help them i.d. a killer. it was frustrating for the family, it was frustrating for the detectives and it was frustrating for the prosecutors that worked on the case, including myself. reporter: so detectives went back to the beginning. 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?
years together, sharon and keith finally got married. when i was getting ready to walk down the aisle, that was very sad because my baby girl wasn t gonna be in that wedding party. but she was there. we made sure she was there. we had a big, big picture 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,
she was a fighter and she they ve had the picture hanging in their office for a very long time. and they they passed it onto me. i could look at it now and go, we did it. we did it. you ve given us a new chapter in our life. reporter: the family gave the cold case detectives and prosecutors gifts as well. each was engraved: justice for tara. here to tara. cheers! they put in so much hard work and time and respect, compassion. so we wanna give them a little token of our appreciation and love for everything they ve done. they gave tara peace and justice. that s all for this edition of dateline. i m craig melvin.
results. they were not helpful. only half of the bones in her body were recovered. and some of the more important bones like the hyoid bone which would show whether or not there might been a choking or strangulation was not recovered. reporter: the medical examiner, though, found evidence that four of tara s ribs were fractured. a perimortem fracture, a fracture that occurred at the time of death. so there s a big, big slam into her ribs somehow. the medical examiner clearly found that there was evidence of a violent struggle. there was evidence of blunt force trauma and that would contribute to her death. reporter: detectives scoured the woods, looking for anything that might tell them something. they found a belly button ring near the bones. the kind tara wore, sharon confirmed. and the remnants of only one piece of clothing that belonged to her, a pair of panties. but no hair, no fiber, no dna of any kind at the scene that would
the state, that first of october, 2001: tara s landlord asked barr for a repair estimate. barr and his helper, mcmannis, began their work-day by smoking crack. around noon, four hours before veronica arrived home from school, the men most likely knocked on the door and tara let them in, unaware they had robbery not work on their minds. dave mcmannis was taking the property while barr was distracting her in the bathroom. we believe she found out. she heard something or saw something that mr. mcmannis was doing, where he was in a place he shouldn t have been and she confronted him. and two people with impaired minds do things that normal people wouldn t do. and their solution to that was to kill her. reporter: the woman who d been sitting out in the front yard told the jury how the two men had been laughing and joking when they arrived, but later when she saw them backing their truck up to tara s front door