there was no stopping. reporter: as did her attorney. she would hear a piece of information from a neighbor or a news source or a detective that wasn t supposed to tell her. and then she would confirm it, 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. coming up i always felt this was a case that could be solved. reporter: enter the cold case squad! could they do what no one else had? how important was that?
i d ever seen. reporter: the idea worked. the grand jury indicted both phil barr and dave mcmannis for tara s murder. they were arrested in late 2012, 11 years after tara vanished from her home. dave mcmannis was arrested in maryland, where he grew up, while u.s. marshals mounted a 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.
told investigators, tara was fine when he and his helper left her house that afternoon. but questions went on and on. and phil barr, who had a business to run, didn t appreciate that kind of attention. barr complained to a local nbc reporter about it. it s been very stressful. i realize the police are doing their job and they re looking into things, but nonetheless i feel like, you know, i ve been harassed. reporter: and several times, he, himself, confronted the detectives. insisted he was innocent, all the talk was unfair. i am telling you the truth. i have nothing to do with this girl s disappearance. i m getting the [ bleep ] shaft here. reporter: it was a problem. detectives certainly had their suspicions. but evidence? there was none. and most everyone they questioned who knew barr was, well, a bit shady. hard to believe. prosecutor feinberg concluded he simply didn t have enough to make a charge stick. the dna evidence in this case that was collected from the
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 we contended that those conversations never took place. snitches.er: some of those 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 went missing. there s enough circumstantial evidence to believe that he was involved if not in the murder, but definitely in
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. so it was closing doors, it was excluding other people. reporter: so, that s what these three did, as a large photo of tara kept watch. but, again, there was no dna to help them. all they had really were lingering suspicions about the workmen who went to tara s house the day she vanished. phil barr, the guy who owned the septic tank business, his helper that day, dave mcmannis, and their buddy peewee st. john, but nothing in this huge trove of investigative material proved anything. kurt, we call him the scribe. he organized it in in such a way that it was easier to understand. what had been difficult to understand? it was confusing to the point where you didn t know what we