Case that could be solved. if it had a new set of eyes, it had somebody that could put the case together, connect all of the dots. what requests did you make of them? we wanted to know more about every piece of evidence, every we have to rule out every piece of dna in that house. so it was closing doors, it was excluding other people. reporter: so, that s what these three did, as a large photo of tara kept watch. but, again, there was no dna to help them. all they had really were lingering suspicions about the workmen who went to tara s house the day she vanished. phil barr, the guy who owned the septic tank business, his helper that day, dave mcmannis, and their buddy peewee st. john, but nothing in this huge trove of investigative material proved anything. kurt, we call him the scribe. he organized it in 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
And that all were followed up, everyone of them. detective mehl chased down a 2001 walmart receipt, a minor, forgettable purchase, except that the time stamp on the receipt cast 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 in jail. phillip barr said something similar because peewee is talking about, well, i ve only seen a body. it s not against the law to see see a body. and barr tells him, hey, shut up. we re all gonna end up in prison. and it was somebody with credibility. be better than what we had before, yeah. reporter: but overall, a key problem remained. terrible witnesses.
So it was closing doors, it was excluding other people. reporter: so, that s what these three did, as a large photo of tara kept watch. but, again, there was no dna to help them. all they had really were lingering suspicions about the workmen who went to tara s house the day she vanished. phil barr, the guy who owned the septic tank business, his helper that day, dave mcmannis, and their buddy peewee st. john, but nothing in this huge trove of investigative material proved anything. kurt, we call him the scribe. he organized it in 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 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
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
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. reporter: a mother s perseverance had brought the case this far. she fought and fought and reporter: would a verdict bring justice at last? it s tough to quit smoking cold turkey.