hello. i m andrea canning. and this is dateline. i was just like, oh my god this is really an answer. it may not be definitive, but this guy knows something. a young couple vanishes. then, nearly a decade later, a discovery in their own backyard turns the mystery into a murder. they find a back, and inside the back is a human skull. detectives had a suspect. and then, he disappeared, too. his trailhead just stopped. until this please, please, bring him back. he kidnapped his own daughter right from this boston straight, after claiming to be a rockefeller clark rockefeller. i hired a private investigator, trying to find out who i was married to. and they couldn t find out. now, a second chance for investigators to prove that this mysterious con man was also a killer. but was this case as clear cut as it seemed? there was no motive. there was no reason he would have done this. we will hear from detectives who helped crack this puzzlin
this is really an answer. it may not be definitive, but this guy knows something. a young couple vanishes. then, nearly a decade later, a discovery in their own backyard turns the mystery into a murder. they find a back, and inside the back is a human skull. detectives had a suspect. and then, he disappeared, too. his trailhead just stopped. until this please, please, bring him back. he kidnapped his own daughter right from this boston straight, after claiming to be a rockefeller clark rockefeller. i hired a private investigator, trying to find out who i was married to. and they couldn t find out. now, a second chance for investigators to prove that this mysterious con man was also a killer. but was this case as clear cut as it seemed? there was no motive. there was no reason he would have done this. we will hear from detectives who helped crack this puzzling case. and from his ex-wife. i thought he was very intelligent, funny, very charming.
( laughs ) reporter: while a rockefeller courted his soon-to-be wife in new york, back in san marino, the mystery of john sohus disappearance was about to take a sharp turn. the owners of didi sohus house at 1920 lorraine decided to put in a swimming pool. and during the excavation of the pool, the bulldozer operator struck something hard, and it turned out to be human bones. reporter: the gravesite was directly behind the guest house where a young man named chichester once lived. the body was found. it was inside of a fiberglass container. reporter: l.a. sheriffs detective tim miley. inside the container, the arms, legs and torso were wrapped in saran wrap, hands were covered in bags, and the hands, feet and head were covered in plastic bags. reporter: the remains were so decomposed that they couldn t be officially identified, and the coroner wouldn t rule it a homicide. police could only speculate about how the body came to be buried in the backyard of the
if you had nothing to do with the death of john sohus, why wouldn t you talk to detective allen? because detective allen never contacted me. reporter: he contacted mihoko. he never gave her a reason for the contact, did he? reporter: but you knew what they were there for. no. reporter: oh, you had no idea? how would i know? reporter: but here s what mihoko manabe said at trial: he told me that next time he calls, that, you know, he wasn t there and that i didn t know where he was. he had told her i wasn t a police officer, i wasn t a detective. i was a hit man out to kill him. reporter: and she believed that? and she believed that. reporter: now that crowe knew thheat t police were on to him, it was time once again to disappear, leaving allen at a dead end. did you ever meet him face to face? no. reporter: did you ever talk to him on the phone? no. fairly soon after detective allen s call, we moved to another apartment. he grew a beard. i hel
it was a man skeleton. and that old missing persons report suggested to that man was. i didn t need the dna, i didn t need the dental records. i knew that was done. john s friend sue kaufman heard details of where the body had been dressed, and truth she dreaded at home. i said, that s exactly what john war, almost exactly all the time. that was the way he liked to dress. the remains told more of the story close to the head, six stab moves to the back, not just murder, but a brutal murder. a missing persons case that had gone permanently cold, transformed in that moment through the very act of super heated homicide investigation. there were two other people who lived at the road again, and were unaccounted for. john s wife linda, still missing. and the tenant in the guesthouse. exactly where were they, and was a possible one of them was killer? coming up detectives get to work on that