. . hi, i m craig melvin, and what did you find? this is dateline. all of a sudden i realize, why are they late? there s something definitely wrong. he said your family was in an accident. and my world just dropped down underneath me. the scene told the story why did you find? somebody hit them. a deadly crash on a dark road. two gone, one barely alive. to a tragic accident. but look closer. can all of the broken glass and twisted metal, was there a clue to a crime? the last thing i wanted to have was to have to take a double fatality and not treat it as a homicide. murder. and no one saw coming. i couldn t deal with it. two families in torment. we were both just a small town trial with big emotions. you took it. you did it. and the verdict that would shake them all. hello, and welcome to dateline. a dangerous highway in big sky country. that was a setting for a deadly crash that would seem to unite two families in shock and heartbreak. excep
accident happened. what events would those be? i remember doing stuff to get ready for prom, because prom was supposed to be two days after when the accident happened, but other than that, i don t really remember a whole lot about march. what do you remember, the last time you saw your boyfriend? i have no idea. i remember that we spent some time together. you are inseparable? pretty much. in love? kid love. well, that is pretty strong love, that kid love, isn t it? yes, i remember, if i was not with him, i was texting him all of the time. as for those texts, following the argument with ryan just before the crash, justine says despite what many believe, she would never, ever have tried to commit suicide. knowing if she does, her grandmother, randi s mother, killed herself when her dad was just a boy. in fact, she says the most likely explanation is that she
justine could understand what was going on around her, but the news had to be faced eventually. and so, when she seemed ready, they told her. when you told her what happened and the accident and how those other people had died, how did you react to that? it was very emotional for her. it was very devastating. and then what was discovered was quite frankly unimaginable, for in the middle of that river of tears, relief on the one side, abject grief on the other side there was a tone no one saw coming. while justine spent 45 days in the hospital recuperating and months more at home in montana healing, it didn t take investigators long at all, matter of hours really, to solve the mystery of who and what caused this crash. in fact the first months, the highway patrol officers who rushed to this scene believe that justine winters cars
public opinion has turned as bitter as a winter of montana. and justine who showed up in an almost childlike polka dot hair band, didn t look the part of an accused killer facing as many as 200 years behind bars. but there she was. i can see the debris field. with the two families just a few feet away she watched investigators testify to a certainty that it was justine s pontiac car that crossed the centerline. here you can see all this debris from the initial impact of the crash. slamming into erin s subaru so hard that it was driven backward into the highway barrier and crash reconstructionist agree. justine winter s car approached the northbound lane, striking mrs. thompson s vehicle. but what evidence was there that justine had done it as the law says purposefully? investigators pulled the black
they found the evidence on justine s phone they said, text messages which she wrote herself and gave him no choice, he said, he charged her with deliberate homicides. montana s equivalent of murder. justine purposely went into traffic and smashed into another car and by doing so, she should ve known her actions could ve killed somebody and under those circumstances i think deliberately homicide was the only charge we could find. you decided to charge as an adult, why? she was 16. she was. the taking of two lives is not a delinquent act, it is a crime. it needs to be prosecuted as a crime and if convicted, it needs to be on her record for the rest of her life. perhaps because of her own massive injuries and continuing operations, her age, just been after pleading not guilty was