You Took My Daughter

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Speaker 4 I bought this camcorder, just like to talk to you.

Speaker 5 I just wanted to tell you hi, and I love you, and I miss you. I'm very proud of you.

Speaker 2 My wife got the call at home, and they said Holly was missing.

Speaker 6 I mean, the Army's got a missing soldier.

Speaker 7 That's a big deal.

Speaker 8 We're now inside Fort Bragg.

Speaker 9 One of those soldiers goes missing.

Speaker 7 They would just jump into action.

Speaker 10 We didn't know if this is someone that had kidnapped Holly or killed Holly.

Speaker 11 That's 146.

Speaker 12 That was her apartment.

Speaker 13 We could tell looking through the back window that place had been burned. She was not in there.

Speaker 14 Several knives were missing from the knife block.

Speaker 17 Then bizarrely, a second female soldier goes missing.

Speaker 6 Megan Tumo, she was supposed to go to work and she didn't show up for work.

Speaker 18 Are they just missing? Did they succumb to foul play? Like you just don't know.

Speaker 13 The mirror had a very large insignia drawn on it that insignia was the zodiac sign while there's this massive search for holly these mysterious letters come in from a person purporting to be reenacting the zodiac murders this could be the same killer

Speaker 23 My name is Jesse James.

Speaker 24 For 17 years, we have lived with the pain of losing our daughter, Holly.

Speaker 25 It's something that cannot be explained in words. Recently, I decided to write to the person responsible for taking Holly from us.

Speaker 25 I'm not sure why and I'm not sure what I'm reaching for, but it just feels like I need to express my thoughts.

Speaker 24 Many, many people loved Holly and you took her from all of us.

Speaker 24 They still have episodes of grief that I'm unable to control.

Speaker 24 Why did he choose Holly?

Speaker 26 I've decided to reach out and try to discover that.

Speaker 28 So right now, I'm on my way to Fort Bragg, North Carolina.

Speaker 8 It's one of the largest military bases in the world.

Speaker 30 Some say that this base right here is America's first line of defense.

Speaker 29 I'm investigating a mysterious disappearance of a Army nurse.

Speaker 34 Her name is 2nd Lieutenant Holly Lynn James.

Speaker 16 When Holly fails to show up for her shift at Womack Army Medical Center, it causes concern because it's something totally out of character for any soldier.

Speaker 38 I was driving back to Fort Bragg from Iowa. And I received a text from a friend at work asking me when the last time I heard from Holly was.

Speaker 38 It was unusual. Holly was very dependable, and it's just, you know, being an Army officer, it was kind of unheard of to not show up for work.

Speaker 6 Her co-workers went to her apartment, and when they got there, they found that she wasn't there, and it had been set on fire.

Speaker 29 So they called the police.

Speaker 10 Pretty much as soon as Holly went missing, I heard about it. Our homicide team heard about it.
It was very concerning. She had just sort of disappeared into thin air.

Speaker 39 This is the face of the missing Fort Bragg soldier. Has not been seen since Wednesday.

Speaker 33 Holly was driven by ambition, an unshakable work ethic, and felt a powerful call to serve her country.

Speaker 20 A lot of us are military in our family, and she wanted to go out and do something great.

Speaker 33 Holly's younger brother Bo, a Maureen himself, says that Holly had found her calling.

Speaker 35 As a nurse, were you pretty proud of her?

Speaker 20 Absolutely. Yeah, they're absolutely lifesavers.

Speaker 2 She wanted to go to Iraq.

Speaker 2 I said, why would you want to go to Iraq, to the war zone? And she said,

Speaker 2 Dad, I just think I can help soldiers if I'm out there as a first responder in a war zone. I can do more good and help more soldiers.

Speaker 9 Although Holly never served in combat and was ultimately stationed in the U.S., she was going places and by age 23 had become a second lieutenant in the United States Army.

Speaker 2 Even though I was a sergeant major, she was technically a higher rank than me starting out, you know, and I was pretty proud of that. They assigned her to the Mother Baby Ward at Womack.

Speaker 23 She just always wanted to be in the thick of things.

Speaker 38 She was a floor nurse. She loved helping people all the time.

Speaker 38 And she really loved children.

Speaker 37 Actually, at the time, Holly was raising a couple of children on her own, born from a relationship with her ex-boyfriend from her hometown of Dubuque, Iowa.

Speaker 37 Then in 2007, she met this 22-year-old Marine Corporal John W.

Speaker 35 Monk, a combat engineer who was stationed along with her brother Beau at Marine Corps Base, Camp Lejeune.

Speaker 45 Colonel Kirk Cordova was John Y.

Speaker 44 Monk's commanding officer.

Speaker 46 He's a non-commissioned officer working towards being a sergeant and probably one of the best ranks in the Marine Corps. So he was very proficient.
I can tell you that.

Speaker 20 As we deployed together, a lot of times we were looking for explosives or blowing things up. He was very good at our robots that we used for looking for explosives or setting them.

Speaker 28 I was embedded in the war zone with the Marines in the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Speaker 33 The level of danger was similar to what they experienced.

Speaker 26 Marines continue to bring their heavy armor north.

Speaker 37 And you realize just how intense their jobs really are.

Speaker 9 Why did you decide you wanted to introduce him to your sister, Holly?

Speaker 20 Everything he said just seemed so funny. And I thought Holly deserved some humor in her life, too.

Speaker 2 She outranked him. She was an officer, and he was a listed man, a lower enlisted man.

Speaker 28 The couple eventually married and shared an apartment together in Fayetteville just outside the gates of Fort Bragg.

Speaker 33 Wymonk lived two hours away at Camp Lejeune, but would visit on weekends.

Speaker 38 Holly and John seemed happy. It seemed like a good match.
Being a dual military couple, it's just that extra layer of complication.

Speaker 38 You're just apart.

Speaker 2 quite a bit.

Speaker 49 During Wymonk's deployment, Holly bridged the distance with heartfelt video messages.

Speaker 5 I bought this camcorder just like I talked to you.

Speaker 5 I just wanted to tell you hi and I love you and I miss you. I'm very proud of you.

Speaker 2 There was a number of videos that she had made for him, you know, and they were sweet.

Speaker 5 I'm pretty excited.

Speaker 4 You'll be here in two months.

Speaker 2 She would talk about, you know, how much she loved him, how much she was looking forward to him coming back.

Speaker 51 I didn't talk to you, so I just wanted to send you a quick hi and let you know that everything is okay.

Speaker 2 Just being a sweet girl.

Speaker 28 Together, they were rising in the military ranks, newly married, full of hope.

Speaker 44 But everything would change on that terrible night Holly went missing.

Speaker 52 There is still no official word on the whereabouts and the fate of Army Lieutenant Holly Wymonk.

Speaker 24 Investigators speak with Wymonk, who says that he was hours away at Camp Lejeune and knew nothing about Holly's whereabouts.

Speaker 2 My wife got the call at home and they said Holly was missing.

Speaker 53 Police and federal investigators are on the case. Crime scene tape surrounds the apartment complex.

Speaker 2 I began to see reports on the internet. The first report I saw was the police there, the military there, and they were towing her car away from the apartment complex.

Speaker 10 There was a lot of interest locally and nationally about what had happened to Holly.

Speaker 38 I had reporters on my doorstep and they were asking if I knew anything about Holly, what could I tell them? I think that's when I realized it was bigger than what I was imagining.

Speaker 10 At this point, we didn't know if this was a random act of violence that occurred or if this is someone that had kidnapped Holly or killed Holly.

Speaker 54 It's currently under investigation and we're working with Fort Bragg trying to locate this person.

Speaker 6 People are scared, people are worried, and they've got to go fast to try to find her.

Speaker 2 It was all happening so rapidly, so quick.

Speaker 22 You decided to fly out to see exactly what's happening.

Speaker 2 I did.

Speaker 22 But your main job was really to find her.

Speaker 2 I came here

Speaker 2 on a mission. I was scared to death because I was afraid of what I was going to find.

Speaker 13 And when investigators are given the all-clear to enter Holly's apartment, there was a note that had survived the fire.

Speaker 2 This letter.

Speaker 16 What or who will they uncover?

Speaker 2 Oh, look at her cheeks. Nano, huge cheeks, you know.

Speaker 2 She's adorable. Really very cute, huh?

Speaker 2 She was a little daddy's girl. She loved working at that hospital.
I had no doubt she was going to stay in the Army because she loved it that much.

Speaker 22 She found the job she loves.

Speaker 2 Yep, she did.

Speaker 55 She was up for the challenge.

Speaker 24 And from what I know, I think she did great.

Speaker 56 She worked really hard so she'd be able to get a good life and a good job to be able to raise us better.

Speaker 59 At the time of Holly's disappearance in July of 2008, her children, Harper, just seven, and three-year-old Kendall, were far from the chaos visiting their father back in Iowa.

Speaker 4 We were not there when our mom went missing.

Speaker 39 Authorities finally released the name and picture of Second Lieutenant Holly Wimonk, a nurse at Womack Army Medical Center.

Speaker 7 You decided to fly out to see exactly what's happening.

Speaker 2 I did. You know, my first thought was go to the media like I've seen other families do.
Ask Holly to surface or if somebody's got Holly, ask them to bring her back, you know.

Speaker 2 And then I thought, I should do that from Fayetteville. I should do that from Fort Bragg.
Because if she is around there, you know, I can say, here I am, right here, and you can come to see me.

Speaker 54 We're in constant contact with the family.

Speaker 49 What exactly did the investigators tell you?

Speaker 2 Well, that evening, when I got here and I met with the chief of detectives, one of the first questions I said is, is my daughter dead? And he said, we can't say that.

Speaker 2 He said, because that hasn't been proven. But he said, I can tell you we have grave, grave concern.

Speaker 32 Once the flames were out, investigators combed through the charred remains of Holly's apartment, searching for anything the fire had not destroyed.

Speaker 52 For the second day in a row, state and federal agents scoured the young woman's burned apartment.

Speaker 29 The case would soon fall to Detective Jeff Locklear of the Fayetteville Police Department, the man tasked with uncovering what happened to Holly.

Speaker 2 What was your reaction when you learned that the woman that's missing

Speaker 40 was a soldier?

Speaker 13 My partner and I, we were surprised at that time. You know, the whole city was kind of on edge.

Speaker 2 How far are we from her apartment?

Speaker 13 So as the crow flies, maybe a mile, not very far at all, all of that stuff is pretty centralized. around the mall area of Fayetteville.

Speaker 30 Holly's apartment sits along this busy stretch of road just five miles outside the gates of Fort Bragg where she worked as an Army nurse.

Speaker 13 And her apartment building was actually the first building that you come to on the right.

Speaker 11 Down here 146.

Speaker 13 Yep 146.

Speaker 13 Well as soon as we got here we could tell you know looking through the back window that place had been burned. She of course was not in there.

Speaker 47 What's the first thing you saw when you walked in?

Speaker 13 Well I think a better question would be what was what was the first thing that I smelled and that was gasoline.

Speaker 13 And there was so much gasoline in the apartment poured on the floor and on the carpet that as my partner and I would walk, it would kind of gush up next to our shoe.

Speaker 13 But the fire department was really concerned about it. They said the spark had light this whole place up.

Speaker 47 Why was it the building was not completely burnt to the ground?

Speaker 13 Anybody can strike a match, but you got to know you got to have enough air with this amount of gasoline that was poured in the apartment. They didn't have enough air.

Speaker 13 They should have left the door open to have vented it more and we would have had a more complete fire.

Speaker 12 So this was an arson, but not a very talented arson. Exactly.

Speaker 14 So in 2008, I was a forensic technician dispatched via radio to respond now to an apartment fire at that time. I initially started taking photographs around.

Speaker 14 There's a certain level of

Speaker 14 emotion that teeters on excitement and anxiousness because you're kind of afraid of what you might find.

Speaker 16 By the front door, investigators discovered Holly's purse still holding her ID, credit cards, her keys, and phone.

Speaker 34 For the detectives, the abandoned belongings are a red flag.

Speaker 14 Typically, being a woman myself, if I were to go off somewhere, my purse and at least my personal belongings, credit cards, things of that nature would have come with me.

Speaker 31 As investigators pushed deeper into the apartment, the kitchen reveals its own disturbing clue.

Speaker 14 I noticed that there was a knife block sitting over on the counter and several knives were missing from the knife block.

Speaker 13 We couldn't find any of those knives knocking in a drawer or maybe dirty in the sink. They were missing from that house altogether.

Speaker 10 We knew that could have been used as some sort of a weapon, so we certainly took note of that as well.

Speaker 12 The missing knives raised the grim possibility that Holly was stabbed.

Speaker 33 There were also signs of blood spatter in her bedroom, along with another disturbing piece of evidence.

Speaker 14 Probably one of the most alarming things about the master bedroom is one, the carpet, the large amount of carpet that had been cut from around the door frame. It was almost

Speaker 14 carved precisely to cut out a specific shape.

Speaker 14 All of the bedding had been removed to include the pillowcases. So that was a little out of the norm as well of a home that had been lived in where there was absolutely no bed lining on it at all.

Speaker 34 Then eagle-eyed detectives spot something easy to miss.

Speaker 9 A single bullet hole in the closet door.

Speaker 14 Something potentially could have occurred right in front of the closet.

Speaker 63 Amid the devastation, one piece of evidence survived, and it would become the investigation's biggest clue.

Speaker 14 I just happened to notice an odd scrap of paper in the middle of the hallway. And once I uncrumpled the ball of paper, I notified Detective Locklear that there was a message on it.

Speaker 13 A note survived the fire.

Speaker 32 This letter.

Speaker 13 We just thought it might have just been some trash and refuge, whatever, until we unraveled it. Can you read that?

Speaker 13 It says something to the effect of she shot herself and I tried to make it look like an accident.

Speaker 30 The note, scrawled in jagged handwriting and unsigned, hinted at Holly's fate but raised more questions than answers.

Speaker 10 It wasn't consistent with what we were seeing, but obviously it was an important piece of evidence that we took note of.

Speaker 34 Was the note a confession or a calculated attempt to throw investigators off the trail?

Speaker 14 Even the smallest details are something that it may be insignificant now, but down the line it might be one of the most critical pieces of evidence that you have.

Speaker 32 When Holly's father arrives at the scene, the evidence looks grim, and yet he holds out hope.

Speaker 2 I believed Holly was alive. I said, I'm going to work.
to try to get her back here. And I'm going to do everything that I can do to try to get her back here.

Speaker 10 The thought was that she she still could be alive and that we could find her, but we knew this also could end very tragically.

Speaker 31 And with an active duty soldier missing, the U.S.

Speaker 37 Army search and rescue mission kicks into high gear.

Speaker 6 I mean, the Army's got a missing soldier, and that's a big deal.

Speaker 65 We'll dedicate as many people as we have because this is one of our own.

Speaker 13 It's a sister.

Speaker 22 This young mother, this soldier is missing.

Speaker 2 The clock was ticking.

Speaker 30 But where was Holly?

Speaker 12 And is there a hidden secret in this last photo taken of her before she vanished?

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Speaker 8 We're now inside Fort Bragg, North Carolina, about 250 square miles, about 50,000 active duty soldiers.

Speaker 41 Fort Bragg is a city unto itself, sprawling, relentless, and brimming with power.

Speaker 37 Soldiers here often call it the center of the military universe.

Speaker 9 And when 2nd Lieutenant Holly James goes missing, the U.S.

Speaker 42 Army mobilizes fast, launching an all-out search, working around the clock to find answers.

Speaker 37 Good to see you.

Speaker 28 Special Agent Al Diaz is the man in charge of the Army's Criminal Investigation Division at Fort Bragg.

Speaker 32 What do you remember when the news came out that Holly was missing?

Speaker 18 Just like anytime a service member shows up missing, it's just that natural sense of concern. And then what we can do to help local law enforcement find her.

Speaker 11 Does it become 24 hours a day?

Speaker 2 Absolutely.

Speaker 18 I mean, you want to put as much effort and resources to it until you find the individual. Are they just missing? Did they succumb to foul play? Like, you just don't know.

Speaker 15 Fort Bragg sits like a fortress.

Speaker 73 At its heart is Womack Medical Center, where Holly worked as an Army nurse. With 13 access points in and out, CID's task was clear.

Speaker 9 Reconstruct Holly's every step in the days before she vanished.

Speaker 9 Adam Armstrong is a special agent with CID.

Speaker 12 All right, so you get the call from the police about what was happening that afternoon.

Speaker 65 So when we get that, we'll immediately get a picture of her out so we can start working on the reward posters and all that.

Speaker 65 And then we start figuring out okay how can we start putting together elements to go out and start searching.

Speaker 11 Tell us where we're going.

Speaker 65 Right now we're just heading back to the one side of base where Holly was last seen.

Speaker 9 Investigators learned that just two nights before she was reported missing Holly had been seen at a late night softball game on base.

Speaker 57 So this is the last place that she was

Speaker 2 right here on the right hand side.

Speaker 13 So this was the eighth, two days before they discovered that she was missing.

Speaker 19 This is where she was.

Speaker 65 And so a sergeant first class had invited her out to come watch. And then after the game, she actually approached him.
He actually helped out a lot.

Speaker 65 Played a big role in understanding the last time that she was seen.

Speaker 29 This is the last photo of Holly taken just before she disappeared.

Speaker 65 He said she was happy that night, bubbly, and just seemed to be in good spirits.

Speaker 65 With a cell phone analysis, and they were able to identify that she did leave the base, and she did make it home.

Speaker 74 Something had happened to Holly.

Speaker 22 You just felt like you had to get here.

Speaker 2 Had to come.

Speaker 37 Well, Army investigators come to the base.

Speaker 9 Holly's father, Jesse James, launches his own search for answers.

Speaker 2 Hard to get to Fort Bragg, so I had to think about... how I was going to get sort of control of the situation.

Speaker 24 Your father was on a mission to try to figure figure out what happened to his daughter, to your sister.

Speaker 20 Absolutely. He was on a mission and 10 seconds of hearing that his daughter was missing, he wasn't going to let it go, nor should he.

Speaker 4 Thinking about my grandfather dropping everything to fly to Fayetteville and find her,

Speaker 4 that's a man who loves his daughter.

Speaker 56 And it shows how loving and caring he is, how deeply he loves his family.

Speaker 2 The thought occurred occurred to me that I'm going to go to the bank and see if she had any charges on her checking account or credit card since she disappeared.

Speaker 2 I got up and drove over to the bank. I said, are there any recent charges in the past day

Speaker 2 to her credit card or her checking account?

Speaker 41 A bank attorney confirms that there had been activity on Holly's account.

Speaker 49 Charges dated the very day she vanished.

Speaker 2 So So there was hope. Oh, let's see.
I walked away stepping lightly, as quickly as I could. Called Detective Block Lear, and he almost hung up on me.

Speaker 2 He wanted to call that bank to get a warrant to get the checking account information.

Speaker 9 But to Jesse's disappointment, what seems like a promising lead goes nowhere.

Speaker 32 It turns out those transactions were older ones.

Speaker 13 Charges that had only just been cleared.

Speaker 2 Took all the wind out of me

Speaker 2 and was right back where we started.

Speaker 3 Desperate for answers, Jesse comes here to Holly's workplace at Womack Medical Center to try to retrace his daughter's footsteps.

Speaker 57 So this is where she was, huh?

Speaker 2 It is where she was.

Speaker 2 The morning after I got here, I just walked in and introduced myself and I could just feel a shockwave go through the unit, you know, because they were experiencing it just like we were.

Speaker 2 She loved these people. She loved the people she worked with.
I could sense a presence here of Holly.

Speaker 2 I could see her just running the halls.

Speaker 24 She never walked slow.

Speaker 2 I could see her just rushing through these hallways and I could feel that.

Speaker 23 And I thought, I just might be putting my feet where her feet were.

Speaker 2 And that affected me.

Speaker 28 Days into the investigation, there is still no sign of Holly. But then an unexpected twist, a possible link to another female soldier who had also gone missing from Fort Breddick.

Speaker 10 These mysterious letters come into the Fayville Observer as well as the Fayettev Police Department.

Speaker 13 CID said, look, we got a second female soldier that's missing and has possibly been harmed.

Speaker 10 We wondered, could this be connected to Holly's case?

Speaker 13 Are we dealing with a copycat here?

Speaker 37 A disturbing letter.

Speaker 9 marked with a chilling symbol.

Speaker 13 And there it is on that mirror in the lipstick.

Speaker 45 And could there be a connection to Holly?

Speaker 13 I'm like,

Speaker 13 this has never happened. It's like something you see in a movie.

Speaker 13 When I left the crime scene, I didn't think that we would find her alive.

Speaker 41 Summer of 2008,

Speaker 9 Holly Lynn James has vanished.

Speaker 33 Teams of investigators search for clues in a burned-out apartment near Fort Bragg Army Base. But it turns out Holly's not the only female soldier in the area to go missing that June.

Speaker 57 And right at the same time, there's two different investigations, also with soldiers, also females.

Speaker 13 It's two females now. Both are in the military.
and both of the situations are nothing about them is normal. It was getting interesting here at the Federal Police Department.

Speaker 47 About a month before Holly disappeared, another female soldier from Fort Bragg went missing.

Speaker 58 The police got a call saying that there was a strange odor coming out of this hotel, and that took a chilling turn.

Speaker 13 A deceased person was located inside room 143.

Speaker 13 She was dressed in a bathing suit, almost as like she had just left the pool.

Speaker 13 And then when the maintenance guy found her, the water was still running in the bathtub.

Speaker 65 She was submerged in the bathtub, and so there was water everywhere. There was actually a towel along the bottom edge of the door, so whoever had done it was thinking ahead.

Speaker 65 And so that way the water couldn't get out to alert anybody.

Speaker 13 This room had been rented to a Megan Tuma. Megan was a soldier, an active duty soldier.

Speaker 77 23-year-old Megan Tuma was a a dental specialist who had been with the Army for five years. Her body was found in a hotel room June 21st.
She was seven months pregnant and may have been dead for days.

Speaker 6 Megan Tuma had newly transferred to Fort Bragg from a military base in Germany. She was supposed to go to work and she didn't show up for work.
They did not

Speaker 6 notice that she was missing.

Speaker 65 She's found on the 21st of June. The last time she was seen, I believe it was 15 June.
And so there's about a six-day gap.

Speaker 65 And then the hotel that she was staying in off-post, she had one of those do not disturbs on. And so that's why she was in there for a lengthy time without anybody coming in.

Speaker 13 So she was in an advanced state of decomposition.

Speaker 13 Some evidence of a struggle, some of what we believe to be blood, light blood transfer on the wall.

Speaker 63 So she was murdered in that hotel.

Speaker 13 The autopsy revealed she had been strangled. We flipped the switch then and it went to a homicide investigation.
There was something else in the room though that made us really suspicious.

Speaker 13 The mirror outside the bathroom had a very large insignia drawn on it and lipstick.

Speaker 13 That insignia that was drawn there was the Zodiac sign.

Speaker 13 A couple days later we get a letter through the mail from a person purporting to be somebody who is reenacting the Zodiac murders. from the West Coast.

Speaker 37 From 1968 to 1974, several newspapers in the San Francisco area received a series of anonymous letters from the self-proclaimed Zodiac killer who claimed credit for up to 37 murders.

Speaker 13 The 2007 movie, Zodiac, put one of America's biggest unsolved murder cases on the big screen.

Speaker 44 It's unsigned except for a symbol.

Speaker 44 Is it me?

Speaker 2 Does that look like a gun sign?

Speaker 70 A letter has surfaced claiming the murder is a work of a serial killer.

Speaker 61 Good Good morning, Robin. That letter certainly has gotten everyone's attention.

Speaker 77 In a twisted case with very few leads, police have been forced to pay particular attention to this letter sent to a local newspaper.

Speaker 77 The writer signed the letter with a symbol made famous by the infamous Zodiac killer of the 1960s.

Speaker 6 The Fayetteville Observer received a letter, and this is what the letter said. I am responsible for the dead body that was found on Saturday, June 21st at 11.30 in room 143.

Speaker 6 I confess that I have killed many times before in several states, but now I will start using my role model signature.

Speaker 13 We were sitting down in a meeting with CID about this exact letter when we got the call to go out to Holly's apartment. We were like, what is going on here? It's like something you see in a movie.

Speaker 13 The guy's trying to communicate with the police by way of mail.

Speaker 57 And you're looking at the possibility this could be the same killer.

Speaker 13 Of course, the same symbol is on the bottom of this letter that was written on the mirror in the hotel room in the lipstick.

Speaker 13 So

Speaker 13 it's, are we dealing with a copycat here?

Speaker 10 We very much thought that it was a possibility these were connected. Was Holly this killer's next victim, which would have been just a couple of weeks after Megan Tooma's murder.

Speaker 10 So it was certainly of interest and of concern in the disappearance of Holly.

Speaker 13 The public is demanding answers. Now people are making phone calls.
They're calling the chief, the city counsel

Speaker 13 is there a serial killer in Fayetteville.

Speaker 37 But as investigators dig deeper into the Megan Tuma case, they begin to question that serial killer theory.

Speaker 43 Detectives are able to uncover evidence that her murder might have been a highly personal one.

Speaker 9 And the trail leads to someone very close to her.

Speaker 13 She had begun a relationship with an individual and she had become pregnant as a result of that relationship. Well, it turns out he was married.

Speaker 13 He was in the military in the same base in Germany that Megan was assigned to. And we did a search on his house and you wouldn't believe it.

Speaker 13 He was actually actively taking the crime scene class at a local college here in Fayetteville.

Speaker 37 Authorities began to close in on the man that they think might be responsible for Megan's murder.

Speaker 28 And in that parallel investigation, detectives also uncover evidence that Holly's disappearance also might not have been random, that it too could have been a highly personal crime.

Speaker 10 It was obvious that something terrible had happened to Holly, and we were fairly certain that it was someone close to her that had done it.

Speaker 9 Could a woman connected to John Wymonk with a possible grudge against Holly be responsible for her disappearance?

Speaker 60 She was a threat. She was a threat.

Speaker 43 Two women stationed at Fort Bragg have met with tragedy.

Speaker 42 Fayetteville, North Carolina is a town on edge.

Speaker 61 I think it's horrible what happened.

Speaker 62 Stop changing your tracks.

Speaker 14 The community was scared. It sort of put a lot of pressure on us as well.

Speaker 74 The public is wanting to know what are we doing about it.

Speaker 29 But then a huge development in the Megan Tuma case as Fayetteville police close in on the person they suspect is responsible for her murder.

Speaker 70 Police in North Carolina are expected to offer details today about the death of a pregnant Fort Bragg soldier.

Speaker 63 Who was it that was ultimately found to be the murderer in this case?

Speaker 13 The person that was responsible for taking Megan Tooma's life was Edgar Petino. He was the father of her child that she was was carrying.

Speaker 6 And then the person claiming to have killed her had sent letters to the newspaper, to the police, claiming to be like the Zodiac killer.

Speaker 13 We were able to prove that the letters that were sent were typed at our suspect's house by a typewriter in our suspect's room.

Speaker 10 Edgar was also married at the time. And he had killed Megan Tuma because she was pregnant with a child, and yet he was still married and he wanted to remain with his wife.

Speaker 13 And he's the one that set that crime scene up. He's the one that drew that Zodiac sign on the mirror.

Speaker 6 Tino was playing games with the cops, trying to be too clever for his own good and lead them astray, and I don't think they ever really bought it.

Speaker 10 So at that point, we had ruled out that the killer of Megan Tuma was also the killer or person responsible for the disappearance of Hollywood.

Speaker 29 So now the race is on to find the culprit behind Holly's disappearance.

Speaker 37 A review of the evidence at the crime scene has investigators convinced that Holly knew her assailant.

Speaker 10 There was no evidence that there was an intruder who had forced their way into the home through the door, through a window, or something like that.

Speaker 13 We never thought that some stranger walking down Morganton Road just decided to peep through this girl's window and do do all of this.

Speaker 13 We were fairly certain that the person that had done all these things knew her and that she knew that person.

Speaker 40 Did it seem to indicate that this may have been done by somebody who knew the details of that apartment?

Speaker 13 Holly either let that person in or that person made his way into the apartment by some other means, possibly by a key.

Speaker 29 Detectives believe that whoever was in Holly's apartment also tried to cover up evidence of what happened there.

Speaker 13 We found actually a carpet cleaner and we tested that carpet cleaner and it tested positive for blood on a preliminary test.

Speaker 13 Just from what I had seen, the reaction we got from the Luminol, the amount of carpet that was cut from the floor in the bedroom, the bed sheets and clothing and stuff had been taken off the bed.

Speaker 13 All those were indicators for me that there had been at least some measure of crime scene cleanup that had tried to

Speaker 13 take place.

Speaker 29 Whoever did this might have tried to cover their tracks, but that crumpled letter was left behind.

Speaker 10 It appeared that whoever wrote that note was inside the apartment when this terrible thing happened to Holly, but it does not identify who they were or what their relationship to Holly was.

Speaker 13 The person that wrote this letter is the person that tried to burn that apartment, which is the person that knows where Holly's at. That's the way I was looking at it.

Speaker 10 At the time of Holly's disappearance, we knew she was going through a tumultuous time in her life.

Speaker 15 As investigators look into Holly's personal life for clues, they learned that about eight months before she went missing, Holly had filed a request for a temporary restraining order against an ex-girlfriend of her husband named Lindsay.

Speaker 42 In the filing, Holly alleges that for 18 months, the defendant has continuously posted pictures of herself and my spouse on the internet with comments directed at me and claims I have changed my phone number six times.

Speaker 38 Hollywood always call Lindsay John's little girlfriend.

Speaker 38 I think there was a lot of yelling,

Speaker 38 a lot of swearing. Holly was getting exhausted because of the bombardment.

Speaker 38 I think she was just at the end of her rope.

Speaker 28 Lindsay denied harassing Holly.

Speaker 15 In fact, she tells investigators Holly was the one harassing her, and she was never served with Holly's request for a restraining order.

Speaker 65 She was considered threat. That's why we wanted to look at her because we had to consider her.

Speaker 45 But when investigators talk to her, she denies having anything to do with Holly's disappearance.

Speaker 74 They also discover she had an alibi on the date Holly disappeared.

Speaker 65 What did she say? She provided a full breakdown of her timeline leading up to the disappearance of Holly.

Speaker 13 She was not in Fayetteville the night Holly went missing.

Speaker 63 So there was no evidence whatsoever to charge her for what happened to Holly.

Speaker 13 She had no criminal culpability in this at all.

Speaker 73 While Lindsay is fully cleared, investigators say she provides them with some revealing information about John Weimonk's activities the night of Holly's disappearance.

Speaker 13 She actually told us about a phone call that she had with John, and John said that he was actually on his way to Fayetteville. So that was a key piece of evidence for us.

Speaker 65 When she called him, he was like, I'm on my way. I can't do this anymore.

Speaker 22 Why would he reveal this to her?

Speaker 65 That's what we had to look at.

Speaker 9 As investigators learn more about John Wymonk, they decide to bring him in again to answer questions about his wife's disappearance.

Speaker 79 I'm at the point where I have no idea what's going on, okay?

Speaker 79 This is my wife.

Speaker 80 What the f is become of my wife?

Speaker 81 That's what we're all trying to find out.

Speaker 47 And a shocking discovery in the middle of nowhere will bring yet another Marine into the frame.

Speaker 82 Guess where I just come from? There's soot and dirt on my shoe. Why do you think there's soot and dirt on my shoe? How am I supposed to believe anything that you say?

Speaker 82 For God's sake, son, I need to find this woman. I need to I gotta do something for these kids.

Speaker 51 You know that everything is okay.

Speaker 5 I'll talk to you later, baby.

Speaker 38 Tell them it's a Chevy.

Speaker 82 It's a Chevy.

Speaker 22 This young mother.

Speaker 2 The soldier is missing. The clock was ticking.

Speaker 80 What the f is going on with my wife?

Speaker 83 You know what I mean?

Speaker 82 That's what we're all trying to find out.

Speaker 10 Here was a mysterious person running through the parking lot and getting into a black pickup truck.

Speaker 13 Today is the day of salvation. You better get on board right now.

Speaker 10 What he specifically said is, are y'all looking for a blonde girl?

Speaker 2 If you somehow committed a perfect murder and and left no evidence, you could get away with it.

Speaker 81 Zach, what's the worst he's ever done?

Speaker 38 He said the worst thing I've ever done is thumbs up, but he carved her name into a bullet and told her this one's for you.

Speaker 82 It's coming Jesus' time. Now you tell me, tell me the rest of it.
Tell me the rest of it.

Speaker 24 For many years, I woke up at 4 a.m., went to the basement so I could cry, and call out for my daughter.

Speaker 24 When I had contacted you, I had no idea it would be so complicated.

Speaker 33 You stole my daughter from me.

Speaker 38 Holly was a second lieutenant nurse corps officer.

Speaker 38 She was assigned to Womack Army Medical Center at Fort Bright. All of her patients loved her.
Her coworkers loved her.

Speaker 63 That morning of the 10th of July, that was the first indication that something strange that had happened.

Speaker 13 She didn't show up for work and she wouldn't answer any of the calls from her friends. And for them, that was a big deal.

Speaker 6 Her co-workers there became concerned, so they went to her apartment and found that it had been set on fire.

Speaker 13 What the scene did tell us was that something horrible had happened inside that apartment.

Speaker 14 You just don't know the full extent of what has occurred, but you're also kind of afraid of what you might find.

Speaker 29 Your father was on a mission to try to figure out what happened to his daughter.

Speaker 20 He was on a mission and he wasn't going to let it go.

Speaker 2 I was living like in two different worlds, I think. One believing that she's alive, another that she's dead.

Speaker 57 So this young mother, this soldier is missing.

Speaker 40 The clock was ticking.

Speaker 13 There was a lot of pressure on us.

Speaker 30 It had been three days since Holly James had disappeared.

Speaker 31 Police had taken a close look at John Wymock's former girlfriend, but investigators discovered that she had an alibi for the night Holly went missing and was nowhere near Fayetteville.

Speaker 49 What was her demeanor when you were talking to her, investigating?

Speaker 13 She was scared that she had been drawn into this mess.

Speaker 10 She was ruled out as a suspect in the investigation, but she had provided information that was helpful.

Speaker 59 Investigators say the former girlfriend is able to provide them with an inside look at the relationship between John and Holly.

Speaker 61 They had been married for approximately a year, but towards the end of this one-year marriage, it had become rather complicated between them.

Speaker 59 Holly's brother Bo says the phone calls between John and Holly were becoming increasingly volatile.

Speaker 20 He would be on the phone and then he would be just screaming at her.

Speaker 15 You're watching him scream and you could hear your sister Holly reacting to that.

Speaker 45 What was she doing?

Speaker 20 Crying, telling him to stop. And I felt like, well, I need to say something, but at the same time, I thought, well, this is a married couple.

Speaker 20 I thought about if somebody tried doing that to me, it might upset me.

Speaker 59 As investigators looked deeper into their relationship, they learned from friends close to Holly that John seemed insecure, that he held a lower rank than his wife.

Speaker 2 I think it was something of a resentment

Speaker 2 that she was a woman and she outranked him.

Speaker 22 John Wymonk was a corporal.

Speaker 35 Yes.

Speaker 63 So his level of skills was pretty high-end.

Speaker 46 I would say it was good.

Speaker 46 He's still honing his skills and still learning.

Speaker 38 Her being an officer, she outranked him. And he would always tell her, you're not a real officer,

Speaker 38 things like that, just putting her down.

Speaker 46 We had a non-commissioned officer married to an Army second lieutenant. It just doesn't happen.

Speaker 46 That's the first time in my whole career that I had seen something like that.

Speaker 11 According to Holly's friends, it was clear that John's attitude attitude and frequent yelling directed towards his wife and distance between their bases was putting a strain on their relationship.

Speaker 51 I didn't talk to you, so I just wanted to send you a quick honey and let you know that everything is okay.

Speaker 10 They lived two and a half hours apart. Eventually, their marriage became estranged.

Speaker 38 She had put up with the emotional abuse, and I think she finally realized that it wasn't going to get any better.

Speaker 30 And as investigators continue to dig, they begin to realize that the alleged abuse may have been more than emotional.

Speaker 13 We had done a number of interviews with her friends, some of the ladies that worked with her at Womack. First thing they told us was how violent John had been in the past.

Speaker 30 Armed with these insights into Holly and John's marriage, investigators head to Camp Lejeune to talk with him.

Speaker 13 That's where the Marines are.

Speaker 36 They have a lot of questions for Holly's husband, John Wymonk, about where he was and what he did that night.

Speaker 61 NCIS agent brought him in from the command, interviewed him just to try and figure out what was going on and what he knew about Holly's whereabouts.

Speaker 82 Hey, John, here's my guy, buddy.

Speaker 82 Hey, John.

Speaker 80 How are you doing, sir?

Speaker 82 You sipping this hot coffee down, buddy. What's going on?

Speaker 24 John, Jeff Locklear, what we'll say of you.

Speaker 61 He expressed that there were concerns for his wife, that he did not know where she was.

Speaker 79 I'm at the point where I have no idea what's going on, okay? This is my wife.

Speaker 79 Everybody knows that.

Speaker 81 That is my apartment.

Speaker 80 What the f ⁇ is going on with my wife?

Speaker 83 You know what I mean?

Speaker 81 That's what we're all trying to find out, man.

Speaker 61 After a brief conversation, the agent conducting the interview noticed a smell of alcohol and that Corporal Wymonk was likely intoxicated or under the influence of alcohol.

Speaker 79 I have been drinking. Okay.

Speaker 82 And I don't want the things that I say to be turned around.

Speaker 82 I don't want to talk with you now that, you know, I can smell the odor of alcohol on you. I don't want to talk to you about legal stuff while that's even questioned in my mind.

Speaker 82 Let's handle all that tomorrow.

Speaker 13 So he's free to go. He's not in custody or whatever.

Speaker 32 So what did you learn in this investigation here?

Speaker 13 It gives me a chance to look him in his eye. It gives me a chance to smell him.
There's a difference between regular sweating and stressed sweat. You can smell that guy.

Speaker 78 Really? So you knew at that point.

Speaker 13 Yeah, he ain't telling me everything, right?

Speaker 61 In any type of case where we have a missing person, we have suspicious circumstances. I mean, the spouse is obviously a person of interest.

Speaker 61 NCIS will immediately look at them and trying to establish: are they related or are they unrelated?

Speaker 59 Either way.

Speaker 10 We continue to gather evidence to interview people, really focus in on John's movements and whereabouts around July 9th.

Speaker 30 But as investigators focus their attention on John Wymonk, they are also conducting a canvas of Holly's apartment complex and get a tip that is about to pay off in a big way.

Speaker 10 Here was a mysterious person running through the parking lot and getting into a black pickup truck. It gave us something to go on.
It was a turning point in the investigation.

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Speaker 68 Hey, welcome into Walgreens. Hi there.

Speaker 68 All right, hon. I'll grab the gift wrap,

Speaker 68 cards, and, oh, those stuffed animals the girls want.

Speaker 84 Great. And I'll grab the string lights and some.

Speaker 84 How about I grab some cough drops?

Speaker 72 This is not just a quick trip to Walgreens.

Speaker 38 I'm fine, honey.

Speaker 84 Well, just in case. You know what they say.

Speaker 67 Tis the season.

Speaker 72 This is Help help Staying Healthy Through the Holidays.

Speaker 10 Walgreens.

Speaker 59 As investigators continue their urgent search for any leads linked to Holly's disappearance, they get their first big break in the case at her apartment complex.

Speaker 61 We began interviewing neighbors. Did anybody see anything? Did anybody hear anything?

Speaker 13 We interviewed one young lady and she said that the night that apartment was burned, she was outside walking her dog

Speaker 13 and she said that she saw a guy running through the shadows. She said he was purposely trying to stay in the shadows and that he had dark clothing on and that he was a white male.

Speaker 13 She did distinctly remember him running out to a truck.

Speaker 10 It gave us something to go on.

Speaker 42 Investigators talk to anyone involved in Holly's life to find out more details about that truck and who it may have belonged to, including at Camp Lejeune, where she often spent time with her husband.

Speaker 6 As the police canvassed and interviewed people at Camp Lejeune, they found out that a young Marine named Kyle had been asking around about borrowing a pickup truck to help a friend move some things, and that was in the time period that Holly had disappeared.

Speaker 31 Kyle is in fact, Lance Corporal Kyle Alden, and investigators discover the identity of the man who he said he was helping to move.

Speaker 59 It was none other than Holly's husband, John Wymonk.

Speaker 10 This became a very important piece of information, so we wanted to talk to Kyle and see if we could connect the dots.

Speaker 82 Hey, buddy. Hello, hey, I'm Locklear.

Speaker 59 Alden is brought in for an interview at Camp Lejeune with Detective Jeff Locklear.

Speaker 24 This apartment, we got a fire apartment.

Speaker 82 Okay.

Speaker 82 Do you know who owns that apartment?

Speaker 82 Without me even getting the specifics, go ahead and tell me who owns the apartment in Fayneville. Who used to live there?

Speaker 81 John Wymont.

Speaker 82 John Wymont. And you know John.

Speaker 81 It's your case.

Speaker 40 So you have all this evidence.

Speaker 13 You go to interview Alden, so you treat him like...

Speaker 22 like your buddy to be somebody who you want to be nice to.

Speaker 13 Never had to raise my voice to him. We were cussing and yelling at him.

Speaker 13 We weren't accusing him of anything just going through and stuff and kind of set the stage for him to begin to let his guard down so

Speaker 82 and uh

Speaker 82 you guys get the favorite bill

Speaker 82 and you went and picked up the stuff we get the favorite bill walked to the back of the apartment building grabbed the grill left it over the railing and put it in the truck so you guys didn't go inside his old apartment.

Speaker 83 No, sir.

Speaker 30 Kyle Alden tells Locklear that he and Wymonk went to Holly's apartment but could not get inside.

Speaker 59 He then says that they left. He went back home to go sleep with his wife, but it turns out that Locklear had already spoken to Alden's wife.

Speaker 82 She says, I don't know what the heck's going on, okay?

Speaker 82 But not only that, but he's telling me to cover him.

Speaker 83 Okay?

Speaker 2 He was lying about large elements of the story. This is true.

Speaker 58 At this point in the interview, Locklear decides to dramatically up the ante with Alden.

Speaker 82 For God's sake, son, I need to find this woman. I need to, I gotta do something for these kids.
Tell me, help me, help me, help you. That life wraps out.
I need for you to grab it.

Speaker 82 I need for you to hold on to it. If you don't get it right now,

Speaker 82 okay, tomorrow is going to be too late. Yes, sir.
I'm telling you. For God's sake, son, tell me.

Speaker 82 Tell me.

Speaker 83 Tell me.

Speaker 82 Now is the time.

Speaker 82 Yesterday was history. Yes, sir.
Tomorrow's a mystery. Today is what we're dealing with.
Today is the day of salvation. You better get on board right now.
Yes, sir.

Speaker 10 He seems to be holding back. We think he knows more than he's telling us.

Speaker 59 Did John hurt Holly?

Speaker 81 I have no idea.

Speaker 82 Do you think John hurt Holly?

Speaker 81 Kind of, but I'm going to hope not.

Speaker 82 I do too. I would love for Holly to call me right now.

Speaker 83 That ain't going to happen.

Speaker 59 But as Detective Locklear is turning the screws on Kyle Alden, the interview is suddenly interrupted.

Speaker 13 And somebody came and knocked on the interview door.

Speaker 82 Go outside and talk to the boss a minute.

Speaker 13 If somebody's stopping the interview, the building better be on fire. But somebody did.

Speaker 85 A 911 call has come in from a forestry service in nearby Onslow County.

Speaker 16 Hey, what?

Speaker 48 Yes, you heard me right.

Speaker 30 That could lead to happiness or heartache.

Speaker 10 What he specifically said is, are y'all looking for a blonde girl?

Speaker 30 It had been four days since Lieutenant Holly James had vanished, and at this point, John Wymonk has emerged as the prime suspect in the disappearance of his wife.

Speaker 59 A fact not lost on his commanding officer, Colonel Kirk Cordoba.

Speaker 46 The prime suspect was a Marine, and it was one of my Marines.

Speaker 22 And given the reputation that he had, did you think at that time that maybe he is somebody that could be guilty of this?

Speaker 46 Yes, given his nature and the fact that he is somewhat of a hothead and wanted to be in control all the time.

Speaker 46 As soon as I heard Wymock was a prime suspect, I assigned somebody to him to make sure he didn't leave, didn't run, so we knew where he was at at all times.

Speaker 58 While investigators methodically build their case against Wymonk, Jesse James decides to take a more direct approach, confronting him in person.

Speaker 22 What did he say exactly to you?

Speaker 2 And I drove Foul to Camp Lejeune

Speaker 23 and he was with like three friends.

Speaker 2 I saw some arrogance, saw that he was drinking. I just leaned into him very, very close.

Speaker 2 And I said, John, if you somehow committed a perfect murder and left no evidence behind and no one but you knows it, there's a sliver of chance that you could get away with it.

Speaker 2 But I said, if one person knows, you're gonna die for the crime.

Speaker 40 What did you read in his face?

Speaker 2 Fear.

Speaker 2 Fear that all the arrogance was gone. If I'd have had a gun that day,

Speaker 2 I would have killed him.

Speaker 82 I want you to tell me what happened. I gotta find Holly.
For God's sakes, where's Holly at?

Speaker 33 I do not know. Okay.

Speaker 73 Police continue to try and chip away at Wymonk's fellow Marine Kyle Alden. But if he knows anything about Holly's disappearance, he's not giving up the goods.

Speaker 10 Investigators knew he wasn't telling the truth and that he was hiding something.

Speaker 76 He was stonewalling the investigation.

Speaker 2 Oh, yeah. I was surprised that he could hold out as long as he held out.

Speaker 76 So he was in the middle of an interview and suddenly some information came in that something was found at this field about 15 miles away from Camp Lejeune.

Speaker 61 NCIS received the phone call. What we discovered was that the North Carolina Forestry Service had responded to a fire in a wooded area in Sneets Ferry, North Carolina.

Speaker 13 So when those guys got to the scene and they go over there, it was pretty clear that there's a body in a shallow grave that looks like someone has tried to burn.

Speaker 13 They put the call into the sheriff's office.

Speaker 75 We're down here on this fire.

Speaker 48 We need Sheriff Paul to die here for possible burned up body.

Speaker 48 You hear right?

Speaker 48 Yes, you heard me right.

Speaker 63 When they called you, they knew it was a body.

Speaker 13 They said, we believe we found a burial site and

Speaker 13 this might be the missing female from Fayetteville.

Speaker 10 What he specifically said is, are y'all looking for a blonde girl? And obviously that hit really close to home.

Speaker 10 It was a sad day and then we knew what had ultimately happened to Holly.

Speaker 31 The authorities shifted their focus here to Sneeze Ferry, North Carolina.

Speaker 59 This is about 130 miles away where Holly was living in her apartment, only about 15 miles away from Camp Lejeune.

Speaker 10 If you were looking to hide a body, it would be a good place to do it. It's a very remote spot.

Speaker 13 We drove out there to the crime scene, to the burial site.

Speaker 22 You saw a body there.

Speaker 2 A burnt body.

Speaker 13 I saw human remains rolled up in what appeared to be an air mattress. There was a hatchet in the burn pit with the remains.

Speaker 13 I saw a number of knives that looked like they came out of a butcher block.

Speaker 2 Were those the ones that were also identified that we saw in the pictures inside her apartment that day when it was found out that she was missing?

Speaker 61 Right, so those knives that were found with the body matched the style, make, and type that were missing from Holly's apartment.

Speaker 13 The best way I could explain it to you is it was an oval-shaped six-inch hole in the ground, long enough, you know, to place her body.

Speaker 63 So she was not buried. She was just laid there for the fire.

Speaker 12 And then how did they ignite it?

Speaker 13 Gasoline.

Speaker 61 Just poured it all around the area.

Speaker 73 Jesse James is at his son's house at Camp Lejeune when a detective from Fayetteville Police calls him with the news.

Speaker 2 And of course I said, let's go. I'm going out there, you know, to see the remains.

Speaker 2 And he said, well, he said, I don't think you should do that. I don't think you should come out there with us.
And I said, well,

Speaker 2 I don't care really what you think at this point. I'm going out where my child's remains were found.

Speaker 2 And he says, well, let me just try to make it a little clearer. There isn't much to see.

Speaker 2 He said, the body had been burning for days.

Speaker 4 I know that when it came to finding her, there was a lot of love poured into into it. And that is something that I really appreciate, that people who didn't necessarily know her

Speaker 4 still felt the need to find her

Speaker 24 and

Speaker 55 loved her as deeply as they did.

Speaker 59 An autopsy would confirm that the dismembered remains found in the pit were Holly's. The cause of death was a single gunshot wound to the head.

Speaker 13 During the initial crime scene process, one of the things that kind of stood out to me was a small hole in the closet door of the master bedroom.

Speaker 13 I didn't know why, I couldn't explain it. Sure enough, as soon as we cut that door into, a piece of bullet fragment fell out.
So my suspicions initially were correct.

Speaker 13 That it looks like she was laying down on the floor in the bedroom. The round was fired into her head.
It exited her head. It hit the concrete floor, ricocheted up, and rested in the closet door.

Speaker 10 One of the critical pieces that you need is the physical body of the person that was killed, and we had that now.

Speaker 10 And so the first thing we wanted to do is go talk to Kyle Alden again and ask him what really happened that day.

Speaker 59 But would this tough Marine finally crack?

Speaker 82 It's come to Jesus time, all right? But you can't get forgiveness unless you ask for forgiveness. You better get it out right now.

Speaker 42 Investigators have finally discovered the remains of Holly Lynn James at a site deep in a pine forest.

Speaker 9 But Kyle Alden denies knowing anything about what became of her.

Speaker 81 Have you guys found her body yet?

Speaker 82 I'm going to be honest with you. I mean, we will find her.

Speaker 80 All right?

Speaker 24 I promise you.

Speaker 9 As the questioning continues, Detective Locklear decides to see if some psychological persuasion can get Alden to open up.

Speaker 82 And then I guess that's the whole crew.

Speaker 13 Photos tend to help get people in their feelings, and that's the reason I introduced some photos in the interview.

Speaker 85 So now you're showing him the pictures of these two adorable kids.

Speaker 13 He tried to not look at the photos. Every time I would catch him kind of leading off not looking at the photos, I said, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
Look at her and her kids.

Speaker 13 And that pressure really worked with him.

Speaker 9 Finally, Alden starts revealing details about the day of Holly's disappearance.

Speaker 27 He tells detectives that John Wymonk called to ask if he could borrow a truck.

Speaker 81 I told him I can make a couple phone calls and see if I can get a truck. He's like, okay, I'll meet Jim Clinton.

Speaker 22 What is this?

Speaker 13 Kyle Alden and John Wymonk stopped at a shield gas station in Clinton, North Carolina, which is about halfway between here and Camp Lejeune.

Speaker 81 And then we go into the gas station. He's like, you want something to drink? It's like, okay.

Speaker 81 And then we go back outside, we talk a little bit. He's like, what's the worst thing you've ever done? He said, the worst thing I've ever done is killed somebody.

Speaker 82 What do you think he means by this?

Speaker 81 I do not know. I did not want to know.

Speaker 82 What else does he say? He's like,

Speaker 81 you can't say anything about this, but

Speaker 80 I need your help doing something.

Speaker 82 Okay, and do you ask him what he means?

Speaker 80 No.

Speaker 82 Are you worried at this point?

Speaker 81 I'm kind of worried. I'm kind of hesitant.
What could he have done? Why does he not want me to tell anybody?

Speaker 13 The dam's beginning to break. right? The information's beginning to come forward.

Speaker 15 Alden says they leave the shell station and about an hour later the pair reaches their destination, Holly's apartment in Fayetteville.

Speaker 42 Here, Alden changes his story, now saying that the two did, in fact, go into the apartment.

Speaker 81 Both get out of the truck, and then we walk down the sidewalk, back over to his apartment. Then I come into the master bedroom,

Speaker 80 and the carpet's torn out.

Speaker 13 I just don't think that he was prepared when he arrived at her apartment for what he saw.

Speaker 82 Did you guys carry that stuff out to the other truck?

Speaker 80 Yes. What do you do next?

Speaker 81 We go back in for the blue bag thing. And then we just pick it up and

Speaker 81 carry it.

Speaker 83 How much in the bag wet?

Speaker 81 Probably about 150 pounds.

Speaker 82 What do you think was in the bag?

Speaker 83 The thought crossed my mind.

Speaker 81 It's like

Speaker 81 the worst thing he's ever done is killed somebody. We're in his house.
There was a blood spot on his wall. There's a blood spot on the bed.
There's a blood spot on the floor. What the hell happened?

Speaker 81 Am I carrying out a body?

Speaker 13 He got really nervous talking about what he saw when he first arrived at the apartment. His carotic artery, you can watch that in a person.

Speaker 13 And when they really get nervous, it's almost like there's a little small green

Speaker 13 tree frog rat in their throat. It's just throbbing.

Speaker 81 We drive around for a little bit and then he says, hey, we need to go to Walmart's.

Speaker 33 Then a brazen act is caught on video.

Speaker 13 When they got to Walmart and parked, they actually went to the bed of the truck, picked her body up, took it, put it in the cab of the truck, closed the door, locked it, went inside and shopped.

Speaker 81 They grabbed two jugs of shell oil.

Speaker 45 They pay for the items at the register.

Speaker 37 and head back to the truck.

Speaker 13 They then came back out and removed her body from the interior of the truck and put it back in the bed. We retrieved that video.

Speaker 13 That was a really key piece of evidence for us that they had the callousness to do that.

Speaker 9 Alden says the pair then head back towards Camp Lejeune, stopping along the way to pick up Wymonk's car.

Speaker 42 And then from there, they each drive to a secluded spot.

Speaker 82 That's what happens.

Speaker 81 Then I continue to put put the bags in the tote in the trunk, the big bag in the back seat of the car, and then I take off.

Speaker 9 Alden says he then continues home, solo, and that was the end of his involvement.

Speaker 82 Is there any details that we're missing?

Speaker 81 Not that I can think of right now.

Speaker 21 But Detective Locklear has a hunch that Alden has more to tell.

Speaker 42 Could bringing him back for one more day of questioning finally break the case fully open

Speaker 13 the next day when i walked back in that interview room i had my chest poked out and my tail feathers were high because i was armed with information that i didn't have when i first went in there

Speaker 82 and i let him know it guess where i just come from there's soot and dirt on my shoes why do you think there's soot and dirt on my shoes

Speaker 83 i went

Speaker 83 I went where Holly's at.

Speaker 82 You have been lying to me since we met one another, right?

Speaker 82 But I don't understand why.

Speaker 9 Sensing that Alden is still holding back, Detective Jeff Locklear, who happens to be a preacher's son, invokes a higher authority.

Speaker 82 It's come to Jesus' time, all right? But you can't get forgiveness unless you ask for forgiveness. You better get it out right now.
Now you tell me. Tell me the rest of it.
Tell me the rest of it.

Speaker 45 Will that appeal get Alden to see the light?

Speaker 29 Really finally tell the truth about what really happened to Holly?

Speaker 81 I tell him

Speaker 81 this stuff is scary.

Speaker 81 I don't know what to do.

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Speaker 37 In the NCIS building at Camp Lejeune, it's been three long days of questioning for Maureen Kyle Alden.

Speaker 9 And it's at this point he finally tells investigators what he claims to know about John Wymonk's involvement in the death of his wife, Holly.

Speaker 81 He called me, it was around 6.30. He said that he'd been there all morning and all afternoon.
Say, I killed her.

Speaker 82 I didn't ask him how he killed her.

Speaker 81 I just said, why?

Speaker 13 You have to be careful in situations like this.

Speaker 13 He's telling me a story, and if I encourage him and it's not correct, you go down the wrong road here.

Speaker 81 Told me that

Speaker 81 she didn't die right away, so he had to hit her again.

Speaker 83 And I told him I don't want to hear that.

Speaker 82 But he still kept telling you didn't.

Speaker 83 Yes, sir. What did he say?

Speaker 81 He's like

Speaker 81 the look in her eye,

Speaker 81 he'd never seen her anything like it, the look in her eye.

Speaker 74 Kyle Alden then says he and John Wymonk are not yet done at the apartment.

Speaker 81 He told me he he had to burn the apartment and he had to let it burn for a really long time because he wanted to try to get rid of all the evidence.

Speaker 13 They had devised a plan or made an agreement that they would drive her remains back to the area of Camp Lejeune and find somewhere at that point to bury the remains.

Speaker 60 Investigators say they choose a place familiar to Alden.

Speaker 8 Alden was living not far from here. How far away was he?

Speaker 13 As the crow flies about a half a mile. The reason they picked this area was he was familiar with it because he had been back here doing some target shooting.

Speaker 13 That's how he even knew that this place existed.

Speaker 13 I had enough probable cause at that time to charge him with the arson and the conspiracy to commit the arson.

Speaker 13 That allowed me to arrest him, Alden, and arrest Wymonk and get my hands on him and get him back to Fayetteville.

Speaker 42 With both men in custody, the focus now switches back to John Wymonk and what possible motive could he have to kill his wife.

Speaker 9 Investigators believe the answer to that question lies in what they were told about John's alleged violent treatment of Holly.

Speaker 38 The first time we really talked about it is when her and John Wymonk got in the fight and she showed up at my house. Her hair was a mess.
She had scratches and claw marks all over her back.

Speaker 2 We came out a couple of weeks on vacation to visit Holly. A couple of weeks before she was murdered, and I met him again once there.

Speaker 2 I just really didn't have a sense that there was anything until she began talking about a divorce.

Speaker 42 Authorities come to learn that Holly filed for a protective order against John Wymonk in May, less than two months before she was killed in which she alleged a chilling encounter with her husband.

Speaker 61 We discovered that there had been an incident in the prior months leading up to this where he had threatened suicide and also held a gun to her head.

Speaker 2 To her head. Correct.

Speaker 40 Threatening to kill her.

Speaker 2 Yes.

Speaker 38 The night that Holly left John at the apartment, she was kind of telling me everything that happened, that John had threatened her. He carved her name into a bullet and told her this one's for you.

Speaker 4 The fact that he was in the military and went as extreme as he did makes it so much worse because his main priority should have been protecting her.

Speaker 4 That was his main job was to protect a mother and a wife and he couldn't and he wouldn't do that.

Speaker 42 After Holly did not show up for a court hearing on the protective order, the case was dismissed.

Speaker 82 You need anything to drink?

Speaker 81 Glass of water stuff.

Speaker 82 You want some water? Fair enough.

Speaker 74 Despite the growing amount of evidence against John Wymonk implicating him in Holly's murder, Wymonk Wymonk still will not talk.

Speaker 10 Armed with the information that Kyle had given investigators, they gave John Wymonk an opportunity to come clean and tell what happened.

Speaker 10 He said he wasn't going to talk with them without an attorney present.

Speaker 82 Okay, stand up.

Speaker 81 Follow me out here.

Speaker 10 He was then charged with first-degree murder, second-degree arson, as well as conspiracy to commit second-degree arson.

Speaker 39 Corporal John Wymonk is accused of killing his wife, 2nd Lieutenant Holly Wimunk, a nurse stationed at Fort Bragg.

Speaker 87 My client is presumed to be innocent. We don't want this case tried in the media.
We want it to be tried in a court of law.

Speaker 10 Taking a case to trial, there's always risk involved.

Speaker 10 In this case, we had very good information from Kyle, and the thought was that Kyle would testify at trial as to what happened, and then we would put all the circumstantial evidence together to point to the fact of what John Wimunk had done that night.

Speaker 9 While John Wymock pleads not guilty to all charges in connection with the arson and his wife's death,

Speaker 28 Kyle Olden is now cooperating with authorities.

Speaker 29 He agrees to take Detective Locklear through the night of Holly's murder at the scene of the crime.

Speaker 13 It was very telling to bring him back to the spot. He had never been here before.
right before that night this is only the second time he had ever been here and he could still remember where he parked

Speaker 82 I parked right there besides the Prayson.

Speaker 13 It was worth taking him back out there and having him tell it from his own the viewpoint of the guy that was there tonight this happened. And from there you guys went to

Speaker 82 we went back out towards Jacksonville Smith's Ferry area.

Speaker 40 Did he give an indication of why it is that he did what he did, what Alden did?

Speaker 61 The only explanation that I'm aware of is that Wymonk, being another Marine, asked him for help and he agreed.

Speaker 40 You're a Marine, would you do that?

Speaker 2 Absolutely not.

Speaker 6 After he confessed, Kyle Alden was charged and he ultimately pleaded guilty.

Speaker 10 Kyle Alden was sentenced to approximately five years in prison.

Speaker 42 And at a hearing for John Wymonk, Holly's brother Bo

Speaker 33 seized the man he once called a friend, now accused of killing his sister.

Speaker 20 But we stood up when Wymonk came in and he didn't even look. He didn't turn around.

Speaker 10 Ultimately, in 2010, John Wymock pled guilty to first-degree murder.

Speaker 21 John Wymonk is sentenced to life in prison for arson, conspiracy to commit arson, and Holly's murder.

Speaker 2 The district attorney called me and he said, I have Wymuck here. His parents have convinced him to take a plea of life without parole.
I said, you just take the plea and send him to prison.

Speaker 2 You know, so that's what they did.

Speaker 9 Did you hope there was a death penalty?

Speaker 20 I personally wanted it. Yeah, it's a different opinion than my dad's.

Speaker 33 With John Weimwalk now behind bars,

Speaker 19 Jesse James still has questions.

Speaker 7 Did you expect he would write back to you?

Speaker 9 Will this father finally get answers from his daughter's killer?

Speaker 32 She was honored in many ways.

Speaker 2 It was a lavish funeral and I did it on purpose because Holly was a big personality.

Speaker 2 The police in the community from several communities came and the Patriot Guard, it looked like a state funeral. Dignitary.
Dignitary. Yeah.
And that's what I wanted for Holly.

Speaker 10 What was it like then

Speaker 36 to be at a funeral like that?

Speaker 64 It was heartbreaking.

Speaker 20 And I just uncontrollably cried.

Speaker 64 It was awful.

Speaker 20 Just in so many ways.

Speaker 17 You put them together.

Speaker 49 The man that you...

Speaker 19 that you introduced to your sister ultimately killed her.

Speaker 20 Right. It's part of what haunts me for a a long part of my life, absolutely.

Speaker 17 But that's looking back. Nobody can ever predict something that they already learned.

Speaker 20 But once you go through something, it's really hard to take it away. Pretending it didn't happen is hard, but coming to terms with it is even harder.

Speaker 2 Sometimes I think every time I take a step here, maybe I'm taking a step in a place she has stepped.

Speaker 2 And that

Speaker 2 gives me a sense of presence.

Speaker 59 Here in the hallway of Womack Army Medical Center, where Holly once worked, her memory stands eternal, a silent testament to a life that will not be forgotten.

Speaker 2 What does that say down there? In memory of 2nd Lieutenant Holly James for her joy, her service, and her support of mothers and babies.

Speaker 40 Well, she was loved.

Speaker 2 Yes, she was.

Speaker 59 The pain of losing a daughter never fades, and neither do the unanswered questions.

Speaker 60 So after all these years, you still want to know more?

Speaker 2 Yeah, I'd like like to know more.

Speaker 59 Recently, Jesse made the difficult decision to reach out to John Wymonk, the man who murdered his daughter, through an online prisoner website.

Speaker 24 John, both my son Jesse and I carry no anger toward you, but only grief for the loss of Holly.

Speaker 26 The level of grief we carry leaves no room for you.

Speaker 26 To my surprise, I did receive a response to my letter. The response goes like this.

Speaker 24 Thank you for reaching out to me. You are entitled to answers to which I will give them to you as best I can.
I hope this will provide some closure for all parties involved.

Speaker 7 Did you expect he would write back to you?

Speaker 2 I thought he would. It took a long time.

Speaker 20 And the return letter went into the things like, you know, yeah, we need to talk but rather than taking responsibility Wymonk outlines a process centered on his own terms and not on the needs of Jesse even in that letter that he wrote there's no apology he does not care about what he did he only cares about what's happening to him

Speaker 76 you are now communicating with the man who murdered your daughter If you were to talk to him in person, would that be something that would be somewhat helpful to you?

Speaker 2 I think being in the same room would would have a negative impact on me.

Speaker 24 John, I can assure you that I have no interest in engaging in restorative justice or any sense of closure with you. How could you possibly restore 17 years of life without Holly?

Speaker 2 I fought to live a life of joy

Speaker 2 because I didn't want to be a victim of John Wimup too.

Speaker 17 So you've never been there?

Speaker 2 Never been there. Would you want to go there? At this point, I think

Speaker 2 I would like to do that.

Speaker 19 Years after his daughter was discovered here, Jesse James visits the sacred hallowed ground for the first time.

Speaker 9 Not just to face where Holly's body was abandoned, but to honor her memory.

Speaker 2 Not only for myself, but, you know, I'd like to represent my family and her friends that did not get to

Speaker 2 see her again.

Speaker 75 What do you think about now?

Speaker 33 I think that I miss my protector.

Speaker 30 She was always the big sister.

Speaker 59 Today, those who loved Holly keep her memory alive.

Speaker 63 Remembering her as the devoted mother and dedicated soldier she always strived to be.

Speaker 33 What would you like the world to remember about Holly?

Speaker 20 I think she should be remembered for trying to give so much. My sister loved protecting the people she cared about.

Speaker 56 Got the same smile too, right there.

Speaker 56 I want people to remember her as a really good mother with the time she had.

Speaker 24 I am very proud of who she was.

Speaker 4 A patriot is someone who goes above and beyond. And that's what she did.
Like no matter what. Isn't she sweet?

Speaker 4 She put everything above herself.

Speaker 55 And I don't think there's anything more patriotic than that.

Speaker 62 The life of a true patriot cut short. In the years since his daughter's murder, Jesse James has become an advocate in the fight against domestic violence, hoping, David, to make a difference.

Speaker 41 After completing his sentence, Kyle Alden was released from prison.

Speaker 47 Neither he nor John Wymonk are members of the Marine Corps any longer. That is our program for tonight.

Speaker 41 Thank you for watching.

Speaker 36 I'm David Muir.

Speaker 35 And I'm Deborah Roberts.

Speaker 62 From All of Us at 2020 and ABC News, good night.

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