can t do anything. i honestly didn t think we would ever find her. really? what was going to change? but little did justin know things were about to change. up in fayetteville, private investigator david marshburn had befriended nick holbert, the prime suspect in kelli s disappearance. marshburn was working practically 24/7 to get a confession. chasing every clue holbert dropped. we go talk to him and then we d go out and try and figure it out. we knew we were going on wild goose chases. we had to do it. i mean what else you got? marshburn needed to turn up the heat on holbert and had an idea. nick was always worried law enforcement was watching him. that was his achilles heel? uh-huh. so i knew that was a weakness. which marshburn exploited by enlisting a friend who owned a vehicle that looked like an unmarked police car. he had him park near holbert s house and conduct surveillance, fake surveillance.
provided answers about kelli who had now been missing some 18 months. by this point marshburn spent some $40,000 trying to crack holbert. and thousands of hours. he was losing hope and considered quitting or even trying something drastic. at times i wanted to just take nick and cut his fingers off and say, you tell me or i m going to chop another one off. i wanted to torture him because i knew he knew. you really would have done that? oh, yeah. i hated him that bad, i despised him. marshburn didn t resort to torture but he needed a new tactic, something that would make holbert finally share his deadly secret. coming up, marshburn finds a new pressure point. that was his achilles heel. uh-huh. but will it work? when dateline continues. but if you have diabetes, there can be some not-so-pretty stuff
investigator david marshburn had befriended nick holbert, the prime suspect in kelli s disappearance. marshburn was working practically 24/7 to get a confession. chasing every clue holbert dropped. we go talk to him and then we d go out and try and figure it out. we knew we were going on wild goose chases. we had to do it. i mean what else you got? marshburn needed to turn up the heat on holbert and had an idea. nick was always worried law enforcement was watching him. that was his achilles heel? uh-huh. so i knew it was a weakness. which marshburn exploited by enlisting a friend who owned a vehicle that looked like an unmarked police car. he hadim park near holbert s house and conduct surveillance, fake surveillance. it worked like a charm because he saw him right out the gate when he come outside and got paranoid. so paranoid that marshburn tried yet another trick to push
locked up on that parole violation. if holbert was happy, david marshburn was thrilled because now he could deal with him face-to-face. so just a day after his release marshburn pulled up to the house where holbert was staying. i dve never talked to a killer. have you? i work for dateline. oh, yeah. i take that back. what were you nervous about, that he would try to hurt you or just that the stakes are high here? sort of like a star struck, you know what i mean? you re like, wow, it is happening. marshburn took a deep breath and knocked on the door. and he answered the door, and i said, hey, nick, i m david marshburn, i m a private investigator, i m here to try to find kelli bordeaux and i think you can help me. his strategy was simple, trick holbert into thinking he was an ally. it was basically telling him,
the da didn t have any evidence to arrest holbert for kelli ds disappearance, but he did discover holbert was violating the terms of his parole. he was a prior sex offender, and he was not registered properly and he was placed in jail. sex offender nicholas right where detectives wanted him. now they could watch holbert, see if he blabbed to a cell mate about what happened to kelli. they also questioned him twice, even took him back to froggy bottoms to jog his memory, but holbert stuck to his same, though sometimes inconsistent story. you caught him in lies but you couldn t crack him? exactly. by now olivia and matt had left fayetteville and gone home. i remember feeling defeated. we came up here thinking that something was going to happen and it didn t. i don t know. i felt like i didn t sleep for a couple of weeks. it was 24/7 thinking about what happened, what happened, what happened. detectives and the da seemed so close to an answer. they