floor. my god help me please. a teenage mom at the center of a murder mystery. fingers were pointed everywhere at everybody. who had a motive to kill? hello and welcome to dateline. a teenage mom and her close circle of friends find themselves at the center of an emotional situation. they were carefree california girl still in high school, but soon their lives would change in a way that if you could ve predicted. here s keith morrison with mean girls. an interesting species a teenage girls. some are sweet. some are not. we call them mean girls. and some in particular as you are about to see have been very mean indeed. i was 1997 when their story began here in the high desert north of l.a.. lancaster, california. there was sara chapin, than 18, a cheerleader and local beauty queen. you are pretty popular kid in high school? i was fairly popular but i was a cheerleader. which helps? yes. amy priest myre, 16, sporty, and ap student who looked like the girl ne
two families that might have gone off the rails stayed intact because of an amazing gift he helped create and left behind. her name is kayleigh the man who killed her father before she was born was in prison. the teenager who gave birth to her grew into womanhood, and even ricky s parents the cowles who hadn t liked amy from the start, developed a grudging respect. for amy was really good a catch handing out. a beer with kayleigh? that s right she s great. and that might be in the end of the story. life has to go on and they re hours with kayleigh were some of the sweet never had. but they couldn t just erased or one nagging belief that billy hoffman did not act alone when he killed their son. even though philippe billy was convicted, that was in the whole story? he was convicted on circumstantial evidence. i didn t do, and i didn t do
and then months, months, and months them by. oh, years! years won by. and during those years, the cowles held their breath and their tongues every week. when they want to pick up their granddaughter from the woman they had come to believe arranged their son s murder. we knew but, you know, what sometimes there s one more thing more important than that was to kayleigh. she superseded all of that because i wanted her to have a happy life. it was easter, 2000 and, five love was in the air again. amy lynn preasmyer what s just about to be married. baby kayleigh was seven years old, though they were showing baby pictures of her when ricky s parents got the call and arrest was imminent. and that s set into motion in a country we had an attorney for kayleigh. we called, and they said we need to go get custody of this little girl. the family court judge gave the cowles temporary custody. and thus, we got a five-year battle between two sets of loving grandparents.
nothing is for dna. nothing missing and nothing in particular about ricky cowles that would lead you to think that he d be a murder victim. he s not the sort of person who would normally be a victim of that kind of crime. unless, maybe, he owed money, drug field or hadn t paid a gambling that. that wasn t anything that was out there. tom harrison and detectives with los angeles county sheriff s homicide worked on the case. we also know the victims lifestyle because that s usually what s going to tell you where to go. and rickie worked all the time with this father. he drink some beer when he d get done working. and he probably smoked some weed every once in a while. but beyond that pretty standard middle class guy. the. he was a hardworking kid. so he wasn t the type of kid who would have some big drug that. but, if the cops didn t have much to go. on that group of girls seems to have some rather shocking ideas. though, of course, reporting this to the cops would be a
it. yeah. but in 2002 he wrote us a letter. i.s., a letter. the key to the whole thing really. without that letter, it was 2002 and billy hoffman had been in prison for three years when he wrote to the cowles that he was remorseful. he had found god he said and with that a sense of obligation to say he was sorry. i m reading it, i m reading it, and crying, and i m reading, and i m crying. that he was sorry that he had done things that he shouldn t have. he hoped that we would forgive him someday. then she went back to the beginning and won t read this one curious phrase. i would he wrote i would like to begin by confessing my part in the murder of richard as the one who took his life. my part. when ricky s parents saw