Infatuation

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Speaker 5 It's like a scene out of a movie. There was tape, there were cops with dogs searching all around the crime scene.
I just ran towards the cops and started yelling, Shelly, Shelly.

Speaker 6 A young art student murdered.

Speaker 3 She said, your daughter's been found in in blood.

Speaker 8 And then the phone went dead.

Speaker 9 This was brutal and this was savage.

Speaker 11 A clever killer leaves a blank canvas.

Speaker 14 You had no fingerprints.

Speaker 15 You had no DNA. Yeah.

Speaker 9 Police zero in on three fellow students.

Speaker 17 The dead girl's friend.

Speaker 3 Trying to corner her in the hallways at school, texting her on the phone. She's like, he's really weirding me out.

Speaker 14 Her boyfriend.

Speaker 18 He had daggers, knives, swords.

Speaker 19 Who collects that kind of stuff?

Speaker 14 And her roommate. Something like a lover would do.

Speaker 20 A sperm. Absolutely.

Speaker 14 And she could well have been that sperm.

Speaker 19 She sure could have.

Speaker 22 Soon, a dark picture begins to develop.

Speaker 23 That's why this whole thing happened.

Speaker 19 A portrait of the artist as a young killer.

Speaker 3 You know, there's evil in there.

Speaker 7 Once there was a quiet little girl in a quiet little town who liked to draw.

Speaker 27 She drew the butterflies that floated, quiet like her, around Itley, Texas.

Speaker 29 Spelled just like the country, but they pronounce it Itley.

Speaker 3 She drew a butterfly in her art class when she was in elementary school.

Speaker 8 And all the little girls are like, oh, that's so good, draw me one, draw me one.

Speaker 30 Her name was Samantha Michelle Nance, but everybody called her Shelly.

Speaker 33 And her mother, Cynthia, loves to tell this story about her.

Speaker 3 Everybody was just so impressed with her butterfly that she said, well, I think I'm going to be an artist because I think I can do this, you know. So she just started honing her artistic talent.

Speaker 3 From that point, she would draw everything, anything, everything.

Speaker 3 She just loved to draw and she'd draw and draw and draw.

Speaker 34 Shelly was different from the other girls at school and at home, said her dad, Sam.

Speaker 38 The other two girls we couldn't keep in the house. She didn't want to go out of the house.
She was perfectly happy to be at home on the weekends, staying alone time by herself.

Speaker 11 Which, as you can imagine, did not make her very popular in the intensely social world of growing up.

Speaker 42 But it didn't seem to matter much to Shelley.

Speaker 14 What was it she said in the yearbook?

Speaker 3 Oh, they had them write a little epilogue for the seniors, all the seniors. And she wrote, you laugh at me because I'm different.
I laugh at you because you're all the same.

Speaker 44 She wasn't like you two.

Speaker 8 No.

Speaker 45 She was totally opposite.

Speaker 46 These are her sisters, Sean and Ants and Rachel David.

Speaker 45 Yeah, I was the wild child.

Speaker 3 She got in the job.

Speaker 13 Shelly, however, did not raise hell.

Speaker 7 Not ever.

Speaker 3 She was very artistic, smart.

Speaker 10 non-athletic.

Speaker 3 Did not like athletics. That was more me and her department.

Speaker 8 Yeah.

Speaker 3 Just very shy.

Speaker 5 She was one that would sit in her room, read a book, play video game.

Speaker 47 Never had to worry about her.

Speaker 3 She wasn't into like tattoos and piercing and alcohol and sex for sure. She avoided majority of everything that could have got her into trouble.
And I was so happy because of that.

Speaker 50 Then when Shelley was a senior in the Itley High School, her teacher suggested she enter an art contest sponsored by the Art Institute of of Dallas.

Speaker 3 And she's like, well, you know, I'm not that good. And the art teacher said, no, I think you are, Shelly.

Speaker 26 And she won.

Speaker 3 That same piece of art they took and put in the national competition.

Speaker 3 And it won her fourth place there. So she got a total of $13,000 to a scholarship toward the Art Institute of Dallas.

Speaker 10 That's quite remarkable. So she,

Speaker 46 this is a major talent.

Speaker 13 Yes.

Speaker 3 And she was so excited about getting getting to go.

Speaker 22 The Art Institute of Dallas is an urban school.

Speaker 26 Everything about it and around it, as different as can be from little Italy, 45 miles and a whole world away.

Speaker 16 But here finally was a world in which Shelley felt like she belonged.

Speaker 3 Just being around people that had her same objectives and

Speaker 3 their same mindsets. And a lot of the boys which have never really paid much attention to her in high school noticed her in college because she knew her stuff.

Speaker 3 So they were quite impressed that she was so knowledgeable in her field already.

Speaker 8 So I caught a lot of their eyes.

Speaker 14 Well, maybe they were each other's kind of people.

Speaker 8 Yeah.

Speaker 8 Yeah.

Speaker 40 They worried about her, of course.

Speaker 54 This was the first time Shelly had ever been away from home.

Speaker 38 This is what she wanted to do.

Speaker 38 And she wasn't homesick.

Speaker 8 And

Speaker 39 I said, okay.

Speaker 32 It was only an hour's drive away if she needed them.

Speaker 49 Her first year was just fine.

Speaker 11 And so in September 2009, when Shell was into year two with a circle of friends, even a boyfriend, her parents felt free to set off on their first real adventure alone, far from home, just the two of them, a road trip to Yellowstone National Park, more than 1,400 miles up the interstate from Italy.

Speaker 38 Cynthia was texting out on her phone, you know, we're leaving Texas now,

Speaker 38 and she sent it to each one of the girls. Rachel and Shauna responded almost immediately.

Speaker 38 No word from Shelly.

Speaker 38 We thought, well, she's probably still asleep, you know, because she didn't have class today, so that wasn't really unusual at the time.

Speaker 38 It wasn't until later in the evening that we thought something might be wrong, because we hadn't heard from her, and that wasn't like her at all.

Speaker 47 What's that like? It's torture.

Speaker 38 She had a premonition that something was wrong, but I...

Speaker 38 What would happen to Shelly? She never goes anywhere. She stays in her room.
She only goes out when she has to.

Speaker 38 So the next morning when she still hadn't called,

Speaker 38 that's when we both got worried.

Speaker 48 The first thing the next morning, Cynthia called the Art Institute.

Speaker 38 To find out if Shelly was in class. And actually, they, well,

Speaker 38 they wouldn't go check on her.

Speaker 38 They said they can't leave the office alone and go check on a class. They'll have her call us when she gets a break.

Speaker 8 As soon as she has a break, they'll have her call us.

Speaker 30 Then they phoned Shelly's sister, Shauna.

Speaker 5 I told her early, I was like, stop worrying about it. She's 20 years old.
She doesn't want to talk to your mom.

Speaker 5 You know, I really didn't think anything bad would ever happen to her, so I just kind of brushed it off.

Speaker 55 So they kept driving.

Speaker 46 By now, they were almost a thousand miles from Dallas.

Speaker 22 That's when the school called back.

Speaker 38 When they finally sent somebody to the classroom and she wasn't there, well, I was ready to turn around right there because I knew something was wrong.

Speaker 42 Then relief.

Speaker 49 Someone from the school ran into Shelly's roommate, Ashley Olvera.

Speaker 38 But she said, I just saw her last night at the room. She was fine.

Speaker 11 But relief didn't last.

Speaker 38 When Ashley went home, she found her.

Speaker 33 And she wasn't all right.

Speaker 60 No, she was not.

Speaker 60 The school called Shelly's parents yet again.

Speaker 3 We're on the highway about 200 miles from our destination in the mountains, and phone reception was really bad.

Speaker 41 So, through the static, she couldn't tell.

Speaker 34 Was she hearing or imagining the words?

Speaker 3 And she said, your daughter's been found in blood.

Speaker 8 And then the phone went dead. And I'd lost reception at that point.

Speaker 10 Daughters were found in blood.

Speaker 8 Yeah, Yeah, I was asking him, what does that mean? But I knew what it meant.

Speaker 38 I just didn't want to accept it.

Speaker 38 The only thing that made sense was a sexual assault. That's all I could think of, because she didn't have any money.
She didn't have any enemies that we knew of.

Speaker 47 But what is that like?

Speaker 8 Driving through the mountains so far away and you get that call.

Speaker 8 Panic.

Speaker 8 I wanted him to stop the truck. We were in the middle of the freeway.

Speaker 3 There was no place to cross.

Speaker 8 I wanted him to cut across the medium and go back. We needed to get back.
Not that we could do anything, but we should have been there.

Speaker 8 We should have been there.

Speaker 38 It kind of feels like your guts were kicked out from the inside.

Speaker 38 That's about the best description I can. It hurts your whole soul.

Speaker 62 As they raced back toward Texas, Cynthia's cell service finally cleared.

Speaker 64 She called the police and got the confirmation.

Speaker 42 Shelly was dead.

Speaker 14 So again, she phoned Shauna.

Speaker 8 I had to tell her her little sister was dead

Speaker 8 on the phone.

Speaker 4 I needed somebody to be there, to be me in my place,

Speaker 4 to be, you know, there if the police needed to ask questions and stuff. Somebody needed to be there, so I called her.

Speaker 8 And of course, I hated to devastate her that way over the phone but she had to know

Speaker 5 and I just hit the floor

Speaker 5 I couldn't stand up couldn't do anything couldn't talk just

Speaker 14 shocked did you have any idea what happened none

Speaker 5 I got to the scene first because um I live closest to her It's like a scene out of a movie.

Speaker 5 There was tape that had everything taped off. There were cops with dogs, and they were searching the garbage can.
They had cops on golf carts, and they were just searching all around the crime scene.

Speaker 5 I just ran towards the cops and started yelling, Shelly, Shelly.

Speaker 14 They wouldn't let her in, of course, but they had questions.

Speaker 5 Well, they just wanted to know, like,

Speaker 5 if I knew her boyfriend and if I knew her roommate, and who could have done something like this to her.

Speaker 14 Meanwhile, you're flying down the highway as fast as you can go.

Speaker 8 Yeah.

Speaker 8 We were trying to get back.

Speaker 38 We were still trying to put it together in our minds what happened, who took our little girl from us.

Speaker 38 And at that time, you're so tore up that

Speaker 38 you don't know what to do.

Speaker 11 What happened to this talented, modest, innocent young woman would be all too obvious very soon.

Speaker 36 But as for who did it and why,

Speaker 19 for the case to have the twist and turns that this one did was

Speaker 19 something that

Speaker 19 I wouldn't have dreamed in 100 years.

Speaker 29 And I'm seasoned.

Speaker 14 I've seen a lot of things, no kidding, but not like this.

Speaker 55 One thing the detective would see right there at the crime scene gave him the first inkling of who the killer might be.

Speaker 19 I started thinking, personal, this is probably going to be somebody that she knew.

Speaker 8 And then, could the smallest of clues lead to the biggest of breaks?

Speaker 19 A little bitty tiny sliver of plastic about this long.

Speaker 38 She just never got in any trouble at all.

Speaker 38 So that's what makes this so much harder. Because nothing like this should have ever happened to her, you know.
Especially to her. Especially to her.

Speaker 62 What was done to Shelly Nance, just 20 years old, was viciously ugly.

Speaker 12 That it was murder was all too obvious.

Speaker 11 The girl had been attacked as she lay, probably asleep in bed.

Speaker 48 Her killers stabbed her again and again

Speaker 67 and again.

Speaker 19 Over 40 times.

Speaker 18 In the back.

Speaker 19 She was stabbed in her back. She was stabbed in her neck, behind her head.

Speaker 29 I mean, this was brutal and this was savage.

Speaker 40 Overkilled, said Detective Paul Elzi.

Speaker 11 As will be clearly apparent, Detective Elzey has deep roots in old-fashioned police work, starting as a kid.

Speaker 49 Spanned 36 years with the Dallas P.D.

Speaker 8 Dad was a cop, wife and sisters, too, worked law enforcement.

Speaker 50 That's over now.

Speaker 55 He retired from the force.

Speaker 29 But he cannot get over the sight that greeted him in Shelly Nance's bedroom.

Speaker 19 This was tragic. This was horrific.

Speaker 28 That sight sticks with you.

Speaker 8 Yes.

Speaker 10 Very much so.

Speaker 48 Murder, as Detective Elsie knew from long experience, takes something from the investigators, too.

Speaker 46 Makes them hard sometimes.

Speaker 6 But when he learned about the victim, about her decent family, her quiet, modest life, her innocence, the murder of Shelly Nance hit him personally.

Speaker 19 I mean, that was doing nothing wrong. She was not in the wrong place at the wrong time.
She was not associating with somebody that she shouldn't have been associated with.

Speaker 19 The stars lined up just right that somebody an animal decided to take her life sounds like it got to you this one

Speaker 47 well

Speaker 19 you know i've got two daughters

Speaker 29 and uh

Speaker 47 yeah

Speaker 8 it's it's hard

Speaker 22 shelley died here in the falls a large housing complex where the art institute arranged for some of its students to live seemed like a perfectly reasonable place looked quite safe when we stopped by to take some pictures one sunny afternoon.

Speaker 8 But

Speaker 19 I wouldn't let my daughter live there.

Speaker 19 Absolutely not.

Speaker 58 Dallas, like any big American city, suffers from its share of crime.

Speaker 66 And the falls?

Speaker 19 You go there during the daytime, it looks very nice, but at nighttime, totally different story.

Speaker 10 Innocent 20-year-old girl out on the street in that neighborhood at night, you'd worry about her.

Speaker 19 No way would I let my daughter walk that neighborhood at night.

Speaker 47 No way.

Speaker 19 The Nances didn't know any better.

Speaker 11 Little Italy, after all, presents few of the issues a person can encounter in the middle of a place like Dallas.

Speaker 22 Anyway, on that September day, when Detective Elzey arrived at the falls, he had no idea what sort of scene would confront him there.

Speaker 41 All he knew was that a female had been murdered.

Speaker 19 I'm ready to go different directions and I have to make some assessments. When I walk in that door and I make a left-hand turn and I see that girl there,

Speaker 19 then I can eliminate things relatively quickly. She still had her panties on, which generally means no sexual assault.
Exactly right. It relieves the sexual assault part of it.

Speaker 19 She has a t-shirt on. So I'm not thinking that it's a rape.
I'm not thinking that.

Speaker 19 And when I see the stab wounds in the back, then I start thinking personal, this is probably going to be somebody that she knew. I checked the windows, I checked the door.

Speaker 19 You want to look look for forced entry?

Speaker 47 I didn't see evidence of that.

Speaker 26 So, somebody she knew.

Speaker 62 And from the looks of it, the wild, repeated, ferocious stabbing, somebody consumed by an uncontrollable rage.

Speaker 32 But aside from all the blood, they found no useful fingerprints and eventually no DNA to help them either.

Speaker 67 Whoever did this had managed to erase any sign of who he or she was.

Speaker 10 Except there was one tiny tiny bit of, well, was it evidence or what was it?

Speaker 54 They found it under Shelley's left wrist.

Speaker 19 A little bitty, tiny sliver

Speaker 19 of

Speaker 19 plastic about this long

Speaker 19 and probably a quarter of an inch in width. Hmm.
Any idea what it was when you found it?

Speaker 29 It wasn't confirmed until

Speaker 19 after the completion of the autopsy of what the material actually was,

Speaker 19 it was latex.

Speaker 33 A latex kind of material that pathologists would be rather familiar with doing his autopsies.

Speaker 36 It appeared to be a fragment of a disposable glove.

Speaker 11 Of course, they tested it to be sure it did not come from the medical examiner or any of the officers of the crime scene, and it did not.

Speaker 13 Must have been left by the otherwise careful killer.

Speaker 22 But who would want to hurt her?

Speaker 42 And so horribly.

Speaker 66 The first person Detective Elsie talked to was Shelly's roommate, Ashley Olvera, who found Shelley dead in her own bed.

Speaker 46 That's how Ashley became possible suspect, number one.

Speaker 19 She wasn't sexually assaulted, Shelly. That was my initial opinion.
It was later confirmed.

Speaker 19 Why couldn't a woman do this?

Speaker 29 Sure. It's her roommate.

Speaker 19 And there's a lot of things happen between roommates that we don't know about. So it very well could have been.

Speaker 29 Sure.

Speaker 37 What happened, if anything, between these roommates was something Detective Elzey was determined to find out,

Speaker 50 even if he had to get rough

Speaker 35 right away, he'd become convinced that something just wasn't right between those two girls.

Speaker 19 What else can you say? It's weird, it's not natural, it's not normal.

Speaker 5 I kept thinking I was asleep. It was a really bad dream.
And this wasn't really happening.

Speaker 5 I couldn't imagine anything like that ever happening.

Speaker 3 Definitely a shock.

Speaker 16 The first stage was denial.

Speaker 17 That Shelly Nance, their innocent wisp of a sister, had been murdered, was almost beyond comprehending.

Speaker 50 But maybe worse, quite possibly, they weren't going to know who did it.

Speaker 58 The first and most obvious mystery jumped right out of the experienced eyes that cased her bloody bedroom.

Speaker 42 Shelley had been dead a while.

Speaker 19 We could tell by looking at her that she had not been there longer than 24 hours.

Speaker 43 But this was curious.

Speaker 64 Her roommate was in the apartment for much of that 24-hour period and claimed she saw and heard nothing amiss.

Speaker 56 Like Shelley, roommate Ashley Olvera was also 20 years old and from a tiny town, Taft, Texas, not far from Corpus Christi on the other side of the state.

Speaker 16 Her interest at the Art Institute was animation.

Speaker 42 She was shy, like Shelley, but more willing to be social.

Speaker 20 They took her in for questioning.

Speaker 19 What sort of state was she in?

Speaker 19 You know, she was upset.

Speaker 29 She was crying,

Speaker 19 but it was...

Speaker 47 It wasn't anything...

Speaker 19 I don't know. I don't think that I would have had the same reaction had my roommate roommate met that kind of death.
It's a little less of a reaction than you might.

Speaker 19 More of like maybe her puppy got run over than her roommate got killed.

Speaker 48 Detective Elzi, highly tuned to the subtle reactions of his interviewees, was still seeing in his head the image of that intensely personal murder scene. Could Ashley have been so full of rage?

Speaker 14 One of the things that can make a roommate situation between two girls

Speaker 14 deadly is if there is a romantic attachment.

Speaker 47 Did you go down that path with her?

Speaker 19 No, I went down two directions. I went down the part that maybe they were seeing the same guy.

Speaker 8 Also,

Speaker 19 because you have to explore the fact that maybe they were romantically involved, Shelly and Ashley, because the degree of injury that that poor girl suffered, as I stated, is personal, which is a lot of ventures rage.

Speaker 29 Something like a lover would do a spring.

Speaker 47 Absolutely.

Speaker 10 Yes, sir.

Speaker 14 That's correct. And she could well have been that spring.

Speaker 29 Oh, yes.

Speaker 19 Yes, she sure could have, without a doubt.

Speaker 50 Ashley told the detective she discovered the murder after the school sent her home to check on Shelly.

Speaker 69 She said she knocked on Shelly's closed bedroom door, got no response, and then entered the room.

Speaker 70 I saw her feet, and she wasn't moving. So I turned on the lights and I said, hey, Shelly, are you okay? She wasn't moving.

Speaker 70 So I went

Speaker 70 and I shook her in her bed. Was she covered up? Originally the blanket was on her.
You shake her, put a blanket over her. Yes, sir.
She don't move, she don't wake up.

Speaker 70 You pull the cover off of her, shake her again. I saw the blood, and

Speaker 70 I touched her arm, and she was cold.

Speaker 70 As soon as you seen that, what happened?

Speaker 70 I yelled her name I don't know how many times.

Speaker 68 Ashley told the detective it was all just an innocent mistake when she told the Art Institute she had seen Shelly alive and well the night before.

Speaker 31 When in fact Shelly was dead by then.

Speaker 52 Which didn't make sense to Detective Elsie any more than did the next thing Ashley said, that it was not unusual for several days to go by without seeing Shelly at all.

Speaker 19 She said that Shelly was a very private person, that she just would put her headphones on, go into her own world, close her bedroom door, and start drawing.

Speaker 29 And close the door from the bathroom? Is that what? Is that what?

Speaker 19 She had had two doors. Shelly did.
One that would allow entry into the living room, to her bedroom, and then one from her bedroom to the bathroom. To the bathroom.
Correct. And

Speaker 14 Ashley claimed that door was closed.

Speaker 8 Yes.

Speaker 29 You wouldn't buy that.

Speaker 47 No.

Speaker 14 Your first reaction when she said that she hadn't checked on her, hadn't seen her, she lived a bathroom away from this girl.

Speaker 19 What else can you say? It's weird. It's not natural.
It's not normal. You know,

Speaker 19 if I have a roommate in such a small apartment, if I don't see him, I'm definitely going to hear him. I'm certainly going to communicate to him.

Speaker 19 And with two girls, you would think that bathroom would be tied up all the time.

Speaker 28 Did you suggest that the possibility existed that these two girls didn't like each other?

Speaker 29 And sometimes girls can be pretty...

Speaker 19 You know,

Speaker 19 Ashley told me that they didn't have arguments, but they had disagreements.

Speaker 14 And I asked her what she meant by disagreement.

Speaker 19 And she said, well, just girl stuff, you know.

Speaker 19 Not fights, not, you know,

Speaker 19 we didn't hate each other. It's just like we kind of live two different worlds.

Speaker 19 Strange. Hard to know whether to buy that or not.

Speaker 29 Exactly.

Speaker 19 Many, many twists and turns.

Speaker 22 Something else.

Speaker 51 Something potentially huge.

Speaker 11 Police found spots of blood in the bathroom the girls shared.

Speaker 26 A bathroom Ashley used after Shelly was murdered.

Speaker 55 So did she just not see the blood?

Speaker 27 Or did she leave it there herself?

Speaker 16 As you'll you'll hear, Detective Elzi used an old-fashioned strategy.

Speaker 42 He exaggerated the evidence.

Speaker 20 Another way of saying he didn't exactly tell the truth.

Speaker 24 In an effort to get Ashley to cough up the truth herself.

Speaker 19 And you got to dig in people sometimes to really see where they're coming.

Speaker 14 Sometimes you can throw them off stride and it puts them off their story.

Speaker 19 Absolutely.

Speaker 70 I don't see how you can miss that big blood right here on the sink.

Speaker 70 I don't see how you can miss that. I don't see how you can miss this big deal of blood right here on the bathtub.
I don't see how you can miss it all on the trash can.

Speaker 70 How do you do that? I didn't see the trash can,

Speaker 70 but

Speaker 70 I remember seeing the little splotch of blood on the sink.

Speaker 70 When did you say that? When I was leaving for school. When? What day? Today.
And he still

Speaker 70 didn't even think to knock on the door. No, sir.
To say, hey, Still, you cut yourself? You hurt? You injured? You made something?

Speaker 70 That's weird, man. I know it is.

Speaker 70 I'm telling you everything I know. I mean, Shelly was my roommate.

Speaker 70 She was my friend. She is my friend.
We went to school together, sir. There's no reason why I would harm her.

Speaker 70 I really believe that something terrible happened between you and Shelly that you're not telling me.

Speaker 42 Thing is, there was no forced entry.

Speaker 11 Whoever killed Shelly...

Speaker 22 had a key.

Speaker 19 You know, when I talked to Ashley, I wasn't the nicest guy in the world. You know, I dug into her pretty hard, especially when I found out there's no forced entry.

Speaker 19 Ashley had a key.

Speaker 70 I need to know what happened.

Speaker 70 I have to have an explanation as to what happened. You're the only one that can tell me.
I know, and I'm telling you the truth. Ashley, I don't believe you, honey.
I know, I believe.

Speaker 70 I don't believe you. I don't believe you.
You got her in your stabbing, did you? No, I did not. You did.
I just need to know why you did it.

Speaker 70 I did not care. Yeah, you did.

Speaker 70 I can prove you did. Something made you snap.
I didn't hurt her. I'm looking you straight in the eyes, sir.
Nobody else could have did it. Nobody else could have done it.

Speaker 70 Nobody. This looks terrible for you.
No, it does. This looks terrible, terrible, terrible for you.

Speaker 17 No, Detective LZ did not go easy on Shelly's roommate.

Speaker 20 But there was a murder to solve.

Speaker 16 And the first day of an investigation is crucial.

Speaker 50 Time to bring in the boyfriend.

Speaker 26 Shelly had been stabbed to death, and guess what they're about to find at her boyfriend's place?

Speaker 19 What a collection he had. He had throwing stars, he had daggers, he had knives, he had swords.

Speaker 18 Who collects that kind of stuff?

Speaker 13 To say that murder victim Shelley Nance had a boyfriend was perhaps an overstatement, at least as the term is generally used in the 21st century.

Speaker 30 His name was Nathan Schuck.

Speaker 31 He was a classmate of the Art Institute, 20 years old, like Shelley, and from a Dallas suburb where he grew up with his mom and grandmother.

Speaker 37 Like Shelley, he seemed reserved, at least to most people.

Speaker 58 But in class and with close friends, he was energetic.

Speaker 37 Shelly and Nathan had been going out, if you could call it that, for a couple of months.

Speaker 3 I didn't even find out till the summer, I think it was like July of 2009, that she had a boyfriend. She said, Bye-bye, mom, I've got a boyfriend.

Speaker 8 I'm like, you do?

Speaker 3 She said, yeah, and dad probably wouldn't like him too much because he's got like a lip piercing and some tattoos.

Speaker 36 But she told her mom, they hadn't even kissed yet.

Speaker 3 She, as far as I know, had only held his hand like once.

Speaker 3 She's just naive that way. I sheltered her.

Speaker 67 Sister Shauna was the only one in the family who'd met Nathan.

Speaker 5 She introduced me to him as her friend, not her boyfriend.

Speaker 47 What was he like?

Speaker 5 He was just nice, goofy kid. I mean, they were joking and making jokes and laughing and having a good time, and you could tell she liked him.
She would blush and kind of

Speaker 8 giggle.

Speaker 10 She hadn't seen that from her before.

Speaker 10 Not like that, no.

Speaker 27 It was a fellow art student, Chris Phillips, who saw them as a couple.

Speaker 45 She was exactly in the same vein as Nathan. You know, they were both artists, they both loved to draw, they both kind of

Speaker 45 kept to themselves, and you know, they were pretty quiet.

Speaker 60 And then one terrible day, Chris heard that a female art student had been killed somehow over at the Falls apartment complex.

Speaker 22 So said Chris, he and Nathan and a few others piled into his car and headed over there to see if they could find out what happened.

Speaker 9 On the way, Chris's cell phone rang.

Speaker 54 It was a friend named Jeremy who told them it was Shelly who was dead.

Speaker 45 I hear those words and I look at Nathan and it's,

Speaker 45 you know, it's one of those defining moments in your life where it's like, what, what happens now.

Speaker 29 Did you hand him the phone or did you tell him yourself?

Speaker 45 No,

Speaker 45 I told Jeremy that he needs to tell him, you know, so I handed him my phone and, you know, it's.

Speaker 45 You know, you kind of see this sudden shift of emotion, going from worry to absolute just.

Speaker 45 I don't think I'll ever forget the way he looked at me as he was listening to Jeremy talk to him. You know, his eyes were so

Speaker 45 so just broken.

Speaker 31 In some kind of denial, at least according to Chris, they knocked at Shelly's apartment door.

Speaker 15 No answer.

Speaker 58 So they hurried to Jeremy's place, also at the falls, to see if he knew anything more.

Speaker 45 And the police showed up and they grabbed him by the arm and yanked him out the door and they started talking to him. Not gently.
No. No.

Speaker 45 They were talking to him and then they got in the car and went. And I didn't see him for the rest of the day.

Speaker 22 In a murder so up-close and personal, so vicious, boyfriend Nathan naturally became a person of interest immediately.

Speaker 46 When officers brought him to Dallas Police Headquarters, Detective Elzi was more than ready to ask Nathan some very personal and specific questions about his relationship with Shelly.

Speaker 71 Are you a virgin?

Speaker 72 Yeah.

Speaker 72 Shelly a virgin, to your knowledge?

Speaker 72 Y'all ever discussed sexual intercourse?

Speaker 72 Never.

Speaker 72 She's been in your bedroom before with the line off.

Speaker 72 Yeah, we're... What do y'all do? We were sitting there playing videos.

Speaker 72 Never tried anything sexual with her?

Speaker 72 She never tried anything sex with you.

Speaker 26 Did you kiss her?

Speaker 72 No, no, no. You never kissed her.
She's a girlfriend too much, and you never kissed her. Why?

Speaker 26 It was weird.

Speaker 72 It was my first girlfriend.

Speaker 68 Detective Elsie had never heard of a college romantic relationship like that.

Speaker 13 The question was, could he believe it?

Speaker 19 How many 19 and 20 year old people proclaim to have a girlfriend or boyfriend who have not kissed them?

Speaker 31 Nathan also said he hadn't seen or spoken with Shelly since several days before the murder.

Speaker 52 In fact, he said he spent much of the week back home with his mom and grandmother.

Speaker 44 Was he telling the truth?

Speaker 46 Standard procedure, Detective Elsie checked out Nathan's body for scratches.

Speaker 73 All right, turn around.

Speaker 73 Okay, turn back around with Devon.

Speaker 73 I need these breaks, right here.

Speaker 73 And scratches.

Speaker 73 Oh, I usually scratch myself.

Speaker 22 Again, could he believe that?

Speaker 19 We asked him, can we go to your apartment? You know, describe your apartment. Do you have knives? Do you have swords?

Speaker 33 Do you have this?

Speaker 19 And he answered,

Speaker 18 some weird stuff.

Speaker 47 Funny thing is, he did.

Speaker 19 He did, and what a collection he had. He had throw-in stars, he had daggers, he had knives, he had swords.

Speaker 18 Who collects that kind of stuff?

Speaker 30 Then, Detective LZ learned something very interesting from Shelly's mom.

Speaker 40 Something Shelly had told her mom not long before she was killed.

Speaker 3 She said, Mom, I'm

Speaker 3 thinking about breaking up with Nathan. She said, I just don't have the feelings for him that I think I should.
You know, I just don't, you know, don't see the relationship going anywhere.

Speaker 54 And a furious young man struck back at the woman who rejected him.

Speaker 50 A not uncommon motive for murder, as the detective knew very well.

Speaker 74 He confronted Nathan.

Speaker 73 Shelly told her mom that she told you that y'all was through.

Speaker 73 No? Uh, yeah. No, she didn't.
Her mama told me that, son. I talked to her mama.
Don't call me a damn liar.

Speaker 73 I just talked to her mama. Her mama, Shelly told her mam that y'all didn't have nothing in common and that it was over, that it was through.

Speaker 76 She asked him.

Speaker 73 You sound that, you're a damn psychopath.

Speaker 73 Are you like doo-voodoo and la-la-lam that shit not restored to you?

Speaker 73 Nothing makes sense. I'm just...

Speaker 73 I'm just waiting to wake up. That's right.

Speaker 26 You're waiting to wake up.

Speaker 73 And what did you do with a knife? I wasn't there.

Speaker 73 Nathan, you're damn. Did you do anything

Speaker 73 with a knife? Yeah, you did.

Speaker 57 Detective Elze made no apology for the aggressive tone of his interrogation.

Speaker 13 There was more to learn about this closed-off young man, for whom questions about knives would have an extra special meaning.

Speaker 25 Someone offers a new and unsettling portrait of Nathan's relationship with Shelly.

Speaker 77 Nathan was actually stalking Sally

Speaker 77 everywhere she goes.

Speaker 24 And then a fresh clue surfaces in a damning place.

Speaker 19 It changes his whole case.

Speaker 52 The murder of Shelly Nance set off a wave of deep anxiety around the apartment complex called the Falls.

Speaker 29 This is where some of the art students lived and now where one of them was murdered.

Speaker 21 Was the killer out there somewhere or worse, even among them?

Speaker 46 If this could happen to a sweet, quiet homebody like Shelly, surely none of them was safe.

Speaker 45 I think a lot of people immediately after hearing about this kind of went into this panic mode and it's like, okay, if it was her, is it going to be me next?

Speaker 31 In fact, in short order, the Art Institute of Dallas moved its students out of the falls and into a more secure apartment complex in a safer part of town.

Speaker 52 But with the investigation just days old, they didn't know what police were thinking.

Speaker 6 That this was no random crime, that it was personal, an inside job, so to speak.

Speaker 54 They were looking at people close to Shelley.

Speaker 11 Someone who had a key, like a boyfriend, for a roommate.

Speaker 58 Someone who knew she'd be asleep and then surprised her, attacked her with a knife.

Speaker 19 She was small in statue. She was a little girl.
It wouldn't take much.

Speaker 26 But who?

Speaker 15 As tough as Detective Elzey was with roommate Ashley and boyfriend Nathan, he was not much farther along than when he started.

Speaker 44 And so he spent some time with a few of Nathan's friends, like his roommate, Daniel William.

Speaker 10 You're a little older than the other kids.

Speaker 14 And they're all kind of 18, 19, and you're...

Speaker 77 Yes, I was 26 years old.

Speaker 57 It hadn't always been easy for Daniel.

Speaker 34 He, too, was was a little different.

Speaker 46 For one thing, he had been born in Indonesia and struggled with some rude culture shocks when his family moved to America.

Speaker 58 Still, he put on a brave face and served in the Navy and then signed up to study interactive media at the Art Institute.

Speaker 22 If anybody knew what Nathan was up to, it would be Daniel, whose role in the student department was...

Speaker 13 almost like a den mother.

Speaker 77 I became a big brother to him. You know, I was like,

Speaker 77 do your homework, take him to school, pick him up from school, and things like that.

Speaker 14 Well, yes, I mean, you were.

Speaker 19 You were helping him with his homework.

Speaker 14 You were making his lunches. You were, you know, cleaning up after him.
You were driving him to school.

Speaker 19 He was afraid.

Speaker 77 I was like a father to him, yes.

Speaker 28 But the way it was described later was more like you were a mother to him.

Speaker 10 I mean, you were...

Speaker 77 Well, yes, that was

Speaker 77 his own words.

Speaker 13 Daniel worried about Nathan, he said.

Speaker 9 Saw early red flags in Nathan's behavior toward this first girlfriend of his.

Speaker 43 Nathan, he said, seemed obsessed with Shelley, maybe dangerously.

Speaker 77 I started to notice that Nathan had missed his classes

Speaker 77 and

Speaker 77 finally I talked to Shelly's roommate Ashley and what she told me shocked me because from her own words Nathan was actually stalking Sally

Speaker 77 everywhere she goes.

Speaker 44 And after Shelly was murdered, he said he saw scratches on Nathan's body, which in fact the police had noticed too.

Speaker 56 And then Daniel added something very interesting.

Speaker 74 He picked up Nathan from school on Thursday night.

Speaker 35 That's the day of the killing.

Speaker 58 It was more than 12 hours before Shelley's body was discovered, he said.

Speaker 52 And Nathan behaved like someone who felt

Speaker 26 guilty.

Speaker 78 Kind of have like a bad mood or something for a while to be tried. Right before I went to sleep,

Speaker 78 I heard him crying in his room.

Speaker 80 What was he crying for?

Speaker 75 Do you not

Speaker 80 approach him?

Speaker 78 I knocked on his door.

Speaker 78 I asked him, he's like, are you okay? I was like, yeah, I was like, why? Because I heard you crying. I was like, no.
But his face was red because

Speaker 78 when people cry, their face are red.

Speaker 75 Did he tell you why he was crying?

Speaker 78 I don't know if he is or not because he said he's not crying.

Speaker 80 But he looks upset.

Speaker 45 You to live with this guy for so long and you know that you know obviously something's bothering which is what their friend chris phillips thought too daniel knew nathan well in fact said chris daniel kept a helpful eye out for a lot of people at the school he was very bright friendly um eager to help anyone out uh you know he was he was that kind of he was that guy that a lot of people knew and he would walk into say the student lounge and everybody would like hey it's daniel you know

Speaker 14 nice guy.

Speaker 45 Yeah, very nice guy.

Speaker 40 A nice guy who was telling Detective Elsie he was troubled about Nathan.

Speaker 40 And then, when the detective dug a little deeper among other people who knew Nathan, he began to hear a different take on the kid who was supposedly too shy to kiss his girlfriend.

Speaker 19 Some people would describe him as a little bitty scrawny kid, kind of introverted,

Speaker 19 who just lived and breathed his artwork. Other people would say, the guy had a a temper.

Speaker 35 Ashley said she heard the same thing.

Speaker 70 One of my friends was saying he's like,

Speaker 70 you know, I never really want to see Nathan angry and I asked him why and they said, have you ever seen him play a video game? He kind of just like pops if he doesn't get something.

Speaker 13 Then the police searched Nathan's bedroom and found his collection of knives.

Speaker 17 Which was not the only thing Nathan liked to collect.

Speaker 40 He also kept a very unusual costume, which anybody who searched social media could readily see.

Speaker 84 Just Google his name at the time and his MySpace page came up and he's dressed as a ninja

Speaker 84 and he clearly has an obsession with ninjas.

Speaker 47 And knives. And knives, yeah.

Speaker 59 Former reporter Scott Goldstein covered the case for the Dallas Morning News.

Speaker 84 As the investigation went on there were some other pieces of key evidence that pointed to him even more so.

Speaker 54 Perhaps the most startling was a remarkable piece of evidence that police discovered in Daniel and Nathan's apartment.

Speaker 77 I'm paying attention to what was found in the bathroom.

Speaker 47 In your bathroom.

Speaker 77 No, not my bathroom. Nathan's bathroom.

Speaker 47 A plastic baggie with blood on it in Nathan's bathroom.

Speaker 19 That changes his whole case. And when he's asked about that piece of evidence, he locks up.

Speaker 19 Now he's not that little boy I've been talking to. Now he's a man.
And he understands his situation. And he says, I need a lawyer.
Just like that. Absolutely.

Speaker 15 And climbed right up.

Speaker 19 He locked up up tight. He sure did.

Speaker 55 Also, remember, whoever killed Shelly must have had a key to her apartment.

Speaker 57 There was no sign whatever of forced entry.

Speaker 9 Nathan may well have had a key.

Speaker 44 And Shelly told her mother she was thinking of breaking up with Nathan.

Speaker 48 Did she tell him?

Speaker 54 Did he use one of his many knives to get even?

Speaker 63 Is that why the bloody baggie was in his bathroom?

Speaker 19 The kid, being a boyfriend, has got a motive. He could have very well well did it.
He could have very well had a key.

Speaker 19 He could have very well slipped in there undetected, been in there from, you know, she could have invited him in for all we know, did what he did for whatever reason he chose, and then left.

Speaker 17 It was not looking good for Nathan.

Speaker 13 Not at all.

Speaker 44 The focus widens to include another student, someone Shelley had once expressed concerns about.

Speaker 3 Trying to corner her in the hallways at school, texting her on the phone, saying we need to talk. She's like, he's really weirding me out.

Speaker 22 They took Shelly Nats's body back to Itley, Texas, not quite a week after the murder, held her funeral.

Speaker 60 at the family's church.

Speaker 41 And it seemed like the whole town was there, along with many of Shelly's fellow students from the Art Institute of Dallas.

Speaker 38 It was the most horrible thing we've ever been through. The day after the funeral, I was ready to kill somebody.

Speaker 74 The Institute held a memorial, too, and it was there Shelly's parents met Nathan for the first time.

Speaker 3 He came up and wanted to shake my hand, and I couldn't do it. I didn't want to look at him.
I didn't want to touch him because if he had something to do with killing my Shelly,

Speaker 4 I didn't want to pretend that it was okay.

Speaker 46 Shelly Knights was just 20 when she was attacked and killed in her off-campus apartment here in Dallas.

Speaker 68 Tiny, quiet, sweet, and defenseless.

Speaker 46 The last person anyone would want dead.

Speaker 13 Everyone said that.

Speaker 17 But clearly someone did.

Speaker 50 The police already had Ashley on their list of suspects.

Speaker 19 I've interviewed her. I'm satisfied that I can set her to the side for the time being.
She's not going anywhere.

Speaker 14 And she's not eliminated yet.

Speaker 19 Absolutely not. No, no, no.

Speaker 17 But for the moment, detectives were concentrating a lot of attention on Nathan, but carefully.

Speaker 13 They weren't done.

Speaker 22 Not yet.

Speaker 63 Got to take it slow.

Speaker 19 We try to look at it from a distance. You can't let your personal emotions get involved.

Speaker 19 You can't allow tunnel vision to take over.

Speaker 19 Your job is to investigate, look at the evidence, and then go where the evidence leads you.

Speaker 54 Detectives are still canvassing fellow students and teachers and school administrators, anybody who could help them nail down Nathan's movements on Thursday morning, the time of the murder.

Speaker 32 And again, if anybody knew, it would be Daniel who, after all, watched over Nathan, drove him around, looked after him.

Speaker 69 But it turned out, Nathan was at home in suburban Dallas the night before the murder.

Speaker 10 His mother drove him to school that Thursday morning.

Speaker 54 He said he was doing homework in a computer lab at the time of the murder.

Speaker 8 But was he?

Speaker 75 And he was in school from what time to what time.

Speaker 71 I don't know.

Speaker 75 What time did you pick him up Thursday?

Speaker 78 Did they pick him up

Speaker 76 around 10.

Speaker 52 Detective Elzey also asked Daniel what he was doing on Thursday morning.

Speaker 13 Routine questioning.

Speaker 78 From Starbucks. I went

Speaker 78 that when I texted Ashley

Speaker 78 if she wants to go eat lunch. From there,

Speaker 78 I went to

Speaker 75 White Rock Lake

Speaker 78 because I was supposed to take a picture, but I forgot to bring my camera for an assignment.

Speaker 78 And from there, I thought I went to my friend's place.

Speaker 75 And you forgot your camera, so you went to his house?

Speaker 78 Just take a house.

Speaker 71 What time did you get there?

Speaker 78 Um, around 12-30 years.

Speaker 78 But she wasn't home.

Speaker 26 Perfectly reasonable.

Speaker 50 No apparent reason not to believe him.

Speaker 30 But did Daniel know something more than he was saying?

Speaker 11 Detectives talked to Chris Phillips, too.

Speaker 57 Chris was Daniel's roommate before Nathan moved in.

Speaker 25 And it was great at first, said Chris.

Speaker 58 But Daniel ended up doing more of the house chores, and resentments began to fester about things like trash not taken out and so on.

Speaker 52 Daniel turned out to be something of a neat freak and

Speaker 50 needy maybe.

Speaker 45 I'm a college guy, so I wanted to interact with women and bring them to our apartment and stuff. And he wasn't very excited about that.

Speaker 45 He didn't really want me to bring people to the apartment that he didn't know.

Speaker 47 People or women?

Speaker 45 Well,

Speaker 45 I guess it was both.

Speaker 33 Did you understand what this was all about?

Speaker 45 You know,

Speaker 45 at first I didn't,

Speaker 45 but over time,

Speaker 45 see, what's a good word for it,

Speaker 45 kind of needy, you know, towards me. Like he needed me to hang out with him more than anybody else.

Speaker 14 He wanted to be central in your existence.

Speaker 22 Yeah.

Speaker 14 Did you understand when you were first hanging out with him and deciding to move in there that he was gay?

Speaker 45 No, I didn't know. But as time went on,

Speaker 45 he eventually came out to me.

Speaker 45 I had essentially just started to figure he was anyways and you know it's I was absolutely cool with it I had no problem but did he like make a request did he want to have a romantic relationship with you he never any made any kind of request like that towards me Shelly's mother Cynthia had heard a thing or two about Daniel as well from Shelley who told her some stories about what happened when she started dating Nathan

Speaker 3 trying to corner her in the hallways at school, texting her on the phone, trying to call her and saying, we need to talk. She's like, what does he need to talk to me about?

Speaker 3 She said, he's really weirding me out.

Speaker 14 And she kept refusing to talk to him.

Speaker 3 She's not a confrontational type person. She didn't want to know what it was he wanted.

Speaker 3 She said she ended up asking Nathan and come to find out he was just insulted that they weren't inviting him to go out with them on dates.

Speaker 3 Which I thought was rather weird to begin with too.

Speaker 10 She said, why not? She found this out.

Speaker 3 Yeah, she said that's what he told her.

Speaker 3 you're being inconsiderate

Speaker 8 of his feelings.

Speaker 33 Did she have an opinion about this?

Speaker 3 She just thought it was strange that he'd want to go out on a date with them.

Speaker 3 She's like, you know, if we were over at his apartment and we'd be like playing video games or something in Nathan's bedroom, he'd open the door and stand there in the doorway watching them, you know?

Speaker 3 She said, that's just weird.

Speaker 24 That is pretty weird.

Speaker 3 Yeah, she said they just got to the point where they go to her apartment instead.

Speaker 26 Strange,

Speaker 26 But did it have anything to do with Shelly's murder? Maybe.

Speaker 50 Maybe not.

Speaker 32 But, just maybe.

Speaker 64 There were three murder suspects now.

Speaker 58 Which of them had a key to Shelly's place?

Speaker 26 The roommate, of course.

Speaker 44 But according to her, one of the others had access to it at least once.

Speaker 51 Do you know he made a copy of it?

Speaker 86 No, but now that I, if the possibility made,

Speaker 86 of the only time I remember, I ever had an IP for somebody.

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Speaker 60 A terrible helplessness, angry and impotent, piled onto the grief that laid low the Nance family during that autumn of 2009.

Speaker 45 It's just kind of scary that somebody could be out there that's capable of doing these type of things, and, you know, who is it?

Speaker 50 The answer wouldn't bring her back, of course.

Speaker 54 Nothing was going to be the way it was ever again.

Speaker 46 But finding out who did it?

Speaker 26 Now, that was a need, intense.

Speaker 52 The Dallas Police Department was zeroing in on the boyfriend, Nathan.

Speaker 49 And so detectives decided to interview Daniel a second time.

Speaker 37 After all, he lived with Nathan.

Speaker 54 Maybe Daniel could tell them more.

Speaker 26 And then something odd happened.

Speaker 85 Daniel changed his own story a little.

Speaker 49 Remember the story of where he was the day of the murder?

Speaker 13 This time, he added something.

Speaker 14 1015 to 1020, you live Starbucks. Where do you go?

Speaker 78 To White Rock Lake.

Speaker 73 Okay.

Speaker 70 Specifically at White Rock Lake, where?

Speaker 70 I went to Walmart first and then White Rock Lake. Okay, you can't believe that.
So you go straight from Starbucks to Walmart.

Speaker 70 How long, what did you do at Walmart?

Speaker 78 Um, I got a

Speaker 70 hair dye, okay.

Speaker 76 Um, so

Speaker 76 and

Speaker 78 um, goes to color my hair.

Speaker 26 Wait, Walmart?

Speaker 52 He did not reveal any stop at Walmart during his first interview.

Speaker 56 And then he amended his story again.

Speaker 43 Just slightly.

Speaker 46 After the Walmart and the trip to White Rock Lake, he said, he went to visit that friend, Jessica, discovered she wasn't home, he'd said that already.

Speaker 13 But this time, he added one little detail.

Speaker 15 Where his friend lived.

Speaker 75 You get back in your car. Where do you go?

Speaker 78 I went to the falls to go to my friend's house, Jessica Howard.

Speaker 22 The falls apartment complex.

Speaker 49 That's where Shelly was killed.

Speaker 52 Daniel didn't mention the falls the first time he was interrogated.

Speaker 75 Why did you leave that part out?

Speaker 78 Because I was mugged over there, sir.

Speaker 47 Mugged?

Speaker 30 And yet he somehow failed to mention that during his first long session of questioning?

Speaker 19 Coincidentally, while he's at this same complex, he's approached by a blackmail with a knife. who robs him.

Speaker 44 The robber took $40 in cash and his backpack, said Daniel.

Speaker 75 You didn't tell me a damn thing about getting robbed. You know why? Because that's bullshit.

Speaker 80 You didn't get robbed. The robbery never happened.
That's poor s ⁇ .

Speaker 34 Clearly, Detective Elzey didn't believe him for a minute.

Speaker 50 And in fact, no evidence of the claimed mugging ever turned up.

Speaker 32 But it was that little crumb of truth inside the suspected lie that caught Detective Elzi's attention.

Speaker 26 Daniel's admission that he went to the falls on the morning of the murder.

Speaker 80 What you did son is put yourself right there at that complex when that little girl was killed.

Speaker 75 That's exactly what you did. I didn't do anything.

Speaker 75 Yeah you did. You killed that girl.

Speaker 53 You took a knife and you stabbed her.

Speaker 53 I want to know why you did it. I didn't do it.
Yeah you did.

Speaker 75 You killed that girl at length.

Speaker 75 You stabbed her and you killed her. I did not do it.

Speaker 79 Yes, she absolutely did.

Speaker 75 All I want to do is hear the truth.

Speaker 80 I know what the evidence is going to tell me.

Speaker 26 He shoved a photo of Shelly, dead, covered in blood, in front of Daniel.

Speaker 79 Remember her looking like that?

Speaker 75 That's your handiwork.

Speaker 75 That's what she looked like when you finished with her.

Speaker 79 Look at her.

Speaker 53 Don't cover your face. Look at her.
That's what you did to her.

Speaker 53 That's what you did did to her.

Speaker 80 That's where mom and daddy had to look at.

Speaker 53 What do you think about that?

Speaker 53 Look at this.

Speaker 53 Look at it.

Speaker 75 Think about the last word she said.

Speaker 75 Think about the last thing you heard that say, that girl say before she took her last breath.

Speaker 80 You think about it.

Speaker 53 How How can you live with yourself?

Speaker 75 Take your damn hand away from your eyes

Speaker 75 and look at me.

Speaker 75 And tell me how you treat a girl like that.

Speaker 80 Tell me how you do that.

Speaker 80 I can do that, too.

Speaker 46 However, by then, detectives had heard that Daniel was not fond of Shelley.

Speaker 36 Because he felt she was a bad influence on Nathan's studies, which wasn't true, by the way, but that's what Daniel claimed.

Speaker 51 And then his friend suggested what might be the real reason.

Speaker 49 Daniel disliked Shelley because he was jealous.

Speaker 46 Didn't like Nathan spending time with a girl.

Speaker 13 Detective Elzey turned up the heat even more.

Speaker 79 How can you despise a human being that fast?

Speaker 75 She never did nothing to you.

Speaker 75 How did you hate that girl so much?

Speaker 8 I didn't. You hate her enough to kill her over a dude?

Speaker 8 I didn't.

Speaker 22 you hate her that much that she took nathan away from you that much that she caused you so much problems in your personal relationship that the only answer was to kill her that's it two days after that interview it was once again ashley's turn to talk and she also revealed something she had not said before

Speaker 40 Remember, it was quite apparent that whoever killed Shelly must have had a key to her apartment.

Speaker 85 There was no sign of forced entry.

Speaker 34 Well, now, Ashley told the detectives that a month before the murder, Daniel borrowed her car, which would have been neither here nor there, except the key to her apartment was attached to her car keys.

Speaker 51 You don't think he'd made a copy of it?

Speaker 86 No, but now that

Speaker 86 the possibility is bad, that's the only time I remember ever having my keys for somebody.

Speaker 86 I always have my keys.

Speaker 26 Daniel may or may not have copied the key.

Speaker 32 But as much as the detectives wanted to make an arrest, they had to be sure they had the right person or persons.

Speaker 19 A lot of times, you got one shot at it. And if you don't do it right, a killer could walk for life.
And that's the last thing I want to do.

Speaker 50 Finally, detectives believe they've zeroed in on their killer.

Speaker 19 When all these facts come together, there's no other suspect.

Speaker 16 A few weeks after the murder of art student Shelly Nance, the police were waiting for the results of a test they hoped would explain everything.

Speaker 50 The DNA on that bloody baggie found in Nathan's bathroom.

Speaker 19 If it comes back to Shelly, we've got a golden ticket. We know who committed, well, we know one or two people or both committed this murder.

Speaker 19 It's not by coincidence that this girl ends up dead and her blood ends up in their apartment in the bathroom.

Speaker 18 Daniel killed her,

Speaker 18 Nathan killed her, or they both killed her.

Speaker 26 Hope for the investigators. Dread for art student Chris Phillips.

Speaker 45 I lived with both of them, and to think that, you know, I was living with someone that would do this.

Speaker 42 And then finally, the lab results came in.

Speaker 19 DNA confirmed that that blood comes from Shelly. And then you have to sit back, scratch your head, and say, well,

Speaker 19 I wonder if both these guys did it. And then if you go with that theory, what is the motive?

Speaker 47 Robbery? No.

Speaker 8 Rape?

Speaker 47 No.

Speaker 47 I mean,

Speaker 19 how would you get these two people on the same page to kill this young girl?

Speaker 26 There was one other possibility.

Speaker 50 Did Daniel frame Nathan?

Speaker 46 By planting that bag in his bathroom. After all, he lived in the same apartment.

Speaker 31 So detectives went about the painstaking work of verifying every moment in the lives of those two young men on the day of the murder.

Speaker 26 And

Speaker 19 Nathan was a hard, hard suspect.

Speaker 19 But after we do our timelines and we interview people and we check his phone and we check surveillance videos and witnesses at class.

Speaker 19 He had an alibi. He was at school when we believe Shelly was killed.

Speaker 26 Daniel?

Speaker 54 Daniel, remember, had given the police a shifting alibi.

Speaker 12 Didn't tell them in his first interview that he stopped by a Walmart store to buy a hair dye.

Speaker 34 But as detectives thought about it, that new little nugget raised more questions.

Speaker 52 I mean, this is a young kid, not old enough to have to cover, you know, whatever they're covering i mean his hair looked fine to me hmm i thought it a little odd did he actually go to walmart at all that morning they subpoenaed this walmart surveillance video and sure enough there was daniel in the walmart when he said he was but why hair dye Could it be he really wanted the protective gloves that are generally included in a hair dye kit?

Speaker 19 Gloves is important

Speaker 19 because there's evidence at the scene

Speaker 47 where a glove turned up.

Speaker 58 Not a whole glove, of course, but a tiny piece of material that appeared to have been torn from a rubber glove.

Speaker 68 So they requested a copy of Daniel's Walmart receipt and what do you know? The type of hair dye he bought came with a pair of gloves,

Speaker 52 which did not match the snippet of blue material found at the crime scene.

Speaker 58 But Daniel, it turned out, bought something else that morning at the Walmart.

Speaker 25 A whole box box of disposable gloves in blue nitrile.

Speaker 30 Was that the same material as that tiny glove fragment found under Shelley's wrist?

Speaker 26 Why, yes, it was.

Speaker 19 We're able to scientifically connect that little sliver of glove found at the scene as being of the same manufacturer

Speaker 19 and consistency of that glove that Walmart sold on the day that Daniel purchased those gloves.

Speaker 49 That was huge.

Speaker 46 Real evidence linking Daniel to the crime scene.

Speaker 19 When all these facts comes together, there's no other suspect.

Speaker 19 And the reason that Shelley was killed is because she stood in the way of a romantic rendezvous that he so desperately wanted with Nathan.

Speaker 85 On November 4th, 2009, eight weeks after Shelley's murder, they arrested Daniel William.

Speaker 22 The arrest was, for Shelley's family, a double-edged thing.

Speaker 13 They were relieved, of course, but until then, then, the police had not told them that Shelley had been stabbed 42 times.

Speaker 8 Oh my God, I almost passed out. 42 exact.

Speaker 3 And I just thought, oh my God.

Speaker 85 Prosecutor Dewey Mitchell got the case then and right away could see the problem.

Speaker 46 This was a circumstantial case

Speaker 48 in which the accused would likely say the other guy did it.

Speaker 23 Especially in a case like this.

Speaker 42 So he sent out his investigator, Hoyt Hoffman,

Speaker 54 to second guess the police.

Speaker 24 You have to make sure that no stone's left unturned.

Speaker 43 And then they strategize.

Speaker 47 We spent, I would say, half or more of our time

Speaker 23 actually working it the other way, saying, okay, well, let's say that the other person did it.

Speaker 47 Nathan. Nathan.

Speaker 23 Let's say Nathan did it. Or let's say Ashley did it.

Speaker 23 And let's look at the evidence and does that bear fruit or is that something where you look at them and it just doesn't work? Because we wanted to make sure we got the right person.

Speaker 28 Could you have prosecuted Nathan?

Speaker 47 Absolutely. Absolutely.

Speaker 23 I mean,

Speaker 23 it would have been an easy case.

Speaker 47 Really? Absolutely.

Speaker 23 To come in and say, he did it, he's the boyfriend. Anytime you have a stabbing, you immediately look to whoever that person's romantically involved with.

Speaker 50 So they called in Nathan yet again, tested his answers.

Speaker 9 Multiple times.

Speaker 33 Ashley, too?

Speaker 47 Yes, sir.

Speaker 46 They finally arrived at the same conclusion the Dallas police did.

Speaker 17 That neither Ashley nor Nathan killed Shelley.

Speaker 37 Had to be Daniel and Daniel alone.

Speaker 35 But making the case in court might not be so easy.

Speaker 46 This is one of those cases where circumstantial

Speaker 14 is kind.

Speaker 15 I mean, you had no fingerprints, you had no DNA, you had no bloody clothes on the suspect, you had no incriminating statements, really, just some sort of weird stuff.

Speaker 8 Yeah, it's a tough case. Tough case.

Speaker 29 Circumstantial is a correct word.

Speaker 13 Question was, could they make the case?

Speaker 46 Or would a jury believe they'd reached the wrong conclusion?

Speaker 8 Motive.

Speaker 19 It's been tricky to pin down in this case, but in court, prosecutors present jurors with a theory of everything.

Speaker 23 That's why this whole thing happened.

Speaker 58 It was at the trial when Sam and Cynthia Nance finally came face to face with the man accused of killing their youngest daughter.

Speaker 68 Or, more accurately, their eyes boring a stare into the back of Daniel Williams' head.

Speaker 34 It was November 2011.

Speaker 3 I wanted him to look at me, and he wouldn't do it. So that told me right there he had to have done it because he's so ashamed to even look at me in the face.

Speaker 29 Chris Phillips saw Daniel in court, too, when Chris testified for the state.

Speaker 45 I'm very cool under pressure, but something about seeing him that day was very shocking for me. I look over at Daniel and

Speaker 45 I give him a nod like, I see you, and he nods back, and it was just kind of this, this, I don't know, this tension.

Speaker 55 Scott Goldstein covered the trial.

Speaker 11 You could tell right away this could be unusual.

Speaker 84 The opening line, I think, for the prosecutors was there are two people on the face of the earth who could have done this. They said up front that it's about these two men.

Speaker 51 Nathan and Daniel, a boyfriend incapable of murder, the prosecutor would say.

Speaker 16 and that boy's roommate, driven by jealousy.

Speaker 23 We couldn't just go in and say, here's the physical evidence and the circumstantial evidence, and you know he did it.

Speaker 23 We had to then show all the evidence that we had that showed Nathan didn't do it because we knew that was going to be the defense.

Speaker 26 And as for Daniel.

Speaker 23 I told him in an opening statement, it is bizarre as it is brutal.

Speaker 23 And I wanted them to know that they would be hearing a case where their first reaction was going to be,

Speaker 23 How could this happen?

Speaker 23 This is crazy. I didn't want to be in the middle of the case and them trying to figure out, wait, what's going on and why are we looking at this guy and not that guy?

Speaker 48 This one. Then the prosecutor presented his theory, a story of how it went down.

Speaker 17 Shelly, a known night owl, had been up all Wednesday night into Thursday morning on her computer until 6 a.m.

Speaker 23 when she went to sleep.

Speaker 22 Ashley left for school.

Speaker 50 Then Daniel entered the apartment.

Speaker 17 Possibly with Ashley's key, the one he'd secretly copied when he borrowed her car and keyring a month before.

Speaker 31 Once inside the apartment, he stabbed Shelly to death.

Speaker 46 He cleaned up any evidence of his presence and got out of there.

Speaker 42 But he could not erase all the evidence.

Speaker 49 Like, for example, his text messages that morning, particularly his texts to Ashley before the murder.

Speaker 44 He can be seen sending some of those texts while at the Walmart on this surveillance video.

Speaker 81 Timing was starting after the 10 o'clock hour on September 10th, and

Speaker 9 it was

Speaker 65 one minute, the next minute, the next minute, the next minute.

Speaker 81 Then there was a pause, pause for an hour and something. He was asking her in those text messages if she wanted to go to lunch with him.

Speaker 23 He was hammer texting her and it was one of those situations where I have no doubt in my mind. He was texting her to see whether or not she was going to leave that classroom.

Speaker 23 She repeatedly told him no, that she was in class, that she wasn't interested.

Speaker 23 And the fact that he kept asking just showed that he really wanted to make sure he'd get away with what he was about to do. And that she wasn't home, also.

Speaker 47 Right.

Speaker 14 So that was key.

Speaker 50 He had to make sure that there was nobody in the apartment.

Speaker 47 Absolutely.

Speaker 26 Then, Daniel stopped texting her for almost two hours and then resumed again.

Speaker 68 And remember, in his first interview with the police, Daniel lied about where he was the morning of the murder.

Speaker 50 And then, in a second interview, he told them he went to the falls that morning.

Speaker 59 And that bit was true, the prosecutor said.

Speaker 82 But when Daniel claimed he went there to meet another female classmate for a photo assignment, that was a lie, said the prosecutor.

Speaker 23 We talked to her, and she said that there was no reason for him to have ever been there. He didn't contact her about coming in and doing any such project.

Speaker 23 And so then the other lie, though, that was in that was he then told the detectives about going straight home.

Speaker 23 And when the detectives started to look at the cell phone records of his location after we believe he committed the offense, he went to an entirely different location.

Speaker 8 And so

Speaker 23 he did not go home. He went 30 minutes north of town, stayed up there for

Speaker 23 some period of time before coming back.

Speaker 11 Getting rid of his bloody clothing and the murder weapon and other evidence, the prosecutor figured.

Speaker 56 None of which police were able to find, though they searched thoroughly through the area.

Speaker 23 In this case, we had someone who committed this crime and then did a fantastic job of cleaning up and not leaving evidence. And after the fact, told multiple lies.

Speaker 17 In fact, the prosecutor said Daniel was so good at cleaning up, it would be reasonable to assume he was framing Nathan when he left that one piece of obvious evidence, the bloody baggie, in Nathan's bathroom.

Speaker 54 And then there was Daniel's complicated relationship with Nathan and by extension, Shelley.

Speaker 23 We would hear these stories about him getting upset because he didn't get offered to go to breakfast with people or he wasn't invited to go to the movies with Nathan Nathan and his girlfriend. And

Speaker 23 it was just a consistent,

Speaker 23 pervasive

Speaker 23 feeling that Daniel would tell anybody who was willing to listen about how he was slighted by not being involved. And

Speaker 23 part of the chain of events, too, was the fact that he was not invited by Nathan and Shelley to go to some anime festival here in Dallas. I see.
the weekend before this ended up happening.

Speaker 48 So Nathan went with Shelly and left him at home.

Speaker 10 Absolutely.

Speaker 56 It was one weird triangle.

Speaker 37 The prosecution argued that Daniel felt left out, became increasingly jealous, and then angry.

Speaker 46 And then his anger turned to rage at Shelley.

Speaker 23 That's why this whole thing happened. I believe he had hate in his heart for her.

Speaker 46 But remember, in a court of law, a defendant is innocent until proven guilty.

Speaker 26 And Daniel?

Speaker 77 My mother asked me if I killed Shelly, and I told her, Mama, I'm not the one who committed this. I'm not the one who killed her.

Speaker 36 Daniel's defense tries a single bold tactic to cast suspicion on Nathan.

Speaker 50 And they've got plenty of ammunition.

Speaker 23 What they had in their pocket is the boyfriend who we knew the girlfriend was thinking about breaking up with, who happens to be obsessed with knives.

Speaker 32 What would the jury make of all that?

Speaker 87 Some stories stories never make national headlines, but stories from small towns and coastal communities deserve recognition too.

Speaker 87 I'm Kylie Lowe, host of Dark Down East, a true crime podcast that gives voice to victims through investigative journalism and powerful storytelling.

Speaker 87 Set in my home state of Maine and the greater New England area, it's my goal to dig through the archives to bring the stories of the people at the heart of these cases to light.

Speaker 87 Listen to Dark Down East, wherever you get your podcasts.

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Speaker 51 Daniel William, as was his right, declined to testify when he went on trial for killing Shelly Nance.

Speaker 46 So he did not himself point at Nathan Nathan and accuse him of committing the murder.

Speaker 22 But of course he didn't have to. His attorney did it for him.

Speaker 48 It was not a surprise to prosecutor Dewey Mitchell.

Speaker 23 They said it could have been Nathan and it could have been a random person and that by the time the state's done with its case, you're not going to be able to know who did this crime.

Speaker 23 They just don't have evidence. I think it's a pretty good strategy.

Speaker 47 Yeah.

Speaker 23 I think it was the only strategy. You know, this wasn't a self-defense case

Speaker 23 and it wasn't an insanity case.

Speaker 23 So it had to be somebody else.

Speaker 10 Well, makes sense.

Speaker 15 I mean, again, did you have blood?

Speaker 8 No.

Speaker 47 Do you have DNA?

Speaker 8 No.

Speaker 23 What they had in their pocket, my star witness is the boyfriend who

Speaker 23 we knew the girlfriend was thinking about breaking up with,

Speaker 23 who happens to be

Speaker 23 obsessed with knives.

Speaker 14 And, oh, by the way, he's appearing online in a ninja costume, for heaven's sake.

Speaker 23 When he was cross-examined by the defense, they just left the picture of him with the mask on up on the screen.

Speaker 20 Make you worry just a little bit, I would think.

Speaker 33 And that just happens to be how young women tend to die.

Speaker 29 They get murdered by jealous boyfriends who don't want them to leave.

Speaker 10 Absolutely.

Speaker 14 And that's exactly what she was going to do.

Speaker 47 Absolutely.

Speaker 52 The defense attorney's strategy was perfectly clear.

Speaker 22 Point out that the state's evidence was circumstantial and then blame Nathan, which he did repeatedly.

Speaker 48 We certainly wanted to know more about about the reason for the defense strategy, its opinion of the charges and the evidence, but at Daniel's direction, his attorney declined our request for an interview and in court called just one witness.

Speaker 40 No, not Daniel.

Speaker 52 Daniel did not testify. The witness was Shelley's mother, Cynthia.

Speaker 3 At first, they said since I was going to be called that I couldn't sit in the courtroom during the whole trial. And I'm sorry I was going to raise a conniption fit because I was going to be there.

Speaker 3 And the judge decided, yeah, it would be okay.

Speaker 26 Why call Cynthia Nance?

Speaker 52 Do you remember that conversation in which Shelley told her mother she was thinking of breaking up with Nathan?

Speaker 46 That, said the defense, gave Nathan the motive, but certainly not Daniel.

Speaker 57 Cynthia was incensed by the questions she was asked.

Speaker 3 For them to call me and ask questions, trying to make it sound like that

Speaker 3 her conversation

Speaker 3 with me

Speaker 3 wanting to break up with Nathan would be the reason why Nathan would go and kill her.

Speaker 3 I didn't want them twisting my words to make it sound like

Speaker 3 the things that I said made it reflect more on Nathan than less on Daniel.

Speaker 14 So did that work out for them? Or did it backfire?

Speaker 84 It didn't work out because Shelly's mother also testified when she was cross-examined cross-examined by the prosecution that as far as she knew, Shelly never had that conversation with Nathan, so Nathan

Speaker 29 wouldn't have known.

Speaker 84 He wouldn't have known. So that kind of kills the idea that that could have been a motive if he didn't even know that they were going to break up.

Speaker 46 Still, one way or another, Nathan may have felt he was on trial as much as Daniel was.

Speaker 44 So in their closing argument, the prosecutors had to essentially act as Nathan's defense attorneys.

Speaker 84 One of the prosecutors pointed at him and remarked, This is basically a scared little boy who spent that week at home with his grandmomi cutting the crust off his bread.

Speaker 23 I told the jury he was yellow as mustard without the spice.

Speaker 3 He was a scawny little kid. Shelly probably could have taken him in her sleep, you know.

Speaker 37 But was Daniel William capable of so brutal a murder of someone he barely knew?

Speaker 52 The jurors would have to make up their minds without hearing a word from Daniel.

Speaker 46 So when we spoke with him,

Speaker 66 Daniel had a great deal to say about the case against him.

Speaker 77 Now, I'm not trying to accuse Nathan of murder. I'm just trying to find out where he was.

Speaker 77 But I do have a suspect.

Speaker 8 Oh.

Speaker 55 Just who is Daniel talking about?

Speaker 11 Someone the police never even looked at.

Speaker 23 He put the baggie in the bathroom.

Speaker 77 No, I'm saying he had access to my house.

Speaker 60 Daniel William, on trial for murdering Shelly Nance, has a complaint about the way the world is.

Speaker 21 Though he didn't testify, he wanted us to know something about him and his concern that people, young people especially, lack courtesy.

Speaker 41 They're just too rude.

Speaker 52 Like, for example, the young people he lived with at the Art Institute of Dallas.

Speaker 77 What I was trying to do is be courteous to the people that live around you.

Speaker 41 A lot of discourtesy expressed by these kids.

Speaker 19 That's been a problem.

Speaker 20 I mean, you see that everywhere. Yes.

Speaker 14 I mean, people don't have right attitudes about respect and doing the right thing.

Speaker 77 Manners and courtesy.

Speaker 14 Manners and courtesy. Yes.

Speaker 74 Which is what he was up against, said Daniel, first with roommate Chris Phillips and then with Nathan.

Speaker 13 But just as happened with Chris, Daniel went through an enamored stage first.

Speaker 77 One day, Chris brought Nathan home. And when I first saw him, I was like, wow, you know,

Speaker 77 this kid is good looking.

Speaker 36 Daniel, who is gay, was attracted at first, he admitted.

Speaker 14 You were infatuated.

Speaker 77 Not anymore. No, no.

Speaker 14 Not anymore by a few months into the relationship?

Speaker 77 No, I've never had no sexual relationship whatsoever with him, except for being a platonic friend.

Speaker 14 Did you ever try to initiate a sexual relationship?

Speaker 33 No.

Speaker 47 Not at all. Didn't hint at it? Nothing.
No.

Speaker 44 Friends, like Chris Phillips, however, said they saw something else going on.

Speaker 14 I mean, essentially, they were saying you were obsessed with Nathan, that he was becoming more interested in Shelley, that it seemed to bother you, according to those who saw you.

Speaker 23 It seemed to bother you a great deal.

Speaker 8 Yes, he was talking her.

Speaker 23 Well, or that he was actually hanging out with her a lot.

Speaker 14 They'd play video games together. And they didn't include you.

Speaker 33 And they didn't include you in places they went to see other people.

Speaker 19 They left you out.

Speaker 10 You were feeling like left out by these two.

Speaker 77 I did feel left out because I told Nathan, you know,

Speaker 77 it's very rude that, you know, you didn't ask me if I want to

Speaker 77 do this or to do that with you. Now.

Speaker 29 All those things you had done for him.

Speaker 14 Yes.

Speaker 33 And he is just basically shoveling you out the door.

Speaker 22 Yes, I actually

Speaker 77 came to him and talked to him about it.

Speaker 77 I told him that it was very rude and you know it's not that I felt left out but it's just that it was very rude and so.

Speaker 22 Of course you felt left out.

Speaker 19 It would not be human of you if you didn't feel left out.

Speaker 77 Well at first yes I did but let me tell you this. After I talked to him, he,

Speaker 77 before he

Speaker 77 goes out with Sally, he would ask me on second and I said, no, I don't want to go. Don't worry about it.

Speaker 44 We asked Daniel about something Shelly told her mom.

Speaker 16 That Daniel kept trying to corner her, speak to her alone, that it bothered her.

Speaker 21 His reply,

Speaker 46 he did approach Shelley, but only out of concern for Nathan.

Speaker 77 No, I was actually asking her, I was like, is there something wrong? Because he's literally failing his classes.

Speaker 23 So you, as his...

Speaker 20 Big brother, mother, figure, whatever it was, felt a responsibility for him, and it was because of his obsession with Shelley.

Speaker 77 I believe so.

Speaker 28 Did she tell you to lay off?

Speaker 8 No. No.

Speaker 77 She actually thanked me for bringing up the issue, and then that's where I left it.

Speaker 44 Of course, it was quite easy for us to check his claim that Nathan was failing his classes, was he?

Speaker 66 No.

Speaker 44 But listen now to Daniel's central claim.

Speaker 26 that for evidence of who killed Shelley, one need look no further than that plastic baggie stained with her blood and found in Nathan's bathroom.

Speaker 34 Daniel swore he didn't put it there.

Speaker 77 They're telling me that I'm assessing with Nathan, so therefore I was the one who committed this crime. My question is, okay, if that was true, why would I put it in there?

Speaker 14 Because once you realize it's either you or Nathan, you better blame Nathan.

Speaker 77 Don't do that. Okay, that's what you would think, right? For me to blame Nathan, but I didn't.
I, to this day, do.

Speaker 77 I'm not trying to accuse Nathan of murder. I'm just

Speaker 77 trying to find out where was he. But I do have a suspect.

Speaker 47 Oh.

Speaker 77 Where was Christopher Phillips at this time?

Speaker 8 Chris Phillips?

Speaker 47 Now that was a new one.

Speaker 23 He put the baggie in the bathroom.

Speaker 77 No, I'm saying he have access to my house.

Speaker 58 By the way, Chris Phillips was never a suspect in the case.

Speaker 49 In fact, he was a witness for the state.

Speaker 50 But Daniel was adamant that he at least was innocent.

Speaker 77 I'm not the one who killed that girl.

Speaker 61 I'm not the one who killed Shelly.

Speaker 28 I have two younger sisters, sir.

Speaker 77 What if that happened to my sisters?

Speaker 8 What if that happened to my mom?

Speaker 8 I would kill myself before I hurt anybody else. I could kill her

Speaker 8 because she reminds me of my younger sister, Amanda.

Speaker 8 What if that happens to Amanda or Katie?

Speaker 8 I would kill myself.

Speaker 19 But it happened to Shelly.

Speaker 8 That's what happened to Shelly.

Speaker 61 But I'm not the one who killed her.

Speaker 77 Even if I have to go through this,

Speaker 77 I'm still telling you I'm not the one who killed her because I can't. That would be like me killing my younger sisters.

Speaker 8 And I love them.

Speaker 49 Would the jury have believed him?

Speaker 51 Had he testified?

Speaker 50 We'll never know.

Speaker 67 But without it, the verdict came back in just three hours.

Speaker 17 Guilty of first-degree murder.

Speaker 19 It was a very good feeling.

Speaker 19 It's one of the cases that I'll never forget.

Speaker 19 only because of the brutality involved in it and at that time my daughter was exactly 20 years old.

Speaker 47 Same age.

Speaker 9 So it struck close to home.

Speaker 16 After the verdict Shelly's mother approached Nathan and apologized for ever suspecting him.

Speaker 8 I was grateful that he was nice to her.

Speaker 48 How did he take it?

Speaker 3 He didn't have a whole lot to say. He just gave me a hug and said thank you.

Speaker 51 At Daniel's sentencing, the state revealed a little more about his past, about the times he reacted to what he considered to be rude behavior.

Speaker 23 The defense attorney had told him he was a pastry chef in the Navy in his opening statement. That was all they knew.

Speaker 47 And so what were you able to tell the judge?

Speaker 23 So we were able to tell them that while he was in the Navy, he had repeated times where someone would upset him and he would go to a superior and let them know that he was contemplating hurting them.

Speaker 23 He hurting them with knives

Speaker 23 and hot oil. Then we found out that once he was back at his house, he had gotten into an argument with his brother and taken a samurai sword to his room and torn the whole place up.

Speaker 23 What I hoped it would do was say to the jurors, you got it right.

Speaker 49 Because it was Texas, it was also the jury's job to decide on a sentence.

Speaker 12 It took them less than an hour.

Speaker 32 He got life.

Speaker 60 No chance of parole for at least 30 years.

Speaker 77 I was like, what just happened?

Speaker 14 You thought you should have been found not guilty?

Speaker 8 Yes.

Speaker 33 You expected to be?

Speaker 61 Yes, because I'm not the one who killed her.

Speaker 77 How many times do I need to tell you this?

Speaker 14 How did it feel inside?

Speaker 77 Soul-crushing.

Speaker 27 Life in Italy, Texas, is not the same anymore, of course, without Shelly Nance.

Speaker 51 Her mother founded an art scholarship in her memory and did something very unusual for a woman her age in a place like Italy.

Speaker 63 She got a tattoo

Speaker 8 of a butterfly, of course.

Speaker 3 I can look down and I can remember Shelly every time I see it.

Speaker 48 She and Sam are deeply religious people.

Speaker 58 Their faith tells them to forgive.

Speaker 27 It's very hard.

Speaker 3 I haven't forgiven him for what he's done.

Speaker 3 And that's a hard thing to do.

Speaker 8 I know he has.

Speaker 8 But if he could ever admit that he did it, then I might be able to forgive him.

Speaker 8 But I can't forgive him, and I can't forget.

Speaker 13 How have you been able to forgive him?

Speaker 38 I just know that everybody's not perfect, but I don't know.

Speaker 38 To me,

Speaker 38 if I hold a grudge like that, it's going to eat me up more than it's going to eat him up.

Speaker 38 I just had to let it go. Put it in God's hands.
Let it go.

Speaker 38 I miss my daughter every day, though.

Speaker 38 There's not a day goes by I don't think about her.

Speaker 8 That's for sure.

Speaker 38 I know I'll see her again someday. That's what keeps me going.

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