The Match

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Speaker 2 I see her laying there on the floor, and I see a person who I've never seen before in my house.

Speaker 2 And I'm looking at him. He tells me I'm Nick's while he's reaching for a butcher knife.

Speaker 3 Terrified.

Speaker 4 I just walked in. I saw blood everywhere.

Speaker 5 Her daughter's laying there. A young girl coming home for lunch, getting brutally attacked with.

Speaker 6 Blood on the floor, a shovel, duct tape, also a knife.

Speaker 7 I truly thought Brittany would die.

Speaker 8 You wake up from your coma.

Speaker 9 I'm just like trying to communicate.

Speaker 7 She didn't give up. It was a struggle.

Speaker 8 You're not only the victim in this, you're the witness.

Speaker 9 It's almost like a nightmare.

Speaker 12 The detective wanted you to do hypnosis.

Speaker 9 Your mind is in a completely different phase.

Speaker 13 Tell me what's happening.

Speaker 14 It is hurting me.

Speaker 15 It's hurting me.

Speaker 5 The details that she gave,

Speaker 5 it was unbelievable.

Speaker 9 She says, you did it. I said, no, you did.

Speaker 10 Route 66 once stretched across the southwest from one horizon to the next, going from what America was to what it wanted to be.

Speaker 10 Cities like Albuquerque, New Mexico were celebrated stops along the journey.

Speaker 10 Today, buildings that once lined this part of the iconic highway have faded and closed as the Cottonwood Mall became the new downtown.

Speaker 12 The mall was kind of the big hangout?

Speaker 19 I met my husband at the mall.

Speaker 16 Yes, sort of capsule and I've played a pivotal part in my life.

Speaker 10 For the Marcel sisters, all six six of them, along with their brother Jonathan, the Cottonwood Mall in Albuquerque was the center of their social lives.

Speaker 20 And it was people that we went to school with, and so everybody kind of knew everybody.

Speaker 10 Sister number five, 17-year-old Brittany, worked at a sunglasses kiosk in the atrium.

Speaker 7 And she's this beautiful blonde girl with striking blue eyes and a big smile.

Speaker 21 We were just drawn to her.

Speaker 10 Life was simple, good.

Speaker 10 Until Wednesday, September 11th, 2008, Brittany, just starting her senior year of high school, made plans to meet her mom, a credit union teller, at home for lunch.

Speaker 2 I opened the door and I walk in and I saw her favorite pair of red sunglasses down on the floor. Did that mean anything? I thought that was really weird.

Speaker 10 A seemingly trivial detail now burned into Diane's memory because of what she saw next.

Speaker 2 I see her laying there on the floor.

Speaker 16 Lying on the floor? On the floor.

Speaker 2 And she's just bleeding profusely.

Speaker 17 Then what do you see?

Speaker 2 I see a person who I've never seen before in my house. And he's holding a shovel.
And he walks through my living room, drops the shovel, and walks through the dining room and around to the kitchen.

Speaker 2 And I'm looking at him, and he tells me I'm Nick's while he's reaching for a butcher knife.

Speaker 12 He's going to kill you?

Speaker 12 Yes.

Speaker 2 What do you do? I ran out. I'm screaming and yelling.

Speaker 10 Diane's screams got the attention of a passerby who was brave enough to help.

Speaker 2 He ran into the house and he yelled back and he said, you need to get those paramedics here real quick. She's going to die.

Speaker 10 Diane called 911 but stayed outside, certain the attacker was still in her home. I just walked in.
I saw blood everywhere.

Speaker 24 I'm afraid to go in. I walked in and he had, he was coming after me.
He ran to the kitchen.

Speaker 10 Police and the paramedics were there in minutes. Brittany was taken to the hospital as Diane called her other children.

Speaker 7 Someone was calling me saying Brittany got stabbed. Kat had thought she was in a car accident.

Speaker 11 We didn't realize what had happened.

Speaker 20 Yeah, and so I rushed home to my mom.

Speaker 7 She told me what happened and I truly thought Brittany would die.

Speaker 10 The sisters rushed to the hospital, but once there, were met with confused looks.

Speaker 19 They were like, we don't have a Britney Marcel. Yeah.

Speaker 10 Minutes later, detectives arrived and told the Marcel family, for her safety, Brittany was admitted under an assumed name.

Speaker 7 We still hadn't understood what happened. I mean, she's under an alias.
The police officers rush us into this private room in the hospital.

Speaker 10 Putting Brittany under an assumed name may have been a smart move because the family was later told about a mysterious visitor who was trying to get in to see Brittany.

Speaker 2 While we were in the waiting room, one of the nurses came out and said, Do you know that some man just came in to see her?

Speaker 11 Who was it?

Speaker 17 We don't know who it was. You never.

Speaker 2 We don't know.

Speaker 10 The man left before he could be identified. Diane had a terrifying thought.
Maybe it was Brittany's attacker.

Speaker 2 I didn't know if this person was watching us from afar. Did he follow the ambulance? I went into the restroom.

Speaker 2 I would look at every stall on the back of the doors to make sure nobody was in there or standing on

Speaker 2 the actual commode.

Speaker 25 Fear took over. Fear.

Speaker 10 As Brittany teetered on the edge of death, her family could only guess as to who attacked her and why.

Speaker 7 We start looking like who's in our lives, what strange person, is it any of the boyfriends?

Speaker 19 Everybody in our family is a natural problem solver.

Speaker 20 And so everybody's trying to formulate ideas of who, how,

Speaker 26 what, when.

Speaker 10 The Marcels were raised to be close and self-sufficient. Their dad, a truck driver, was often away.
When he and Diane divorced, she had to go to work. The children looked out for each other.

Speaker 12 How do you think it shaped Brittany being number five in this big family?

Speaker 21 She looked up to Kathleen and Kristen and Alicia.

Speaker 12 Remind me again, who's the oldest?

Speaker 7 I am. I think I was kind of like her mom too.

Speaker 9 I mean, that's the way it goes in a big family, right?

Speaker 7 The littlest one has the most moms.

Speaker 10 Like her older sisters, Brittany was disciplined and hardworking.

Speaker 21 She was an excellent student. She had a good circle of friends.

Speaker 19 I think she kind of set herself apart from the popular crowd rather than was inside it.

Speaker 20 And I think most of us because she's very genuine in everything that she does.

Speaker 10 Brittany was headed for college and hoped one day to be a local TV reporter covering Albuquerque.

Speaker 21 Very, very driven. She was scheduled to graduate high school early.
She wanted to study journalism.

Speaker 10 But her mom, Diane, said Brittany hit a rough patch during her junior year in high school.

Speaker 12 How was Brittany acting?

Speaker 2 Just rebellious. Normal 17-year-old, how they, you know, get confrontational if you ask them something.

Speaker 10 Things got so tense for a while, Brittany moved in with her dad.

Speaker 2 And he wasn't there all the time. So it was perfect for her.

Speaker 12 This was her sort of mild way of running away from home.

Speaker 16 A little bit. Right.

Speaker 10 But by the start of her senior year, Brittany wanted to come back. That's why she and her mom were meeting for lunch to discuss Brittany's return.
Instead, Brittany was attacked.

Speaker 12 What did the doctors tell you when Brittany was brought to the hospital?

Speaker 2 They didn't think she would survive.

Speaker 12 Are you able to see her?

Speaker 2 We can see her, but she doesn't know we're there.

Speaker 22 The moment we all walked into the room, everything stopped.

Speaker 12 Brittany's head was the size of a basketball, if not bigger.

Speaker 20 And I don't think any of us really thought that's Brittany.

Speaker 12 What goes through your mind when you realize you may not never have any moments with your sister again? Like this could be it.

Speaker 20 All the moments you missed, you know, like I didn't tell her I loved her enough.

Speaker 21 I didn't hold her enough. She didn't know how much she meant to me.

Speaker 31 I didn't tell her I appreciated her.

Speaker 32 My son's not going to see her again.

Speaker 19 You're having a dress rehearsal for a death that hasn't happened.

Speaker 10 Who was Brittany's attacker?

Speaker 6 This just seems so personal.

Speaker 12 This person seemed like they were full of rage.

Speaker 6 Who is Brittany hanging around with? Who might be a suspect?

Speaker 10 And would he return?

Speaker 2 The alarm was set constantly.

Speaker 21 We just never experienced that kind of imminent danger.

Speaker 10 While the Marcels tried to grasp what happened to Brittany, the police were trying to find out who did it. Albuquerque Police Detective Jason Morales was the lead investigator.

Speaker 12 You've seen a lot of murders in your career. How brutal was this attack in this house?

Speaker 6 It was very brutal.

Speaker 10 Morales said Brittany had been hit repeatedly with a shovel. So hard, it crushed the left part of her skull.

Speaker 6 So when I got here, the crime van was already parked out in front. They'd been here for a little while.

Speaker 6 They're waiting on the condition of the victim, Brittany, to see if she was going to survive or if she's going to die.

Speaker 10 Morales said the fact that Brittany's person's sunglasses were found right in the entryway led him to believe the attacker came up behind her as she entered the house.

Speaker 12 Did you get the sense that maybe this was a burglary in progress and Brittany just happened to come home? Or did you feel like the perpetrator was someone that Brittany knew?

Speaker 6 This just seems so personal.

Speaker 6 It seemed to me at the time that we're looking at somebody that either knew Brittany or knew somebody in the family or there was something, there's more of a connection to their brutal nature of the attack.

Speaker 10 Did that tell you anything?

Speaker 12 I mean, this person seemed like they were full of rage.

Speaker 6 It does. We started trying to figure out who was Brittany hanging around with, who might be a suspect, because then really at this point, we had no suspect at all, so everybody is.

Speaker 10 Morales believed the attack had just started when Brittany's mom arrived.

Speaker 6 I don't think he was anticipating Diane showing up.

Speaker 10 The pattern of blood at the scene indicated the attacker actually chased Diane when she fled the house, but stopped for some reason. Maybe, Morales thought, when Diane started screaming.

Speaker 6 And he panicked, so instead of going out a sliding glass door, whether it was locked or unlocked, he jumps out of a dining room window and he not through the screen, he jumps through the glass to get out.

Speaker 10 Inside the house, Morales found a room full of evidence.

Speaker 6 So once we were able to go inside, you could see it was pretty violent. There was blood on the floor, the shovel, there was duct tape, and then there was also a knife.

Speaker 33 A lot of clues.

Speaker 6 Yes, absolutely.

Speaker 10 Enough, Morales thought, to solve the case. That is, until he got the lab results, the fingerprints found on the shovel, knife, and tape were incomplete.

Speaker 10 DNA from a male was found on the shovel and the knife, but it was so intermingled with Brittany's blood, it was impossible to develop an individual profile.

Speaker 10 But on a shard of broken glass, police found a drop of blood that looked promising because it was pristine.

Speaker 6 When he jumped out of the window, he cut himself.

Speaker 10 The blood drop was analyzed and a complete male DNA profile was generated, which Morales uploaded to the National Criminal Database called CODIS.

Speaker 6 To see if it would match anybody that's already in the database.

Speaker 10 Did you get a match?

Speaker 3 No.

Speaker 10 No match? Morales couldn't believe it. He was convinced Brittany's attacker had to be a repeat offender.

Speaker 6 You'd have to figure that somebody that's done something that in that extreme has done something like that before.

Speaker 12 Britney's attacker basically vanished into thin air.

Speaker 6 Yes.

Speaker 10 So now, Morales' investigation went from the lab to the street. He'd heard Brittany was seeing someone, kind of a boyfriend.

Speaker 12 Was he a potential suspect?

Speaker 21 Absolutely.

Speaker 12 Did you do a DNA test on her sort of boyfriend?

Speaker 6 Yes, he was cleared. His DNA did not match that.

Speaker 10 Police didn't have to rely on just hard evidence, though. They had an eyewitness to the attack.

Speaker 2 I could see his height.

Speaker 10 Brittany's mom had actually seen the guy.

Speaker 2 I saw he had jeans on. He had a long sleeve shirt on.

Speaker 17 And what does he look like?

Speaker 2 Either a dark Caucasian man or a light Hispanic with brown hair. kind of spiky.

Speaker 10 Police created a composite sketch and spread the word across the rio grande valley there was both billboards rewards crime stoppers rewards names just start pouring in so we were talking to a bunch of people but to no avail the billboard campaign didn't produce any workable suspects witnesses or leads meanwhile the marcel family was on edge in the days following the attack brittany remained on life support close to death.

Speaker 28 We really didn't know what to do and they said she's probably not going to make it.

Speaker 10 Their home, once a safe and sacred place, was now marred by evil.

Speaker 7 Walking it was like someone died there.

Speaker 19 Like, it was just morbid.

Speaker 11 It was just dark.

Speaker 16 Very dark.

Speaker 10 Brittany's mom soon found a rental house, but changing addresses didn't help with the lingering unease.

Speaker 2 When we're ever in the house, the alarm was set constantly. No open windows, no open doors until we go out.
Our whole lifestyle changed.

Speaker 10 The Marcelles were terrified. Brittany had been attacked by someone who knew them and their routines.
Someone who might strike again.

Speaker 21 We just never experienced that kind of imminent danger.

Speaker 6 I think it was unsettling for everybody, and I think they had every reason to be worried.

Speaker 10 They worked out a schedule, taking turns standing vigil at the hospital with Brittany. They tried to be hopeful, but they also knew the doctors and the police.
all thought Brittany was going to die.

Speaker 21 And all the reports at the hospital were looking like the trajectory was for Brittany to pass.

Speaker 10 But somehow, Brittany held on. And six weeks after the attack, against all odds, she finally opened her eyes.

Speaker 21 When Brittany came to and she woke up, her eyes were blue like the ocean before and they

Speaker 21 were gray. And I kept thinking, he took your light.

Speaker 7 Oh my God, he took your light.

Speaker 10 And in Brittany's new gray eyes, her family saw something else.

Speaker 16 fear.

Speaker 35 Who is this guy that hurt me? Why did he hurt me?

Speaker 10 Brittany and her family, still haunted.

Speaker 29 Your friends, your teachers, your boyfriend.

Speaker 12 Everybody's a possible suspect.

Speaker 7 It sounds crazy, but it could be anybody.

Speaker 10 Brittany's beating was so horrific, we created sketches of her time in the ICU rather than show you the actual photos. Part of her brain was removed.

Speaker 10 Then she contracted meningitis, which nearly killed her. One surgery after another.
But Brittany held on.

Speaker 10 And by Christmas, three months after the attack, the family was told Brittany would survive. But what would her new life be like?

Speaker 2 We talked to her, and she'd blink her eyes and smile, but we knew at that point

Speaker 2 there was a lot of paralysis. And that's when they told us her ear canal is crushed.
She's going to be deaf. They also told us that her optic nerve is probably atrophied, which it's severed

Speaker 2 just from the

Speaker 2 hitting of the head, the jolting of it.

Speaker 10 Despite her extensive injuries, Brittany's family started taking her on short outings.

Speaker 32 And we put her in the wheelchair and she still couldn't hold her head up and she's drooling and I was like, please don't let this be it.

Speaker 10 The family knew this might be all they could hope for.

Speaker 21 And there was so much dead tissue in the front temporal lobe. They removed pieces of that and they, with the brain, they were saying it's so unpredictable.

Speaker 5 That could be any, that could be your speech. That could be short term.

Speaker 21 It could regenerate.

Speaker 10 As they tended to Brittany, Her sisters continued to wonder who could have done this to her.

Speaker 21 It's violating because you start questioning relationships you trust.

Speaker 32 Exactly. Yes.

Speaker 29 At school, your friends, your teachers, your boyfriend, your circle of influence, you're like, well, maybe it was you.

Speaker 12 So everybody's a possible suspect.

Speaker 16 Everybody.

Speaker 7 Even going to the gym, going to the grocery store, you know, standing at the gas station watching people. I mean, it sounds crazy, but when you don't know who it is, it could be anybody.

Speaker 10 It was all so personal. The attacker had been in their home, possibly stalked them.
Maybe Brittany wasn't even his intended target. Maybe it was one of the other sisters.
No one could say for sure.

Speaker 10 But the family had to put their fears aside when caring for Brittany, who now needed all of their help.

Speaker 19 It's really taking your baby and raising her all over again.

Speaker 33 So you're raising a child that you already raised.

Speaker 7 And that, I think, was the hardest part, watching mom have to go through that again. And you just, you wanted to cry for them.

Speaker 10 Five months after the attack, her condition had stabilized to the point Brittany could be released from the hospital, but she was far from healed.

Speaker 2 She didn't realize why she couldn't walk, why she couldn't eat, why she had to learn all these things over again.

Speaker 10 As helpless as a child, which meant if the attacker returned, the Marcel family was more vulnerable now than ever.

Speaker 10 So Diane fled Albuquerque, taking Brittany along with the two youngest children to neighboring Texas. She found a new home, a new job, and most important, a rehabilitation clinic for Brittany.

Speaker 35 Her mom was very, very anxious because we didn't know who the assailant was and that they were still very concerned for her safety.

Speaker 10 Dr. Lori Wright was one of Brittany's therapists.

Speaker 12 What was your first impression of Brittany when you met her?

Speaker 35 She just didn't know much beyond where she was and she was very, very confused, crying a lot. She had to have somebody shower her.
She had to have somebody take her to the bathroom.

Speaker 35 She had to have all those things done for her all over again.

Speaker 8 Dr.

Speaker 10 Wright, a neuropsychologist, practices what's known as cognitive behavioral therapy.

Speaker 35 We believe with practice, practice, practice, the brain can heal.

Speaker 10 Which means teaching a head trauma patient to do one simple task over and over again until it becomes reflexive.

Speaker 35 Because their brain is just not the same brain that it used to be.

Speaker 12 Is it like rewiring the brain?

Speaker 35 Absolutely. It is rewiring the brain.
And so what do you do? You sit down and you do it with her until she's able to do it herself.

Speaker 10 Brittany's brain injury was so severe, much of her therapy was almost like a preschool class.

Speaker 2 She would read her Dr. Zeus books to me.
That was a rehab. And she would have to read.
And I'd read and she'd read. It's like reading to a toddler all over and teaching a child to read.

Speaker 10 But the attack on Brittany was so brutal, Dr. Wright wasn't sure how far she'd get in her recovery.

Speaker 35 There was 25% of the brain she wasn't able to access that she used to be able to access.

Speaker 10 Did you think she'd ever get her memory back?

Speaker 35 Getting that memory back, most people don't ever, especially if it's a traumatic brain injury, if

Speaker 35 you don't usually remember.

Speaker 10 If Brittany's memory did return, her account of the attack could later be used as evidence.

Speaker 8 So Dr.

Speaker 10 Wright didn't give Brittany any of the details out of concern it could create false memories.

Speaker 35 When people come out of this kind of trauma, they're not sure if this is a memory that they're remembering or this is something that somebody's told them.

Speaker 35 If her memory were to come back, we wanted it to just be her memory.

Speaker 10 As she slowly learned to talk again, Brittany seemed stuck in a loop of fear.

Speaker 35 She would just on repeat, you know, I'm afraid, I'm afraid. Who is this guy that hurt me? Why did he hurt me? And,

Speaker 35 you know, what am I going to do if he comes to get me?

Speaker 10 After months of constant repetitive therapy, Brittany's brain did start to rewire itself. And in such a dramatic way, it still brings tears to Dr.
Wright's eyes.

Speaker 35 It took a year, a year of intense therapy, and she didn't give up. And it's really hard to explain.
Hey, Brittany's special. She is definitely special.

Speaker 10 She is indeed, as you're about to see for yourself.

Speaker 10 Brittany speaks out at last.

Speaker 8 You wake up from your coma.

Speaker 10 What's the first thing that happens?

Speaker 9 I'm just like trying to communicate.

Speaker 10 And she speaks to investigators too.

Speaker 9 I put that big X through that one picture. I thought it was this guy.
I really did.

Speaker 10 There was a time when doctors gave Brittany Marcel just hours to live. But somehow she held on, almost rising from the dead.

Speaker 10 She's permanently deaf in her left ear and blind in her left eye.

Speaker 10 These days, she no longer struggles to talk. Here, at last, is Brittany in her own words.

Speaker 8 You wake up from your coma.

Speaker 12 What's the first thing that happens that you can tell us about?

Speaker 9 I'm just like trying to communicate, but you can't at that age. I was at that, I just say newborn stage per se, because I couldn't walk.
Talking was the hard thing, speech in general.

Speaker 9 I mean, after everything had happened, you're kind of like a toddler. you don't understand the language that you and I are speaking today.

Speaker 9 And then when I went to rehab, I was more of like a teenager, like a young teenager.

Speaker 9 And as time went on, I started started becoming more like a better teenager, like a stronger teenager, like knowing what to do.

Speaker 12 So you were rapidly going through all the phases you'd already done once before.

Speaker 23 Right, right.

Speaker 10 And by her side the entire time, her mom.

Speaker 9 She's been there with me on every medical appointment, every surgery. It's like she's somebody who I look up to.
Very much so. She's like my best friend now.

Speaker 12 How well do you remember your high school years?

Speaker 9 Like nothing. Like I don't remember that, but I remember my childhood very well.

Speaker 25 Oh, that's interesting.

Speaker 12 You remember childhood, but not high school

Speaker 9 or middle school. Very little middle school.
I remember going to New York in middle school, but when I was in high school, not very much.

Speaker 18 Brittany's nerve damage is so extensive, she's unable to shed a tear or control many of her facial muscles and is no longer able to smile.

Speaker 12 How many surgeries have you had so far?

Speaker 9 Gosh, I've had, I want to say, up to 20. My mom says, I think you're done with surgeries.

Speaker 37 I'm like, no, I'm not, mom.

Speaker 9 I want my smile. That's what I want, my smile.
And she's like, well, most people don't notice that. I'm like, no, but I do every day.

Speaker 10 The Britney you see today is not the same person she was before the attack. As her brain rewired itself, her speech patterns and even aspects of her personality changed.

Speaker 10 She became more reserved, more cautious. not as bubbly and outgoing as she once was.

Speaker 12 Did you still have fears even though you had moved to a new state?

Speaker 17 Did you still feel like he could come find you?

Speaker 9 That's why on my like social media, I don't put a location as to where I live. I mean, you can put where you live on Facebook now.

Speaker 37 I don't put that.

Speaker 10 Despite her fears, Brittany was improving dramatically. And police hoped she'd eventually help them find her attacker.

Speaker 6 We asked her.

Speaker 6 to look at the composite sketch and she said it looks like somebody that she knows but she just couldn't put all the information together but i was hoping that she could at least give some information that that would lead us in a direction, whether it be, you know, somebody that she remembered being with at a party or somebody that showed up to work.

Speaker 6 You know, it would just give us another clue or a lead that we could follow up. And it didn't.

Speaker 12 Another dead end?

Speaker 38 Yes.

Speaker 6 Very frustrating.

Speaker 10 Meanwhile, the Marcel sisters, still working with Brittany, did what they could to help with the investigation by going over Facebook and old yearbook photos.

Speaker 28 And just flipped through to see if she recognized anybody or had any idea who it could be.

Speaker 28 I mean she would point to some pictures but I think she was still processing what we were having her do.

Speaker 10 But there was one picture in what would have been her senior yearbook that got their attention.

Speaker 9 This guy just looks so sketchy. Like it's kind of like you get that

Speaker 9 That vibe like this guy doesn't he looks kind of guilty almost like a criminal like somebody that's gonna go out there and do something to harm somebody.

Speaker 9 So that's why I put that big X through that one picture.

Speaker 10 She did more than draw an X through it. She drew an inverted pentagram, the mark of the beast, the devil.

Speaker 9 I thought it was this guy. I really did.

Speaker 10 But it wasn't the guy. Police investigated him and found out he was just a random classmate who did nothing worse than take a bad picture.
So the family kept up their armchair sleuthing.

Speaker 12 Were you passing along names? I was. Of friends, co-workers, anybody that would be in Britney's world.

Speaker 40 Right.

Speaker 2 Even people in my kids' worlds and my world. I mean, at that point,

Speaker 2 I didn't trust anybody not to have done this.

Speaker 6 They were always calling in. You know, they'd see, like I said, they would see somebody at the bank and it looked like them and they didn't know who it was, but they gave me a license plate.

Speaker 6 And we'd follow up that information, but still.

Speaker 6 It didn't leave the identity of the suspect.

Speaker 17 Did you feel like you had started to exhaust everyone kind of in Britney's world?

Speaker 10 Yes. And how many names of

Speaker 12 potential suspects or people of interest did the family give you?

Speaker 6 I would say somewhere in the area of about 30. The frustrating part is the fact that we have the key right there.

Speaker 6 It's Brittany.

Speaker 10 You're not only the victim in this, you're the key witness.

Speaker 9 That's the scary part. It's almost like a nightmare.

Speaker 10 Enter a new detective. Could she find a new lead?

Speaker 5 I thought, wow, maybe this is the guy.

Speaker 10 Everything about the Brittany Marcel case was inside out. Police had the suspect's DNA, but not his name.
Fingerprints, but too smeared to read.

Speaker 10 And two eyewitnesses who couldn't identify the attacker. You're not only the victim in this, you're the key witness.
Right. I mean, you know who did this to you?

Speaker 10 You may not know his name, but you saw him.

Speaker 9 It's like, that's like kind of the scary part. It's almost like a nightmare.

Speaker 10 Ironically for investigators, the fact that Brittany didn't die posed a problem. There's no statute of limitations for murder, but attempted murder is a different story.

Speaker 10 And two years into the case, Morales worried he was running out of time.

Speaker 6 I wouldn't want something like that to be the technicality that gets this individual off in the future is the fact that the statute of limitations ran.

Speaker 10 For help, Morales turned to cold case prosecutor David Waymire.

Speaker 41 Even if the defendant was ultimately identified through DNA, even if he admitted the crimes, statute of limitations, once it hits, it's an absolute bar to prosecution.

Speaker 10 But Waymire had an idea as to how they could get around that hard deadline. Indict the DNA profile as a John Doe.
A creative legal maneuver, but one that had never been tested in state court.

Speaker 41 Although we felt like we were on solid ground to do it, we didn't know for sure that it would be upheld by the New Mexico courts.

Speaker 10 With no other options, Waymire went ahead with the unusual indictment. A good thing because the investigation was at a standstill.

Speaker 10 Morales was afraid the only way he'd catch Brittany's attacker was if he struck again.

Speaker 6 I cannot believe that somebody that would commit a crime of this nature would not mess up again.

Speaker 10 Brittany's sisters were afraid they might be the next victims.

Speaker 20 I mean, over the years, we will all sit around a table and we will go into hours of the night trying to come up with possibilities of why and who.

Speaker 10 But the Marcel family, like Detective Morales, had no workable leads.

Speaker 10 By the fifth anniversary of the attack, the case was no closer to to being solved.

Speaker 27 I really hate calling cases cold. It's just that you just haven't found that right person.

Speaker 10 Sergeant Liz Thompson, head of the homicide unit and Detective Morales' boss, was optimistic something would break.

Speaker 37 You know, that one person hadn't talked or that one piece of evidence hadn't matched up.

Speaker 27 And it just took persistence. That's what it needed.

Speaker 10 But that optimism was lost on the Marcel family. They were still living in constant fear Brittany's attacker would one day return, possibly for them.

Speaker 2 It was a scary thought, because we don't know if we're being followed still.

Speaker 2 And we're all scared.

Speaker 10 And that's when, in 2012, Brittany's mom placed an uncomfortable call to Sergeant Thompson.

Speaker 2 I finally said, you know what? I think we need new eyes on the case.

Speaker 27 And so we had to have some hard discussions about what are the next steps? How can we move this case forward?

Speaker 10 Sergeant Thompson decided the best way to accomplish that was to reassign the case to veteran homicide detective Jodi Gonterman.

Speaker 5 I read through the case. I briefed with Detective Morales.
I spoke with the family. Brittany didn't remember what happened at all.

Speaker 19 Describe her for us.

Speaker 12 Your first impression, what you thought of her.

Speaker 2 She's a go-getter. She's stubborn.
She doesn't give up. She's just fascinating.
She's cute, vivacious. She's a mom.

Speaker 42 She has kids.

Speaker 9 When she got like her hands on the case, she would call my mom almost every day.

Speaker 12 You finally had hope?

Speaker 25 Did. I did.

Speaker 20 That they would find your attacker.

Speaker 9 I did. She goes out and she goes after like the evidence she's got.
She goes after every tip.

Speaker 10 Gaunterman immersed herself in Britney's world prior to the attack.

Speaker 5 Who she was friends with, what those relationships were, who was in her phone, who the photos were, who she hung around with, what did she like to do.

Speaker 30 She was a very social girl, she was a very good girl.

Speaker 10 Now, five years after the attack, Gonterman worked the case like it happened yesterday, searching for new leads, new witnesses.

Speaker 5 Talked to neighbors. I would look at every house to see is there anybody at this house who has a criminal history that would fit this type of crime.

Speaker 10 Because the case had been out of the public eye for so long, Gonterman and Thompson began drumming up local press coverage, hoping it would shake loose a new lead.

Speaker 27 So I did a piece on local media. We reissued the sketch, and then Detective Gonerman started taking in tips.

Speaker 10 And right off the bat, they got a good one.

Speaker 5 I thought, wow, maybe this is the guy.

Speaker 10 One name, then two,

Speaker 10 then three,

Speaker 10 then four?

Speaker 42 A suspect was developed and then another suspect would be developed and over and over they were excluded.

Speaker 27 What is it that we're missing?

Speaker 5 I didn't give up.

Speaker 10 In just a couple of weeks, Detective Gontraman and Sergeant Thompson had already scared up a hot lead on a potential suspect who had somehow slipped through the cracks years earlier.

Speaker 12 What was his criminal history?

Speaker 5 Stalking his girlfriend, there was duct tape. He lived across the street behind Brittany.

Speaker 10 Also suspicious, the suspect left New Mexico after the attack.

Speaker 12 Where was he?

Speaker 5 I think he was in Colorado, if I'm not mistaken.

Speaker 10 So Gontraman called local police who tracked him down and surprisingly convinced the suspect to give them a DNA swab.

Speaker 10 Albuquerque Police Department forensic scientist Alana Williams took over from there.

Speaker 12 How long does it take you to see if there's a match? Is it instant?

Speaker 42 No, so it takes several days to look at the item of evidence, swab the sample, extract the DNA, see how much you have, and then once it's placed on the instrument, you get a DNA profile.

Speaker 10 At the end of all that, did you think it was him?

Speaker 5 I thought it was a possibility. Got my hopes up, and then I was very disappointed when it wasn't.

Speaker 10 The DNA didn't match. A big letdown, one of many to come.

Speaker 10 Then, another tip. Gonterman took it seriously because of who it was from.

Speaker 5 A parent saying, I think it's my son who did this. Wow.
My son would visit the house right across from Brittany's home. And he looks like the sketch.

Speaker 5 And this was, considering that this would be very difficult for a parent, I thought, wow, okay.

Speaker 10 But when Gonterman got the man's DNA sample, he was excluded.

Speaker 12 Another letdown.

Speaker 5 Yes.

Speaker 10 So Gonterman and Thompson tried a different strategy focusing on cases that bore some similarity to Britney's attack. They found one that was eerily similar.

Speaker 27 Oh my gosh, it's same part of town. It was at her own home.

Speaker 10 It was a shovel.

Speaker 27 They knew her. And I just thought, how could it not be?

Speaker 10 But his DNA didn't match either. He wasn't John Doe.
The old school approach of working tips, leads, and hunches just wasn't paying off for Gonterman.

Speaker 10 So she went back through the case files again and came across a report about Brittany's cell phone.

Speaker 10 Back in 2008, during the initial investigation, police didn't have the technology to break into the phone without erasing the data.

Speaker 5 So when it was first processed, there were only so many tools to get in it, and Brittany couldn't remember her PIN. So years later, I took it down to the forensics laboratory for computers.

Speaker 5 You tried it again. Tried it again.

Speaker 36 Because there's new, there's advanced music technology.

Speaker 10 This time, technicians were able to get into Britney's phone. And right off the bat, Gonterman found an intriguing clue.

Speaker 5 A text message from a male who texted Brittany the day it happened and wanted to meet her for lunch. Wow.
And I was like, wow, okay. We didn't know about this guy.
And Brittany didn't remember him.

Speaker 12 He didn't have a name and everything. It was like right there for you.

Speaker 5 Name, phone number. I figured out who he was.
So at the time, he had gone to high school with Brittany.

Speaker 10 So Gonterman did an online search and easily found Brittany's old high school friend. To her surprise, he was a police officer.

Speaker 12 Did that kind of rattle you a little bit?

Speaker 5 Of course it did. What a better way to just not get caught and, you know, cover it up.

Speaker 10 Gonterman contacted the officer, broke the news to him that he was a person of interest in the Brittany Marcel case. She also collected a sample of his DNA.
Two weeks later, their results came back.

Speaker 10 They were negative. Once again, it wasn't John Doe.

Speaker 12 Somewhat relieved that it wasn't him?

Speaker 5 Was I relieved that it I was. But if it was him and he was a law enforcement officer, then, you know, good, we got him.

Speaker 12 About how many men approximately would you say that you've got your hopes up for that

Speaker 17 this could be the one?

Speaker 5 I think those four were

Speaker 5 the most significant.

Speaker 10 But many more were tested.

Speaker 42 A suspect was developed and then the DNA profile did not match. And then another suspect would be developed and no match.
And every time it seemed like over and over,

Speaker 42 suspects by suspect, they were excluded.

Speaker 27 We tested and tested and tested and no matches.

Speaker 12 What's that like up and down, up and down? You get your hopes up and then it's not a match.

Speaker 27 Oh, it's really hard and we have to remind each other all the time.

Speaker 25 Okay, how do we move forward?

Speaker 27 What is it that we're missing?

Speaker 30 It's an emotional rollercoaster.

Speaker 12 As the years slip by and you have all these false leads, false hope,

Speaker 12 Are you starting to wonder if maybe we're never going to solve this and this is, you know, maybe it's all for nothing what we're doing i didn't give up we need to get an answer for brittany and her family to give them closure

Speaker 10 her determination gave the marcels strength she's like i will not retire until this case is so added she said that to all of us

Speaker 10 like detective morales before her gonterman found herself circling back to brittany but each visit was as frustrating as the last she didn't have a lot of memory you know it was like talking to a little girl talking to a sweet little girl trying to make trying to remember Gontraman and Thompson now believed if they were ever going to solve this case, they had to do something radical, possibly even traumatic.

Speaker 10 Find a way to get Brittany to relive the attack that nearly killed her.

Speaker 10 Brittany Marcel under a doctor's spell.

Speaker 13 Tell me what's happening.

Speaker 14 He's hurting me. He's hurting me.

Speaker 10 Can he jog her memory and help solve this mystery?

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Speaker 10 By 2014, six years after the assault on Brittany Marcel, Detective Jody Gontraman was out of leads, suspects, and witnesses.

Speaker 10 The scientific way of working the case through fingerprints and DNA was a bust. And so was Gontraman's old-school knocking on doors approach.

Speaker 12 Did you ever say to Jody, you know what, I think maybe we need to stop focusing on this case so much.

Speaker 16 We're running in all the wrong directions?

Speaker 27 Oh, good heavens, no. We just hadn't found this person or this person was deceased and we just needed to figure out who they were and get their DNA and solve it that way.

Speaker 27 But no, we, yeah, we just had to keep plugging away at it.

Speaker 12 Were you losing hope?

Speaker 5 No, because now I think it got to a point. What can we do differently?

Speaker 10 There was no doubt Brittany was improving dramatically, but she still had no recollection of the attack.

Speaker 10 No one knew if her memory of that day was gone forever or would eventually emerge from the haze.

Speaker 27 We didn't know if Brittany had brain damage that was interfering with her ability to remember the attack or if they were repressed memories that could be recovered from using hypnosis.

Speaker 10 Putting a witness under hypnosis is legally controversial. Many states won't allow it out of concern the recovered memories could be nothing more than made-up stories.

Speaker 10 Putting Brittany, a brain-damaged crime victim, under hypnosis, had its own unique set of concerns.

Speaker 9 Because then your memories start falling back, and I'm afraid if I do re-hypnotize, more is going to come back than expected.

Speaker 12 If you had the choice to remember the entire incident, would you want to remember it?

Speaker 9 I wouldn't want to remember the beating. That's something I would not want to remember.
I would just want to remember the guy's face.

Speaker 12 Just enough to say, this is him.

Speaker 10 Despite her fears, on August 14th, 2014, Brittany agreed to go under hypnosis.

Speaker 53 I'm recording.

Speaker 10 Dr. Leon Morris was the clinical psychologist chosen to work with Brittany.
It would be his first criminal case using hypnosis, and he was confident there were memories to recover.

Speaker 13 Have we met before?

Speaker 35 I don't believe so.

Speaker 10 Dr. Morris was well aware, though, that what memories Brittany did have of the attack could be wrong.

Speaker 54 There's something called confabulation.

Speaker 54 A person doesn't remember something, they kind of fill in the blanks with things that may not be accurate.

Speaker 10 Before starting, Dr. Morris made sure she was still a willing subject.

Speaker 13 If you have reservations about re-experiencing what happened to you, if it might be true too traumatic for you, I would recommend that you not do it.

Speaker 35 I believe I'm a part of me wants to get it done.

Speaker 13 I think it might help a little bit because maybe that little clue could solve the case. Do I have your permission to hypnotize you? Yes, sir.
You're sure you're ready?

Speaker 14 I believe so. Yes, sir.

Speaker 10 At first, the session seemed to be going in slow motion.

Speaker 13 First, I want you just to hold your hands out in front of you like this.

Speaker 10 Dr. Morris calmly instructs Brittany to slowly bring her hands together.
Brittany will be fully in a trance the moment her hands touch her forehead.

Speaker 10 Watch the clock in the upper left-hand side of the screen.

Speaker 13 Your eyes will close and relax.

Speaker 10 It takes Brittany almost 10 minutes to go under Dr. Morris's spell.

Speaker 13 I want you to open that door.

Speaker 13 That's a door to your memory.

Speaker 10 A passage which led to another time and place. Brittany's home on September the 11th, 2008.

Speaker 10 Brittany recalls walking inside. It's empty.

Speaker 10 Then she sees someone.

Speaker 14 Who is he?

Speaker 14 Who is he?

Speaker 14 No.

Speaker 10 Her body shakes as she relives the beating.

Speaker 14 That hurt.

Speaker 14 That hurt.

Speaker 13 Tell me what's happening.

Speaker 14 He's is

Speaker 14 hurting me.

Speaker 10 Eerily, Brittany describes this fight for her life in an almost flat monotone.

Speaker 13 Tell me what's happening.

Speaker 13 It's hurting me.

Speaker 15 He's hurting me.

Speaker 14 I'm bleeding. I'm bleeding.

Speaker 14 Bad.

Speaker 13 Can you describe him?

Speaker 13 Tall

Speaker 13 hair.

Speaker 13 Like like like spiked

Speaker 13 hair, like

Speaker 13 yeah like spiked hair.

Speaker 13 Muscle.

Speaker 15 Light skin tone.

Speaker 15 Mexican, Hispanic.

Speaker 15 Brown eyes.

Speaker 13 You remember seeing this man?

Speaker 14 Did I see him at at my work? I don't know.

Speaker 13 Did you see him at your work, you said?

Speaker 15 Didn't may maybe he bought glasses, maybe.

Speaker 10 Brittany is apparently talking about a possible customer of hers at the Cottonwood Mall sunglasses kiosk where she worked.

Speaker 13 So it he may have looked familiar to you.

Speaker 13 He's tall.

Speaker 14 He's tall and square.

Speaker 13 Face was square?

Speaker 14 Tall looks square.

Speaker 13 What about his eyes?

Speaker 14 Weird eyes.

Speaker 13 Weird eyes.

Speaker 10 Brittany had been in a trance for just 36 minutes and had apparently provided more details about the attack than had been uncovered over the last six years.

Speaker 10 According to Brittany, her attacker was tall, muscular, with brown eyes, a square jaw, big nose, light-skinned, and possibly Latino.

Speaker 10 And this was important. He may have been a customer of hers at the Cottonwood Mall Sunglasses kiosk.
Someone she knew and whose name she'd hopefully remember.

Speaker 13 I'm going to bring you out of hypnosis.

Speaker 10 Once she came out of her trance,

Speaker 13 you will remember everything

Speaker 13 that has occurred.

Speaker 10 Would she remember the name of her attacker?

Speaker 13 One, two, three.

Speaker 54 I knew what she told me, but I didn't know whether it was accurate or not.

Speaker 10 New information from Brittany and cutting-edge new technology.

Speaker 16 Oh, wow.

Speaker 12 If I was a suspect in a criminal case, this would give me away.

Speaker 26 Yeah, I think so.

Speaker 10 Could it lead to a break in the case?

Speaker 10 As soon as Brittany Marcel emerged from hypnosis, she had a question for Dr. Leon Morris.

Speaker 10 Brittany was hoping she'd blurted out her attacker's name while in a trance. But that didn't happen.
The identity of her attacker was still a mystery.

Speaker 30 So I'm just like, hmm, I was like, well, that wasn't really helpful.

Speaker 12 Did you get upset during the session?

Speaker 9 I was just like angry, like the reconstruction I've had on my face. I was like, you can't tell when I'm happy or sad, unfortunately.

Speaker 9 But it's like, I was like getting that like mad face when I was being hypnotized just because it's like you're feeling the pain of what's happening.

Speaker 10 It wasn't totally in vain, though.

Speaker 14 Yeah, like spectator.

Speaker 10 Brittany's mom also said the same thing. But Brittany was able to provide new details of her attacker's face and physique.

Speaker 5 With those descriptors, what we did was we sent her to our sketch artist and had another sketch done with what Brittany remembered from those characteristics.

Speaker 10 The two sketches, Brittany's and her mom's six years earlier, had some similarities and some differences.

Speaker 10 While both said the attacker had brown eyes and light skin, the facial structure, nose, and hair didn't match. Dr.
Leon Morris had a possible explanation.

Speaker 54 A lot of eyewitness identification is wrong. At the end of the hypnosis, I knew what she told me, but I didn't know whether it was accurate or not.

Speaker 10 No one knew if what Brittany said while under hypnosis was accurate or not. The composite sketch based on her description failed to produce any usable leads.

Speaker 10 Once again, the job of pushing the case forward fell to Detective Jody Gonterman.

Speaker 9 She's probably the best detective I could ever ask for.

Speaker 12 Did you find yourself getting emotionally invested in the case with so many years going by and

Speaker 10 your connection to Brittany and Diane?

Speaker 16 I did.

Speaker 5 I went in her office crying once before, just because I was so disappointed. It's rough.
I mean, you know, you try not to get emotionally involved, but you do.

Speaker 10 As the investigation languished, Brittany continued on with her life. And in May of 2016, eight years after being nearly beaten to death, she graduated from college.

Speaker 9 I didn't think I'd be graduated from college by now. I didn't think I'd be doing that.

Speaker 8 To go to college and

Speaker 8 to come this far, it's just incredible.

Speaker 10 I mean, how do you do it?

Speaker 9 You got to be strong in yourself. You got to believe in yourself.

Speaker 10 And it was around the time of Brittany's graduation that Gonterman got another one of her out-of-the-box ideas.

Speaker 10 She heard about a new way to make a sketch, not from an eyewitness account, but from a DNA sample.

Speaker 5 They do a different type of testing that gives hair color, eye color, skin tone, ancestry.

Speaker 12 This is an incredible tool.

Speaker 5 It's amazing.

Speaker 10 The company behind this new crime fighting tool is Parabon, where they do something called DNA phenotyping.

Speaker 26 It's essentially a genetic witness.

Speaker 10 Dr. Ellen Greytak is Parabon's director of bioinformatics.

Speaker 12 How does it work? In layman's terms, how can you take DNA and make a sketch?

Speaker 26 Well, you focus on those traits that are passed down from parent to child. So if you think about when you say, oh, you have your mother's eyes.

Speaker 26 Well, you have your mother's eyes because you have your mother's DNA. And we can figure out, well, this piece of DNA we see in blue-eyed people, but not in brown-eyed people.

Speaker 12 So all your features are connected to your DNA?

Speaker 25 Absolutely.

Speaker 10 Parabon started off by helping the U.S. military create DNA DNA profiles from the remains of insurgent bomb makers during the Iraq War.

Speaker 10 It wasn't long before cold case detectives were sending them emails looking for help as well.

Speaker 26 These investigations that we're working on, sometimes they've been cold for decades. In these cold cases, they're cold because there are no leads.

Speaker 26 And in a lot of cases, that's because there's no witness description. And we're able to give them that just with the DNA.

Speaker 10 From a single DNA sample, Parabon can make an estimation of someone's hair hair color, eye color, and complexion.

Speaker 10 We hired Parabon to test a sample of my DNA.

Speaker 10 But we didn't tell them it was from me until this interview.

Speaker 12 I sent in my DNA as a

Speaker 12 blind sample.

Speaker 11 Okay.

Speaker 12 You did not know whose DNA we were sending in.

Speaker 26 Did not.

Speaker 10 Parabon built a profile of me as if I were a random criminal suspect.

Speaker 26 So all we received was a DNA vial labeled TR19411 and so these are the predictions that we produced just from that DNA.

Speaker 26 This actually was a pretty interesting eye color prediction, one that we don't see very often.

Speaker 26 It will either come from people with fairly dark bluish green eyes or it will come from people who actually have very light eyes but with a dark ring and a gold center.

Speaker 12 Okay so I have I have the gold center. I see it.

Speaker 26 I see it now.

Speaker 26 The pigment that's in your eyes is a yellowish color so that's why as you get more it turns green and then brown and so you've got that pigment but it's only in the middle, which is pretty interesting.

Speaker 19 That's fascinating.

Speaker 26 Your ancestry came out as a mix of Northern European and Southeast European.

Speaker 12 My grandparents on my mother's side are from Czechoslovakia, and then my father's family from London.

Speaker 26 That is perfectly how it came out.

Speaker 12 Well, you nailed that.

Speaker 19 Good.

Speaker 26 So, we predicted that she would have wider cheekbones and wider eyes, larger eyes, and then a wider jaw and a narrower chin, a fairly petite nose, but a little bit wider at the nostrils.

Speaker 26 And so the next page is going to include your composite.

Speaker 22 Okay.

Speaker 16 Oh, wow.

Speaker 12 The eyes look very much like mine.

Speaker 26 These light eyes, but with a golden center and a dark ring. Medium blonde hair.

Speaker 12 If I was a suspect in a criminal case, this would give me away.

Speaker 26 Yeah, I think so.

Speaker 10 Putting together a profile like this is labor-intensive and costly. Up to $3,600.

Speaker 10 A lot of money for cash-strapped homicide units like Albuquerque's.

Speaker 10 But after months of dogged persistence, Gonterman wrangled up the funds and shipped a sample of the John Doe DNA to Parabon and settled in to wait. The process would take several months.

Speaker 10 Meanwhile, Gonterman set Britney's file aside and focused on other cases. And it was at this time, in October 2016, when a name suddenly emerged from Britney's memory.

Speaker 30 She said

Speaker 2 the name Justin kept coming up.

Speaker 9 I asked my mom, hey, did you know this person? And she was, no.

Speaker 9 I was like, well, for some reason, that name keeps coming back to mind. She's like, how often? I was like, like, every day.
I was like, I don't know why.

Speaker 25 Every day. Every day.

Speaker 10 This was the first time a name had just popped into her head. Brittany called her sisters to see if they remembered a guy named Justin.

Speaker 34 I'm like, oh, that's Hansen. And she said, yeah, Justin Hansen that keeps coming to me.

Speaker 10 All the sisters remember Justin hansen he was a fixture at the cottonwood mall where did he work at the mall hollister i think that was kind of a big deal back yeah

Speaker 25 like cute guys yeah oh yeah if you knew you were going into abercrami or hollister you're like there's a feeling cute guys

Speaker 10 the question was why was brittany suddenly remembering him now Were you getting an eerie feeling when you would think of Justin or just his name was popping into your head?

Speaker 9 Just his name was popping up.

Speaker 12 Nothing more. Nothing more.
Just like,

Speaker 12 why does this keep happening?

Speaker 9 Right. He worked at Hollister and he'd come down over to my kiosk and all and he'd, you know, sit there and chat and all or be on the outside kiosk and talk and all.

Speaker 9 And, and it was what I thought just a mutual relationship.

Speaker 12 Did he seem interested in you?

Speaker 37 I don't remember that at all.

Speaker 9 I was like, flirty.

Speaker 25 Flirty.

Speaker 10 Brittany called Detective Gonterman with this latest memory.

Speaker 5 And she says, a name popped into my head. I don't know why, but this guy's name is is Justin Hansen.

Speaker 5 And I worked at the sunglass kiosk, and he would come and he would visit me. She's like, it was nothing bad.

Speaker 5 She goes, but he would just, I remember him hanging out with me for about an hour at a time.

Speaker 5 And it happened maybe about three months before the attack.

Speaker 5 He would come by and just talk to me.

Speaker 10 Gontraman knew that while under hypnosis, Brittany said she may have met her attacker at the sunglasses kiosk.

Speaker 14 Did I see him at my work? I don't know.

Speaker 13 Did you see him at your work, you said?

Speaker 15 Maybe he bought glasses with me.

Speaker 10 Over the previous nine years, the Marcels had asked police to investigate 75 different men, none of whom turned out to be the attacker.

Speaker 10 This was the first time, though, Brittany had ever come up with a name. So maybe this new memory was important.

Speaker 10 On the other hand,

Speaker 10 maybe it wasn't.

Speaker 10 Hi, how are you? You Justin? I am Justin. Detectives pay a visit to Justin Hansen.
He seems helpful, but is his story truthful?

Speaker 43 Can I think about this and come back and see you just because

Speaker 43 it seems kind of what's your concerns?

Speaker 55 Yeah, what's your concerns?

Speaker 10 For Sergeant Liz Thompson and Detective Jody Gontraman, calling Brittany's case cold was an admission of defeat. But eight years after the attack, the investigation had clearly stalled.

Speaker 10 So this new name from Brittany, Justin Hansen, didn't look to be any kind of case changer.

Speaker 5 She gave me so many names of

Speaker 5 people,

Speaker 5 but nothing was really significant to her. And

Speaker 5 all along, Justin's name never came up.

Speaker 10 Did she have any reason why his name of all people was popping into her head?

Speaker 5 She didn't know. It just popped into her head one day.

Speaker 10 Hansen didn't match the description Brittany gave while under hypnosis.

Speaker 14 He's

Speaker 14 pretty.

Speaker 10 That person was tall, muscular, and had brown eyes. Hansen, on the other hand, is average height, thin, and has green eyes.

Speaker 10 Hansen was also a married father of four with no criminal convictions other than a DUI.

Speaker 12 Was this immediate for you? I have to run this down right now, or was it like, okay,

Speaker 22 well, I'll get to it.

Speaker 5 I said, okay, I'm going to set it aside, but I'm going to wait to contact him because the more I had, when I do an interview, the more information I have behind me is going to be more helpful.

Speaker 10 Justin Hansen just didn't seem like a high priority until three months later, January 3rd, 2017, when Detective Gonterman and Sergeant Thompson finally got the Parabon DNA report. Dr.

Speaker 10 Ellen Greytack of Parabon walked us through her DNA analysis.

Speaker 12 This is the DNA from the person who attacked Brittany.

Speaker 26 Yes, so this is from blood that was found at the crime scene. And so we find that this person has fairly fair skin.

Speaker 12 So this is a white male.

Speaker 26 It's a fair-skinned male.

Speaker 22 Fairly confident in that.

Speaker 26 That this person has sort of light brown hair, so we say blonde to brown.

Speaker 26 It's fairly equally likely blonde to brown, so sort of on the lighter brown side, and most likely doesn't have a lot of freckles.

Speaker 10 There was one detail in John Doe's profile that turned out to be crucial information. The color of his eyes.

Speaker 8 Remember Brittany's description of John Doe?

Speaker 14 Brown eyes.

Speaker 10 Well, it turns out she was wrong. John Doe's eyes weren't brown.

Speaker 26 We found that this person has green to hazel eyes, which is unique. It's fairly unusual, yes.

Speaker 10 green eyes the same color as justin hansen's and the sketch itself here it is

Speaker 5 when we saw that composite i was like oh my god it was that close oh it was justin' we think it's yeah yeah yeah but i still didn't want to get my hopes up because i didn't want to get disappointed again

Speaker 10 still not convinced this man was the guy she'd spent years hunting Gonterman, along with a fellow detective wearing a body cam, paid Justin a visit.

Speaker 55 Yeah, hi, how are are you? You Justin? I am Justin. Okay, cool.
I'm Jodi. We're detectives with APD.

Speaker 10 Right from the start, Justin was calm and cooperative.

Speaker 55 I'm investing a case, it's an older case, and I'm just going back to talk to the friends or people that knew Brittany Marcel.

Speaker 55 Okay. It's from 08.

Speaker 4 Okay.

Speaker 10 Hansen invited the detectives into his home, where Gonterman started off with the basics.

Speaker 55 Do you remember hanging out with her at her sunglass place ever?

Speaker 43 I walked by maybe and kind of just, hey, how are you doing? What's new? How's your family? How's your sisters?

Speaker 55 That kind of stuff.

Speaker 55 Like

Speaker 55 on a regular basis, or do you just remember looking at the moment?

Speaker 43 No, no, no. Just when I was, when I think when I was working at the mall, I just happened to walk by and say I wasn't like a hangout, regular base type thing.

Speaker 55 Because Brittany actually remembers you coming in and visiting her and hanging out and talking with her like twice a week.

Speaker 43 No. No.

Speaker 17 After a few minutes of this, Gaunterman told Hansen what she was really after.

Speaker 10 A DNA sample.

Speaker 55 And then just to compare with the DNA at the scene, so we can exclude everyone, because then it narrows down the field.

Speaker 10 Expecting or hoping Hansen would agree.

Speaker 10 Gonterman put on a pair of latex gloves as she continued to talk.

Speaker 55 Not that you're a suspect at all, anyway, because you're not.

Speaker 10 But Hansen hesitated.

Speaker 43 Can I think about this and then come back and see you just because

Speaker 43 it seems kind of.

Speaker 43 What's your concerns?

Speaker 55 Yeah, what's your concerns

Speaker 43 I don't know me and my wife watch a bunch of

Speaker 43 shows and we hear people you know

Speaker 43 oh I've been I've been in trouble or I got in trouble for something that I never did and then 10 15 years later they come back and oh it wasn't you or that kind of thing and then they've been in trouble for it for a long time yeah can I get your card though and come back and you know, just so I think about everything, talk to my mom or whatever, and if they're like, yeah, this is what they normally do type thing, and then just come to see you guys?

Speaker 55 Absolutely. Is that okay?

Speaker 43 Yeah.

Speaker 12 What did you make of his demeanor that first time when you went to go see him?

Speaker 5 Well, I mean,

Speaker 5 he was friendly. He was, you know, he was acting like he was concerned, but it was almost an act.

Speaker 5 But then he wouldn't give his DNA.

Speaker 17 And we all thought, how odd for a man of that age to say they wanted to talk to their mom.

Speaker 27 His wife is right there.

Speaker 27 He's, what, in his 30s, and suddenly he's wanting to talk to his mom.

Speaker 33 So we're like, is his mom a lawyer?

Speaker 27 And it just, the whole thing seemed suddenly very odd and a big red flag.

Speaker 5 He seemed like a bad actor. Yeah.
When I spoke with him, it seemed like he was putting on an act. It wasn't genuine to me.

Speaker 10 Before she left Hansen's house, Gaunterman decided to rattle his cage by telling him Brittany's memory was finally starting to return.

Speaker 55 Your statement doesn't match what she remembers. She remembers very well that you used to visit her when she was bored.
You would come in about twice a week and just hang out.

Speaker 55 She remembers that you used to wear tight ambercomby shirts and your pants a little bit saggy, you know, with your underwear hanging down.

Speaker 10 Hansen said he'd come by Gonterman's office after speaking with his mom, but he never showed up. So Gonterman gave him a call to see what was going on.

Speaker 5 Hello. Hi, Justin.

Speaker 5 Hello. Hi, it's Detective Jody Gonterman with APD.
How are you?

Speaker 56 I'm doing okay. How is yourself?

Speaker 42 Good.

Speaker 10 The call started off well enough, but the tone quickly changed. Hansen said he felt targeted and outright refused to give a DNA sample.

Speaker 56 I felt like the way you guys were coming at me was like, no matter what I said,

Speaker 56 I was the person you were looking for, and it's in it, in it, and it, and no one wants to be that.

Speaker 10 Hansen ended the call demanding an apology.

Speaker 56 I'd appreciate a call to let me know that you're sorry.

Speaker 5 I'll apologize after I get your direct DNA.

Speaker 10 Detective Gonterman had been investigating Justin Hansen for five months now, yet there was still a question mark next to his name. So time again for Gonterman to get creative.

Speaker 10 An undercover mission to McDonald's?

Speaker 5 They followed him and they watched him eat.

Speaker 10 A hunt for treasure in the trash.

Speaker 42 I said, I can't believe this.

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Speaker 10 If Justin Hansen really was the guy who'd assaulted Brittany Marcel, he'd done a masterful job getting away with it.

Speaker 10 Over the course of a nine-year investigation, not once had police considered him a suspect.

Speaker 41 It's pretty unique that his name had never been mentioned by any of the family, the friends.

Speaker 10 And now that he'd come to the attention of Prosecutor David Waymire and Detective Jody Gonterman, after Brittany remembered his name, Hansen was able to keep them at bay by simply refusing a DNA test.

Speaker 5 So our district attorney suggested having him followed and getting his DNA.

Speaker 41 And one of the main ways that that can be done is through things that a subject throws away.

Speaker 10 On April 3rd, 2017, six months after Brittany told police about Hansen, Detective Gonterman requested a couple of undercover officers to tail him.

Speaker 10 But by the time the request was approved, two months later, Hansen had both moved and quit his job. Police didn't know where he was.

Speaker 10 Two more months passed before the surveillance team tracked Hansen to his new job at this body shop in North Albuquerque.

Speaker 5 And they followed him to a McDonald's and they watched him eat. And he took the lid off of his McDonald's cup and he drank it directly out of the cup.

Speaker 5 And when he walked out, the trash was pretty full, like to the top. And he wrapped his own meal, his own trash, nicely in the placemat that comes on your tray.

Speaker 5 So it was all separated from everything else. And so the undercover detective just walked right behind him and picked it up.

Speaker 10 And the detectives took that trash straight to Albuquerque police criminalist Alana Williams.

Speaker 42 I really did not have high hopes that this would be the individual that might match to our unknown person.

Speaker 10 She'd already processed the DNA of 17 potential suspects without a match. No reason to think number 18 would be any different.

Speaker 12 What was the result from this suspect, Justin Hansen?

Speaker 42 It was a complete match.

Speaker 10 After a nine-year investigation and 18 DNA tests, John Doe had finally been identified. It was Justin Hansen.

Speaker 12 Did you keep checking it over and over again, just like a lottery ticket?

Speaker 34 I actually checked it twice.

Speaker 42 I did it once, and then I went back through, and I checked it again, and I said, I can't believe this.

Speaker 10 Williams wanted to deliver news this big in person.

Speaker 27 And Alana told her, and I wish I had it on video because Jodi,

Speaker 5 I think she jumped about four feet off the ground and threw my keys.

Speaker 27 Yeah, it was

Speaker 27 very, very exciting. And then I had such good news.
And then, yeah. And then I broke down all just in tears.

Speaker 5 And then we all started crying. And I said, I can't believe it.
I can't believe it. Oh, my God.
I got to call Diane.

Speaker 2 I'm at work and she says, Diane, hey, how are you doing? I said, I'm fine. And I'm thinking, great, more bad news.

Speaker 2 Because every phone call had been kind of like, yeah, it's not him. She goes, we've got a match.

Speaker 2 I'm like just blown over and I'm. overwhelmed and I could hear the emotions in her voice.
And

Speaker 2 she says, yeah, we've got a match. and she said this is how it happened i'm going

Speaker 2 just like on tv huh she goes yeah it does happen

Speaker 10 diane then called brittany who was in boston with sister jennifer i said jodi called she's got a match she's like they know who the guy is i'm like what

Speaker 9 she goes it's a dna match 100 i'm like who is it She goes, Justin Hansen, who you get, you remember giving that tip to her? I'm like, yeah. She says, it's a 100% match.

Speaker 16 I'm like, holy holy crap.

Speaker 9 Well, it's like, my prayers are answered. So I called Jodi, and I was like, you have no idea how thankful I am for you solving this, Jodi.
She goes, no, you did it. I said, no, you did.

Speaker 9 She goes, you gave me the name.

Speaker 7 I was like, well, you acted on it.

Speaker 10 Hansen was arrested while out shopping. For the Marcel sisters, it was hard to believe the monster who'd haunted them for the past nine years may have been just a guy they knew from the mall.

Speaker 7 And I thought, this guy?

Speaker 7 This little skinny guy?

Speaker 7 Like, Like, he's charming, but how could he have done something so horrible?

Speaker 17 This guy looks great.

Speaker 34 It messes with your mind.

Speaker 21 It's so frustrating. Because it's not black and white.

Speaker 25 Right.

Speaker 21 Because we want to put our criminals or our violent offenders in this, and they look like this. And he doesn't look like that.

Speaker 12 He's the cute guy who worked at the clothing store in the bar.

Speaker 21 Yeah, people liked him and wanted to date him.

Speaker 10 Like, you did that?

Speaker 10 The next hurdle would be the trial. Brittany would have to testify and relive the emotional trauma of the attack.

Speaker 12 Normally, people don't look forward to trials like this. Are you actually looking forward to it to get it done and to see justice?

Speaker 9 Very much so. I can finally kind of close that chapter finally after nine years.

Speaker 10 What Brittany didn't know at the time of this interview was that there were problems with the case. Believe it or not, there were serious doubts Justin Hansen would ever go on trial.

Speaker 5 I was pretty mad. Okay, to be honest, I was really mad.

Speaker 10 A stunning setback. The case against Justin Hansen takes another dramatic turn.

Speaker 58 There's a lot of evidence that doesn't make sense. It's hard to try to prove your innocence after a certain amount of time.

Speaker 10 Police found a mountain of evidence at the Marcel house following the attack on Brittany.

Speaker 10 There was the shovel, the knife, the duct tape, even the clothes Brittany was wearing, all collected and carefully stored away.

Speaker 10 And of course, when Detective Gontraman started working Brittany's case, she wanted to see it all firsthand.

Speaker 5 So when I went to pull evidence and view it myself, it wasn't there.

Speaker 21 Where was it?

Speaker 5 It had been destroyed.

Speaker 10 All of it gone due to a simple clerical error.

Speaker 5 When anyone retires, you get a list of evidence on cases. There's a box you either check, dispose, or retain, and the box was checked, dispose for this case.

Speaker 12 I mean, what's that moment like when you're trying to solve this case only to find out that physical evidence has been destroyed by your own police department?

Speaker 5 Well, I was pretty upset.

Speaker 5 I was pretty mad. Okay, to be honest, I was really mad.

Speaker 10 The most important piece of evidence, though, was that blood drop, which was stored separately. The defense would want their own experts to test it.

Speaker 10 So if it was missing, too, the case against Hansen might well be over.

Speaker 12 Was that kind of a, oh my gosh, what if this has been destroyed too?

Speaker 17 Yes. Because then you're kind of done.

Speaker 5 I was stressed. I met with Alana Williams, the forensic scientist.
She went to look for it and she found it. It was in the freezer.
So thank God.

Speaker 10 Still, prosecutor David Waymire knew the case had taken a serious hit.

Speaker 41 Proving a case beyond a reasonable doubt to unanimously to 12 jurors would be difficult when we had evidentiary problems.

Speaker 10 Justin Hansen's defense attorney could now claim the Albuquerque Police Department had mishandled evidence. Evidence that may have pointed to another suspect.

Speaker 41 A judge and a jury might very well hold that against us, and that could make it more difficult to get a conviction.

Speaker 10 While awaiting trial, the judge allowed Hansen to be placed under house arrest. We tried for months to get him to sit down with Dayline, but he put us off.

Speaker 10 He finally agreed to talk when we dropped in on the farmhouse where he was living outside of Albuquerque. Overcome with emotion, Justin Hansen fought back tears as his family looked on.

Speaker 17 This case, I mean, it's unreal, all the twists and turns that have happened.

Speaker 10 What do you make of everything? I mean, you're at the center of it.

Speaker 4 It's hard.

Speaker 58 It's hard to try to take everything in.

Speaker 58 Lots of nights of not sleeping, lots of nights of

Speaker 58 trying to figure things out.

Speaker 12 What do you say to people who say that there is irrefutable evidence in this case

Speaker 10 that you did this?

Speaker 58 I've kind of realized

Speaker 58 who counts and who matters, and those people,

Speaker 10 they don't matter. They're looking at the evidence that they feel points to you.

Speaker 12 And there's no way to get around that.

Speaker 58 I don't have a way to convince them otherwise. That's not for me to try to do.

Speaker 12 Do you think about what Brittany's lost?

Speaker 16 Of course.

Speaker 58 She's lost a lot. And I'm glad she has a good support system.
You know, her mom and her sisters and everybody standing by her side.

Speaker 58 That's great that she has that. And I'm glad that she has that.

Speaker 12 They see you as a monster.

Speaker 14 They do.

Speaker 58 They see me as what APD has put me in there to be. They see me as what the media has put me to be.

Speaker 12 How do you explain the drop of blood at the scene?

Speaker 22 I don't.

Speaker 53 I don't.

Speaker 12 That's the one thing I think that people have a hard time getting around.

Speaker 4 They do.

Speaker 58 And there's a lot of evidence that doesn't make sense.

Speaker 12 Did you attack Brittany Marcel?

Speaker 14 No.

Speaker 10 Besides the missing evidence, Hansen's lawyer had another plan to get the case tossed out. Simply put, the statute of limitations had run out.

Speaker 10 Sure, Prosecutor Waymire filed an indictment in 2010, but the name on that indictment was John Doe, not Justin Hansen.

Speaker 58 You know, they have a statute of limitations set up for a reason.

Speaker 58 It's not to let people get away with things, it's just because it's hard to try to prove your innocence after a certain amount of time. It's like phone records go back seven years.

Speaker 58 Bank statements, I think, are six or seven years. So, like, you can't even try to go back to try to you know prove your innocence or to prove things differently and and that's hard

Speaker 10 hansen's lawyer argued the john doe indictment should be dismissed and the judge ruled an appellate court could hear that motion before the trial even got underway a huge victory for justin hansen and a major setback for prosecutor david waymire who knew the John Doe indictment was uncharted legal territory.

Speaker 41 Although that had had been done once before in New Mexico in a different case, it had never actually gone up and been reviewed by the appellate courts to ensure that it was legally allowed.

Speaker 10 Waymire had been concerned about the strength of the case all along. He'd even offered Hansen a plea deal.

Speaker 10 But now, apparently emboldened by the judge's ruling, Hansen rejected the plea offer, hoping instead to have the entire case against him tossed out.

Speaker 7 Brittany was robbed of the life that we all have. We want him to pay dearly.

Speaker 10 Would he? The final scene in this nine-year mystery is about to play out in court.

Speaker 10 Justin Hansen insisted to us he was an innocent family man, accused of a crime he didn't commit. But the Marcel family wasn't buying any of it.

Speaker 10 They were certain Hansen was the one who attacked Brittany, and they wanted justice.

Speaker 7 You know, Brittany has to deal with this for her whole entire life.

Speaker 7 She was robbed of the life that it appears that we all have. She doesn't get that.
And everything that she has today, she's worked hard for with the support of my mom. They've sacrificed daily.

Speaker 7 And I think it's kind of the same way. We want him to pay dearly.

Speaker 10 But there might not be a trial, let alone a conviction, if Hansen's attorney could get the John Doe indictment that was filed in 2010 tossed out.

Speaker 10 It was a tense time for both families, the Marcels and the Hansons, as they waited weeks on the appellate court's decision. Just 12 days before the start of the trial, the court issued its ruling.

Speaker 10 Hansen's motion was denied. The John Doe indictment was upheld and the case was going to trial.
That's when prosecutor David Waymire got a very unexpected phone call from Hansen's attorney.

Speaker 41 They wanted to revisit plea negotiations.

Speaker 10 Wanting to spare Brittany the stress and anxiety of a trial, the Marcel family gave their blessing to Waymire's decision to move ahead with a plea offer.

Speaker 10 of no contest to attempted murder in the first degree, which Hansen accepted. And just like that, it all came to an end.

Speaker 10 The alternate suspects, the John Doe indictment, the hypnosis, the Parabon sketch, the DNA tests, over.

Speaker 10 A case that took nine years to get to court was resolved in a matter of hours.

Speaker 12 You had a really tough decision to make in this case, to go to trial or to take this deal. How did you ultimately come up with your decision?

Speaker 58 I mean, I wanted to go to trial. I wanted to clear my name, but I just felt like the odds were against me and I didn't want to chance you know 58

Speaker 58 to 60 years away from my kids and that was kind of what pushed me into the plea.

Speaker 12 So the plea was not about an admission of guilt necessarily but for you it was more about being there someday for your children?

Speaker 58 That's exactly what it was for.

Speaker 58 It was like

Speaker 58 60 years

Speaker 58 or 18 years

Speaker 58 with a chance of being out out 9 or less. My youngest will only be 11, and I can still be there for her and try to help guide her through stuff.

Speaker 4 It's like

Speaker 4 I'm dying, like I'm not coming back. And it's hard.
And I know it's a goodbye because we don't know

Speaker 4 what the outcome is going to be, but at the same time, it still feels like

Speaker 4 I'm not going to be here anymore. And you don't know what to say.

Speaker 10 The day after our interview, Hansen went to court for sentencing, and the stakes were high.

Speaker 10 Under the terms of the plea agreement, he could be released on probation or sent to prison for up to 18 years.

Speaker 10 Prosecutor David Waymire argued for the longest possible sentence, telling the judge three other women in the past had accused Hansen of assault.

Speaker 41 The alleged victim, the girlfriend, was 17 at the time and was four months pregnant.

Speaker 10 Next, for two pain-filled hours, the Marcels testified about what the attack did to Brittany and their family.

Speaker 31 That her life is a mere flicker of what it had the potential to be.

Speaker 21 She struggles with friendships, creating social circles, reading social cues, and understanding her emotions.

Speaker 31 Her life is a shell of what it had the potential to be.

Speaker 32 I want my sister back.

Speaker 34 I miss her so much, and I'm starting to forget who she was before the attack.

Speaker 10 Last to speak was Brittany, who with her back to Justin Hansen, faced the judge and told her about the severity of her wounds, the 22 surgeries she'd endured, and of the injuries that may never heal.

Speaker 9 On September 11th, my dreams and goals were beaten out of me. For 10 years, I've been struggling to rebuild some semblance of the life I had once planned.
I'm fearful that I won't get married.

Speaker 9 I'm worried that I won't have children. I'm worried that I'll never be able to live alone again.

Speaker 10 Afterwards, it was Justin Hansen's turn to speak.

Speaker 43 First of all, Your Honor, I want to apologize to Brittany and Diane and their family for everything they've been through.

Speaker 10 But that was all he had to say to the Marcels. He spent the rest of his time telling his children how much he loved them.

Speaker 10 Then, everyone waited for Judge Cindy Leos to tell Hansen just how long he'd be away from those children.

Speaker 39 I am going to impose the full 18 years in the Department of Corrections. I think that that is the only sentence that makes sense sense under the circumstances of this case.

Speaker 27 Thank you.

Speaker 10 And with those words, Justin Hansen was handcuffed and led away to prison, while Brittany, her mom and siblings, hugged and wept. Detective Gontraman and Sergeant Thompson were there as well.

Speaker 12 How did it feel hearing Justin Hansen get the maximum 18 years as part of this play deal?

Speaker 5 It felt amazing. I was so happy.
I mean, I overwhelmed with emotion, just so relieved, so happy for the family.

Speaker 27 It was truly one of the highlights of my career.

Speaker 17 Did you get justice today?

Speaker 9 Yes, justice. One on dudes and justice.
Yes.

Speaker 29 He finally got caught, he played with barr, and he messed with the wrong ladies.

Speaker 10 For the siblings, there was, more than anything, an overwhelming sense of relief and gratitude.

Speaker 29 I looked at my sisters before it started and I said, no matter what happens today, it's over. We have to let this be over today.

Speaker 29 And this was a good way for this to be over. I feel very grateful for Judge Leos and I feel even more immensely grateful for Detective Gonterman.

Speaker 10 While Thompson, Gonterman, and the Marcels got justice, what they didn't get was an explanation.

Speaker 12 One of the biggest mysteries in this has been the motive.

Speaker 10 What is your working theory?

Speaker 5 So many people describe Justin as being very friendly and social and they think he's good looking and charming and he's that older guy that

Speaker 5 I don't think he was ever turned down. and it's possible that maybe Brittany was just the one person that said no and turned him down.

Speaker 10 Brittany agrees.

Speaker 9 I think I was attacked because Justin Hansen had some jealousy.

Speaker 9 Because he had probably asked me out to be like going a date, be his girlfriend. And I had a different boyfriend at the time and it wasn't him at all.
So I think it was struck out of jealousy.

Speaker 9 And since he didn't have me, nobody else could.

Speaker 10 Brittany now lives in rural Texas and spends much of her time tending to the animals. She has one college degree, but would like to return to campus to get the degree she's wanted since high school.

Speaker 9 I am definitely thinking about going back to school for journalism. I was like, it takes, I mean, my major was communication.
I can communicate quite well.

Speaker 10 But she had one more big hurdle to get over, another surgery. her 23rd.

Speaker 17 An operation that took hours with a recovery period of months.

Speaker 10 Brittany could have opted not to go through such torment, but for her, there was no choice. The surgery was to get her smile back.

Speaker 9 I had the biggest smile you could dream of. I was like, that's something, that's what I want back.

Speaker 9 I'm going to go for it.

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Speaker 50 There are lots of options when it comes to nicotine satisfaction, but there's only one Zen.

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