the story begins in a small texas town, but it s not just any town. this is college station, home to texas a&m. and in 1999, home to 21-year-old student jamie hart. i was immediately struck with her beauty. chuck crews was her boyfriend at the time. he said jamie was the light of his life. he remembers when he first laid eyes on her. i could barely speak when i saw her, she was so pretty. it was like when the color came on in the wizard of oz. i had been living in a dark world, and she showed me a world full of color. and she was a loyal friend, funny, outspoken. she would tell you exactly what was on her mind at all times. it was early one morning in may. jamie s roommates couldn t find her. they called chuck. i got a call asking me if i knew where she was. and i said, no, she didn t come over here last night. i don t know where she is.
just didn t feel like i had any recourse. she did talk about the case later with reporter kelly brown. it bothered me at the time because i wondered why didn t the grand jury indict him for at least attempted sexual assault? but it did it seemed a little troubling to me that what were we missing? what part of the story did we not have? did the detectives say something that made them think, maybe it was consensual? he was still facing the misdemeanor charge of unlawful restraint scheduled to go to court down the road. in the meantime, he was a free man. he s out walking around. he s out walking around. in the next town over, detectives at the brazos county sheriff s office were still working the jamie hart murder case. in addition to keeping an eye on jamie s boyfriend chuck, they say they followed up on hundreds of other leads and tips.
he was not a match. you felt confident that you could rule him out based on yes. the dna not matching? yes. but even before the dna test cleared jamie s friend, the detective was already looking for other suspects. and his attention quickly landed on someone very close to the victim. her boyfriend. the questions that they asked, focused on where was i the night before. what had i been doing. looking at you as a possible suspect? it didn t really occur to me that that was what they were doing. i just thought they were asking for information. chuck told the detective that before jamie was killed, he hadn t seen her for two days. on the night of the murder, he said he was at home. i was playing computer games like a good nerd. did you have anyone there to corroborate your alibi? i think my roommates were there, but they were both asleep. i had nobody right there sitting there with me.
people just hope this is a drifter and moved on because of the location of the body. the detectives searched the crime scene, searched jamie s car and talked to several witnesses. talked to several people and no one saw anything. turns out, there were no fingerprints inside the car, but during an autopsy, the medical examiner did recover dna from jamie s body, dna which likely came from her rapist and killer. did you put the dna into a database? we put it in codis. any hits? none. no fingerprints, no dna matches. the investigation wasn t off to a good start. that s when we started contacting people at her place of employment, friends, roommates. did she have any enemies? everybody seemed to love her. detective elliott began to retrace jamie s steps on the night of the murder.
so the boyfriend s alibi wasn t solid. and as they spoke, the detective was looking carefully for signs he might be hiding something. he was cooperative. apprehensive. he said everything was fine in their relationship. the detective asked chuck for dna, and he said yes. and when they asked him for a polygraph, he agreed to that, too. but here s the thing with that last part, the polygraph. failed the test. that s a bad sign for you, right? a bad sign for him, yes. doesn t tell you that he s guilty, but he was a very strong person of interest. and what s more, the detective had been speaking with jamie s friends who said the relationship wasn t fine. in fact, the couple had a fight and were on the verge of a breakup. all of which just led to more questions. basically, he went over every aspect of the relationship. just questioned him on his whereabouts. tried to get him to confess.