tara, almost grown up, told them she d stay behind, make her own life. she didn t wanna come down, you know. i m sure it was, you know, it s change, especially when you re older and but we had a bet going on how long it would be before she got here, because we re we are so close. so we had a bet going, and i think she lasted three weeks? i m gonna stay here on my own. no, i m not. yeah. yes. yep, no. reporter: she got a job. made plans to start college. had already decided that she wanted to be a crime scene investigator. she had her books and everything. yeah. reporter: and though sharon s then-fiance keith wasn t officially tara s step-dad, they had a father-daughter sort of relationship. yeah, we were very close. yep. always always hung out together. she would make our famous peanut butter and jelly triple-decker sandwiches we would have. and she would be going to make them all. she was my buddy. reporter: and now he didn t know where she was.
the decorative bricks around it. and then there was tire tracks. reporter: what, across the lawn? across the lawn. reporter: how close do those tire tracks come to the house? it wasn t a big yard, but no, it wasn t a big yard. reporter: they went up to the door. and they found two ribbons, the kind tara wore in her hair, outside their front door, and scuff marks on their bedroom dresser. tell me about the what those scuff marks look like. like somebody moved it or rubbed something against it? if you took your shoe and you kicked something and you left a mark. reporter: okay. like, if, you know, if you walk on a floor and you drag your feet, it leaves a mark? reporter: yeah. well, that was on the dresser drawers in our bedroom. reporter: one of the missing pieces of jewelry was a ring tara had given to keith. my dad ring she she bought me. i didn t care about anything else but that. reporter: the officers left the house with nothing learned, nothing
reporter: how frustrated were you? oh, so very frustrated. reporter: veronica, not quite 14, remember, was terrified. why wasn t anybody taking action and figuring out where she was? reporter: keith and sharon called everybody they knew in town. their best friends offered moral support, came to the house, and one of them noticed something on the floor. we just heard, oh, my god! and we walked in and she was bending over, pulling it out of the carpet like it was embedded in the carpet. yeah, it wasn t just laying there. she pulled it out and she said, sharon, isn t this one of her earrings? and she said, yeah. reporter: so then? then eventually we found the we found another one. yeah. and and then the third one. reporter: like, ground into the carpet? yeah, right oh, yeah, just we had to pull them out. reporter: they also noticed a small palm tree in their front yard had been damaged along with
here as you re sitting up all night gut-wrenching pain. big hole. praying that, oh, please, please don t let this be true. reporter: before the sun came up, sharon called 911 again. and a new officer arrived. a woman deputy, i ll never forget that. and she came. and i remember saying to her, please help me. and she did. she got the ball rolling. she listened to me. the deputy called in crime scene investigators. i remember my mother waking me and my brother up. and i remember seeing so many people there, and the crime scene van outside. reporter: now deputies were taking tara s disappearance seriously. mike gandy was a captain at the charlotte county sheriff s office back then. sometimes you ll respond to a scene or a call where someone s missing and you can tell from the family interaction that it s not a big deal. this was not the case with tara s mom.
but it was her. it was tara. enough of the teeth were there to to make a positive identification that it was tara. reporter: by then, sharon and keith were at home, waiting for the results. detective gandy went to tell them. that s never easy, huh? hardest thing you ever have to do. and then when they come to your door with clergy reporter: you see them coming? yeah. [ crying ] then the reality is that s it, you re never gonna see her again. it s so devastating. it s the worst pain ever. [ crying ] she didn t belong out there. reporter: 284 days after tara vanished, they knew, finally, she was never coming back. but they were no closer to knowing how she wound up out there in the woods.