made up of her. reporter: but the anger remained and intense frustration as, year after year, sharon demanded answers and didn t get them. in 2008, almost seven years after tara s murder, sharon appeared in a crime stoppers video, and spoke directly to the killers, whoever they were. i want to know how they wake up in the morning. how do they go on with their life knowing that they did this to a person? don t think for a minute that you got away with this. cuz one day, and i truly truly believe this, that one day, there s going to be a knock at that door, and they re going to be in cuffs. and that s what i, that s what i want. reporter: nothing came of it. the whole world had moved on, forgotten, apparently. but then, a year later, 2009, punta gorda got a new sheriff. and he thought some of the unsolved cases in town needed a new look and called upon the retired detective mike gandy. and these two, who had been detectives up north before they,
too, retired and moved to punta gorda, mike vogel and kurt mehl. i moved to florida and came down here to hunt and fish and play golf and go boating and go to the beach and just relax. and that lasted a couple months. i got very bored. reporter: and so three bored ex-detectives put on badges again to form the sheriff s very first official cold case unit and decided early on they d work on tara s case. prosecutor feinberg was finally optimistic, sort of. i always felt that this was a case that could be solved. if it had a new set of eyes, it had somebody that could put the case together, connect all of the dots. what requests did you make of them? we wanted to know more about every piece of evidence, every we have to rule out every piece of dna in that house.
run with it, call me. she fought and fought and fought for justice. justice for tara. and as sharon would say, my tara. she s always said, my tara. reporter: but none of these efforts turned up anything useful. and the sheriff s case wasn t going anywhere either. there was no getting around it. justice for tara just was not happening. in fact, the case was growing cold. stone cold. eventually mike gandy retired, as did these two cops, way up north. retired and moved to sunny florida. and i got very bored. reporter: oh oh. it turns out the three cops were not ready to hand in their badges. with extraordinary attention to detail, they were about to reignite the investigation and give a heart broken family new hope. coming up. i always felt this was a case that could be solved.
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now he didn t know where she was. right away that afternoon, keith called cheshlgs just finishing her work day at her office. i ll never forget that call. i remember saying i have to leave now. it was a 40-minute ride. i ceo i d that whole way home to please don t let nothing be wrong. please. please. i remember my mother pulling up. how did she look? panicked. keith called 911. an officer was there when she arrived. i said you need to do something. my daughter is not here. i just knew, i just knew. coming up, what had happened to tara, earrings in the carpet? stuff on the ground, tire tracks overall? it was obviously that we had a serious problem. when the knock at the door continues. continues.