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.
located her and spoke to her. what d she have to say? she floored me. reporter: why? that visitor was not blocked by the fence like her relatives were. she d been sitting in full view not more than 15 yards from tara s front door, and she saw a lot. she did see a vehicle pull in a couple different times. and then the second time she saw the vehicle there, it was backed up to the front door. and the two guys got out, opened the tailgate, and we were walking back and forth inside the front door. wow. yeah. and that was, kind of how important was that in the extremely important. she she identified david mcmannis as being at the house with barr. she identified him there at a time when the pickup truck was backed up to the front door. what other reason was that pickup truck backed up the front door other than to take tara out of that house? reporter: we went out to the house to get a better idea of where this woman was sitting and what she could have seen. so, she
the decorative bricks around it. and then there was tire tracks. reporter: what, across the lawn? across the lawn. reporter: how close do those tire tracks come to the house? it wasn t a big yard, but no, it wasn t a big yard. reporter: they went up to the door. and they found two ribbons, the kind tara wore in her hair, outside their front door, and scuff marks on their bedroom dresser. tell me about the what those scuff marks look like. like somebody moved it or rubbed something against it? if you took your shoe and you kicked something and you left a mark. reporter: okay. like, if, you know, if you walk on a floor and you drag your feet, it leaves a mark? reporter: yeah. well, that was on the dresser drawers in our bedroom. reporter: one of the missing pieces of jewelry was a ring tara had given to keith. my dad ring she she bought me. i didn t care about anything else but that. reporter: the officers left the house with nothing learned, nothing
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 were gonna be able to get into court. the context was in there. you couldn t figure it out because it was a mess. the majority of it was in
and i remember halfway down the road, remembering that i forget my key. but the closer we got to the house, i had seen my sister s car. so i said, oh, okay, cool. you know, i don t i don t need the key. you know, she s home. reporter: then she noticed the door wasn t quite closed. it was closed, but it wasn t latched. like you could just pull on it and the door would open. i remember walking in and oprah was on the tv. what did you assume when you saw the door open and the tv on? i thought maybe she left in a hurry. maybe she went with a friend, you know, and she just didn t close the door all the way. reporter: she was tara, veronica s older sister, not quite 20 then. veronica called out. no answer. she walked through the house, bathroom light was on. i went and looked in the bathroom and then i went in our bedroom and i d seen her purse and everything on top of her dresser. so then, i m like, where would she be without her purse? cause that wasn t usual. so tha