Mystery on the Jordan River

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Speaker 6 I'm Lester Holt and this is Dateline.

Speaker 7 You can lose a child without knowing it in a second. It wasn't an if, it was a when.
Are they going to tell us that she's not coming home?

Speaker 7 This is not what was supposed to happen.

Speaker 3 The note was under her blanket.

Speaker 9 I saw it sticking out and I grabbed it.

Speaker 5 Their daughter was a runaway.

Speaker 7 I am frantic because I didn't know how to find her.

Speaker 5 They called police. They searched.
And then a jogger found a red shoe and a pool of blood.

Speaker 6 Here they are, three people at the door.

Speaker 7 I just

Speaker 7 started sobbing.

Speaker 5 They'd found her daughter, but not the boy she was with. It was as if he'd never existed.

Speaker 11 We couldn't find anything about LJ.

Speaker 5 Months went by. Still no trace of LJ.

Speaker 5 And then a rookie took the case.

Speaker 6 How'd you feel about it, that this was now going to be your case?

Speaker 12 I didn't know if I was capable of doing this. I cried for two hours.

Speaker 10 A teen found dead.

Speaker 7 We still don't have an answer.

Speaker 5 A mysterious missing suspect.

Speaker 14 You said that LJ has killed someone before.

Speaker 5 And hers to solve.

Speaker 6 I get the feeling, Jack one, you're learning how to become a detective as you go.

Speaker 12 This is the case that taught me.

Speaker 7 You have no surefire way to keep your children safe.

Speaker 10 Here's Dennis Murphy with Mystery on the Georgia River.

Speaker 10 Madhood!

Speaker 3 Veronica Kasperzak Bratcher is a determined woman.

Speaker 6 Did someone ever say you can't save them all, do you?

Speaker 7 My mother is probably the one that would save and still says that.

Speaker 7 But yeah, I heard that a lot.

Speaker 3 She rarely listened, though. The desire to do good, to save a child, was too strong.
Though sometimes in the quiet hours, she wonders if she did the right thing.

Speaker 7 If I wouldn't have picked that house, if I would have not taken a shower, if I would have

Speaker 7 done

Speaker 7 something else,

Speaker 7 she wouldn't have been in that situation.

Speaker 3 Of course, no one could have known then that it would end up like this.

Speaker 7 Unified Police Department, I I need to report a runaway. My daughter is missing.

Speaker 3 Her daughter was Annie Grace Kasperzak. Though when Veronica first met Annie, she wasn't a Kasperzak at all.
She wasn't even her daughter.

Speaker 3 She was a client, just seven years old with a rough childhood.

Speaker 7 She'd been through some abuse, and she had a hard time trusting other people.

Speaker 3 Back in 2005, Veronica was a caseworker for Utah's Division of Children and Family Services. Her job was to find homes for kids who no longer had one.
Annie was one of those kids.

Speaker 7 Annie has kind of a larger than life personality. Whatever Annie does, she never did small.
If there was something she liked, she loved it and she was huge.

Speaker 7 If there was something she didn't like, it was big and there was no question about it.

Speaker 6 Drama came with it, huh?

Speaker 15 Oh, yes. Oh, yes.

Speaker 3 Veronica tried for years to find Annie a stable home. But after Annie had been flung back to the state nine times, Veronica, young, naive, and stubborn, made a surprising decision to adopt Annie.

Speaker 6 Did your superiors tell you, you know, we don't do that, Veronica.

Speaker 15 Oh, yes. Don't cross that line.

Speaker 6 You have a professional relationship with this child, but don't bring her into your home.

Speaker 7 Well, and that was very true, and because at the time, I also happened to be about six months pregnant. And so I'm sure the thought was, okay, crazy pregnant lady, she doesn't know what she's doing.

Speaker 7 But it was very much, are you sure you can't save everybody?

Speaker 3 But Veronica was determined to try. She and her then husband Dennis adopted 10-year-old Annie in January 2007.
Annie, who had bounced around from house to house, finally had a home.

Speaker 3 Parents and brothers who adored her.

Speaker 7 She was the immediate cool big sister. She liked being the oldest, being in charge and teaching them all of this cool stuff.

Speaker 3 She was wanted, happy, making memories.

Speaker 3 Opening gifts on Christmas morning, her first trip to the beach. Not that everything was perfect, mind you.

Speaker 7 There was still definitely a,

Speaker 7 I'm going to test you as much as you say you love me and you're keeping me. I'm going to make I don't believe you.

Speaker 6 How would she challenge you, for instance?

Speaker 7 Just the quintessential, I'm not going to do what you say. I'm going to do whatever I want.

Speaker 6 So there's a psychological tussle going on.

Speaker 15 Uh-huh. Mm-hmm.

Speaker 3 Which only intensified when Annie entered her teen years.

Speaker 7 She was about as boy crazy as I could imagine. She always had a boy that she liked or that liked her, and it was never a, here, let me see, it's a, oh, I'm so in love with you, this is forever.

Speaker 7 I couldn't imagine anybody being more amazing. She was very all in.

Speaker 3 But Annie was also into her education and her future. She wanted to be a therapist, just like Veronica.
She even wanted her new family to adopt more kids.

Speaker 7 Well, what about this other girl, Mom? She's there. She's really having a hard time.
I think we should bring her home. It was...

Speaker 6 She was really becoming your daughter in a way, huh?

Speaker 15 Yeah.

Speaker 3 Veronica eventually divorced and remarried. She and her new husband, James, settled here in Riverton, Utah, a quiet suburb of Salt Lake City.

Speaker 3 Annie had James wrapped around her finger.

Speaker 9 I took her with me to help me pick out her mother's Valentine's Day gift, and there was a shoe store right across the way. She had a way with me.
She could talk me into just about anything.

Speaker 9 And one of them was her favorite shoes that she found, and she was so excited about them. And they were a red pair of shoes.

Speaker 14 Just a few weeks later, March 10th, 2012, Annie, now 15, was watching her brothers while Veronica and James went out for dinner.

Speaker 7 And then when we came home, everything seemed the same.

Speaker 7 I mean Annie had changed from running around the house in shorts to jeans and I just kind of chalked that up to okay she's gotten cold and I had a massive headache I couldn't get rid of so I went to take a shower and Annie had gone downstairs to her room to listen to music and

Speaker 7 we just figured it was another Saturday.

Speaker 3 But it wasn't. When Veronica finished her shower, Annie was gone.
James searched her bedroom.

Speaker 9 The note was tucked underneath her blanket, and I grabbed it, and it just said, I'm sorry, mom, that I haven't been totally honest with you.

Speaker 3 Annie, it turned out, was keeping a secret. In the note, she wrote, I lied to my friends.
I told them I was P.

Speaker 3 P.

Speaker 3 Veronica and James knew that stood for the word no teenager's parents want to hear. Pregnant.
Just a few months earlier, they had learned that Annie had had sex for the first time.

Speaker 7 She'd had sex, and so to Annie, she had assumed that, well, because you've had sex, I could be pregnant, or I am pregnant.

Speaker 3 But the pregnancy test was negative, and Annie was now on birth control. Why would she lie about being pee?

Speaker 3 Even more alarming was where Annie said she was going. By the time you read this note, I'll be on my way to California.

Speaker 7 Please don't try and look for me because i don't want to be found the first thing we did was we called the police and then the second person i called was chris 14 year old chris bagshaw annie had brought him over to the house a few times he was kind of quiet i kind of took it as the all right i'm here with my girlfriend's parents and i want to make sure they don't kill me so was he in and out of the picture for her as the boyfriend of the moment

Speaker 6 His stock would rise and fall.

Speaker 7 Yep. She was crazy about him.

Speaker 3 Chris told Veronica he didn't know where Annie was, but he did have some potentially significant information. Chris said Annie told him she was running away with a guy named LJ.

Speaker 7 We were shocked because, I mean, we didn't know all of her friends because they changed a lot depending on who she was hanging out with at the moment, but it wasn't familiar at all.

Speaker 3 A police officer came and took a report. James, meanwhile, called up the GPS function on Annie's cell phone.

Speaker 9 They'd put her around or about the golf course out in Riverton, within a mile of that, which is around the bridge area.

Speaker 3 The bridge at the Jordan River, just a couple of miles from their home. A place joggers and horseback riders frequent during the day and young lovers at night.

Speaker 3 James, Veronica, and the officer watched as Annie's phone pinged across the computer screen in real time. You're watching her move.

Speaker 7 Yes. When it moved so fast, our immediate assumption was, okay, she's getting in a car.

Speaker 6 So this is a hot pursuit now, looking looking for your girl.

Speaker 14 Yep.

Speaker 3 And then the signal just stopped. Veronica drove to a Walmart near where they tracked Annie's phone.

Speaker 7 And I have her picture on my cell phone and I'm showing it to the people that are sitting at the front. The grader's going, have you seen this girl?

Speaker 6 Are you collected or are you a wreck while all this is going on?

Speaker 7 I am

Speaker 7 frantic.

Speaker 3 Veronica went back home. She and James watched the front door and they kept calling Annie, but her phone went straight to voicemail.

Speaker 6 In the best of worlds, she's out with some young boyfriend you may or may not know,

Speaker 6 off on a lark of some kind, but it'll come to an end and you'll get her back and regroup.

Speaker 7 Yeah, our worst-case scenario at that point is: okay, she's gonna come home pregnant.

Speaker 3 Worst-case scenario, not even close.

Speaker 5 What had happened to Annie, and who is the mysterious LJ

Speaker 5 when we returned?

Speaker 11 He had told us that LJ had driven by the house, threatening Chris.

Speaker 5 And a jogger makes a grim discovery.

Speaker 12 911, what is the address of the emergency?

Speaker 17 From at the river bottom, there's some pools of blood.

Speaker 3 March 11th, 2012. Spring was still officially days away, but in Draper, Utah, its promise was clear.
Morning dew on the brush, the crisp air, the sun rising over the Wasatch Mountains.

Speaker 3 It should have been a beautiful day. But for a jogger on the Jordan River Parkway that morning, it was anything but.

Speaker 12 911, what is the address of the emergency?

Speaker 17 You know, I'm not real sure. I'm at the river bottom, and there's some pools of blood.

Speaker 8 And

Speaker 17 I'm guessing it's just an animal, but in the water right by the river, there's a shoe.

Speaker 3 Sergeant Chad Carpenter was one of the first on the scene.

Speaker 6 This is what the jogger sees. Blood here.

Speaker 18 Pooling blood?

Speaker 6 Clotted blood?

Speaker 19 Yeah, so basically in this area right here, you had the blood droplets. And then on the cement right here, you had

Speaker 19 blood in this area

Speaker 19 on that beam right there. In this area, you had a little bit of blood, and then you had pooling down on the ground right there.

Speaker 19 And then in this area, down to those rocks, was where the majority of the blood had.

Speaker 13 So down there's where most of the blood is.

Speaker 19 Yeah. So

Speaker 19 it was a large amount of blood.

Speaker 3 With all the wildlife around, they thought it might be animal blood.

Speaker 19 But we called forensics out and we did a presumptive test, which was able to tell us that it actually was human blood.

Speaker 3 Human blood. That changed things.

Speaker 19 That made us think, okay, we might have a body in the water. So we called the Highway Control helicopter.

Speaker 3 The helicopter was in the air for just under an hour before before it spotted something about a mile north of where the joggers saw the blood. It was caught up in some branches.

Speaker 3 As the chopper got closer, it was clear there was a body in the river.

Speaker 6 Sergeant, when the divers pulled the victim out, what were the injuries that they observed to her face?

Speaker 19 She had a laceration here on her forehead.

Speaker 11 Her face was very swollen,

Speaker 19 so we weren't able to tell

Speaker 19 to what extent the injuries were, and

Speaker 11 we couldn't even identify who she was.

Speaker 3 Their Jane Doe, dressed in a red and white plaid shirt, looked to be about 20 years old, her features possibly Asian. And obviously, she had been murdered.

Speaker 3 Leading the investigation was a young detective named Derek Johnson.

Speaker 15 Tell me about him.

Speaker 12 Right when he came into the academy,

Speaker 12 he sat next to me and started teasing me. And the rest of the class time, we just harassed each other and laughed and giggled all day.

Speaker 3 Jaclyn Moore met Derek at the police academy. She was a hairstylist who'd gotten bored with rinses and blowouts.

Speaker 12 I wanted something more challenging, so I went on a ride-along with a local police department and fell in love.

Speaker 6 That took a lot of guts to do that.

Speaker 12 Yeah, it was challenging and scary, but that's what I was looking for.

Speaker 3 She and Derek hit it off immediately.

Speaker 6 You guys became friendly, competitive headbutters, huh?

Speaker 12 Yes, when we both applied at Draper and he got hired, we started our competition.

Speaker 3 Their competitive streak clearly apparent when a new position opened up.

Speaker 12 A detective spot came open and we both applied and he got it.

Speaker 15 Do you think rats? I did.

Speaker 6 He got it and I didn't? Yes.

Speaker 3 Now Derek had caught his first case, which was also the first homicide the small town of Draper had seen in years.

Speaker 21 Someone called police just after 10 this morning to report they had come across a gruesome scene.

Speaker 3 By the time Veronica and James saw the reports, Annie had been missing for nearly 20 hours.

Speaker 6 The information that it's an Asian woman in her 20s, I think, was the initial report. That would seem to rule out Annie, certainly.

Speaker 7 Initially, we were thinking, no, that's not possible.

Speaker 15 That

Speaker 15 there's no way.

Speaker 3 But then, a detail Sergeant Carpenter shared with Salt Lake City's NBC affiliate, KSL-TV.

Speaker 19 There was a shoe found at the crime scene,

Speaker 19 and there was one on the body.

Speaker 3 A red shoe. The same kind James had bought Annie for Valentine's Day just weeks earlier.
Veronica and James tried to stay calm.

Speaker 7 So we called the police and we said, hey, our daughter's missing. I think logically I was going, they're just going to rule it out.
I just need them to rule it out.

Speaker 3 But they couldn't rule it out.

Speaker 7 After I called the police, I called my parents to come and pick up our boys and I just

Speaker 7 started sobbing.

Speaker 3 Police soon determined the 20-something Asian victim was really 15-year-old Annie Kasperzak. She had been killed by blunt force trauma to the head.

Speaker 3 Veronica and James had thought the rapid pinging of Annie's phone meant she was driving away. Now there was no hope of her ever coming home.

Speaker 6 So there's the very worst moment of your life at that point. Here they are, three people at the door.

Speaker 7 They confirmed that it was Annie. I think we were in shock.

Speaker 7 We went into automatic.

Speaker 7 What do you need from us? Tell us what you want. You can have it.
Look at anything.

Speaker 3 Veronica told investigators what she learned from Annie's on-again, off-again boyfriend, Chris Bagshaw. That Annie had run away with a boy named LJ.

Speaker 22 When you you talked with LJ, how did you talk to him? I talked to him once. Okay.
Actually on the phone. Okay.

Speaker 3 Police spoke to Chris Bagshaw and his father at their home.

Speaker 22 And when you talked to him on the phone, did he speak with an accent or do you notice anything distinctive about his voice? No.

Speaker 3 Naturally, police also had to ask Chris where he was.

Speaker 22 I was with my grandma, okay, and at one point I did walk up to see if my friend can hang out, but he wasn't home. Okay.

Speaker 3 They went through the usual questions.

Speaker 23 When you walk to your friends, what did you have on?

Speaker 22 Um, just regular jeans and a t-shirt and a red jacket. Just blue jeans?

Speaker 22 Yeah, blue jeans, his Nike shoes. He had a t-shirt underneath and he had his red hoodie on.
Do you mind if we see your Nikes?

Speaker 22 Sure.

Speaker 3 Chris wanted to help. He gave those Nikes to investigators as well as his clothes.
He even gave a DNA sample. And after his interview, Chris's dad called up Sergeant Carpenter.

Speaker 11 He had told us in this phone call that LJ had driven by the house,

Speaker 11 was threatening Chris.

Speaker 6 So here more information that this LJ is a very real and threatening person.

Speaker 15 Yes.

Speaker 23 You know,

Speaker 13 I never wanted to do this.

Speaker 3 Detectives also spoke to Chris and Annie's friend, Spencer Criddle. Spencer said he was at the gym with his brother the night Annie was killed.

Speaker 14 Sometimes you just gotta point

Speaker 14 shoot.

Speaker 15 Yeah, what are you doing?

Speaker 3 On his phone, detectives found this video of Spencer, Annie, Chris, and another friend hanging out, taken just weeks before Annie was killed. Detectives looked carefully.

Speaker 3 Was Annie throwing a gang sign?

Speaker 3 They asked Spencer about it.

Speaker 14 Did she have an interest in gangs or?

Speaker 8 Um, not that.

Speaker 14 She didn't really tell me. I'm just...
I... Maybe she does because of some person named LJ that I have no idea who is.
All I know is she told me he was in a gang. I don't know for sure.

Speaker 3 Before Before he left the interview, Spencer shared one more thing with police.

Speaker 6 He said that

Speaker 14 LJ has killed someone before. She never gave me the name, but she said that she knows that or something like that.
That's why she was scared when apparently LJ threatened Chris to come kill him.

Speaker 6 You thought LJ was your killer?

Speaker 11 We thought LJ was involved.

Speaker 3 Did boy crazy Annie fall for a gang member? In her room, police found this poem she had written to LJ, and with it, for the first time, a name, Leighton Leighton Gendon.

Speaker 3 But police couldn't track him down.

Speaker 6 Not showing up on social media, any kid stuff?

Speaker 11 Nothing. Not even on any driver's license database.
We checked all of the gang databases that we have in the Salt Lake Valley.

Speaker 10 Nothing.

Speaker 3 Jacqueline wasn't working the case then, but she remembers crossing paths with Spencer at the station.

Speaker 12 And he immediately tensed up, clenched his fists. His eyes got big.
He couldn't take his eyes off of me.

Speaker 12 And I thought, this kid has done something wrong, and he thinks I'm coming to arrest him because I'm approaching him in uniform.

Speaker 6 Did you share that with Derek?

Speaker 12 Yes. He said, we've received more information now, and we think we have another suspect.

Speaker 3 Another suspect. A new name altogether.
Based on information from an eyewitness who may have seen Annie Kasperzak the night she was killed and knew who killed her.

Speaker 26 Coming up.

Speaker 5 Is this how Annie was murdered?

Speaker 5 And is this the man who murdered her?

Speaker 5 When dateline continues.

Speaker 3 Annie Kazbrazak had been brutally murdered and dumped into the Jordan River.

Speaker 7 We kept asking, are you sure it wasn't an an accident? The idea that somebody else could do that to her was just.

Speaker 7 Even now, it's hard to imagine that that's even possible.

Speaker 3 And now Draper Police were working hard to catch her killer.

Speaker 19 We're trying to actively locate suspects in this case, any witnesses, so that we can actually bring this case to a conclusion for the parents.

Speaker 3 And within a week of Annie's murder, they found that witness.

Speaker 3 Her name name was Joanna, and she'd been picked up on a fraud charge by neighboring West Jordan PD.

Speaker 3 During her interview, she started telling detectives about a young girl she had seen a week prior. The cops thought some of what she said sounded eerily similar to Annie's case.

Speaker 3 So they called Draper PD and Detective Derek Johnson and his colleague came over to hear what Joanna had to say.

Speaker 3 Tell me what you know about this girl.

Speaker 27 I was every time I've seen her. Over there.

Speaker 14 There, at the home where a man man named Daniel Ferry used to live.

Speaker 1 Danny Ferry is a guy known to law enforcement.

Speaker 3 Yes.

Speaker 6 As maybe a drug dealer?

Speaker 11 Drug dealer.

Speaker 11 He was a member of

Speaker 11 a gang called Vario Locotown.

Speaker 11 And

Speaker 11 law enforcement has dealt with Danny quite a few times, yeah.

Speaker 3 Ferry had a long rap sheet. In fact, Derek had served a search warrant on his home a year earlier.

Speaker 3 And now, here was Joanna telling Derek that she saw a girl who sounded a lot like Annie at Daniel Ferry's home on the night Annie was killed.

Speaker 3 Joanna also said the girl showed up with someone police had been searching for but couldn't find.

Speaker 27 She gave an LJ.

Speaker 3 LJ, the guy Annie had written that note to, the alleged gang member, the one Chris Bagshaw said Annie had run away with.

Speaker 11 We had Annie's entries that said LJ.

Speaker 11 We had Joanna telling us about LJ.

Speaker 3 On that night, said Joanna, LJ and the girl disappeared into the garage. She assumed they were having sex.
Then, when they came out, she saw Daniel approach the girl.

Speaker 27 And she laughed, and she was like, No, and he saw that red rounding the wall.

Speaker 3 She said the girl was knocked unconscious. LJ and another friend named V tried to calm Daniel down.
And then the three of them carried the girl out to the garage and changed her clothes.

Speaker 28 Tell me about the clothes you changed for her intent. It was a lot of red.

Speaker 28 That's what I remember the most.

Speaker 28 What parts do you remember being red?

Speaker 27 Pants and shoes, and the shirt was like white.

Speaker 15 White red.

Speaker 24 The shirt was white laces.

Speaker 27 Yeah, the shoes. Shoes had white laces and retail.

Speaker 3 Then Joanna said, Daniel, LJ, and V wrapped the unconscious girl in a blue tarp, put her in a white suburban, and took off.

Speaker 3 And when they came back hours later, she said Daniel was covered in blood and the girl was not with him.

Speaker 15 I asked Daniel where she was.

Speaker 15 And he heard that she lost her name.

Speaker 27 She said she was going home to find what she got there.

Speaker 3 Joanna's story rang true, leading Derek Johnson to believe the mystery girl was Annie and Daniel Ferry was her killer.

Speaker 3 Jacqueline was part of the team that secured Daniel's home while detectives searched it.

Speaker 12 I was about half a block away from Daniel Ferry's house. I could see his house, but I was more concerned with people coming in and out of the street.

Speaker 6 Did you see people coming and going that night?

Speaker 12 Yes, Daniel Ferry's family was trying to get in.

Speaker 3 A tense scene. Daniel himself wasn't there.
But detectives did learn something more in another interview with Joanna that bore out their star witnesses' story.

Speaker 20 Did you see blood on the carpet?

Speaker 12 Yeah.

Speaker 3 Was it carpet or hard ferment? There's carpet. Okay.

Speaker 12 Positive carpet.

Speaker 3 Now the search team found the carpet in Ferry's house had been ripped up and the walls were freshly painted.

Speaker 6 It's signs of a cover-up.

Speaker 10 Yeah, it's looking more and more like this is actually

Speaker 11 true, all this information that we're receiving.

Speaker 6 Did you find blood-like splotches on the wall?

Speaker 11 We found indications that there

Speaker 11 would be blood on the wall.

Speaker 3 They swabbed those areas and then went looking for Daniel. They found him at an apartment complex, arrested him, and brought him in.

Speaker 31 Let me ask you that.

Speaker 30 What do you think? I got an answer.

Speaker 3 It was, the detectives thought, the typical bad guy response. They were sure Daniel knew something.
They asked him about LJ.

Speaker 28 Who knows LJ?

Speaker 28 Tell me about Annie.

Speaker 28 Tell me about Annie.

Speaker 30 And you.

Speaker 14 Annie. Who the f is Annie?

Speaker 24 Annie is the girl that was at your house for party last weekend.

Speaker 30 Dude, I have no idea who Annie is.

Speaker 28 We've already talked to a lot of other people, but I'll verify she was there.

Speaker 30 Okay, show me a picture of that.

Speaker 6 You showed him the picture of Annie? Yep. Brittany's?

Speaker 28 Is her name Britney's?

Speaker 27 No, Danny.

Speaker 3 Detectives thought Daniel was lying, and they were done playing around.

Speaker 24 I didn't know about it.

Speaker 27 I told you she's dead.

Speaker 28 I knew it.

Speaker 28 What the f ⁇ ?

Speaker 30 Did you guys think I did this? I do all the women.

Speaker 27 Because

Speaker 24 the only thing

Speaker 27 is safe in the name of the.

Speaker 27 I think you did it. Well, if you think I did it, then you're f ⁇ ing out the wrong guy.

Speaker 27 Good luck. Found the right guy.

Speaker 3 Derek was confident he had. They booked Daniel for Annie's murder.

Speaker 6 Did this name mean anything to you?

Speaker 15 Fairy? No.

Speaker 6 Guy's known for doing drugs. Uh-huh.

Speaker 9 I didn't understand it.

Speaker 9 Annie was extremely anti-drugs.

Speaker 6 Annie's 15. The guy arrested is, what, 30 years old? A person known to the police, as they say.

Speaker 7 That compounded the

Speaker 7 guilt of, boy, what bad parents are we, that not only did we did this happen to her, but that we didn't even know she was hanging out with people like this.

Speaker 3 LJ, whoever he was, still hadn't turned up. But Detective Derek Johnson still thought he'd wrapped up his first homicide.

Speaker 3 All he needed was the lab to confirm that the blood found in Daniel's home was Annie's. But then the lab called, and everything unraveled.

Speaker 26 Coming up.

Speaker 5 Not the best time for a rookie detective to be taking over.

Speaker 6 How'd you feel about it that this was now going to be your case?

Speaker 12 I cried for two hours. I had only had a few months in detectives and I didn't know if I was capable of doing this.

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Speaker 3 Annie Kazburzak had had a rough childhood. She was passed along from foster home to foster home before she was adopted by her caseworker, Veronica.
Annie's life finally seemed to be turning around.

Speaker 3 Then in 2012, Annie, just 15, was found murdered, her body floating in the Jordan River.

Speaker 7 There was never a second

Speaker 7 that

Speaker 7 your mind didn't go to,

Speaker 7 this is not,

Speaker 7 this is not what was supposed to happen.

Speaker 3 Draper police were on the hunt to find her killer. And a week after Annie's murder, they believed they had.
Known gang member and drug dealer, Daniel Ferry.

Speaker 19 I know that she was at the house, but how she got to the house, that's something we're working out. If she'd been to the house before, we don't know.

Speaker 3 An eyewitness said she saw Daniel Ferry assault a girl the night Annie was killed. That witness also said the girl had shown up with LJ, whom police could never find.

Speaker 3 But in the course of their investigation of Ferry, detectives learned something interesting.

Speaker 6 And you had another LJ in that crowd, didn't you?

Speaker 15 Yeah. Daniel Ferry.
Yeah.

Speaker 6 What was his nickname?

Speaker 11 So he used two. One was Joker and the other one was Lil Joe.

Speaker 15 Lil Joe. LJ.
Yeah.

Speaker 3 Maybe their witness was confused or deliberately hiding the fact that Ferry and LJ were one and the same. Either way, Ferry seemed like their man.

Speaker 3 But the DA wanted more evidence before filing charges. Derek Johnson and Chad Carpenter thought the blood samples taken from Daniel Ferry's home would push the case over the finish line.

Speaker 6 You and Derek have to think you're done there.

Speaker 15 You got it.

Speaker 11 A lot of our investigators thought that we had it, we had it nailed.

Speaker 3 While they waited for the blood results to come back from the lab, they went searching for the carpet that had been ripped out from the fairy home. The carpet Joanna had said the girl had bled on.

Speaker 11 We sent investigators to the landfill here in Salt Lake County and all of the carpet that had been brought in from all the different places had been piled together.

Speaker 11 So our investigators went through each piece of carpet.

Speaker 6 That's a nasty job.

Speaker 15 That was terrible.

Speaker 20 We actually burned our clothes afterwards because we were walking in all the stuff.

Speaker 3 They found a couple of carpet scraps, but no way to prove they came from Ferry's house, making those blood samples they'd taken from the wall even more critical.

Speaker 3 It was weeks later when they heard back from the lab.

Speaker 6 And then the blood work comes back and whoops.

Speaker 11 Blood work came back and it was negative for blood.

Speaker 3 Not only were the samples not Annie's blood, it wasn't even blood at all. A major blow to the investigation.

Speaker 25 Didn't mean he's not good for the crime.

Speaker 11 Doesn't mean that he's not good for the crime. It just

Speaker 11 led us to believe that, okay, it didn't happen here at the Ferry residence.

Speaker 6 So Ferry might be good for this thing, but boy, you're just not getting there.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 3 The only bright spot, Daniel Ferry, wasn't getting out of jail. He was also being investigated for an unrelated kidnapping and assault case in a neighboring town.

Speaker 6 So he's on ice while you guys can develop. your theories about his involvement in this thing.
Yeah.

Speaker 3 They continued to investigate Ferry. Months went by.
Lead detective Derek Johnson was promoted to sergeant, which meant former hairdresser Jaclyn Moore's dream of making detective finally came true.

Speaker 3 Maybe a case of beware what you wish for. One of her first assignments was the Annie Kazperzak murder.

Speaker 6 How'd you feel about it, that this was now going to be your case?

Speaker 12 I cried for two hours.

Speaker 10 Really?

Speaker 6 We closed the door and.

Speaker 12 I actually drove to my parents' house and I cried at their house.

Speaker 6 What was your anxiety?

Speaker 12 I had only had a few months in detectives and I didn't know if I was capable of doing this. Derek told me when he passed it off to me that it was probably going to be a cold case.

Speaker 12 I had five huge binders staring at me and hundreds of items of evidence in our evidence locker. I didn't know where to go.

Speaker 6 Did you think I should have stayed in the salon cutting hair?

Speaker 15 No.

Speaker 12 No. I knew I could do this.
It was just very overwhelming.

Speaker 3 Jacqueline decided she needed to start again from the beginning, following the chain of evidence that led her colleagues to Daniel Ferry.

Speaker 12 She thought she might link Ferry to Annie through his phone calls, but when she checked, all of his cell phone records showed he was in the middle to northern part of Salt Lake County.

Speaker 12 He had never gone south close enough to where Annie was killed, not even near her house.

Speaker 3 And she well knew the physical evidence wasn't there either.

Speaker 12 None of the DNA came back saying Annie was ever a friend or ever at his house.

Speaker 3 And no matter how much Derek Derek and the other investigators leaned on him, Daniel Ferry didn't budge.

Speaker 6 What was his story when he was confronted directly when he was in the chair? Did you kill this girl? What's the story he tells?

Speaker 12 He said, no, he had never met her. She was never at his house.

Speaker 12 He didn't know who she was.

Speaker 6 He's saying all along it's not me.

Speaker 12 Yes.

Speaker 3 Now Jacqueline, her detective's badge still shiny new, started to believe he might be telling the truth, which would mean Annie's killer was still walking free.

Speaker 26 Coming up,

Speaker 5 a trail of phone calls.

Speaker 6 What do you think is going on?

Speaker 12 It looks like a fight. It looks like they're yelling at each other and hanging up on each other.

Speaker 5 When dateline continues.

Speaker 3 For months, the investigation into Annie's murder had centered on one suspect.

Speaker 12 Daniel Ferry is an adult and a known gang member and criminal, and it was easier to believe Daniel Ferry killed Annie.

Speaker 3 But detectives had never found enough evidence to make a murder charge stick, and it turned out there was an explanation.

Speaker 3 Remember, while under suspicion for Annie's murder, Ferry was arrested for an unrelated kidnapping in a different town.

Speaker 6 The charge stuck.

Speaker 3 Ferry eventually pleaded guilty and was sent to prison. Draper police came to believe it was this kidnapping that star witness Joanna had recounted to them.

Speaker 3 She had seen a totally different crime, not Annie's murder. What's more, it happened on the same night Annie was killed.
No way Daniel Ferry could have committed both crimes.

Speaker 3 So now, rookie detective Jacqueline Moore went back to all the evidence Derek had amassed.

Speaker 12 I felt lost. I decided I needed to start from the beginning and see what information Derek had when he first got the case.

Speaker 3 And so began the education of a detective. She started reading through pages and pages of Annie's notes and journal entries.

Speaker 6 Who does Annie turn out to be the more you learn about her?

Speaker 12 She's very lost. She wants to be loved by anyone and everyone.

Speaker 3 And Jacqueline saw that there was one person in particular Annie wanted to be loved by. Chris Bagshaw.
His name was scribbled all over her journals. Veronica remembered Annie gushing about him.

Speaker 7 She liked him. He was different.
He had enough of the bad boy going on that he wasn't a goody two-shoes, and so she didn't feel like he looked down at her.

Speaker 3 Annie's diaries revealed something else, too.

Speaker 12 She and Chris had sex.

Speaker 3 Chris was the boy Annie had slept with just months before her death. After which, remember, she lied about being pregnant.

Speaker 12 I'm starting to think that she made up the pregnancy to keep Chris around because he didn't want to be with her anymore.

Speaker 3 Next, Jacqueline poured over Annie and Chris's phone records from the night of the murder. Not only was Chris the last person Annie spoke to, but the pattern of their calls spoke volumes.

Speaker 12 30 seconds here, and then it hangs up. Immediately, one of them calls the other back.

Speaker 12 Sometimes the call is ignored. Sometimes Chris's phone is blocked.

Speaker 6 What do you think is going on?

Speaker 12 It looks like a fight. It looks like they're yelling at each other and hanging up on each other.

Speaker 3 Then while going through the case file, Jacqueline found an interesting piece of evidence that Derek collected when he searched Chris's room.

Speaker 3 A torn-up note written by Chris that when pieced together looked like this.

Speaker 3 It seemed to be an inventory of details regarding Annie's murder and all the way at the bottom was something that caught Jacqueline's attention.

Speaker 12 I notice he writes that she was wearing a white jacket.

Speaker 3 Which was odd because

Speaker 6 when the body is recovered, is there a white jacket there?

Speaker 15 No.

Speaker 12 I called Veronica and I said, does Annie have a white jacket? And she said, yes. And And I said, is it still at your house? And she said, no.
We haven't seen it since she left.

Speaker 6 How does he know about a white jacket?

Speaker 8 Right.

Speaker 12 He would have seen her that night.

Speaker 3 One more thing about that note. Written at the top of the page were the letters A-K-D.

Speaker 3 Someone's initials? Or maybe an acronym.

Speaker 12 I believe it meant Annie Kasperzak death.

Speaker 3 Her more experienced colleagues had looked at Chris too, of course, but eventually moved on. And for good reasons.
Chris had no criminal record, and no eyewitness put him at the scene.

Speaker 3 And there was still the mysterious LJ, Annie's reported boyfriend whom police could never find. Not in any police database, not anywhere.
That is, until Jacqueline knocked on one more door.

Speaker 15 Hey, how's it going?

Speaker 15 Hi.

Speaker 18 Are you Jack? Yes.

Speaker 8 I'm Detective Morris. I'm Detective Jackson.

Speaker 3 Her close buddy and predecessor, Derek Johnson, was by her side when she went to interview Annie's friend, Jackson. He told them the same story that they'd been hearing all along.

Speaker 3 Annie telling friends she was pregnant. Nothing new.
But then they asked Jackson if he knew who LJ was. His answer floored them.

Speaker 14 She would always refer to this guy as LJ

Speaker 8 and

Speaker 14 asked, well, what's his real name? And she said, Chris.

Speaker 3 A stunning revelation. Was LJ all along just Annie's nickname for Chris Bagshaw? Jacqueline knew she was getting somewhere, but there was still one big problem, Daniel Ferry.

Speaker 3 He had been in the news so long, he was clouding her investigation.

Speaker 12 As I was interviewing Annie's friends, they were all giving me stories about Annie's night, and it was based on what they had heard from the news.

Speaker 6 So that's a tainted source for you.

Speaker 15 Yes.

Speaker 6 You're somebody who doesn't know what's out there in the press.

Speaker 12 Yes.

Speaker 3 So Jacqueline took a bold step and went to her bosses, asking them to publicly clear Daniel Ferry. It was a year, almost to the day after the murder of Annie Kasparozak when the news broke.

Speaker 37 Draper police have been tight-lipped about this investigation, but today they did say that Daniel Ferry is no longer a person of interest in the murder of Annie Kasparozak.

Speaker 3 Ferry, for months the prime suspect, was officially no longer a suspect at all.

Speaker 6 Not every institution would be willing to take that little walk of shame, the humiliation that comes with something like that.

Speaker 11 I wouldn't say that it was a walk of shame or humiliation. I would actually say that it was transparency and doing the right thing.

Speaker 11 And because we could actually honestly say that Daniel was not a suspect.

Speaker 6 When the case fell apart, were you disappointed?

Speaker 7 Exhausted.

Speaker 6 Exhausted by the police investigation.

Speaker 7 Exhausted that

Speaker 7 this was just not ever going to end and that, okay, here's a big thing that kind of rocks your world and guess what?

Speaker 7 We're going to have to do this at least a couple more times because we still don't have an answer.

Speaker 3 To them, it seemed as if the investigation was going backwards. Yet, clearing Ferry brought Veronica one small comfort.

Speaker 7 It was like, okay, you have not completely failed as a parent. You did not miss this big drug-dealing world going on in your daughter's life.

Speaker 3 Not much comfort for Jacqueline Moore. The rookie detective had convinced her supervisors to clear Ferry.
Now she knew it was on her to solve the case.

Speaker 3 And then, nearly a year and a half after Annie's murder.

Speaker 3 Another tragedy. Officer has a bullet wound through his shoulder.
We are officially a helicopter in here.

Speaker 26 Coming up.

Speaker 5 A death on the road and a body blow to Jacqueline's case.

Speaker 12 I lost any information that I needed on that case.

Speaker 3 September 1st, 2013. It was 6 a.m.
Derek Johnson, once the lead detective on Annie's murder case, was now a sergeant.

Speaker 3 He was just finishing his graveyard shift and headed back to the station when he noticed a car parked on the side of the road. It looked like a stranded motorist.

Speaker 3 Derek stopped to help, but never made it out of his car.

Speaker 29 The motorist had a gun, and he was angry.

Speaker 3 Draper Police Chief Brian Roberts. Sergeant Johnson.

Speaker 29 And he fired at Derek Johnson while he was sitting in the driver's seat of his car.

Speaker 3 Derek, wounded, tried to drive away, but lost control and crashed head-on into a tree. He died at the scene.

Speaker 15 It was hard.

Speaker 10 Yeah, it sucked.

Speaker 6 You have to give me a second.

Speaker 13 So, Derek,

Speaker 6 he was a good guy.

Speaker 18 Good cop.

Speaker 11 Good friend.

Speaker 3 Derek was just 32 years old, leaving behind his wife and his six-year-old son and his family at Draper PD.

Speaker 29 You know, everybody talks about cop's cop and the best cop you can have and how he treated and served the community. Derek is one of those guys.

Speaker 3 For Jaclyn Moore, the loss was twofold.

Speaker 12 He was starting to get some free time to come help me with the case and tell me more about what he did when he was on the case.

Speaker 12 And then he was killed. I didn't have anyone else

Speaker 12 to ask.

Speaker 6 You'd lost your friend, your old competitive friend.

Speaker 12 I lost my friend and I lost any information

Speaker 12 that I needed on that case.

Speaker 6 There was no... Because he was kind of the institutional memory of this thing, wasn't he?

Speaker 15 Yes.

Speaker 3 Jacqueline had only herself to rely on now. In the balance, justice for Annie, now dead for a year and a half.
She strongly suspected Chris Bagshaw knew more than he was telling.

Speaker 3 What she needed but didn't have was something tying Chris to Annie the night she was killed.

Speaker 3 So Jacqueline reviewed every interview, every piece of evidence on Chris. The clothes he'd handed over to police early on came back clean.
No presence of Annie's DNA or blood anywhere.

Speaker 3 But then there were the shoes he handed over.

Speaker 22 Do you mind mind if we see your Nikes?

Speaker 22 Sure.

Speaker 3 Jacqueline listened to Chris's interviews again and again and noticed something interesting Chris said about his shoes.

Speaker 22 She had a bloody nose last time I hung out with her and we were sitting right next to each other and she did drip it on my shoes. Do you remember

Speaker 22 on the shoe?

Speaker 22 Um it was on my shoelaces. I'm not sure which shoe it was handed.
I was

Speaker 22 about five days ago. Me and my friend Spencer were hanging out and she just came over.

Speaker 8 Oh, Ann.

Speaker 8 No.

Speaker 3 Spencer, the guy from that cell phone video. Remember, Jacqueline had seen him coming into the station in the days following Annie's murder.

Speaker 3 She had a gut feeling back then that he was hiding something. And detectives at the time asked for his phone.

Speaker 14 Do you have an idea why we took your phone? For call-offs? Well, no, that's part of the reason, but there was a message on there that we were kind of interested in. Do you know what that message is?

Speaker 3 It was a message from Chris. The cops might come back to your house.
I need you to tell them that Annie got a bloody nose so I don't get blamed.

Speaker 14 He told me that about the...

Speaker 14 He said something about the bloody nose. That I actually don't remember seeing it.
I remember hearing it though.

Speaker 3 Lab results eventually did show Annie's blood was on Chris's shoes. Detectives questioned him about it during a second interview.

Speaker 19 Okay, would have just been one drop.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 3 But then his story began to change. Where did the drip from merch?

Speaker 32 There was no bit on the shoemaker's mind. There was angle it'll be right here.

Speaker 20 So the two separate drops did you put it?

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 3 In fact, the lab found more than just those two spots of blood. They found several.
But studying the case file, Jacqueline noticed that the lab didn't test every spot to see if it belonged to Annie.

Speaker 3 They also hadn't tested the bottom of Chris's shoes.

Speaker 12 So what do you do? Well, at that point, we went with a private lab to see if they could test the shoes further.

Speaker 12 And there is a new machine out called the MVAC.

Speaker 3 A strange mix of high and low tech.

Speaker 12 It's like a steam cleaner and vacuum. So it spits out steam and then vacuums it back up.

Speaker 3 The MVAC can collect minute DNA samples other methods miss. And when the crime lab tested the MVAC samples from Chris's shoes, Jacqueline couldn't believe it.

Speaker 12 It appeared the bottom of the shoe, both shoes were soaked in blood.

Speaker 3 It seemed like damning evidence. But after testing that blood further.

Speaker 12 It came back with two males and two females.

Speaker 6 Again, nothing you can take to the jury.

Speaker 8 Right.

Speaker 3 She tested some of the other evidence, but it didn't lead anywhere. There was one last hope.

Speaker 12 When she was recovered, her left pant pocket was pulled out. So we're thinking the suspect may have used her pocket to pull her into the river.
So his DNA might be on that pocket.

Speaker 6 Now, when the MVAC process vacuumed that pocket, did it find anything?

Speaker 12 Male DNA. Enough to get a profile.

Speaker 14 But there were were also what DNA texts call inhibitors, sand from the river and the dye from Annie's genes that could block an accurate reading.

Speaker 14 So Jacqueline decided to hold off testing until a new highly sensitive DNA kit became available.

Speaker 6 I get the feeling, Jacqueline, you're learning how to become a detective as you go.

Speaker 12 This is the case that taught me.

Speaker 14 But she was about to learn another lesson about being a detective. Things don't always go as planned.

Speaker 5 Coming up, Evidence Lost.

Speaker 12 This case has had so many dead ends.

Speaker 5 And evidence found.

Speaker 12 I said, I have this cell phone map, and I can't explain it. We'll look at it.

Speaker 5 When Dateline continues.

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Speaker 3 Annie Kazbruzak had been dead two years, brutally taken away from the family who had given her a second chance at life and who had loved her deeply.

Speaker 7 I miss waiting for the time where she would have grown up and figured out, okay, life is okay. I can trust, I can relax, I can settle down.
I feel like

Speaker 7 our ending was taken from us.

Speaker 3 Their happy ending gone. And Annie's killer, whoever it was, still walking around free.

Speaker 6 Somebody is getting away with Annie's murder, huh? Did you think it was going to get resolved, James?

Speaker 9 Eventually, everything always gets resolved at some point.

Speaker 6 Sometimes it doesn't.

Speaker 9 Sometimes.

Speaker 6 What did you think, Veronica?

Speaker 7 I think I got to a point where I...

Speaker 7 I had to come to terms with the idea that it might not.

Speaker 3 Detective Jaclyn Moore had compiled strong circumstantial evidence against Annie's sometime boyfriend, Chris Bagshaw.

Speaker 3 Police had even found blood on his shoes, but no physical evidence that definitively put Chris at the river where the body was found. The last best hope: DNA from Annie's pants pocket.

Speaker 3 Preliminary tests showed it was male.

Speaker 6 This belief about the pocket has turned into the gold nugget of this whole case?

Speaker 8 It's true.

Speaker 12 There's DNA on this pocket, and it's male DNA. It's not Annie's.

Speaker 6 And if you can compare it properly, you're going to get a name out of this.

Speaker 12 So I'm

Speaker 12 extremely happy.

Speaker 6 This is a good day in the investigation.

Speaker 12 Very good.

Speaker 3 This was the last little bit of DNA left in the entire case.

Speaker 3 So to be sure they could identify who that DNA belonged to, Jacqueline told the lab to wait to test it until they got a new, more sensitive kit from the FBI, one that could see through the contaminants in the sample.

Speaker 12 The feds were sending down a new kit that would block those inhibitors.

Speaker 6 So this is an even more refined science.

Speaker 15 Yes.

Speaker 3 She waited for that kit for months, and then finally a call from the lab.

Speaker 12 They said no we didn't get a profile there were too many inhibitors.

Speaker 6 But they're not supposed to be inhibitors with this new technique right?

Speaker 12 Right. I asked them exactly that.
Well why are there inhibitors? This new kit was supposed to block them and they said they didn't use the new kit.

Speaker 3 A critical mistake and there was no do-over.

Speaker 12 I was extremely upset. We had

Speaker 12 Waited for months for this kit. We had had in-person meetings, several meetings with this lab, asking them to please use this kit.

Speaker 6 What do you do? Go for a 10-mile jog, kick the dog, what?

Speaker 12 I told my boss and I wanted them to get in trouble.

Speaker 12 But there's nothing you can do. The DNA is gone.

Speaker 6 How do you absorb a body shot like that to your case?

Speaker 12 This case has had so many dead ends and so many

Speaker 12 issues come up. I was starting to get used to it.
I was starting to think maybe we're not going to actually solve this case.

Speaker 3 But Jacqueline was tenacious. She went back to where she started, back to the phone records.

Speaker 3 Her late friend, Sergeant Derek Johnson, had mapped out the pings from Chris's cell phone from the night of Annie's murder.

Speaker 12 But that map was confusing. It was all over the valley, the south end of the valley, and it was moving faster than you could in a car.

Speaker 3 She poured over Chris's records, trying to make her own map. But all those numbers were like a foreign language to her.

Speaker 12 So I decided I was just going to put myself through a cell phone training and learn on my own. You're kidding.

Speaker 6 You're putting yourself back to school? Yes. This is more of Jacqueline learning how to be a detective.

Speaker 3 She took a week-long course on cell phone investigation taught by a former homicide detective.

Speaker 12 As the class went on, I realized he knew exactly what he was talking about.

Speaker 6 This is your guy.

Speaker 12 Yes, this is my guy.

Speaker 3 His name was Cy Ray, and he was a busy man.

Speaker 12 I said, hey, I have this case and it's two years old and I have this cell phone map and I can't explain it. Will you look at it?

Speaker 6 Is he interested or is he go away, kid? You're bothering me.

Speaker 12 He seemed interested as long as it took five to ten minutes to look at.

Speaker 3 Almost immediately, Ray's expert eye caught something in those cell phone records.

Speaker 13 This is one of the most unique calls I have seen as an investigator in my history of working these type of cases.

Speaker 3 Could it be the key to solving the case?

Speaker 26 Coming up.

Speaker 5 How a phone call from her mom may help catch Annie's killer.

Speaker 7 I said, you know, if you're ever missing, he's the first person I'm calling.

Speaker 3 Detective Jaclyn Moore was on a quest to catch Annie's killer, and she sought out the help of a new player, Cy Ray, a former homicide detective from Arizona with more than 20 years experience.

Speaker 3 He now runs a company called ZX that specializes in cell phone investigations.

Speaker 12 When I sent him Annie's Chris's and Spencer's cell phone records, he looked at them and said, yeah, I want to do this.

Speaker 3 Cy agreed to help, pro bono.

Speaker 23 There's certain cases like this case when you hear the details and you understand what's going on and you see that the agency is having challenges.

Speaker 13 How do you not get involved?

Speaker 3 He reviewed 35,000 of Chris Bagshaw's calls and texts and noticed something very unusual.

Speaker 23 We've mapped as a company probably 18 million phone calls.

Speaker 23 I don't know that I've ever seen a set of records as unique as this.

Speaker 3 One call stood out, an incoming call at 9.01 p.m. the night Annie was killed.

Speaker 23 It's a minute and 59 seconds in length. And what really stood out is we see these 25 handoffs.

Speaker 3 Handoffs. The signal bouncing from tower to tower.

Speaker 23 But the 25 handoffs were only between these four towers that we were looking at.

Speaker 3 Cy created this map of the pings. And right there, somewhere in the red, was the area he believed Chris's phone likely was in when the call was made.

Speaker 23 We could tell that we're dealing with an area about 12 square miles. And now the challenge is going to be, can we position where and within that 12 square miles that the phone is located?

Speaker 3 Next, Cy took his high-tech scanner and tracking equipment and drove around with Jacqueline, trying to locate the area that produced what they saw in Chris's records.

Speaker 23 We were looking for a very isolated area where we had four towers that were servicing an area, but the signal strength had to be so similar within those four towers and a very poor signal at that, that it would cause the handing off that we saw.

Speaker 3 Eventually, they found it. The only spot in town that caused the strange pattern of pings.
It was at the Jordan River, the very spot where Annie was killed.

Speaker 3 Sai discovered it was the geography of the area that caused the pings to bounce around.

Speaker 23 So what's happening is we have this bowl. It's just a natural depression because of the river cutting through here, and that phone is just jumping back and forth between these four phone towers.

Speaker 3 Which also explained the rapid pinging Veronica and James observed when they tracked Annie's phone. Annie hadn't gotten into a car as they suspected.
She was at the river.

Speaker 3 And the records prove that Chris Bagshaw's phone was there too.

Speaker 23 We feel very very comfortable saying at 901 p.m.

Speaker 13 on March 10th the phone was within 100 meters of where we're standing.

Speaker 3 Of course a skilled defense attorney could argue just because Chris's phone was there didn't mean he was except for one important detail.

Speaker 3 It turned out of all the people who could have called Chris that night, the one who did at precisely 9.01 p.m. was Annie's mom, Veronica.

Speaker 3 That was because of something Annie had told Veronica earlier that morning, something about Chris.

Speaker 7 He'd asked her,

Speaker 7 what would you do if I asked you to run away with me?

Speaker 15 Run away.

Speaker 7 And then I told her, I said, you know, if you're ever missing, he's the first person I'm calling.

Speaker 3 Which she did, and without even realizing it, helped police place Chris Bagshaw at the scene of the crime right around the time her daughter was killed.

Speaker 3 It was early morning, October 16th, 2014, more than two and a half years after Annie's murder, when Veronica got another life-changing call.

Speaker 7 Jacqueline was on the line. She says, we're in Colorado and we're in the process of arresting Chris.
And

Speaker 7 I say, what? Tell me that again. Wait a second.
I don't understand.

Speaker 3 Chris, now 17, had moved to Grand Junction, Colorado and was living with his mom.

Speaker 3 He was completely unprepared for the undercover officers who approached him on his way to school and for the young detective who met him in the interview room.

Speaker 3 Chris, how are you doing? Hey, nice to meet you.

Speaker 3 Nice to meet you.

Speaker 3 Jacqueline had wanted to question Chris all along. Now she finally had her chance.
Is this an interview? Yes. But just as soon as it began,

Speaker 3 I'm not going to talk to you about the boy. Okay.

Speaker 3 It was over.

Speaker 24 Well, we have a warrant for your arrest

Speaker 27 for murder and obstruction of justice.

Speaker 27 I thought a proven was so

Speaker 3 Chris was extradited back to Utah. Veronica and James were grateful to police, but they knew nothing could bring any back.

Speaker 7 While we support the police department and the attorney's office and we appreciate all the work that they have continued to do,

Speaker 7 it does not change what happened.

Speaker 3 They braced themselves for what would be coming next.

Speaker 15 Can you go through a trial?

Speaker 6 Are you steeled for it?

Speaker 7 I don't think it's optional.

Speaker 3 Another year came and went. And then, just one week before the trial was set to begin, Jaclyn got another unexpected call that would change everything.

Speaker 26 Coming up,

Speaker 5 was a fake pregnancy the motive for an all-too-real murder?

Speaker 6 It's chilling, even as you tell it, isn't it?

Speaker 5 When Dateline continues.

Speaker 3 February 29th, 2016, almost four years since Annie's murder. And Darwin Christopher Bagshaw's trial was just a week away.
He had refused to talk to police and pleaded not guilty.

Speaker 12 We were preparing for trial the following week, and I got a phone call that Chris's attorney scheduled a hearing that day.

Speaker 3 Jacqueline, now a sergeant with the Utah State Police, ran down to court and barely made it in time.

Speaker 3 When she got there, she saw Chris standing before the judge.

Speaker 14 The case is set for a change of plea hearing today.

Speaker 18 Are we going forward with that, Mr. Belmont?

Speaker 13 Yes, we are, Your Honor.

Speaker 18 All right, if you'd like to discuss...

Speaker 3 There was no deal offered.

Speaker 14 Are you pleading guilty to the charge because you're guilty of it?

Speaker 15 Yes, Your Honor.

Speaker 3 Chris's attorney said Chris wanted to take responsibility for what he had done.

Speaker 31 All right, then, as to count one, murder or a first-degree felony. How do you plead?

Speaker 18 Guilty, Your Honor.

Speaker 3 A guilty plea, which may have been motivated by what investigators learned months before, that Chris had confessed to another inmate. This is the story Chris told.

Speaker 12 So March 10th, Annie is discussing over the phone what her options are for her baby with Chris.

Speaker 12 And Chris is telling her he's come up with a plan and they can run away and be together.

Speaker 3 Chris told the other inmate he didn't think Annie was pregnant, but Jacqueline thinks he did and believes that's why he met Annie at the river.

Speaker 12 Chris has no intent on running away. Chris's only reason for being there is to kill her.

Speaker 12 So he just starts beating her until she dies.

Speaker 3 Chris said he used a shovel to kill Annie.

Speaker 6 Turns out to be a very sloppy crime. The amount of blood.

Speaker 15 The shoe.

Speaker 6 Unobserved, apparently.

Speaker 15 Not collected by him.

Speaker 12 I don't think that late at night, how dark it was, he even knew how much blood was there.

Speaker 6 It's chilling, even as you tell it, isn't it? Because you're talking about a child killing a child.

Speaker 6 Do you feel betrayed that this is the child that took your girl?

Speaker 7 I feel that he betrayed Annie more than he betrayed us. Annie knew him, and Annie trusted him.

Speaker 3 At his sentencing, Chris, now 18, sounded remorseful.

Speaker 39 I'm very sorry for everything that's happened, and I want to apologize to Annie's family and to my family

Speaker 39 and to everybody in court today for putting everybody through this.

Speaker 7 Still trying to put words into everything that has happened.

Speaker 3 But for Veronica, no amount of I'm sorry could make up for what she and Annie's entire family lost.

Speaker 12 May you feel sadness.

Speaker 12 May you feel loss.

Speaker 7 May your tears heal your soul.

Speaker 7 But may your conscience never clear.

Speaker 15 I will grieve my daughter every day.

Speaker 31 And so for the charge of murder or first-degree felony, I'll sentence you to an indeterminate term of not less than 15 years.

Speaker 3 15 years to life in prison. Chris Bagshaw will be eligible for parole when he is 37 years old.

Speaker 3 Today, you'll still see joggers and bike riders traversing the path along the Jordan River. Young lovers still walking hand in hand.
But somehow that once serene setting will never be quite the same.

Speaker 6 Do you ever go down to the bridge area or is this all you put in this behind you?

Speaker 12 When I worked the case, I would go down a lot. But no, I don't go down there anymore.

Speaker 3 Jacqueline has other cases to work these days. But this one, Annie's case, will surely always hold a special place in her heart.

Speaker 6 Do you think Derek would have approved? His confidence in you would have been vindicated finally?

Speaker 12 I wished so bad he was there.

Speaker 6 You were the kid detective that became a veteran in the course of this.

Speaker 6 What'd you learn about human nature along the way?

Speaker 12 A child can murder another child.

Speaker 12 An adult can give up on a case that's solvable because it seems too hard.

Speaker 6 This was a lot that you'd taken on from your days of cutting hair.

Speaker 8 Yeah.

Speaker 6 Did it also tell you I'm glad I did did this, that I made the transition?

Speaker 12 Yes. It was worth every second.
It was worth all of the stress. It was worth

Speaker 12 all of my weekends. It was worth missing sleep.

Speaker 3 Annie started off as a case for Veronica, too. But she became so much more.
She completed their family.

Speaker 3 And when the time came to let her go, they brought her back to a place she had visited only once. A place one day she hoped to live.

Speaker 7 We let the kids play and we put her ashes in the ocean so that

Speaker 7 she would never be in one place

Speaker 18 and so that wherever

Speaker 7 we were at, we could feel like

Speaker 7 she was there.

Speaker 3 Despite the horrific events that took away her daughter, Veronica is still as determined as ever to continue to do good work and to help children in need.

Speaker 3 She and James have since adopted five more children. It is just what Annie would have wanted them to do.

Speaker 5 That's all for now.

Speaker 3 I'm Lester Holt.

Speaker 5 Thanks for joining us.

Speaker 40 Hey, this is Will Arnett, host of Smartless. Smartless is a podcast with myself and Sean Hayes and Jason Bateman, where each week one of us reveals a mystery guest to the other two.

Speaker 40 We dive deep with guests that you love, like Bill Hayter, Selena Gomez, Jennifer Aniston, David Beckham, Kristen Stewart, and tons more.

Speaker 40 So join us for a genuinely improvised and authentic conversation filled with laughter and newfound knowledge to feed the Smartless mind. Listen to Smartless now on the Sirius XM app.

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