Into the Night

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Speaker 11 From the Creator of Homeland, Claire Danes and Matthew Rees star in the new Netflix series The Beast in Me as ruthless rivals whose shared darkness will set them on a collision course with fatal consequences.

Speaker 5 The Beast in Me is a riveting psychological cat and mouse story about guilt and justice and doubt, now playing only on Netflix.

Speaker 19 I would have never been able to tell my daughter. Your monster, your boogeyman, will pull up alongside you, and instead of him coming to help you,

Speaker 19 he has come to harm you

Speaker 20 she was the girl next door she would come into her room the room would just brighten up people instantly thought I'm Kaylee's best friend now a new chapter in her heartbreaking story had the sickening feeling

Speaker 20 The day she vanished was the start of the most dramatic crime spree in this town's history.

Speaker 25 We found her green bag. We found her passport.

Speaker 22 Ever been hit in the chest with a sledgehammer?

Speaker 20 A fugitive was on the run, taking new victims as he fled.

Speaker 26 He unlocked the door and sat in the car really fast, and he had a gun just pointing it at me.

Speaker 30 I'm looking at a desperate man. Anything can happen.

Speaker 31 There's a chance he could get away with murder.

Speaker 20 Tonight, he talks to Keith Morrison.

Speaker 33 Hang on a second. You've got to explain that to me a little bit.

Speaker 34 Well, what are you suggesting?

Speaker 20 Simmering evil explodes into deadly violence.

Speaker 30 She was trying to turn emergency lights on, trying to grab the radio, trying to honk the horn, anything that she could do because she knew. She knew.

Speaker 20 I'm Lester Holt, and this is Dateline.

Speaker 20 Here's Keith Morrison with Into the Night.

Speaker 2 It was a Saturday night in the summer and they were so happy at their bachelorette party as they laughed and danced.

Speaker 33 and played their drinking games.

Speaker 8 Well, outside in the dark, watchful, waiting, hidden in its clever disguise, death cruised by,

Speaker 8 looking for one of them.

Speaker 7 And all around, a peaceful town tucked into sleep, no ghost, no soothsayer to warn them that evil had fooled their defenses, had slipped inside to snatch its prey.

Speaker 50 This is the place here in the wide, handsome high desert of central Oregon, the small city of Bend,

Speaker 5 an annual occupant of every list of the best places to live in America.

Speaker 25 It's a nice place to live.

Speaker 1 I love it here. It's perfect.

Speaker 14 An outdoor recreation heaven on the slopes of the Cascade Range, rife with rivers and lakes and rugged independence.

Speaker 30 I mean, everything here is about outdoors, about connection.

Speaker 8 And Bend was home to a beautiful young woman named Kaylee Sawyer.

Speaker 5 This is Kaylee's mother, Julie.

Speaker 19 She was probably

Speaker 19 17 and she said to me, Mom, when people describe me, I want them to describe me as smart and strong and funny. And she was.

Speaker 13 Yes, and feisty and fearless.

Speaker 55 Her best friend, Naomi's sleepover buddy and stunt team cheerleading partner.

Speaker 2 I love Kaylee so much, but she's not the most coordinated person there was.

Speaker 58 We were probably the best stunt team on our squad because our communication, we didn't need to speak. We could look at each other and understand everything about one another.

Speaker 2 I wouldn't really call her a tomboy, but I also wouldn't really call her a girly girl.

Speaker 58 Somewhere in between.

Speaker 62 She could look like a model one minute and be in scrubby clothes and ready to go camping the next.

Speaker 42 She called her grandfather Papa Jim here with Grandma Sharon.

Speaker 6 She was our sunshine. She was just our world.

Speaker 2 Did you worry about her as a teenager?

Speaker 67 She was in Bend.

Speaker 68 She had family around.

Speaker 67 So

Speaker 67 my worry was if she left Bend, you know, oh my goodness, what if my Kaylee goes up to Portland?

Speaker 69 She won't have a Grandma Sharon there.

Speaker 2 We'll have to move.

Speaker 68 We'll have to go and be with her.

Speaker 67 That was my worry, not being in Bend.

Speaker 12 Mind you, Kaylee was on her own now, was living with her boyfriend, a young man named Cam.

Speaker 19 I could tell from the moment that Kaylee met Cam

Speaker 19 that this was a good relationship for her. I could see that she was happy.

Speaker 56 Now, if she could just figure out what to do with her life.

Speaker 59 She was going to be a plastic surgeon, she was going to be a policeman, she was going to be a chef, she was going to be a photographer.

Speaker 2 The world was hers.

Speaker 58 She didn't pick one thing.

Speaker 71 No, but this year, the year she turned 23, that was changing.

Speaker 74 She'd held a job for two full years now as a dental assistant.

Speaker 24 She was my work daughter. She'd follow me around to learn how to do things because she really wanted to be the best.

Speaker 73 Lisa Castro was Kaylee's mentor at the dentist's office.

Speaker 8 It discovered Kaylee had this rare ability to make people laugh.

Speaker 7 even when they weren't in the mood or were scared.

Speaker 24 If there was a difficult patient, you'd put Kaylee in the room and they would just melt.

Speaker 24 So those pretty eyes and that smile.

Speaker 44 And then, surprise, surprise, Kaylee was making plans to enroll in college.

Speaker 46 Now she knew what she wanted to do.

Speaker 24 And one day she comes into work, she says, I've decided I'm going to become a dentist.

Speaker 56 So both of them had something to look forward to that Saturday night, July 23rd, 2016.

Speaker 44 Lisa was celebrating her upcoming wedding.

Speaker 13 The Bachelorette Party was for her.

Speaker 44 Kayleigh had already told Lisa and her sister Jana that she couldn't go.

Speaker 15 She'd be out of town.

Speaker 50 But last minute.

Speaker 24 I got a text from her saying,

Speaker 24 guess what? I'm going to show up to your party to help celebrate you. But I'm going to show up a little late, but I'll be there.

Speaker 1 That's a great thing when women get together for a bachelorette party.

Speaker 1 Katie bar the door.

Speaker 47 Especially at our age.

Speaker 75 It was after 8 p.m.

Speaker 71 when Kaylee showed up at a country bar called Mavericks.

Speaker 64 The party was well underway.

Speaker 24 She came in a little dress and just looked adorable in it.

Speaker 77 Indeed, she did. Here are photos of Kayleigh at that party in that black dress.

Speaker 39 She was kicking up her heels a bit, right?

Speaker 24 My course.

Speaker 24 She was having fun.

Speaker 77 But when the Bachelorette and her party began to run out of steam, Kaylee and a friend left to keep things going at another bar downtown.

Speaker 57 You know, I checked them out and said, you know, you girls be safe.

Speaker 79 You're okay, right?

Speaker 57 And they said, yeah, we're okay.

Speaker 2 We'll be good.

Speaker 8 And a little before 10.30 p.m., she walked out into the night, happy, a little tipsy, altogether unaware of what was waiting on the other side of midnight.

Speaker 19 When we returned, a friend of Cam's texted him and said, your girlfriend's here dancing with another guy.

Speaker 20 Kaylee, out for a night of fun. But where would she be when morning came?

Speaker 19 The very first message that I looked at was from Cam saying, have you seen Kaylee?

Speaker 24 Instantly, I had the sickening feeling in my gut.

Speaker 48 It was late afternoon, Sunday, July 24th, the day after the bachelorette party.

Speaker 54 Kayleigh's mother, Julie, was driving home from a weekend camping trip.

Speaker 7 She approached Bend around 5 p.m., re-entered cell phone range.

Speaker 19 I turned my phone back on, and my phone was just pinging and pinging and pinging. And the very first message that I looked at was from Cam saying, have you seen Kayleigh? Have you heard from Kaylee?

Speaker 50 Why would Cam be asking her about Kayleigh?

Speaker 16 After all, they live together.

Speaker 12 Julie's phone chirped over and over.

Speaker 8 Cam had texted her the same question almost hourly all day.

Speaker 1 So you're looking at multiple messages.

Speaker 19 Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 8 Jude's getting a little more worried.

Speaker 19 And I called her first,

Speaker 19 and her phone went to voicemail, which Kayleigh notoriously let her cell phone battery go really low.

Speaker 2 Okay.

Speaker 19 So that wasn't surprising.

Speaker 35 By then, Cam had already texted Kaylee's dad, Jamie, and stepmother, Crystal, as they sat in church.

Speaker 79 His phone in his pocket kept buzzing.

Speaker 26 I'm elbowing him and I'm like, what's going on?

Speaker 79 So he kind of said, Cam doesn't know where Kaylee is. And I'm like, okay.

Speaker 21 So Kaylee's dad questioned Cam.

Speaker 81 What did Camera tell you?

Speaker 82 She went to a bachelor party and

Speaker 6 they had an argument going home. An argument?

Speaker 82 It seemed really obvious that she just walked down the road and probably called a friend to come pick her up because she was mad. And that was it.
I literally thought nothing more to it than that.

Speaker 8 But Cam clearly did.

Speaker 71 He'd spent that Sunday calling the entire family.

Speaker 68 Cam called and said, Grandma Sharon, have you heard from Kaylee?

Speaker 67 And I said, no, I hadn't.

Speaker 58 Grandma Sharon called and was like, have you talked to Kaylee? And I was like, no, you know, is everything okay? What's going on? So I called her.

Speaker 58 I don't even know how many times and her phone was going straight to voicemail. And I figured, you know, she was out with friends.
Maybe she ended up just staying with them.

Speaker 74 But the bride-to-be who'd said goodnight to that happy young woman was alarmed.

Speaker 24 Instantly, I had this sickening feeling in my gut. Because that's not Kayleigh.
She would have contacted somebody that, you know,

Speaker 24 I went to someone's house or whatever.

Speaker 8 Julie, still driving, trying to comprehend, got a call from Cam.

Speaker 75 who told her that after the bachelorette party at that other bar, Kaylee had had a few and was having fun with some other guy.

Speaker 19 They were dancing

Speaker 19 and I guess a friend of Cam's texted him and said, your girlfriend's here dancing with another guy and so he went and picked her up. And on the way home they started to argue.

Speaker 44 Cam's story?

Speaker 38 He parked outside their apartment a little after midnight, tempers still hot.

Speaker 12 He got out of the car.

Speaker 15 She stayed inside.

Speaker 61 He told her, come up when you've cooled off.

Speaker 8 But a few minutes later, out she got and walked away into the night.

Speaker 19 It didn't surprise me when

Speaker 19 he told me that she went for a walk because she had always done that when she was younger and she'd get in trouble and I would tell her,

Speaker 19 you know, you need to go to your room.

Speaker 19 Chances are she went to her room and out her window and she'd go for a walk.

Speaker 78 She'd work it out. Yeah.
She was mad.

Speaker 19 Yeah, she was mad and she, you know, she would go go for a walk. And that wasn't unusual behavior.

Speaker 50 Anyway, Cam and Katie lived in a crime-free neighborhood right across the street from the local college.

Speaker 37 But Cam didn't sound so sure of his story.

Speaker 30 So, where did she go?

Speaker 15 Why didn't she come back? Why didn't she call anyone?

Speaker 44 Julie encouraged Cam to call Ben police, which he did Sunday afternoon.

Speaker 88 Is that shot going to help you? Hi.

Speaker 89 Last night I got home from the bars with my girlfriend, and she got upset at me and ran off. And I still haven't heard from her.
Her phone's off.

Speaker 90 Okay, so did she just take out walking or something from the dowders?

Speaker 89 Like, she was mad? Yeah, I walked. She was, yeah, she was mad at me, so I walked inside and told her to come meet me.
And then when she's like, calm down.

Speaker 89 And then I went back out in 10 minutes, and she was gone. And I called her a few times, and she said she was walking down the street.
I haven't heard from her since.

Speaker 17 As Julie neared Ben, she worried, would police take it seriously?

Speaker 43 After all, grown woman, lover's spat.

Speaker 13 So Julie added a little urgency and called 911 herself.

Speaker 91 Is that going to help you? Yes, I need to have an officer call me. My daughter is missing and she is over 23, but she has

Speaker 91 epilepsy and some medical issues.

Speaker 19 I exaggerated her seizure condition.

Speaker 41 How did they react to that?

Speaker 19 They were concerned about that. They, you know, they knew that she had been out the night before and she had been drinking.
You know, could that have triggered a medical incident?

Speaker 48 Julie drove straight to the apartment where she questioned Cam.

Speaker 19 I was frustrated that his story just didn't make sense. And so I walked out of the apartment and I said I just needed to go and

Speaker 19 take a walk and get some fresh air. And while I was out there walking, the officer came and I said to him, I need you to go talk to Cam because his story doesn't make sense to me.

Speaker 8 What was going on

Speaker 13 and where was Kaylee Sawyer?

Speaker 20 Coming up, Kaylee's mom wasn't the only one troubled by Cam's story.

Speaker 82 My thought was, did they really have that bad of an argument and something bad happened?

Speaker 20 And what did police think about Kaylee's sudden disappearance?

Speaker 81 Did you both agree at that point something was going on here?

Speaker 63 Something was off?

Speaker 32 Yeah, we were talking back and forth and he said, do you think we need to get detectives involved?

Speaker 78 And I said, yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 20 When dateline continues.

Speaker 10 Sunday evening, July 24th, the sun descended toward the Cascades.

Speaker 9 18 hours after Katie Sawyer argued with her boyfriend and walked alone into the dark, her extended family gathered at the apartment she shared with Cam.

Speaker 8 Her father, Jamie.

Speaker 81 Was part of you kind of suspicious of Cameron?

Speaker 82 Yes. My thought was that did they really have that bad of an argument and something bad happened?

Speaker 46 But your mind went there because, you know, the vast majority of the time, if something happens to a young woman, it's somebody very close.

Speaker 82 It's hard to believe, too, because we knew Cameron, very innocent young man. He's just a

Speaker 82 nice guy.

Speaker 47 Yeah.

Speaker 82 It's hard to imagine that, but you still do.

Speaker 86 Remember, Cam's story troubled Kaylee's mother, too.

Speaker 5 Then police officer Kyle Denny arrived and parked outside the apartment, right across the street from the campus of Central Oregon Community College.

Speaker 32 It's on Auburn Butte, which is one of the more prestigious areas of town. There's very nice homes.

Speaker 39 Very safe area, I would think.

Speaker 87 It's very safe.

Speaker 73 Officer Denny was soon joined by Corporal Eric Sapli.

Speaker 15 While Denny talked to the family, Sapli found that friend, the girl who'd seen Kayleigh dancing at the bar, the one who texted Cam, better come get her.

Speaker 96 And a little after midnight, Kaylee sent a text message to her friend saying, I'm home, everything's okay, I'm sorry about earlier tonight. And then her friend tried to call her just before 1 a.m.

Speaker 96 and Kaylee didn't answer the phone.

Speaker 81 Did there seem to be any chance that she would have gone back to be with that guy she had met at the bachelorette party?

Speaker 96 Initially, I thought maybe there was a chance, but...

Speaker 40 did you talk to him?

Speaker 32 So I called him on the telephone. He didn't get Kayleigh's phone number.

Speaker 32 He didn't give her his phone number. So it was just kind of they were hanging out that night, and that was the last he knew or saw of her.

Speaker 80 And that seemed to make sense to you.

Speaker 47 It did.

Speaker 8 So nothing to disprove anything Cam had told them.

Speaker 46 What was your take on Cameron's story?

Speaker 66 What happened? It didn't make sense.

Speaker 32 The story made sense. It made absolute sense.

Speaker 10 Officer Denny took Julie aside to address concerns about Cam.

Speaker 19 He was able to come and tell me. It's not that his story is changing.
His story is evolving. He's remembering things.

Speaker 19 I think that he, very early on, took on the guilt and the responsibility that if something did happen to her, that maybe it was his fault.

Speaker 46 Why'd you let her go off in the night alone?

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 19 But I never felt that he was involved in harming her.

Speaker 16 Then Officer Denny assembled the family and asked them a question.

Speaker 32 I said, hey, is there anywhere you can think of that she might be? And I kind of just sent them on a mission to go start looking at places where she could be if she was trying to cool off.

Speaker 22 I remember going up to the campus and walking the route that we were told or assumed that she might have walked that night.

Speaker 56 A terrifying thing to do, said Papa Jim.

Speaker 98 You didn't know whether we were looking for a body, parts of clothing, a purse.

Speaker 46 So you were worried something very bad had happened.

Speaker 22 Oh, yes, petrified, terrified.

Speaker 19 I wanted to stay home and I wanted to be there because maybe she'd come home.

Speaker 46 Yeah, maybe she'd come home.

Speaker 6 Maybe she'd call, maybe she'd let you know.

Speaker 19 My husband went out and looked for her. We were praying that he find her, that she's safe.
But in a way, you know that something's wrong. I was praying that he didn't find her

Speaker 19 because I didn't want him

Speaker 19 to have to find her if

Speaker 19 somebody had hurt her.

Speaker 8 Now for the two officers, a judgment call.

Speaker 10 She was a grown woman who was missing, but she had a right to be somewhere else.

Speaker 48 There was no evidence of foul play.

Speaker 8 But...

Speaker 81 Did you both agree at that point something was going on here?

Speaker 63 Something was off?

Speaker 32 Yeah, we were talking back and forth, and he said, do you think we need to get detectives involved?

Speaker 78 And I said, yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 11 Overnight, the first missing person flyer in the Katie Sawyer case went out to law enforcement around central Oregon.

Speaker 8 And the next morning, everyone held their breath, hoping Kaylee would simply show up for work at the dentist's office.

Speaker 12 And then they'd all breathe again.

Speaker 82 I drove in and walked into her workplace and they all looked at me and their faces just showed me what they were already thinking. And I asked them to, she called in and they just shook their heads.

Speaker 24 It was heartbreaking. I mean, nobody could talk.
There was just a lot of tears.

Speaker 46 That's when you knew.

Speaker 82 That's when I knew something and still didn't want to accept it.

Speaker 44 She was truly missing.

Speaker 16 And then a few hours later, 20 miles up the road from Bend in Redmond, Oregon, a police detective named Eric Beckwith got up from his desk.

Speaker 25 Went out to my car and got my lunch and was walking through the lobby and saw Isabel Ponce.

Speaker 80 Who's Isabel Ponce?

Speaker 25 Isabel Ponce is somebody that we knew in Redmond. She was a band police officer recruit and Redmond resident.

Speaker 10 She seemed to be waiting for something.

Speaker 8 Curious.

Speaker 14 He walked on back to his office, sat down.

Speaker 70 No idea.

Speaker 12 What was about to worm its ugly way into his world?

Speaker 3 Coming up, a worried wife with a wild story.

Speaker 2 She's crying.

Speaker 25 She's crying uncontrollably. I knew we had a big problem.

Speaker 20 And reality sinks in.

Speaker 22 Ever been hit in the chest with a sledgehammer? That's about what it feels like.

Speaker 74 By Monday morning, they were swamped under waves of panic.

Speaker 44 It was 36 hours since Kaylee Sawyer walked into the Oregon night and vanished.

Speaker 78 I'm trying to get a sense of what it felt like to be in the middle of all of that.

Speaker 19 Complete loss of control, accompanied with sheer panic.

Speaker 22 Ever been hit in the chest with a sledgehammer?

Speaker 22 That's about what it feels like.

Speaker 86 And then, going on noon, 20 miles north of the Redmond Police Department, Detective Eric Beckwith noticed a newly minted bend police officer named Isabel Ponce sitting calmly on a chair, as if waiting for something.

Speaker 1 Odd.

Speaker 25 It struck me as unusual, but I didn't approach her or strike up a conversation. I just

Speaker 25 went into the office.

Speaker 99 Unwrapped his lunch.

Speaker 1 prepared to tuck in when a colleague appeared at his door.

Speaker 25 He had asked me if I'd had any idea why she would be in the office, that she had called and requested to talk to a watch commander or a supervisor of some kind.

Speaker 6 You had no idea.

Speaker 25 Had no idea.

Speaker 47 And then?

Speaker 25 And then I saw Sergeant Duff bring Miss Pawn into his office.

Speaker 25 Just a short amount of time after that, Sergeant Duff opened his door and yelled down the hall for me to come into his office.

Speaker 21 So, of course, Beck was rushed in there and right into the biggest, most shocking case of his life.

Speaker 15 Though at first, it was just puzzling.

Speaker 31 Describe the scene to me.

Speaker 66 She's crying.

Speaker 25 She's crying uncontrollably.

Speaker 83 Could you tell what was going on?

Speaker 25 I knew we had a big problem, and I never would have anticipated how big of a problem we had.

Speaker 5 There'd been an accident. She got out through her tears.

Speaker 73 Or at least her husband said he'd had an accident, said he'd hit someone with his car.

Speaker 18 And it must have been that missing girl that had been showing on TV, Kaylee Sawyer.

Speaker 97 Did that name, Kaylee Sawyer, mean anything to you?

Speaker 21 It did.

Speaker 25 When I had arrived at work on that Monday, I had noticed that Ben P. D.
had put out a missing persons flyer and were requesting other agencies for any information or to be on the lookout for her.

Speaker 25 So I knew right away what she was talking about.

Speaker 62 Isabel said her husband was a security guard at Central Oregon Community College, and something must have happened there late Saturday because she said he seemed kind of distant all day Sunday.

Speaker 102 Like here when they went to the movies, this picked up by a surveillance camera.

Speaker 7 And then Monday morning.

Speaker 103 So he comes out of the room and his eyes were all teary.

Speaker 103 That's why I'm like, what happened?

Speaker 104 Tell me what happened. What's wrong?

Speaker 103 Then he's like, I hit her with the car.

Speaker 30 And did he tell you which car?

Speaker 103 He said the security, the job, the car, the things at the job.

Speaker 105 And what did you say to that?

Speaker 103 So I'm like, what do you mean when

Speaker 103 what do you mean you hit her?

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 103 he's like, yeah, I hit her and I panicked.

Speaker 25 All he said was he hit her and he panicked. He never said.

Speaker 107 It wasn't making any sense to me because I'm like, why would somebody could somebody

Speaker 107 do that, especially you, especially him.

Speaker 103 Like, it doesn't make any sense.

Speaker 74 Didn't make sense, said Isabel, because her husband, Edwin Laura, was a good man, had a degree in criminal justice, was in training to be a cop.

Speaker 74 And then he told her that awful, confusing story and

Speaker 73 just got in his car, told her he was going to make a run for it, and took off, fled, ran away.

Speaker 25 How long did this conversation go on before he left?

Speaker 103 It was pretty brief. It was just him moving around.
I'm not sure if he, I don't think he grabbed anything other than he did grab my gun from my purse.

Speaker 103 And then he just kept saying, I need to go, I need to go.

Speaker 37 What did you think when you heard all these things?

Speaker 25 I thought we had a significant problem. We had a gentleman who I'd now known that was a member of the campus public safety, whose wife was a police recruit who was potentially armed,

Speaker 25 would have some knowledge of the way police initiated an investigation.

Speaker 8 So Edwin Laura, now on the run, knew what police would do.

Speaker 72 But it seemed like Isabel was being rather vague about him.

Speaker 25 We had very, very little information about who he was and what his background was. So almost alarmingly that we didn't know much about him.

Speaker 8 Or more importantly, where he was now.

Speaker 25 Only places she think he could be going would be traveling southbound from central Oregon to his grandfather's place in Los Angeles.

Speaker 44 Right away, Beckwith issued a bolo, Be on the Lookout for Laura and the 2008 Silver Nissan Ultima he was believed to be driving.

Speaker 11 And then he activated the major crimes team, called in dozens of investigators in town and out.

Speaker 73 Among those responding, Deschutes County Sheriff's Detective James McLaughlin.

Speaker 71 who had his own questions about the story Isabel Ponce had reported about her husband.

Speaker 34 He had told his wife this crazy tale, which might or might not be true.

Speaker 30 May or may not be. There were a lot of things left out as far as details that we needed to know, law enforcement-wise, like how did it happen? Where is she now?

Speaker 97 Where is Kaylee, that is?

Speaker 76 Was she lying in some ditch badly hurt?

Speaker 21 What exactly did Edwin Laura do to her?

Speaker 95 And how big a head start did he have?

Speaker 97 After all, Isabel hadn't seemed to be in a real rush to report any of this, driving from their home, eight minutes away from the police department, then waiting for who knows how long, just sitting in the office, waiting to speak to a sergeant.

Speaker 75 So she could have been on the phone and let people know in a heartbeat.

Speaker 77 Yes. He just told me this.
He's on the road.

Speaker 21 Get him. Absolutely.
She didn't.

Speaker 30 She did not. So there is an unknown period of time in between his confession to her

Speaker 30 from when the actual report took place. It could have been a half hour, 45 minutes.
However, it could have also been an hour and a half, two hours. We just don't know.

Speaker 39 You're on a manhunt now.

Speaker 2 We are.

Speaker 30 Our goal was this:

Speaker 30 We are going to hunt for Edwin Enoch Laura as quickly and as fiercely as we can so that we can A, potentially locate Kaylee alive, and B,

Speaker 30 if we can't, that we can find her and that we can stop anyone else from being heard.

Speaker 93 And so began one of the largest manhunts in Oregon history.

Speaker 8 But

Speaker 85 not so easy to find a man who doesn't want to be found or to know what that man might do next.

Speaker 92 Coming up,

Speaker 20 a mother's nightmare.

Speaker 19 You hear about news stories about people stealing young women, and now I'm going to have to search for her, you know, being a sex slave.

Speaker 20 When Dateline continues.

Speaker 7 By Monday afternoon, Kaylee Sawyer had been gone a day and a half, and the calculus was very grim.

Speaker 72 If Edwin Laura had told his wife the truth, Kaylee might be dead.

Speaker 52 But was he telling the truth?

Speaker 52 And was she?

Speaker 10 Or was Kaylee still alive and injured or alive and the captive of an armed and obviously dangerous fugitive?

Speaker 50 But having told them what she came to say, Isabel Ponce was no longer much help.

Speaker 103 I don't think he has a pan.

Speaker 45 I don't think he... No, I think you're right.

Speaker 107 He knows what he's doing.

Speaker 103 I don't think he does.

Speaker 80 Did you ping his phone?

Speaker 25 We pinged his phone immediately when it initially pinged in Eagle Crest.

Speaker 72 Eagle Crest is a resort about 10 minutes west of Redmond.

Speaker 10 But it must have been a false signal.

Speaker 7 Didn't pan out.

Speaker 8 So.

Speaker 1 We really didn't have

Speaker 25 a good idea of where he was or where he might go.

Speaker 42 None of this, of course, could be shared with Kaylee's family.

Speaker 6 Not yet.

Speaker 44 Not even with her mother, Julie, who was conducting a search of her own.

Speaker 19 My best friend and I went and made missing posters and started distributing those all throughout Bend.

Speaker 81 Panicky day.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 19 And,

Speaker 19 you know, the whole time that you're doing this, you're checking your cell phone.

Speaker 66 Did you think maybe she'd been kidnapped or something?

Speaker 19 When I heard that she'd gone for a walk, you hear about news stories about people stealing young women. And, you know.

Speaker 78 She's a blonde, good-looking young woman.

Speaker 2 You never know.

Speaker 19 Yeah, and so then now I'm going to have to search for her, you know, being a sex slave, you know.

Speaker 78 And that's just a pretty awful thing to go.

Speaker 19 It is a very awful thing.

Speaker 25 We knew how

Speaker 25 hard the family was searching for Kaylee, how many friends and relatives and people that were out looking for her? So, yeah, that was weighing on my mind and other investigators as well.

Speaker 50 The major crimes team was growing by the hour.

Speaker 73 Deschutes County District Attorney John Hummel.

Speaker 97 This was full on.

Speaker 31 Every man and woman in every law enforcement agency in Deschutes County and also Crook and Jefferson counties, with the Oregon State Police Department as well, putting all resources into it.

Speaker 31 We needed to find Kaylee because we thought she may, may

Speaker 87 still be alive.

Speaker 8 Edwin Laura was the key. So again, they asked his wife, where could he be?

Speaker 99 Did you ask her whether he knew other people around town that he might, you know, hide with or something like that?

Speaker 25 Yes, I did. She told me that there would be no place for him to go in town or close or anywhere in Oregon for that matter.

Speaker 20 No place at all, she said.

Speaker 64 No family to run to, no one.

Speaker 8 And then a bit later, one of the investigators Beckwith had called in remembered Laura did, in fact, have family in the area.

Speaker 10 Police had once arrested his stepfather.

Speaker 11 And that's how the investigator knew that the stepfather lived five minutes from the police department.

Speaker 74 And also, only five minutes from Laura's house.

Speaker 40 What do you know?

Speaker 87 And his wife, the police officer,

Speaker 102 basically led you away from that.

Speaker 25 She definitely didn't lead us directly to that place, that's for sure.

Speaker 35 And there, lo and behold, just two blocks from his parents' house, detectives found Edwin Laura's getaway car, his 2008 Nissan Ultima, abandoned.

Speaker 3 A SWAT team was assembled, went to his parents' door.

Speaker 23 Was he at his parents' house?

Speaker 25 He was not at his parents' house.

Speaker 8 And from the parents?

Speaker 30 There wasn't much detail, if any, only that he had come by, that he had asked for some money. They had no idea where he was, where he had gone, that there was any trouble at all.

Speaker 30 That was the initial interview. They gave no credible information.

Speaker 87 Did they tell the officer that they'd given him a car to use?

Speaker 2 No.

Speaker 40 That doesn't make it easy to find a person.

Speaker 30 No, it's typical, but no, it does not.

Speaker 86 Maybe there'd be something at Laura's house.

Speaker 7 Some clue to what made him tick or to where he might have gone.

Speaker 86 Detective McLaughlin got a search warrant, headed over there, went inside.

Speaker 5 But nothing could have prepared him for what he would discover.

Speaker 99 A horrifying journey into the heart of darkness.

Speaker 20 Coming up, two discoveries at Edwin Laura's home.

Speaker 3 One surprising.

Speaker 30 There were things that were written on certain pages, certain scriptures.

Speaker 2 The other, horrifying.

Speaker 62 This is not a good sign at all.

Speaker 30 It is not.

Speaker 16 Two massive searches were in full force across central Oregon late that Monday in July 2016.

Speaker 48 In neither case did the searchers have all the facts.

Speaker 17 Kaylee Sawyer's family got word out every which way they could.

Speaker 20 Posters, Facebook.

Speaker 19 Within less than 24 hours, there was 10,000 shares of Kaylee's missing picture.

Speaker 19 There wasn't a spot in downtown Bend or,

Speaker 19 you know, Redmond that you could go go, that you didn't see Kaylee's missing picture.

Speaker 79 We had people call and said, I just canceled everything for the week. What do you need?

Speaker 15 Kaylee's family did not know what this police officer had told detectives.

Speaker 103 He said something that he hit her with the car and then he panicked.

Speaker 86 Did not know.

Speaker 71 that this security company car with the missing flyer attached was the very one Edwin Laurel was driving when, as he told his wife, he ran into Kaylee.

Speaker 8 But was she dead or alive?

Speaker 44 It was most certainly, said D.A. John Hummel, a race against time.

Speaker 31 I was holding on to hope, and every officer was holding on to hope that she might be clinging to life.

Speaker 31 And if we could find her, we could race her to help and bring her back from the point of no return.

Speaker 12 And as they searched for her, they searched also for him, for answers.

Speaker 49 Detective Bekwis struggled to contain his outrage that a security guard at Central Oregon Community College, a wannabe cop, would cut and run.

Speaker 39 How do you wrap your mind around the idea that somebody in that level of trust would do such a thing?

Speaker 25 I don't think you can wrap your mind away around that.

Speaker 21 By now, the major crimes team had grown to more than 30 investigators, one of whom was Detective James McLaughlin.

Speaker 35 about to be sent to conduct a search of Edwin Laura's home.

Speaker 30 I would like to see what makes this person tick.

Speaker 8 And it just happened, coincidence really, that McLaughlin was a former pastor, which was about to matter a lot.

Speaker 30 We go through the house and I'm immediately drawn to a music room. There's pictures of Edwin and Isabel inside,

Speaker 30 various musical instruments.

Speaker 7 They found YouTube videos, Laura singing love songs.

Speaker 13 But also in here was evidence that Laura was a a member of his church's worship team.

Speaker 8 And here on Laura's bedside table was a well-worn Bible.

Speaker 77 You've preached from a Bible.

Speaker 2 I have.

Speaker 30 And so you know what a used Bible looks like. There were things that were written on certain pages, certain scriptures.
So I believed at this point in time that, you know,

Speaker 30 this is one of the focal points of his life.

Speaker 77 And when the detective found evidence in a note, that Laura was tithing, giving 10% of his income to the church, he began thinking several steps ahead.

Speaker 3 What did you think as you're looking at that Bible and you see that he is clearly highly engaged in his religion and his commitment to it?

Speaker 30 My first thought is I'm here for some kind of reason, and I believe that unless this is a complete farce, that there's a hook there. And I'm looking for a hook through that house.
I want a hook.

Speaker 3 If there is anybody who could use that hook, it's you.

Speaker 30 And I believe that. That was my initial thought is that I can use this.

Speaker 99 Something going on with with that man.

Speaker 30 He's feeding something else, and I'm just wondering what that something else is.

Speaker 84 Maybe they'd find it in the backyard shed.

Speaker 5 Isabel had told detectives Edwin Laura had left some things there.

Speaker 14 Would it reveal anything about what happened or where Kayleigh was?

Speaker 16 McLaughlin opened the door.

Speaker 8 And

Speaker 15 this did not look good.

Speaker 46 What did you find in there?

Speaker 30 So inside the shed, there was a trash bag. Inside that trash bag, there was a green purse.
That green purse had a large amount of cast off and bloodstain on it.

Speaker 56 Inside the purse?

Speaker 44 Kaylee Sawyer's passport.

Speaker 35 And there were the shoes she'd put on before the bachelorette party Saturday night.

Speaker 8 But then,

Speaker 84 there it was, like a punch in the gut.

Speaker 30 There's also a large rock that was very sharp. Half of it at least was saturated in dried blood.

Speaker 8 A murder weapon.

Speaker 15 Had to be.

Speaker 62 This is not a good sign at all.

Speaker 30 It is not.

Speaker 8 Kaylee Sawyer was not a victim of a hit and run. No.

Speaker 71 It was much more than that.

Speaker 70 And in that moment, faint hope died.

Speaker 25 I believe that she was dead.

Speaker 78 This was a murder. This wasn't any accident.

Speaker 25 This was definitely not an accident. It was definitely a murder.

Speaker 71 But if that wasn't horrifying enough, there was one more thing in that shed.

Speaker 55 This.

Speaker 13 It was a poster board for a criminal justice class Laura had taken at the community college.

Speaker 23 A project on serial killers.

Speaker 31 She had a fascination with serial killers. And so you naturally ask, well, why?

Speaker 102 Are you a serial killer?

Speaker 100 And if that was a real question, then...

Speaker 98 What were your fears of what could happen?

Speaker 30 I had very, very real fears that he was going to abduct and that he was going to harm someone else. I knew he had a firearm.
I knew clearly at this point in time this man is willing to commit murder.

Speaker 30 This man is willing to do heinous, unspeakable things.

Speaker 7 Detective McLaughlin had no idea then

Speaker 15 how right his instincts would be.

Speaker 54 Coming up, a young woman alone with an unexpected visitor.

Speaker 26 He unlocked the door and sat in.

Speaker 27 the car really fast and he had a gun just pointing it at me.

Speaker 59 I didn't think I was going to live another day.

Speaker 57 I didn't think I was even gonna see the moon that night.

Speaker 20 When Dateline continues.

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Speaker 20 Returning to our story.

Speaker 19 There was panic.

Speaker 20 Young Kaylee Sawyer was missing, taken by a wannabe cop.

Speaker 112 He had a fascination with serial killers.

Speaker 20 By now, police are certain Kaylee is dead.

Speaker 30 There's also a large rock. Half of it at least was saturated in dried blood.

Speaker 62 This is not a good sign at all.

Speaker 30 It is not.

Speaker 20 And this killer wasn't done.

Speaker 113 It kind of felt like that.

Speaker 28 They're probably going to find my body in a ditch somewhere.

Speaker 20 Unless cops could find him first.

Speaker 20 And suddenly, there he was.

Speaker 115 Hi, everybody. I just want to say that.

Speaker 115 I apologize for everything I've done.

Speaker 20 Now, new twists in this hair-raising story.

Speaker 33 Hang on a second. You've got to explain that to me a little bit.

Speaker 34 Well, what do you suggest?

Speaker 20 Here again is Keith Morrison.

Speaker 97 Monday evening, late now, 48 hours after Kaylee Sawyer vanished.

Speaker 1 Kayleigh's friends and family had scoured the streets and alleys in woodbots around Bend, Oregon, and found no sign of her anywhere.

Speaker 19 I told my husband,

Speaker 2 I'm not stupid.

Speaker 19 I know she's not with us anymore.

Speaker 19 And I know that the police know something.

Speaker 19 And I just need them to tell me.

Speaker 113 About five minutes later, there was a knock on the door.

Speaker 94 That's when they told her what they'd found.

Speaker 42 That Kaylee was dead.

Speaker 8 And the guy named Edwin Laura was on the run.

Speaker 73 And now detectives worry what or who was next.

Speaker 30 I'm looking at a desperate man, and anything can happen at this point in time, is my thought. Anything can happen.

Speaker 43 Oh, it would.

Speaker 35 9 p.m., 130 miles northwest of Bend in the capital city of Salem, Oregon.

Speaker 49 A 19-year-old saleswoman named Andrea Mays was walking to her car, tired, at the end of her double shift at the Ross Dress for Less.

Speaker 117 I was supposed to leave like in the middle of the afternoon, but I decided to stay and cover someone's shift.

Speaker 109 As she got in her car she got out her phone and snapped a selfie it was just a long day i was on my snapchat just took a picture of like working the double shift that's when she saw him i just in the corner of my eye somebody reaching into her window

Speaker 27 that's when he unlocked the door and sat in the car really fast and he had a big backpack with him and he had a gun just pointing it at me.

Speaker 15 She flinched.

Speaker 10 Had to be a prank, she thought.

Speaker 59 I was really confused because at first I thought it was someone I knew.

Speaker 44 But then she saw this wild look.

Speaker 108 It just happened all so fast.

Speaker 120 Then I saw his face and I was like, what are you doing?

Speaker 120 And then he started yelling at me.

Speaker 2 Where was the gun?

Speaker 117 It was just in between him and his backpack.

Speaker 69 He just had his backpack on his lap and then he had his gun like hiding it, just pointing it at me.

Speaker 23 What did he say to you about the gun?

Speaker 57 He didn't say anything.

Speaker 28 He just kept it pointing at me until I started driving.

Speaker 16 And then Andreas Andreas started laughing.

Speaker 14 Had to be a prank.

Speaker 28 And that's when he got really upset and he put the gun on my thigh and he had told me, he's like, do you think this is a game?

Speaker 57 Do you think this is a joke?

Speaker 28 Because I will shoot you.

Speaker 119 I'm not joking.

Speaker 9 Her body reacted then almost before her mind.

Speaker 1 What does it feel like?

Speaker 119 Just this whole part of my face into my ears was like numb and burning hot and red.

Speaker 106 And I remember I was just gripping the steering wheel so hard.

Speaker 117 I wasn't even crying at this point yet because it was just so unreal to me.

Speaker 64 He told her he killed a girl and Ben.

Speaker 44 Made her look as she drove at the stories about Kayleigh on her phone.

Speaker 81 How did you not become hysterical?

Speaker 119 I don't know.

Speaker 117 In my head, I just kept thinking, it'll end soon.

Speaker 29 Maybe he'll just leave or maybe he'll just find another car.

Speaker 71 She thought about her family.

Speaker 44 Would she ever see them again?

Speaker 8 Was he going to kill kill her? And then somehow it occurred to her.

Speaker 1 Her car had an oil leak.

Speaker 52 If she made him believe it was worse than it was, would he let her go?

Speaker 59 I kept telling him, it's not going to make it.

Speaker 117 You just need to find a different car, find somebody else, because I can't help you.

Speaker 28 And he's like, he kept telling me, we'll figure it out.

Speaker 60 We'll just keep adding oil.

Speaker 72 And so they did.

Speaker 50 Stopped at a service station and then a McDonald's where he kept her hostage while he bought food.

Speaker 109 It was the most frustrating feeling ever knowing that I probably talked to maybe

Speaker 117 five people while he had me captive and nobody even suspected a thing.

Speaker 80 Were you trying to make him understand what was going on?

Speaker 120 I wanted to, but he had told me that if I even made eye contact with anybody, he would shoot them, he would shoot me, that he didn't care.

Speaker 28 He had nothing to lose.

Speaker 13 And so again, she drove.

Speaker 72 He held the gun.

Speaker 62 And a strange thing happened.

Speaker 29 There was a couple of times where I really thought like I wasn't going to go home ever.

Speaker 118 I wasn't going to see my family.

Speaker 69 So when I would feel like that in those times, I was just in a like, I don't care attitude.

Speaker 29 And I would snap at him. I would say things.

Speaker 40 And instead of crying or getting terribly upset, you'd get mad.

Speaker 60 Yeah.

Speaker 60 Huh.

Speaker 119 He would ask me things about my personal life and I would just shut him down and tell him, no, I'm not going to tell you that.

Speaker 46 This This is the guy who's got the gun pointed at you.

Speaker 120 Yeah.

Speaker 117 I could have put my life in a lot of risky positions, but at the time, I just stopped caring a little bit.

Speaker 81 What do you mean, stop caring?

Speaker 99 Like, I'm dead anyway. I might as well.

Speaker 28 Yeah, it kind of felt like that.

Speaker 119 I'm probably not going to go home.

Speaker 69 I'm probably never going to see anybody again. They're probably going to find my body in a ditch somewhere or find me dead in a motel or something.

Speaker 97 And sure enough, 90 miles down the interstate, he told her, we're stopping.

Speaker 33 They pulled up to a motel.

Speaker 1 They're relaxing.

Speaker 9 Here he is on surveillance video, keeping an eye on Andrea while he checks in.

Speaker 5 Once inside their room, he handcuffed her.

Speaker 83 He took a shower, told her, now it's your turn.

Speaker 28 In my head, I thought I'd rather die than shower in front of you.

Speaker 59 And so I told him no, and he got really mad and threatened me and I told him I don't care what you do to me at this point because that would be honestly worse than dying is to shower in front of you I would rather die what did you do did you did you have a thought maybe I could make a break for it here while he's in the shower or anything yeah it's kind of silly I mean I've watched criminal minds and law and orders through my favorite shows I was handcuffed the whole time in there so A couple of times I thought I could probably just put the handcuffs around his neck and, you know, maybe make him pass out or something to give me enough time to run or drive away

Speaker 117 But then the thoughts would come into my head well it could go really bad if I'm not strong enough to do that and he's the one with the gun

Speaker 44 He moved her handcuffed her to the bed forced her to take a sleeping pill with his face down beside hers

Speaker 113 He like licked my ear.

Speaker 110 I remember that I just started crying again.

Speaker 119 I was freaking out because I had never never been in a position like that.

Speaker 106 I didn't really know what to do.

Speaker 72 He was, she knew, about to rape her.

Speaker 8 And just then, the alarm on her phone went off.

Speaker 119 I don't even know what that alarm was for,

Speaker 59 but that alarm probably saved my life because he saw it and was like, what's this? What does that mean?

Speaker 117 And then I don't know where I got the idea, but I was like, that's my

Speaker 117 timer.

Speaker 118 I have to take medicine every day.

Speaker 28 And he was like, for what?

Speaker 118 And I was like, well, I have an STD.

Speaker 106 And he was like, you have a what?

Speaker 57 And I was like, I have an STD and I've been living with it and I have to take medicine every day.

Speaker 1 She didn't.

Speaker 8 But.

Speaker 75 Did you think if I tell him that, he won't want to rape me?

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 102 And you were right.

Speaker 109 Yeah.

Speaker 71 Then the kidnapper's phone rang.

Speaker 44 It was summoned from his family saying the cops were after him.

Speaker 35 He put on a bulletproof vest, announced they were leaving.

Speaker 8 And as Andrea's car sputtered down the highway in the pitch dark, far from any town or help, Laura frightened her with a fake story that he came from a family of rapists and murderers, known criminals.

Speaker 28 He had started telling me that we're going to Los Angeles, that he has family there.

Speaker 69 I didn't think I was going to live another day.

Speaker 110 I didn't think I was even going to see the moon that night.

Speaker 12 And oh, it would get worse.

Speaker 12 Though, when it did.

Speaker 57 I didn't see anything.

Speaker 59 It just...

Speaker 26 My whole head just went black.

Speaker 92 Coming up.

Speaker 101 A shooting.

Speaker 29 The gun just went off.

Speaker 20 Another kidnapping.

Speaker 117 He's like, you just need to drive.

Speaker 109 You just need to get me out of here.

Speaker 20 And a Facebook message from a killer.

Speaker 122 And I have to wanna let family member

Speaker 123 Andrea that she's fine and she will be fine.

Speaker 10 The morning sun lit up the sky over Mount Shasta as dawn arrived in Northern California.

Speaker 44 It was Tuesday, 52 hours after Kaylee disappeared.

Speaker 85 Andrea Mays and her kidnapper, Edwin Laura, had been on the road eight hours, and her car was overheating.

Speaker 113 And he told me we're going going to have to get a new car.

Speaker 118 This one's not going to make it.

Speaker 7 5 a.m.

Speaker 14 Laura pulled off the road in Huaika, California at this Super 8 motel, where he saw a man unloading his car, checking into his room.

Speaker 5 He grabbed Andrea, dragged her along, and burst in on the man.

Speaker 15 And that's when it happened.

Speaker 59 The guy was like, you guys have the wrong room.

Speaker 110 You need to leave.

Speaker 27 And Edwin, he's like, we just need your car.

Speaker 119 We're not going to hurt you.

Speaker 113 We just need to get out of here.

Speaker 118 And the guy was like, no, help, help.

Speaker 40 And

Speaker 6 what happened?

Speaker 113 Then that's when he told him to stop yelling.

Speaker 120 And he told him if he didn't stop, that he would kill him.

Speaker 29 And the man just didn't stop yelling.

Speaker 106 He just kept yelling for help.

Speaker 69 And then the gun just went off and everything just kind of went black in my head.

Speaker 18 The man touched his stomach, went down.

Speaker 69 And all I remember was my ears were ringing really loud, and I was just being pulled out of the room.

Speaker 86 They ran, Laura pulling Andrea with him.

Speaker 57 And then I'm like thinking, well, I just seen him shoot someone in front of me.

Speaker 28 What's to stop him from shooting me in the back on my way to the car?

Speaker 118 And I was just scared.

Speaker 120 I didn't know what to do.

Speaker 29 And so all I saw ahead of me was just the gas station, and that's where he was running to.

Speaker 74 Here, the mobile station.

Speaker 5 Somebody was gassing up.

Speaker 64 In the car, an older woman and two young men, one behind the wheel.

Speaker 1 Laura jumped in, pulled Andrea in too.

Speaker 117 He's like, you just need to drive.

Speaker 109 You just need to get out of here.

Speaker 80 He had the gun out.

Speaker 29 Yeah, he was pointing it at the driver at the time.

Speaker 59 And so the grandma was still freaking out.

Speaker 28 She was screaming.

Speaker 109 And he kept telling them, like, you need to shut her up or I will.

Speaker 2 I'll kill her if you guys don't make her stop.

Speaker 64 He slammed the doors, took off.

Speaker 7 Behind them, someone called 911.

Speaker 76 EMTs arrived just in time to save the life of the man Laura shot.

Speaker 1 Well, in the car, the older woman was hysterical.

Speaker 119 She just really didn't understand what was going on.

Speaker 19 I mean who would?

Speaker 37 Laura took their cell phones and made Andrea throw them out the window.

Speaker 106 I was just trying to throw them as hard as I could to the grass to make sure that they wouldn't like break so maybe they could pinpoint where we were going or something.

Speaker 1 And then 30 miles down the road he suddenly stopped.

Speaker 117 And he's like, okay, you guys just all get out.

Speaker 48 That is all but Andrea who as she watched them leave, saw that one of them still had a cell phone.

Speaker 29 I think it was one of the boys who was smart enough to just keep it.

Speaker 16 Out of the car, the boy called 911.

Speaker 95 Well, Laura, unaware of what the boy was doing, kept driving.

Speaker 109 He was going like 120 at that time now, and he was just zooming in and out of cars, honking at people, just driving reckless and crazy.

Speaker 81 So, how did you understand that somebody was following you?

Speaker 118 I didn't.

Speaker 27 It was just him that kept saying, oh, there's a helicopter.

Speaker 29 It's following me.

Speaker 69 They know where I'm going.

Speaker 29 And I think he was just paranoid.

Speaker 102 Did you see the helicopter?

Speaker 117 I didn't.

Speaker 106 And a couple of times he could even hear it, I guess, and he would tell me, do you hear it?

Speaker 27 Where's the helicopter?

Speaker 69 And I would look, and there would be nothing there.

Speaker 8 Paranoid.

Speaker 93 But before long, they heard the sirens.

Speaker 54 Saw the highway patrol cars behind them.

Speaker 76 Here's the dash cam video.

Speaker 108 They're approaching

Speaker 86 But even then, screaming down the freeway, Laura made phone calls to his family and recorded this on Andrea's phone.

Speaker 115 Hi, everybody.

Speaker 123 I just want to say that

Speaker 123 I apologize for everything I've done. Most likely, I'm going to get caught.

Speaker 123 And

Speaker 123 I'm sorry about that girl.

Speaker 123 About that girl in Central Oregon. And I just want to let family members,

Speaker 123 Andrea, that she's fine and she will be fine because

Speaker 123 so far she's been doing

Speaker 123 what I've been told to do.

Speaker 123 You know, and if you guys are wondering

Speaker 123 if I have done dirty things to her, no.

Speaker 123 Alright, I'm not that kind of guy. You know, I just

Speaker 123 I used to kill that other girl, you know, and

Speaker 123 I regret it.

Speaker 123 I regret killing her.

Speaker 123 You know, she's kept screaming and

Speaker 123 I had to selling her forever.

Speaker 123 So all the cops that

Speaker 123 not to shoot us,'cause if they shoot us, then that's not my fault. Okay, but

Speaker 123 sorry, everybody.

Speaker 94 Bye.

Speaker 10 And just here, Andrea made the last in a series of remarkable decisions.

Speaker 72 Decisions that very likely saved her life and certainly saved her family anguish.

Speaker 59 And so he wanted me to post that to my Facebook and share it with everybody.

Speaker 109 And I remember, I think he had me caption it.

Speaker 29 crazy murderer on the loose or something to that effect.

Speaker 117 And I kept telling him, like, I have a lot of people. I don't want to see this because he did record me in that video a couple of times.

Speaker 121 And I didn't want teachers or pastors and friends and people to see that.

Speaker 59 It'd be terrified for you.

Speaker 27 So vulnerable, yeah.

Speaker 117 So I just changed the setting on the post to just only me to see it. So it looked like it really did post, but only I could see it.

Speaker 119 He was threatening to kill me if I didn't post it.

Speaker 69 Obviously I was a mess and just crying and I was freaking out thinking is this going to end or is this going to keep going because he wasn't pulling over at this point.

Speaker 121 There was like maybe five or more cop cars that were on our tail just following him with their lights.

Speaker 99 That would be one of the most dangerous moments for you.

Speaker 60 Yeah, I was...

Speaker 63 Murder-suicide comes to mind.

Speaker 27 Yeah, I kind of felt like I was stuck in the crossfire a little bit, just

Speaker 120 in the middle of everything.

Speaker 56 It was at this very moment, 6.40 a.m., when Edwin Laura called 9-1-1.

Speaker 124 9-1-0 emergency reporting.

Speaker 89 Yes, hi, this is Edwin Laura, and I'm the guy on Interstate Interstate 5.

Speaker 89 Going at high speed. I just want to say I am going to turn myself in.

Speaker 71 The dispatcher, try to understand.

Speaker 89 Are you by yourself, or? No, I have someone with me. I kidnapped her in Oregon.
She's innocent. Her name is Andrea.

Speaker 89 What's her last name? I'll let you, I'll let her give her a last name if you can call her family, okay? Hello.

Speaker 124 Yeah, hi. What's her name?

Speaker 89 Andrea?

Speaker 124 Okay, are you hurt at all, Andrea?

Speaker 89 No.

Speaker 13 Then, sounding a little sorry for himself, Laura started bargaining.

Speaker 89 I want to ask you a favor. Uh-huh.
So I have asthma. Do you have asthma? Okay.
Yeah, so you tell him not to be too rough on me, because, you know, I can't barely breathe right now.

Speaker 89 You want me to throw my gun out of the window right now? No, no, no, no, no, no. No, no, no.

Speaker 124 Don't do that right now.

Speaker 89 All right.

Speaker 124 I just want you to stop basically.

Speaker 89 I'll just give it to Andrea in case she wants to kill me.

Speaker 124 No, no, no.

Speaker 10 Finally, just before 7 a.m.

Speaker 124 Don't keep this chasing you, just pull over.

Speaker 89 Yeah, I'll pull over right now.

Speaker 89 Okay, I'll let you talk to Andrea. Okay, just don't hang up.
I'm not. Don't hang in.
She doesn't want to hear anyone.

Speaker 89 Hello?

Speaker 124 Yeah, hi, Andrea.

Speaker 89 Are you okay?

Speaker 124 You don't need any medical or anything?

Speaker 89 No.

Speaker 124 See you stopping?

Speaker 89 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 89 Get your hands up.

Speaker 124 Can you see? Do they have him in custody already?

Speaker 89 Um, they're putting the cups on him right now.

Speaker 124 The cups on him. I'm gonna hang up and out, and you walk backwards towards him with your hands up, okay?

Speaker 47 Okay.

Speaker 8 But it still wasn't over for Andrea.

Speaker 44 She was arrested, too, and it was hours before detectives from Oregon arrived and explained that Andrea was the innocent one, a victim.

Speaker 94 And then, two more things happened in this remote California police station.

Speaker 54 First, a horrifying story, a confession about what that man did to Kaylee Sawyer.

Speaker 8 And then, quiet and unnoticed, an extreme complication.

Speaker 20 Coming up, a brave young woman's battle.

Speaker 30 He said she became coming to and tried to fight. She was trying to turn emergency lights on, trying to grab the radio, trying to honk the horn, anything that she could do because she knew.

Speaker 20 And an odd request from a killer.

Speaker 25 It was shocking to me to hear him say that.

Speaker 20 When dateline continues.

Speaker 94 Red Bluff, California, Tuesday, Tehema County Jail.

Speaker 35 After a three-day two-state crime spree, killing, kidnapping, shooting, carjacking, manhunt, high-speed chase,

Speaker 71 and finally surrender.

Speaker 10 Edwin Laura seemed eager to talk to the detectives who'd just arrived from Oregon.

Speaker 30 We were informed, actually, as we were walking into the jail that he's been asking for you, been waiting for you.

Speaker 8 The question was, what would he say?

Speaker 101 But as the detectives soon learned, a better question might be, what wouldn't Laura say?

Speaker 45 My name is Sergeant Eckwood.

Speaker 96 I'm Mac.

Speaker 105 Wait, I shouldn't introduce myself because he has known me.

Speaker 30 I'm sure you guys already know who I am. There's that really, really strong hint of arrogance and ego behind that statement.

Speaker 94 And right away it was obvious.

Speaker 10 Laura seemed to be enjoying his new role as notorious criminal.

Speaker 115 Well all I gotta say is that I want to go home and I'm gonna do everything possible to go home. Yes sir.

Speaker 122 And home in Oregon?

Speaker 126 Yes.

Speaker 13 But first things first, the detectives implored, where was Kaylee Sawyer?

Speaker 122 We have not been able to find Kaylee's body. Can you please help me find her body immediately before we start talking about anything else?

Speaker 122 The reason why I'm asking you that is

Speaker 122 I've done this a bunch of times.

Speaker 105 I want to have told you where the body is.

Speaker 12 And so Laura went to work drawing a crude map.

Speaker 127 X26 Highway.

Speaker 75 That's going towards Sigma.

Speaker 36 He dumped her along a highway, he said, said, 10 miles outside of Redmond.

Speaker 95 There's a mailbox

Speaker 127 right here

Speaker 128 that reads 18700.

Speaker 8 Really?

Speaker 46 1-8-7-00?

Speaker 81 Isn't that kind of a significant number?

Speaker 25 It's significant because the California Penal Code for Murder or Homicide is 187.

Speaker 15 And just about then, as the detectives were talking to Laura, Their colleagues back in Oregon found the car he'd taken from his parents and the note inside on which he'd written repeatedly 1-8700

Speaker 15 had he been toying with them playing games

Speaker 30 a wannabe cop who left the call signal for homicide in a note is that an address or is it just a message or what the hell is it and that's exactly what we're thinking that is something that he spent time developing and looking for.

Speaker 30 And it just so happened to fit his

Speaker 30 desire to hide her body, but hide it in a way that

Speaker 30 he's not hiding his body of work from the public. He wants it seen eventually.

Speaker 62 Detective Beckwith got on the phone to Oregon.

Speaker 122 He said it's directly across from the senior box on the south side of the highway.

Speaker 78 They went to look and just like that.

Speaker 25 It's about five minutes after that that we locate Kaylee.

Speaker 72 Here is where she was, a ravine just off the highway.

Speaker 44 And Kaylee Sawyer's family got the call they dreaded.

Speaker 99 The last time I got to

Speaker 1 kiss my baby girl on the forehead was through a black body bag.

Speaker 79 We asked when we can see her identify the body and they would not let us see her. Their words were, you cannot see her because she's unrecognizable.

Speaker 82 Unrecognizable is the haunting word.

Speaker 3 How do you accept that?

Speaker 42 Kaylee's mom couldn't bring herself to visit the morgue.

Speaker 19 I just knew that if I went,

Speaker 19 I might climb up on that table with her and not leave.

Speaker 74 Back in jail with the detectives, Laura seemed pleased to have an audience and had decided to reveal more.

Speaker 116 And worse,

Speaker 84 like the reason why Kaylee's body was unrecognizable.

Speaker 100 He was in his cruiser, he told them, at Central Oregon Community College, the cruiser that looked just like a real police car, in a uniform that made him look just like a real policeman.

Speaker 95 And along came Kaylee Sawyer after that argument with her boyfriend.

Speaker 30 Lights turn and

Speaker 127 I mean, I think I had her that hard, a bumper with the patrol car.

Speaker 8 An accident?

Speaker 35 That's what he told his wife, Isabel, the morning he left, and what he claimed in the note he left behind in his car.

Speaker 25 He kind of stuck to that, I hit her with the car story for a little bit.

Speaker 6 You knew it wasn't true.

Speaker 25 We knew it wasn't true, and it was

Speaker 25 easy to get past that.

Speaker 1 How?

Speaker 14 Well, remember, Detective McLaughlin, the former pastor, had searched Laura's home the previous day and found his Bible and evidence of his apparent devotion to his church.

Speaker 12 The hook he now could see for this very moment.

Speaker 105 I was in your house. I saw the Bible.
I know you thumbed through it a lot. I see that you've tithed for months consecutively.

Speaker 14 He appealed to Laura the way a pastor would with Psalm 24,

Speaker 8 clean hands and a pure heart.

Speaker 30 I said, do you clean one hand when you wash your hands or do you clean them both?

Speaker 2 Well, both.

Speaker 30 Okay, so now's your time to tell me the real story because what you just said

Speaker 30 didn't happen that way. And he begins to describe, to my shock and quite frankly, terror, listening to the things that he had done.

Speaker 16 The truth, Laura said, was that when he saw Kaylee that night, he knew she was the one he'd been looking for.

Speaker 86 And up welled a familiar urge.

Speaker 44 His urge to kill a beautiful woman.

Speaker 25 He saw her as a target the moment he laid eyes on her.

Speaker 6 And so he cruised alongside Kayleigh, excited, stopped, got out of his cruiser in his cop-like uniform, trying extra hard to look safe, hiding his ugly intention.

Speaker 25 Mr. Laura offered her a ride, and she refused.
She didn't want a ride from him.

Speaker 127 It's like Benic and I spread her little toll.

Speaker 104 He told her, shut up, shut up, shut up.

Speaker 122 Did she pass them out?

Speaker 25 In his words, he put put her in the car. He didn't open the door.
She didn't get in willingly. He put her in there.

Speaker 23 What did he do to her then?

Speaker 25 He took her cell phone from her. He told us that he knew that he felt a sense of relief once he took her cell phone.
She's completely under his control in a vehicle that she can't escape from.

Speaker 35 Can't escape because the campus car had a security cage in the back seat, just like a real police car.

Speaker 93 Then, with Kaylee unconscious, he drove up the hill to a secluded parking lot,

Speaker 17 B-12.

Speaker 30 He said she became coming to and tried to fight. She started to crawl through the plexiglass caged back seat.

Speaker 30 She was trying to turn emergency lights on, trying to grab the radio, trying to honk the horn, anything that she could do to, because she knew.

Speaker 128 So he grabbed the choke hole

Speaker 104 and I was telling her, Shut up, shut up, shut up, shut up.

Speaker 128 She was just struggling to scream.

Speaker 115 So I throw her down and

Speaker 115 put my head over the rock on the head.

Speaker 18 The rock, he saved, and squirreled away like a trophy in his backyard shed.

Speaker 30 And he decides at that point that he does want to sexually assault her. And he sexually assaults her there while she is dying

Speaker 30 and drags her up behind a tree. and finishes the job with the the big 60, 70 pound rock.

Speaker 47 And that's what

Speaker 122 I think she died because I heard her breathing,

Speaker 128 her last breath.

Speaker 116 Afterwards, he told them he felt bad about what he did.

Speaker 104 She looked raped this girl. She didn't deserve

Speaker 128 what I did to her.

Speaker 11 Laura's confession continued for six hours.

Speaker 33 They asked if he wanted to call someone.

Speaker 5 He said, could I call the media?

Speaker 40 Like have a press conference about it or something?

Speaker 83 I mean, what in heaven's name?

Speaker 25 It was shocking to me to hear him say that.

Speaker 1 He wanted the whole world to know.

Speaker 2 Wanted the whole world to know.

Speaker 8 Detectives believed they had him.

Speaker 55 Nothing could have been further from the truth.

Speaker 21 Coming up, a question from a killer that could let him walk free.

Speaker 6 Well, that had to be a bad day.

Speaker 37 It was. It was

Speaker 37 so hard.

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Speaker 73 On Tuesday evening, they had a vigil.

Speaker 15 From all around Ben, people gathered, most of them silent in disbelief.

Speaker 74 They had planned this in hope, as they searched. And during those two days, the whole town seemed to adopt Kayleigh Sawyer.

Speaker 86 Ben's daughter, they took to calling her.

Speaker 70 But now Ben's daughter was dead.

Speaker 8 And unbelievably, at the hands of a security guard at the local community college, Edwin Laura.

Speaker 19 I would have never been able to tell my daughter. Your monster, your boogeyman, will pull up alongside you in a car that looks like a police officer's car.

Speaker 19 And he will get out and he will be dressed like a police officer.

Speaker 19 And

Speaker 19 instead of him coming to help you, he has come to harm you. Evil takes on many faces.

Speaker 14 Sort of thing that gives a cop nightmares.

Speaker 1 You have to wondered a lot.

Speaker 76 What possessed him to be so apparently devoutly religious and to want to be a cop and want to be a kind of an upstanding member of society, but at the same time he had this stuff going on.

Speaker 25 Yeah, I still wonder about that to this day. For him to go from no criminal history to the most severe criminal history in a matter of three days

Speaker 25 was alarming and is still alarming to me.

Speaker 83 Wow.

Speaker 102 Does that make you think perhaps there are some other things in there that he got away with over the years?

Speaker 1 I believe so.

Speaker 25 I believe that if he's not a serial killer, he was on his way to being a serial killer.

Speaker 70 So, what to do with a man like Edwin Laura, now charged with aggravated murder and kidnapping and other crimes?

Speaker 35 It was the DA, John Hummel's job, to decide.

Speaker 31 Good people can do bad things, and they will be ashamed, embarrassed, and it'll eat them up until they die.

Speaker 30 That's not Edwin Laura.

Speaker 31 That is not Edwin Laura. He

Speaker 31 seems to be proud of what he did.

Speaker 78 So what seemed to you then to be the most appropriate charge, the most appropriate action to take against him?

Speaker 30 Well, this is a case that was eligible.

Speaker 31 for the ultimate sentence. It's a death penalty eligible case.

Speaker 31 Me personally, I'm morally opposed to the death penalty, but I was not elected by the voters of Deschutes County to impose my morals on our laws.

Speaker 48 In fact, the death penalty was a sentence that Edwin Laura himself feared.

Speaker 10 And in that confession with Oregon detectives, he'd said he'd told his wife as much the day he made his getaway.

Speaker 128 I don't want to spend the rest of my life in prison.

Speaker 128 Yeah.

Speaker 128 I don't want to get death penalty out of that penalty.

Speaker 56 Before the DA made a decision, he and his staff spent weeks in meetings with law officers.

Speaker 15 Kaylee's family, defense attorneys.

Speaker 8 They assembled all available evidence.

Speaker 100 They held a mini-mock trial with his deputies arguing both for and against the pursuit of the death penalty.

Speaker 8 And then.

Speaker 20 If the facts in this case

Speaker 31 did not warrant a sentence of death, then I, in essence, would have been saying that no crime ever in Deschutes County would be appropriate for the death penalty.

Speaker 31 And I decided to ask the jury to impose a sentence of death.

Speaker 80 And so they prepared for trial.

Speaker 1 They went over and over all that happened, minute by minute.

Speaker 21 They interviewed and re-interviewed witnesses, poured over the physical evidence.

Speaker 54 They examined in minute detail Laura's six-hour confession, ensured he'd been read his rights.

Speaker 105 You do have the right to remain silent?

Speaker 84 The detectives even went the extra mile and read Lara his consular rights.

Speaker 43 Though he was a permanent legal U.S.

Speaker 12 resident, he was born in Honduras.

Speaker 122 You want us to notify the consular's office at this time?

Speaker 77 No.

Speaker 86 It was quite a bit later they discovered one bit of video had been overlooked somehow.

Speaker 1 Didn't turn up for months?

Speaker 35 Mind you, it didn't exactly jump out.

Speaker 10 What Laura said off camera, almost as an aside.

Speaker 131 My lawyer, I'm okay.

Speaker 131 No, it's direct to request a lawyer. Okay.

Speaker 131 So when you get your phone calls, you can request a lawyer.

Speaker 86 And that was it.

Speaker 7 The moment passed. Laura, though entitled to phone calls, did not ask again and did not phone anyone.

Speaker 74 So there was a hearing.

Speaker 10 The judge listened to that and other arguments from the defense.

Speaker 48 Listened carefully to the prosecution and tossed out Edwin Laura's confession.

Speaker 8 All of it.

Speaker 12 Every word.

Speaker 6 Wow, that had to be a bad day.

Speaker 21 It was.

Speaker 37 It was

Speaker 98 so hard.

Speaker 46 It's hard to take, huh?

Speaker 1 Very hard to take.

Speaker 22 And it's something we're going to live with, and we do live with every day of our lives. Until the time they put me under the grass, I'm gonna have a hard,

Speaker 6 you know, hollow heart.

Speaker 8 Well,

Speaker 95 there was other evidence besides his confession, like Kaylee's purse and shoes and that rock covered in her blood all found in Laura's backyard shed

Speaker 12 and Kaylee's blood inside Laura's security company car and on her body. Evidence that she fought hard to survive.

Speaker 25 She left behind evidence that was incredibly damning. She had his DNA under her fingernails.

Speaker 44 So, investigators encouraged the DA, do not lose faith.

Speaker 34 Push ahead.

Speaker 31 You know, they said, you know, look,

Speaker 77 we got this.

Speaker 102 Sure. We can do it.

Speaker 31 We have the evidence. If we thought it was a death penalty case before,

Speaker 31 there's no reason to back down now.

Speaker 102 Except.

Speaker 43 That everything changed again.

Speaker 39 Coming up, a phone call with a killer.

Speaker 33 Hang on a second. You've got to explain that to me a little bit.

Speaker 34 Well, what are you suggesting?

Speaker 20 And a time to heal.

Speaker 132 I'm not a victim. I am a survivor.

Speaker 20 When dateline continues.

Speaker 30 She looked riding this girl.

Speaker 104 She didn't deserve

Speaker 8 what I did to her.

Speaker 1 Edwin Laura told the whole story, held little, if anything, back.

Speaker 12 And not a word of it would be heard by any jury, any time.

Speaker 99 Inadmissible.

Speaker 84 So, as prosecutors prepared, even without that confession, to ask a jury to give Laura the death penalty, his defense team asked for a meeting with the DA, made an offer.

Speaker 5 Laura would plead guilty.

Speaker 77 and agree to a sentence of life without parole.

Speaker 80 But with Kaylee's family, go for that.

Speaker 101 A retired judge sat down with Kaylee's mother and told her what a jury conviction her desired result would almost certainly mean.

Speaker 19 He explained to me what happens in a death penalty case and the appeals.

Speaker 19 As long as he's living on death row, I would be too.

Speaker 46 Some choice.

Speaker 46 Yeah.

Speaker 19 I would have had to show up to every appeal.

Speaker 19 I would have had to

Speaker 19 be Kayleigh's voice.

Speaker 38 And so family members stuffed down their grief and anger and said, make the deal.

Speaker 17 On a January day in 2018, Judgment Day arrived for Edwin Laura.

Speaker 5 The courtroom was packed, the first row filled shoulder to shoulder with members of the major crimes team.

Speaker 73 Scattered in the gallery behind, Kaylee's large extended family and many friends.

Speaker 41 Her boyfriend, Cam.

Speaker 74 At the defendant's table, Edwin Laura.

Speaker 95 And finally, also in the courthouse that day, that young woman Laura was charged with kidnapping during his getaway, Andrea Mays.

Speaker 59 This was the first time that I had seen him since everything happened.

Speaker 106 It was just hard even sitting there because I could see him trying to look over here.

Speaker 11 There was something in the air that day.

Speaker 90 You have no idea how much irreversible damage this piece of s ⁇

Speaker 90 has done to my extended family. And I'm going to fill this carcass full of lead.

Speaker 64 Finally, it was time for Edwin Laura to speak.

Speaker 17 What could he say?

Speaker 6 Oh boy.

Speaker 112 Something.

Speaker 112 Something I would like to speak to whoever's willing to listen. God Almighty, who aren't headed.

Speaker 17 But then, there was this.

Speaker 112 I'll ask you, please,

Speaker 112 heal the hearts of all those broken hearts.

Speaker 54 Papa Jim, quite thoroughly disgusted, stormed out of the courtroom.

Speaker 112 I ask you, please, heal the hearts of this family.

Speaker 25 Felt like it was staged. And in retrospect, I wish I had the courage to stand up and tell him to turn around because all those people had to sit there and watch that happen, that show.

Speaker 90 And they can be so good, rest in peace.

Speaker 22 The death sentence, even if they carried it out, would have been too quick for him.

Speaker 6 You know, he's going to die a lot slower death.

Speaker 8 After receiving his life sentence for Katie's murder, there was still the matter of what Laura did to Andrea Mays, how he'd hunted her, caught her, terrorized her, talked of his urge to kill.

Speaker 98 It was like something out of a horror movie, which she endured, said one prosecutor.

Speaker 8 Sometimes it all overwhelmed her.

Speaker 23 Tell me about the damage you went through, that it caused in your life.

Speaker 28 I distanced myself a lot from everybody, from my family, from friends, from church members, from my pastor.

Speaker 106 There's days where I wake up and I just really don't want to talk to anybody.

Speaker 120 I don't want to do anything.

Speaker 76 And so as she waited more than a year for her case to make its long, slow way through the legal system, Andrea fretted over whether or not to be in federal court when Laura was finally sentenced for kidnapping and terrorizing her, whether to face him, whether to say something.

Speaker 50 But then, last month at the courthouse in Eugene, Oregon, there she was.

Speaker 132 I just didn't want to look back 10 years from now and just regret not coming or not saying anything.

Speaker 37 And so Andrea summoned up every ounce of courage she could and said her peace to his face.

Speaker 42 No cameras in this courtroom, so she told us what she said to him in court.

Speaker 132 I'm not a victim. I am a survivor.
I'm a warrior. I defeated him and I am truly blessed.
Now with this over today, I feel like I can really just move past it and move forward.

Speaker 35 For his crimes against Andrea, a federal judge handed Laura another life prison sentence.

Speaker 77 Laura has also agreed to plead guilty to a host of California charges related to his crime spree.

Speaker 77 Now, you may recall that Laura, right after his capture, asked if he could call the media and said at his Oregon sentencing,

Speaker 112 something I would like to speak to whoever's willing to listen.

Speaker 44 An honest desire to explain?

Speaker 83 Hello. Edwin?

Speaker 88 Yes.

Speaker 13 We were skeptical.

Speaker 50 So earlier this month, we called his bluff.

Speaker 71 I understand you've been wanting to tell your story for some time.

Speaker 44 But was he serious about explaining himself?

Speaker 47 No.

Speaker 50 Instead, Laura floated a strange little conspiracy theory about his bank statements.

Speaker 88 Yeah, I wish they would have gotten my statement, my bank statements, every time I stayed in Salem, Oregon. I wish they would have gotten that, but they never did.

Speaker 88 Right now, I'm like frustrated when it comes down to that. You know, but at this point, I honestly don't have nothing to say.

Speaker 33 Well, hang on a second. You've got to explain that to me a little bit.

Speaker 34 What are you suggesting?

Speaker 88 Well, once they look into it, they'll be able to figure it out.

Speaker 83 But f figure out what?

Speaker 88 There's a lot of things, though. Right now, I don't have nothing to say.

Speaker 8 Well,

Speaker 2 that's that.

Speaker 99 And with that, Laura's conversation with us was over.

Speaker 71 Of course, we checked, and of course, his bank statements, like everything about him, have been examined in infinite detail.

Speaker 35 And the little charade in our phone call?

Speaker 42 Who knows why?

Speaker 16 Laura's wife, Isabel, by the way, who was never charged with any wrongdoing, filed for divorce, resigned from the Benn Police Department, and moved away.

Speaker 7 But it's not done.

Speaker 8 Oh, no.

Speaker 35 Kaylee Sawyer's family has sued Central Oregon Community College, alleging it is responsible for Kaylee's death, since, among other things, it enabled Laura to impersonate a police officer.

Speaker 15 The college declined to comment on the pending lawsuit, but in court papers, it has denied liability.

Speaker 73 We're going to go ahead and call the Senate Judiciary Committee to order.

Speaker 20 We have a meeting.

Speaker 94 And this spring, Kaylee's family, Father Jamie, this could have been anyone's daughter. And friends in public safety, including Oregon's Attorney General.

Speaker 108 I come before you today to join my partners in law enforcement.

Speaker 35 Have been pushing Kaylee's law in Oregon's legislature to make sure what happened to her won't happen to anyone else on a college campus.

Speaker 11 The law would require campuses to conduct nationwide background checks on security officers, require campus security vehicles to have GPS and video systems similar to taxicabs, and prohibit campus security vehicles from having red and blue lights or security cages like police cars.

Speaker 71 like the car Edwin Laura used to kidnap and kill Kaylee in 2016.

Speaker 73 We don't want to see other families experience the same tragedy

Speaker 73 of losing a loved one.

Speaker 71 Kaylee's law will be law within a month, as Oregon's Governor Kate Brown has said she will sign it when it reaches her desk.

Speaker 133 In the height of their tragedy, Kaylee's family stepped up and said, we're going to make Oregon a better place. We're going to introduce legislation.

Speaker 133 We're going to make sure that no young person has to go through what our daughter did.

Speaker 17 Perhaps there's a salve for the madness of such a terrible story.

Speaker 54 Andrea has struck up her relationship with Kaylee's father, Jamie, and the family.

Speaker 5 It's been good for them and good for her.

Speaker 59 I think out of this whole messy, ugly thing,

Speaker 59 this was the good that came out of it.

Speaker 106 And we both kind of found each other and

Speaker 106 saw a light that we didn't know was there.

Speaker 54 Her ordeal with Edmund Laura did not leave her unscathed.

Speaker 8 Far from it.

Speaker 10 These have certainly not been easy years for Andrea Mays.

Speaker 109 He tried to stop me, he tried to

Speaker 28 break me, tried to ruin my life, and for almost two years I let it.

Speaker 119 And now I'm realizing, you know, I'm stronger and smarter and

Speaker 69 braver than I thought, and

Speaker 40 I'm glad.

Speaker 80 Andrea has discovered something.

Speaker 41 She is a powerful woman.

Speaker 86 And for herself,

Speaker 17 and for the memory of that young woman they call Ben's daughter, for Kaylee Sawyer, she prevails.

Speaker 20 That's all for now. I'm Lester Holt.
Thanks for joining us.

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