surroundings, you just never know. it started with a frightening horror movie from the 80s. this movie is we re gonna take some women into the wood and they will be hunted down. decades later something truly frightening it was happening for real. a strange vanishing in the forest. immediately, we knew something was wrong. then your heart just broke. surely, then meredith, two women missing and desperate efforts to find them. she could be alive and we just can t let up. could this old movie hold the key to these new cases? a little blood, sex, violence. a film fantasy turn chilling reality. if someone has her, she is afraid. who could be behind this and how with this real life story and? she was a blue belt in judo. if anybody could survive it was there it is. our national forests are places of refuge for folks who want to get away from the city and have a sense of peace, commune with nature but you have to be aware of your surroundings all th
like, she s dead, she s dead! and i was so confused. i was like, what s going on? what happened? a small texas town, two super close friends, and a summer night in the park. they have this lookout, and you could see the harbor bridge lit up. it s really pretty when the stars are out. it was the next morning that they found them. i could see two girls laying there. it was horrifying. there was duct tape on their mouths, on their hands. a mystifying scene. the only thing we have are cigarette butts and suspicion. dna would point one way. he s like, serge, you ve got to take a look at this. a bombshell message would point another. i read the letter and immediately knew this was something very important. a twisted trail leading to a sinister suspect. it takes a special kind of mind that wants to do something like that. to crack a case this convoluted, it might just take a miracle. that was extraordinary. i just couldn t believe it. welcome to dateli
was it me, why didn t she survive. i told her, there s a reason she s still living and to be happy and live on for mollie because mollie didn t get that chance. that s all for this edition of dateline. i m craig melvin. thank you for watching. i m craig melvin. and i m natalie morales alice. and this is dateline. you have to be aware of your
in his interrogation strickland said he had no issues with the gay community. whether or not that was the truth, prosecutors decided not to charge him with a hate crime. after five days of testimony, the jury began deliberations. it took six hours to reach a verdict. guilty. david strickland is appealing that conviction based on the fact, his lawyer says, the evidence presented was legally insufficient to convict him. strickland was sentenced to life in prison. for mollie s family and friends, that guilty verdict, as it often does, provided hollow satisfaction. we re waiting for justice, and then now it s here but we don t get her back. we have had so many huge, major life moments and she hasn t been there. what would have been our anniversary, her birthday, the anniversary of us getting shot, those days are the hardest. kristene still wonders how she escaped death and sometimes why. i do have survivor s guilt. i mean hopefully it will go away in time. kristene would tell
had sought his services to finish the job and make the only witness to mollie s murder disappear. what he s saying is, i was hired to kill kristene, but i m not going to do it. instead, i m warning you. that s right. he s telling kristene chapa s father, i m going to tell you who the murderer is, and then you can go do something about it. the letter contained details police had never mentioned in public. that he forced the girls to duct tape themselves, the fact that he called them by numbers, girl number one, girl number two. then, the biggest revelation of all. who does he say the murderer is? he identifies him. his name is cristobal melchor, and he gives an address in utah. from layton, utah, to be precise, just outside salt lake city. he worked in the area as an army reservist. had the name cristobal melchor crossed your desk in any way during your investigation? in the two years in the