The Mystery on Albion Road

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Speaker 5 My poor baby.

Speaker 6 How could this happen to her?

Speaker 7 He came upon her suddenly in the dead of night, maybe 20 yards away.

Speaker 8 I realized it was actually somebody laying in the road.

Speaker 9 A young woman, unconscious, covered in blood.

Speaker 10 What possibly happened to this girl and why she was out there in such a strange place all alone?

Speaker 11 We don't know if it's an attempted murder or if it's just a bad accident.

Speaker 7 Soon, they found a name, a loving family.

Speaker 12 I just remember praying like I've never prayed before in my life.

Speaker 13 But still, no answers.

Speaker 15 Somebody did that to her and is not coming forward.

Speaker 16 There was a boyfriend.

Speaker 11 My first impressions were that he knew exactly what happened.

Speaker 7 But he said he didn't know. Only she could tell them.

Speaker 7 But her memory of that night was gone.

Speaker 6 There's no words to describe how horrible it was.

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

Speaker 7 Here's Josh Mankiewicz with The Mystery on Albion Road.

Speaker 18 How would it feel to have brutal, life-altering injuries?

Speaker 23 But to have the memories of how you got those injuries wiped out the instant you received them?

Speaker 25 How would it feel to have a gulf in your mind that stands between you and justice?

Speaker 28 November 11th, 2009, 1.30 a.m., a moonless night over the wheat fields outside Pullman, Washington.

Speaker 26 As Bob Cady drove home from the bar he owns, Albion Road was pitch black and dead quiet.

Speaker 8 As I came up the road, initially, what I thought I saw on the road was somebody's McDonald's bag and their drink that they'd thrown out the window.

Speaker 35 Just trash in the road.

Speaker 36 I thought it was trash in the road.

Speaker 8 I wasn't going to pull off to the side of the road to drive around garbage. I was just going to drive over it.

Speaker 21 But as Bob drove closer, he saw the object in the road wasn't garbage at all.

Speaker 8 As I got maybe 20 yards away, I realized it was actually somebody laying in the road.

Speaker 20 A young woman.

Speaker 37 She couldn't have been more than 20 or 25 years old, bleeding, barefoot, and unconscious.

Speaker 31 Bob Cady parked his truck sideways in the road to shield the woman from oncoming cars.

Speaker 34 Then he ran down the hill a few hundred yards until he could get a cell phone signal.

Speaker 42 There's a lady laying in the middle of the street.

Speaker 43 She is breathing.

Speaker 44 I can hear her breathe. Okay, is she awake? No, we got to get a car out of here quick.

Speaker 8 I had a pretty strong feeling that she wasn't going to be able to lay in the road for very long.

Speaker 44 Actually, your car is coming right now. I see him coming up the hill.

Speaker 45 Speeding up the hill were three emergency medical technicians.

Speaker 10 You look at the situation and it almost looks unreal. She was pretty much covered from head to toe in dirt, blood.

Speaker 48 And she had a very, very irregular pulse. It was there, but it was very weak.

Speaker 50 And as they loaded her into an ambulance, they were full of questions.

Speaker 10 What possibly happened to this girl and why she was out there in such a strange place at such a strange time, all alone?

Speaker 11 She was only wearing a shirt, a t-shirt, jeans, and no shoes.

Speaker 29 Sheriff Brett Myers and his deputies arrived on the scene to find a mystery.

Speaker 35 What was the temperature that night?

Speaker 11 Temperature was probably about 35, maybe 40 degrees.

Speaker 52 So anybody walking around out there without shoes or a coat, I mean, that doesn't make sense.

Speaker 3 Doesn't make sense.

Speaker 11 No, but we don't know if it's an attempted murder or if it's just a bad accident. All we know is that we have an injured female in the middle of the road and we have very little evidence.

Speaker 20 But soon they had her name, courtesy of a bank card they found in her pocket.

Speaker 21 It was issued to Kristen Grindley, and investigators soon learned there was a recent graduate of nearby Washington State University by that name.

Speaker 23 They got a phone number for her parents, Rick and Pat Grindley, across the state in Woodenville, Washington.

Speaker 56 They said, I'm calling about your daughter that was in the accident.

Speaker 5 Pat Grindley bolted awake.

Speaker 30 What had happened to Kristen?

Speaker 29 How badly was she hurt?

Speaker 56 And I just remember screaming, is she alive?

Speaker 12 They handed the phone to me and there was a chaplain with the police department, and saying that, you know, your daughter's been airlifted to Spokane.

Speaker 12 And I just remember just, you know, praying like I've never prayed before in my life that, you know, Kristen, hang on, we're coming, you know, hang on.

Speaker 46 When the terrified parents finally arrived at Sacred Heart Hospital, they were ushered into intensive care.

Speaker 12 It's just

Speaker 12 shocking. I mean, you just...

Speaker 12 I mean, Kristen's a very beautiful girl, and then they see her, you know, her hair all cut and matted with blood.

Speaker 12 You know, just seeing your own child go through what that pain must have been like was just

Speaker 12 impossible for us to take.

Speaker 58 I felt like I was going to collapse.

Speaker 59 What was your initial prognosis when Kristen came in?

Speaker 45 Pretty guarded.

Speaker 39 Dr.

Speaker 31 Benjamin Ling was the neurosurgeon assigned to Kristen's case.

Speaker 61 She was in a fairly deep coma. Under CAT scan, she did have bruising of her brain.

Speaker 39 How serious a brain injury is that?

Speaker 61 On a scale of one to ten, I'd say probably like a seven.

Speaker 21 As Kristen lay unconscious in the ICU, family gathered at her bedside.

Speaker 39 Brother Patrick, sisters Kelly, and Shannon.

Speaker 15 We got in there, and there was like one inch on her body that you could touch, like on her arm. The rest of her body was in bandages, bandages,

Speaker 62 blood, cuts, tubes.

Speaker 58 It was just so hard to see her,

Speaker 63 but overall more reassuring to see that she was okay, that she was still breathing.

Speaker 64 Every member of the family spent hours watching over Kristen in those early days, but one of them never left Kristen's side, her mom, Pat.

Speaker 5 My poor baby.

Speaker 5 You know, how could this happen to her?

Speaker 29 Exactly what did happen is a question that would consume not just Kristen's family, but investigators and prosecutors as well.

Speaker 41 Together, the road rash on her body and a long trail of blood on the asphalt suggest Kristen might have been hit by a car or fallen from a car or been thrown from a car.

Speaker 68 But when Kristen was found, there wasn't a vehicle in sight.

Speaker 41 If anyone else was involved, they were gone.

Speaker 11 Real simply put, we knew that somebody else knew what happened.

Speaker 15 I just remember like clenching my fist every time I went in there because just seeing her like that and knowing that somebody did that to her and is not coming forward and is hiding.

Speaker 65 The Grindlies were going to do all they could to make sure whoever hurt Kristen was found and brought to justice.

Speaker 7 Coming up, the investigation's key witness, Kristen herself, was still unconscious and fighting for her life.

Speaker 12 Mercy, Kristen, I just need you to get up one more time.

Speaker 7 When Dateline continues.

Speaker 21 the Grindlies are a close-knit family, accustomed to gathering for vacations at their lake house and at concerts by family favorite Jimmy Buffett.

Speaker 72 Now they banded together around 23-year-old Kristen's hospital bed, praying for a word, even a twitch, any sign that she might wake up and pull through.

Speaker 6 There's no words to describe how horrible it was.

Speaker 5 You know, all those

Speaker 6 from the time she was born, it just was flashing through my head.

Speaker 74 You know, everything,

Speaker 56 you know, everything she had done.

Speaker 31 Kristen Elizabeth Grindley, Pat and Rick Grindley's second child, had been a handful from the start.

Speaker 12 When she first started to walk, she would get up on her feet and then she would just run.

Speaker 40 The determined toddler grew into a confident young woman.

Speaker 77 Upbeat, friendly, outgoing, vivacious, charismatic, positive, hilarious.

Speaker 49 Kristen was always at the center of a big group of friends, always up for fun, and on top of the trends.

Speaker 77 When Twilight came out, we had like this obsession with it.

Speaker 80 We all got into Twilight, Facebook, MySpace, because of Kristen.

Speaker 31 In her senior year at Washington State, Kristen started dating a fellow student named Richard Pasma. He was her first steady boyfriend, and Kristen fell hard.

Speaker 35 What was she saying about this guy?

Speaker 56 That, you know, how great he was and that she really liked him. And

Speaker 29 It was nice to hear her that excited about a guy.

Speaker 77 They were attached to the hip from the very beginning. She wanted to marry him and have kids with him and they started planning their future, like, talked about getting married right away.

Speaker 21 Now, just a year later, this once lively, loving young woman lay motionless in a hospital bed.

Speaker 23 Rick Grindley thought back to his daughter as a strong-willed toddler.

Speaker 12 That's all I remember is like telling her as I stood over, say, Kristen, I just need you to get up one more time.

Speaker 55 Family and friends started a Facebook page for Kristen, hoping she would somehow feel the love they poured onto the screen.

Speaker 23 In the hospital gift shop, her sisters bought a stuffed panda bear, one of Kristen's favorite animals.

Speaker 46 But Kristen didn't notice the toy.

Speaker 29 So they clutched it themselves on the nights when it was their turn to watch over their sister's bedside.

Speaker 63 You could tell that it was like when she'd go through like spurts of pain or something. It sounded like she'd hold her breath or something.

Speaker 75 About a week into Kristen's hospital stay, Rick first saw a glimmer of life on his daughter's face.

Speaker 38 You know, I bent over really closely. I said, Kristen, what was that?

Speaker 12 And she just said, hurts.

Speaker 17 Gradually, painfully, Kristen Grindley.

Speaker 50 was fighting her way back to consciousness.

Speaker 15 Kristen turned her head around to me and she was like, hi, sissy, and smile.

Speaker 56 She goes, I love you, mommy.

Speaker 80 And I just, I started to cry.

Speaker 56 It was an amazing feeling.

Speaker 66 Soon, Kristen could utter a few more phrases.

Speaker 83 It became clear to the Grindlies that her memory was shaky.

Speaker 38 She remembered who she was, but not too much else.

Speaker 37 In those early days, they didn't press it.

Speaker 21 The important thing was Kristen's palpable determination to get better.

Speaker 29 Kristen's swift recovery was surprising to her doctors at Sacred Sacred Heart and thrilling to her family and friends.

Speaker 41 But sheriff's investigators were also keeping track of her progress, waiting for a sign that Kristen's memory was returning.

Speaker 27 They knew the truth about what happened out on Albion Road that night remained locked somewhere inside her mind.

Speaker 11 We want her to pull through and we would love to have her information if she has it.

Speaker 45 But as Kristen regained her strength and her voice, the gaps in her memory became more noticeable.

Speaker 12 And I remember, talking with her and say, Kristen, do you know where you are? And she'd say no. And then I'd say, you're in Spokane.
And she'd say, I'd say, repeat it, and she'd repeat it.

Speaker 12 Then I'd go out for a cup of coffee, come back to him and say later and say, Kristen, do you know where you are? And she'd say, no.

Speaker 75 How would Sheriff Myers ever piece together what had happened that night on Albion Road, considering that Kristen couldn't even remember where she was from one minute to the next?

Speaker 5 It makes your job, what, 10 times more difficult when the actual victim doesn't remember anything about the crime.

Speaker 11 It made this case very difficult.

Speaker 24 Kristen's family and friends prayed her memory would heal.

Speaker 53 But with all the support for her in the hospital room and online, there was one person who hadn't visited, called, or posted on the Facebook page.

Speaker 38 Someone you might expect to be there at her bedside.

Speaker 46 Kristen's boyfriend, Richard Basma.

Speaker 27 Did he know anything about what had happened the night Kristen was found, bruised, bleeding, and alone, in the middle of Albion Road.

Speaker 7 Coming up, who was the man in Kristen's life and what had happened between them?

Speaker 15 One time he locked her out and I remember her just crying and telling me about it as if she didn't want me to tell our parents.

Speaker 7 When Dateline continues

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Speaker 37 23-year-old Kristen Grindley was inching her way back to health after a mysterious accident in the dead of night.

Speaker 71 But all her memories of that event had been wiped away by the serious brain injury she'd suffered.

Speaker 65 Richard Pasma, the young man with whom Kristen had once shared her heart, hadn't come to see her in the hospital.

Speaker 53 And now those close to Kristen wanted to know if the man Kristen had once called the love of her life had something to do with what was almost the end of her life.

Speaker 77 Like I had like a gut like I can't explain it. I don't know why.
Like just this gut feeling in my stomach that like something wasn't okay.

Speaker 25 Richard had become the center of Kristen's world almost from the moment they met at a popular campus bar.

Speaker 65 He was a tall, slim engineering student with an interest in politics and big ambitions for the future.

Speaker 87 For Kristen, his intensity sparked a powerful attraction.

Speaker 77 They started dating and we never saw her.

Speaker 22 Caitlin, Kristen's college roommate and best friend, says that as soon as the romance started, Kristen pulled away from everyone except Richard.

Speaker 77 None of our best friends that were there like every year through college, none of us really were friends with her because she never wanted to leave him.

Speaker 64 Retreating from the world to spend time with a new love isn't unusual, of course, but Kristen's friends say her boyfriend was unusually possessive.

Speaker 80 He was upset with pictures on her Facebook page page, and he sat her down and made her go through and delete pictures with her that had other men in the picture, other boys in the picture, because he didn't like that.

Speaker 18 In the fall of 2008, about six weeks into the relationship, Kristen's dad came to visit the new couple for dad's weekend.

Speaker 12 Friday night party, he didn't show up. The breakfast the next day didn't show up.
We kind of tracked him down before the football game and then he decided, well, I don't really want to go to the game.

Speaker 12 So

Speaker 12 he came across to me as a bit immature.

Speaker 49 Kristen's mom, Pat, says her daughter called home devastated.

Speaker 56 Crying on the phone, very upset that she didn't understand why he wouldn't want to meet

Speaker 56 her dad.

Speaker 56 And I said, it doesn't sound like he's the person for you.

Speaker 71 And she said, you're right or you don't understand him.

Speaker 56 I don't remember what she said, but

Speaker 81 I...

Speaker 56 just got the feeling that she liked him enough to continue.

Speaker 35 Part of being a parent is watching your kids grow up and watching them make choices that maybe you wouldn't have made.

Speaker 6 Absolutely.

Speaker 35 So you grit your teeth and say, okay, she's dating Richard.

Speaker 81 Right.

Speaker 41 But it may have been worse than Pat knew.

Speaker 21 Kristen started to confide alarming details of her relationship to her sister, Shannon.

Speaker 15 One time he locked her out of his house and she ended up having to walk all the way back to her apartment.

Speaker 15 And I remember her just calling me the next morning and just like crying and telling me about it as if she didn't want me to tell our parents.

Speaker 82 Shannon kept her sister's confidence and Kristen and Richard seemed to grow closer.

Speaker 14 In the spring of 2009, they moved in together to a small home just off campus.

Speaker 49 Around that same time, during a visit with the Grindley family, Pat says Richard once lost his temper.

Speaker 57 when she and Rick wouldn't let him drive after an afternoon of drinking.

Speaker 56 He pretty much blew up.

Speaker 56 There were four of us adults there, and my friends were just floored.

Speaker 55 Clearly, Kristen's family and friends had disliked and mistrusted her boyfriend from the start.

Speaker 75 Could that be the reason he hadn't come to visit her in the hospital?

Speaker 57 Or was there something more?

Speaker 31 Was it possible that Richard Pasma had something to do with the events of November 11, 2009?

Speaker 75 the night Kristen was found on Albion Road.

Speaker 37 That question fell to Sheriff Brett Myers.

Speaker 75 From that first night, the sheriff knew the first person he needed to talk with was Richard Basma.

Speaker 59 So you get to the house and you meet Richard Pazma?

Speaker 11 We did meet Richard Pazma.

Speaker 26 The sheriff's conversation with Kristen's boyfriend would start at the couple's home and continue in an interrogation room.

Speaker 70 Coming up.

Speaker 11 First impressions are big in law enforcement, and my first impressions were that

Speaker 11 he knew exactly what happened.

Speaker 7 The boyfriend's version of the events of that horrific night.

Speaker 35 Where did he say he was?

Speaker 11 He said he had been out on Albion Road.

Speaker 51 Albion Road, where Kristen was found. Right.

Speaker 7 But was he the one who left her there? When dateline continues.

Speaker 53 From the time Kristen opened her eyes and uttered her first word, her progress was astounding.

Speaker 54 Here she is just six weeks after she arrived at the hospital unconscious.

Speaker 38 She's smiling, moving,

Speaker 23 answering questions.

Speaker 11 What's today?

Speaker 49 Things most of us take for granted.

Speaker 42 But for Kristen Grindley, each felt like a little miracle.

Speaker 67 By now, Kristen was recuperating at St.

Speaker 18 Luke's, an inpatient rehabilitation facility.

Speaker 49 Videos posted on Facebook chronicled her progress.

Speaker 65 Kristen exercising, playing games to strengthen eye-hand coordination.

Speaker 20 Simple tasks, but with Kristen's injuries, they required grueling effort.

Speaker 43 Didn't great, honey.

Speaker 12 January just seemed like a cloud lifted off of her and all of a sudden she was started asking questions, why am I here?

Speaker 32 Now, when Kristen searched for the life she had lived, she had only shards of memories seen through a haze.

Speaker 37 She asked her family for reminders, seeking out treasured pieces of the past.

Speaker 21 They brought her dog, Coda, to St. Luke's for an enthusiastic reunion.

Speaker 29 There was one part of the past Kristen seemed much less excited about, her old boyfriend, Richard Pasma.

Speaker 20 The love Kristen had felt for him so strongly, now seemed to have vanished along with her memory.

Speaker 10 She said, yeah, I'm going to break up with that guy. I don't like that guy.

Speaker 56 I'm going going to break up with him. She kept saying, I need to break up with that dude.
Finally, I said, honey,

Speaker 56 who's are you talking about? And she said, Richard. I hate him.
I need to break up with him. That was the very first time that she even mentioned his name.

Speaker 65 But Richard Pazma's name had been at the center of the investigation by Whitman County Sheriff Brett Myers ever since the night of November 11th.

Speaker 71 Just a few hours after Kristen was found, the sheriff was in the doorway of the couple's home, sizing sizing up her live-in boyfriend.

Speaker 51 First impressions of Richard Pasmo.

Speaker 11 First impressions are big in law enforcement, and my first impressions were that

Speaker 11 he knew exactly what happened.

Speaker 47 He didn't say that he knew what happened.

Speaker 9 No, he didn't.

Speaker 21 In fact, Richard told the sheriff he'd been out searching for Kristen.

Speaker 27 He said he had no clue where she was.

Speaker 25 And so the sheriff broke the news.

Speaker 54 that Kristen had been airlifted to a hospital in critical condition.

Speaker 11 He was overly concerned about Kristen, but yet his emotions didn't really match the level of concern that he was presenting. It was almost like a really poor acting job.

Speaker 24 Not possible that this was just Richard's way of reacting to some bad news?

Speaker 11 That's always possible, but we knew we needed to speak with him.

Speaker 39 Sheriff Myers brought Richard back to the station for questioning.

Speaker 55 He says he smelled alcohol on Richard's breath.

Speaker 65 Richard acknowledged right off that he and Kristen had been arguing that day.

Speaker 11 They had kind of this argumentative relationship.

Speaker 24 Stormy.

Speaker 11 And yeah, it was stormy at times.

Speaker 21 That evening, Richard said they'd gone out separately.

Speaker 49 When he came back home, he said, Kristen started to fight again.

Speaker 22 So at 1.30 a.m., he got in his truck and left the house alone.

Speaker 11 He indicated he had reached over and locked the car and looked over his shoulder. And as he pulled away, he said she was in that doorway.

Speaker 25 Richard said he went out four-wheeling.

Speaker 53 driving fast on rural roads to blow off some steam.

Speaker 35 Where did he say he was?

Speaker 11 He said he had been out on Albion Road.

Speaker 51 Albion Road where Kristen was found. Right.

Speaker 71 Dashboard video from police cars in the area backed up that part of the story.

Speaker 13 And Richard told the sheriff something odd happened when he returned home after 2 a.m.

Speaker 46 Richard said he'd heard someone throwing around the recycling bins in his front yard, and he went downstairs, he says, to tell Kristen.

Speaker 71 He said it was only then that he realized she wasn't home. He woke her friend Caitlin, who was staying over that night, and the two of them went searching in vain for Kristen.

Speaker 27 Had vandals really been in the yard that night?

Speaker 71 The sheriff sent deputies back to Richard's house to check it out.

Speaker 11 Recycling bins did not appear to have been moved. Still covered with leaves, did not appear to have been moved.

Speaker 60 Why tell a story that can be so easily disproven?

Speaker 11 He's just trying to explain why it couldn't be him and why he, in the middle of the night, decided to start looking for Kristen.

Speaker 88 It was the first solid clue backing up the sheriff's hunch that Richard Pasma knew more than he was telling.

Speaker 75 An even bigger clue came from Kristen's friend Caitlin.

Speaker 19 She told sheriff's deputies that while she and Richard searched for Kristen that night, he told her over and over he was scared Kristen could have been in the bed of his truck.

Speaker 52 It was a very different story than the one he was telling the cops.

Speaker 11 An hour before we interview him, he's telling Caitlin that he's afraid she fell out of the back of the vehicle.

Speaker 52 And then when you interview him, he's saying there's no way she could have been in the vehicle.

Speaker 11 He doesn't even bring it up, absolutely, never even mentions that there's a possibility that she could have fallen out while he was four-wheeling.

Speaker 11 When we offered that up to him as a plausible explanation, he refuted it and said there's no way.

Speaker 79 After about 40 minutes of questioning, Richard asked to speak to a lawyer.

Speaker 18 The interview was over.

Speaker 23 But the criminal investigation was just beginning.

Speaker 21 That same night, the sheriff ran a routine check on Kristen Grindley's name on a police database.

Speaker 35 Anything interesting about Kristen's previous contacts with law enforcement?

Speaker 11 There was one contact that she had had with campus police. She had

Speaker 11 been the victim in a domestic violence situation.

Speaker 27 University police made an arrest in that case.

Speaker 46 Kristen's boyfriend, Richard Pazma.

Speaker 39 According to the April 2009 report, an officer in a university parking lot had heard a couple screaming at each other on a stairway.

Speaker 41 I saw Pasma strike Grindley with a fully extended right arm and open hand across her face, the officer wrote.

Speaker 54 Grindley recoiled in shock.

Speaker 27 I heard the sound of his hand hitting her face from approximately 20 feet.

Speaker 20 Kristen's mom hadn't known a thing about that incident, but looking back, She says it confirmed suspicions she'd had all along.

Speaker 21 Suspicions she had asked Kristen about in the months before she was injured.

Speaker 56 I came right and asked her numerous times, does he hit you?

Speaker 35 And she would say, No.

Speaker 5 And you believed her? Um, no.

Speaker 5 I

Speaker 56 just had a feeling.

Speaker 21 For Sheriff Myers, the report that Richard had been arrested for slapping Kristen was a jarring discovery, but it didn't prove a thing.

Speaker 11 Just because someone's been arrested for domestic violence prior doesn't necessarily mean that they're guilty of a heinous crime.

Speaker 24 Had Richard committed a heinous crime on the night of November 11, 2009?

Speaker 27 Or was there some other explanation for how Kristen ended up unconscious on Albion Road?

Speaker 18 And without her memories to add to the case, would the sheriff be able to piece together the answers?

Speaker 23 and find justice for Kristen.

Speaker 7 Coming up, a dramatically different theory about what happened that night.

Speaker 36 Unfortunately, the person that caused Kristen Grinley's injuries was Kristen Grinley.

Speaker 7 When dateline continues.

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Speaker 32 Two and a half months after Kristen Grindley was found clinging to life on Albion Road, she finally moved out of a medical facility and back to her parents' house in Woodenville, Washington.

Speaker 89 Oh my gosh.

Speaker 38 Having her home was of course a blessing, but Kristen's parents wouldn't rest easy until someone was held accountable for her injuries.

Speaker 21 To the Grindley family, everything pointed to Richard Pasma, their old suspicions about his behavior during the romance,

Speaker 49 the domestic violence arrest back in April 2009,

Speaker 21 and his evasive answers in that interview with the sheriff the night Kristen was hurt.

Speaker 56 Oh my god, what did he do to her?

Speaker 35 What did he do to her?

Speaker 35 Couldn't have been an accident.

Speaker 74 Never.

Speaker 27 The Grindleys suspected Richard had thrown Kristen from his pickup truck or even injured her elsewhere and then dumped her on Albion Road.

Speaker 65 They waited anxiously for the results of the sheriff's investigation, hoping for a a charge they considered tough enough.

Speaker 24 What would be enough?

Speaker 74 Attempted murder.

Speaker 53 But Tim Esser, the prominent local attorney Richard hired the night he was first questioned, says there was no reason to charge his client with anything.

Speaker 71 And you might be surprised where he does place the blame.

Speaker 36 Unfortunately, the person that caused Kristen Grinley's injuries was Christian Grinley.

Speaker 37 To understand what happened the night of November 11, 2009, Esser says you need to know a side of this couple that you haven't heard from Kristen's friends and family.

Speaker 83 Do you think Richard loves Kristen?

Speaker 69 I kind of think he does.

Speaker 71 He says it wasn't by choice that Richard stayed away from his injured girlfriend's bedside.

Speaker 36 He wanted to contact her. The sheriff told him not to.
His parents contacted

Speaker 69 them and Mr.

Speaker 36 Grinley told him, don't ever contact us again.

Speaker 28 Esser says the claims Richard was controlling, even violent, are way off base.

Speaker 21 He says Kristen was the one who couldn't walk away from a fight.

Speaker 28 And Sheriff Myers says some of the couple's friends said the same thing.

Speaker 11 As if you'd interview friends on one side, of course, the friends would say that

Speaker 11 the other one in the relationship was difficult and liked to fight and would be jealous and accusatory.

Speaker 41 His friends said that about her and

Speaker 52 her friends said that about him. Exactly.

Speaker 51 But what about that April 2009 incident when a police officer in the campus parking lot saw Richard slap Kristen on the face hard?

Speaker 29 Esser says there's another side to that story too.

Speaker 36 An arrest is different than a charge. That arrest never led to a charge.

Speaker 21 In fact, it was Kristen who asked to have the charges dropped, saying she had started the fight.

Speaker 60 Kristen blamed herself and said she actually hit Richard first.

Speaker 17 Absolutely.

Speaker 52 And so what? Therefore, it's okay to hit for him to hit her back?

Speaker 57 No, No, I'm not saying it's.

Speaker 76 Of course it's not okay to slap someone back.

Speaker 36 But it's presented that there's an abusive relationship and he's the abuser. I don't think that's accurate.

Speaker 49 As for the events of November 11th, Esser says again it was Kristen who provoked a conflict.

Speaker 21 He says she was being unreasonable that day, objecting to Richard's father coming to stay with them, even though he owned the house they were living in.

Speaker 28 After the couple parted around noon, Esser says Kristen wouldn't let it drop.

Speaker 36 From about 12 noon until about 1 a.m. the next morning, 12, 13 hour period, she made,

Speaker 36 I think something like 113 phone calls.

Speaker 35 She called Richard 113 times?

Speaker 36 Yeah.

Speaker 52 Characterize

Speaker 52 somebody who calls their boyfriend 113 times in one day.

Speaker 76 How would you characterize it?

Speaker 52 I'm not the attorney in this case.

Speaker 36 I think it's pretty obvious.

Speaker 24 It sounds frantic.

Speaker 21 It sounds immature.

Speaker 69 It sounds like the kind of thing kids do.

Speaker 60 It also, I guess, could sound

Speaker 60 obsessive.

Speaker 36 I wouldn't disagree with that.

Speaker 49 Esser's focus on Kristen's behavior isn't, he says, meant as character assassination.

Speaker 16 It's at the heart of his theory of what caused her injuries.

Speaker 24 She was so obsessive, Esser says, that when Richard came home late at night, she started the argument for a third time.

Speaker 65 So obsessive that when he tried to go for a drive in his pickup, she sneaked into the back without him knowing it.

Speaker 76 She somehow managed to climb in the back of that pickup, the bed, and somehow managed to fall out.

Speaker 57 She must have fallen out, Esser says, while Richard was coasting along Albion Road, still not realizing she was in the truck.

Speaker 21 He says perhaps she fell because she tried to stand and was unsteady on her feet.

Speaker 22 Kristen's blood alcohol level, tested when she arrived at the hospital, showed she had been drinking that evening.

Speaker 29 Her family says that played no role in her injury.

Speaker 51 Esser says it did play a role.

Speaker 21 The attorney acknowledges his version of what happened that night is unusual. We're trying to show that something happened that is pretty bizarre.

Speaker 83 And to support that, Esser had a powerful piece of evidence, a letter Kristen wrote to Richard shortly shortly before she was hurt.

Speaker 32 I know I have a problem, Kristen wrote.

Speaker 67 I need to control my alcohol consumption, and I need to learn to walk away from a fight.

Speaker 5 She promises to fix a list of things, her drinking, her temper, yelling, and fighting.

Speaker 76 We thought it was pretty significant.

Speaker 49 Even more significant, Esser says, is the lack of physical evidence against his client.

Speaker 54 The sheriff and his team had spent months combing through Richard's truck, the house he shared with Kristen, and the scene on Albion Road.

Speaker 55 But they'd come up with no blood spatters, no marks on her clothing, nothing at all to show that Kristen had been in the back of the truck that night, or that Richard had hurt Kristen in any way.

Speaker 36 There's no evidence that he caused the occurrence.

Speaker 52 No evidence that he caused her to fall from the truck or that he threw her out of the truck or that he did anything overtly to her at all.

Speaker 76 Correct.

Speaker 55 Despite all that, Sheriff Brett Myers wasn't calling off his investigation of Richard Pasma.

Speaker 37 A few months after Kristen returned home, Myers told her family he was prepared to bring charges against Kristen's former boyfriend.

Speaker 70 Coming up.

Speaker 7 But what could those charges be? And what does Kristen herself say about that night when Dateline continues?

Speaker 53 While Rick and Pat Grindley waited to see whether Richard Pasma would stand trial for playing a role in their daughter's severe injuries, Kristen was facing daily trials of her own.

Speaker 72 Have you been doing some cooking at home?

Speaker 58 I know that's been a goal of yours.

Speaker 81 I've just been helping.

Speaker 49 Relearning the everyday tasks that can overwhelm someone with brain damage.

Speaker 57 At that time, Kristen didn't have the cognitive skills to drive or hold down a job, and her emotions were sometimes muted.

Speaker 12 It's just so great to have Kristen healthy and back with us.

Speaker 30 But in July 2010, eight months after the accident, she and her parents felt Kristen was well enough to sit down with me and talk about what she did and didn't remember.

Speaker 39 How are you?

Speaker 5 I'm doing great.

Speaker 81 I'm doing good.

Speaker 53 Kristen was alert and engaged, though there were clearly pieces of her past she couldn't recall.

Speaker 35 What's the first thing you remember after the night of November 11th of last year?

Speaker 74 I remember like waking up and I was talking to my dad about like where I was and what I was doing.

Speaker 35 Is this like a movie? When you wake up and say, where am I or what happened?

Speaker 56 The first thing I asked him was,

Speaker 74 I believe, like, where am I? You know, like, why am I here?

Speaker 13 All that time later, Kristen could only remember fragments of her life in the weeks and months leading up to November 11th, 2009.

Speaker 74 And I kept thinking I didn't graduate.

Speaker 56 And I kept telling telling my parents I have to go back to school to complete it, and they're like, no, you graduated.

Speaker 63 I was like, how did I forget that?

Speaker 21 Some of Kristen's memories of her year-long relationship with Richard Pasma were fuzzy, too.

Speaker 35 What did you like about him?

Speaker 5 I actually can't remember that really.

Speaker 26 Kristen said she did remember Richard hitting her.

Speaker 38 in that school parking lot in April 2009.

Speaker 57 But what about Richard's claim, which she backed up at the time, that she hit him first?

Speaker 35 You still think that's true, what you told the police at the time, that

Speaker 52 Richard hit you because you had hit him?

Speaker 74 Like, I do think that happened and I don't think that happened, but I think we were arguing. So I think that's kind of like what led to the slop.

Speaker 24 As for November 11th, 2009, the night that left a hole in Kristen Grindley's life, she told me she couldn't remember a thing.

Speaker 5 You want to remember what happened that night.

Speaker 35 I do.

Speaker 69 Even though it might end up being a pretty unpleasant memory.

Speaker 74 Yeah, I mean, it would stink, but

Speaker 74 I would like just so I can like

Speaker 74 remember. I mean, just to remember it, I think, would

Speaker 56 just to know, yeah.

Speaker 13 By now, Sheriff Myers had spent months on his investigation.

Speaker 27 But with Kristen's memory of the event gone, seemingly forever, and with no physical evidence to show Richard had hurt her, the sheriff had reached a dead end.

Speaker 55 However, as he reviewed his files, the sheriff kept coming back to Richard's two inconsistent stories.

Speaker 55 His puzzling statement to Kristen's friend Caitlin that just maybe Kristen had climbed into the back of his pickup without him realizing it.

Speaker 49 And his claim to the sheriff that he'd watched Kristen standing in the doorway as he pulled away.

Speaker 52 So for Richard's stories to both be true, he would have had to be able to look at her, see her in the doorway.

Speaker 52 Then the minute he looks away, she runs forward and secretly hides in the bed of his truck.

Speaker 11 Somehow, she's got to be able to jump in the back of that truck, crouch down without being detected. Just doesn't fit.

Speaker 35 She'd have to know how to fly.

Speaker 11 She pretty much would have to, yeah.

Speaker 31 The sheriff and his team studied that truck and Richard's story from every angle.

Speaker 34 They concluded that Kristen must have been in the truck that night, that Richard knew she was there, and that he knew she hit the pavement with his truck cruising at high speed.

Speaker 33 They were convinced he left her lying there, hovering near death, without so much as tapping his finger three times to call 911.

Speaker 27 Maybe Richard fled the scene because he'd somehow pushed her from the truck, or maybe he was driving drunk when she tumbled out of the back and he feared a blood alcohol test.

Speaker 27 Investigators and prosecutors weren't sure exactly how their victim had been hurt, but they didn't need a definitive answer to make their their next move.

Speaker 90 Criminal charges have been filed in the case of a WSU graduate injured and left for dead last year.

Speaker 64 In the summer of 2010, after an eight-month investigation, Richard Pasma was booked, fingerprinted, and charged with a felony.

Speaker 65 It was a very long way from the attempted murder charge once contemplated by Kristen's family.

Speaker 50 Richard stood accused of leaving the scene of an injury accident, punishable by up to five years in prison.

Speaker 60 What did you think when Richard was charged?

Speaker 56 I started crying, and I thought that the charges weren't enough.

Speaker 24 Still, the Grindlies hoped that during a trial, they might learn more details of what happened to their daughter.

Speaker 79 But that's not how things unfolded.

Speaker 57 Just 10 days before the trial date, Richard Pasma came into the courtroom not to face a jury of his peers, but to enter a plea.

Speaker 65 In Washington state, it's called an Alford plea.

Speaker 13 And under that agreement, Richard did not admit wrongdoing.

Speaker 49 In fact, he once again maintains that as far as he knew, Kristen was never in his truck that night.

Speaker 49 But he acknowledged there was sufficient evidence for a jury to find him guilty of knowing Kristen was injured and not calling for help.

Speaker 90 She was not conscious at the time.

Speaker 90 She was bleeding from her head and other injuries.

Speaker 32 As part of their plea deal, the prosecution dropped their request for the exceptional sentence of five years.

Speaker 49 The sentencing hearing in November 2010 was the first time Kristen Grindley and Richard Pasma were in the same room since the night a year earlier when their romance came to an abrupt, terrifying, and violent end.

Speaker 91 I hope someday Richard confronts what he did to me and gets helped. Until he admits that he has to change to get his anger under control.

Speaker 89 I fear that he will hurt others like he did to me.

Speaker 49 Richard Pazma was the last to speak at sentencing.

Speaker 27 He had never talked publicly about the case, and he declined Dateline's request for an interview.

Speaker 27 Because he was taking the Alford plea, essentially pleading no contest rather than guilty, he didn't take responsibility for what happened on Albion Road.

Speaker 13 And if the Grindleys had been hoping to hear words of remorse, they were disappointed.

Speaker 89 I know you guys think that I'm not sorry, but I'm sorry for all of your

Speaker 89 troubles in the last year, you know, and

Speaker 90 I wish this never would have happened.

Speaker 89 I hope that just after today we can all just move on and move in a positive light and

Speaker 89 have it all just go away. Your honor, thank you.

Speaker 13 Richard was sentenced to nine months in jail.

Speaker 83 Kristen Grindley will likely be dealing with the injuries she suffered on November 11th, 2009.

Speaker 50 for the rest of her life.

Speaker 83 But she keeps her focus on the good things ahead.

Speaker 34 You think of yourself as lucky?

Speaker 35 Because you're here.

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 5 I'm just very happy that I'm okay.

Speaker 3 That's all for now. I'm Lester Holt.

Speaker 7 Thanks for joining us.

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