my friend called me and she was hysterical. she said sandra has been killed. i was like, oh, my god. as soon as she was killed, we all knew who did it. as the months went on, we just realized that this guy is going to get off. how is this happening? just keep praying. that s all we can do. there aren t a lot of murders in paradise. people still talk about this one. just a darling girl with two darling children. it is a story keith morrison followed for nearly ten years. how? when? i got a call from her boss, said she hadn t showed up for work. they found her in the car. i saw in the back of her neck some ligature marks. just didn t deserve that. a small island, a small pool of suspects. ryan, her lover with a past i had no idea he was a drug dealer. and darren, the soon-to-be ex-husband. that morning he called in sick. was darren polygraphed? he didn t pass. and the lover? he didn t do that good either. without much else to go on, this ca
murders in paradise. people still talk about this one. just a darling girl with two darling children. it is a story keith morrison followed for nearly ten years. how? when? i got a call from her boss, said she hadn t showed up for work. they found her in the car. i saw in the back of her neck some ligature marks. just didn t deserve that. a small island, a small pool of suspects. ryan, her lover with a past i had no idea he was a drug dealer. and darren, the soon-to-be ex-husband. that morning he called in sick. was darren polygraphed? he didn t pass. and the lover? he didn t do that good either. without much else to go on, this case was growing colder by the day. nothing. just nothing happens. but a father doesn t forget. i have to have justice for my daughter. after all these years, are there still secrets to uncover? must have been quite a journey for you. it isn t over yet. this father finally got his answer, but is it the o
garage. police immediately set their sights on two men close to sandra, but it would take a father s relentless pursuit of the truth to unravel this mystery. here is keith morrison with the other side of paradise. ? wandering through this land you wonder if you ve been transported to the beginning of biblical time. to a garden free of want, temptation or betrayal. and in a land so distractingly beautiful, tourists who ebb and flow like the tides could be forgiven for looking past this lone, tormented father, begging for help for a terrible reason, to solve the murder of his precious daughter, sandy. yeah, i really appreciate it. no, no, anything we can do. we re it takes time. we hope. we hope we get an arrest this year. there s no close yet. we are 90% there. it s all good. we first came upon larry mendonca, well, on another dateline assignment way back in 2009, which is when we shot this video. he was 68 years old then. alone he worked, handing
take a look at the file. and remarkably, they found new evidence. but in a case full of twists there was another one just around the corner. here again is keith morrison with the other side of paradise. it took a scientific breakthrough to finally get larry mendonca the breakthrough he was looking for. touch dna, microscopic skin cells on sandra s shirt and bra that was a match to darren. when that result came in, tell me what your first thoughts were. we got him. but larry was wary. it isn t over yet. because what seemed like great evidence to the cops did not to the newly elected prosecuting attorney shailene neseri. for one simple reason. the dna did not exclusively match darren. it could have come from the two children. larry, though, refused to be discouraged. the driving force is to get this case solved and put my
million dollar settlement to family of stephen clark, black man shot and killed by police in 2018. they chase the 22-year-old into his grandmother s backyard and shot him at least seven times. now, back to dateline. w, back to dateline. welcome back to dateline. i m natalie morales. three years after sandra galas s murder the investigation had stalled. enter chief darryl perry. like sandra s father, larry, chief perry knew the pain of losing a child. motivated by their shared grief, he asked state investigators to take a look at the file. and remarkably, they found new evidence. but in a case full of twists there was another one just around the corner. here again is keith morrison with the other side of paradise. it took a scientific breakthrough to finally get larry mendonca the breakthrough he was looking for. touch dna,