The Creek

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Speaker 6 I'm Lester Holt tonight on Dateline.

Speaker 7 He says, Danielle didn't come home last night. And I'm like, what?

Speaker 3 He had a beautiful 15-year-old girl just vanish.

Speaker 7 Danielle was talking about his creek. Some kids were trying to get her to go hang out.

Speaker 8 Somebody said that they saw her get into the trouble.

Speaker 9 There was another story that she was with her mom.

Speaker 10 Maybe she was abducted. Maybe she was kidnapped.

Speaker 11 The stories didn't stop, did they?

Speaker 12 No.

Speaker 13 We were getting information that they were cuddling. We got to figure out, does he have any motive to want to harm her?

Speaker 7 I see her sock right at the exit of the trail. The word help was scratched in the ground.

Speaker 13 We found two shovels that had what appeared to be blood on them.

Speaker 16 That just done it for me.

Speaker 7 I can't even think about how scared she was.

Speaker 18 My mother's worst partner.

Speaker 19 Here's Dennis Murphy with The Creek.

Speaker 20 There are no signs to get there.

Speaker 23 Just follow the rough, sandy trail down from the subdivisions above, turn a corner, and there it is.

Speaker 1 The Creek.

Speaker 28 A twisty, slow-moving body of water in North Carolina that's nothing less than a virtually undiscovered Garden of Eden for teenagers playing hookie from high school.

Speaker 8 It was like going to the beach for us. There was just a vacation.

Speaker 34 When Caroline Noza was a high school freshman and terrified of math class, if the weather was good, her decision was made.

Speaker 14 Go right to the creek and bypass school altogether.

Speaker 11 Tell me about an afternoon at the creek, Caroline. What would you do?

Speaker 8 Just go swimming, and then after we were done swimming, we would sit by the fire and get dry, and then we would hurry up and go back to the school and take the bus home.

Speaker 36 So the creek creek was the place where the local kids could hide out from the grown-ups and play all day like frisky otters.

Speaker 41 It was innocent fun until one day when the secret teenage world collided with tragedy.

Speaker 9 It just knew in my heart that something was wrong.

Speaker 18 These people were actually hiding their kids.

Speaker 7 You think I'm gonna rest not knowing what actually happened? No,

Speaker 7 I was gonna find out.

Speaker 21 So this story is about a teenage sweetie named Danielle.

Speaker 45 Idea.

Speaker 46 Danielle Locklear.

Speaker 30 It seems everyone in her orbit, young and old, got a boost from her sunny take on life, including her mom, Rona.

Speaker 18 She was just a funny, witty girl. She stood out.

Speaker 48 She shined.

Speaker 18 You would notice her.

Speaker 7 She was always happy. Never seen her without a smile on her face.

Speaker 49 Danielle's aunt, Sheena Papa, was somewhere between an older sister and a surrogate mom for Danielle.

Speaker 52 Danielle was living with Aunt Sheena's family in Hope Mills, North Carolina, while her mother worked her way through a painful divorce in another state.

Speaker 7 My sister's like, hey, you mind

Speaker 7 Danielle coming. I was like, not at all.

Speaker 27 So she dropped in very naturally.

Speaker 7 Oh, yeah, oh yeah.

Speaker 51 Danielle was the outsider, the new kid at school, for all of about 10 minutes.

Speaker 58 Caroline and Danielle became best buds immediately.

Speaker 8 We were sitting in the auditorium, and I guess everybody was kind of like scared to talk to her because of how pretty she was.

Speaker 8 Well I just tapped on her shoulder and we started complimenting her hair and like she just started making jokes and hanging out with us all the time.

Speaker 49 A few weeks into her freshman year, Danielle was already known around the school by her nickname Danny.

Speaker 11 Did Danny fit into any of the groups?

Speaker 8 Every group, every person.

Speaker 11 It didn't matter who she could sit down at any lunch table and she'd be welcome.

Speaker 8 Oh, yeah, she could talk to the quietest kid in the class and have a full-on conversation with him.

Speaker 44 And an obedient student as well.

Speaker 61 Sharp as a tack.

Speaker 51 Straight A's in ROTC class.

Speaker 58 At night, there she'd be at home indulging her inner girly girl, goofing on YouTube with makeup tricks, baking professional-looking and tasting cakes.

Speaker 28 And you'd think she would have had bruised thumbs with her non-stop messaging and social media posts.

Speaker 66 Boys, life.

Speaker 66 I can't

Speaker 21 Are you wondering if a striking teen like Danielle had a boyfriend?

Speaker 67 Well, she did.

Speaker 28 She'd struck up a head-over-heels relationship with a boy in the summer of 2013.

Speaker 21 His name was Jermichael Malloy.

Speaker 68 Danielle's grandmother, Kelly, and great-aunt Gina Simmons had known his family forever.

Speaker 70 They belonged to the same church.

Speaker 58 Kelly remembered the sparks flying when Jermichael and Danny met as teenagers.

Speaker 17 You could see something in their eyes. I'm looking at her and I'm looking at him.

Speaker 48 It's like they were attracted to one another right away.

Speaker 73 Sheena, who played the role of nosy aunt, always kept a hawk's eye on her niece.

Speaker 74 Now she had reason to be extra vigilant.

Speaker 11 And this is time for nosy aunt to get busy, huh?

Speaker 12 Oh, yeah.

Speaker 11 Because you got something to work with.

Speaker 14 Yeah.

Speaker 7 Almost just like, what's going on here?

Speaker 22 What was going on was that the pair had become what everyone called a cute couple.

Speaker 35 He was her first real boyfriend and an older one, too.

Speaker 69 Jamichael was a senior at another school, and Danielle was a freshman.

Speaker 38 She invited him to her first high school dance.

Speaker 7 She was like, I'm going to need some high heels.

Speaker 18 And I said, mm,

Speaker 32 high heels.

Speaker 11 You're going across that line. You're in the land of high heels and welcome to being a young adult, huh?

Speaker 7 Yeah, so she puts on these sparkling heels and I'm watching her walk and I'm like, oh my God.

Speaker 11 She's pulling it off, huh?

Speaker 7 Yeah.

Speaker 25 By spring 2014, Danielle had been living with China and her grandparents for close to 10 months.

Speaker 25 They saw little Danny maturing into a young woman, but she was still too young to spend the night alone.

Speaker 52 So on March 11th, when Gina and her mom had to go over to Atlanta for a doctor's appointment, Danielle's grandfather was given the responsibility of keeping an eye on the team.

Speaker 11 So grandfather's in charge here.

Speaker 7 Yeah, grandfather's in charge. And this is something we would really never do.
And on the way down there, we get a text

Speaker 7 danielle she was like oh it's just oh you guys just left me huh it's just me and papa

Speaker 7 like that and we would always joke like like you'd do that to me huh yeah like you guys just left me

Speaker 21 it was a tuesday a school night after supper just before bed danielle asked her grandfather if she could drop off a school notebook at a classmate's house a few doors away

Speaker 46 he said yes and off Danielle went into the night.

Speaker 20 In Atlanta, Sheena sensed something was off.

Speaker 4 You had that feeling?

Speaker 7 Could not even sleep. I had this overwhelming feeling of

Speaker 7 something bad happening.

Speaker 22 And the next morning, Sheena got a call from Danielle's grandfather, and it was bad.

Speaker 7 He says,

Speaker 7 Danielle didn't come home last night.

Speaker 7 And I'm like, what?

Speaker 7 What is he saying? Danielle didn't come home.

Speaker 7 What do you mean?

Speaker 59 Danielle had gone, about to be officially a missing person.

Speaker 43 As simple to state as it was terrifying in all its ramifications.

Speaker 19 When we come back,

Speaker 19 where was Danielle? Her family was about to get its first unnerving clue.

Speaker 7 The word help was scratched in the ground.

Speaker 19 Not far from the creek, one ominous sight leads to another.

Speaker 7 I look down and I see her sock right at the exit of the trail.

Speaker 25 Danielle Locklear walked out the door of her home on the night of March 11th, 2014, and hadn't been seen in the hour since.

Speaker 79 Their bright, bright girl gone.

Speaker 34 Danielle's mother, Rona, was in a South Carolina restaurant when she got a call from her sister China.

Speaker 18 Your mind goes like this.

Speaker 18 I get the car and, well, I get to my house and

Speaker 18 grab as many clothes as I can and just drive through the night.

Speaker 50 Gina and Danielle's grandmother, Kelly, also raced back home.

Speaker 49 They arrived first.

Speaker 11 So what do you see when you pull up at the house?

Speaker 7 So there's a police car there. My dad went and called the police.

Speaker 25 Detective Josh Hamilton became the lead investigator for Hope Mills Police Department.

Speaker 11 But the family's telling all your officers, she's a good girl.

Speaker 80 She's a straight A student.

Speaker 11 This is not like her to go do a runner, go to the beach with a boyfriend.

Speaker 13 Totally out of character.

Speaker 22 But police thought it was possible Danielle left voluntarily and would return on her own.

Speaker 11 Give it 24 hours and you're going to have a different resolution here.

Speaker 13 We were hopeful that she had stayed at a friend's house.

Speaker 58 But that scenario didn't sound right to Rona.

Speaker 35 When she arrived, she said as much to police.

Speaker 18 They were like asking all these questions like, well, do you think she would have ran away?

Speaker 18 Do you think she could be at a friend's house? You know, just anything, you know.

Speaker 18 And I was like, well, there's no reason why for Danielle to run away.

Speaker 20 The family called around to everyone they could think of, hoping someone had heard from Danielle.

Speaker 67 Of course, her boyfriend was at the top of the list.

Speaker 7 I said, hey, Jemichael, is she not,

Speaker 7 have you heard from Danielle? She's been missing since last night.

Speaker 44 He said, no, he hadn't seen Danielle in days.

Speaker 22 And what's more, he said they'd broken up.

Speaker 49 The split was news to Danielle's aunt, but she wasn't entirely surprised.

Speaker 29 These two had broken up before, the last time just a few months earlier.

Speaker 7 She mentioned something about him talking to another girl.

Speaker 7 Yeah, and he wasn't giving her as much attention anymore.

Speaker 84 She didn't like that.

Speaker 11 So after she's moping around the couch,

Speaker 11 she's with him at the big dance.

Speaker 12 Yeah.

Speaker 7 I was like, oh, y'all back to go?

Speaker 5 She's like, oh, yeah, we're fine.

Speaker 20 Sheena also called Danielle's school.

Speaker 37 They reported that Danielle had skipped school the day she went missing.

Speaker 86 Totally out of character.

Speaker 20 What was up with that?

Speaker 87 Then a light bulb moment for Gina.

Speaker 7 So the day before everything kind of happened, I'm pulling into the driveway and the sun's almost down and she is running across the driveway and she's kind of out of breath and laughing.

Speaker 77 And I'm like, where are,

Speaker 7 what time, uh-uh, where are you coming from? Where are you coming from? And she's like, oh, oh, just, there's this creek. This is this creek back in the back of the neighborhood.

Speaker 7 Some kids have been trying to get me to hang out. But don't worry, I won't be going back there.
It's a mess back there. And I was like, yeah, I know.
You will not be going back there, right?

Speaker 26 The creek.

Speaker 35 Sheena's gut told her now with her niece missing, she had to go find it.

Speaker 83 But how?

Speaker 7 We go to the back of the neighborhood and I see this little kid on the dirt bike. I said, is there a creek around here? He's, oh yeah, so hang out.
I'll show you.

Speaker 11 You follow this neighborhood kid down to the creek, huh?

Speaker 36 The creek.

Speaker 49 The neighborhood kid led Gina into a wooded area.

Speaker 7 We're walking here and he's on his, you know, he's walking his dirt bike down and he's leading me to where the stream is. Yeah.

Speaker 68 Then the kid pointed to the ground.

Speaker 66 He saw something.

Speaker 52 There, carved in the dirt with some care, a single word.

Speaker 7 The word help was scratched in the ground.

Speaker 85 As though somebody picked up a stick and...

Speaker 6 Like someone had

Speaker 7 scraped help in the ground with a stick.

Speaker 62 The creak, help,

Speaker 30 frightening.

Speaker 7 Just made my hair stand up, and

Speaker 7 I started getting really nervous.

Speaker 58 Sheena did know what was going on, but it couldn't be good, that SOS in the sand.

Speaker 11 Does that mean anything to you?

Speaker 4 It's alarming.

Speaker 7 It was extremely alarming. I didn't know if it was a call for help.

Speaker 7 I didn't know if this was something Danielle left for me.

Speaker 20 Gina kept walking down the long path and then she came upon it.

Speaker 73 The creek, down a steep bluff.

Speaker 11 Subdivision is just back up here. Right.
And yet this is like from, I don't know, 100 years ago or something.

Speaker 59 Yeah.

Speaker 11 It's like this secret undiscovered place.

Speaker 7 I had no idea it even existed. And there were fire pits and just

Speaker 7 clothes from where the kids had went swimming. There were old homework notes and all of that stuff.

Speaker 50 Including a towel she recognized from her house.

Speaker 20 Danielle had definitely been there at some point.

Speaker 25 Gina returned home and told police what she'd found.

Speaker 52 They were interested and went back to the creek with her.

Speaker 7 And they're kind of walking ahead and I look down and

Speaker 7 I see her night sock just

Speaker 7 Right at the exit of the trail.

Speaker 7 And I know it's her sock because I bought them and this fuzzy sock and and it was like rolled into a ball and it kind of like had straw in it would she go out with her socks on like that absolutely not

Speaker 11 sheena could not make sense of why a sock danielle wore only at bedtime would be there i can't imagine being barefoot through here where we just walked or in your stocking feet right you'd be all ripped up absolutely

Speaker 34 sheena knew the sock could be an important clue She picked it up and turned it over to police.

Speaker 65 By then, something else was coming to light.

Speaker 28 Police realized that Danielle's almost constant social media chit-chat had gone dark.

Speaker 75 The high school girl missing in life was now suddenly gone on Facebook and Instagram, too.

Speaker 57 And cops learned something else from their own kids.

Speaker 7 They're like, you know, well, they said she's been hanging out with some bad kids lately.

Speaker 14 I'm like, oh, oh, great.

Speaker 50 Bad kids, a sock covered in straw, the word help carved in the sand.

Speaker 46 Danielle's hours before her disappearance were becoming more and more enigmatic and infinitely more terrifying.

Speaker 7 Maybe we don't really know her the way we thought.

Speaker 19 Coming up, pictures surface of Danielle by the creek the day she disappeared.

Speaker 7 I zoomed in and I could see there were four kids in the background.

Speaker 19 Stories surface too about Danielle and a boy from school.

Speaker 13 We were getting information that they were cuddling.

Speaker 19 When Dateline continues.

Speaker 44 China Papa was known as the nosy ant in her big family.

Speaker 73 So when her niece, Danielle Locklear, went missing, China wasn't waiting on police for answers.

Speaker 11 So you've become your own detective here.

Speaker 12 Oh, yeah.

Speaker 7 I mean, my concern was to find her.

Speaker 86 China's search had turned up troubling things about Danielle.

Speaker 34 There was boyfriend turbulence, playing hookie from school, and hanging out at a creek.

Speaker 11 How do you reconcile this behavior with this

Speaker 32 little girl you've known for a long while?

Speaker 7 It didn't seem right. But she also is turning, and she's a teenager as well, you know, and she's got boyfriend problems.
And maybe she's a little emotional. I don't know.

Speaker 21 Before police could get there, Gina found that neighborhood friend Danielle was supposed to see the night she disappeared.

Speaker 11 This is the the one that she'd meant to deliver the book to? Yeah.

Speaker 7 And I'm like, oh, hey, girl. Oh, my gosh.
So did you see Danielle last night?

Speaker 7 And she's like,

Speaker 7 no.

Speaker 28 Sheena was disappointed, but the friend said something else.

Speaker 7 She's like, I mean, we were texting last night, and she actually had some pictures of her from earlier on in the day of March 11th.

Speaker 58 And those images showed Danielle hanging out at the creek.

Speaker 7 I can see what shirt she had on. I can see her jeans were like at the bottom of the picture and she kind of just had on some shorts like she didn't want to get her pants wet.

Speaker 11 Were there pictures of the kid she was hanging with?

Speaker 7 Nope, there were no pictures of any other kids that were around, but it was strange. And one of the pictures, she had on a pair of glasses that didn't belong to her.

Speaker 7 So I zoomed in into the lenses and I can see there were like

Speaker 14 four

Speaker 7 kids, like a reflection of four kids in the background. I asked her friend, I said, wait a minute, so there were other people there.
And she's like, I was a little hesitant.

Speaker 37 Sheena pried the names of the other kids out of this friend.

Speaker 64 More names and faces for police to track down.

Speaker 7 And so now, I'm like, I got to find out who these kids are.

Speaker 67 Sheena didn't know it then, but one of those kids was Caroline.

Speaker 25 Caroline first introduced Danielle to the creek days before her disappearance. It didn't seem like Danielle's kind of place.

Speaker 8 Danny never really skipped class. And one day she was like, I don't want to go present my project, so can I go with you?

Speaker 80 Then the next day, the day Danielle went missing, she was at the creek before the school day was over.

Speaker 10 She was already at the creek before me.

Speaker 83 How did she seem to you, Caroline?

Speaker 9 She just kept texting me and was like, hurry up and get down here.

Speaker 8 Everybody's having fun. And when I got down there, she was just hanging out with everybody, having a blast, laughing.

Speaker 37 Kids were celebrating what seemed like the first day of spring.

Speaker 8 We were doing like chicken fights in the water. We were just making jokes and stuff.

Speaker 8 It was a good day.

Speaker 83 After a day of laughs, Danielle headed home.

Speaker 11 She has dinner with her grandfather.

Speaker 11 She's accounted for.

Speaker 13 Her grandfather said he had seen her with that evening.

Speaker 13 So now,

Speaker 13 why is this sock over here at the entrance to this creek?

Speaker 41 Police theorized that after dinner, Danielle had gone from her home back to the creek.

Speaker 89 Why else would they have recovered that sock that she only wore at night?

Speaker 82 They wondered if she had met up with someone there.

Speaker 31 And other information was rolling in.

Speaker 25 The high school grapevine was abuzz with rumors about the boys Danielle spent the day with at the creek.

Speaker 11 You identify a boy named Angel from the school. So how do you hook Danielle who's missing with his boy Angel?

Speaker 13 We were getting information from other kids that were down there that they were making out

Speaker 13 and that they were cuddling.

Speaker 42 And remember, Danielle and her serious boyfriend had just split up.

Speaker 11 She's available. She's very cute.
That's right.

Speaker 35 Billy West is the Cumberland County District Attorney.

Speaker 41 He was brought in early on the case as Angel emerged as a person of interest.

Speaker 3 He had a girlfriend, but we knew Danielle was single.

Speaker 3 Her relationship had recently ended with Jermichael Malloy and some of the kids were telling us in interviews that Angel was trying to put the moves on Danielle, so to speak.

Speaker 13 At this point, we got to figure out, is she in a romantic relationship with this boy? And if so, does he have any

Speaker 13 motive to want to harm her?

Speaker 51 Most kids described Angel as a popular student, but a few others were called a fight starter.

Speaker 25 Angel was certainly someone police wanted to talk to, so they stopped by his house.

Speaker 3 And he was saying,

Speaker 3 I don't know who you're talking about. I don't know what you were talking about.

Speaker 41 Angel denied being at the creek, something police knew wasn't true.

Speaker 11 Investigators don't like to be lied to, even if it's a kid.

Speaker 3 That's right. That's right.
He wanted them to shoot straight.

Speaker 4 That's right. And you weren't getting it.

Speaker 3 We did not get the truth initially from him.

Speaker 93 So Angel was lying.

Speaker 76 But did he have something to hide?

Speaker 19 Coming up. Investigators are also about to look at those closer to home.

Speaker 11 The family doesn't get a pass, does it, Detective?

Speaker 13 Absolutely not.

Speaker 19 Which family member prompted this reaction?

Speaker 94 It was the first and only time in my career that I contacted my supervisor and said, you know, there's something wrong here.

Speaker 25 Danielle Locklear was missing for a day, then two.

Speaker 57 As the week went by, missing girl posters were tacked up.

Speaker 28 By then, local news, including NBC affiliate WRAL-TV, was picking up on the missing teen story.

Speaker 16 This does not make any sense.

Speaker 35 During that first week, Danielle's mom, Rona, spent her days at the police station and nights at her mother's house.

Speaker 18 I'll just sit there and I'll everybody go to bed and I'll just stare at that front door, just waiting, just like hoping, hoping, praying.

Speaker 18 And she'll run through that door so I can yell at her.

Speaker 25 Investigators hoped for the same, but Danielle had gone silent.

Speaker 51 No posts, no tweets, no texts.

Speaker 13 For a teenager like that to be so active and then flatline on social media, it's very concerning.

Speaker 44 A command post was set up headed by Hope Mills Deputy Chief David Servey.

Speaker 25 How many different agencies were seated around your table there?

Speaker 95 The FBI had the biggest presence. There were representatives from the sheriff's office.
If they wore a badge in Cumberland County,

Speaker 95 they were in that command post.

Speaker 28 Police deployed those new resources to investigate their most promising lead, Angel.

Speaker 21 He was the classmate Rumorville Stories, had supposedly canoodling with Danielle on March 11th.

Speaker 35 But Angel initially told police he didn't even know Danielle and hadn't been at the creek.

Speaker 32 After police briefed Angel about the consequences of lying to the authorities, he started to spill.

Speaker 3 He finally

Speaker 3 came forward and said, yes, I was there. I was with Danielle.

Speaker 49 I talked with her some. Caroline was there, too.

Speaker 11 Was Angel hitting on her?

Speaker 8 No. He was actually dating one of my other friends at the time.
And then another one of my friends who was at the creek, Cammie, he was talking to Cammie the whole time.

Speaker 49 According to Caroline, the stories about Angel hitting on Danielle were just rumors.

Speaker 51 Angel told police he last saw Danielle in the afternoon.

Speaker 3 His story was that she had left around 3.30 that day, was headed towards home, headed towards where she lived with her grandfather.

Speaker 11 Now, what about his alibi during the critical hour, say after 9 p.m.?

Speaker 3 His alibi was actually pretty solid. He said that he went to practice after school, that he and his family went to a movie that evening, came back, was spending time with his family.

Speaker 3 So we were able to confirm that during the hours we were pretty certain Danny Ellman went missing. He was at home with his family.

Speaker 69 He doesn't seem to pan out, Detective.

Speaker 11 He drops off your personal pool.

Speaker 13 He drops off the suspect pool pretty quick.

Speaker 58 But police hadn't run out of people to investigate.

Speaker 11 The family doesn't doesn't get a pass, does it, Detective?

Speaker 13 Absolutely not.

Speaker 11 When you say everybody is a suspect, painfully, that includes the people under your roof. Well...
They come to ask some sharp questions to the family members, huh?

Speaker 7 Yep, they did.

Speaker 28 Investigators seize computers and cell phones.

Speaker 17 Any type of electronics. Anything that anybody had in the house.
And I remember trying to write down phone numbers out of it real quick because they was taking it real quick.

Speaker 25 Police interviewed everyone, but they were interested in one specific relative.

Speaker 11 They're asking questions of your father.

Speaker 7 Yeah, they're asking questions about my dad. You know, why was she staying there? And, you know, the family dynamic is strange.

Speaker 20 Danielle's grandmother expected that her husband would come under police scrutiny.

Speaker 17 Everybody had their eyes on him because he was the last one to saw her.

Speaker 25 Officer George Regan was the first policeman dispatched to Danielle's house after her grandfather reported her missing.

Speaker 25 When the grandfather described what happened the night before, things didn't seem right to Regan.

Speaker 49 One thing that struck him, 10 p.m.

Speaker 69 seemed awfully late to be letting your granddaughter out of the house.

Speaker 94 He told me he'd been playing video games and when she came in to tell him, hey, I'm going down to a friend's house, because he's involved in his video games, he didn't realize how late it really was.

Speaker 21 Then there was the fact that he didn't report her missing until well into the next day.

Speaker 59 So why has he waited so long to call the police?

Speaker 96 He tells us that he thought he had to wait at least 24 hours, but when he called and talked to his wife and she was on her way back from Atlanta, that

Speaker 96 she said, you need to go ahead and call the police now.

Speaker 82 The responding officer says he got a bad vibe from grandpa.

Speaker 94 It's the first and only time in my career of taking missing persons calls that I excused myself and I contacted my supervisor and said, you know, there's something wrong here.

Speaker 90 The grandfather was asked to come to the police station for an interview, and he was later asked to take a polygraph.

Speaker 11 What are you trying to rule in or out?

Speaker 13 We're trying to initially rule out whether anything could have happened between him and her that might have led to her disappearance.

Speaker 25 The police suspicion about their own kin was excruciating for Danielle's family.

Speaker 7 It was heartbreaking.

Speaker 68 Was that pain upon pain?

Speaker 7 It was painful. It was painful because

Speaker 7 never in a million years would we have done anything. She was very precious to us.

Speaker 21 Danielle's grandmother certainly didn't think her husband had anything to do with her granddaughter's disappearance.

Speaker 79 But she was also searching her heart for forgiveness.

Speaker 17 Well, how do you let her leave? Or how do you let her get out of the house? Or how do you, why didn't you call for her? Why didn't you, TV was calling and everything.

Speaker 17 We say, what kind of grandfather would let the child out of the house this time of the night?

Speaker 26 It wasn't long before police cleared Danielle's grandfather.

Speaker 43 He passed his polygraph.

Speaker 68 And police couldn't find anything in his phone or family history to make him a suspect.

Speaker 66 Grandpa was off the hook.

Speaker 25 Police were continuing to go down their list of names.

Speaker 97 I'm Tim. I see you, she said.

Speaker 98 How are you?

Speaker 21 Someone else on their list was Danielle's on-again, off-again boyfriend, Jermichael Malloy.

Speaker 11 So, where does he stand on your persons of interest theories about what's going on here? The boyfriend.

Speaker 13 He's floating in the middle.

Speaker 72 So many people to talk to, but none of them was Danielle.

Speaker 51 No one had the slightest idea where she was.

Speaker 69 Not even her ex.

Speaker 99 Still are.

Speaker 19 Coming up. Could Danielle have run away? Jamichael Jermichael shares what could be a critical revelation.

Speaker 97 She felt like she was a burden to her grandma, and that's why she really wanted to go back to South Carolina.

Speaker 19 When Dateline continues.

Speaker 98 Did she say anything about she was planning on going anywhere?

Speaker 35 Police were talking to Jermichael Malloy.

Speaker 25 He'd been Danielle's most recent boyfriend.

Speaker 51 The couple met at a church youth camp a year earlier when Danielle was only 14.

Speaker 18 Kids have little elementary school little boyfriends, you know, hold hands, but this was like her real first

Speaker 18 boyfriend, you know, that she was in love with.

Speaker 67 Her first love came with a family seal of approval.

Speaker 53 Jermichael, like Danielle, was a good kid, never a problem.

Speaker 20 Varsity soccer, a dedicated runner with a laser-focused goal of becoming a Marine after graduation.

Speaker 11 He had his eye kind of set on what he was going going to do with himself, huh? Oh yeah.

Speaker 7 Seemed like a very ambitious child. And I thought, hey, this might be something good for Danielle.
I mean, I know they're young, but it seems like he has a plan for his life.

Speaker 28 Danielle was daydreaming herself into that master plan.

Speaker 21 Alexis McDowell was one of Danielle's best friends.

Speaker 16 She was talking about marriage, she was talking about having little Danielle's and Jermichels running around. She was very serious about Jermichael.

Speaker 51 Jermichael's laid-back vibe was the yin to Danielle's bubbly yang.

Speaker 16 She was a pretty popular girl who was handsome so it seemed like they just were a perfect match. They were in the same league.

Speaker 99 Even though Jermichael and Danielle had broken up, he was still one of the people closest to her.

Speaker 98 Why don't you sit up there with me?

Speaker 20 He came down to the station willingly.

Speaker 11 No, you got to talk to my lawyer stuff going on.

Speaker 13 No, he freely involunteer.

Speaker 13 Came in on his own.

Speaker 35 Jermichael said that he and Danielle might have broken up, but she was still dear to him.

Speaker 100 Angle, I still love her.

Speaker 101 I mean, she was a good girl.

Speaker 98 So you loved her.

Speaker 99 I loved her.

Speaker 101 I still love her.

Speaker 52 He pitched in just how much Danielle's family cared for him, too.

Speaker 97 Their grandparents liked me, her whole family liked me.

Speaker 82 The former boyfriend wanted to find her just as much as anyone.

Speaker 98 But what can you do to help us find her?

Speaker 14 Whatever you want me to do.

Speaker 34 So law enforcement pumped him for information.

Speaker 98 So she skipped school. Right, okay.

Speaker 100 Did she do that a lot?

Speaker 97 She didn't go to Fourth Period a lot. She didn't like Fourth Period because she got picked on because of her clothes and stuff, they believe.

Speaker 98 Was she like dressed different or something?

Speaker 97 She dressed normally to me, but she didn't have the best of clothes.

Speaker 99 Like,

Speaker 101 I mean, yeah, you can afford what you can afford, but.

Speaker 51 Jermichael offered his own theories about what might have happened to her.

Speaker 97 She felt like she was a burden to her grandma, and that's why she was supposed she really wanted to go back to South Carolina.

Speaker 98 If she's running away now, where do you think she went to?

Speaker 97 Close friend.

Speaker 101 The only thing I could think of would be like a friend.

Speaker 20 Jermichael also said Danielle had been depressed in the past, and he'd even told Danielle's aunt Sheena about that.

Speaker 101 I told Gina that she told me she tried to kill herself twice.

Speaker 100 I told her that,

Speaker 98 why?

Speaker 101 Just because she didn't want to be here anymore.

Speaker 67 Jermichael was cooperative, but police weren't giving him a pass either.

Speaker 98 You look me straight in the eye and tell me you didn't have anything to do with her disappearance.

Speaker 101 I'll look you straight in the eye and tell you it had nothing to do with her disappearance.

Speaker 22 The boyfriend told police the same thing he told the family.

Speaker 68 He hadn't seen Danielle in days.

Speaker 73 On the night she went missing, he was home studying.

Speaker 100 Was anybody else home with you that night?

Speaker 97 My friend Dominic was there. My mom was there.
My grandma was there.

Speaker 52 Jermichael's family confirmed his whereabouts.

Speaker 93 Police talked to his friend Dominic Locke, too.

Speaker 13 Locke says, yeah, I was with him. We were studying for our SATs.

Speaker 75 Police asked for Jermichael's cell.

Speaker 11 And his phone told the same thing.

Speaker 13 So you got three, four sources saying the same thing that

Speaker 13 Jermichael's saying. He was at home that night.

Speaker 21 There were also cell phone messages Jermichael sent to other friends around the time she went missing. GPS data showed those texts were sent from Jermichael's house.

Speaker 24 And police couldn't find any evidence that he and Danielle had arranged to meet up the night she disappeared.

Speaker 1 And there was one more thing.

Speaker 20 Jermichael lived almost a half-hour drive from Danielle.

Speaker 11 Jermichael doesn't have a car? No.

Speaker 24 Jermichael had a good alibi, home with his folks, studying with a friend, firing off the occasional text from the house.

Speaker 25 There was no way to tie him to Danielle's disappearance.

Speaker 32 Rather, Danielle's family and friends remember his worry and concern for Danny.

Speaker 102 Have you heard anything? You know, have anybody said anything?

Speaker 102 Have anyone found her?

Speaker 16 Jamicha seemed like he was very concerned.

Speaker 44 Like

Speaker 16 he was asking me, you know,

Speaker 16 is there any place you can think of that she might have ran off to or any people that she could have, you know, ran off with?

Speaker 91 alexis couldn't think of anyone but danielle's classmates had an idea of what had happened to the team the high school rumor mill was running wild and new leads were emerging out of all that chatter still got a whole high school full of kids up there still high school and a bunch of her friends that were prepared to come forward with their own version of what transpired

Speaker 25 And the stories police were getting, some of them bloody and lurid, were leading right back to the creek.

Speaker 19 Coming up, the rumor mill turns out a new name, Derek. But he says he was at home online when Danielle disappeared.

Speaker 11 I'm Derek telling you I was noodling around my computer, but you're not going to find record of that because I deleted the history. Right.

Speaker 13 If you're not doing nothing wrong, why are you deleting your history?

Speaker 84 Ever since Danielle Locklear went missing, her aunt Sheena had but one goal, to find her.

Speaker 37 So almost every day, Sheena would head to the creek for more detective work.

Speaker 7 I had a cousin in Special Forces. He got inside of the water, the creek, and he had a stick and he was just

Speaker 7 going through the cold waters.

Speaker 32 Sheena also kept running down leads.

Speaker 68 Like an investigative reporter working a story, she was able to track down most of the kids who had been with Danielle the day she disappeared.

Speaker 7 I remember one time this kid, he was like, my mom told me not to talk to you.

Speaker 14 It's like, wow, really?

Speaker 7 So I guess it was going around that I was the crazy aunt.

Speaker 42 The kids had good reason not to talk to grown-ups about their days at the creek.

Speaker 7 They were scared. They all skipped.
They didn't want their parents to know.

Speaker 40 The kids weren't saying much to China, but they were talking amongst themselves.

Speaker 69 Breanna Little was a junior at Danielle's high school.

Speaker 10 You go into one class and it was, well, have you guys heard this? What do you know?

Speaker 21 Some kids were convinced she'd run away.

Speaker 75 Alexis didn't buy it.

Speaker 16 She does not like to leave home. And if she does, she definitely would have took some makeup or something.
Like we talked, she don't even go check the mail without putting on makeup.

Speaker 51 Sorting it out wasn't easy for law enforcement either.

Speaker 3 We're dealing with 15, 16, 17 year old kids in high school, something that's getting a lot of publicity and everybody wants to be the person that knows something, that saw Danielle that day or talked to Danielle that day.

Speaker 20 As the police questioned the school crowd, one name came up over and over again.

Speaker 10 How does Derek know her?

Speaker 77 Derek.

Speaker 104 Derek, he hangs out with her.

Speaker 42 In fact, kids said they were really tight.

Speaker 104 Derek told me that like he was like Danielle's like his sister. He said family comes first.

Speaker 3 Derek is a kid that was not even in school, was looking at getting back in school, but he had run into some trouble and wasn't in school.

Speaker 25 When Derek was in school, he had a penchant for skipping.

Speaker 37 He was a regular at the creek and familiar with Danielle's crowd.

Speaker 34 Caroline was friends with him.

Speaker 8 Derek's kind of like

Speaker 8 at the time, he was like kind of big and like bulky and everybody was kind of afraid of him.

Speaker 11 Did you hear stories about him later?

Speaker 9 Yes, I did.

Speaker 58 And the story going around about Derek was more than a little scary.

Speaker 13 We got information concerning him stating that he was also trying to get into a romantic relationship with Miss Locklear and she refused him.

Speaker 13 And as a result, he cut her neck and left her in the woods.

Speaker 11 Detective, this is like a whole Grade B horror movie.

Speaker 47 Yeah.

Speaker 43 As horrible as the story was, that sounds like a good lead.

Speaker 3 Yeah, it was a good lead.

Speaker 11 Kids are telling it almost verbatim at that time.

Speaker 3 Right, right, they were. I mean, this was not coming from one kid.
This was coming from two or three kids. And so we needed to follow up on this for sure.

Speaker 22 Police brought Derek in for an interview.

Speaker 11 What do you see in the demeanor? What do you hear him talking about?

Speaker 13 Very, very relaxed. He doesn't seem concerned about being in trouble.

Speaker 11 He's cool, having a smoke.

Speaker 1 Cool.

Speaker 41 There was a huge detectives wanted to find out.

Speaker 20 What did he know about Danielle?

Speaker 105 Suddenly, the like a sister story was out the window.

Speaker 44 He claimed he hardly knew her.

Speaker 45 The only thing I know about her,

Speaker 45 white female, black hair, blue eyes, went missing March 11th.

Speaker 106 When you did see her in school, where did you see her at?

Speaker 45 Walking around in hallways.

Speaker 45 I basically said hey to her one time, and that was when I was talking to my friend Caroline.

Speaker 57 He denied knowing Danielle, but admitted he noticed her.

Speaker 45 From what I've seen on Facebook, very beautiful face.

Speaker 106 She was a very, very beautiful person.

Speaker 75 Was you infatuated with her?

Speaker 100 She kind of held like a secret cushion.

Speaker 107 No.

Speaker 107 She was a little...

Speaker 45 She seemed a little too preppy.

Speaker 100 Too preppy. Kind of standoffish?

Speaker 97 Yeah. Was she standoffish to you?

Speaker 45 She seemed like a goody-goody.

Speaker 100 And honestly, I don't hang out with goody-goody's.

Speaker 45 Goody goodies have a bad habit of snitching.

Speaker 19 I ain't gonna lie.

Speaker 45 I do illegal things, and I know I do.

Speaker 59 So Derek thought Danielle was a goody-goody and a snitch, and he did less than legal things.

Speaker 38 Interesting.

Speaker 11 He also seemed to know a lot about the creek.

Speaker 45 That was my chill spot.

Speaker 45 I was one of the founders of that area.

Speaker 100 The founders.

Speaker 45 Yes, I would skip so much. I found that area.
Nobody else would go back there.

Speaker 28 But he said he hadn't gone there the night Danielle disappeared.

Speaker 23 Yes, sir.

Speaker 28 Derek said he spent that night at home.

Speaker 45 Around 8:30, my dad left to go to a pool tournament.

Speaker 45 Again, I stayed on the computer job searching. Between Facebook, job searching, and TV.
That's what I was doing all night.

Speaker 97 Not really sure if there's any history on my computer.

Speaker 45 There might be. I'll have to take a look.

Speaker 100 Are you in the habit of erasing your history?

Speaker 45 Yeah, I have a real bad habit of doing it.

Speaker 11 I'm Derek telling you, I was... Noodling around for jobs on my computer, but you're not going to find a record of that.
Right. Because I deleted the history.

Speaker 19 Right.

Speaker 28 Derek explained he did it to protect his account from hackers.

Speaker 72 He'd been burned in the past.

Speaker 45 I've had a bad habit of it ever since my last Facebook got hacked.

Speaker 56 But what about his alibi?

Speaker 100 Yeah, it left late 30-plug proof on him when time to get back

Speaker 17 between

Speaker 45 between 12 and 1.

Speaker 11 He can't account for himself that night, convincingly.

Speaker 13 There's nobody there at the house that can truly put him there.

Speaker 21 No solid alibi.

Speaker 57 And now new evidence was in.

Speaker 20 And it didn't look good for Derek.

Speaker 100 I'm asking you, was she alive when she left that area out there around your house?

Speaker 11 Tuesday night.

Speaker 19 Coming up,

Speaker 19 a chilling discovery at Derek's house.

Speaker 13 We found two shovels that had what appeared to be blood on them.

Speaker 19 But this case is far from closed. Police are about to learn that the last ping from Danielle's cell phone came from near here.

Speaker 5 on RV park.

Speaker 11 You have no idea who's coming and going there.

Speaker 13 No idea.

Speaker 11 Makes you wonder, right?

Speaker 13 Makes me wonder a lot.

Speaker 19 When dateline continues.

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Speaker 59 For weeks, police searched for any sign of Danielle Locklear.

Speaker 30 But a chatty girl had gone mute on social media, her phone dark.

Speaker 25 A search warrant had been filed for her cell provider's records.

Speaker 11 A cell phone can be a detective's best friend these days. Would you agree with that?

Speaker 13 The best.

Speaker 42 And the results were in.

Speaker 52 Her phone, it turned out, had been roughly in her neighborhood after she left home about 10 that night.

Speaker 84 But at 10:40 p.m., it suddenly started pinging off a tower miles away.

Speaker 20 The phone and presumably Danielle were on the move.

Speaker 13 We get a pin drop that pretty much puts it on I-95. But from that pin out is a certain amount of area that the phone could be in.

Speaker 69 So helpful as phones are, it doesn't give you X marks the spot.

Speaker 13 Not in this case.

Speaker 70 The last ping came from that spot near the highway.

Speaker 49 A worry in itself, because I-95 is a big ribbon of opportunities from Miami to the state of Maine.

Speaker 42 Was Danielle a runaway?

Speaker 81 Had she been abducted?

Speaker 66 No one knew.

Speaker 28 But the records did give investigators a direction to go in, because within that area was Derek's house.

Speaker 21 Police interviewers brought this information to Derek's attention.

Speaker 107 Well, we know where Danielle's phone was.

Speaker 107 Okay, what area her phone was?

Speaker 100 It's out there around your house. Was she alive when she left that area out there around your house?

Speaker 11 Tuesday night.

Speaker 108 I have no idea that it's here.

Speaker 100 So you're saying she wasn't out there at all. She didn't come out there with some of your friends?

Speaker 97 No, she didn't.

Speaker 45 She didn't know where I lived.

Speaker 100 Your buddies out there. Your buddies know where you live.
Did she come out there with some of your friends? No.

Speaker 100 Nobody showed up.

Speaker 45 Not a single soul.

Speaker 25 Police weren't satisfied.

Speaker 38 They got a search warrant for Derek's house, and what they saw only deepened their suspicions.

Speaker 11 Tell me what you found, Detective, because there's some interesting things that got your attention.

Speaker 13 Yeah, when we went out there, we initially found a burn pit. We're in March, April time frame.
It's not really super cold here.

Speaker 20 A burn pit.

Speaker 66 Curious, and there was more.

Speaker 13 We see a long knife in a tree, and we also found shovels that had, in fact, what appeared to be blood on them.

Speaker 25 A burn pit, a serious knife, and shovels with maybe bloodstains.

Speaker 93 Police thought their case might have cracked wide open.

Speaker 13 Oh, antenna spiked right up.

Speaker 13 You thought this might have solved your case, huh? Might have solved it. We might be on something.

Speaker 13 Looking good until investigators did some testing on the blood we did a presumptive out there and it showed negative

Speaker 49 back to square one we're not dealing with blood well what about derek denying he knew danielle even though friends claimed he called her his sister didn't that make him a liar one of derek's friends cautioned don't read too much into that he tries to seem cool and tell everybody he's his sister Edwin's his sister, everybody's his brother.

Speaker 104 That's just the kind of guy he is.

Speaker 25 Detectives also spoke to one of Derek's biggest defenders, his girlfriend.

Speaker 68 Her information suggested Derek could not possibly have been involved in Danielle's disappearance.

Speaker 22 He had no way of getting to her house that night.

Speaker 109 Does he have a call on anything?

Speaker 104 He doesn't even have his license.

Speaker 25 Caroline knew Derek, too, and thought he was a decent kid.

Speaker 38 Misunderstood.

Speaker 8 I guess everyone thought that he was that type of person because he was the kid that skipped school and that didn't got in trouble with teachers or spoke back or something like that.

Speaker 5 A school bad boy, huh?

Speaker 8 Yeah, and he really, he was just this really soft-hearted guy. He would always be there for anybody who needed him.

Speaker 29 In the end, police couldn't find any electronic trail linking Derek to Danielle.

Speaker 21 Detectives' latest lead had fizzled out.

Speaker 25 And with no explanation for that word help that Gina found scrawled at the creek, they were down to their two main clues.

Speaker 13 So you got the sock on the trail and you got a phone out at 95.

Speaker 13 More questions and answers.

Speaker 21 Danielle's last cell phone, ping, was miles away from her neighborhood.

Speaker 13 We can see that she's moving in a fairly quick fashion, faster than a person can walk.

Speaker 11 So the story told by the phone is I'm in a car.

Speaker 47 Yeah.

Speaker 86 Had she been abducted, grabbed by a person or persons unknown?

Speaker 27 The stranger danger abduction theory was gaining traction with both the police and Danielle's peers.

Speaker 10 A lot of girls at the high school were scared of like walking around, you know,

Speaker 10 in their neighborhoods and stuff at night now.

Speaker 81 And parents were scared too.

Speaker 18 People were actually hiding their kids because, you know, we're thinking some crazy person come through and kidnap her.

Speaker 54 And there was something more about the rough location of that last cell phone ping.

Speaker 72 Not only was the cone near Derek's place, it also included an RV park.

Speaker 11 You have no idea who's coming and going there.

Speaker 13 No idea.

Speaker 11 Makes you wonder, right?

Speaker 13 Makes me wonder a lot. Did this person stay at this RV park, come into Hope Mills, grab this girl, go back to the RV park, and that's why her phone's there?

Speaker 13 There's a lot of questions.

Speaker 59 Did you have to go through the RV park?

Speaker 14 A lot.

Speaker 13 We drained the ponds, dove them, brought dogs in. We began to search that entire property

Speaker 13 from the wooded areas to the water.

Speaker 30 By now, Danielle had been missing for almost two weeks.

Speaker 7 I went over that area and I would drive by and it was just like open field. And I'm like, oh my God, there's so many places she could have been.

Speaker 11 It was not a mobile home community. This is RVs coming and going and transient.

Speaker 7 Yeah, but it even made me feel more nervous that was by 95, because I'm like, she, we're looking around here, and she possibly could be somewhere else.

Speaker 73 After several days of searching the RV park, there was no sign of Danielle and no sign of her cell phone that last ping by the highway.

Speaker 51 Both could be anywhere.

Speaker 11 And 95 is different than a county road. She could have been five states away at that time.

Speaker 3 Absolutely. Absolutely.
I mean, on I-95, an hour either way, and you're in a different state and a few hours and you're in a different region of the country.

Speaker 22 A bad, bad feeling in the pit of her stomach gnawed away at Gina.

Speaker 7 And we're kind of like, well,

Speaker 7 something bad is... I felt something bad has happened.

Speaker 41 The news may not be good,

Speaker 28 but Danielle's mother still held out hope she would one day see her alive again.

Speaker 18 So I'm not leaving until I find my child.

Speaker 40 And that day might come sooner than anyone thought.

Speaker 52 Just when all seemed lost, who would believe it?

Speaker 25 Danielle was seen on camera walking around.

Speaker 17 Wow, she might be visiting someone at the hospital.

Speaker 19 Coming up,

Speaker 19 Danielle seen alive on surveillance tape, and then a report of her at a restaurant.

Speaker 95 It was like, okay, this is it. We're done.
We found her.

Speaker 20 Nearly two weeks had passed since 15-year-old Danielle Locklear vanished into the night.

Speaker 25 Detectives were getting frustrated.

Speaker 30 Almost all theories of her disappearance were still in play.

Speaker 11 Have you eliminated, say, the abduction theory at that point?

Speaker 11 Have you eliminated Jamichael or another boyfriend unknown?

Speaker 13 Nope.

Speaker 11 Or that she could have taken off on her own.

Speaker 13 Can't eliminate any of them yet.

Speaker 67 Detective Hamilton kept Daniel's picture by his desk, thought about the case around the clock.

Speaker 13 Many nights I

Speaker 13 cried myself, honestly. I have a little girl myself.
Something happening to her would be devastating.

Speaker 57 All the not knowing was torture for Danielle's mom.

Speaker 18 Your mind is just, you're going crazy. I mean, you're thinking of, I mean, even some of the worst and the craziest stuff.

Speaker 25 By now, Danielle's disappearance wasn't just a Hope Mill story.

Speaker 43 She was featured in Dateline's Missing in America series.

Speaker 25 Her story was national news.

Speaker 16 The missing 15-year-old, Danielle Locklear.

Speaker 96 Her face is blowing up all over the billboards.

Speaker 18 Every time I hit a stoplight, I see it.

Speaker 25 The media set up shop in the police station parking lot.

Speaker 91 Deputy Chief Servey and his team started giving regular briefings.

Speaker 95 And we are leaving no stone unturned. in order to find Danielle and bring her home.
If people want information about what's going on, they're concerned about what's going on.

Speaker 12 We're a hungry beast.

Speaker 80 What do you got for us today?

Speaker 95 Feed the beast.

Speaker 11 Did that put extra pressure on the investigators because it had jumped the fence and really become a national story?

Speaker 3 Yeah, there's pressure for answers, pressures for resolution. And in this case, you know, you had a beautiful young 15-year-old girl just basically vanish into thin air.

Speaker 51 North Carolina's State Bureau of Investigation and the ATF were consulted.

Speaker 36 Federal agents traveled in from across the Southeast.

Speaker 54 Cadaver dogs were even brought in from England.

Speaker 38 They assisted as Danielle's entire subdivision was searched.

Speaker 13 Every house in her neighborhood, and there's probably 200 plus houses near, was searched with the consent of the homeowner.

Speaker 35 Volunteers were drafted too.

Speaker 25 Over 300 joined Danielle's family for a top-to-bottom search of the creek area.

Speaker 24 This is my baby. She's sweet and loving.

Speaker 71 We're just trying to find her.

Speaker 103 Friends from the neighborhood and the church pitched in.

Speaker 64 including Danielle's ex-boyfriend Jamichael and his family.

Speaker 13 We were hopeful in them doing them grid searches. We might find more articles of clothing or her.
We needed to find something to give us a more solid direction to go.

Speaker 79 The coverage also brought a deluge of tips, some totally far-fetched.

Speaker 7 There's a lady that was calling saying that she had her and was taking care of her and that she was sick.

Speaker 7 And

Speaker 7 it was just crazy.

Speaker 11 How many leads do you think you chased at?

Speaker 95 Over a thousand leads. I'm positive of it.

Speaker 20 One of those leads had the authorities convinced Danielle was alive.

Speaker 35 Some tipsters said she was at a restaurant near the North Carolina-Virginia border 150 miles away.

Speaker 72 And she's there right now.

Speaker 13 These people were adamant, look, we've seen her.

Speaker 13 She's with a guy.

Speaker 25 FBI agents were dispatched to check it out.

Speaker 95 They were sending pictures back, like they were sitting in the parking lot watching and taking pictures and stuff. And we were like, man, that looks like her.
That's...

Speaker 11 Spitting image, huh?

Speaker 95 Oh, God.

Speaker 24 Yeah.

Speaker 95 And it was like, okay, this is it. We're done.
We found her.

Speaker 22 But when the agents made contact with the girl, it wasn't her.

Speaker 65 All those leads had China second-guessing her own instincts.

Speaker 68 Maybe Danielle had run away.

Speaker 7 I actually started seeing things in the house that were missing. I was like, well, you know, I haven't seen those jeans in a while.
I haven't seen that shirt.

Speaker 7 Maybe she did pack a bag and leave.

Speaker 11 Maybe she's out there somewhere.

Speaker 7 Maybe she is.

Speaker 59 Then the family received a call that made them think their prayers had been answered.

Speaker 28 An investigator said Danielle had been seen at a nearby hospital.

Speaker 25 What's more, she'd been captured on surveillance video.

Speaker 17 Wow,

Speaker 17 she might be at the hospital, and what in the world is she doing? Is she on drugs or somebody gave her something? We have no idea.

Speaker 23 Danielle's grandmother grabbed the hands of those around her and started to pray.

Speaker 17 But when police called back, what they were looking at was Danielle on the

Speaker 82 It was so devastating to her grandma that she can barely describe it.

Speaker 41 There was video of Danielle, but Danielle seen on an old tape six months before.

Speaker 57 Her dear granddaughter had been at the hospital visiting her.

Speaker 17 We thought they had found her.

Speaker 14 And

Speaker 17 that just done it for me.

Speaker 21 On March 29th, almost three weeks after Danielle disappeared, her family and friends gathered for a balloon release. Her friend Alexis was there, so was Jamichel.

Speaker 52 She remembers he was holding out hope that Danielle was alive.

Speaker 16 Say, hey, and gave me a hug, and he said, I just, you know, hope we find her and she's okay.

Speaker 57 Up until then, Danielle's Aunt Sheena had managed to stay strong for the family.

Speaker 82 But with the release of those balloons, she felt her resolve and confidence sailing away with them.

Speaker 7 For the first time then, I felt like I was giving up hope.

Speaker 12 Starting to feel like

Speaker 7 that she may not ever come home and how would we be able to live like this?

Speaker 7 I couldn't sleep.

Speaker 7 I couldn't eat. I was

Speaker 7 it was it was horrible.

Speaker 25 Something, anything would be better than not knowing.

Speaker 67 Mercifully for the family, Answers were just a phone call away.

Speaker 14 Is there a deputy that's close by with a pair of of binoculars?

Speaker 19 Coming out, the view from the bridge.

Speaker 71 When I was looking, I could see what looked like dark hair.

Speaker 19 The most painful of discoveries, and one peculiar detail that stood out to me. When dateline continues.

Speaker 40 On the morning of April 2nd, 2014, China Papa did what she'd done almost every day since her niece disappeared.

Speaker 80 She went to her family church to pray for Danielle's safe return.

Speaker 81 But this time, her prayer was different.

Speaker 7 It was, please just allow us to bring her home and lay her to rest.

Speaker 12 If that is what you want.

Speaker 7 Yeah. I felt like I was being selfish wanting her to come back alive.

Speaker 7 But I also had in me, I can't live with not knowing. I'd rather just know the truth.

Speaker 69 The truth at long last would start to be revealed that afternoon.

Speaker 11 This is not your regular route to go home.

Speaker 47 No, sir, it's not.

Speaker 25 Veteran homicide detective Adam Brinkley had been helping out on the Locklear case.

Speaker 74 He'd interviewed some of the high school kids in Danielle's circle.

Speaker 53 Now he was off duty, driving the back roads towards a river he knew very well.

Speaker 69 You're a fisherman. I'm a fisherman, yeah.
Is that one one of your fishing holes?

Speaker 71 That's one of my fishing holes.

Speaker 35 It was Shad season, and as chance would have it, he was wearing a special pair of polarized fishing glasses.

Speaker 11 These ones that are on your lanyard, huh?

Speaker 71 Yep, these ones right here, and they helped me to, you know, kind of look and see into the water a little bit better.

Speaker 58 He was traveling about 35 miles an hour when he reached this bridge. Something in the water below caught his eye.

Speaker 71 I see something down there towards that debris that just didn't quite look right.

Speaker 11 Boy, you've got good eyes. With all that junk out there, you saw something.

Speaker 71 Yep, I just normally, normally, I just know it's not normally there.

Speaker 43 He stopped to take a closer look.

Speaker 71 I really couldn't tell what it was, and that's when I got on my cell phone and contacted Dispatch.

Speaker 71 Is there a deputy that's close by with a pair of binoculars so I can make sure there's not a body in the ward be a prank?

Speaker 57 There's no telling. Within minutes, a deputy pulled up.

Speaker 71 So I took and got the binoculars out. When I was looking, I could see what looked like dark hair.

Speaker 11 Dark hair.

Speaker 74 With a jolt, he realized that the hair was human.

Speaker 11 You must say something like, oh my goodness.

Speaker 71 Well, definitely knew what I had to do.

Speaker 14 I walked into here, huh?

Speaker 71 Yeah, definitely knew that. I got on the cell phone and I called my

Speaker 71 homicide supervisor and told him, yes, look, I got a body in the river down here.

Speaker 28 Police from two counties descended on the scene. One of the first investigators to arrive was Detective Hamilton.

Speaker 53 One look at the clothes told him Danielle Locklear had been found.

Speaker 78 He had a clothing match, huh?

Speaker 11 Clothing match. He had a photo of what she was wearing that day at the creek?

Speaker 47 Correct.

Speaker 11 And there was the same shirt on your

Speaker 11 body recovered.

Speaker 13 There's the same shirt.

Speaker 32 Police would need a positive ID from the medical examiner before they could officially notify the family.

Speaker 105 But Danielle's relatives were already hearing about the discovery of a body from the local news.

Speaker 10 A potential break in the case of a missing Cumberland County teenager.

Speaker 7 The moment that they put it on the news, everyone was already sending their condolences. And I'm like, no,

Speaker 7 it doesn't mean that it's her.

Speaker 23 Great Aunt China had to see it for herself.

Speaker 86 She rushed to the river.

Speaker 48 I went running towards the emergency vehicles to go in, but they had a roadblock, and I said, No, let me see, let me see. And then, ma'am, I'm sorry, we can't let you through.

Speaker 75 Danielle's mom, Rona, had taken refuge in a hotel for the night.

Speaker 44 After midnight, a team of police showed up at her door.

Speaker 68 A female sergeant broke the news.

Speaker 10 She's like, we found the body.

Speaker 14 I said, Well,

Speaker 18 I looked at her and I said, I understand you have to do your job.

Speaker 18 I said, Just look at me in my eyes.

Speaker 18 I said, It's her.

Speaker 18 She just looked me square in my eyes. She didn't say nothing out of you.

Speaker 41 Sleep would be unthinkable.

Speaker 18 I think I could probably count every crack in the ceiling that night because you're just sitting there, you're in a blank space.

Speaker 18 You're just like, Did she just tell me what she just told me?

Speaker 18 Do I have to actually plan a funeral?

Speaker 18 Am I going to get ready to bury my child?

Speaker 17 Nah, nah, nah.

Speaker 18 Yeah, it was a nightmare.

Speaker 18 Snap out of it, Rona.

Speaker 14 It was real.

Speaker 18 A mother's worst nightmare.

Speaker 40 As the family began to mourn, detectives got to work.

Speaker 50 They scoured the river for clues.

Speaker 23 It was clear from the condition of Danielle's body, it had been underwater for almost a month.

Speaker 25 Detectives could see why.

Speaker 13 There were some cinder blocks tied to the body.

Speaker 12 So the body's weighted down.

Speaker 13 Yeah, you could see through the water with lights.

Speaker 1 The cinder blocks were tied to the body with bright yellow rope, and they were unique.

Speaker 13 Old style is how I would categorize it. It was very old.

Speaker 11 Not like you get it at a modern-day building supply place.

Speaker 13 No, this one had a lot of pebbles and actual rocks in it. So that stood out to me.

Speaker 30 On the banks of the river, they found shotgun shells.

Speaker 25 perhaps a clue as to how she died.

Speaker 93 But a shotgun had nothing to do with it.

Speaker 57 The next day, the medical examiner concluded Danielle's cause of death was asphyxiation.

Speaker 68 It seemed Danielle had been strangled.

Speaker 25 And a particularly gruesome detail.

Speaker 75 Stuffed in Danielle's mouth, the medical examiner found a night sock.

Speaker 73 Hamilton had seen one just like it before.

Speaker 11 It was a match to a sock that Aunt Gina had discovered on the trail.

Speaker 13 Yeah, I was going to say Aunt Gina actually found that sock.

Speaker 43 So this was the pair.

Speaker 13 It was definitely the match.

Speaker 67 Remember, the sock at the creek had been covered in debris.

Speaker 21 Detectives theorized that whatever happened to Danielle started there creekside, a possibly violent altercation.

Speaker 62 If that was the case, how had Danielle's body ended up here?

Speaker 85 The river was about 30 minutes away from the creek in a remote part of the county.

Speaker 93 And the river and the creek aren't even connected.

Speaker 38 The body was disposed of there.

Speaker 13 But it was disposed of.

Speaker 65 The spot had been chosen to conceal Daniel's body, but by whom?

Speaker 52 All detectives had to do was look around.

Speaker 68 Maybe the answer was very nearby.

Speaker 7 It was so close that, I mean, if you dropped a pin on where his house was, the river is

Speaker 7 right there.

Speaker 19 Coming up,

Speaker 19 police are about to circle back to one of the young men they've looked at, and they're prepared for anything.

Speaker 11 Did you have your vests on, firearms out?

Speaker 13 We did. We had everything with us.

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Speaker 54 Word that Danielle's body had been found was tearing through South View High School.

Speaker 9 Somebody messaged me, I can't remember who it was, and they told me to turn on the news.

Speaker 9 And I turned on the news, and

Speaker 9 it was like the video of like them pulling the body out.

Speaker 9 And I called my mom's work and I was crying on the phone. I was just begging her to come home.

Speaker 25 Danielle's family, too, was trying to come to grips with her death.

Speaker 22 Her grandfather, who'd let Danielle leave that night, was plagued by guilt.

Speaker 55 So was her grandma, Kelly.

Speaker 17 I feel like I failed.

Speaker 17 I failed my granddaughter by not being there

Speaker 16 for her when this happened.

Speaker 75 The discovery of Danielle's body had started the mourning process for her family.

Speaker 40 But it was also a turning point for detectives because Danielle knew someone who lived just down the road from the river where her body had been found.

Speaker 20 Her ex-boyfriend, Jamichael.

Speaker 11 So he was on his home turf.

Speaker 13 He's in his backyard. That's rural county out there.
There's not even a light and there's traffic light in that town.

Speaker 93 Investigators thought that couldn't be a coincidence.

Speaker 25 But Jermichael wasn't someone the the family had seriously considered as a suspect, at least not at first.

Speaker 28 He'd been supportively by their side ever since Danielle disappeared.

Speaker 18 And they gave me a hug.

Speaker 17 Yep.

Speaker 18 He was at a balloon release, he was at the search parties, all that stuff.

Speaker 22 But there had been moments with Jermichael that gave them pause.

Speaker 34 One happened for China during that big search.

Speaker 7 It was the strangest thing because

Speaker 7 he was like in the middle of an open circle, and there there he stood, not talking to anyone,

Speaker 7 standing there, just staring down at his arm.

Speaker 57 She even snapped a picture of it.

Speaker 21 And remember how Jermichael had seemed so helpful with information about his ex.

Speaker 101 She told me she tried to kill herself twice.

Speaker 22 Now, one story he told could be read in a very different way.

Speaker 7 And he goes, Well,

Speaker 7 you know, did you know Danielle was depressed?

Speaker 7 I'm like, depressed? I mean,

Speaker 7 why would you say that?

Speaker 7 Well, you know, when we broke up the last time, you know, she told me that

Speaker 7 she was going to drown herself in cold water.

Speaker 31 So he's suggesting a narration here, huh?

Speaker 14 And I'm like,

Speaker 77 wait a minute.

Speaker 58 Detectives were also reviewing everything they knew about Jermichael.

Speaker 37 Turns out his breakup with Danielle was anything but casual.

Speaker 20 In Jermichael's cell phone, detectives found over-the-top outrage texts from the girl.

Speaker 13 He goes as far as to block her on his phone.

Speaker 11 That's it, you're really history here. Yeah, I'm not going to take your calls, your texts.

Speaker 13 Goodbye. That's it, blocked her.

Speaker 41 What's more, Danielle had used a friend's cell phone to do an end run around Jermichael's block so she could keep texting him.

Speaker 75 In his roundabout responses to her, Jermichael seemed to threaten Danielle's life.

Speaker 32 He wrote, Come to my house the way I'm feeling right now.

Speaker 68 I'll shoot you with no hesitation.

Speaker 11 Jermichael's going to kill Danielle.

Speaker 66 But he would.

Speaker 49 If what?

Speaker 13 If she didn't leave him alone.

Speaker 11 So get off my case.

Speaker 13 Yep.

Speaker 25 Detectives had confronted Jermichael about that message early on.

Speaker 44 And remember, Jermichael had what appeared to be a solid alibi.

Speaker 68 Three people put him at home studying the night Danielle disappeared.

Speaker 43 His phone was there, too.

Speaker 51 And he had to have been with her because he'd sent text messages to female friends that night.

Speaker 13 He had been having Fortace conversations with several girls.

Speaker 55 On top of that, Jermichael had always been cooperative with police.

Speaker 98 Well, what can you do to help us find her?

Speaker 101 Whatever you want me to do.

Speaker 64 In fact, he'd been interviewed aggressively by veteran investigators, and he never buckled.

Speaker 98 If you killed this girl or you had anything to do with it, you're going to have every law enforcement agency around a gun for you.

Speaker 9 Yes, sir.

Speaker 25 But that didn't stop investigators from giving Jermichael a polygraph.

Speaker 35 And in his cool exterior, they thought they saw a crack.

Speaker 95 Absolutely bombed it.

Speaker 13 He flunked it. Absolutely.

Speaker 93 They suspected he was lying.

Speaker 73 But Jermichael never changed his story.

Speaker 68 Now that Danielle's body had been found, it was time to dial up the pressure.

Speaker 28 Investigators would pay Jermichael a visit at his house.

Speaker 65 They set the stage in a church parking lot.

Speaker 13 We briefed everybody on what was going to transpire, who was on

Speaker 13 the perimeter, who was going in.

Speaker 11 Did you have your vests on, firearms out?

Speaker 13 We did. We had everything with us.

Speaker 36 While several officers kept an eye on the perimeter, Detective Hamilton approached Jermichael's front door.

Speaker 43 Was he shook?

Speaker 13 He didn't seem shook to me. I was kind of surprised.
I'm like, you know, they just found a body in the South River right down the road from my house.

Speaker 13 He's cool as a pickle.

Speaker 73 They asked him to come down to the station.

Speaker 5 Sure, definitely.

Speaker 13 I'll go down to the office with you guys.

Speaker 62 Jermichael's mother joined him in the interview room.

Speaker 82 She seemed to get just how bad the situation looked for her son.

Speaker 104 That body, if it is hers,

Speaker 112 really, how did it get down there?

Speaker 7 Somebody could be,

Speaker 10 could have done it, but trying to frame you.

Speaker 112 Because me and Mama know in our heart you ain't did nothing.

Speaker 22 But Jermichael didn't seem concerned.

Speaker 108 I love you too much.

Speaker 14 Okay.

Speaker 93 This time, Adam Brinkley, the detective who found the body, would do the questioning.

Speaker 52 Jermichael had a lawyer there, too.

Speaker 104 You're saying you didn't have anything to do with it. Yes, sir.

Speaker 75 How do you think that's going to make you work?

Speaker 108 Unless y'all can prove it has something to do with it, which y'all are not going to be able to because I didn't have anything to do with it.

Speaker 104 I'm going to live perfectly fine. We'll then help you with this.

Speaker 104 Why did you fail the body graph? I was nervous. I'm nervous sitting here now, so I mean.

Speaker 63 Jermichael said he didn't kill Danielle.

Speaker 25 But if he had, he said he wouldn't have been so stupid as to hide the body next to his own house.

Speaker 104 Yook you're saying you think I'm smart here?

Speaker 104 I do think you're smart here.

Speaker 108 Why in the world would I put her down the street and around the corner?

Speaker 43 You're a fisherman.

Speaker 11 You're looking for that moment when you've set the hook in the mouth, huh?

Speaker 69 Did you see it with this kid? No.

Speaker 40 But Jermichael was in for a surprise.

Speaker 52 While he was sitting there, detectives armed with a warrant were searching his house.

Speaker 64 And next to his driveway, oh, what a discovery they'd made.

Speaker 19 Coming up, Jamaica learns about that search in progress.

Speaker 71 And you can see him thinking, you're just watching that mind go to work.

Speaker 19 And then, fresh drama for friends of Danielle.

Speaker 102 I was just like, are you kidding me?

Speaker 19 When Dateline continues.

Speaker 29 Danielle's decomposed body had been found in a river, but it didn't seem to face 17-year-old Jermichael Molloy.

Speaker 57 In the interview room, he was unflappable.

Speaker 85 But there was something he didn't know when he agreed to sit down with Detective Brinkley.

Speaker 20 It was his mom who told him that investigators at that very moment were turning his house upside down.

Speaker 104 Yes, sir. Right?

Speaker 71 You can see him thinking, you just sit there watching that mind, you know, go to work.

Speaker 51 If Jermichael was rattled, he had good reason.

Speaker 28 Because investigators had made a big discovery.

Speaker 14 Cinder blocks.

Speaker 11 The distinctive concrete blocks. Did you find items like that at the house?

Speaker 3 We did.

Speaker 11 Even an indent in the grass where one might have lain?

Speaker 47 Where two were removed.

Speaker 13 And there was two on Danielle.

Speaker 40 They also found yellow rope.

Speaker 21 Detective Brinkley hit Jermichael with that news.

Speaker 104 What if if I tell you that we found the rope that she was tied up with hanging out down the roof at your house? Shouldn't be a mountain. Why shouldn't it be? Because I have nothing to do with it.

Speaker 104 Why the sandbox? Why the rope here? Why the polygraph? The evidence is not going to lie. That's going to be the one thing that

Speaker 75 will get you in the end. The detective gave Jermichael one last chance to confess.

Speaker 104 You're going to look like a monster.

Speaker 104 You're not gonna win this battle.

Speaker 87 No go.

Speaker 28 And still, detectives didn't have enough.

Speaker 11 So you didn't arrest him that night? No. Did you think you were releasing back into the community a potentially violent character?

Speaker 13 Yeah, I felt like I was letting the murderer go.

Speaker 21 Detectives were now certain that Jermichael was Danielle's killer, and they knew where the investigation was going next.

Speaker 73 They had to deconstruct Jermichael's alibi, the one that put him home studying that night. It turns out the family members who said they were with him weren't actually in the same room with him.

Speaker 58 They couldn't say they'd seen him with their own eyes.

Speaker 13 We actually could not get confirmation from mother or grandmother that he was there.

Speaker 34 Which meant the only person truly vouching for him was his study partner and best friend, Dominic.

Speaker 13 We brought him to the sheriff's office, gave him the same opportunity, and he lured up.

Speaker 11 Did you go through this scenario that you're two guys in trouble and one of you might be able to do yourself some good?

Speaker 13 We let him know very bluntly that the house of cars is falling. First one on the train gets the ride.

Speaker 93 Four days later, police got a phone call.

Speaker 51 It was Jermichael.

Speaker 13 I got a call from my supervisor saying that Jermichael's on his way to the sheriff's office to confess.

Speaker 31 To confess?

Speaker 13 That was what I was told, but I had got a lot of rumors up to this point, so I was skeptical.

Speaker 20 Not a rumor this time.

Speaker 75 Jermichael was there to confess.

Speaker 65 Now, he wasn't that self-assured kid police encountered days before.

Speaker 25 The person taking this confession would again be Detective Brinkley.

Speaker 71 Came into the interview room, sat down, and I said, Jermichael,

Speaker 71 tell me in your own words what happened.

Speaker 25 The night of the murder, Jermichael said, he and Dominic sneaked out of the house and headed for Danielle's.

Speaker 30 He wanted to talk to his ex-girlfriend.

Speaker 108 I had tipped my wallet and I threw it against her window.

Speaker 99 You know,

Speaker 108 a TK melt and everything, and she got in the car. And we went to the creek.

Speaker 99 And

Speaker 104 we sat down and we talked for a while.

Speaker 75 But this wasn't an evening of reconciliation.

Speaker 59 There was another combustible in their breakup, something that raised the stakes way higher.

Speaker 50 According to Jermichel, Danielle had been telling him on and off for months that she was pregnant.

Speaker 104 And she was supposed to take a pregnancy test in front of me.

Speaker 21 If the test came back positive, Jermichael was adamant.

Speaker 25 He said he would provide for his child, but he would not be with Danielle.

Speaker 104 And that's when she snapped on me and she clutched me in my face and she slapped me and jumped on top of me and got all over me and stuff.

Speaker 66 In the middle of their alleged fight, Jermichael said he took her by the throat.

Speaker 104 All I remember was I grabbed her. I was choking her.

Speaker 104 I

Speaker 104 wiped out.

Speaker 28 Jermichael said when he came to, Danielle wasn't breathing.

Speaker 84 He said he called out to Dominic in a panic, and together they loaded Danielle's body into the back seat of the car.

Speaker 50 As for that word help, Gina found scrawled in the sand, police had suspected for a while that it had nothing to do with the case.

Speaker 13 Somebody did not write that in a hurry. That was our consensus.

Speaker 27 But that sock, of course, did.

Speaker 85 It likely fell off as they were dragging Danielle's body out of the creek area.

Speaker 28 According to Jermichael, Dominic is the one who shoved the other sock into Danielle's mouth.

Speaker 75 Why would he do that?

Speaker 99 I guess

Speaker 108 she was making a noise.

Speaker 108 Yeah.

Speaker 108 She put a socket nurse in the body right here.

Speaker 65 As they drove back to his house, Jermichael said he threw Danielle's phone out of the window right on I-95, the last place it pinged.

Speaker 40 Then Jermichael found the rope and cinder blocks.

Speaker 108 Tied her up, put her in the car,

Speaker 108 and threw her over the side, tiding to the river.

Speaker 41 He said that night, he and Dominic made a pact.

Speaker 108 Take it to the grave, I'm going to throw nobody.

Speaker 21 Once his confession was complete, Jermichael was arrested and charged with second-degree murder.

Speaker 37 Days later, Dominic was too.

Speaker 73 And now Danielle's circle was aware that Jermichael had confessed.

Speaker 16 I had a panic attack. I was like, you know, how could he? He was texting me and telling me, you know, I hope she's okay.
I love her. I miss her.

Speaker 102 I was just like, are you kidding me?

Speaker 9 I wanted to kill him. I still want to kill him.

Speaker 40 Danielle's family was likewise enraged.

Speaker 11 What are you all saying to one another?

Speaker 7 We feel betrayed. We feel like he's been around us.
I mean, he was walking alongside of us

Speaker 7 during the search. He watched us cry our eyes out.

Speaker 7 You know, it was.

Speaker 11 Knowing full well that she was at the bottom of that creep.

Speaker 14 Yeah.

Speaker 25 More troubling still, Sheena didn't feel that Jermichael had told the whole truth.

Speaker 7 It just doesn't make any sense to me. I don't believe his story.

Speaker 25 Neither did investigators.

Speaker 11 Did that story satisfy you?

Speaker 5 No.

Speaker 19 Coming up. A bold move to get the whole truth out of Jermichael reveals something remarkable.

Speaker 71 And this one is attorney stopped it.

Speaker 19 And then, for Danielle's mom, one small measure of comfort.

Speaker 18 I'm so thankful.

Speaker 40 A month after Danielle's body was found in the river, her family and friends gathered to say their goodbyes.

Speaker 21 The details of Danielle's final minutes were especially haunting to her mom, Rona.

Speaker 77 They put her in the trunk of a car.

Speaker 18 Then they took her to that dirty river and tossed her in there.

Speaker 12 Your baby?

Speaker 12 Yeah.

Speaker 18 Threw away like she was garbage.

Speaker 28 For her Aunt Sheena, who'd always kept an eye on her niece, the pain was still so raw.

Speaker 7 I know I was overprotective. and I know that I was always in her business and stuff, but I just wish that I was a little more in her business.
And I can't even think about how scared she was.

Speaker 35 To make matters even worse, they felt the charge of second-degree murder didn't cut it.

Speaker 84 That crime of passion story, a fight turned deadly, they believed that was a lie.

Speaker 23 They pointed to Jermichael's cell phone left at home.

Speaker 25 What teenager does that?

Speaker 7 He knew exactly what he's doing. He left the phone at home on purpose.

Speaker 21 Detective Hamilton felt the same way.

Speaker 68 Do you believe this was a premeditated crime?

Speaker 13 Absolutely.

Speaker 11 He planned it.

Speaker 13 I do. I believe he planned it.

Speaker 28 For the detective, it wasn't just Jermichael's choice to leave his phone home that night.

Speaker 53 Hamilton thought the location Jermichael chose for their rendezvous was also a giveaway, the creek.

Speaker 13 Why wouldn't they iron it out right there in front of the house? Why do they have to go to a creek and walk down a dark trail?

Speaker 58 As for Jermichael's story of what happened there, his account of blacking out when he killed Danielle, detectives didn't buy that for one second.

Speaker 23 They brought Jermichael back down to the creek to walk through the crime scene.

Speaker 28 Once there, Detective Brinkley asked Jermichael to close his eyes.

Speaker 71 He said, Jermichael, I want you to go back to the event. I want to get an idea about how long you felt like you had choked Danielle.

Speaker 20 Jermichael played along.

Speaker 71 And his eyes are twitching and closed. And I'm like, Jermichael, what's going on? What's happening?

Speaker 71 And he says that he had grabbed her and he was starting to choke her.

Speaker 68 It was dead calm in the creek.

Speaker 67 Ten seconds went by, then 20, then a minute.

Speaker 71 I said, you're still choking her? He says, yes. And that's when his attorney stopped it.
He never blacked out. As he had said, he had just sat right there and walked me through the entire process.

Speaker 64 As for the motive, Detective Hamilton feels it all goes back to that test Jermichael mentioned during his confession.

Speaker 104 She was supposed to take a paranoid test in front of me.

Speaker 44 Jermichael, he says, was dead set on becoming a U.S. Marine.

Speaker 51 And a baby wasn't part of his plans.

Speaker 13 He thought she was pregnant.

Speaker 11 And was going to mess up his life plan.

Speaker 13 It was going to mess up his

Speaker 13 dream career of going in the Marines. Hmm.
The mind of a 17-year-old.

Speaker 13 Man, she wasn't pregnant at all.

Speaker 28 And there was one more detail that convinced the detective that this was a uniquely calculated crime.

Speaker 43 Something chilling.

Speaker 21 Remember those texts Jermichael's phone sent out from his house around the time of the killing?

Speaker 43 The ones that bolstered his alibi.

Speaker 11 So what was that about?

Speaker 13 He couldn't have been there to do it. I can tell you that.

Speaker 25 The texts were sent to girls he'd been flirting with. He wrote to one, I just woke up, so what you doing?

Speaker 21 For a while, detectives were stumped.

Speaker 84 How could he be texting from home and also be out committing a murder?

Speaker 13 It was a problem for us. I couldn't figure it out.

Speaker 28 It was a tech-savvy investigator who solved the mystery.

Speaker 22 Jermichael had downloaded an app that allows you to schedule your texts.

Speaker 11 Let me see if I understand this. You can pre-write your text and then telephone, I want you to send this two hours from now.
Yep.

Speaker 58 It was alibi building of the digital kind.

Speaker 78 Treacherous.

Speaker 13 My opinion is, you know, he's a sociopath. He truly believed that he was getting away with the murder.

Speaker 24 I want everybody to know she will get justice.

Speaker 93 With a trial looming, prosecutor Billy West was planning to up the ante on Jermichael's second-degree murder charge.

Speaker 3 We would have tried, if the judge allowed us to, to give first-degree

Speaker 3 as an option. We would have.
We would have tried to give that as an option.

Speaker 7 We wanted him to pay the price.

Speaker 51 But trial came with a risk.

Speaker 64 The prosecutor still thought a competent defense attorney could make a compelling argument for voluntary manslaughter, a crime of passion in the moment.

Speaker 11 If so, this young man might be out in five years. Right.

Speaker 3 That's right. If the jury finds him guilty of manslaughter, he could be given five to seven years.
You could be seeing him on the streets in that short a period of time.

Speaker 42 Trial was a gamble.

Speaker 34 The prosecutors consulted with family members who wrestled with their feelings.

Speaker 7 It was just a lot. We had been through a lot.
We just wanted to be done with everything.

Speaker 41 Jamichael agreed to a deal.

Speaker 51 He pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and received 25 to 31 years in prison.

Speaker 93 His friend Dominic pleaded guilty to accessory.

Speaker 63 He received six to eight years.

Speaker 25 In May 2016, Danielle's family showed up at the Cumberland County Courthouse for Jermichael's sentencing.

Speaker 93 It was their first face-to-face since he accepted the plea.

Speaker 18 Same old kid with the smirk on his face.

Speaker 49 When it was his turn to speak, Jermichael turned to the family and apologized.

Speaker 108 I know, sorry he doesn't cut it,

Speaker 98 but

Speaker 98 I do want to say I'm truly sorry.

Speaker 81 But they didn't buy it.

Speaker 7 He's sorry he didn't add more center blocks. That's what he was sorry for.
Because he had every intention for her to stay down there.

Speaker 21 Jermichael's mother, who'd known Danielle's family forever, spoke at the sentencing, too.

Speaker 88 I want you to know I'm not blocking out no pain.

Speaker 88 I pray for y'all. I pray for healing.

Speaker 88 I pray for forgiveness.

Speaker 88 And most of all, I pray for mercy.

Speaker 34 But mercy wasn't something Danielle's mom was considering.

Speaker 7 You want to touch touch my mercy?

Speaker 88 She didn't have no mercy that night.

Speaker 53 You ripped out my soul.

Speaker 7 My sister is not the same. She's not the same.

Speaker 7 I mean,

Speaker 7 she was my niece, but

Speaker 7 that was my sister's daughter and her only daughter.

Speaker 25 In 2017, Danielle's class graduated from high school.

Speaker 87 At the ceremony, Rona looked on as they honored the girl who will forever be 15.

Speaker 18 She had an empty seat and it was all decorated, ribbons and everything.

Speaker 18 And they gave me a shadow box

Speaker 18 with her tassel and cat and everything in it.

Speaker 18 They graduated my child.

Speaker 18 I'm so thankful.

Speaker 25 There are so many things Danielle's family misses about her.

Speaker 59 Her heart, her happy-go-lucky nature, her infectious joy.

Speaker 68 That's what China thinks about when the memories come rushing back.

Speaker 7 She was always laughing, so I just picture her laughing, and I know that's the way she wants to be remembered.

Speaker 80 Caroline, who was with Danielle at the creek that day, misses her friend too.

Speaker 25 That one-time teenage haven is now just a memory.

Speaker 11 Was that the end of the creek for you?

Speaker 9 Yes, it was. Nobody really went after that.
Ever.

Speaker 28 The creek, still lazing through its sandy banks.

Speaker 59 But those voices of innocence are stilled now.

Speaker 44 Ever since one lazy, happy day turned into a very bad night.

Speaker 31 One never to be forgotten or completely understood.

Speaker 6 That's all for now.

Speaker 95 I'm Lester Holt.

Speaker 19 Thanks for joining us.

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