phillip barr was saying to david mcmannis, i didn t want to kill her. and she overheard david mcmannis respond, she had to die. reporter: not very believable, said the defense attorneys. just people making things up, said barr s lawyer, mark de sisto. we contended that those conversations never took place. reporter: some of those witnesses were inmates, too, snitches. i never met a confidential informant that s gonna inform just cause he wants to be a nice guy or a good citizen. there s always something in it for him. reporter: that woman, the star witness found by the cold case team, who said she saw the two men coming and going from tara s house? could it be she made herself believe this over so much of a time to make sure the bad guy goes away? reporter: dave mcmannis s attorney, michael bross, said his view those detectives focused on the wrong man. said phil barr s accomplice must have been peewee st. john, the man who d turned in jewelry three days after tara
quellc welcome back. later their mom s fiancee noticed muddy foot prints tracked through house and cash and jewelry missing. the moment her mother got the call her intuition told her tara was in trouble. so there they were. frantic about tara. what happened? where was she? reporter: the policemen who came to help them only seemed concerned about the jewelry and cash that appeared to have been taken, not sharon s missing daughter. they were concentrated on the burglary. reporter: they didn t seem to hear what she was saying, didn t understand her panic. they just weren t getting us or
that s when i called keith. keith was keith philips her mum s fiancee. he was just leaving work, told veronica he was thinking of stopping for coffee with a friend on his way home. ven then ver ka told him about tara, her purse was home but she wasn t. what did you think when she told you that? well just something wasn t right. if tara was going to go somewhere, she wouldn t leave her keys there. that s how responsible she was. he kept it and drove straight home. as soon as i got home. there were tracks, i said, what are these marks on the road? tracks? muddy foot prints. muddy foot prints in the living room and master bedroom and something else. something only those who live there would know. in the bedroom, it would be turned the certain way. you lay in bed you want to see it. when i went in, it was straight.
manhunt for phil barr. kinda lost track of him. we were actually then able to to locate phil in the vermont area, very close to the canadian border, where we think he had fled with the intent possibly of of leaving the country. reporter: but the case against the men needed more, and so the cold case team kept investigating. and in 2014, one of them came across a name buried deep in an old file. right after tara disappeared, a next door neighbor told investigators she saw barr and another man at tara s house that day, but she couldn t see much because her view was blocked by a fence. so that went nowhere then, except the neighbor happened to mention that her sister-in-law had been visiting that day. but, no one had ever interviewed her. kurt, i think, had found her name and said, hey, do you who is this person? and mike said, oh, i know someone by that name. so mike then went out and and
they reviewed all the witness statements they d taken over the course of the nine months tara had been missing. and there was a note about a man who d turned in some jewelry three days after tara went missing. a ring and bracelet, which turned out to belong to tara s family. it would had been in the possession of glen saint john. took a couple of pieces of jewelry to his probation officer. reporter: glen st. john, who went by peewee, was on probation for felony burglary. so, did peewee kill tara? he insisted, no, and he didn t take the jewelry, either, he said. somebody gave it to him. told him that he received that jewelry from phil barr, and phil barr told him it came from the missing girl s home. reporter: phil barr? he was the owner of the septic repair business that had been at tara s house the day she went missing. but, was pee wee telling the