Horror at the Lake

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Speaker 3 Tonight on date live.

Speaker 10 Oh my god.

Speaker 11 Oh my god.

Speaker 10 I need someone crap.

Speaker 12 I need EMT.

Speaker 13 The subject found his mom with an axe in her head.

Speaker 14 I can still hear her trying to breathe.

Speaker 15 Carlos said that someone had broken into the house and murdered his mom.

Speaker 16 This is just a ghastly crime. How could this school teacher have an enemy?

Speaker 18 Correct.

Speaker 14 I don't know anybody who would have done that.

Speaker 19 I remember feeling so sorry for Carlos that he had lost his mom in such a horrific way.

Speaker 22 You know, we're telling anyone to stay alert, call us if there's something suspicious.

Speaker 16 There may be an axe murderer on the look this sir.

Speaker 24 We started seeing cars showing up at night.

Speaker 25 Who are these people out in the woods?

Speaker 26 Were you frightened?

Speaker 15 Yes, we were nervous.

Speaker 16 What did you get out of that lake?

Speaker 27 Three security cameras and her cell phone.

Speaker 22 That was a huge, huge fight for us.

Speaker 28 You can see the connect the dots of footprints very easily.

Speaker 19 My stomach dropped.

Speaker 20 Probably the most I've ever cried in my life.

Speaker 7 I'm Lester Holt, and this is Dateline.

Speaker 3 Here's Dennis Murphy with horror at the lake.

Speaker 17 The lake in northwest Florida is as much a secluded nature preserve as it is a haven for retirees.

Speaker 37 It's like living in an Audubon drawing from the 19th century, where sandhill cranes stalk the grounds amidst the raccoons and deer.

Speaker 39 Lake critters would pop up from the murky water out back to look around.

Speaker 16 I'm thinking of alligators.

Speaker 18 Oh.

Speaker 34 Are there?

Speaker 15 Our lake is pretty shallow, so we don't have those big, scary alligators, just little guys.

Speaker 26 Just little four or five-foot alligators.

Speaker 18 Right, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 Home to a single mom school teacher and her son.

Speaker 3 Their waterfront house nestled back in the woods.

Speaker 42 A serene setting.

Speaker 43 Then all those cars in the night started showing up.

Speaker 15 There were a lot of cars going in and out. Hindsight made it all of a sudden even more frightening.

Speaker 17 There had never been much crime out here, and what there was was petty stuff mostly

Speaker 45 until that summer day.

Speaker 19 It was just really horrific.

Speaker 47 It was unnerving for me to have something like that happen in my own county.

Speaker 48 The two responding deputies agreed they could never unsee what they found in the house.

Speaker 49 It's not anything you ever forget. It's just something that you consciously make an effort not to remember.

Speaker 36 Who's out there, Sheriff?

Speaker 47 Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 17 July 2019, on a Saturday morning in Inverness, Florida, a mother and her son left their lakeside home to attend a funeral an hour and a half away.

Speaker 51 On the way back, they stopped at a favorite bakery for pie.

Speaker 3 Apple for him, chocolate cream for her.

Speaker 53 When they arrived home, they shared the pie and settled in for the afternoon.

Speaker 2 She took a nap.

Speaker 3 Whatever happened next, and it wasn't at all clear what that was, was very bad.

Speaker 32 Horrific.

Speaker 10 911, what is the address at the emergency? I need someone trapped.

Speaker 17 It was a little after six in the evening when the 911 dispatcher picked up to the frantic pleas of a boy who would turn out to be 17-year-old Carlos Hollowell.

Speaker 55 A nightmarish scene.

Speaker 57 I need EMTs. I need people.
I need to get it. So come on the phone with me and take a deep breath and calm down so we can get this information, okay? I see it.
I see it. I see it.

Speaker 3 It was his mother, Denise Hollowell, bleeding in her bed.

Speaker 10 Do you think she's found any help?

Speaker 34 I don't know. I don't know.

Speaker 57 Okay. How long ago did you find her?

Speaker 10 Just now.

Speaker 57 Just now.

Speaker 13 It came out as a suspicious death. A note was in the screen that the subject woke up and found his mom with an axe in her head.

Speaker 3 An axe to the back of her head.

Speaker 36 Deputy Robert Bang and Sergeant Laura Anstead of the Citrus County Sheriff's Office had responded to their share of shootings and stabbings over the years.

Speaker 58 But this was something else altogether.

Speaker 16 Axe? The word axe was in your initial information, huh? It was.

Speaker 13 It was.

Speaker 37 It sounded like an intruder.

Speaker 49 Someone had come into the house. He'd woken up because his dogs were barking and he thought someone was in the house.

Speaker 61 Oh my God.

Speaker 30 The dispatcher gave Carlos, the boy in the 911 line, clear instructions.

Speaker 10 Listen to me. I want you to go outside.
Don't touch anything, okay? My mouse goes, all right, just stay outside with me. I'm going to stay on the phone with you till somebody gets there, okay?

Speaker 62 The dispatcher tried to keep Carlos calm.

Speaker 10 Listen to me. Take a deep breath through your nose, okay?

Speaker 10 And out through your mouth.

Speaker 10 You have to, okay? I need you to stay calm.

Speaker 10 Opening up the gates. Okay, open the gates.

Speaker 10 Oh my God, just stay on the line with me, oh my god.

Speaker 64 The deputies headed up the driveway, taking mental notes as they went.

Speaker 41 Preserving the scene would be a priority for the investigators following behind them.

Speaker 49 There were a few footprints. I noticed, obviously, dirt driveway, saw footprints.

Speaker 49 Grabbed a stick, circled it really quick, and then secured the gate, let dispatch know so that everybody would stay off to the side and not disturb that evidence.

Speaker 67 At the front door of the home, Carlos was told to wait outside.

Speaker 7 There might be other people here.

Speaker 49 Absolutely correct.

Speaker 69 With guns drawn, they entered cautiously, proceeding down a hallway to the victim's bedroom.

Speaker 70 And there it was, in all its ghastliness.

Speaker 49 She's laying on her left side, facing the other direction. And you can see it's a full-size axe, and it was embedded until there was only about an inch left.

Speaker 17 And she was alive.

Speaker 49 Well, she wasn't conscious. Her body was still functioning.
She was breathing.

Speaker 63 Breathing, but barely.

Speaker 43 They'd need more hands to attempt CPR.

Speaker 49 You can't remove the axe to roll her on the back. So once fire got there, we kind of propped her up from behind and they attempted CPR while she was on her side.

Speaker 73 Outside the residence now, more deputies arrive, both by air and on the ground.

Speaker 42 One of them recording audio as Carlos pleaded for information about his mother.

Speaker 42 Anything at all?

Speaker 42 My governor's just working on making sure she's okay, okay? She's breathing, she's breathing in this food, so breathing. Yes,

Speaker 3 The boy watched as his childhood home was strewn with yellow crime scene tape in the front yard.

Speaker 75 Emergency lights flashing, sheriff's radios squawking.

Speaker 75 I just want to know why these being tape put around my house. I need to know if she's going to be okay.

Speaker 55 He prepared to hear the worst.

Speaker 76 She's not making it, is she?

Speaker 77 I don't know. I'm standing here with you, man.
I have no idea.

Speaker 16 As it turned out, she was gone. She was.
You were not able to recover her.

Speaker 27 That's correct.

Speaker 3 Crime scene texts arrived, followed by the ME.

Speaker 78 Carlos was told the news.

Speaker 52 His mother, 57-year-old Denise Hollowell, was pronounced dead.

Speaker 52 The county sheriff called for a full-on manhunt.

Speaker 43 Helicopters, dog teams, boots on the ground.

Speaker 17 Apparently, there was an axe murderer on the loose.

Speaker 35 Nothing less than a madman.

Speaker 31 When we come back,

Speaker 31 what had happened in that house?

Speaker 15 I felt my knees buckle and I had to hold on to the post.

Speaker 31 Denise's lifelong friend and neighbor was left with a mystery and memories.

Speaker 15 We always planned to be

Speaker 80 grow old together on the lake.

Speaker 57 That didn't happen.

Speaker 17 The pleasant home on the lake had become a house of horrors.

Speaker 73 Denise Holliwell was found murdered in her own bed.

Speaker 39 Her 17-year-old son, Carlos, reported the macabre discovery.

Speaker 69 The Citrus County Sheriff threw everything he had into the search for the woman's killer.

Speaker 47 We deployed not only air, land, and by water, we put our canine units out there and we saturated our areas of the county.

Speaker 17 Neighbor and good friend Amy Alford heard the thump of helicopters overhead that July evening. What in the world?

Speaker 15 My other neighbor down the road called me and she said the driveway was lined with sheriff cars. And then she said there was a forensic unit there.
And then that really worried me.

Speaker 40 And then she learned her friend was gone.

Speaker 15 I felt my knees buckle and I had to hold on to the post. It was just a blur after that.

Speaker 15 We always planned to be

Speaker 80 grow old together on the lake.

Speaker 80 That didn't happen.

Speaker 62 Another lifelong friend, Peggy Ness, had seen Denise just hours before at that funeral service for their mutual friend who'd passed away.

Speaker 15 Denise seemed great.

Speaker 54 Peggy relayed the mind-numbing news to another friend, Adele Hunnell.

Speaker 83 I was just leaving work, and she called me and told me.

Speaker 72 The friends, Amy, Peggy, and Adele, had always been there for Denise.

Speaker 3 From her early on work as a veterinary tech to seeing her earn her teaching credentials.

Speaker 81 Was she a good teacher?

Speaker 3 Oh, yeah.

Speaker 15 The kids adored her.

Speaker 55 She'd been married twice, relationships that didn't last long.

Speaker 74 It was very much Denise, they remembered, to exchange her vows with one of the fiancés while skydiving.

Speaker 15 She's so adventurous, so they said their vows

Speaker 34 on the way down?

Speaker 15 I think either on the plane right before they jumped or on the way down i'm not sure which as she grew older denise's life centered on her students and her church and enjoying her time at the weekend place on the lake that had been in her family for three generations it was right next door to her friend amy whom she'd met so many years before i've known denise all my life i don't remember meeting her she was just always the um this high huh yeah she was about five years older than me so she was like a big sister i admired her

Speaker 15 they'd spent countless idyllic childhood hours messing about the lake where their families had bought adjacent lots we had a hobo swing a hobo swing is a burlap sack full of spanish moss tied from a long rope so we'd take a jump onto it and it would have a big old arc sounds like tom soyer sounds like a an america that's disappeared right yeah

Speaker 33 Denise wanted to share that lifestyle with a child, and she pondered seriously adopting.

Speaker 62 She herself had been adopted.

Speaker 36 She discussed the big life change with Adele.

Speaker 16 Was that to fill something she needed, do you think, to have the child in her life or did she want to give to the child?

Speaker 83 Well, she wanted to give to the child because she said she knew what it was like to be adopted and be able to have a great life. And she said she wanted to pass that on to another child.

Speaker 45 She contacted an adoption agency, one that placed children from Central America.

Speaker 73 Do you remember her going to Guatemala to find the child?

Speaker 15 Yeah, I remember how nervous she was. I remember, you know, how excited she was.

Speaker 51 It took perseverance and a good deal of teacher salary money. But one day at a hotel in Guatemala, she was introduced to a boy of four who ran into her arms and dissolved her heart.

Speaker 85 He was named Carlos.

Speaker 16 Here's the new child. What did you think?

Speaker 7 He was adorable.

Speaker 83 Very polite. Called me Miss Adele all the time.

Speaker 16 So she calls you up and says, I got somebody I want you to meet, huh?

Speaker 18 Yeah.

Speaker 15 And she was just ecstatic.

Speaker 74 Amy had adopted two little girls of her own.

Speaker 15 He immediately hit it off with my own daughters who were at the same age and they just ran off to play.

Speaker 86 Amy's daughter, Bayouche.

Speaker 87 It was like, hey, I'm your new neighbor, Carlos.

Speaker 88 As the years went by, Carlos, a charmer and bright as a penny, grew into the boy every parent might want.

Speaker 89 The straight-A student who skipped a grade.

Speaker 40 An athletic standout on the ball fields.

Speaker 87 He wasn't just popular. He was popular.
He was smart. He was athletic.

Speaker 34 Natural leader.

Speaker 87 Yeah, definitely.

Speaker 3 And he had a mom who adored him.

Speaker 67 He was regarded as Denise's golden child.

Speaker 16 Carlos turned out to be the fix. He was the one.

Speaker 15 Absolutely. And they bonded so well.
I even remember I was jealous because my girls and I struggled a lot. And she and Carlos just hit it off perfectly.

Speaker 41 Eventually, Denise and Carlos moved full-time to their weekend place.

Speaker 36 Young Carlos took to the lake as eagerly as Denise once had as a girl.

Speaker 45 He was never happier, it seemed, than when he was fishing.

Speaker 39 He'd even found a girlfriend, Kayla, someone Denise had grown fond of.

Speaker 48 So Mrs. Hollowell was nice to you, huh?

Speaker 19 Yes, extremely nice to me.

Speaker 12 Now, what did your parents, Kayla, think of Carlos?

Speaker 19 They really liked how mature he was, how he carried himself.

Speaker 19 They could sense how intelligent he was.

Speaker 3 Now, on that humid July evening, in the horror of that bedroom, where Carlos had found his mother attacked, their happy lives were utterly destroyed.

Speaker 17 And a murder investigation, an urgent one, was up and running.

Speaker 31 Coming up: was Denise a random victim of a crazed axe murderer who wandered in from the woods?

Speaker 14 I hear barking from my side of the house. The front door was wide open.

Speaker 31 Or was the killer someone she knew?

Speaker 14 Boyfriends or any issue, issues with boyfriends, or

Speaker 31 when date line continues.

Speaker 34 Deputies searched the wooded area around the Hollowells lakefront property who was out there too soon to know Sheriff Mike Prentergased in its early hours, you don't know what's happened.

Speaker 47 Could be an intruder. It's just a happens stance type of case where somebody was breaking in trying to see if they can find something easy to steal.
The victim confronts the intruder.

Speaker 47 The intruder grabs something nearby, uses that to disable or kill the victim, and then the intruder finishes what they were going to do in their crime.

Speaker 12 The break-in gone wrong.

Speaker 30 Detective Rob Ramos was on call that Saturday.

Speaker 16 What did you know when you got rolled out?

Speaker 22 They said it was possibly a break-in

Speaker 22 and that the son ended up finding a mom in her bedroom with an axe in her head.

Speaker 9 After a brief fill from the on-scene deputies, the detective went inside the home to the bedroom.

Speaker 22 Once you walk in, she's laying on her left side, her back towards the door, and there's an axe just embedded in her.

Speaker 22 You know, seeing something like that, it's not something we respond to on a daily basis. You barely hear of cases like this.

Speaker 3 What was it?

Speaker 2 A home invasion gone terribly wrong?

Speaker 39 Maybe someone from the victim's past or present taking revenge.

Speaker 71 Could it have been a transient out of the woods?

Speaker 64 Carlos, the victim's son, told the police the axe was from the shed out back.

Speaker 73 There were only theories at that early stage.

Speaker 29 Detective Ramos joined the deputies out front.

Speaker 54 That's where he met Carlos.

Speaker 16 So he's got to be an important witness for you.

Speaker 22 Oh, yes, he's the only witness.

Speaker 93 The detective knew he needed to speak with the boy right away, get his story down, the timeline of the day.

Speaker 23 What had he and his mother been doing in her final hours?

Speaker 85 So once Carlos had calmed down, he rode with deputies to the sheriff's office and told the detectives what had happened.

Speaker 3 The car trip to the funeral and back, eating pie.

Speaker 14 Last time I saw her was around 2.30, 3.

Speaker 14 We both went to our separate rooms to take our naps for the day, which is what we normally do.

Speaker 48 Carlos said he watched some video clips on his phone, then fell asleep.

Speaker 8 He estimates he was out for about two hours when he was awakened by his dogs barking in late afternoon.

Speaker 14 I hear barking from my side of the house, which is abnormal. Our dogs are supposed to be in that little fenced-in area.
So I walk out to the front door.

Speaker 14 My mom's door is closed as always, but she does let the dogs out every now and then while she's taking a nap to just let them go to the bathroom.

Speaker 14 So the front door was wide open. I figured she might have forgotten to close it.
I looked outside. Our dog, the two green gates that you guys walked through, completely open.

Speaker 14 So I went to go find the dogs, checked around the property looking for them. I couldn't find them.
So I went to go wake my mom up to help me find them.

Speaker 91 And that was when he said he found his mom the way he did, still alive.

Speaker 14 And I can can still hear her

Speaker 14 trying to breathe.

Speaker 64 The obvious question for the boy, who did he think would do this to his mother?

Speaker 14 I don't know anybody who would have done that. All my mom's close friends, anything would be people at church.
This is the only people that I know. She don't have any enemies? Not that I know of.

Speaker 14 Well, boyfriends or anything, she had issues with boyfriends? Not that I know of. If she did, I didn't know about it.

Speaker 16 Anybody have a beef against her?

Speaker 35 Were there any lawsuits?

Speaker 94 No, no arguments, no anything.

Speaker 22 Same thing with Carlos. We asked him if he had, if she had any issues or no one.
They like to stay to themselves and enjoy the company.

Speaker 64 The detectives wrapped up the interview in the wee hours.

Speaker 36 By then, the story of the woman found murdered in her lakefront home was out there.

Speaker 30 An absolutely wildfire headline.

Speaker 23 An axe murderer on the loose.

Speaker 16 Yes, sir. Out in the woods somewhere.

Speaker 35 Yes, sir.

Speaker 77 I mean, that's a terribly fearful kind of crime to have.

Speaker 17 It is.

Speaker 3 The sun wasn't even up yet when Carlos's girlfriend, Kayla, was awakened awakened by a knock on the door.

Speaker 3 A woman from Child Protective Services was there at her parents' home, a mute Carlos standing beside her.

Speaker 19 She basically said, We have Carlos Hollowell here, and his mother has just been killed. It was just surreal.
Like, I couldn't really believe what she was saying because it was just really horrific.

Speaker 30 None of it made sense to you.

Speaker 19 No, I couldn't imagine who would want to hurt her. She was an extremely nice lady, super caring.

Speaker 19 I couldn't imagine.

Speaker 3 Who could?

Speaker 52 Child Services in that pre-dawn Sunday morning was hoping that Kayla's parents would take Carlos in for a while until things got sorted out.

Speaker 48 But her parents thought a young girlfriend and boyfriend under the same roof was not a good idea.

Speaker 54 They declined.

Speaker 67 The child protective services agent with Carlos in tow next knocked on Amy's door.

Speaker 45 So what was the child protective service asking you to do?

Speaker 15 She asked us if we would

Speaker 15 keep him for a little while. He's only 17.
Could we keep him until he was 18?

Speaker 40 Amy took Carlos under her wing and supported him as he planned his mother's funeral.

Speaker 15 I just wanted him to stay busy and have something to focus on. And so I got him immediately working on this funeral so that he would have something to occupy his time.

Speaker 36 Detective Ramos, meanwhile, had a million questions and no good answers.

Speaker 77 Pressure's on you to find who done it and get him off the street.

Speaker 22 That is correct.

Speaker 23 It was time for the detective to turn back the clock and find out a lot more about his victim, Denise Halliwell.

Speaker 55 It's surprising what you learn, shocking, really, when you begin to peel back the onion.

Speaker 92 Coming up.

Speaker 15 He was troubled.

Speaker 17 There was someone else in Denise's life.

Speaker 13 His door was bolted shut. His windows had been locked, according to him.

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Speaker 36 In the early hours of the Denise Hallowell murder investigation, her son Carlos gave Detective Ramos a lead.

Speaker 14 The way they ripped our family apart.

Speaker 2 He recounted a traumatic incident involving his mother and little brother.

Speaker 40 Turns out Denise had another son, Angel.

Speaker 29 She'd adopted him from Honduras when he was eight years old.

Speaker 15 She wanted Carlos to have a brother.

Speaker 9 Amy says Denise hoped adding Angel to their family would make them complete.

Speaker 71 But it didn't turn out that way.

Speaker 3 Angel came with a lot of baggage.

Speaker 15 He was troubled. And I think he was more from the streets than Carlos was.

Speaker 85 She says Denise could see the two boys weren't a good fit.

Speaker 62 Did Denise express her frustrations about this with him?

Speaker 15 Yes, yeah. She was very disappointed.
More for Carlos. She wanted him to be happy.

Speaker 16 And this new brother was not giving him the experience that she hoped he would get from it.

Speaker 15 Right, yeah.

Speaker 33 And Angel's relationship with his mom was no better.

Speaker 52 It got so bad, authorities were brought in.

Speaker 55 Carlos told the detective all about it.

Speaker 14 I wasn't done recovering after what happened between my mom, my younger brother, and me. Even though it happened a while ago, it was just starting to come back up again.
What was that? I have no idea.

Speaker 14 It was a big DCF case, and it was even in the newspaper, the Chronicle, and stuff like that.

Speaker 14 My mom was charged with,

Speaker 14 supposedly charged with

Speaker 14 child abuse.

Speaker 46 Could that case be connected to her murder?

Speaker 84 Buster Thompson from the Citrus County Chronicle covered the story back in 2015.

Speaker 13 The sheriff's office told us at the time that it was a runaway case that turned to child abuse allegations.

Speaker 77 And one of the senior command in the sheriff's office said one of the worst cases he'd seen.

Speaker 13 It was that's how he had described it.

Speaker 17 It all began when Denise called 911, panicked that Angel, who was now 12, had run away.

Speaker 13 The sheriff's office had been called out to assist and find this runaway child.

Speaker 17 A few hours later, Denise found Angel hiding in neighbor Amy's shed. At that point, deputies decided to look around the Hollowell house and didn't like what they saw.

Speaker 72 In their report, they noted, the victim's room is very bare.

Speaker 55 An air mattress on a metal frame, some books, and a bucket was found in the victim's room.

Speaker 72 And the deputies noticed something else.

Speaker 13 His door was bolted shut.

Speaker 13 His windows had been locked, according to him.

Speaker 13 He had been made to defecate and urinate in a bucket.

Speaker 17 Deputies on the scene sounded the alarm and alerted the Department of Child and Family Services. Both boys were removed from the home.

Speaker 101 So Angel, my name is Sunshine and my job.

Speaker 70 Later, Angel was brought in to speak with a member of the child protection team.

Speaker 101 So tell me more about this issue with your mom.

Speaker 102 She gets mad and she stabs me and all that stuff. I just like run away.

Speaker 101 Okay. And she slaps you? Where will she slap you?

Speaker 102 Right on the face.

Speaker 55 Angel told the social worker this wasn't his first time running away.

Speaker 67 He'd taken off three years earlier.

Speaker 101 When you ran away that time, how did you get out?

Speaker 102 Oh, from a window.

Speaker 101 You got out a window?

Speaker 102 Yes. Okay.

Speaker 14 And

Speaker 101 after you got out that time, did your mom do anything to the windows? Yes. What did she do?

Speaker 102 She locked them.

Speaker 101 She locked them?

Speaker 102 How? Like, she put nails to them, like, boards

Speaker 102 and stuff.

Speaker 101 Nails and boards? Yes.

Speaker 3 And that wasn't all?

Speaker 102 She locks the door.

Speaker 101 To your room? Yes. And how does she lock that?

Speaker 102 Like, she locks it from outside. I'm not sure why.

Speaker 102 She just locks it every night.

Speaker 101 Every single night? Yes. Okay.

Speaker 3 And his story got worse from there.

Speaker 102 She makes me take my clothes off. I had to clean

Speaker 10 the bathroom.

Speaker 75 Angel also said it wasn't just his mom punishing him.

Speaker 33 He said his brother was abusive too.

Speaker 101 Has your mom or Carlos ever hit you anywhere else on your body?

Speaker 102 Bull, yes. Yeah.
In my private.

Speaker 101 Okay.

Speaker 101 And who hit you there?

Speaker 102 Sometimes both of them.

Speaker 101 Both of them? Yes.

Speaker 101 What will they hit you with?

Speaker 74 Angel had told a similar story to deputies the day he ran away.

Speaker 32 They reported seeing three-inch bruising on his hips and interior of arm and scratches on his face and neck.

Speaker 86 Angel was deemed to be credible, so Denise was arrested and thrown in jail.

Speaker 53 Her story made front-page news.

Speaker 25 She's a teacher and a mother in jail.

Speaker 7 Exactly.

Speaker 13 It's the last thing a mother and a teacher want to have is accusations of child abuse. Children, that's

Speaker 81 who they protect.

Speaker 67 So four years before her murder, Denise's world was crashing down around her.

Speaker 17 But not everyone was buying Angel's story. Denise's friend and neighbor Amy found the whole thing hard to believe.

Speaker 15 It didn't make sense. It didn't sound like who Denise is.
I mean, I knew she was frustrated with him, but it didn't make sense that she would ever be abusive.

Speaker 15 And

Speaker 15 things just weren't adding up.

Speaker 74 Investigators had only heard Angel's version of the story.

Speaker 53 Others were about to weigh in.

Speaker 3 And what looked like unthinkable acts of child abuse might be something else entirely.

Speaker 13 The allegations that were made by the younger brother were simply so fantastical that it required me to evaluate what happened.

Speaker 92 Coming up.

Speaker 14 He's never been hit. Not that I know of.

Speaker 31 Carlos defends his mother and claims Angel was the violent one.

Speaker 14 He'll throw punches, try to scratch, hurt the dogs.

Speaker 31 When dateline continues.

Speaker 17 As law enforcement continued its all-hands-on search for Denise Hollowell's killer, local reporter Buster Thompson kept his readers updated on her brutal murder.

Speaker 52 Since this wasn't Denise's first time making headlines, he said local folks were keenly interested.

Speaker 25 This ghastly murder.

Speaker 50 How was it playing in the community?

Speaker 13 This blew the community out of the water to hear that news that this woman, Denise, this has happened to her.

Speaker 52 The last time Denise made headlines, four years earlier, her arrest for child abuse was the buzz on every street corner.

Speaker 67 A story her neighbors hadn't forgotten.

Speaker 16 There's their teacher in a jumpsuit on the front page in a mug shot.

Speaker 13 It's very traumatizing, especially for a small community, and this case just brought her reputation down to its knees.

Speaker 43 She'd been arrested, resigned from her teaching job, and her two sons were banned from seeing her.

Speaker 36 Denise had been in jail for about two weeks when local defense attorney Bill Grant got the case.

Speaker 13 I was approached by several people to please visit with her, and that's when I read those affidavits that government and law enforcement provided.

Speaker 13 And I knew from my experience that these can't be accurate. Remember, the child's in school, counselors, teachers.

Speaker 16 People are aware of scratches, blood.

Speaker 13 That's correct. And they're trained for that.
And we're very good in our community with that.

Speaker 36 Grant says after meeting Denise and reading reports about Angel from his school, pediatrician, and Denise's own notes about her son's behavioral problems, he was convinced she had not broken any laws.

Speaker 13 So we were able to access a lot of records. that showed that he had some issues.

Speaker 25 And she, Denise, was a meticulous diary keeper.

Speaker 13 Yes, she was. Did that help her?

Speaker 34 Yes, it did.

Speaker 13 It It helped tremendously.

Speaker 2 Denise had explanations for what the deputies had seen at the house.

Speaker 71 She said that Angel had fits of rage and was impossible to control.

Speaker 13 Yes, Denise locked the boy's bedroom door because he would sneak out. Yes, she locked his bedroom window so he wouldn't crawl out the window because he had a history of running.

Speaker 13 So she did everything appropriate, including sleeping by his door.

Speaker 67 Denise said the bucket was just a safety measure in case he didn't make it to the toilet.

Speaker 13 The bed had clean sheets. There was nothing in the bucket.
So all the things that they just showed up and took pictures of were easily to dispel.

Speaker 43 Armed with this information, Grant focused on getting Denise out of jail, something her 13-year-old son Carlos had already attempted.

Speaker 35 The older boy.

Speaker 37 Trying to bond his mother out, called a bail bondsman.

Speaker 7 In my office, yes, sir.

Speaker 13 He was actively seeking to get his mom out of the jailhouse.

Speaker 91 Grant told the court his investigation uncovered evidence that would clear his client.

Speaker 43 The judge was persuaded enough to give give Denise an ankle bracelet and release her.

Speaker 17 The state continued its investigation into Denise, and so did her lawyer.

Speaker 66 Grant found more evidence affirming Denise's innocence.

Speaker 68 He reviewed an interview her older son did with a social worker

Speaker 30 where Carlos said right off the bat, Angel was lying.

Speaker 14 All accusations against mom are false, except for the ones that I know of, blocking Angel in the room. And that has a specific reason.

Speaker 14 When he's really frustrated, he'll tend to throw things, he'll throw punches, try to scratch, hurt the dogs, but he won't hurt himself.

Speaker 101 And the locking in the room is because of throw angel, will throw things,

Speaker 14 throw anything that's near him, which is why he doesn't have things in his room. He'll take it, he'll throw it against the wall, smash his windows.
He doesn't care.

Speaker 101 Has he ever told you or do you know of any time that anybody's hit him

Speaker 14 in his genitals? Yeah.

Speaker 14 He's hit me. He's hit you.
He's never been hit. Not that I know of.

Speaker 42 Carlos said his mom never made Angel clean the bathroom while naked.

Speaker 14 The only time mom ever tells you to get naked is to get in the shower, and that's just something she says. Strip down, get your ass in the shower.
You smell.

Speaker 101 Like normal bath time. Yeah.
But he's not made to do anything like to degrade him or embarrass him. No.

Speaker 51 From Carlos's point of view, Angel was the one abusing his mom.

Speaker 14 See, throw punches, he'll scratch. Mom had a few marks about a year ago.
One right here, just a big old gash right by her main blood valve. So, and Angel has long nails.

Speaker 14 He doesn't cut them, and he cuts very deep.

Speaker 38 And Denise's friend Adele remembers both Carlos and Denise being wary of Angel.

Speaker 83 They would go to bed at night and lock their doors because they were afraid he was going to come in and do something while they were sleeping.

Speaker 74 Angel had already told his story to a social worker. Now Grant had the chance to challenge the boy himself in a deposition.

Speaker 13 We may all ask you some questions, okay?

Speaker 3 Yes, sir.

Speaker 63 Now, Grant knew he had to walk a fine line.

Speaker 23 Be delicate enough with a 12-year-old not to traumatize him, but tough enough to get to the truth.

Speaker 13 When I saw Angel there, my heart cried for that child. That he's saying these things that I know to be not true.

Speaker 16 What did the boy say?

Speaker 13 Basically, he was concerned with the way that his mother treated him, that he was locked in his room.

Speaker 13 that she wouldn't allow him to crawl out.

Speaker 55 But Grant dug deeper and a different, more nuanced picture started to emerge.

Speaker 13 So you're saying that you only get into the rage when she spanks you?

Speaker 15 Yeah, it hits me.

Speaker 13 Well, what happened at school then when you had the fit of rage in front of the teachers?

Speaker 3 I was mad.

Speaker 19 Like

Speaker 19 Like

Speaker 13 You were just mad at the teachers?

Speaker 103 Yeah, I was angry.

Speaker 13 And so

Speaker 13 how many times do you have you had these kinds of incidences at school that had nothing to do with your mom?

Speaker 39 Like

Speaker 15 a lot of times.

Speaker 59 He then asked Angel about his home life and showed him photos of happy times with his mother and brother.

Speaker 43 Things Angel hadn't mentioned to the social worker.

Speaker 27 So

Speaker 13 your mom takes you on vacation, right? Yeah.

Speaker 90 Several places, correct? Yes.

Speaker 13 All over the southeastern United States, is that right? Yeah.

Speaker 13 She takes you fishing.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 13 She buys you ATVs and motorcycles for your brother.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 13 You get to ride and play on your land that you live there with your mom.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 43 At every turn, Grant found more evidence to prove Denise's innocence, including Angel's behavior after he was removed from her house.

Speaker 13 When he was placed with foster family, he was accused of violent acts. of running away, of certain things that he was accusing his mother of not allowing him to do.

Speaker 16 So are you saying to the prosecutor, we got an unreliable witness here?

Speaker 77 Oh, without a doubt.

Speaker 71 Grant submitted his evidence to the court, then they waited and waited.

Speaker 67 Denise spent five months wondering if she would lose her children and be sent to prison for years.

Speaker 70 Coming up, an ugly question about an even uglier murder.

Speaker 16 In trying to figure out what had happened, did anyone say, look, maybe it's the child who's no longer here?

Speaker 18 Yeah, I did.

Speaker 52 Investigators working in the Denise Hallowell murder were looking closely at the child abuse case brought against her years before, hoping to find a connection to her killer.

Speaker 3 Her son Carlos told police the abuse charges all came down to his little brother making up lies.

Speaker 55 Lies that left deep, ugly scars.

Speaker 14 How did that traumatize you

Speaker 14 from the lies that your brother was saying?

Speaker 14 Because the way they ripped our family apart,

Speaker 14 I watched my mom get arrested, which that didn't do well for me, and then being separated from her without contact hurt.

Speaker 14 How long was that separation?

Speaker 14 Months?

Speaker 3 Around three months.

Speaker 91 Then mother and son waited another two months for the prosecutors to make a decision.

Speaker 33 Denise's attorney says she recognized she did make parenting mistakes, but nothing close to criminal.

Speaker 30 He thinks the whole thing should never have happened.

Speaker 13 First of all, the prosecutors, just let's be real clear here, she was arrested, but I got the government to never even charge her.

Speaker 13 Okay, that's a big deal.

Speaker 54 They never filed on her.

Speaker 13 They never filed on her.

Speaker 84 So what's the picture that came together?

Speaker 13 The picture ultimately came together that it was clear Denise had not violated any criminal law. The government dropped everything, released her from any obligations.

Speaker 2 While that was a giant relief being cleared by the government, clearing her name in the court of public opinion was a whole different story.

Speaker 69 Her attorney suggested she tell her side to the media.

Speaker 25 She did an interview with Fox 13.

Speaker 106 It's been a total of five months

Speaker 106 and a nightmare for five months.

Speaker 74 In the report, she said from the very start, she tried to explain to the deputies at her house the problem she was having with Angel.

Speaker 106 I had logged three years worth of behavior on my youngest son.

Speaker 15 I offered that immediately on that day.

Speaker 106 That was also ignored. Don't be quick to judge, and that's exactly what happened here.

Speaker 40 Denise knew she needed to move on and start rebuilding her life.

Speaker 88 Having Carlos home was a first step.

Speaker 34 How do you put something like that back together?

Speaker 13 It went back very well. It was not difficult for Carlos and Denise.

Speaker 13 There was clearly great affinity between the two.

Speaker 7 Clearly great affinity.

Speaker 55 Denise was hopeful Angel would come back too.

Speaker 13 Denise was enthralled at the prospect of being reunified with her youngest son, who made the allegations against her.

Speaker 16 She thought she'd get him back.

Speaker 13 She did. She wanted him back because she had plans for his therapy.

Speaker 42 But she was told by professionals who had evaluated Angel that going back to live with her was not in the child's best interest.

Speaker 13 Several forensic people indicated that if she was still in that role in his life, that it would thwart his rehabilitation.

Speaker 67 So she signed away her rights as his mother.

Speaker 85 The state put the boy in foster care.

Speaker 91 Denise's friend Amy said Denise never spoke of Angel again.

Speaker 25 Is that odd?

Speaker 15 Yeah, I think I might have tried to bring him up once and she was like, no.

Speaker 91 Denise's focus turned to getting another teaching job.

Speaker 43 It took an entire school year before she was back in the classroom in a new position.

Speaker 15 She worked with autistic children.

Speaker 16 So she's not taking on an easy assignment in her new job.

Speaker 3 Right, right.

Speaker 70 But

Speaker 15 she did great with them. They loved her.

Speaker 15 The parents loved her.

Speaker 16 So were you thinking she's had this awful experience with the criminal justice system, but now she's back on track?

Speaker 78 Or did you think there was trouble?

Speaker 15 No, I felt like she was back on track.

Speaker 58 Carlos is back under her roof. Yes.

Speaker 23 What's going on with them?

Speaker 30 Oh, they're happy.

Speaker 15 They're going on trips all the time.

Speaker 15 Adopted a couple more little dogs.

Speaker 40 Carlos, now 17, was spending more time with his girlfriend, Kayla.

Speaker 62 Was this your first serious boyfriend?

Speaker 19 Yes, he was my first serious boyfriend and we were both pretty attached to each other. We were kind of opposites.
He's really outgoing. I'm more reserved, laid back.

Speaker 19 He was super sweet, super intelligent, so we just always had a good time.

Speaker 3 One fond memory that stuck with her was when they went to an orientation at a local college.

Speaker 19 We went on like a little date after kind of just talking about his future and our future. And it was a little bit more of like a serious conversation.

Speaker 52 That young couple earnestly dreaming of the future could never have imagined the tragedy just ahead.

Speaker 39 Carlos's mother savagely murdered.

Speaker 56 The news was hard for Kayla to process.

Speaker 84 What did you think?

Speaker 62 This is horrible news for you.

Speaker 16 Your boyfriend's mother, you liked her?

Speaker 19 I was just trying to be present for Carlos. I was trying to fight back tears.

Speaker 67 Kayla had no theories about who would want to harm Denise.

Speaker 95 But others in the small community of Inverness were beginning to wonder: what about the son she gave up?

Speaker 23 Angel was now 15.

Speaker 16 In trying to figure out what had happened,

Speaker 16 did anyone say, look, maybe it's the child who's no longer here?

Speaker 25 Yeah, it is.

Speaker 16 Maybe it was that second child.

Speaker 3 Detectives quickly set out to find Angel, and what they learned about his whereabouts raised more than a few eyebrows.

Speaker 31 Coming up, strange and suspicious doings near the Hallowell home.

Speaker 15 I had a goat that disappeared.

Speaker 24 The neighbors said you've been noticing these cars. It started making them a little nervous.

Speaker 31 When dateline continues.

Speaker 52 Detective Chris Holloway of the Citrus County Sheriff's Office was playing catch-up on the Denise Hallowell case.

Speaker 74 He was out of town at the time of the murder.

Speaker 38 Now, two days later, he was in charge.

Speaker 48 His team briefed him on what they had so far.

Speaker 16 You saw the pictures by that point, huh?

Speaker 27 Yes, I did.

Speaker 16 You can't unsee them?

Speaker 27 No, you'll never unsee those.

Speaker 86 The gruesome crime scene photos of Denise dead in her bed.

Speaker 52 But after that initial flurry of sheriffs, helicopters, search dogs, and boots on the ground, the investigation had moved into a quieter phase.

Speaker 39 As detectives ran down each and every lead, they took a deeper dive into the history of Denise's trouble with her younger son, the one who'd accused her of child abuse.

Speaker 16 There were people that remembered that being a very tough time in that household.

Speaker 58 And people thought maybe the kid was responsible.

Speaker 16 They did. So you might have been able to come up with a version of why he would be the guy.

Speaker 27 Oh, yeah, we were definitely looking at that right off the bat.

Speaker 66 As a theory, it seemed to make some sense.

Speaker 95 The younger boy, in his mind, abused by a cruel mother.

Speaker 33 returning to take revenge with that axe from the shed.

Speaker 50 They chased down that theory, but it quickly ran out of steam.

Speaker 48 Angel could not have done it.

Speaker 55 He had a premium alibi.

Speaker 27 He was actually incarcerated at the time.

Speaker 35 So he's in stir.

Speaker 59 The boy's life, it seemed, hadn't gotten any easier after his time with Denise.

Speaker 43 He'd committed armed robbery a few months earlier and now at the age of 15, was behind bars when Denise Holliwe was killed.

Speaker 95 A quick and easy theory went into the shredder.

Speaker 67 So the detectives pressed on with what's called victimology, learning as much as they could about Denise Holliwell.

Speaker 9 The good friends had a common thread in their stories.

Speaker 104 Denise was a hard person to read.

Speaker 15 Very private.

Speaker 20 Very private.

Speaker 83 She didn't believe in airing her dirty laundry. She didn't always reach out until after the fact.

Speaker 39 Even her son Carlos told detectives his mom kept her life at a distance from him.

Speaker 14 She also stays private. from me as well.

Speaker 14 I only know what I need to know.

Speaker 69 In that vacuum of information about what was going on with Denise, the idea arose that maybe she was in some sort of trouble and simply hadn't confided in anyone.

Speaker 36 Investigators spoke to neighbor Rick Anderson and his wife Juanita Baker.

Speaker 59 They recounted some troubling incidents over the years, like all the cars in the night.

Speaker 24 The neighbors at the corner called and said, you've been noticing these cars coming into the neighborhood down your road, and it started making them a little nervous.

Speaker 62 Mysterious cars driving near Denise's property.

Speaker 41 Edric remembered the day he got a call from Denise to please come quickly.

Speaker 26 The house was on fire.

Speaker 24 So I shot over there and I went walking around. So plastic has caught on fire and burned.

Speaker 31 And from the flames and the heat, the vinyl siding of the garage was all melted. It almost caught the house on fire.

Speaker 78 The cause of the suspicious fire was never determined.

Speaker 3 When detectives spoke to Carlos, he mentioned his mom mom had become alarmed when she thought there was someone outside the home.

Speaker 14 Our neighbor, Rick,

Speaker 14 even came to our property with his small handheld gun to make sure no one was there. I just saw him out in the yard with a gun and I was like, uh,

Speaker 14 what's going on?

Speaker 17 And the Hollowell's neighbor on the other side, good friend Amy, said some of her animals started going missing. Her chickens had been killed.

Speaker 15 One of our cats was sliced in half. And more recently, I had a goat that disappeared about the same time all the cars were coming and going.

Speaker 23 What was going on around the lake?

Speaker 93 There was enough unsettling commotion about her secluded property that Denise asked Rick to set up a security system for her.

Speaker 24 She bought a camera system and then called me and I went over and Carlos and I and her went through and set it all up. So she had a security system for the house.

Speaker 25 The investigators had actually come upon Rick's security system outside the house, but it was mothballed and no longer working.

Speaker 22 Once we got the search warrant, they did get inside the house.

Speaker 22 And that's when we start once again, grid by grid, section by section, looking at everything in the house, every square inch.

Speaker 16 Anything jumping out at you from this first search?

Speaker 22 There was no damage at any of the locks, any of the doors.

Speaker 16 I know the sergeant said she noticed some footprints on the path to the house. Did any of those kinds of forensic details turn out to be of interest later?

Speaker 27 No, no,

Speaker 27 I believe the footprints were ruled out to be either one of our deputies when they first arrived on scene or were going to be Carlos's when he was going back and forth with them.

Speaker 43 A smartphone, of course, can be a detective's best friend.

Speaker 55 And right away, they asked Carlos for his.

Speaker 14 Do you have any problem with this scoring? Do you think that's completely fine? That's cool.

Speaker 55 And they were very interested in his mother's phone.

Speaker 14 Does she have a cell phone, too?

Speaker 14 Yes.

Speaker 14 Where does she usually keep that? Usually keeps it on her nightstand.

Speaker 14 Okay.

Speaker 37 But when they searched the home, the phone didn't turn up.

Speaker 22 Unfortunately, the victim's cell phone is nowhere to be found.

Speaker 84 Which is a question.

Speaker 16 That is a big horse is potentially a treasure trove.

Speaker 22 It is.

Speaker 67 Still, the search of the home wasn't a complete bust.

Speaker 93 They did find something in Denise's bedroom that piqued their interest.

Speaker 27 They found some owner's manuals for some security cameras.

Speaker 70 A different setup than the one installed by the neighbor.

Speaker 84 So the light bulb is ideas.

Speaker 16 We've got a manual here. Where's the camera?

Speaker 27 Where's the camera for? Correct.

Speaker 75 And when they took a closer look at the furniture, there were a few places without dust.

Speaker 3 Odd.

Speaker 52 What had been sitting there to keep the dust from settling?

Speaker 27 Well, we found the chargers. When I walked through the house, you could see where the dust was.
There was no dust

Speaker 27 where the cameras were.

Speaker 55 The thought was this: if you had to ditch something quickly because the cops were coming, where better to fling something than that lake out back of the house?

Speaker 27 I contacted the dive team leader and asked them to do a cursory search in that area.

Speaker 93 And what they found was about to break the case wide open.

Speaker 92 Coming up.

Speaker 16 What did you get out of that lake?

Speaker 27 Three security cameras and her cell phone.

Speaker 33 Sunken treasure.

Speaker 22 Hopefully it would have captured the whole entire incident.

Speaker 71 A few days after Denise's murder, Carlos's girlfriend Kayla paid a visit to him at Amy's, the neighbor who had taken in the boy temporarily.

Speaker 19 I wanted to, you know, see how he was doing, try to support him as much as I could. And, you know, we kind of just talked like normal,

Speaker 19 try to stay off, you know, the topic of his mom, try to get his mind off of things.

Speaker 65 Kayla couldn't imagine what Carlos was going through.

Speaker 19 I remember feeling so sorry for Carlos that he had lost his mom in such a horrific way as well.

Speaker 43 Meanwhile, investigators were busy trying to find out who was behind the heinous act.

Speaker 51 After coming across that security camera manual in Denise's bedroom, they had shifted their focus from inside the home to the lake out back.

Speaker 32 They deployed a dive team to look for the missing security cameras.

Speaker 107 Monday, I got the phone call. We need to go scope out the scene.

Speaker 37 Deputy Jimmy Sudla was one of the divers out in the water that day.

Speaker 107 So we went and got the mud boat from the hangar.

Speaker 59 They launched the boat into the murky waters behind Denise's property.

Speaker 50 To me, it looks like you can't see a hand in front of you.

Speaker 27 Correct, it looks like that, but once you get below the surface you can actually sometimes get a couple feet of visibility.

Speaker 67 The lake itself covers thousands of acres.

Speaker 78 A thorough search could easily take many days.

Speaker 36 But luck was on the dive team's side because not 20 yards from the house in waist-deep water they found the evidence that would be crucial to the investigation.

Speaker 39 They spotted it from the reconnaissance boat.

Speaker 107 I see a white round object, very clean, no marine growth, no nothing on it, and I get in the water and I retrieve it and it turns out to be a camera base.

Speaker 107 I keep looking around that vicinity real fast, and I locate a camera.

Speaker 38 The divers contacted the detective with their great news.

Speaker 27 So the following day, we did actually a full search of the area.

Speaker 77 You know, what did you get out of that lake?

Speaker 27 Three security cameras and her cell phone.

Speaker 81 Denise's cell phone.

Speaker 3 A bonus of all bonuses and a completely unexpected prize.

Speaker 16 Were the items found in the lake the turning point in the investigation?

Speaker 22 That was a huge, huge find for us.

Speaker 60 Huge, except problem.

Speaker 43 Everything was soaked.

Speaker 67 Sheriff Prendergast and his team cast a wide net in hopes of extracting any information.

Speaker 16 The waterlogged devices I assume are shot.

Speaker 25 Is there a technical whiz somewhere that can coax information out of the thing that's been in the city?

Speaker 47 There is a technical whiz and we're fortunate to have him working for us.

Speaker 47 But we're also trying to look back at the camera company and find out what type of information we might be able to extract off of the cameras.

Speaker 67 Just think if the security cameras could be brought to life again.

Speaker 16 You thought they had a story, but you didn't know what it was.

Speaker 22 Yeah, you figured they were recording. The recording has to be somewhere and hopefully it would have captured the whole entire incident.

Speaker 16 Somewhere out there in the cloud is an image of the perpetrator with the axe.

Speaker 53 That's what we're hoping.

Speaker 88 The sheriff's tech whiz got to work testing those waterlogged pieces of evidence but the process would take weeks.

Speaker 47 We're continuing to go through and look at cell phone records and laying this all out and having conversations with the state attorney's office as we're attempting to get into the cell phone and harvest that information that's out there.

Speaker 95 Then one day, the results finally came back and disappointment.

Speaker 54 The security cams yielded no image of an axe-wielding killer.

Speaker 91 Likewise, there were no useful pics on Denise's phone or in the cloud.

Speaker 43 Still, the device itself was crucial for building a timeline.

Speaker 22 I believe on her phone, we was able to tell when it was on the charger, when it got disconnected from the charger, and when it finally died in the water. So we were able to have a closer timeline.

Speaker 67 And the timeline seemed to match what Carlos told detectives.

Speaker 3 Denise's phone arrived at their home around 3 o'clock.

Speaker 32 It was plugged into her charger at around 3.12 in the afternoon when Denise was presumably napping.

Speaker 89 Then at 3.45, the phone was disconnected from the bedside charger.

Speaker 32 At around 6.18 p.m., Denise's phone was going berserk.

Speaker 89 The detectives theorized it was being submerged in the lake.

Speaker 37 And it was able to tell them something else.

Speaker 42 Ownership.

Speaker 56 Who did the waterlogged security cameras belong to?

Speaker 27 The phone was our huge thing because the security cameras were linked to the phone.

Speaker 33 Meaning those cameras they fished out of the lake unquestionably belonged to Denise.

Speaker 45 And while, amazingly, investigators were able to recover security camera images from Denise's waterlogged phone, none of them were from the critical moments of the murder.

Speaker 75 But the more the detectives spun scenarios for who might have wanted to kill Denise Holliwell, the less likely it seemed to be a stranger, a madman, emerging from the woods.

Speaker 16 How does a perpetrator come upon an axe, murder his victim, and then take the security cameras and toss them in the lake out back?

Speaker 43 That's a strange sequence of events. Oh, very strange.

Speaker 46 Weeks into the investigation, detectives had exhausted most leads.

Speaker 30 Have you discounted the theories of a home invasion gone wrong?

Speaker 16 Have you discounted an angry boyfriend, associates of the boy in the house?

Speaker 47 We had discounted a lot of theories that were out there because there was just no evidence leading us to that.

Speaker 74 Which made them consider suspects closer to home.

Speaker 73 Coming up, not far from that home, a friend and neighbor was living in terror.

Speaker 15 Each one of us had wasp spray next to our bed so that we could shoot him with wasp spray.

Speaker 18 You thought he was a killer.

Speaker 15 I thought he was a killer.

Speaker 31 When dateline continues.

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Speaker 43 As detectives narrowed their investigation, they kept coming back to the last person who had seen Denise alive, her son, Carlos.

Speaker 37 Carlos was indeed a bright, charismatic golden child with his welcoming smile and the yes, ma'am, yes, sir, handshakes.

Speaker 91 But the more investigators dug into family history, they learned he concealed another personality altogether.

Speaker 67 Neighbor Bayush watched the wheels come off her lakeside friend.

Speaker 87 What I hear is that it got progressively worse because he was partying and stuff. And he was actually starting to get in trouble.

Speaker 87 He got kicked out of that Christian school that he was going going to for a while. And I think that's when Denise stopped sort of putting him on a pedestal.

Speaker 67 Those close to Denise told detectives his mother laid down the law about his sneaking girls into the house after dark.

Speaker 95 They argued about where and whether he'd go to college.

Speaker 72 His school grades had cratered.

Speaker 59 Rick and Juanita along the shoreline could hear the raised voices.

Speaker 24 It'd be very colorful.

Speaker 30 Really? Oh, yeah,

Speaker 65 with both.

Speaker 43 She's vocal, and so is he, huh?

Speaker 24 Once she gets going, she deal bull right with him.

Speaker 64 Carlos, by his own telling, had been drinking since the age of 11, taking all manner of prescription pills.

Speaker 75 And detectives heard he was dealing drugs in the woods near his house.

Speaker 39 Hence, all those mysterious cars.

Speaker 67 He'd intentionally wrecked the beloved pickup his mom had bought him.

Speaker 15 He'd done several things, ran his car into a tree.

Speaker 16 Why did he do that?

Speaker 60 Was it a purposeful act?

Speaker 15 He says it was a suicide attempt. I think he did it just to make her mad,

Speaker 15 just to show her.

Speaker 55 One day, Carlos gobbled a handful of pills and OD'd.

Speaker 65 Investigators learned he was committed to a secure mental health facility for a few days and ultimately diagnosed with bipolar disorder and depression.

Speaker 64 He was put on medication.

Speaker 67 By the spring of 2019, Denise seemed to have had it with a willful son throwing away all the opportunities she tried so hard to create for him.

Speaker 40 Carlos was was thrown out of the house.

Speaker 55 He was taken in by a married couple he'd come to know through a mutual friend.

Speaker 67 They were Damien and Stephanie Irving.

Speaker 110 He is a warm, beautiful, funny,

Speaker 110 charming, smart person who is struggling also with many

Speaker 110 issues.

Speaker 53 The couple seemed to enjoy having Carlos around.

Speaker 21 Carlos is a really nice guy. I mean, mean, the first time I met him, he was like so chill.
He actually listened to us a lot. I mean, he didn't rebel.

Speaker 19 I think in his perspective, he seemed happier, maybe a little less stressed because they were a little bit more lax on the rules. But he did mention a few times that he missed his mom.

Speaker 86 And she missed him.

Speaker 33 But investigators learned the issues between mother and son went even deeper.

Speaker 75 As evidenced by a list of demands, Carlos texted Denise before he'd even consider moving back home.

Speaker 29 I want a notarized agreement from the bank with everything you say you will do on it.

Speaker 48 I want it signed.

Speaker 67 A vehicle that I could depend on for college that you cannot take away from me at any time unless I fail in college.

Speaker 45 A guarantee that you will pay for my apartment and distribute my college money for any other college-related expenses.

Speaker 56 The list went on.

Speaker 16 As though it was written by a lawyer.

Speaker 87 Honestly, I... If you want me back in the house, here are the conditions.
And that's what I mean. Like,

Speaker 87 Carlos was a calculated person like i'm not using the word lightly when i say he was intelligent you know

Speaker 3 family friends told investigators carlos and his mom patched things up he moved back home i think maybe they swept it under the rug and did what they need to do to get along again

Speaker 55 all of these anecdotes the cops were hearing the mother-son fights the suicide attempts the boys while partying made detectives think back to their first impression of carlos Something about him was just off.

Speaker 14 What are you hanging in there, man? I'm just trying to accept the fact.

Speaker 27 When I watched the video back, he's flattened. He just doesn't have a whole lot of emotion to go behind it.

Speaker 35 His mother's been murdered, an action in her head.

Speaker 48 And nothing's going on?

Speaker 27 No, it doesn't appear. Whatever's there just seems false.

Speaker 54 And even though Denise's good friend Amy agreed to take Carlos in the morning after her murder, she could barely choke down her fear of this boy she'd known all these years.

Speaker 3 The reason why her husband had bought a large guard dog for the family.

Speaker 15 We had wasp spray in every room because, you know, that shoots 20 feet. So each one of us had wasp spray next to our bed so that if he came anywhere near us, we could shoot him with wasp spray.

Speaker 26 Were you frightened for your well-being?

Speaker 15 Yes. I was torn because

Speaker 15 on the one hand, he could have just been... a kid whose mom was just brutally murdered and he was in shock.
And I know Denise would have wanted me to help.

Speaker 16 To do the decent thing.

Speaker 18 Right.

Speaker 15 On the other hand.

Speaker 5 You thought he was a killer.

Speaker 15 I thought he was a killer.

Speaker 78 Amy wasn't alone.

Speaker 89 By now, investigators had zeroed in on Carlos as their prime suspect.

Speaker 22 We had our suspicions that it was Carlos because his story wasn't added up.

Speaker 16 What made your nose twitch? How was the story coming out different?

Speaker 53 Everything.

Speaker 22 He went from, I went outside at one point. Now he's adding that he ran around the house.
Now he's saying that he went to a different part of the yard.

Speaker 90 His story is like.

Speaker 77 Maybe he's remembering stuff. It's been a bad day.

Speaker 44 It could be.

Speaker 22 But once you start questioning him what he just told you, that changes right behind it again.

Speaker 3 And there was something else.

Speaker 23 Detectives remembered asking Carlos about surveillance devices around the home the night of the murder.

Speaker 14 We have a lot of those signs that say surveillance or be aware of dogs and stuff like that. You guys actually got surveillance up?

Speaker 38 No.

Speaker 14 Seems like a scare tactic.

Speaker 14 We have one camera on the side of the house that doesn't even work. It's just there, just for looks.

Speaker 71 Carlos was referring to the broken outdoor camera his neighbor Rick had helped install, but he made no mention of the three perfectly good indoor cameras detectives later found dumped in the lake.

Speaker 67 Investigators could see exactly where in the house those cameras had been hooked up.

Speaker 52 Their charging cords left dangling.

Speaker 23 The evidence was stacking up against the teen.

Speaker 47 The evidence was not leading us really on any direction other than the fact that the son was in the home alone with the mother and the dogs.

Speaker 50 It kept coming back to the son, didn't it?

Speaker 47 It was absolutely pointing right back at the son.

Speaker 43 So investigators kept eyes on him. A week into the case, child services removed the 17-year-old from Amy's home and placed him with another family.

Speaker 15 I hugged him and I wished him well, but

Speaker 15 I was relieved when he was gone.

Speaker 72 Weeks passed as detectives worked to piece together the evidence.

Speaker 27 It was still our prime suspect, but we didn't have enough to hold him.

Speaker 75 They felt they still needed a little more.

Speaker 2 By mid-August, the missing link came to them in the form of Carlos' own cell data.

Speaker 86 Its GPS tracking ability proved to be invaluable.

Speaker 42 They would confront Carlos with its story in their second interview.

Speaker 67 The detectives picked him up at his foster family's home and brought him back to the station.

Speaker 48 Does he realize what's going down?

Speaker 18 No, he doesn't have a clue.

Speaker 92 Coming up.

Speaker 31 Are these the footsteps of a killer?

Speaker 28 You can see the connected dots of footprints leaving the house very easily.

Speaker 27 And going to where? He's actually on the phone while he's throwing the things in the lake.

Speaker 74 September 16th, 2019.

Speaker 74 A little more than two months after Denise Halliwell was brutally murdered, investigators brought her son Carlos in for questioning a second time to confront him with key evidence.

Speaker 38 But if Carlos was nervous, he wasn't showing it.

Speaker 27 He was excited. He's like, yeah, I wanted to know more about the case.

Speaker 112 Defense that you know, my mom's.

Speaker 27 We get him in there, start talking to him. I let him know that, hey, I'm new to the case, even though it's months later.
Just run me a quick rundown of what happened that night.

Speaker 33 Carlos recited his story again.

Speaker 66 The nap, the barking dogs, finding his mom.

Speaker 3 When he was done, detectives Holloway and Ramos challenged Carlos with a different version of the story, the one told by his own phone.

Speaker 112 On your phone, there's like no dead time. Your phone's being used almost the entire time.
Yeah, as long as you're probably staying on. No, I mean, somebody physically using it.

Speaker 3 Why was that important?

Speaker 90 Because it meant he was lying about being asleep.

Speaker 30 Analysis of his cell activity showed he was actively using it around the time of the murder.

Speaker 79 And get this, forensic investigators were able to track all his motions, every time his finger touched the screen, when his phone was plugged or unplugged, even whether it was being used in landscape or portrait mode.

Speaker 112 Of course, every time you flip it, plug it in, anytime you access something, every website you look at, you look at sports stuff like that, like you told us before. Good.

Speaker 112 But it shows it was active almost the entire time you were on. Like,

Speaker 112 back and forth on the house, or like just on one steady thing

Speaker 112 carlos appeared to be squirming but he stuck to his story he had been asleep yeah the dogs as soon as the dog was bike i was when i woke up and that's when i started moving back around and then we also get the cell phone uh tower data as well

Speaker 10 remember carlos had used his cell to make that frantic call to 911 i need someone faster i need empts i need people i need cable The phone tracked him footstep by footstep as he moved about.

Speaker 70 When plotted out, it was almost like an animation.

Speaker 27 We were actually getting a step every second.

Speaker 28 You can see the connect the dots of footprints. Leaving the house?

Speaker 27 Very easily. And going to where? Goes down to the lake.
At the same time,

Speaker 27 he's on the phone with dispatch.

Speaker 10 Oh my god.

Speaker 10 Oh my god. Okay, just stay on the phone, okay? Oh my god.

Speaker 27 He's actually on the phone while he's throwing the things in the lake.

Speaker 23 The timeline sync perfectly with the time that Denise's phone and those cameras went dead.

Speaker 112 On your phone itself, it also tracks your GPS locations. That whole time frame from when you called 911 on.
I didn't go down by the lake. I could see it, but I didn't go down there.

Speaker 112 It tracks you all the way down there, GPS. I mean, it looks like I connect the dots the entire way.

Speaker 17 So you start turning over your cards.

Speaker 22 We start one at a time. We started letting him know that we know what he told us about finding his mom was false.

Speaker 112 I don't remember going down there. Okay.

Speaker 112 Alright, you know we have a dive team, right? Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 112 And then we searched the entire lake behind there. Okay.
Will we found anything out there, you think? Nothing I know of, no, sir. Nothing you know of.

Speaker 27 I mean, he's adamant. I actually had to bring the cameras into the room.

Speaker 44 Tell me about that.

Speaker 27 So I have the evidence brought in. And I asked him, was I...

Speaker 112 Say, did I look from out there? No, sir. There's a camera inside of here.

Speaker 112 Okay, yeah, it's one of the ones that are facing towards the window. Guess anything we found.
There's only one in the house? No, you know there's one more in the house. No, sir.
I know of one.

Speaker 112 There's three cameras in the house.

Speaker 112 What else do you think we could have found in the lake that day?

Speaker 112 You don't know what else we could have found out here? No, I'm going to assume her phone since she's on the camera.

Speaker 94 Once we start showing him, he knows the gig is up.

Speaker 22 There's no more bluffing. Because he can sit there and bluff all day.
The evidence is not going to lie, and it didn't.

Speaker 3 After all the denials and the sticking to his guns, Carlos appeared cornered.

Speaker 43 What his interrogators didn't tell him was that they'd already obtained an arrest warrant for him.

Speaker 55 They had it in their pocket all along.

Speaker 3 The cuffs went on.

Speaker 2 After a long evening, the sheriff did a perp walk with the accused.

Speaker 40 Not a madman from the woods, as so many seem to want to believe, but the son of the victim.

Speaker 90 Inverness, Florida would wake to another startling headline about the Hollowells.

Speaker 16 It was the boy, and he was going on trial.

Speaker 86 But so was Denise.

Speaker 92 Coming up.

Speaker 31 Is this why Denise was killed?

Speaker 13 The story from prosecutors is that Carlos is not getting what he wants because his mom is holding him down.

Speaker 70 Or was it more complicated?

Speaker 113 In front of Carlos, she said, I don't want him anymore.

Speaker 110 Yes.

Speaker 31 When dateline continues.

Speaker 55 Kayla Cook was in the middle of her school day when she got an urgent text from a friend.

Speaker 19 She basically said, Carlos just got arrested. And so I looked it up and it turned out to be true.

Speaker 23 For Kayla, the arrest was upsetting, but hadn't come as a complete surprise.

Speaker 89 Her parents had distanced their daughter from Carlos after Denise's murder.

Speaker 19 They had stopped me from seeing him. They finally had the conversation with me about how he was probably the one who did it.

Speaker 16 That must have been a difficult conversation, huh?

Speaker 19 I think that conversation,

Speaker 20 it was probably the most I've ever heard in my life.

Speaker 74 The arrest didn't come as a shock to Denise's friends either.

Speaker 51 In the months prior to her murder, the usually private Denise had confided in those she trusted, saying she was afraid of her own son.

Speaker 15 She asked me to make sure her dogs were okay if something happened to her. That was when I knew.
What? That's when I knew. It was very serious.
Yeah.

Speaker 16 That's kind of chilling to be told of

Speaker 10 a friend.

Speaker 15 Very chilling.

Speaker 2 Carlos was charged with first-degree premeditated murder, to which he pleaded not guilty.

Speaker 43 Despite his age, 17 at the time of the murder, the state attorney chose to try Carlos as an an adult. That call was a blow to his public defender, Ed Spate.

Speaker 113 It does go from being punishable by about six years in a juvenile program up to facing the possibility of

Speaker 113 life in prison.

Speaker 17 By the time the trial began in July 2021, almost two years had passed.

Speaker 3 And the Carlos Hallowell who entered the courtroom did not look at all like the smiley teenager he once was.

Speaker 81 Carlos had changed.

Speaker 13 More tattoos throughout his face, on his arms. Very stocky, buff, gruff person.

Speaker 91 Reporter Buster Thompson was in the gallery as the state presented its case.

Speaker 13 The story from prosecutors is that Carlos is not getting what he wants. He's not able to be with his friends because his mom is holding him down.

Speaker 13 He says he wants to go to vocational school, but his mom's getting in the way. And it all builds up to him swinging the axe into her head.

Speaker 27 It's Carlos being fatally selfish.

Speaker 11 You solemnly swear or firm testimony.

Speaker 51 To help prove premeditation, the state called Detective Chris Holloway.

Speaker 89 He told the jurors about a disagreement Carlos said he had with his mom on the day of the murder.

Speaker 13 Now what did he tell you that they argued about?

Speaker 27 It was about his schooling. If he wasn't gonna go to college, she was not gonna support him whatsoever.

Speaker 37 But school wasn't the only point of contention.

Speaker 67 His mom was fed up with Carlos's partying, too.

Speaker 11 Step right on up there, make yourself comfortable.

Speaker 67 Carlos's good friend Kylie was called to testify about a text she received from Denise the day before the murder.

Speaker 116 Carlos is trying hard to get his life together for his future. He really needs his friends to help him be successful by not giving him or bringing him weed and beer.

Speaker 116 If he can't do this, he won't be staying here.

Speaker 38 When Kylie saw Carlos later that day, she showed him the text.

Speaker 117 His response was, yeah, like it'll, like, I'll take care of it or something along those lines.

Speaker 48 Is that ominous?

Speaker 13 It's a little ominous. That again went to another notch in this kind of premeditation.

Speaker 64 But the key to the case was all of that digital evidence.

Speaker 80 State calls Corey Allen.

Speaker 30 The state called digital forensic investigator Corey Allen to show how Carlos tried to cover up after he killed his mother.

Speaker 45 He testified about Carlos's movements as he was on the phone with 911.

Speaker 13 You have the lake over here, and you have several GPS pings in here, and then one section of them right here in the house.

Speaker 36 That, coupled with the evidence retrieved from the waterlogged devices, proved Carlos was the one who disconnected the cameras and threw them and his mother's phone into the lake before law enforcement arrived.

Speaker 69 And the state saved its say goodnight evidence for last.

Speaker 17 They played that interview of Carlos talking to detectives.

Speaker 112 On your phone itself, it also tracks your GPS locations. That whole timeframe from when you called 911 on.

Speaker 62 Turns out, as they confronted him with that rock-solid evidence, Carlos's story started to change.

Speaker 112 Once I found my mom, I did panic. I did panic.

Speaker 66 Carlos admitted to throwing his mom's phone and the security cameras into the lake, but said he couldn't remember much else.

Speaker 112 You'd have to remember some of it. I remember...
Okay. I remember being outside at the shed

Speaker 112 and

Speaker 112 grabbing the axe. And that's it.
That's all I remember.

Speaker 2 They kept on pushing him.

Speaker 112 I remember sharpening the axe, and then all of a sudden it's in the back of her head. So after you hear the axe, is that when you call 911 right after? Immediately, immediately.

Speaker 3 The state called it a full-on confession.

Speaker 43 And with that, the prosecution rested.

Speaker 66 It seemed like a slam dunk, but not to Defense Attorney Spate.

Speaker 50 He had a different spin on the case, even though he didn't contest that Carlos was indeed the killer.

Speaker 45 You're saying he is the one with the axe in his hand.

Speaker 30 He does commit the crime. Yes.

Speaker 16 But you're saying the crime is not murder.

Speaker 35 Is that right?

Speaker 113 We argued that it was manslaughter.

Speaker 59 So you're going for a lesser here, huh?

Speaker 27 Yes, sir.

Speaker 113 If he were convicted of manslaughter, the worst he faced is 15 years in prison.

Speaker 55 While the state portrayed Carlos as a teenager fed up with his mom's rules, who as a consequence planned her murder, the defense countered with a psychological argument, saying Carlos was struggling with lifelong abandonment issues, saddled to a mother unable to handle him.

Speaker 91 Jurors, in the moment he simply snapped.

Speaker 91 Carlos's defense attorney had heard about Denise's parenting style from Damien and Stephanie Irving, the couple Carlos temporarily lived with before the murder.

Speaker 110 When I was asked by detectives, do you believe he could do this? My answer was yes, but not because I believe he was a murderer. It was yes, because I know what Denise is capable of.

Speaker 110 So I think she probably must have done something really, really bad.

Speaker 81 In the six months leading up to the murder, they said they had front row seats to the toxic relationship between Carlos and Denise.

Speaker 115 She is very controlling, and it's like...

Speaker 21 It's her way or he has to go. It's just like she wants a puppet.

Speaker 23 The issues going on inside the home escalated to physical fights.

Speaker 71 Damien was so concerned, he called a family meeting between mother and son.

Speaker 21 I looked at her and said, you guys need to stop putting your hand on each other because if you don't, one of you guys is going to end up doing something bad.

Speaker 6 It was clear to Stephanie that Carlos had deep-rooted issues tied to his brother Angel and the fallout from the abuse allegations.

Speaker 110 Carlos had a real fear of abandonment because he lost his brother. When he saw Denise just give that boy away, he felt he could be next.

Speaker 43 But the jury wouldn't get to hear any of those stories of domestic drama.

Speaker 55 The judge excluded them.

Speaker 113 We weren't even allowed to mention the fact that he had a brother.

Speaker 75 Or the fact that Denise had been arrested for child abuse.

Speaker 3 What's more, the judge excluded testimony from doctors, whom the defense planned to call about Carlos's mental and emotional state at the time of the murder.

Speaker 34 You had very little to work with.

Speaker 35 We had very little to work with.

Speaker 89 And so within the limits imposed by the court, Carlos's defense attorney was about to put Denise's mothering on trial by calling Stephanie Irving.

Speaker 11 You solemnly swear or firm testimony you.

Speaker 91 Stephanie recounted how she and Damien offered Carlos a place to stay.

Speaker 110 Denise brought Carlos very late in the evening. She basically said she did not want him back.
She believed that Carlos was causing her stress that she wasn't able to tolerate anymore.

Speaker 114 She said in front of Carlos, she said, I don't want him anymore.

Speaker 110 Yes.

Speaker 30 I don't want him anymore.

Speaker 84 Crushing words, said the defense, for a boy who had been rejected before.

Speaker 30 After calling only one witness, the defense rested.

Speaker 43 Carlos chose not to testify.

Speaker 48 So each side now made its final arguments.

Speaker 17 Remember the jury, there is no doubt

Speaker 17 that the defendant in this case killed his mother premeditatedly putting the axe in her head.

Speaker 114 If he'd planned it, He'd have disconnected the cameras, gotten rid of the cameras, and gotten rid of the phone before.

Speaker 114 Those were the actions of somebody who had acted without thinking and was panicking. Not somebody who was planning and premeditating.

Speaker 72 After three days of testimony, Carlos's future was in the hands of the jury.

Speaker 50 It took them less than 90 minutes.

Speaker 118 We, the jury, find the defendant is guilty of murder in the first degree as charged in the indictment.

Speaker 64 Guilty of premeditated murder.

Speaker 75 It's also incomprehensible.

Speaker 72 It begs an answer to the question, why?

Speaker 38 The only person who can answer that is Carlos himself.

Speaker 43 Let me show you where chairs. Come on this way.

Speaker 25 And he agreed to sit down and tell us what really happened in a jailhouse interview.

Speaker 16 Why do you think it happened? Why couldn't you get past that day?

Speaker 76 Every day I ask myself that question.

Speaker 76 Just make it through the next day. But I made the conscious decision to

Speaker 115 kill my mother.

Speaker 75 Two months after Carlos was convicted, he was back in court for sentencing.

Speaker 51 And when Judge Richard Howard made his ruling, he didn't hold back.

Speaker 119 You see the size of this thing? This was buried in her skull up to the hilt.

Speaker 11 It is the ruling of this court that the defendant to be sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.

Speaker 95 There is, though, one one caveat.

Speaker 69 Because Carlos was a minor at the time of the homicide, his sentence will be eligible for review by a judge in 2044.

Speaker 65 By then he'll be 42 years old.

Speaker 36 Carlos addressed the court and spoke directly to his mom as though she were in the room.

Speaker 120 Words can't describe how I feel right now and

Speaker 120 how much I miss you and how sorry I am for what I've done. I love you so much.

Speaker 34 He He loved her, yet he killed her.

Speaker 7 What was that?

Speaker 26 There were so many unanswered questions.

Speaker 62 Well, now you're going to hear the story in Carlos's own words.

Speaker 45 Carlos, my name is Dennis from Dayland.

Speaker 43 We sat down with him dressed in jailhouse orange to try to get inside his head.

Speaker 30 He said early on he and his mom got along well.

Speaker 115 Things were great actually, you know, things were

Speaker 18 fun.

Speaker 54 That is until his younger brother Angel entered the picture and accused his mom of child abuse.

Speaker 76 That was tough for me because they actually came to the house and arrested her in front of me.

Speaker 21 I actually saw it happen and that to me was scary.

Speaker 16 At the time of allegations of child abuse, you backed up your mother's position. She didn't do this kind of thing to me.

Speaker 80 Correct.

Speaker 16 There's no hands-on, there's no psychological abuse. Have you changed that? Are you now saying that your mother did abuse you?

Speaker 5 Yes.

Speaker 21 And a lot of people want to take the side of, no, it didn't happen.

Speaker 76 You did.

Speaker 7 What would you do, man?

Speaker 76 What would you do if you were adopted into somewhere, taken out of one home and put into another?

Speaker 76 this is all you know and then that threat of being taken out at home again for a second time being taken ripped out from your family

Speaker 55 eventually he was allowed to move back home denise was cleared of any wrongdoing but carlos said things weren't the same things got a little bit more

Speaker 115 strict and and a little bit distant you know my mother and i we were close we were tight

Speaker 4 and then you're saying were past tense yeah we started falling off a little bit.

Speaker 21 The connection we really had just wasn't...

Speaker 76 I didn't really feel that anymore.

Speaker 16 She's opened up her heart and her bank accounts and her household to raise you, give you whatever you wanted, put you on the best road.

Speaker 76 Until it was time to give back. Until it was time to get back.

Speaker 3 Time to give back, as in help pay the bills, said Carlos.

Speaker 29 He claimed as he got older, his mom expected him to contribute money to the household.

Speaker 43 Their relationship only worsened when he started abusing drugs and alcohol.

Speaker 72 He said said when they fought, his mom's words turned from anger to rejection.

Speaker 76 I don't love you. She'll never adopt you.

Speaker 84 She regretted adopting you?

Speaker 82 Her exact words were,

Speaker 115 if I didn't adopt you, you would still be on the streets.

Speaker 18 You know.

Speaker 16 So, young man, you owe me.

Speaker 76 Yeah, and she definitely made it clear, very clear, how much she spent on me.

Speaker 54 Those alleged words of rejection came up against Carlos on the car ride home from the funeral on the day of the murder.

Speaker 76 Well, at first it was, you know, why the heck are you not going to university, man? I paid for your college, you're a disappointment to me. And then it got to same typical.

Speaker 76 Should have never adopted you. You would have still been on the streets.
You would have never had the opportunity that I've given you.

Speaker 16 Those are kind of harsh words, huh?

Speaker 76 I don't take those words kindly, though.

Speaker 45 Carlos said later that afternoon he went outside to do some yard work.

Speaker 58 Said he had to chop down a tree. He got out the axe and started to sharpen it.

Speaker 76 I've started thinking about, you know, everything my mom and I talked about in the car. You're not worth anything.
You're a disappointment.

Speaker 115 You know, these words that she has told me over time that are all accumulating that just kind of

Speaker 76 built up one day.

Speaker 5 Hit a boil.

Speaker 115 Went to the tree.

Speaker 76 Never actually ended up chopping the tree.

Speaker 50 So the axe is in your hand and you're headed back to the house.

Speaker 16 What's in your mind?

Speaker 21 I was going to walk inside and just get a cup of water and come back out,

Speaker 115 but it ended up not working out that way.

Speaker 16 Did you go to your mom's bedroom?

Speaker 79 She's asleep?

Speaker 16 What do you do, Carlos?

Speaker 16 I

Speaker 47 swing the axe.

Speaker 16 Drove the axe into her head.

Speaker 16 Yeah.

Speaker 105 I didn't look,

Speaker 76 Try to turn away from it.

Speaker 115 As soon as I open my eyes,

Speaker 105 I look.

Speaker 76 Kind of like freak out.

Speaker 76 And I hear attempts of breathing.

Speaker 50 There's your mom in her bed, gasping, making noises.

Speaker 16 Axes in her head. What is going on with you, Carlos?

Speaker 115 Telling my mom I can get help.

Speaker 16 Carlos a little late for that, huh? Yeah.

Speaker 16 How could she do anything that was so repellent to you that you would go to get the accent killer?

Speaker 5 There really is no excuse for it.

Speaker 76 There's no reason I should have done that.

Speaker 16 When people look, they don't see remorse.

Speaker 16 You know, you're talking it, but they're not seeing anything deep there. You know what they mean?

Speaker 24 Yes.

Speaker 105 I have...

Speaker 115 A very hard time being emotional.

Speaker 76 In private, I will shed a tear.

Speaker 62 Were you crying for yourself yourself or for what you've done?

Speaker 6 For both.

Speaker 59 Because there's poor me and poor mom, right?

Speaker 76 There's a point where you take responsibility.

Speaker 16 People are still looking for you to say, I am as sorry as I can be that I killed my mother in the way I did.

Speaker 76 I am very deeply and truly sorry for what I did. I did something very heinous and very

Speaker 115 unimaginable.

Speaker 76 I miss her.

Speaker 24 I love her.

Speaker 76 And I wish I could take things back, but I can't because I did that. I made that choice.

Speaker 16 Do you accept that you should be incarcerated? Yes.

Speaker 44 You don't have a problem with that?

Speaker 18 No.

Speaker 115 None whatsoever.

Speaker 76 You take a life,

Speaker 24 you owe a life.

Speaker 33 Two lives destroyed, but so many more changed forever.

Speaker 69 Consider Amy, Denise's lake sister.

Speaker 29 She and Denise had plans to grow old together.

Speaker 30 They used to meet by the lake and talk about their lives.

Speaker 59 Amy still comes down here from time to time to reflect and think about her sweet lost friend Denise.

Speaker 16 How do you want Denise to be remembered?

Speaker 15 She was a beautiful person inside and out.

Speaker 15 Very caring, compassionate,

Speaker 15 fun,

Speaker 15 generous.

Speaker 15 She was a good friend, a good big sister.

Speaker 75 A woman in the end great-hearted enough to reach out and adopt two children in desperate circumstances.

Speaker 37 In the early years, it seemed such an inspiring family story.

Speaker 3 Denise and her golden boy.

Speaker 74 Who could have seen the ending?

Speaker 31 That's all for this edition of Dateline. We'll see you again next Friday at 9-8 Central.
And of course, I'll see you each weeknight for NBC Nightly News.

Speaker 111 I'm Lester Holt for all of us at NBC News.

Speaker 90 Good night.

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