Secrets in the Canal

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It was really pretty.

Lots of palm trees.

I like that.

It was always hot.

We always hung out in street corners, went to the beach, dyed our hair blonde.

We also partied a lot.

Kids partying, kids over at the park, kids with beer in the car.

I mean, there wasn't very much going on here in 77.

We didn't have a lot of violent crimes.

I'm Bob Vernon.

I'm a retired Coral Springs Police Detective.

I worked on the Jeff Klee case.

He was really tall and handsome.

He was funny and smart,

warm, and kind, and he would do anything for anybody.

I am Ginny Healy.

In 1977, I dated Jeff Klee.

He was the firstborn.

He got along with most everybody.

I'm Flossy Klee, and I'm Jeff Klee's mother.

Jeff disappeared on June 21st, 1977.

It was on a Monday night.

He went to the Crown Lounge with a group of friends.

They apparently left about 2 o'clock in the morning.

It was an average Joe kind of bar where everybody kind of hung out.

When we woke up the next morning, Jeff wasn't in his bedroom.

Jeff's band wasn't there.

We called around and we couldn't locate him.

Was that unusual?

Yeah.

He'd never done it before.

And so we called and reported it to the police and they said, well, you know, he's 18 and, you know, he probably just took off.

When your child goes missing like that,

you don't know.

How could this happen?

I wonder where he is.

I hope he's well.

Well, he has a special place in my heart.

He always has.

A lot of people overlooked the case because it was just another kid who didn't come home and he's off someplace else.

It was just like the earth just opened up and swallowed him.

Somewhere in between the Crown Lounge and his house, something happened.

That took 31 years for the case to be solved.

Deep secret.

Tonight's 48 hours mystery

back in the 70s how were you treated as a mom well they ignored me they said i was hysterical When Flossie Cleave reported her 18-year-old son, Jeff, missing on a June day in 1977, she was frustrated that police didn't take her seriously.

I said, well, when was I hysterical?

Because

I never screamed or hollered or cried or any did any of that.

I mean, I was just concerned.

Where's my son?

He isn't home.

What are you going to do about it?

They didn't do much.

They said, well, you know, he's 18 and we can't really do anything.

You just sort of have to wait.

He'll come up.

He'll show up.

Even if police had begun a serious search, it wasn't so easy to track down a missing teen back in the late 1970s.

There weren't surveillance cameras like this everywhere as there are now.

No ATMs on every corner, cell phones, electronic tolls, or vast computer networks.

It wasn't so difficult to virtually disappear.

Back in the 1970s, drinking laws were more lax too.

It was perfectly legal in Florida for 18-year-olds to drink at bars.

Nickel Beer Night at the Crown Lounge was a big hit with Jeff Klee and his friends.

Jeff was, he was a lot of fun.

He was a party maker.

Alan Carpenter was one of those close friends.

He just enjoyed having a good time.

Ginny Healy was Jeff's girlfriend.

He was strong and

I thought he was handsome.

Like a man's man.

Didn't mean even at 18.

It's like

he knew who he was.

You loved him?

Absolutely.

Here's his birthday.

As the oldest of four children, Jeff was also close to his mother and three younger sisters.

Dee Dee was 11.

And I remember sitting in the front yard for hours because I was waiting for him to come home.

And she's like, okay, you know, it's time to come in, Diddy.

I'm like, but he's not home yet.

Cindy, now a Coral Springs cop, was 15.

He'd give you the shirt off his back to anybody, even his sisters, believe it or not.

Laurel, only a year younger than Jeff, was closest to him.

She hung out with him and his friends, especially his best friend, David Cusinelli.

They did everything together.

He was like a big brother to me.

He and Jeff, they were just almost inseparable.

Both David David and Alan worked for Jeff's dad, Bucky, who ran a landscaping business.

Bucky had a commanding presence and expected his son to someday run the company.

My husband had given him half of the business and he had a brand new van.

Did he like working in his father's business?

Was that something he enjoyed doing?

I think he did, but I also think that he'd get a little resentful only because he worked so much.

How did your husband deal with Jeff's disappearance?

How would you describe what he was going through?

This was his boy, you know, and

it left a big void with him in his life, I think.

Do you remember the last time you saw Jeff?

Yep.

It was in my family room, and he was going out, and I can see him.

And we were all laughing in the family room, doing something.

And I remember him saying to me, Mom, I love you.

And that was the last time I remember that.

Jeff, from what I understand, left the Crown Lounge, and then he went to take David Cusinelli home.

And never returned home himself.

What I recall is

Cusinelli telling me that Jeff had disappeared and his mother was looking for him.

And have you seen him?

And I said, no, and I haven't heard from him.

So what did you think?

He always mentioned when he'd go off daydreaming that he would move to California.

And I thought he went.

A lot of people thought Jeff,

you know, went off on his own.

Find a place down in the keys.

He had a scuba license.

He loved the water.

As time wore on, there was still no sign of Jeff.

As part of procedure, police took a closer look at his family and learned that Bucky Klee was a gambler.

My husband knew a lot of people, and not all of them were wonderful people.

A little shady?

Kind of.

And Bucky did like to gamble.

He knew bookies.

Any possibility of your husband having a debt that could

have something to do with your son's disappearance?

No.

The police also learned that the Cleese had taken out a $100,000 life insurance policy on Jeff.

And wasn't that a pretty large insurance policy on an 18-year-old?

Well,

probably my girls also had large policies on them too.

And this was just something we do.

Flossie refused to believe her son was dead.

The first year she brought a ton of Christmas presents for him and I'm sitting there kind of like looking at,

he's not here.

Well he'll have something to open up when he comes out in, you know, through the front door.

Jeff's sisters began to wonder if the friend who last saw their brother might be hiding something.

He had stopped working for their father right after Jeff disappeared.

Did you continue to see David Cusinelli?

I did from time to time, but I really thought that he knew something, but I didn't know what.

Did you ever ask David?

Like, what happened to my brother?

Yes, I asked him, and he just said he didn't know.

But if David seemed reluctant to talk, someone else they knew was not.

In 1981, four years after Jeff disappeared, suddenly there was news.

And a friend of his is saying, Jeff's alive.

Yeah.

And he asked me not to say anything to anybody because if they ever find Jeff, Jeff would be in trouble.

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So the

three little ones, little, and who's all fish?

That's me.

And that's Cindy and Joe.

Look, he's got his arm around both of you.

Old faded photographs are all Laurel Klee has left of the older brother who vanished in June of 1977.

She heard nothing until four years later when by chance, she ran into someone she knew from high school.

It was just a bizarre conversation.

Michael Collister told Laurel that Jeff was alive but in hiding, living under an alias after a drug deal went bad.

Mike Collister is telling you that when Jeff disappeared in 1977, He had actually gone somewhere, changed his name, and was on the run.

Yes.

But he refused to tell Laura where.

And he said that he had a nice girl, they were living somewhere,

and he was set for life.

It didn't sound like Jeff, but I, you know, I didn't know.

Laurel, who at first kept quiet, later confided in her mother.

I just didn't believe this.

I said, Laurie, this is just not something Jeff would do.

When investigators eventually tracked down Collister, he denied telling Laurel that her brother was alive.

If I had a conversation with her about Jeff, it was only to

try to ease her pain to some degree.

A dead end, says Detective Bob Vernon.

I discounted it right from the start.

Vernon took charge of Jeff Klee's case in 1982, five years after he went missing.

Vernon was shocked by how thin the case file was.

Did Jeff Klee's disappearance kind of fall through the cracks?

cracks?

Yes.

It was listed as a missing person on the face sheet.

It was basically an empty folder.

Vernon wondered how Jeff and his van could simply disappear without a trace.

It never showed up in five years.

I mean, not in a chop shop.

The license plate didn't show up.

It didn't end up on some used car lot.

His gut told him that Jeff was dead.

And back in 1977, when Coral Springs was an undeveloped maze of canals and levees, there were plenty of places to dump bodies and vans.

There was a lot of empty fields.

I mean, there was a lot of possibilities.

While Detective Vernon was beginning his search, Jeff Klee's mom, Flossie, had never stopped hers.

I think I chased every black van in Howard County.

I hate to admit it, I went to at least five different psychics trying to find out.

I would just come away shaking my head thinking, this just, that's not him.

They don't know him.

Through all the false leads, Flossie held out hope.

I never changed my phone number, thinking that if something did happen to him,

he'd know the phone number.

Like Jeff's family, Detective Vernon thought that Jeff's friends had to know more than they were saying.

Jeff Clay had been out with friends they'd been drinking here at the Crown Lounge.

According to police reports, the last friend to see Jeff was David Cousinelli.

So Vernon began dropping by his workplace.

After half a dozen or more visits, the same questions come up.

Can you think about anything else?

Do you remember anything else that night?

David told Vernon what he told police in 1977.

That Jeff dropped him and his brother Carl off at their house at around 2 a.m.

They never saw or heard from Jeff again.

Vernon felt the best clue to the mystery was something Jeff's sister Laurel had mentioned offhandedly.

She said,

a few years ago, I got a letter.

from Attica State Prison.

The letter, Laurel says, came from a New York State prison official who stated that an inmate wanted to write to her.

An inmate by the name of Scott Rango.

I was 17.

My mom asked me if I knew him, and I said, no, I don't know who it is.

Why did he want to write to you?

I had no idea.

Scott Rango was serving a life sentence for murder.

I just didn't want my daughter involved with him.

And so that was the end of that.

How would he get the address to write to the Clay family?

What were you thinking?

At that particular point, I tell you, I just, you know, it was like pulling on a string.

I'm going to pull wherever I can to see whatever it is.

And, you know.

Rango had robbed and killed a psychiatrist in New York and was a suspect in as many as 17 other crimes, many violent.

He would meet people out, become friends, drink in bars, stuff like that, later rob them or try to kill them.

More significantly, back in 1977, Rango was here living in Florida in the Coral Springs area.

And he just happened to wash dishes at a restaurant near the Crown Lounge, the same club where Jeff hung out with his friends on the night he disappeared.

And how close is the restaurant where Scott Rango worked?

Right across the street, I would say probably 500 yards.

That one right there on the corner.

That was known as the clock restaurant then.

I was putting the pieces together.

I'm thinking, well, you know, he comes across the street.

He meets Jeff.

He asks for a ride home.

I was thinking he's probably killed him, took his van at that time, and went to New York.

Vernon was sure he was on to something,

but it was too late to talk to Scott Rango himself.

Shortly after Rango reached out to Laurel Klee, he hanged himself in his cell.

Was the case pretty much, though, closed?

Believing that Scott Rango was the one who killed Jeff Clee?

In my mind, yes, it was.

Nearly nine years after Jeff Klee went missing, and at the insistence of the insurance company, the Cleese finally asked to have him declared dead.

I said, I can't do it.

I don't want to do it.

You know,

he might walk through that door tomorrow.

Detective Vernon testified how how he believed Jeff Clee died at the hands of Scott Rango, and the judge made it official.

Tough.

Tough.

Having to walk away from that judge's chambers in silence, not talking about it on the other side.

Yeah, none of us talked.

We just walked out real quiet.

I would go to my grave believing that Scott Rango was responsible for the disappearance of Jeff Clee.

But today you feel differently, don't you?

I feel entirely different.

Yes, absolutely.

I was wrong.

Totally?

Totally.

Three decades after Jeff Klee disappeared, Coral Springs is a thriving community.

Busy bridges now span the city's canals.

Was any of this here back then like any of these homes?

No, this was...

These were cow fields back here, and this bridge wasn't built until 1989

The Klee case had been passed to Detective Dave Weissman only five years old in 1977.

I wanted to give the Klees more answers He was reviewing the case in March 2008 when he heard his colleagues were dredging the C-14 canal were stolen vehicles possibly involved in insurance fraud.

They fished out more than 30 vehicles here.

And then a discovery no one expected.

Remnants of a black van that had been submerged for a very long time.

When they put the van down on a concrete, it actually fell apart.

So it had to be in a canal for several, several years because it totally deteriorated once it hit the ground.

His scuba license floated to the top of the canal, and license plate was still on the van.

One by one, clues to a 30-year mystery emerged.

We found atrac tapes, we found cologne, a comb, and Jeff Klee's bones.

His mother's agonizing search had come to an end.

I was just so astonished.

I really was.

I just

had to go by and see the van.

Jeff had never been far from home.

It's incredible to think that probably about three and a half, four miles from our house, this is where my son's resting place was.

And how many times have I driven over that bridge after it was made?

How many times have all of us driven over that bridge?

Jeff's father, Bucky, died in 2004, never knowing what happened to his only son.

They found the van on my dad's birthday.

You think that's a coincidence?

I said it was a gift from daddy.

What was your reaction when this was actually pulled up?

What do you think even when you look at this now?

I just can't believe that Jeff was stuck in this van for 31 years.

It's just hard to believe.

The timing was uncanny because the van wasn't the only new evidence to surface remarkably just two weeks earlier the police heard from a new witness

swear to tell the truth the whole truth nothing but the truth so you got hey sir dana holmes who was only one year old when jeff clea went missing came to police out of the blue to report an event that happened in the year 2000.

Back then, she met a man at a Coral Springs bar.

He was drinking very much.

He was wasting.

She and the man ended up alone that night.

He was coming on to me and I said, whoa, whoa, whoa.

Instead of getting intimate, she says, they shared secrets.

He started crying and he explained that he killed his best friend.

His words.

And my heart dropped.

And then he continued to say, but it was an accident.

Dana was very disturbed by the story, but she was married to another man at the time, so she kept the story to herself.

I figured, well, who am I going to tell?

What am I going to do?

Call Coral Springs PD and say, oh, this guy I met one night,

he told me he killed his best friend.

I don't know his best friend.

I mean, it's one heck of a story.

I didn't know if anyone would believe that.

As Dana went on with her life, she says, she buried the memory of that night until seven years later in 2007, when her memory got a jolt.

She was in a bar again.

This time she overheard a woman telling a chilling story about her missing brother.

That woman was Coral Springs police sergeant Cindy Klee.

Her brother had disappeared 30 years earlier.

She strongly believes that her brother's best friend had something to do with it.

And I listened and I thought, oh my god, I know this story.

Did you say something to Cindy?

No, I didn't.

I didn't do anything and it did work on me.

What do you mean worked on you?

Because now the victim had a name.

It was six months after that, in March 2008, when Dana Holmes finally went to the police.

He was very emotional and he was very, very detailed.

And he said it was about when he was 17 or 18.

And she gave them a sworn tape statement.

He said that him and his best friend were fighting, and there was some type of girl involved.

But he said that he accidentally had killed him and that he hit a body and he didn't want to go to the cops.

Dana knew the man only by his first name, Dave.

But when shown a photo lineup.

That is David.

She picked out David Cusinelli, Jeff Klee's high school friend.

That's him.

That's the man that told me he killed his best friend.

It was just like God said, okay,

we've had enough of this.

Let's get this thing settled once and for all.

Detective Weissman was now convinced that David was responsible for Jeff's death.

How do you know he didn't just kind of get lost and drive into the canal?

That wouldn't be possible.

There were no roads back then.

There wasn't a bridge.

And when we found the van,

it was found in neutral,

which raised our suspicions that someone had pushed the van into that canal.

Dana Holmes continued to remember details of the story David Cusinelli told her eight years earlier.

There was something that had to do with a rock.

This time, she was under hypnosis.

It's an investigative tool.

That's all it is.

It's not admissible in court.

I don't know if he fell

and hit his head on a rock or he hit him in the head with the rock.

rock.

I know that he killed him.

Weissman also interviewed Ginny Healy Spence, Jeff's high school girlfriend, who revealed to police for the first time that she had cheated on Jeff.

You had spent some time with David Cusinelli?

Yeah.

Yeah.

On his birthday.

On David's birthday?

Yeah.

And how did Jeff react?

Well, he was pretty mad, so we broke up.

There's our motive.

Jeff, that gave Jeff the reason to confront David.

You feel responsible in some ways?

Yes.

David was still in the area.

He had never married, but making a case against him was not going to be easy.

Nothing in Jeff's van or the condition of his body answered the biggest question.

How did he die?

We may have the why now, but how?

It was time for the detectives to confront David Cousinelle.

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I'm Investigator Slater, host of the Psychopedia True Crime Podcast.

Spooky season is officially here, and for the entire month of October, we are transforming into Spookompedia.

All episodes, including bonus content, will delve into true crime with a dark twist, blending the spooky, creepy, gory, and the haunted.

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Four months after Jeff Klee's body was found, yet another surprising development.

The man police suspect of pushing Jeff and his van into the C-14 canal agrees to talk to Detective David Weissman.

Nobody thought he would come in.

And then we got the call that there was somebody down in the lobby.

All the investigators were stunned.

Hey, Sam.

Hello, what else?

How are you?

David Cousinelli, now 50, arrives without an attorney.

It was extremely important because there was no physical evidence.

And we needed David's confession.

But if David knows what happened to Jeff, he's not telling the team of detectives who question him.

So tell me about that night.

Do you remember what time you left?

It had to be...

What time did you arrive and who drove and just set up?

Well, Jeff drove.

Me and my brother Carl went with him.

Dropped me and my brother off at my parents' house and

I said that was it.

It's the same story he has always told, except for one crucial difference.

For the very first time, David admits that he and Jeff had argued that night about Jenny, Jeff's girlfriend.

He was upset.

David admitted that Jeff was upset because he had found out that Jenny and him slept together.

Were you scared Jeff was gonna hurt you that night?

No.

No, no.

While police continue to press David in one room,

What David doesn't know is that in another room, his older brother Carl, who also agreed to talk, is being interrogated.

Police are hoping to find inconsistencies in the brothers' stories.

When you went down to the Crown Lounge that night, how did you get down there?

Jeff drove.

David is confronted with Dana Holmes' statement that he had confessed to her that he had killed his best friend.

Rock, there was something that had to do with a rock.

Why would she say something like that?

I have no idea.

And I never told her anything.

I never told her that I killed Jeff Jeff Clee.

I did not hit him with no rock.

I did nothing like that.

David sticks to his story, even as he is egged on for hours.

Because, you know, accidents do happen.

I understand that, but

I don't know what happened to him.

He dropped me off of my parents' house and drove away.

Were you nervous?

Questioning him?

I was a little nervous.

Finally, both brothers begin to waver on whether Carl had really been at the Crown Lounge the night Jeff disappeared.

I thought he was in the van.

Maybe it was the mother night he was in the van.

Well, where were you?

I don't remember.

I thought I went to the bar with the two of them, and that was it.

So that's when we went in the room, and I spoke with Carl.

This is Detective Poisson.

He's been speaking to your brother.

After three and a half hours, Carl appears to break.

I asked him if there was any malicious intent with Jeff's disappearance.

An accident is an accident, okay?

As long as you can tell me that there was no malicious intent,

then I'll be fine with that.

I really will be.

There was no malicious intent.

Thank you.

And at that point, I can see that we were getting somewhere.

David called me up and told me that there was a problem.

I guess I went out and met him.

I must have helped him dispose of the vehicle.

I helped him push it in.

Carl does not give any details, and he insists he never saw Jeff's body in the van.

Okay, well, what did he tell you happen to Jeff?

I don't know.

I, you know, vaguely come up with

pushing the van into the canal, and I'm not even I wouldn't swear up and down that

Carl

I don't I can't think of anything else when police push him for more

come on

I'm not gonna make something up I don't know Carl suddenly ends the interview do I need to get a lawyer at this point is that where we're at

Are you requesting a lawyer?

You know, I can't give you guys the answers you want.

But Carl has given the cops the ammunition they need to press David.

Please.

Feel important that you see this.

They show David portions of his brother's interview.

David called me up and told me that there was a problem because I went out and met him.

I must help him dispose of the vehicle.

He goes into more detail.

What are he's talking about.

When we brought the video in the actual room of Carl confessing,

David started to freak out a little bit.

I did not do it.

David, by your brother's own admission, he helped you.

No friggin' away!

No freaking way.

We saw it.

I

no way.

That's your blood.

I understand that.

No, I...

That's your blood.

I did not kill Jeff.

I did not.

Then, David changes his story.

He begins to tell police how Jeff might have gotten hurt.

I said, the only thing that could have happened is

he was chasing me around the van.

He tripped, fell, and ate his head.

In your mind, he really finally broke when he saw Carl?

I believe so.

Absolutely.

Seeing his own brother confessing to something they probably

were gonna keep a secret amongst themselves their entire lives.

What's the possibility that you grabbed something and threw it at him?

Hmm?

Does that sound like that?

Yeah.

Does that seem more reasonable?

It's possible, but I don't know how to remember if that rock hit him in the head.

No, I don't know.

Or did he trip and fall?

I don't know if the rock hit him in the head or if it caused him to trip and fall, if it hit him in the body and then he tripped and fell.

Where did you see an injury?

Forehead, I would think.

It was on his forehead.

How big of an injury?

I think it was split wide open.

The detectives finally feel they're getting somewhere as David begins to reluctantly talk about that night.

But David is never clear about how Jeff died or how he and Carl put the van in the water.

Did he jump back in the van with you and go down there, or did he have followed you?

because it's kind of a long he would have followed me in his car

It's hard to watch him talk about our brother like it was just

his life didn't matter

We showed Jeff Clee's mother and sisters some of David's taped interview

if he was breathing I wouldn't have

put him in the canal.

Okay, no way.

All right

Did you think that there was a chance that he could have been brought to a hospital?

If I thought there was I would have Do you think it's possible that Jeff wasn't dead when he was put in the canal?

That was one of the first questions I had.

How did they know he was dead?

He could have been unconscious, totally unconscious.

And then drowned.

I mean, these are two guys.

I mean, they aren't paramedics, right?

Said, I thought it was a bad dream.

So when I woke up the next morning, I was like, nah, no way did that happen.

No way.

Would you actually describe what David said as a confession?

I believe so.

God, what did I do?

More than nine and a half hours after he arrived,

David goes home.

Why wasn't he arrested?

We wanted to review the case with the state attorney and make sure we had all our ducks in a row.

What were you hoping he could be charged with?

Homicide.

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He was a good-looking fella and he loved to be dressed nicely.

Do you remember what Jeff was wearing when he disappeared?

I remember he had this shirt on with little tiny roses.

I don't remember anything.

They were little tiny ones like this.

And it was,

he really did like that shirt.

Okay, Ma.

We do miss him.

We do miss him.

And what he could have been, I think.

It's not just losing a son and brother that is so difficult for Flossie Klee and her daughters.

They are still reeling from learning that Jeff's best friend may be responsible.

Maybe it was an accident, but why did they have to cover it up then?

We might never know, so there's always going to be a question in all of our minds.

What do you think of David Cusinelli today?

I think that he and his brother both are cowards.

They knew where Jeff was for 31 years, and they chose to remain silent.

Immediately after David and his brother Carl gave their taped statements to police, they hired an attorney, Mitch Pele.

The Kusinellis wouldn't talk with us, but their lawyer did.

The police called David Cousinelli's statement a confession.

Do you agree with that?

No.

What do you call it?

I call it something that's coerced.

I call it something that's manufactured.

Now, do you recall him chasing you?

Pele says police fed David information and pressured him into admitting he was there the night Jeff died.

These pieces of the story don't initially come from David.

Here,

this does not come from the police when he says, did you see an injury on the forehead?

Where did you see an injury?

Forehead?

That came from David.

David is the one who said it was split wide open.

How big of an injury?

I think it was split wide open.

David is the one who says it's a couple of inches of a gash.

How long do you think the gash was?

Two, three, six inches, inches, his whole forehead?

Like say maybe a couple inches?

That wasn't fed by the police.

That sounds like real details, doesn't it?

But you have to take a step back before he answered that way with some specificity.

Who brought up the fact that he tripped and fell first?

It was the police.

I don't have it right here in the top of my head.

And Carl, his attorney says, got the same treatment.

Every time he would say, I didn't have any type of involvement, I don't remember, the police would say, That's not a good enough answer for us.

That's not good enough.

We could help you along.

And you're saying that neither David Kusinelli nor Carl Kusinelli had anything to do with it?

I'm not saying that they didn't have anything to do with it.

I'm saying that they both denied

having anything to do with it.

And I don't think that these so-called confessions confirm

anything.

The police hoped a criminal court would settle the matter.

But then, a development that no one expected.

Today, what charges are pending against David Kusinelli or Carl Kusinelli?

No charges are pending against them.

You heard it.

The Kusinelli brothers will face no charges at all.

Assistant State's Attorney Sherry Tate Jenkins.

We don't have any evidence to suggest homicide because it could have been accidental.

There is simply not enough evidence to prove premeditated murder, she says.

The main problem is that no one can even say how Jeff died.

His skeletal remains, meticulously examined,

reveal nothing.

You can't tell whether he drowned?

No.

You can't tell whether he was stabbed?

No.

Or shot?

No.

Or even hit in the head with a rock?

No.

No.

But what about Dana Holmes?

Didn't she say David confessed to her?

If you took that alleged statement as factual,

that indicated an accidental death and really gave no details whatsoever of that.

As for David's own admissions,

I don't think I could describe it as a confession.

He doesn't say definitively,

I hit him.

In fact, he many times stresses the opposite.

What about Carl Kusinelli?

Would you describe his statement as a confession?

He places himself there

only

to help his brother do something with the van.

He claims no knowledge of Jeff Clee being there.

If it was an accident, what about manslaughter charges against the brothers?

Well, that's out too.

You have to apply the law that existed in 1977.

The law in Florida has since changed, but back in 1977, there was only a three-year statute of limitations on manslaughter, meaning that the state could only bring charges three years after a death.

Obviously, by 2008, the clock had long run out, not only on manslaughter, but on lesser charges like concealing a body.

But no one even knew Jeff Clee was dead.

No.

No.

But that was the law at the time, in 1977.

They'll never pay for the crime.

Which is frustrating to the police department, frustrating for the Clee family.

We are burdened by knowing that someone who we believe put our brother in his van and pushed him into the canal will not be held legally accountable.

With no case pending,

Jeff's belongings are returned to the Klees.

There were a few things that we just, my family decided to keep, but they're strictly for their own personal remembrances.

This is his die card.

This is what floated to the top.

The hair.

Proof positive who it was.

Flossie finds a tiny threadbare piece of cloth with a faint but familiar pattern.

It's the shirt she has remembered all these years.

Here, see, here's the rose right here.

She allows the remnants of Jeff's van to be towed away and junked.

In 1977, Jeff Klee left in that vehicle, intending to spend a night out with his friends.

His family feels he has finally come home.

It's over with.

We know

the people involved.

Are they going to go get justice?

They probably won't.

But they have to live with themselves.

As far as I'm concerned, that's the end of the story.

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Everyone who comes into this clinic is a mystery.

We don't know what we're looking for.

Their bodies are the scene of the crime.

No symptoms in history or clues.

You saved her life.

We're doctors and we're detectives.

I kind of love it if I'm being honest.

Solve the puzzle, save the patient.

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