Someone cold case detectives had only recently sdovrd. she was about to describe what she saw when day she disappeared. reporter: it was october 2015 when the trials began. dan feinberg was joined by a co-prosecutor named jennifer garczewski, 14 years almost to the day since tara s life ended. she s only a year younger than me. so when i think back to where i was in 2001, i was just finishing college and obviously that was a goal of hers. so i did feel a connection to her, thinking about her and where she would ve been at my age now. reporter: and the defendants now on trial? phil barr owned a septic tank repair business, dave mcmannis was his helper the day tara disappeared. the detectives had learned that barr used his business as a
Cover for stealing from the homes of unsuspecting customers. and here s what happened, said the state, that first of october, 2001: tara s landlord asked barr for a repair estimate. barr and his helper, mcmannis, began their work-day by smoking crack. around noon, four hours before veronica arrived home from school, the men most likely knocked on the door and tara let them in, unaware they had robbery not work on their minds. dave mcmannis was taking the property while barr was distracting her in the bathroom. we believe she found out. she heard something or saw something that mr. mcmannis was doing, where he was in a place he shouldn t have been and she confronted him. and two people with impaired minds do things that normal people wouldn t do. and their solution to that was to kill her. reporter: the woman who d been sitting out in the front yard told the jury how the two men had been laughing and joking when they arrived, but later when she saw them backing their truck up to tar
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 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. 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.
reporter: meaning detectives spoke with other people who d also heard the men talk about the murder, but they were not the type a jury would likely believe. much of what they d say sounded like drug and booze soaked gossip. there wasn t enough certainly to support charging peewee. but, thought the prosecutor, maybe he could find a way to go after barr and mcmannis. and he had an idea. bring some of the key witnesses before a grand jury just to see who passed the credibility test and who didn t. i ve prosecuted over 100 homicide cases and the complexity, and the amount of information that we had to review to determine if we could prosecute this case was the most i d ever seen. reporter: the idea worked. the grand jury indicted both phil barr and dave mcmannis for tara s murder. they were arrested in late 2012, 11 years after tara vanished from her home. dave mcmannis was arrested in maryland, where he grew up, while u.s. marshals mounted a
Involved if not in the murder, but definitely in the complicity to cover it up. reporter: the only thing that dave mcmannis was guilty of, said bross was being a sarcastic guy. the majority of the statements that were made were sarcasm at best. so if he s guilty it s a claim. yeah. and that s kind of an easy out for saying terrible things, isn t it? well, it was inappropriate statements, if said at all. david is known to be a jokester and sarcastic. even during the course of the trial, he would say things that were sarcastic. reporter: the trials, two of them, dragged on for more than 15 months with delay after delay in a case that had taken more than 15 years to get to this point. sharon and keith s marriage didn t make it that long. they re separated now, but they attended both trials together. we started this together, we re gonna finish it together, no matter what. reporter: and after all that time? in each case, deliberations took less than 90 minutes.