and this is dateline. i can t believe that their baby is lying there lifeless. she was everything to me. she was so sweet everybody. state troopers said bonnie had died in a hiking accident. the said she fell off a cliff. her mother said, they were wrong. i was screaming to them, these are defensive wounds. no witnesses, no weapon. nothing left behind by a stranger s dna. we no longer have some accidental death. this was a homicide. they had no suspect. but for years, her mother kept fighting to find bonnie s killer. bonnie s mother continues her own crusade. then after more than a decade of searching, a phone call. i just got information, there was a match. can we get a conviction on just the dna? and there was something else. something about bonnie herself. it was almost like she knew something hello, and welcome to dateline. we often see headlines about dna evidence exonerating the innocent. it seems we hear less about how dna from an unknow
body floating in mchugh creek, a few miles from anchorage. at first, they didn t know who it was. no idea on the body. alaska state troopers finally figured it out from the class ring she was wearing. but karen could not take it in. not bonnie, her model child. her conscientious college freshman, who she knew was going to school that day. not hiking. miles and miles from home and the university. none of it made sense. she didn t drive, so how did you get out there? somebody would have had to be with her. and she would not have missed school. she absolutely did not go out there on her own. in fact, bonnie s sister heard her get up that morning at 5 am and set out on her 45 minute walk through the predawn dark, to catch the bus that will take her to her 7 am class at the university. she usually didn t return home till about 10 pm. packing most of her classes