finishing college and obviously that was a goal of hers. so i did feel a connection to her, thinking about her and where she would ve been at my age now. reporter: and the defendants now on trial? phil barr owned a septic tank repair business, dave mcmannis was his helper the day tara disappeared. the detectives had learned that barr used his business as a cover for stealing from the homes of unsuspecting customers. and here s what happened, said 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
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 the complicity to cover it up. reporter: the only thing that dave mcmannis was guilty of, said bros bross, was being a sarcastic guy. the majority of the statements that were made were sarcasm at best. so if he s guilty it s a claim. yeah. and that s kind of an easy out for saying terrible things, isn t it? well, it was inappropriate statements, if said at all. david is known to be a jokester and sarcastic. even during the course of the trial, he would say things that were sarcastic.
insisted know, and he didn t take the jewelry either, said somebody gave it to him. he said he received the jewelry from phil barr, and phil barr said it came from the missing girl s home. phil barr, he was the owner of the septic repair business that had been at tara s house the day she went missing. was peewee telling the truth, would he ever tell the truth? he told multiple different stories. what did he say? he said a little more each time he was interviewed, and he would change his story to the point where it made him an uncredible witness. he admitted that he had seen the body at some point. it was a rlittle interesting in that particular area tara s bones were recovered was in a couple hundred yards of peewee s favorite fishing spots. isn t that your connection? it was a great connection but mr. st. john was a very incredible witness. that story about getting
doors, it was excludeing other peop people. so that s what these three did. it was a large photo of tara kept watch, but again, there was no dna to help them. all they had were lingering suspicions about the workmen who went to tara s house the day she v vanished. phil barr, the guy who owned the septic business, and their buddy peewee st. john. but nothing proved anything. curt, we call him the scribe, he organized it 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 going to be able to get into court. the context was in there, you couldn t figure it out because it was a mess. the majority. we had to do the analysis on it and that s what took so long. an amount of detective work amounts to reading witness
meaning detectives spoke with other people who had heard the men talk about the murder but they were not the type a jury would likely believe. much of what they said sowned like drug and booze soaked gossip. it wasn t enough certainly to support charging peewee but thought the prosecutor, maybe he could find a way to go after barr and mcmannis, and he had an idea. bring some of the key witnesses before a grand jury, just to see who passed the credibility test, and who didn t. i ve prosecuted over a hundred homicide cases, and the complexity and the amount of information that we had to review to determine if we could prosecute this case was the most i d ever seen. 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, where