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 cruz was her boyfriend at the time. he says 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. i hadn t talked to her the night
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 codus. any hits? none. no eyewitnesss. 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 elliot began to retrace jamie s steps on the night of the murder. jamie was taking time off from her studies at texas a&m and was working at a pizza parlor. her shift had ended around midnight. we contacted everybody that she delivered pizzas to, and nothing out of the ordinary. after work, she had headed over to a friend s house. he said they were there watching movies and she left his
least attempted sexual assault? but it seemed a little troubling to me that, what were we missing? what part of the story did we not have? did the detective 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. but no one in that department looked at kristen s case for a possible connection. you were sexually assaulted. jamie hart was sexually assaulted. did you start to think that these could be connected? i didn t think they were connected. and that was primarily because with jamie, was that there was a boyfriend that may have been involved.
months before jamie was murdered. i feel like if i would have stayed and fought him through the police department, that possibly he wouldn t have been able to go on to hurt anyone else. and kristen is left with the memory of an assault that, according to the law, never really happened. i was so angry that two people had to die in order for someone to believe me. did the system fail? it failed me. it failed carolyn. it failed jamie. do you think about them a lot? they were total strangers to you. but they re my alternative future. i mean, they re what could have happened to me. i mean, they re what could have happened to any of us. a jury convicted ynobe matthews of carolyn s murder and sentenced him to death. he also pleaded guilty to jamie s murder. kristen faced him in court during the penalty face. it was terrifying. and i had to testify. and i met carolyn s family.
and jamie s family. they all came out afterwards and gave me a hug. it helped me realize that their families didn t hold any grudge against me. it s not her fault that my sister died. and kristen should have no guilt over that. with the casey family as witnesses, ynobe matthews was executed three years later. if there is a lesson to take from this story, it is one that comes directly from a survivor herself. someone who has learned the hard way to cherish life s moments, each and every one. it makes you realize how fragile your life is, and that anybody can take it in a moment s notice. the story for them, that s it. that s their life s story. the final chapter has been written. but for me, i get to keep going on. what would you call yourself? i mean, people have called me a survivor.