marriage to work, i did not give up. soon he was gone, vanished without a word or a trace. he left the young daughter behind. he left the house. was this a husband who did not want to be found? or could this be something else. detectives are not an undercover operation. that would lead to a long hard to say ready for that? i know that it has to happen. disappearance in the desert. could it be the perfect crime. i can only imagine what would be like to keep that. welcome to dateline. i m lester holt. for eight years it was a mystery, a husband who had simply vanished. on the surface it didn t make sense. he had a wife, a lucrative job, a daughter he loved. but investigators were told he also had a secret. so was he missing or was he hiding? that question would lead detectives to a dark discovery because someone else had a secret to. here s josh michael it s. there is an old saying, that two people can keep a secret if one of them is dead. we never talked about
until they had a body. and so another four years passed. mike s sister teri became more and more dissatisfied with the progress detective wilson was making. i think at first he was very zealous. he felt that, you are right, a lot of this isn t adding up and i believe at first they worked very hard to find my brother. as the years went by, the unknown had become unbearable for the snyder family. they wanted answers from the police. i think he got very upset with me that i was being pushy. our phone conversations got less and less. i would call and leave a message and my messages weren t being returned. they kind of, i think, put the case on the back burner, i believe. detective wilson did continue to look for mike snyder but wilson had to also focus on the 20 other cold cases that needed his attention.
ever. i shot him because i was afraid. there are some things ellen snyder admits. she admits that she shot and killed her husband mike snyder in the early-morning hours of january 2002. she admits that she buried his body and lied about his disappearance for years, but she does not admit to being guilty of murder. you don t think of yourself as a murderer? no, i don t. i was saving my own life. it came down that night to me or him. she said it was a case of survival. but ask detective wilson and he calls it something else. i believe this is an evil woman who planned this from the beginning. maybe she did fear for her life. there are people who say they saw her with bruises. sure. it s a possibility. possibility there was a bruise. or it could have been something she set up to look like that to
here again, josh mankiewicz. mike snyder had been missing for eight long years. his family didn t know where he was and the detective investigating the case had a hunch that mike s wife ellen was somehow involved. a co-worker of ellen s came afford saying he had loaned ellen his gun and when she returned it a few months later, there were no bullets. he looked at it, looked at her and said where s the bullets. ellen said that she went to a gun range with a friend who showed her how to use it. and detective wilson had discovered that ellen had actually tried to purchase another gun at a local pawnshop one month earlier. she was turned down after a routine background check. you couldn t. what happened? it was a fraud charge. what did you do to get in trouble. i was working for a company that i wrote a check on.
two more days. finally on the third day, searchers uncovered a waterproof tarp. inside were the remains of mike snyder. she had been saying mike was in phoenix and mike this and that and all along mike wasn t in phoenix. for mike s family the finality is devastating. to not know eight years and hold on to hope and have that pulled out from under you was very difficult for all of us. ellen snyder sat in defense attorney penny adrian s office knowing an arrest was imminent. they found the body and she wanted to get it over with. she said you can t go on like this. so adrian informed the police that ellen snyder was ready to turn herself in. that following friday, i met with the police detectives at her office, gave a full