i called my mom and she didn t answer. i pretty much knew in my heart that something was wrong. a mother vanished. i cried myself to sleep. it was awful realizing your worst nightmare had come true. a family anguished. she s gone. do you have any idea how hard that was? now, the questions begin in a southern gothic mystery. the case is puzzling. we did not really know what had happened. who would everett manage and you would have a murder in the family. soon there would be secrets. we were dealing with a person that was leading a double life. and one of them, would prove deadly. have you ever said, i know you did this? it hurts too much for me to say it out loud. hello. and welcome to dateline. it s a case that centers on the mother who had gone missing in a small town secret, that led to a very big surprise. here s keith morrison. suppose for a minute you are sitting in your car. smacked up in the middle of tuscaloosa alabama. and you poin
right. it was a hand good, inside a plastic ziplock bag. i think she handed him the plastic bag for him to take it out. and that was a little weird. why would it be in the bag? right. a peculiar story for sure. certain details were a little fuzzy. kid could not remember the exact date for example. but he did recall with absolute clarity, who the driver was, because he knew her. knew her name. in here was the most curious thing of all. it was a name you have heard before. dawn lavender. small town moundville suddenly got even smaller. dawn lavender, you will recall is teresa s friend, the one who said she waited in vain for theresa to pick her up on the morning of the murder. great buddies according to don. but maybe not so much, said kelsey. if our mom saw each other eight games, or wherever they would speak, they were not best
stressed out those cat last weeks of her life. the night of the casino trip teresa told kelsey, don gave her xanax, the anti anxiety medication, just to calm her down. dawn told her. it is certainly did that. out like a light calm, for two whole days. i looked at her, i said teresa, you need to stay away from that woman, she is no friend of yours. how did she respond to that? she said i ve learned my lesson. or maybe she did not. because the morning of the murder, teresa had arranged to run errands with dawn, or at least that s what dawn said. and then it all click together. dawn on the dirt road, a gun in a plastic bag, teresa s car window down as though she knew her killer. sheriff alice and corporate boyd, picked apart dawns early interview with a suspicious i. they pulled her phone records and there it was plain as day. dawns lies caught by selling phone technology. it painted a clearer picture, that don was in the location of
mate, dawn not only admitted to shooting teresa but she said that she had tried once before. that strange night the casino, when teresa came home stumbling, that was her first attempted murder. but why? but why? why would she want to kill her friend? because, listen to this, the answer to the whole puzzle really comes down to one little word. dawn uses it when telling her cell mate what she did. i mean, we tried. we? dawn was not acting alone. she had a co-conspirator. i don t know if she was trying to be a show off, because she was calling herself a hit man. dawn was a hired gun, for, you
while we was out at the crime scene, scott had had a young lady come pick up the boys. it was only later when the fog of grief had lifted, that one of teresa s relatives wonder to police, who was that woman, hanging around the day trees that died? ellis and boyd tracked her down. and what they discovered, well that changed everything. or seems to. the person they were talking to was scott s mistress. she was under the impression that scott was not married at that time. what did you make of that when you heard? we knew that was not correct. a love triangle, jealous home wrecker kills wave claims husband? no, not even close. scott s girlfriend thought his marriage was over, his divorce finalized. what was her reaction to getting the real story? she must have been upset. more hurt probably than upset, because i think she had