but wait a minute smudge marks and hair. when you look at how this homicide happened, it wasn t sexually motivated or it wasn t a robbery. it really was focused on anger. and so ponce circled right back to those original two suspects, husband darren, boyfriend ryan. but which one? from the file ponce learned ryan, in addition to being a drug trafficker, had also been convicted of domestic violence. and was there something fishy about how he found sandra s body? he told the cops he went to sandra s house. doors were locked. he said he peered through these ventilation slats at the base of her garage wall. said he saw sandra in her car. and calling out sandra, sandra. and then he says he couldn t get into the door. he called a friend to help him open the door. called a friend to help him find a body? wouldn t be the first time a guilty party did that. did ryan remain here at the scene, wait for the police officers, and talk to them then?
break me. i m craig melvin. and i m natalie morales. and this is dateline. my friend called me and she was hysterical. and she said, sandra s been killed. i was like, oh, my god. as soon as she was killed, we all knew who did it. as the months went on, we just realized that this guy s going to get off. how is this happening? just keep praying, that s all we can do. there aren t a lot of murders in paradise. people still talk about this one. just a darling girl with two darling children. it s a story keith morrison has
report about his demeanor that night? you know, initially investigators thought that maybe he wasn t saying everything that happened and yeah. and he s you know. holding back a little. yeah. and maybe he was a little bit nervous. but ryan had an alibi, right? he was at work when sandra was killed. well, ponce found out the estimated time of sandra s death was really more of a rough guess. and that sandra could just as well have been murdered hours earlier, when ryan wasn t at work. and then there were the results from ryan s 2006 polygraph exam. what was the result of that? he wasn t viewed as passed. which didn t look good for ryan. except, darren s polygraph result didn t look so great, either. how d he do? he didn t do that good. he didn t pass. now that was interesting. both suspects failed the polygraph. so now ponce looked at the evidence against darren.
and it turned out to be two different married women. sandra confronted darren. he would never admit it. he just kept saying they were friends, they were friends. and she knew otherwise. she knew what it was. by june darren had moved out. and sandra moved on. got a job at the beach house restaurant, an island landmark. it was a life-changer. she was just a darling girl, you know? with two darling children. christa hall was a waitress at the beach house and saw, firsthand, sandra s transformation from quiet island girl to young working woman. and she wore her hair back in a ponytail and she was very prim and proper and very, you know, subdued. and then, as soon as she got away from darren, you know, she was, like, cut her hair in a bob and it was really cute and stylish all of a sudden. sandra started going out with friends, and as is pretty obvious in this concert video, she was enjoying her new life. and before too long, sandra started getting friendly with one of the
larry took us to sandra s grave. told us how he promised to bring her killer to justice. she won t be forgotten as long as i m alive. we had no idea then where this meeting would lead us, that our journey would last a decade, a case that would expose evil lurking in this garden paradise and bring larry to the edge of his own mortality. many on kauai knew sandra, even watched her as a teenager dancing in a local marketing video. like many here she was multiracial, growing up in a household that was half japanese, half portuguese, all hawaiian. and a devout catholic who attended st. catherine s school with friends alma umala and joanie morita. when people ask you, what was