doctors described her brain as jell-o. there was severe hemorrhaging, lots of blood. doctors immediately suspected shaken baby syndrome. but when police questioned veech, seen here in this interrogation video, he denied harming the toddler. veech told police cassie was in her highchair eating cheerios when he turned his back to answer the phone he said he heard a thud. just two thumps on the first oneky only assume was the kitchen table. reporter: veech said cassie fell out of her highchair but cassie s highchair was just 30 inches from the ground. just 2 1/2 feet. it just didn t make sense that she would fall and from that short fall that she would be in such critical condition. reporter: doctors couldn t save her. 15 days after she was rushed to the hospital, the little girl with the sparkling blue eyes and blond pigtails was dead.
her highchair eating cheerios when he turned his back to answer the phone he said he heard a thud. just two thumps on the first oneky only assume was the kitchen table. reporter: veech said cassie fell out of her highchair but cassie s highchair was just 30 inches from the ground. just 2 1/2 feet. it just didn t make sense that she would fall and from that short fall that she would be in such critical condition. reporter: doctors couldn t save her. 15 days after she was rushed to the hospital, the little girl with the sparkling blue eyes and blond pigtails was dead. the medical examiner ruled cassie had died of blunt force head injuries but couldn t say for sure how it happened or if a crime had been committed. so prosecutors in yuma county, arizona, chose not to charge veech because of lack of evidence. the file on cassie was officially closed in 2003. veech was a free man. fast forward a few years to
i never put my hands on her. and they never could prove that i did. reporter: after veech was sentenced, cassie s grandmother went to her grave with a message. i told cassie when we got back that we d finally put him away, and not to be afraid anymore. reporter: cassie would have turned 11 this year. julie hanie still looks at her picture. she ll never forget the little girl, who after so many years, finally got justice. such a cute little girl, randi. tough story to hear. so he got ten years in prison. he pleaded to this lesser charge, thought he could get between three and 12 1/2 years. they gave him almost the maximum amount. was he surprised by that? he was. he told us by phone he was shocked because he thought pleading to the lesser charge to manslaughter, he only admitted thoughtlessness, never actually admitted harming cassie or killing cassie but he thought he
starting with veech s interrogation video. watching his video i got the sense that those were crocodile tears. those were not for cassie, those were for him. reporter: the biggest problem with the case was the early diagnosis of shaken baby syndrome. from day one she said that threw the case off course. her own investigation found cassie hadn t been shaken at all. she d been slammed. i think william lost control and in a moment of rage he killed cassie. he struck her with some very hard object, or took her and used her as some kind of a weapon and struck her into a very hard object like the corner of my desk here or a wall, something very, very hard. because it bashed the left side of her brain in. reporter: hainy had the x-rays and autopsy slides re-examined at the armed forces of pathology in washington, d.c., where military pathologists caught something doctors missed all those years ago. the trauma was limited to the right side of her head.
february 2006 when cassie s case landed on the desk of julie hainy, a cold case investigator for ncis, the naval criminal investigative service. because veech was a marine, a case file had been created years earlier. common sense and 24 years of doing this told me it didn t add up. reporter: hainy started to piece together what happened. for inspiration, she posted this picture at her desk. it just reminds me of what why i m here. what who i m working for. reporter: julie hainy turned the case file inside out, starting with veech s interrogation video. watching his video i got the sense that those were crocodile tears. those were not for cassie, those were for him. reporter: the biggest problem with the case was the early diagnosis of shaken baby syndrome. from day one she said that threw the case off course. her own investigation found cassie hadn t been shaken at