The Footprint at the Lake

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Speaker 5 Tonight on Dateline.

Speaker 6 The last thing I said to her,

Speaker 6 and it just tears me up because

Speaker 8 I didn't tell her good night.

Speaker 7 I didn't tell her I love her.

Speaker 10 This is a sinister scene.

Speaker 3 It is. We see footprint and blood on the floor.
We see handprints. It was pretty evident that there was some type of struggle.

Speaker 7 Now they broke in the past

Speaker 7 and attacked your mother.

Speaker 10 She's a beloved teacher and now she's been murdered.

Speaker 11 We had no idea what was happening.

Speaker 12 Three people in this family were within the household while this murder was going on.

Speaker 3 Somebody would have heard something. Nobody did.

Speaker 10 How could you not hear her screaming if she's being attacked?

Speaker 3 That's what everybody thought.

Speaker 6 They fingerprinted us. Did you have anything to do with your mom? Did you kill your mom? I mean, they asked my siblings that, obviously, asked my dad that.

Speaker 7 I did not hurt my wife.

Speaker 8 I was waiting for the cuffs to come out.

Speaker 13 Somebody came in, they knew what they were after.

Speaker 3 Somebody out of control, in a rage,

Speaker 3 never seen anything like it, or never heard of anything like it.

Speaker 14 A mother and teacher murdered in a crime no one heard, no one saw, with a twist no one could predict.

Speaker 3 I'm Lester Holt, and this is Dateline.

Speaker 3 Here's Andrea Canning with The Footprint at the lake.

Speaker 10 Like most small towns in North Texas, the people of Alney spend their Fridays cheering on the high school football team.

Speaker 10 And the Alney Cubs need all the help they can get.

Speaker 8 At one point, we were ranked number three in the state for the longest losing streak.

Speaker 10 But win or lose, there was one cheerleader who never gave up on them, Teacher Manuela Allen. Do you remember Mrs.
Allen in the stands with her cowwell?

Speaker 11 I would hear that over the band sometimes.

Speaker 10 Morgan Wilk was on the team.

Speaker 11 Yeah, everyone loved Ms. Allen.

Speaker 10 That's why what happened to Mrs. Allen was so devastating, so bewildering.

Speaker 10 It was Sunday, July 7th, 2019. Manuela's husband Peter, also a teacher, says he was awake surfing the web in the living room with the TV on.

Speaker 10 A little before 9 a.m., his teenage daughter Kiara popped into the room.

Speaker 8 Kiara comes to me and says, Dad, where's mom?

Speaker 7 I'm like, well, where do you think?

Speaker 8 She's in the bedroom. Probably.
Well, she goes, Dad, the door is locked. So I was like, well, go through the garage and check on her.

Speaker 10 Their house has an unusual layout. There's a second door to the bedroom that's attached to the garage by way of a small laundry room.
Kiara went around to check.

Speaker 8 And she goes, yeah, there's blood all over the place.

Speaker 3 Blood?

Speaker 15 A lot of it.

Speaker 10 But no Manuela. So what are you thinking?

Speaker 8 Nothing. My mind was blank because I had no idea what could have possibly occurred.

Speaker 10 Not only was Manuela gone, so was her car. Peter says the only thing that made sense in that confusing moment was that maybe his wife had driven herself to the emergency room.

Speaker 8 Did she cut herself really badly? And what in this room could she possibly have cut herself on?

Speaker 10 So you're thinking she's been injured?

Speaker 8 Yes, she somehow injured herself.

Speaker 3 And she's driven herself to the hospital?

Speaker 8 Yes.

Speaker 10 Peter and his daughter raced to the local hospital. Manuela wasn't there.
Once back home, he called the police.

Speaker 16 911, where's your emergency?

Speaker 16 I don't know how to describe it.

Speaker 16 My wife is missing, and there's blood all over her bedroom.

Speaker 10 Minutes later, an officer from the Alney Police Department arrived, body cam rolling.

Speaker 17 Morning, Mr. Allen.
Good morning.

Speaker 17 What's going on this morning? I have no idea.

Speaker 17 My wife's gone. Her car is gone.
My daughter comes and says, hey, Dad, where's mom? And I go, well, just in the room sleeping. And she goes, well, no, the door is locked.
I slept on the couch.

Speaker 17 Car is gone. So she goes through there and unlocks it.
She comes up and says, Dad, there's blood all over the place.

Speaker 17 Okay. And I have no idea.

Speaker 17 You have your ID with you, Mr.

Speaker 14 Allen. Yeah.

Speaker 10 The officer followed Peter inside.

Speaker 17 Okay,

Speaker 17 good and step out here. Go ahead and come out here.

Speaker 17 Usually your keys are hanging right there. Okay, let's go ahead and go out to the living room.
And you say you've looked in the garage and the car's gone.

Speaker 17 Well, the car would be parked right in the front, yeah. Shows to be a white arcadia, passing information along for our officers to look for it.

Speaker 7 Are you in full panic mode?

Speaker 8 No.

Speaker 8 That's not my personality.

Speaker 10 But there's blood in the bedroom. Your wife's missing.
Her car's gone.

Speaker 10 Aren't you thinking something really terrible has happened?

Speaker 8 Of course. But I don't freeze up.
I don't lock up. I stop and try to reason through the situation.

Speaker 10 Peter Allen served in the military, dealt with explosives. He's not one to panic.
Patrol Sergeant Dan Burbeck of the Young County Sheriff's Office was next to arrive.

Speaker 3 Hey, what's going on?

Speaker 17 This is him. This is his daughter.

Speaker 3 I made contact with Mr. Allen, who's in the living room with his daughter, Kiara.
I asked them to...

Speaker 3 step outside to get him outside of the house and then I find out that their son Darian is still upstairs in his bedroom.

Speaker 17 I need y'all to go ahead and step out here on the porch.

Speaker 3 And I proceed upstairs to go get Darien.

Speaker 10 What's Darian doing when you get upstairs?

Speaker 3 He's on his video game with a set of headphones on, still playing a video game.

Speaker 10 He has no idea. No idea.

Speaker 10 Happening in the floor beneath him.

Speaker 3 Right.

Speaker 10 Darien was almost 20 at the time. The sergeant told him to head downstairs.

Speaker 6 I was like, why? And the sheriff was like, well, we can't answer any questions right now. And I was like, well, can I at least get dressed? Put on some clothes.

Speaker 6 They were like, no, you got to get out of the house.

Speaker 18 Just have a seat.

Speaker 17 Your mom's missing.

Speaker 18 Okay.

Speaker 6 They were like, yeah, we can't get a hold of her either.

Speaker 8 Like, her phone's just off.

Speaker 6 Don't know where she is. And we've tried looking around.

Speaker 17 Since the last time you saw her, last night, probably about

Speaker 17 nine o'clock. Hey.

Speaker 17 Can you ping a phone? We're already attempting to locate her.

Speaker 17 So I've checked both hospitals here and didn't find anything.

Speaker 10 Peter, the military guy who said he had nerves of steel and had been a green beret, was now on the verge of cracking.

Speaker 8 Oh, worried danger for it. One of the few times in my life I've ever been actually scared.
One of the only few times. But I can't let that fear grip me because I've got to find my wife.

Speaker 10 What on earth had happened to Manuela Allen?

Speaker 17 They're drag marks through the garage where she was drugged, out the back door.

Speaker 10 Lieutenant David Wilk happened to be driving through the tiny town of Alney that Sunday morning. You're probably thinking to yourself, this is just going to be a, you know, a slow day, typical.

Speaker 9 Yes, that's what I'd like to have on a Sunday.

Speaker 10 He worked for a neighboring county, so he hadn't heard about the police activity at the Allen residence.

Speaker 3 I came through only and saw the saw crime scene tape up around Mr.

Speaker 6 and Mrs. Allen's house.

Speaker 9 So I pulled over and talked to one of the city officers that I know and said, asked him what was going on.

Speaker 3 Is everything okay with the kids?

Speaker 10 What are you told?

Speaker 20 I'm told at the time that Mrs.

Speaker 9 Allen was missing and it doesn't look good.

Speaker 10 The news was upsetting and personal. He knew Mrs.
Allen, knew the entire Allen family.

Speaker 9 Mr. and Mrs.

Speaker 3 Allen were both teachers in the school district. and

Speaker 3 the kids we knew, I knew them through my children.

Speaker 10 Lieutenant Wilkes' son is Morgan, the student and football player from Alney High School. Morgan thought the world of Mrs.
Allen.

Speaker 11 She was always laughing. I've never seen her have like a bad day.

Speaker 10 Manu, as she was called, grew up in a Bavarian village in southern Germany. In college, she came to the United States to study English, and that's when she met Peter.

Speaker 8 My wife was strikingly gorgeous, just beautiful.

Speaker 8 I seen her walking up the stairs, and even though that was almost 30 years ago, I can tell you she had a red t-shirt on with biker shorts that were multicolored, beautiful blonde hair.

Speaker 10 You two fell in love in this short period of time, and it was enough for her to uproot her life and move to America.

Speaker 8 God graced me. God bless me.

Speaker 8 Yes.

Speaker 10 Manu encouraged him to become a teacher. He taught math.
She taught German and English. They rounded each other out at home and at school.

Speaker 8 If you wanted the truth, the hard, cold truth, you came to Mr. Allen.

Speaker 8 If you wanted the hard, cold truth told you in a very gentle and loving way, you went to Mrs. Allen.

Speaker 11 There was this one kid every day, give her a hug.

Speaker 10 Every day. Oh, she's one of those teachers.

Speaker 11 Yes, every day. She would always have a smile on her face.

Speaker 10 Your mom sounds very playful, sense of humor.

Speaker 3 Oh, yeah.

Speaker 6 You could usually hear her on the other side of the hallway in between classes, just cracking up with other kids. She was loud,

Speaker 6 but she was also very caring.

Speaker 10 In addition to caring for the kids at school, Manu and Peter had four children of their own, Kiara and Darian, and also Melanie, a recent high school graduate, and William, the eldest.

Speaker 10 Manu liked looking out for the teenagers who seemed to need it the most.

Speaker 13 She was accepting of all people.

Speaker 10 Verle Wolverton is a family friend.

Speaker 13 And, you know, you get one kid that was maybe,

Speaker 13 you know, on the outside. She would bring them in, help them succeed, whatever they needed.

Speaker 10 That included students like her daughter Melanie's boyfriend, a football player who struggled at school and at home.

Speaker 10 Peter remembers a time the boyfriend showed up at his door in the middle of the night.

Speaker 8 My wife is the one who said, yeah, let him stay. So we had taken him in when he needed it.

Speaker 10 She cheered him on the same way she rooted for the rest of the Alni Cubs. One story that I absolutely love is Manu cheering them on with her cowbell.
I hate that. I love it.

Speaker 8 You weren't the one sitting next to her going, ow.

Speaker 8 I lost half my hearing because of that.

Speaker 10 Because both of the Allens were teachers, they had summers off. And in the summer of 2019, Peter, Manu, and their daughters had spent three weeks visiting Manu's family in Germany.

Speaker 10 They'd been home for a few days. And then it was that Saturday night.
Peter says he had some drinks and laid down on the couch.

Speaker 8 She came in, gave me a kiss goodnight, said goodnight, and went to bed.

Speaker 10 Now it was morning and Manu was gone. In her place, blood.

Speaker 10 And investigators were trying to make sense of what they were hearing from the family.

Speaker 17 If you'll stay here, I'm going to just kind of walk around.

Speaker 3 As we enter into the kitchen, we see footprint. and blood on the floor.

Speaker 3 And then as we start working our way towards the bedroom, we see handprints that appear that the person holding onto the door jam was drugged back towards the bedroom.

Speaker 3 It was pretty evident that there was some type of struggle. Across the hallway, there was blood on the carpet.
There was more blood on the door.

Speaker 3 We get into the bedroom and we see a large pooling of blood at that location.

Speaker 10 He noticed that Manu's bed was bare and the sheets were missing. And in the adjacent laundry room, there was a clue on the floor.
Bloody streaks.

Speaker 17 There are drag marks through the garage where she was drugged, out the back door.

Speaker 10 Like a body's being dragged?

Speaker 3 Like a body's being dragged, yes.

Speaker 10 As he surveyed the scene and spoke to the family, the investigator just knew this missing person's case was not likely to end well.

Speaker 10 And everyone in that house was going to have to start answering questions.

Speaker 17 I'm going to tell you, if something sinister happened and there's somebody involved in it.

Speaker 10 Manu Allen was missing and her home was a crime scene.

Speaker 17 So it looks like she might have been killed in the bedroom. We have tracks going along the side of the house here, like somebody pulled around and loaded her in.

Speaker 10 The Alney Police Department needed help, and it came by way of Michael Shrubb of the Texas Rangers.

Speaker 3 I was actually at church and received a call regarding a missing person.

Speaker 10 Any other details or just please come on over here?

Speaker 3 I was told there was a whole lot of blood at the scene. They just felt it was a very suspicious circumstance.

Speaker 10 While other Rangers went to assist the sergeant at the house, Ranger Schraub headed to the sheriff's office to meet the family.

Speaker 3 I just wanted to get a baseline story from everybody so that we would know where to go after we investigated the scene itself.

Speaker 10 Manu's daughter, Kiara, was just one day shy of her 16th birthday. In a near whisper, she told the ranger about the night before.
She said she'd come home late from her boyfriend's house.

Speaker 7 I got home at like 11.50.

Speaker 7 Okay.

Speaker 7 So 11 and 50 or so, you were home.

Speaker 3 Who was at home when you got home?

Speaker 7 My dad was here, and my mom was in her room. Did you see both of them? I just saw my dad.

Speaker 3 Peter actually opened the door, let her in, and then she went to her bedroom and then started FaceTiming with her boyfriend that she had just left and she described just basically falling asleep with FaceTime running.

Speaker 7 I woke up at 8.45

Speaker 7 and I just got ready to go to the gym and I went to go put my clothes in the washing machine and go to my mom's room because I have to go there to get to it and the door was locked when I tried to go in there and I mean usually it's not locked.

Speaker 7 So I went and asked my dad where she was and he looked really confused and he just told me to go check around

Speaker 7 to the garage.

Speaker 10 Then Kiara explained how she went through the other bedroom door and saw the bloody mess. She also saw a knife.

Speaker 7 I picked up a pocket knife on the ground to see if there was blood on it.

Speaker 3 From the investigation standpoint, of course, you're like, don't pick it up. Of course.

Speaker 10 Or

Speaker 10 any movie anyone's watching, you scream at the TV, don't touch the knife.

Speaker 3 But that's information I needed to have.

Speaker 10 So, what had happened in that bedroom? Kiara said she had no idea. She hadn't heard a thing.

Speaker 3 That was very odd to me because her bedroom literally shared a wall with the master bedroom.

Speaker 10 Does seem like if there was a violent struggle, someone would hear something.

Speaker 3 The only thing I could think of on that is I don't know how Kiara was, but I know a lot of teenagers can sleep through anything.

Speaker 7 We're just trying to figure out the circumstances

Speaker 7 surrounding your wife. Oh, that's weird.

Speaker 10 But what about the husband, whose own story put him right down the hall? At the sheriff's office, Peter repeated what he'd told arriving officers,

Speaker 10 how he'd spent the night on the couch. He said that was normal for them.

Speaker 7 One, my wife snores really bad.

Speaker 21 Two, I snore really bad.

Speaker 7 Three, I had a few drinks last night. And me and my wife haven't agree.
If I have more than one period of no fear, I sleep on the couch.

Speaker 10 And like his daughter, Peter said he didn't hear anything unusual coming from the bedroom all night. The living room couch where he slept is down the hall from the bedroom.

Speaker 3 You would think in that situation somebody would have heard something. Nobody did.

Speaker 10 By this time, District Attorney Dee Peavy and Assistant DA Philip Gregory had been out to look at the scene.

Speaker 12 There was so much blood, you had to have heard something, and it was just concerning to everybody involved. Where Mr.
Allen was sleeping on the couch was within 20, 25 feet of a major crime scene.

Speaker 12 This is not a large house.

Speaker 22 I was just completely taken aback by that. I really did not know how to take that at the time, but facts were unfolding.

Speaker 10 The story sounded far-fetched, so naturally, the ranger started asking questions about the state of Peter and Manu's marriage.

Speaker 7 My wife is a Roman, old-school Roman Catholic

Speaker 7 from Germany in Lavaria. That's where we just were for the three weeks.

Speaker 23 Goes to church every Sunday.

Speaker 7 No. Okay.
Me, I'm a man, so I'm a dog. I look, but I don't touch.
I'm married. No.

Speaker 10 He also asked about Manu's relationship with their four children.

Speaker 7 Any particular conflict with any of the kids?

Speaker 7 My children would never touch my wife. Okay.
And my wife,

Speaker 7 I don't know if this is sound right, but she's now built like a tank.

Speaker 7 She can be tanky. Somebody, if she...

Speaker 7 If somebody came in, I don't know what happened, but if somebody came in,

Speaker 7 she put up one hell of a fight, I'll tell you that.

Speaker 10 But before the ranger could probe any deeper, there was a knock at the door. There'd been a discovery.
Arch County Sheriff's office.

Speaker 16 Hey, this is going to be the one he's looking for.

Speaker 16 What?

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Speaker 10 After learning his friend Manu was missing, the lieutenant from the county next door, David Wilk, joined the search. He was asked to check a popular swimming hole north of Alney called Lake Cooper.

Speaker 10 Why Lake Cooper?

Speaker 3 Maybe because that's where folks would go to get away from town.

Speaker 5 That's the only thing I can come up with.

Speaker 10 Right as he pulled up to the lake, he spotted something. A white SUV, the same type of car as Manu's.

Speaker 17 As soon as I came onto the lake, I could see it across over here, parked right about here to my left.

Speaker 10 So the SUV was here. Could you tell if she was in the SUV?

Speaker 17 At first, no, I had to get out and check.

Speaker 10 Wilkes switched on his body cam.

Speaker 17 Walked up there, and there was nobody in or around the vehicle.

Speaker 10 Does anything look suspicious with the vehicle?

Speaker 17 The way it's parked, the damage it had, and how it's high-centered, and then there was a brown smear on the left side of the vehicle that looked like dried blood.

Speaker 10 This was a surprise to the lieutenant. He hadn't been told about all the blood back at the house.
Now you're thinking this could be a crime scene?

Speaker 17 Crime scene, yes, ma'am. Somebody got hurt or whatever.
So I call in the tag number.

Speaker 16 28 is going to be Texas Lincoln Sam Victor.

Speaker 17 Verify it with our dispatch in Archer County.

Speaker 10 That it is.

Speaker 5 It is the one. It is her car.

Speaker 17 The one they were looking for, yes, ma'am.

Speaker 10 Do you just start looking around? Like, is she somewhere in the vicinity?

Speaker 5 Yes, ma'am. That's what I'm thinking.

Speaker 17 Maybe somebody, maybe there was a medical issue or something. So I start looking around and over here between these trees, I see what looks like material, cloth, sheets.

Speaker 17 And I walked down this little path right here up to the barbed wire fence, made a left, and that's where I found Mrs. Allen.

Speaker 5 Oh, my gosh. Underneath those trees.

Speaker 10 Manuela Allen was dead. Her body wrapped in her own blood-stained bed sheets.

Speaker 10 You know, Mrs. Allen.
How chilling is this that you're now seeing a body that you know in your heart is her?

Speaker 5 At this point, I'm more concerned.

Speaker 17 First, like I gotta protect a crime scene.

Speaker 16 Archer Canada Sheriff's Office. Hey, this is gonna be the one he's looking for.

Speaker 10 What?

Speaker 10 It's just heartbreaking because you know what's next. You know that what the family doesn't know, they're about to know.
Yes. And that the kids are about to have their hearts.

Speaker 18 All the hope they had is gone.

Speaker 10 Within minutes, Texas Rangers were on the scene, as was Sergeant Burbeck. What had been a missing person's case that morning was by afternoon a homicide.
This investigation is rapidly unfolding.

Speaker 3 Very rapidly. We have two crime scenes now.

Speaker 10 Manu had been stabbed and shot, her body partially covered.

Speaker 3 The killer took the time to take plants, or yucca plants, and cover her face with them.

Speaker 10 Investigators also noticed this, a footprint in the mud next to their victim's vehicle. And a few feet away, another clue.

Speaker 3 One of the investigators came across a bicycle track in the dirt leading away from where the car was parked.

Speaker 10 Your killer could have left on a bicycle. Correct.
Find that bicycle, find your killer. Correct.

Speaker 10 Down at the sheriff's office where Manu's husband was being interviewed, Ranger Schraub was asked to step out of the room.

Speaker 7 I'm going to get you a bottle of water because I'll make your mad be getting thirsty.

Speaker 10 That's when the ranger learned Manu's body had been found. How does the interview change then when you now have this information and you have to walk back in to see Peter and continue?

Speaker 3 At this point, I had to tell him, you know, his wife had been murdered, but at the same time, I didn't know if he was the one that did it.

Speaker 3 So it's a delicate situation because are you dealing with a victim in this situation or are you dealing with a murderer?

Speaker 5 They have found her vehicle where

Speaker 7 it's in the neighboring county and there's a body next to it dead body

Speaker 7 Yeah,

Speaker 7 but we haven't confirmed a hundred percent that it's her but considering the circumstances we believe it is

Speaker 7 We have people I think there's gonna be a criminal investigation. Yeah

Speaker 7 so your house is gonna be part of the crime scene

Speaker 10 Of course, Manu's children had to be told as well. Schraub offered to do it, but Peter said he wanted to break the news himself.

Speaker 7 I respect that.

Speaker 7 Maybe crack, but I got it made up.

Speaker 7 I've got the all the crime in the situation.

Speaker 10 By now, the Allen son William and daughter Melanie, who'd been out of town, had joined Darien and Kiara. They were waiting in a room down the hall.

Speaker 8 I walked in there.

Speaker 8 I had them all. I had called them all my kids over.
I gave them all a hug. I held them.
We all held each other. I said, they've just told me your mother is dead.

Speaker 8 Manu is dead.

Speaker 10 That's the most difficult thing a father would ever have to do.

Speaker 8 Yeah, it wasn't easy.

Speaker 8 It wasn't easy.

Speaker 10 Ranger Schrub was watching the scene unfold.

Speaker 3 I kept the video running because I wanted to be able to look at those reactions. Interesting.
Because we didn't know who was responsible for this.

Speaker 8 They all started crying.

Speaker 8 My youngest daughter, Kiara,

Speaker 8 kind of collapsed on the floor.

Speaker 10 Did you see any of the family members acting unusual or anything that struck you from that video?

Speaker 3 It did.

Speaker 3 I immediately noticed that her son was kind of away from everybody else.

Speaker 10 Darien, the son police had found playing video games in his room. What would his story be?

Speaker 3 In the very beginning of the interview, he was visibly shaking, which concerned me.

Speaker 10 Darian Allen remembers it like it was yesterday. The moment his father told him and his siblings their mother had been murdered.

Speaker 5 I was so crushed that I

Speaker 6 didn't know how to emotionally react. I didn't start crying.
I

Speaker 6 just

Speaker 10 stopped doing anything, really. Like, this isn't happening.

Speaker 6 Yeah, it was just like

Speaker 3 all the air just got sucked out of me.

Speaker 6 Just there's nothing. It's like, just, this is not real.

Speaker 10 Darian sat alone on the floor while his dad and siblings comforted one another.

Speaker 3 I definitely thought it was odd. At the time, it was something that I noted to myself personally that I thought was strange.

Speaker 10 Was he considered a suspect at all, a person of interest?

Speaker 3 Yeah, at that point, everybody in the house is definitely a person of interest. He would have been one of them, along with Kiara and Peter.

Speaker 10 Ranger Schraub pulled Darian aside to talk in another room.

Speaker 10 His body camera is still rolling.

Speaker 3 In the very beginning of the interview, he was visibly shaking, which concerned me that he may have something to do with it.

Speaker 7 Why?

Speaker 3 Just that reaction. I have to then decide, is he visibly shaking because his mother was murdered that day and the emotional stress and everything? Or is it because he had something to do with it?

Speaker 10 He asked Darian where he'd been the night before. Darian told us the same story he told the Ranger.
He got home from a friend's around 11.30.

Speaker 10 He couldn't sleep and spent the entire night awake in his room. What are you doing in your room?

Speaker 6 I was just playing video games, just hopping from one to the other, take a break, eat a snack, try to fall asleep. Just kept going back in a little cycle of play, eat, attempt to sleep.

Speaker 10 What was going on that night that you

Speaker 6 honestly couldn't tell you? I just

Speaker 6 couldn't sleep. I just

Speaker 3 felt off.

Speaker 10 He says he heard a rustling coming from the kitchen sometime between 3 and 5 a.m.

Speaker 6 I thought it was my dad, like rifling through this silverware. It was just kind of like the clanking of metal.

Speaker 6 I was like, oh, well, he's awake, getting himself a snack. So didn't think anything of it.

Speaker 10 Was that the only thing you heard?

Speaker 10 Yeah, that that was it if there was a violent struggle in that small house you would think that you would hear something yeah you would think in that situation somebody would have heard something never seen anything like it or never heard of anything like it

Speaker 10 darian told the investigator he and his mom were close but they didn't exactly see eye to eye on his future was she yawned to you about getting a job or was it just

Speaker 7 no she was just uh helping me out we kind of had a little disagreement because i

Speaker 7 i don't want to go to college, but she wants to go to college.

Speaker 10 The Ranger noticed a mark on Darian's hand.

Speaker 7 What did you do to your hand up there? This? Not that. The blister.

Speaker 27 Mow in the yard.

Speaker 3 He described the blister was from mowing the yard and so forth, which I guess could be understandable, but a blister could also be left from stabbing somebody potentially and the knife rubbing on the inside of your hand.

Speaker 7 Do you have anything to do with your mother's guns?

Speaker 5 Yeah, do you know who he did?

Speaker 10 The Ranger also spoke to the other Allen kids. 21-year-old William was on his own, no longer living in the house.

Speaker 3 Any idea who might be responsible for this?

Speaker 7 No, but I wish I did. I don't know.
I don't want you to want to hurt him.

Speaker 10 He also spoke to Melanie. She was 18 years old and had just graduated from high school.

Speaker 3 Near in college?

Speaker 7 I'm about to swim. Okay.

Speaker 10 Melanie was away for the weekend with friends the night of the murder.

Speaker 7 Who would you think that might be responsible for it?

Speaker 7 I basically have no idea because

Speaker 7 everyone I only loves my parents.

Speaker 7 I don't know who would do something like that.

Speaker 10 It was late in the day when the whole family was allowed to leave the sheriff's office. Their house was still a crime scene.
They had nowhere to go. Their whole world in pieces.

Speaker 11 Everything got just

Speaker 6 not even flipped upside down. It was like just shoved in a box, box shaken, and then just thrown it everywhere.
And you're just left to kind of pick up the pieces and try to put it back how it was.

Speaker 6 But some pieces are missing, some are destroyed, and you just...

Speaker 6 you're not given a guide on how to do it.

Speaker 10 The family spent the night at a friend's Airbnb.

Speaker 10 By the next morning, Manu's murder was rocking the town of Alni and all the kids who'd loved her as a teacher.

Speaker 3 It was just like...

Speaker 11 Almost like a tornado went through Alni. Everyone's all confused.
We don't know what's going on.

Speaker 10 Was everyone instantly scared?

Speaker 28 Scared in shock?

Speaker 11 Like, why would we go for Miss Allen?

Speaker 10 Students, parents, football fans, everyone in law enforcement knew their town would never be the same.

Speaker 22 It hits you more in a small community when something happens because if you don't know that person, you know someone that does know that person. It just has a ripple effect.

Speaker 5 Alney is small town America.

Speaker 12 You know, you've got the potential of a killer still running around in the streets. So you're feeling the external pressure from a community to get it done.

Speaker 12 And then you have the internal pressure as an investigator or a prosecutor to make sure it's done right.

Speaker 10 And the more they looked at the evidence, the more convinced they were that Manu's killer was someone close to her.

Speaker 3 There was no sign of forced entry.

Speaker 10 Someone was either inside or they knew how to get into that house.

Speaker 3 Correct. Yeah, somebody knew what they were doing and where they were going.

Speaker 10 They even knew where Manu kept her car keys.

Speaker 17 Usually her keys are hanging right there.

Speaker 10 Investigators saw a trail of bloody footprints that led right from the bedroom to those keys in the kitchen.

Speaker 3 The keys were always kept by the refrigerator, and that would have been something that would have been known to the family.

Speaker 10 The day after the murder, the medical examiner performed the autopsy.

Speaker 3 She had been stabbed like 47 times. There had been strangulation involved.
She had also received stab wounds to the back of the head, which

Speaker 3 just seemed very, very violent.

Speaker 10 So she's been stabbed dozens of times,

Speaker 10 strangled, shot in the face. Forgive my choice of words.
Why the overkill?

Speaker 3 It's personal. Whoever did this was very angry.

Speaker 10 The clues at the lake where her body was dumped reinforce that idea. Manu knew her killer.

Speaker 3 The effort that was taken at the scene where she was covered and then plants were put on her, that all took time.

Speaker 3 And typically, somebody that has no vested interest in the victim is not going to take that time to do those types of things.

Speaker 10 So, who would do that?

Speaker 10 Investigators thought they had a pretty good idea because back at the house, the evidence seemed to be pointing toward one person.

Speaker 21 Okay, why would somebody put on your socks and kill your wife?

Speaker 7 I have no idea.

Speaker 10 From the moment they set foot on the Allen's property, investigators had a hunch about who was responsible for what happened there.

Speaker 10 The husband.

Speaker 3 I actually pulled Officer Clark to the side and told him, I said, I think that we might be dealing with our suspect.

Speaker 4 Peter. Yes.

Speaker 17 He's probably going to be our number one suspect.

Speaker 3 Why did you feel that way?

Speaker 3 From experience and dealing with different crime scenes in the past, it felt like the information that he was giving us was trying to throw us in a different direction than what had actually occurred.

Speaker 10 The coroner let investigators know that Manu had defensive wounds on her hands. This had not been a quick struggle.
How could you not hear your wife screaming if she's being attacked? Sounds crazy.

Speaker 3 And that's what everybody thought.

Speaker 10 Five days in, investigators asked Peter to come back down to the sheriff's office.

Speaker 7 I start the interview by Jason Sherry of Peter Adams.

Speaker 10 Going into this second interview, did you think Peter was probably guilty?

Speaker 3 I thought it was a good possibility. Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 10 What is the strategy this time?

Speaker 3 We tried to just put a little more pressure on him. Another ranger actually did that interview at my request.
The goal there was to see what type of reaction he gave.

Speaker 7 I feel a lot better today.

Speaker 10 The conversation was friendly at first. Peter opened up about how hard things had been since the murder.

Speaker 7 You need some plants? You good?

Speaker 7 I've been crying for five days, but some little,

Speaker 7 which little more.

Speaker 7 Sometimes I cry, sometimes I'm so pissed,

Speaker 7 sometimes I'm so outraged.

Speaker 10 And he made it clear he wanted whoever was responsible to pay.

Speaker 7 I want him cut.

Speaker 3 I want that stand with you too.

Speaker 7 I want him dead.

Speaker 10 The Ranger walked him through his whole story again.

Speaker 7 When was the last time you saw your wife? Well, I lay down. I went to sleep that night.

Speaker 9 They talked for hours.

Speaker 7 I said, well, just go around through the garage. When I had one drink during the day, I slept on the couch.
I never thought something like this could happen.

Speaker 10 And then?

Speaker 21 And I'll be honest with you, Peter, and we've been sitting here for probably four or five hours right now talking. I think there's more to it than what you're telling me.

Speaker 7 Just listen to me.

Speaker 10 There were so many details the Ranger thought were suspicious, starting with Peter's assumption that his wife had cut herself and driven off to the hospital.

Speaker 7 We hauled ass to

Speaker 7 the emergency room at Old Dean.

Speaker 3 Normally, a person I thought would have called 911 and reported the scene that they found, but no, it did not make sense.

Speaker 10 Yeah, because like you must be thinking, I mean, wouldn't she wake up her husband and say, I've hurt myself. I need help.
Can you drive me to the hospital or can you call 911?

Speaker 7 Yeah.

Speaker 7 you knew whoever left that blood was not alive

Speaker 7 because that is too much blood it was even more far-fetched because Peter said he was a green beret who'd seen fatal injuries you knew that too because of your training I didn't know that too I thought my wife was hurt and I was hoping and praying she was hurt Nobody wants to think that their wife has been murdered in their house while they sit in the living room.

Speaker 7 What kind of a man do you think it makes me feel like knowing that I was sitting in there while some ass was in there killing my wife?

Speaker 10 As Peter went over the details of that night, there was something else that didn't make sense.

Speaker 23 I heard it start to go and then all of a sudden I didn't hear anything more.

Speaker 10 He said that morning, around 5 a.m., he heard his wife's car.

Speaker 7 I was thinking maybe my wife went to Halso's to get them coffee or something. I don't know.

Speaker 21 Does she usually get up at 5 and go get coffee?

Speaker 7 Well, every once in a while she would get up and go get milk, but that didn't make sense because we had just been shot from the day before. Right.

Speaker 7 None of this makes sense to me.

Speaker 7 None of it.

Speaker 10 Why would Peter hear that and not a violent murder in progress? In this second interview, Peter did recall hearing something in the house that night after all. A thump.

Speaker 7 I heard a little thud, but I thought it was my son coming down from upstairs. And that was it.
Thump.

Speaker 23 Whatever that's going to be daring.

Speaker 10 They also pressed him about some other details, like the footprints leading straight from the bedroom to the kitchen. Peter would know where his wife kept her car keys.

Speaker 21 People don't go straight in the house and know exactly where your keys are at to steal, to take the keys either.

Speaker 7 I know that doesn't make sense either.

Speaker 10 And then, there in the interview room, the ranger had a surprise for Peter. They had found a sock in the bedroom covered in blood and thought that sock matched some of the killer's footprints.

Speaker 10 Turns out it was a specific kind of compression sock Peter wore.

Speaker 21 The person who did this

Speaker 21 did not break into your house and put on your socks and kill your wife.

Speaker 7 It didn't happen. Hey, Peter.

Speaker 7 I did not hurt my wife.

Speaker 7 I don't, I cannot explain this. I don't know what happened.

Speaker 21 Okay, why would somebody put on your socks and kill your wife?

Speaker 7 I have no eye, Deve.

Speaker 21 Wearing your socks.

Speaker 7 You're wearing my socks. It makes no sense.

Speaker 21 It didn't make any sense they sneak into your room, put on your socks, kill your wife, go get the keys where nobody knew except for you and your kids,

Speaker 21 and leave without letting anybody...

Speaker 21 without anybody hearing it. It makes no sense at all.

Speaker 7 I have no idea.

Speaker 7 I did not harm my wife.

Speaker 10 What do you make of Peter and his answers and his demeanor with the pressure that's being put on him?

Speaker 3 Peter often brought up, you know, past military training, so wasn't sure if he was just covering up what he had done,

Speaker 3 was able to stay calm and collected as he had been trained to do in stressful situations.

Speaker 13 or if he was an innocent party.

Speaker 21 When this thing comes to a head and a jury believes you stabbed your wife 46 times,

Speaker 21 they're going to put you in the electric chair.

Speaker 7 I did not do it.

Speaker 10 Did you feel like his denials, his answers seemed genuine?

Speaker 3 I did not know at that point.

Speaker 7 I'm innocent and I know it and my kids know it.

Speaker 23 And if I lose, I lose.

Speaker 7 If you put me in the electric chair, I lose my kids, my kids lose their father, but at least I go down knowing that I didn't do this and had nothing to do with this.

Speaker 10 After more than five hours, Peter was free to leave. You let him go.

Speaker 3 Yeah, part of our judicial system is if you don't have enough, then you have to let him go. So that's what we did.
And we kept digging and kept going forward with the investigation.

Speaker 10 Turns out someone else close to Peter was going to do some investigating too.

Speaker 13 I sat on the couch and I had Darren go into the back into his mother's bedroom. I said, scream at me.
Scream as loud as you can.

Speaker 10 Manu Ellen had been dead for five days when her husband Peter walked out of his second marathon interview with police. Are you feeling like I'm suspect number one here?

Speaker 7 Yeah.

Speaker 8 I was waiting for the cuffs to come out.

Speaker 10 They're just turning up the heat on you.

Speaker 19 Oh,

Speaker 8 yeah.

Speaker 8 They tried.

Speaker 6 I didn't care if they thought I was a suspect

Speaker 8 because I expected them to think I was a suspect. It only made sense.

Speaker 6 The one who it usually is is the spouse.

Speaker 8 So I fully expected that.

Speaker 10 Word spreads that your dad might have done this. How were you all dealing with that?

Speaker 6 It was very, very irritating because uh it was just all over facebook and

Speaker 6 social media people saying i was husband

Speaker 6 daughter hell there was people

Speaker 6 i

Speaker 6 know and uh had worked part-time jobs with who were saying it was me why were people saying you did it i don't know i really don't The one I remember is hearing a friend tell me one of his coworkers said that it was me.

Speaker 8 Just, I don't know.

Speaker 6 I guess I always gave him a weird vibe or something.

Speaker 10 But it wasn't just town gossips making wild guesses.

Speaker 10 Peter's close friend, Verle Wolverton, is a former police chief who knows a thing or two about homicide investigations.

Speaker 10 And like Peter, he's retired military. He knows what kind of training Peter's had.

Speaker 13 He has certain capabilities.

Speaker 10 You're thinking he might have done this?

Speaker 13 I'm thinking maybe something happened. In my line of work, I've seen people that are very devoted to each other suddenly have problems.

Speaker 10 Verl drove down from Arkansas to help the family. He found Peter on the front porch.

Speaker 13 He was just talking about how they took her from me. You know, how I failed.
I mean, he was into

Speaker 4 his shame.

Speaker 10 Feeling the way you're feeling, did you ask him, did you have anything to do with this?

Speaker 3 The next day, I said, Peter, you're my friend.

Speaker 13 I'll support you. You know, I love your wife.
I love your kids. And I said,

Speaker 25 I got to know.

Speaker 4 And what did he say?

Speaker 13 He was face to face with me. He says, I did not do this.

Speaker 10 Like the Rangers investigating the case, Verl had a hard time believing that Manu was killed in the house and no one in the family heard a thing.

Speaker 10 The house has two stories, five bedrooms and two bathrooms packed into just 2,000 square feet. He decided to run a test and asked Darian to help.

Speaker 13 I sat on the couch and I had Darien go into the back to his mother's bedroom. I said, scream at me.

Speaker 6 I yelled as loud as I could. They were in the living room.
it they didn't hear anything at best they just heard like really a little bit and then we switched it around and i mean

Speaker 8 i'm 30 years younger than them and i have a little better hearing and

Speaker 10 it wasn't loud i wanted to hear it for myself first verl showed me the bedroom you're actually standing where where monu uh fell so this is where the blood was right here

Speaker 10 then i went down the hall about 20 steps later i was in the living room This is Peter and Manu's living room, and back then the couch was situated right here.

Speaker 10 We've also set the TV to the exact volume that it was in those early morning hours when this happened. Then Verle, still in the bedroom, yelled my name over and over again.

Speaker 17 Adria!

Speaker 10 Not hearing anything.

Speaker 29 Adria!

Speaker 10 Nothing.

Speaker 10 Not even a peek. I was a little skeptical because this is not such a big house, and I figured you would definitely be able to hear if somebody was screaming.

Speaker 3 It's very quiet back here.

Speaker 13 You got to understand that the construction of the house,

Speaker 13 this is a board-on-board construction, and the layout of the house makes it just nearly impossible to communicate through those rooms.

Speaker 10 So, thinking like a former police chief, Verl now wondered, if not Peter, then who?

Speaker 10 Verl agreed with the investigators that the attack was personal. You're thinking this is targeted? Yeah, I'm thinking that somebody.
Whoever did this knows this family.

Speaker 13 Somebody came in, somebody knew the family, they knew what they were after, and they completed their mission. That's what was very disturbing about it.

Speaker 3 And something in the blood trail caught Verl's eye.

Speaker 10 To him, it seemed the killer had paused for a moment outside of one of the kids' bedrooms. Melanie's.

Speaker 13 I'm going, okay, Melanie knew these people. Went right past Kara's door.
Melanie knew these people because they went to her door.

Speaker 10 Verle urged Peter to be patient with the investigation.

Speaker 13 His question was, why aren't they looking for this person? And I said, look, they have to go through a process. There's a process that must be maintained for the integrity of the case.

Speaker 13 I said, if you're going to get it right,

Speaker 2 you have to be looked at.

Speaker 10 You know your dad better than anyone. Was there any part of you that was thinking, could my dad have done this?

Speaker 6 I never once,

Speaker 6 not for a second,

Speaker 8 thought it was him.

Speaker 6 In fact, dari and his father were leaning on each other for support and protection lock the doors sleep with a gun you're kind of always a little paranoid was there that feeling that like what if this person comes back or they want our whole family yeah there was there was always that feeling from the very first day as soon as we got back to the house my dad and i went and made sure every window was secure.

Speaker 6 We put three-inch screws through the wooden window trim into the sills.

Speaker 3 Made it into a fortress. Yeah.

Speaker 6 Made it into a fortress.

Speaker 10 Things for the Allen family were either about to get much worse or much better because investigators had found a new witness, someone who'd been on his way to Lake Cooper the morning Manu was killed.

Speaker 3 He just asked the worker, hey, have you seen anything unusual this morning? And the worker actually said, you know, matter of fact, I did.

Speaker 10 Darian Ellen plays it over and over again in his mind. The last time he spoke to his mother, Manu.

Speaker 6 The last thing I said to her

Speaker 7 was,

Speaker 7 I'm gonna

Speaker 7 go.

Speaker 6 I'm gonna go to my friend's house. I'll see you later.

Speaker 19 And it just tears me up because

Speaker 8 I didn't tell her good night.

Speaker 7 I didn't tell her I love her.

Speaker 7 Yeah.

Speaker 10 Well, you don't need to say it. Yeah.
She knew it, right?

Speaker 10 And I'm sure you've said it a million times.

Speaker 7 Oh, yeah.

Speaker 10 Now, it was up to Texas Ranger Michael Schropp to figure out who killed her.

Speaker 3 I often tell people, you know, it's like a thousand-piece puzzle.

Speaker 3 You're never going to get the puzzle all the way completed, but you have to put enough of it together to where you know what's in the picture.

Speaker 10 Evidence from the house was still being tested, fingerprints, footprints, and possible DNA.

Speaker 3 What I felt like at that point was that if Peter had something to do with it, then something would come up as far as the physical evidence go confirming that he had something to do with it.

Speaker 10 And don't forget, there was evidence from the other crime scene as well. Remember that bike track at the lake next to Manu's car?

Speaker 10 Investigators talked to a witness who had been by Lake Cooper that very morning.

Speaker 3 He just asked the worker, hey, have you seen anything unusual this morning? And the worker actually said, you know, matter of fact, I did.

Speaker 3 While I was out here this morning, I saw a bicycle go by on the road. And he said, I never see bicycles out here at that time on a Sunday morning.
Oh.

Speaker 10 This is potentially a really lucky break here. Oh, potentially, yes.
Did your witness get a good look at who was on the bicycle?

Speaker 3 No, they just had a bicycle going down the road at a distance.

Speaker 10 The Rangers' next move move was to check the bikes in the Allen family's garage.

Speaker 3 None of the tires looked like they even matched what was found at the scene, so we didn't believe that any of those bicycles had anything to do with it.

Speaker 10 As suspicious as they'd found the stories from the people in the house that night, investigators had to consider a different scenario.

Speaker 10 It had to do with something everyone in town knew about the Allens.

Speaker 10 Peter is a gun collector. Did you think to yourself, maybe given Peter's extensive gun collection that people know about,

Speaker 10 maybe this was some type of burglary gone bad.

Speaker 3 Absolutely.

Speaker 18 When

Speaker 3 you looked at all the guns he had and everything, that's often a target of thefts and burglaries is people stealing guns. And I don't think he was shy about talking about his gun collection either.

Speaker 10 It could be worth a lot of money to someone if they broke in and stole a bunch of guns. It could be.
The Ranger knew the family was just back from summer vacation in Germany.

Speaker 10 Maybe a burglar thought they were still away.

Speaker 3 Then then they discovered oh my you know she's here and manuela you know startled them and you know the the violence started at that point and they they killed her this could in fact be a stranger despite the level of rage yeah absolutely i mean you have to leave everything or keep an open mind

Speaker 6 in fact there had been a gun burglary in town just that summer My friend's dad, his house got broken into, and a couple of his firearms and some money had gotten stolen.

Speaker 10 So this could be a target.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 6 I mean, everybody knows that he's kind of a collector of firearms.

Speaker 10 The sheriff's office started sifting through leads related to that break-in and a name popped up, Corey Taylor. Who is he?

Speaker 3 He's a troubled young man. He's got some run-ins with the law.
Just

Speaker 3 small town, struggling kid.

Speaker 10 This is a video investigators pulled from Corey's Snapchat account. Corey was 17 and went to Alney High School.
What can you tell us about Corey Taylor?

Speaker 5 So we had like kind of like athletes,

Speaker 9 band, and then other kids.

Speaker 11 He wasn't in football, he wasn't in band, so he's kind of off on his own and he was kind of quiet.

Speaker 10 Was he known to be a troublemaker?

Speaker 15 Maybe a little troublemaker.

Speaker 11 He was one of those kids, like, I'm not going to do my homework. I don't need to be in school type stuff.

Speaker 3 I was contacted by the investigators and asked to go to Alney and pick up Mr. Taylor and bring him to the sheriff's office for an interview.

Speaker 10 Sergeant Burbeck drove to an apartment building where Corey was staying. As he approached the stairwell, something caught his eye.

Speaker 3 Underneath the stairs is a little storage area, and I see a bicycle that is stored in that little cubby hole.

Speaker 3 The tread on the bicycle looked like it could have created the impressions that were at the lake.

Speaker 10 Now, lots of people have bikes, but...

Speaker 3 It was a long shot. I mean, I looked at it and it just kind kind of the light bulb went off.

Speaker 10 Yeah, there's something, you're feeling something here.

Speaker 3 Possible, yes.

Speaker 10 Find that bicycle. Find your killer.
Was this the bike investigators had been looking for?

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Speaker 10 Sergeant Dan Burbeck arrived to pick up Corey Taylor, the teenager investigators thought might be involved in that

Speaker 3 So I go ahead and knock on the door and Corey comes to the door.

Speaker 10 Does he look surprised?

Speaker 10 Or is he acting funny?

Speaker 3 Nervous, but not surprised.

Speaker 10 Of course, the first thing the sergeant wanted to know about was that bike he'd seen under the stairwell.

Speaker 3 I asked him who it belonged to.

Speaker 10 And was it his?

Speaker 3 No, it gave me the name of Julius Mullins.

Speaker 10 And who's Julius Mullins?

Speaker 3 To me, at that time, I had no idea. I didn't know him.

Speaker 10 The sergeant may not have known that name, but if you went to the All Ni football games, you'd know number three, Julius Mullins, was a running back on the Cubs.

Speaker 10 Was he the kind of guy that you wanted on your team?

Speaker 28 Yes.

Speaker 10 That you knew he was going to give it his all and back you up?

Speaker 11 Yes, he would always have your back and he would run every play you asked him to. He would get it done.

Speaker 10 Did you go to all the games?

Speaker 7 Oh, yeah.

Speaker 3 And I played. varsity football on that same field and to go there and watch him was definitely a proud moment.

Speaker 10 A proud moment, says Julius's dad, Adrian, for a kid who'd had plenty of struggles.

Speaker 3 He was super hyper. I mean, I know a lot of people say their children have ADHD, and just his focus on stuff, it was almost none, you know.
It was kind of just flying everywhere.

Speaker 10 Adrian says he and his wife made every effort to get Julius help.

Speaker 10 He says they got a mental health treatment. But in middle school, Julius got in trouble and spent time in juvenile detention.

Speaker 10 By sophomore year, he was struggling with his grades, but was excelling on the football field. He also had a girlfriend.
Remember, Manu and Peter's daughter dated a football player?

Speaker 10 That was Julius Mullins, that same kid Manu Allen had taken under her wing at school.

Speaker 3 She definitely was in his corner and wanted to help him any way she could. She was definitely a good influence for him.

Speaker 10 His dad recalls the relationship with Melanie was an intense first love.

Speaker 3 I think he might have been too caught up in the relationship. As young, young love, that will happen.
Right.

Speaker 10 After about a year of dating, they broke up. Kids at school recall that was intense, too.
Did he take it hard?

Speaker 11 I think so, because the beginning of the year, super nice, you know, sat up,

Speaker 11 would always talk. Towards the end of the year, he kind of sat back in his chair, had a hood up, kind of more quiet.
And I was just like, that's different.

Speaker 3 After that, he just kind of hung out with the wrong people.

Speaker 10 He started drinking?

Speaker 3 He started drinking. I knew he was smoking marijuana.
He was skipping school a lot.

Speaker 10 And it got worse.

Speaker 3 He

Speaker 3 had gotten charged with marijuana possession,

Speaker 3 and I told him that I couldn't have that around the other kids.

Speaker 10 His dad gave him an ultimatum. Straighten your life out and go to school or find a new place to live.

Speaker 3 You're laying down the law now. Right.
I tried to focus him on how he could, you know, keep on track, but

Speaker 3 he wasn't taking, he didn't adhere to my advice, you know.

Speaker 10 So Julius crashed where he could, sometimes sleeping in the high school gym, sometimes staying with Corey.

Speaker 10 Now Sergeant Burbeck was looking at his bicycle under the stairs and reporting back to the Rangers.

Speaker 3 I call investigators and ask them if they want me to bring Mullins in with Corey and tell them about the bike.

Speaker 3 And they said, yes, absolutely go get him and so I went back I asked him to accompany me to the sheriff's office

Speaker 10 the rangers were about to talk to both Julius and Corey first of all you understand you're not under arrest or anything like that you're just illness first corey told police that he knew nothing about the murder said he'd never even been inside the allen house you've never been in there not to 13 years ago

Speaker 7 i've barely even talked to me

Speaker 10 by this time the rangers knew corey's friend julius was melanie's ex knew he had a connection to the Allen family. So the conversation quickly turned to Julius.

Speaker 7 So what has he told you about Miss Allen going missing?

Speaker 7 He hasn't really said anything to me,

Speaker 7 but

Speaker 7 it's weird how he didn't even cry or nothing, and he supposedly was really close with Melanie's mom. So,

Speaker 7 I mean, I would cry if I look

Speaker 7 any closer because

Speaker 7 she was real nice to me in the hall, so.

Speaker 3 then Corey said something that really got their attention they started bringing guns in my house and he scared me and my grandma how did he scare me he just acts a little iffy Corey ends up telling me he had brought guns to his house and so that that piqued our interest as a potential you know could be could have been a suspect in this trying to steal Peter's guns do you think Julius had anything to do with it?

Speaker 31 He might have something to do with it because, I mean, he's been in the house, he knows what it looks like, he probably knows where everything's at.

Speaker 10 That was the story from one teenager. Maybe his friend did it.
What would the other one have to say?

Speaker 7 Holly, I still love you. I would never do something like that to you.

Speaker 10 Julius Mullins had been close with the Allen family, close with his teacher, Mrs. Allen, and head over heels for her daughter, Melanie.

Speaker 8 He'd come over, he'd eat,

Speaker 18 he was allowed to go into her room as long as the door was open.

Speaker 8 Yes, I'm old.

Speaker 19 I have rules in my house.

Speaker 10 Truth be told, Peter wasn't crazy about Julius as a boyfriend.

Speaker 8 We both thought he was very nice, seemed like a decent enough, nice enough young man,

Speaker 8 but an idiot.

Speaker 8 But if you try to break up your children's relationships with somebody that you know is not right with them, it just pushes them together. And this is so we just

Speaker 8 pulled back and stayed out of it, let her figure out this on her own.

Speaker 10 Darian remembers that after the breakup, Julius had been trying to get back together with Melanie.

Speaker 6 She said

Speaker 6 she'd received some weird messages from Julius. They were just basically along the lines of him begging her to take him back and wanting to talk to her and still be with her and whatnot.

Speaker 6 But she just didn't answer him.

Speaker 10 Then, after Manu's murder, Julius reached out again.

Speaker 6 He was trying to

Speaker 6 be the one to comfort her, but I mean, she wasn't going for it at all. She found it odd.

Speaker 10 Odd, because Melanie had a bad feeling about her ex. She'd initially told police she had no idea who could have killed her mother.

Speaker 7 Everyone

Speaker 7 loves my hair.

Speaker 7 I don't know who it is.

Speaker 10 But the next day, she went back to police to tell them she did have an idea. Maybe it was Julius.

Speaker 10 She wanted investigators to know her ex-boyfriend claimed he'd been in a gang and that he had an obsession with knives.

Speaker 3 Maoni actually suggested that he may have had something to do with it as well. But, you know, again, we're talking about an ex-boyfriend

Speaker 3 situation and you don't know how much weight to put into that.

Speaker 10 Peter had also mentioned Julius to investigators.

Speaker 23 He got mad at my older daughters and they'd been breaking up.

Speaker 7 So

Speaker 7 I'm not saying anything suspect.

Speaker 21 I'm just saying that lets you know.

Speaker 10 But in those early days of the investigation, they were looking hard at Peter. Despite those two tips, they hadn't gotten around to tracking Julius down for an interview.

Speaker 10 But now, after investigators found his bike, Julius was in an interrogation room. And the Rangers had plenty of questions.

Speaker 21 Tell me about Miss Allen.

Speaker 7 She's She's probably one of the people that's actually helped me the most.

Speaker 7 She was like basically kind of like my other mom because she like helped me out with stuff.

Speaker 7 She pulled me and get my together. She was a really nice lady.

Speaker 10 But when it came to Melanie's father, Julius knew Peter didn't like him much.

Speaker 21 Was there any type of beef between you and her parents at all?

Speaker 7 No. The beef...
The only type of beef I think was just between me and her dad because I was dating her.

Speaker 21 her.

Speaker 21 So how long did you and Melanie date?

Speaker 7 Uh,

Speaker 7 I think about

Speaker 7 a year and a couple months.

Speaker 7 Why did I break up? She said she wanted a break and then I was like, okay, I was like, I'm fine with that.

Speaker 10 Julius conceded the breakup had been hard. And he admitted he wasn't completely over it by the time he and Melanie texted about her mother's murder.

Speaker 7 She was like, my mom was was murdered and I was like, what do you mean? And she said, my mother's blood all over in the room and stuff.

Speaker 7 And I was like, I was shocked, like it hit me like hard.

Speaker 10 He told the Rangers he was aware that Melanie was suspicious of him. She'd already lashed out by text.

Speaker 7 She was like,

Speaker 23 a murderous bastard killed my mother.

Speaker 7 And then

Speaker 7 she was like, she said all these other things like towards me. She was like, was it you? Was it you a friend holly? He's like, did y'all y'all plan this

Speaker 7 but I like

Speaker 7 I wanted to like look at her and be like are you serious who do you think did this

Speaker 7 I really don't know

Speaker 21 is their daughter torn up pretty bad

Speaker 7 I want me to be honest with you Julia

Speaker 7 They think you did it.

Speaker 7 Yeah, I know.

Speaker 7 She texted me and she thought that I I did it and I told her, I was like, really, Melanie, I was like, I still love you. I would never do something like that to you.

Speaker 10 But like the investigators, Melanie knew the killer had to be someone familiar with their home and family. That stood out to the DA when she saw their text exchanges.

Speaker 22 Melanie's a sharp little girl because she inquiried of him, hey, did you do this? Because

Speaker 22 You knew where my mom's car keys were and the footprints that went into the kitchen, the bloody footprints went straight to the car keys and out the door to the car.

Speaker 21 So what we'll do here in a minute is I'll get your DNA.

Speaker 10 Julius willingly gave up his DNA and the Rangers released him. But it turns out they wouldn't have to wait for the forensic test to come back from the lab.

Speaker 10 That very afternoon, Ranger Schraub went to collect the bicycle and ran into Julius.

Speaker 3 I asked him to Let me see the bottom of his shoe. And then I was like, that looks like that shoe matches the footprint that was out at the lake as well.

Speaker 10 They quickly determined the footprint at the lake matched Julius's shoe. And the tire track, it matched his bike.

Speaker 3 With all that,

Speaker 3 I felt like I had enough. And I wanted to present this information to a judge and see if they agreed with me.

Speaker 10 The judge did. Julius was placed under arrest and brought back to the interview room, this time in handcuffs.
Do you just go into this hoping for a confession?

Speaker 3 Oh, I always want a confession as long as it's true.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I absolutely went in and hoping that Julius would confess to me on what he did and tell me the truth about all the circumstances surrounding it.

Speaker 7 We know that you were out there, but not only that,

Speaker 7 but we know your shoes were out there.

Speaker 7 And not only that,

Speaker 7 But we know your bison was out there. But everything's already starting to point towards you.

Speaker 10 Julius was quiet at first.

Speaker 7 Why you're not

Speaker 7 giving us a little more information?

Speaker 7 I don't know. You want to talk about this somewhere else besides this room? Is the camera keeping you from talking?

Speaker 7 Just tell me how it happened and how you got involved.

Speaker 10 After 30 minutes, Julius wanted a break.

Speaker 12 I think if you watched the interview where he pulled Julius outside so Julius could smoke a cigarette outside and

Speaker 12 you could tell that at that point in time Julius was was was at a breaking point.

Speaker 10 Sure enough after a cigarette they sat down with Julius in the police break room and he began to confess.

Speaker 10 How does he go from you know denying to I did it?

Speaker 3 I think he realized that he was caught at that point and he just didn't have anywhere else to go.

Speaker 7 What time did you go from the house when you actually killed her?

Speaker 7 I believe 2. 2 a.m.
So when you went in there, was she asleep?

Speaker 7 Yeah.

Speaker 10 Julius described how he used a knife to stab Manu over and over again.

Speaker 7 She screamed.

Speaker 7 Oh wow.

Speaker 7 She got up.

Speaker 3 Then what happened? Just slammed her to the ground.

Speaker 21 You slammed her on the ground?

Speaker 7 Where at?

Speaker 7 She went through the door. I walked in the kitchen.
I went in there,

Speaker 7 grabbed the keys.

Speaker 10 Then he said he dragged her out of the house into her car and drove her to the lake.

Speaker 21 How did you get her to her final spot?

Speaker 27 I had to drag her.

Speaker 7 You had to drag her? How did you do that? Put a blanket underneath her and carried the blanket.

Speaker 21 So you shot her right there?

Speaker 7 I didn't even know if I hit her or not. I just pulled the trigger and ran.
Yeah.

Speaker 7 What did you cover her up with?

Speaker 7 I don't know what they call it. Two old spanking plans.

Speaker 10 Julius was formally charged with Manu's murder and booked into the county jail.

Speaker 3 I had my man right there.

Speaker 10 But the biggest question was: why?

Speaker 10 It turns out Julius had an answer for that. And what he had to say brought investigators right back to where they started.

Speaker 7 They told me here's what's going to happen.

Speaker 10 Adrian Mullins had just come home from work when his son Julius called with alarming news. He was being questioned by investigators.
What's going through your mind?

Speaker 3 It was just like my stomach was in my chest, you know? Yeah. It was hard to breathe.

Speaker 10 What are you thinking it's about?

Speaker 29 I assumed it had to do with Manuela, but I i don't know to what extent the extent would soon become clear i didn't know that he had confessed until he got a lawyer and then he told you yeah 18 year old julius mullins is charged in connection with the murder of the mother of four

Speaker 10 when peter allen learned that julius had confessed to manu's murder he says all he could think about was revenge You were going to go into that jail and kill Julius?

Speaker 8 Oh, yes.

Speaker 10 That's intense.

Speaker 8 It's the truth. And my youngest daughter said to me, Dad, don't do anything that will get you taken away from us.
We've already lost mom. We can't lose you too.

Speaker 8 And I realized that she was right.

Speaker 10 Even though Melanie had raised the alarm about Julius early on, her brother still had a hard time absorbing the news.

Speaker 6 I was very shocked, very surprised. I only really remember being around him once at the house.

Speaker 10 How did Melanie take this, that this was her ex-boyfriend that she had broken up with?

Speaker 6 She took it very, very hard.

Speaker 8 It was really hard on her.

Speaker 11 The last person I would have thought really was Julius. I was just like, why? Why Miss Allen? Why Julius? Why just a bunch of whys?

Speaker 10 He's the guy that, you know, backed you up on the football field.

Speaker 11 It all didn't make sense.

Speaker 10 But investigators had a theory that might make sense of it. All along, they'd suspected that more than one person had been involved that night.

Speaker 3 I thought it was improbable or not likely

Speaker 3 that a single person could move Miss Allen away from that house with her family asleep in the house and nobody know.

Speaker 10 So from the moment they brought Julius into the room in handcuffs, they repeatedly suggested he hadn't acted alone.

Speaker 7 I think he might have been helping somebody out.

Speaker 10 They asked him again.

Speaker 7 Who is this the only person responsible for this?

Speaker 10 And again.

Speaker 7 I don't think you're other person responsible for this.

Speaker 7 Who else was involved? Who else was involved, involved, Julius?

Speaker 10 Eventually, Julius told them someone else was involved. A name that didn't surprise the Ranger at all.

Speaker 3 He ended up claiming that Peter Allen put him up to it.

Speaker 10 Peter, Manu's husband, the initial suspect.

Speaker 21 Yep. How did Peter find you to get you involved?

Speaker 7 Julius said All Sups.

Speaker 10 Allsups, the town convenience store, right down the street from the Allen house. Julius said he ran into Peter there hours before the murder.

Speaker 7 He told me to get in the car.

Speaker 7 So I was like, all right.

Speaker 7 Locked the doors,

Speaker 7 grabbed him by the back,

Speaker 7 like right here in my gate to him. He told me, he was like, I'm only going to tell you this once.

Speaker 7 And he said, if you tell anybody else, I'm going to kill your entire family.

Speaker 3 He claimed that when he sat down in the car, that Peter pulled him close to him and stuck a gun up to him

Speaker 3 and told him, You're going to kill my wife.

Speaker 7 He told me he left that, he unlocked that window.

Speaker 7 He told me, Here's what's going to happen: you're going to go in there.

Speaker 7 You're doing what's right. What did he tell you to do after you got in there?

Speaker 7 He told me he left a

Speaker 7 butterfly knife

Speaker 7 on the counter and that that's what I would have to use to kill her. He told me exactly what to do.
He told me to go for her head. And Peter, he was awake.

Speaker 7 He was just sitting there on the couch and he watched me do it.

Speaker 21 He couldn't see you from there, right?

Speaker 7 In the bedroom knew I was there. So Mr.
Allen just sat in the living room the whole time?

Speaker 7 He helped me take her and clear her into the car.

Speaker 10 Did he say why Peter wanted him to kill his wife given that everyone said that they had a good relationship?

Speaker 3 Peter didn't tell him. He just told him to do it.

Speaker 21 You made a bad decision.

Speaker 7 You were...

Speaker 3 You couldn't make better decisions.

Speaker 21 Like, we'll wake her up and tell her that her husband just f ⁇ ing up a f ⁇ ing stamp gun in my chest and

Speaker 7 killed her. I don't know.

Speaker 7 I wish he would have called us.

Speaker 7 He said he was going to kill my fing family if I did that. And I f ⁇ ing believe him.
He's a great beret.

Speaker 10 Toward the end of the interview, the Ranger took Julius outside for another cigarette and went over parts of the story again.

Speaker 7 Let me make sure I got this right.

Speaker 21 So after y'all, he made contact with you at Allsups, you left Allsups.

Speaker 7 Went to the car,

Speaker 7 stayed there for like

Speaker 7 honestly. I sat there and I was thinking of ways that I could

Speaker 29 not do it

Speaker 7 because I wanted to believe that he was wrong and he wouldn't do what he said he was going to do to my family.

Speaker 7 But me knowing him and how many guns he had.

Speaker 10 Investigators had this story, and it seemed the husband may have been involved after all. Just one problem.

Speaker 22 I did not believe Julius's story at all.

Speaker 10 We got a chance to ask Julius ourselves.

Speaker 10 I feel like there's something you're not saying. I feel like there's more to this story.

Speaker 10 Melanie's ex-boyfriend had admitted it was him. He was the person who'd sneaked into the Allen house, stabbed Manu to death, and dumped her body by the lake.

Speaker 10 He'd also implicated Manu's husband, Peter, in the plot. Investigators didn't make that part of the confession public right away.
Instead, they worked to nail it down.

Speaker 3 I told Julius, I said, if you're telling me the truth,

Speaker 3 then

Speaker 3 I'm going to be able to prove it. I'm going to find the evidence to prove it.

Speaker 10 There was plenty of evidence to prove Julius was the killer. Julius's fingerprints and DNA were in the house and in Manu's car.

Speaker 10 They also found surveillance video from a bank, and there was Julius on that bike coming home from the lake early that morning.

Speaker 10 But prosecutor Dee Peavy saw problems right away with the teenager's explanation for why he did it.

Speaker 22 It seemed just like he had been caught and he was grabbing at straws.

Speaker 10 Did you have any involvement in your wife's murder? Did you threaten Julius and tell him to kill your wife?

Speaker 8 Had nothing to do whatsoever with my wife ever being touched, ever being harmed, anything.

Speaker 8 My wife was my soulmate.

Speaker 8 She's the one who gave me a heart. He's the one who took it away.

Speaker 10 Sure enough, a little investigating proved Julius's story about Peter was riddled with holes. There was no evidence to support it.
No surveillance video of a meeting outside the convenience store.

Speaker 10 No telephone calls or social media communication between the two of them. Remember that bloody compression sock that investigators hammered Peter about? Turns out it had Julius' DNA on it.

Speaker 10 But didn't Julius need help moving the body? Maybe not.

Speaker 22 I did know that

Speaker 22 he had been a football player

Speaker 22 and

Speaker 22 I know that adrenaline can play a role in these sorts of things.

Speaker 10 When all the lab reports came in, the results seemed clear to the investigators.

Speaker 22 With regard to Peter Allen's involvement, there was no physical evidence whatsoever that linked him to this murder. The only person that really tried to link him to this murder was Julius Mullins.

Speaker 10 Why would Julius say you're involved if you weren't involved, if he's already admitted to doing the killing?

Speaker 8 One thing about the human condition, we always try to make excuses for what we've done. Very few people will actually take responsibility.

Speaker 10 Investigators spent months trying to figure out if anyone else helped Julius and came up empty.

Speaker 10 They found no evidence that Corey Taylor was involved, but he and Julius did admit to committing that gun burglary at another house. Mano's murder case never went to trial.

Speaker 10 Julius pleaded guilty to murder and was given a 55-year sentence.

Speaker 10 As part of the deal, he promised to tell the truth about what happened. He agreed to tell us the story as well.
Why did you want to do this interview?

Speaker 3 To try to give

Speaker 28 the family and people who are

Speaker 28 who have questions about why it happened, some closure.

Speaker 10 I've interviewed the Allen family. I've interviewed your father.

Speaker 10 He He loves you unconditionally.

Speaker 10 They're all in so much pain.

Speaker 10 And

Speaker 10 the biggest question that they have, Julius, is why?

Speaker 10 Why did you do this to Manu?

Speaker 28 I got scared when I went

Speaker 3 into their house.

Speaker 28 It wasn't with the intent to hurt anybody. He had guns, and that's what I was going there to get.

Speaker 10 What you're saying is the why

Speaker 10 is a burglary gone bad?

Speaker 28 Yes, ma'am.

Speaker 10 Other people believe that this was revenge, that, you know, for the breakup with Melanie, that you were trying to get back at her.

Speaker 28 I wouldn't do something like that to try to get a revenge because of her. I had already made my peace with that

Speaker 28 it would never be and that's kind of where I left it.

Speaker 10 Take us through that that night. What exactly happened?

Speaker 28 I rode on my bike and I went through

Speaker 28 the garage window. Then

Speaker 28 I kind of started looking

Speaker 11 for guns.

Speaker 28 I found one in

Speaker 28 the bedroom, in the cabinet. By the time

Speaker 28 that I had

Speaker 3 gotten it out, I had jarred the desk a little bit.

Speaker 28 It woke up Miss Allen

Speaker 3 and

Speaker 9 she sees you.

Speaker 28 Yeah, she sees me and I was kind of frozen for a minute and I saw a butterfly knife on the

Speaker 28 on the dresser and

Speaker 28 I got scared and I jumped on top of her and I just started stabbing her.

Speaker 10 Why grab a knife just because she saw you? She

Speaker 10 she knows you.

Speaker 10 I just This is not a really bad scenario if she finds you in her room. It's not great, but if you haven't done anything, I mean, it's, why

Speaker 10 pick up a knife?

Speaker 28 I didn't know. I don't know really why I did that.
I just, I got scared and

Speaker 28 thinking about being in my other placements, I just didn't want to go back.

Speaker 10 He's referring to the time he spent in juvenile detention.

Speaker 10 You're thinking in that moment, in that split second, I'm going to pay for this. I'm going to, they're going to send me away somewhere.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 28 Adrenaline took over and I just

Speaker 10 don't know. This is a woman who cared about you, who welcomed you into her family.
Where's that rage coming from?

Speaker 28 I'm not sure.

Speaker 28 Yeah, I just

Speaker 28 made the wrong choice.

Speaker 10 I mean, you know, it's one thing to say I made the wrong choice, but this is stabbing a woman 47 times. I mean, this is evil.

Speaker 28 Yeah,

Speaker 28 I agree with you.

Speaker 10 Julius admitted the whole story about Peter's involvement was a lie.

Speaker 28 I was alone.

Speaker 10 It was just me. Even after the fact?

Speaker 10 No one helped you dispose of the body?

Speaker 28 No, ma'am.

Speaker 10 Why did you blame Peter in the beginning and tell that story that Peter threatened your family and that you did this because you were afraid for your family's lives?

Speaker 28 I have no comment.

Speaker 10 Are you sure you want to leave that this interview on that note? That you're saying no comment to anything involving Peter?

Speaker 28 I guess I will say this: then I was trying to get a Lester case,

Speaker 28 Lester time.

Speaker 10 By implicating Peter. You were trying to get a deal?

Speaker 10 Are you sure that's it?

Speaker 2 Yep.

Speaker 28 Peter, I'm sorry for making you seem like the bad guy throughout the situation.

Speaker 10 What do you want to say to the Allen family? You have destroyed their lives.

Speaker 28 Yes, I did.

Speaker 28 There's no amount of apology

Speaker 28 that can change or bring her back.

Speaker 28 She did not deserve what I did to her, and

Speaker 28 I'm sorry that I ripped y'all's family apart.

Speaker 10 And you can look me in the eye and say that you've told me the truth today and there's nothing more to this?

Speaker 28 Yes, ma'am, I can. I would give my life to bring her back.

Speaker 10 Julius's dad said that not a day goes by that he doesn't wonder if he could have done more. And as painful as it's been for him, he's well aware that there's another family whose grief is far worse.

Speaker 3 There was no way for me to say I'm sorry.

Speaker 10 Did you try? Did you say sorry?

Speaker 3 I did.

Speaker 3 I had the florist get some flowers that were

Speaker 3 German flowers. In the mornings, when I was on my way to work,

Speaker 3 I would stop out front and I would just bring one up and put it on her porch.

Speaker 10 How did they feel about that?

Speaker 3 They didn't like it.

Speaker 3 And I stopped immediately. But I just wanted them to know that I was

Speaker 3 thinking about her and thinking about them and their loss.

Speaker 10 Manu's family lives with that loss every day.

Speaker 8 You still have your days when you hurt really bad inside.

Speaker 8 And you can't tell your kids

Speaker 8 because

Speaker 8 you're dead and you have to keep that

Speaker 6 you you you can't put that stress on your kids for the most part i think all of us are healing melanie is just struggling do you all try to tell her this is not your fault i've told her many many times i've hugged her while she's crying, just told her that Melanie is not your fault.

Speaker 6 None of this,

Speaker 6 none of this is on you. Like she doesn't deserve any of the blame.
She doesn't deserve all of the guilt that she's feeling.

Speaker 10 For Peter, the guilt can be overwhelming too.

Speaker 8 I'll never move on. I can move forward.

Speaker 8 And the best thing I can do

Speaker 8 is learn to forgive myself for failing as a husband.

Speaker 10 Why do you think you

Speaker 10 failed your wife though if you didn't even know what was happening?

Speaker 8 Because it's my house and that's my my job i did i know it was happening no well the other part of me inside says you failed as a husband as a man

Speaker 10 i have to learn to forgive myself for that or i won't be able to help my children and right now my children are my biggest priority children were always manu's priority too whether as a mom a teacher or their biggest cheerleader

Speaker 10 And these days, she would be especially proud of her all-ni cubs.

Speaker 10 After her death, the hapless football team started to do something unprecedented.

Speaker 3 When?

Speaker 11 I was still here at Cowbell.

Speaker 11 So maybe it was a real Cowbell, or maybe it was this imagination of hearing a Cowbell. But I was still here at Cowbell.

Speaker 7 I love it.

Speaker 8 Could it mean she's still there? My wife is still there. She's still there.

Speaker 3 That's all for now. I'm Lester Holt.

Speaker 14 Thanks for joining us.

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