Were over, the prosecutors, detectives and their spouses got together for dinner with sharon and keith and veronica. detective mehl made a presentation. she was a fighter and she kept us fighting for her, for you and your family. dave had the picture hanging in their office for a very long time. and they passed it on to me. i can look at it now and go, we did it. we did it. you ve given us a new chapter to our life. the family gave the cold case detectives and the prosecutors gifts as well. each was engraved, justice for tara. here s to tara. cheers. they put in so much hard work and time, and respect,
The verdicts: guilty. both men were sentenced to life in prison without parole. mcmannis has filed an appeal. barr lost his. i think everybody would agree that but for sharon, neither trial would ve taken place. she fought and fought and fought for justice. reporter: tara s little sister veronica has two children of her own now. they know their aunt tara. and they have necklaces with her pictures on it. and my daughter, you would think that she had met her. she dreams about her. never met her, but they love her. that warms my heart. reporter: a few weeks after the trials were over, the prosecutors, detectives and their spouses got together for dinner with sharon, keith and veronica. detective mehl made a presentation.
Hair ribbons came loose as they were driving away or putting her there or something? that would be a pretty good explanation. well, well, well. this makes it all the more real when you see how close this must have been. reporter: the woman said she didn t actually see what the men were doing, because the cab of the truck blocked her view. but still, this was way more than they had before. finally, 14 years after tara vanished, barr and mcmannis were going on trial for her murder. what had happened at the house that day? a jury finally hears the story. coming up. we believe she confronted him. a mother s perseverance had brought the case this far. she fought and fought and fought. would a verdict bring justice at last? when dateline continues. when dateline continues. patients want something that works faster for them. why would somebody want to suffer if there is options
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 there, yes. we had to try to do the analysis on it, and that s what took so long. reporter: an awful lot of detective work amounts to reading. thousands of pages of reports and witness statements, and this and that all were followed up, every one of them. detective mehl chased down a 2001 walmart receipt, a minor, forgettable purchase, except that the time stamp on the receipt cast serious doubt on philip barr s alibi didn t exactly wreck it, but it caught him in a significant lie. that s how detailed we were getting. reporter: but then they just happened to run into a guy who said he knew barr and mcmannis and peewee. and he overheard them talking about killing this girl. he heard david mcmannis say, we shouldn t have done that girl that way. if i don t get out of town, i m gonna spend the rest of my life phillip barr said something s
Breaking that small palm tree in the process. it was almost like they had a mission, that they had a plan. and one went straight to the tailgate and put the tailgate down out the truck and the other went straight to the front door. all business? all business. reporter: that, said the prosecutor, is when they cleaned up and took tara s body in a bed sheet, loaded it into the truck, and waited for dark when one or both of them dumped her body in the woods. but to tell that story took two long trials, each peopled by witnesses the jury might not think were very credible. people who supposedly heard barr and mcmanis say we raped and killed the girl. they re not gonna find her. i m going to kill you like i killed the girl in florida. the girl i killed was 20. reporter: one witness testified about overhearing a conversation between barr and mcmannis. phillip barr was saying to david mcmannis, i didn t want to kill her.