The Motive

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Speaker 20 There was a party. There was a UK football player that had been shot.

Speaker 21 He's killed on his birthday. I was like, it's who?

Speaker 22 That can't happen.

Speaker 22 Why him?

Speaker 23 No one saw a thing.

Speaker 21 It's at night, it's dark, nobody knows where the bullet comes from.

Speaker 25 Nothing is making it any easier.

Speaker 20 If you don't have a motive, it's hard to know which direction to go.

Speaker 21 We were just never going to know.

Speaker 26 But someone knew.

Speaker 19 She called me and said, I think I know something about a murder.

Speaker 20 We never could find out why Trent was killed because it was something this weird. She became the key.

Speaker 26 Would she also become the next victim?

Speaker 19 She was scared to death to confront him.

Speaker 29 She knew what he was capable of.

Speaker 27 And thus she was terrified. And thus she was terrified.

Speaker 30 A woman solves a mystery and then vanishes. I'm Lester Holt, and this is Dateline.

Speaker 23 Here's Keith Morrison with the motive.

Speaker 18 Her heart was on fire.

Speaker 33 Lost to her, the canned music, the hum of other voices in the bar.

Speaker 31 There was only him.

Speaker 27 They were in the deep end now.

Speaker 5 And as lovers in the flush of new commitments sometimes do, they confessed their sins of the abandoned past, the worst things they'd ever done.

Speaker 7 Words, just words, best forgotten, until they could no longer be ignored.

Speaker 2 Lexington, Kentucky.

Speaker 6 One year before that night in the bar.

Speaker 39 A house where students lived.

Speaker 35 And the music and laughter and chatter of a birthday party swelled and ebbed and drifted in and out of the evening air.

Speaker 20 It wasn't a huge party.

Speaker 40 It was just a low-key party with some good friends.

Speaker 41 They were about to be seniors, the young men who'd rented the place, who'd hosted the party.

Speaker 40 And we had a group of guys, four guys that got along extremely well.

Speaker 14 They were big men on campus.

Speaker 42 They played football, the University of Kentucky's beloved Wildcats.

Speaker 39 Antonio O'Farrell was a quarterback.

Speaker 40 In Lexington, Kentucky, if you play for the Cats, you're pretty much a well-known entity.

Speaker 8 The birthday boy, 21 years old, was a true rarity, a Wildcats walk-on.

Speaker 2 He had no scholarship, no invitation.

Speaker 8 He just showed up, tried out for the team.

Speaker 35 And over three years of hard work, he had earned a starting position. Here we go, boom, go up, boom!

Speaker 44 Trent DeGiro,

Speaker 35 gentle giant.

Speaker 21 You know, everybody called him a big teddy bear. He was the great protector of all of our friends.

Speaker 39 The party was sweet.

Speaker 18 informal.

Speaker 5 Friends snapped pictures and evening dawdled into night.

Speaker 27 It was after midnight when the party wound down.

Speaker 40 I think we turned in somewhere between 12.30 and 1 o'clock.

Speaker 7 Antonio and his girlfriend went to bed.

Speaker 45 Outside, Trent and some of the others settled under the light on the front porch.

Speaker 35 Out there, beyond the streetlights, was impenetrable dark.

Speaker 40 Inside, we were already in a faint sleep and we heard a loud bang.

Speaker 2 One of them must have slammed the screen door.

Speaker 1 But no.

Speaker 40 But within 10 seconds, you started to hear the chaos outside. The screaming, the yelling, the crying.

Speaker 5 And there was Trent, slumped to one side in his chair under the light.

Speaker 40 Trent was bleeding out of his ears and his eyes and his nose and his mouth. And

Speaker 40 it was a horrific scene.

Speaker 18 Horrific and confusing.

Speaker 14 That loud bang had been a gunshot.

Speaker 12 But from where?

Speaker 38 Somewhere out there in the dark?

Speaker 42 Had someone intentionally fired a gun at their gentle giant, their teddy bear?

Speaker 46 In their panic and distress, they did not understand, how could they, the nature of the mystery launched here?

Speaker 30 Or who, in a haze of love, may have learned the answer?

Speaker 48 It was just so senseless. Once you found out why, it was even worse.

Speaker 27 Just who was Trent DeGiro, the target?

Speaker 21 Y'all started hanging out from first grade, six years old.

Speaker 50 It's pretty neat.

Speaker 21 Yeah.

Speaker 5 Peyton Turner and Shera Lee Bollinger were his lifelong friends.

Speaker 21 If you were his friend, you were his friend, and that's all that matters. It wasn't a group for him.
Yeah. There was no group.
Everybody got treated just the same.

Speaker 2 Trent was in fourth grade when he started playing football in his hometown of Goshen, Kentucky, just outside Louisville.

Speaker 35 By high school, he was captain of the team, had lots of friends.

Speaker 18 So popular, Trent was homecoming king, with Shera Lee his queen.

Speaker 21 It was pretty special.

Speaker 25 I mean, just

Speaker 21 to be part of that and to be voted as that, and then especially with Trent.

Speaker 45 When it came time for college, Trent set his sights high.

Speaker 18 He turned down football scholarships to smaller schools.

Speaker 48 At one point he says, you know what, I just got to know if I can play in a big time

Speaker 48 in a Division I school.

Speaker 5 Mike DiGiro is Trent's dad.

Speaker 48 So he walked on it through New York, Kentucky, which is in the Southeast Conference, which is sure about as big as a cup. And he worked real hard to get to where he was.

Speaker 6 And Trent's teammates saw that hard work.

Speaker 40 Trent had the ability to perform. So while he might have been a walk-on, his performance allowed him to endear himself to others very quickly.

Speaker 2 That July, as Trent practiced football and prepared for his senior year, his parents went to Lexington to see him and to talk about his future.

Speaker 48 He was trying to decide what he wanted to do with his life. He was talking about maybe going to law school or business school.

Speaker 9 Did he talk about his birthday celebration?

Speaker 48 We knew he was going to have some kind of a thing and that he was supposed to come home that next day to celebrate birthday with us. And

Speaker 10 never made it.

Speaker 51 No,

Speaker 32 and a creeping fear washed over the University of Kentucky football team.

Speaker 17 Was a killer targeting them?

Speaker 17 And if so, who would be next?

Speaker 52 When we return, the investigation begins.

Speaker 53 Everyone Everyone talked,

Speaker 53 but they didn't say anything.

Speaker 52 And was there more terror to come?

Speaker 40 We were so nervous driving down the street at practice, thinking that there might be someone in the woods who want to take you out.

Speaker 2 Chaos is what there was on Trent DeGiro's front porch.

Speaker 1 His friends stood over the body and stared out into the dark with a kind of anticipating horror.

Speaker 40 You're concerned that there's more to come. You know,

Speaker 3 that was one shot.

Speaker 40 Is there someone who's going to shoot again?

Speaker 11 Trent was officially pronounced dead at 3 a.m.,

Speaker 16 just about the time Don Evans arrived.

Speaker 42 Evans has retired now, but was a rookie detective back then. This was his first homicide case.

Speaker 43 What'd you find when you got here?

Speaker 53 There were three young men in this very yard, and they just looked distraught, and they were consoling each other.

Speaker 11 On the porch, Trent's chair was turned over, and Evans could see blood and debris left by the ambulance crew.

Speaker 39 What was your first idea of what appeared to have happened here?

Speaker 53 You know, when I first walked up, I went with what appeared to be the obvious, that someone had simply walked from the side of the house, fired the shot, and then exited back toward the rear of the house.

Speaker 53 So this is almost like an alley here. So it's like, well, it would provide concealment.

Speaker 42 Take advantage of surprise.

Speaker 53 Yeah, if someone was going to take a shot, that made the most sense.

Speaker 43 Believing the shot came from a handgun, police looked for shell casings.

Speaker 1 And yet for all they looked, there were none, nor any other evidence.

Speaker 18 Still, Detective Evans figured there was a party that night.

Speaker 11 So there were bound to be people who saw something.

Speaker 53 My thought was, as soon as I get them to headquarters and get them separated, someone's going to tell me what happened.

Speaker 42 Did they talk?

Speaker 53 Everyone talked, but with each and every person that I talked to, they didn't see anything.

Speaker 2 80 miles away, at 5 a.m., the DeGiros phone rang.

Speaker 48 It's numbing.

Speaker 48 It's hard to imagine the feeling.

Speaker 10 And suddenly your life doesn't make sense anymore.

Speaker 48 It absolutely stops and pivots.

Speaker 31 in an instant.

Speaker 48 And then it was kind of, you know, now what?

Speaker 32 And soon, everybody knew.

Speaker 21 I couldn't even believe it.

Speaker 54 He didn't understand it.

Speaker 21 Who would murder somebody so wonderful?

Speaker 4 It was about then that the first really useful evidence came back from the medical examiner.

Speaker 33 Bullet fragments were recovered in the autopsy.

Speaker 45 And the ballistics showed it wasn't a handgun at all that killed Trent.

Speaker 27 It was a rifle.

Speaker 2 which turned Detective Evans' first theory upside down.

Speaker 53 Well, the theory about walking up the side of the house and firing the shot.

Speaker 20 That's probably out the window.

Speaker 53 The rifle's not designed for a close-range shot.

Speaker 2 Officers canvassed the neighborhood.

Speaker 11 A woman who lived across the street said she awoke to a loud noise, and it sounded like it was right outside her house.

Speaker 20 So based on that, we actually took one of our marksmen from the police department and asked him, could the shot be made from here, from this angle? And we literally reenacted that possibility.

Speaker 43 Did it make sense, the location you found?

Speaker 20 It did make sense. We didn't eliminate the possibility that something else could occur, but this looked pretty strong to us.

Speaker 39 So, a working theory, that Trent was shot from across the street.

Speaker 44 Ballistic suggested it was a rifle with a particular and uncommon type of barrel.

Speaker 38 But who owned it?

Speaker 17 Why did he or she shoot Trent?

Speaker 11 No idea.

Speaker 16 The football team uttered a world of dread.

Speaker 4 Was some hater targeting the team?

Speaker 18 Was one of them next?

Speaker 40 We were so nervous. We were so uncertain of what happened that night that it affected our daily lives.

Speaker 40 Driving down the street at practice, thinking that there might be someone in the woods who wanted to take you out.

Speaker 7 But days and weeks and months went by.

Speaker 37 Nothing happened.

Speaker 11 And over time, the fear eroded.

Speaker 35 But the investigation went nowhere.

Speaker 9 Did you ever get to the place where you thought, we'll just have to live with this uncertainty for the rest of our lives?

Speaker 48 I would say four years into it. It's like, it doesn't make any difference.

Speaker 47 Yeah, not going to bring it back.

Speaker 48 It's not going to bring Print back, but still, it's, why did this happen?

Speaker 20 You're four years in, five years in, and really no closer to solving it than from the first case. And day one, that will make you doubt yourself.

Speaker 36 and then one day a particular woman happened to see an anniversary story about the unsolved murder of the football player back in Kentucky a woman who once sat in a bar in a fog of love and who now was quite terrified

Speaker 52 coming up an ex-lover reveals all including a hard-to-believe motive for murder.

Speaker 20 This could be the reason that we never could find out why Trent was killed is because it was something this

Speaker 28 weird.

Speaker 23 When Dateline continues.

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Speaker 7 It wasn't as if a successful investigation could somehow undo what happened at Trent de Giro.

Speaker 7 And yet, the lack of any answer, year after year, seemed somehow to be an insult to all that was good, and they just had to accept it.

Speaker 21 I think we'd all kind of resigned ourselves as every year passed.

Speaker 21 We were just never going to know.

Speaker 27 Then it was about five years after the shooting.

Speaker 18 A local attorney named Tom Bullock heard from an old friend, a woman.

Speaker 15 She was nervous, tentative, asked him on the phone, could she reveal what she knew about a crime without saying who she was?

Speaker 19 She was extremely evasive. She didn't really want to tell me really anything.

Speaker 17 But she kept calling.

Speaker 5 Finally, she revealed it.

Speaker 3 She was calling about a murder.

Speaker 17 Did she tell you what murder?

Speaker 19 She eventually came around to say it was a very high-profile murder.

Speaker 42 Where'd you mind go when you heard that?

Speaker 19 I knew which one it was.

Speaker 44 And then she told him a very strange story.

Speaker 27 Happened in a bar, she said, almost a year after Trent DeGiro was killed.

Speaker 30 She was falling hard for a guy.

Speaker 19 They talked about how much they loved each other. Towards the end of the evening, they decided to say, okay, what is the worst thing that you've done?

Speaker 48 Like, let's get this out of the way.

Speaker 19 Let's just get to it, you know? That sort of point in the relationship where you say,

Speaker 30 let me hear the worst.

Speaker 14 And her boyfriend said,

Speaker 16 I killed Trent DeGiro.

Speaker 19 And at first she sort of sloughed it off.

Speaker 20 You know,

Speaker 12 sure you did.

Speaker 32 Didn't believe him?

Speaker 36 Nah, of course not.

Speaker 19 But then he started describing it.

Speaker 4 You know, exactly how he did it.

Speaker 3 But she still didn't want to believe it after all.

Speaker 35 She'd fallen in love with the guy.

Speaker 5 So she said she kind of buried it.

Speaker 2 stayed with him for another year.

Speaker 41 But now, years later and single again, she had seen a story in the newspaper newspaper about the fifth anniversary of Trent's murder, in which Trent's dad was quoted.

Speaker 11 Somebody knows what happened.

Speaker 19 She started really thinking about it and

Speaker 9 it touched her.

Speaker 3 But she was so frightened of him, she said.

Speaker 18 She was determined to remain anonymous.

Speaker 19 They know each other intimately. She knows how he would react to certain situations.

Speaker 59 Yep.

Speaker 19 And she was terrified.

Speaker 3 He certainly would have remembered his conversations with her.

Speaker 19 If you told someone that you committed a murder,

Speaker 19 you would certainly remember having told them that.

Speaker 16 So Tom Bullock went to Detective Evans.

Speaker 19 We agreed that whatever information I would give him would be anonymous. Because for all we know, the whole thing could have been hogwash.

Speaker 48 Well, that's sort of tricky, isn't it?

Speaker 43 I mean, when you've got somebody making an accusation, you have to be able to talk to that person.

Speaker 20 Well, yeah, but at that point, beggars can't be choosers.

Speaker 3 So he gave you a name.

Speaker 20 So he gave me a name. He gave me the name of Shane Ragland.

Speaker 11 Shane Ragland, the woman's ex-boyfriend.

Speaker 12 But who was he?

Speaker 60 Didn't take long to find out.

Speaker 15 Shane was the son of a wealthy businessman.

Speaker 2 Just so happened, Shane attended the University of Kentucky at the very same time as Trent DeGiro.

Speaker 14 But after college, he didn't do so well.

Speaker 8 He ran up at least a dozen convictions, drug charges, multiple DUIs, and so on.

Speaker 42 So Detective Evans went back to Attorney Bullock.

Speaker 20 Is there any more? Can you get me any more?

Speaker 20 And ultimately, he started talking about a motive.

Speaker 42 And that's when the whole story took a turn into the Twilight Zone.

Speaker 20 He told me that it was concerning Shane Raglan being blackballed from a fraternity.

Speaker 15 What'd you think when you heard that?

Speaker 20 That's a stupid reason to kill somebody.

Speaker 12 The fraternity in question was Sigma Alpha Epsilon, SAE.

Speaker 4 Detective Evans looked through SAE's records, and there it was, a pledge list with Shane's name crossed off.

Speaker 20 And then it hit, this could be the reason that we never could find out why Trent was killed is because it was something this

Speaker 28 weird.

Speaker 37 Evans went to one of Trent's closest friends and asked, Had he heard of this guy, Shane Ragland?

Speaker 20 And he said, Shane Raglan.

Speaker 20 And then I can just sort of see it at that point on his face, you know. And I let him tell the story.

Speaker 46 A story about an unpleasant little incident.

Speaker 5 Shane was among the freshmen pledging the SAE fraternity.

Speaker 20 And one day, as they were getting to know the campus, they went into Trent's dorm, and Trent was there.

Speaker 28 And on the wall was a calendar of some sorority girls.

Speaker 12 When Shane saw that calendar, right right away he pointed to one of the girls' pictures and he bragged that he'd had sex with her.

Speaker 20 What Shane didn't know is that girl was the girlfriend of the president of the fraternity.

Speaker 18 Trent did not like that one bit.

Speaker 5 Got word to the SAE president. And that's when Shane was blackballed.

Speaker 20 So at that point, Shane's opportunity to be in that fraternity is pretty much over.

Speaker 6 The motives for murder are many and varied, but this seemed absurd.

Speaker 16 It was three years after that slight when Trent was murdered in cold blood.

Speaker 30 Could it really have festered so long?

Speaker 6 And if it had, if that was true, they had another problem.

Speaker 20 The more that we dug specifically into Shane Raglan, the more the likelihood that he would get word that he was becoming a suspect in this case.

Speaker 20 And if that happened, this anonymous witness was in real danger.

Speaker 42 Evans had no doubt that Shane would remember he told an ex-girlfriend about the murder.

Speaker 20 And what's going to keep him from then going up and eliminating her like he did Trendazero?

Speaker 2 So now Evans understood his mystery witness was trying to be brave, but was quite reasonably frightened.

Speaker 41 How would he ever convince her to take the ultimate risk?

Speaker 19 She was very hesitant to do it, and she was scared to death to confront him.

Speaker 61 coming up setting a trap something's been bothering me something that you told me a long time ago but who's going to get caught

Speaker 60 Detective Evans knew he had to meet this mystery woman, a woman who was claiming she knew what happened to Trent DeGiro, but was too frightened to talk about it.

Speaker 12 Then finally, with attorney Tom Bullock playing gatekeeper, they made a deal to at least meet face to face.

Speaker 7 But any more than that?

Speaker 42 Maybe not.

Speaker 20 It was like, listen, don't get me involved in this.

Speaker 20 This guy's dangerous, so until you get handcuffs on him,

Speaker 20 you can't involve me.

Speaker 2 But Evans knew, even if he did arrest the guy, a mystery woman testifying about something an ex-boyfriend told her

Speaker 1 wouldn't be enough.

Speaker 10 I can imagine a prosecutor saying, well, I can't just put her on the stand.

Speaker 10 His attorney will come along and say she's full of it.

Speaker 20 Yeah, and in this particular case, it's, yeah, you know what? That in itself is not going to do it, nor should it. We're still in a situation where this has to come from him.

Speaker 11 Him, meaning Shane Raglund.

Speaker 41 Evans told her they had to find a way to get Shane to admit on tape what he did.

Speaker 4 Otherwise, what jury would buy such a ludicrous motive for murder?

Speaker 7 There was only one way, he told her.

Speaker 8 She'd have to wear a wire.

Speaker 20 She wasn't very happy with that, obviously.

Speaker 10 I should think not.

Speaker 20 She asked me if I could spell anonymous.

Speaker 36 But, he said, she came around.

Speaker 20 She wanted to do what's right all along. She just would like to do that without getting herself killed doing it.

Speaker 2 But she would only proceed on one condition.

Speaker 20 I'd had to prove why she was going to be safe. I had to prove how we were going to do this.
It wasn't enough for me to say, oh, don't worry, worry, he won't have a gun.

Speaker 28 We'll look for bulges.

Speaker 8 So they came up with a plan, gave her a cover story to protect her, a fictitious job, a phony address.

Speaker 14 And then, casually, she resumed contact with Shane.

Speaker 3 A few emails, a little flirty at times on both ends.

Speaker 20 People sometimes hear from their exes, right? I mean, that happens.

Speaker 5 And finally, the sting.

Speaker 3 She told Shane she'd be passing through the Lexington airport on business, and he agreed to meet her.

Speaker 60 It was in this airport lounge, surrounded by undercover cops and FBI, and behind security to be sure Shane wasn't armed.

Speaker 50 What's been happening?

Speaker 18 They reminisced for an hour or so.

Speaker 21 Tell me the good things that you remember about our relationship.

Speaker 50 Something that used to love you, just don't easily get all these things again.

Speaker 50 And then she went for it.

Speaker 61 Something has been bothering me.

Speaker 50 Something that you told me a long time ago, ago I wish you never had.

Speaker 21 And I need to know how you feel about it now.

Speaker 50 So I can understand what kind of person you are now.

Speaker 20 At that point, he paused, and it's like he knew exactly what she was talking about.

Speaker 20 I regret it.

Speaker 42 You do now?

Speaker 50 You did it before?

Speaker 50 And you know what?

Speaker 50 Think about it.

Speaker 50 Not knowing who I wasn't Trent.

Speaker 21 Not knowing him, I just kind of ignored it all the time.

Speaker 5 Saying Trent's name was deliberate.

Speaker 20 We talked to her about that. And let's make sure we know what you're talking about when we play this for a jury later.

Speaker 4 And she brought up what appeared to be the motive, that fraternity blackbowling.

Speaker 50 How could you let that led somebody to do that that

Speaker 50 overseen us

Speaker 50 stupid?

Speaker 50 Do you ever think about it?

Speaker 50 I'm sorry, but this is that I have to get off my chest because I have to live with it too, you know?

Speaker 21 I mean, do you plan on ever telling anybody about what you did?

Speaker 15 Was he sensing something?

Speaker 2 The cops, knowing they didn't quite have what they needed, not yet, held their breath and listened.

Speaker 21 I've never told anybody.

Speaker 20 He said, Are you setting me up? And that's when things got really scary.

Speaker 35 But she kept her cool.

Speaker 18 And they did.

Speaker 33 And then, about ten minutes later, Shane came back with just what the detectives needed to hear.

Speaker 20 She made him so confident and comfortable that he came back to the subject and left us with what we really needed at that point. It came out of his own mouth.

Speaker 2 They picked him up the next day, took him downtown, asked him, was it true what an old girlfriend was telling them?

Speaker 62 So if she tells us, you sit there and you talked about the murder, she's a liar, basically. Because it never happened.
She's just making that up to think she's mad at it. 100%?

Speaker 62 Absolutely. It was absolutely nothing.

Speaker 12 Shane denied it all.

Speaker 11 Denied knowing Trent.

Speaker 2 Didn't even know where he lived.

Speaker 45 Denied talking about Trent with her.

Speaker 62 I never mentioned his name once, and she never mentioned me about it. She didn't suspect nothing about that.

Speaker 62 Never heard about the murder or anything.

Speaker 13 So then?

Speaker 4 His Inquisitors fetched the airport recording.

Speaker 62 I'm going to play something here for you, and I want you to listen to it, okay?

Speaker 62 Something has been bothering me.

Speaker 61 Something that you told me a long time ago I wish you never had.

Speaker 62 You telling me that you didn't talk about Trent? That's not the truth, is it? She might have said Trent. We were talking about stuff, but I didn't hear her say Trent.
I didn't talk about Trent.

Speaker 62 I swear to you guys, I did not do this.

Speaker 42 But his denials were to no avail.

Speaker 35 Shane Ragland was charged with murder.

Speaker 18 Bail was set, and Shane's wealthy father paid it.

Speaker 3 A million dollars cash, so Shane was free pending trial.

Speaker 2 Which was a very big problem for the ex-girlfriend who turned him in.

Speaker 3 Police moved her to a secure location, kept an eye on her.

Speaker 4 And then, strange things started happening.

Speaker 20 We got information from our state police intelligence section that there was a hit out on this girl. There were phone calls to her friends that would ask, have you seen her?

Speaker 20 Do you know where she is these days? Obviously, trying to locate her.

Speaker 3 And with all that going on, she had to do precisely what she didn't want to do: go public, show herself, and testify.

Speaker 12 And the world would know that her name was Amy Lloyd and that she was truly terrified.

Speaker 52 Coming up, Amy goes public for the first time facing her fears and shame.

Speaker 21 He told me that

Speaker 21 he's shot him.

Speaker 26 And the defense hits back hard.

Speaker 29 If in fact someone had actually told you they had engaged in a killing of another person and you continue a romantic relationship with them, that seems a bit

Speaker 29 odd.

Speaker 45 When Dateline continues

Speaker 22 Some stories never make national headlines, but stories from small towns and coastal communities deserve recognition too.

Speaker 22 I'm Kylie Lowe, host of Dark Down East, a true crime podcast that gives voice to victims through investigative journalism and powerful storytelling.

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Speaker 8 If there was any doubt how seriously police took perceived threats to Amy Lloyd's security, this put it to rest.

Speaker 2 Amy rushed into court by a SWAT team.

Speaker 48 But Trent DeGero's dad, Mike, knew that if she braved the danger and told her story, I don't know how a jury could sort of not convict him.

Speaker 2 But when it came time for trial, Then prosecutor, now DA Luanna Redcorn, was all too aware she was alleging a very hard-to-believe motive.

Speaker 21 I think I was like everybody else, a little incredulous that somebody would let the fact that they'd been blackballed from a fraternity fester for

Speaker 21 years and culminate in killing the person they blamed on blackballing them.

Speaker 42 Mind you, they had a bit more than just Amy.

Speaker 3 They'd found what they believed was the murder weapon, the.243 Weatherby rifle at Shane's mother's house.

Speaker 2 And at his father's place, they found 243 caliber bullets like these.

Speaker 41 An FBI expert said testing had linked those bullets to the fragments from the fatal bullet.

Speaker 4 The defense argued the tests were not reliable science.

Speaker 1 Call your next witness.

Speaker 21 Amy Lloyd.

Speaker 3 And now, nearly eight years after Trent was killed, here was the one person who could tell the story.

Speaker 2 Amy Lloyd finally revealed herself publicly.

Speaker 12 Though, because she remains frightened even now, we've obscured her image in this video, recorded by the court.

Speaker 39 The prosecution's star witness talked about that night in a bar.

Speaker 3 And Shane, according to her, straight out confessing to murder.

Speaker 21 He said something about

Speaker 21 Hannkey had, if I remember, the football player who had been killed

Speaker 21 and told me his name, Trent.

Speaker 21 He told me that he shot him.

Speaker 5 But Prosecutor Redcorn knew Amy's story had a weakness.

Speaker 2 And so no choice but to confront it.

Speaker 21 You did not break off the relationship after he said this to you.

Speaker 54 No.

Speaker 21 You didn't go to the police or anything? No, I just ignored it.

Speaker 21 Just ignored what he had said to you? Right, I forgot about it. I didn't want to listen to it.

Speaker 65 I didn't want to hear it.

Speaker 21 I didn't want to believe it.

Speaker 25 Why?

Speaker 16 Because she was in love with him, she said.

Speaker 4 During Amy's testimony, the prosecutor played the tape, the sting meeting at the airport.

Speaker 4 He's so stupid. I was angry at you.

Speaker 4 Maybe I'll conceal it.

Speaker 5 That, said the prosecutor, clear as day, was an admission that he did indeed commit the murder.

Speaker 4 How to defend against that?

Speaker 12 Shane's father hired a formidable defense team.

Speaker 11 Guthrie True was one of Shane's lawyers.

Speaker 29 If, in fact, someone had actually told you they had engaged in a killing of another person and you continue a romantic relationship with them, that seems

Speaker 29 a bit odd.

Speaker 35 When When the defense cross-examined Amy, she knew it was coming.

Speaker 38 Had to.

Speaker 12 An attack on her credibility.

Speaker 15 But could she have suspected how personal it would be?

Speaker 2 This from True's co-counsel when Amy said she went home with Shane that night after he talked about killing someone.

Speaker 65 Weren't you concerned about spending the night with somebody

Speaker 65 who had admitted to you that he had killed someone else?

Speaker 21 I blocked it from my mind. I didn't want to

Speaker 21 hear that.

Speaker 2 And then a kind of nervous embarrassment filled the courtroom.

Speaker 47 The defense had gotten access to Amy's very personal, very explicit diary and confronted her with her entries, one by X-rated one.

Speaker 29 We are trying to challenge the credibility of the prosecution's case, and sometimes that gets uncomfortable.

Speaker 15 This is what Amy wrote the day after she said Shane confessed to her to murder.

Speaker 65 April the 30th, the very next day.

Speaker 65 You make a notation, made love in afternoon.

Speaker 17 Great day.

Speaker 2 We have, for the sake of decency, left out the most explicit entries made public by the defense that day.

Speaker 65 And then May the 3rd was the date that you recorded you took a bath together and made love.

Speaker 65 right yes then it was on May the 7th you notated you noted great love decided I would move in with him in July

Speaker 65 perfect yes so this man who told you that he had killed someone

Speaker 65 you made the decision that you were going to move in with him come July

Speaker 21 yes

Speaker 4 so was her credibility harmed

Speaker 6 there was still after all, that incriminating airport recording.

Speaker 18 Or was it incriminating?

Speaker 65 You never did ask him, though, if he had shot and killed Trent, did you?

Speaker 21 Why would I when he'd already told me? And if I said to him, Did you kill Trent, when he already knew he told me five years ago,

Speaker 22 he would have known that

Speaker 21 I was there, in fact, to

Speaker 42 set him up

Speaker 21 to get him to admit it.

Speaker 65 Hadn't you rehearsed that?

Speaker 25 Rehearsed what?

Speaker 65 With Detective Evans and others. Don't give him an opportunity to deny that he had

Speaker 9 shot Trent.

Speaker 47 No.

Speaker 5 Had the defense planted a seed of reasonable doubt?

Speaker 37 Maybe.

Speaker 45 The jury adjourned to think about it, and Trent's friends waited.

Speaker 21 I've never been so terrified and so scared in my life.

Speaker 21 100 miles an hour.

Speaker 16 And five hours later,

Speaker 43 we, the jury, find the defendant guilty of intentional murder.

Speaker 11 Guilty of intentional murder.

Speaker 4 The sentence 30 years.

Speaker 40 To know that he was guilty, know that this guy who's sitting there smug and non-remorseful is

Speaker 40 guilty and found guilty. And boom, you feel good about that.

Speaker 14 Mike DeGiro thought it was done.

Speaker 20 Okay, this is it.

Speaker 48 He's going to jail.

Speaker 6 It's over.

Speaker 38 And Amy,

Speaker 4 she had vanished.

Speaker 21 Amy was afraid of Shane Rackland.

Speaker 21 And we told her that if she testified, we would do what we could to let her have a new identity. And law enforcement helped her get a new identity.

Speaker 7 And that new identity would be a problem.

Speaker 20 You talk about something that just blows you away. I mean, I can't even, couldn't even grasp that.

Speaker 35 Because this case wasn't over.

Speaker 1 Not even close.

Speaker 52 Coming up, a stunning reversal.

Speaker 66 And I know I'm innocent.

Speaker 52 Will there ever be justice for Trent?

Speaker 47 It's...

Speaker 28 Oh, wow, here we go all over again.

Speaker 5 It was early spring in Kentucky Kentucky when justice was done for the murder of Trent DeGiro, thanks, his friends knew, to a woman who faced up to fear and told her story.

Speaker 21 We've never met Amy, and I am eternally grateful to Amy

Speaker 21 for everything that she's done for not only Trent and his family, but for us.

Speaker 44 Except there was an appeal. Of course there was, standard procedure.

Speaker 1 But what happened was not standard at all.

Speaker 39 A court reversed the jury's decision.

Speaker 20 Any comments, Shane?

Speaker 16 And Shane Raglund went home on a million dollars bail paid by his dad to wait for a whole new trial.

Speaker 45 It's been a long time Shane.

Speaker 66 I don't really look at it like that. I look at the long-term goal of fighting a case against me that's fake, it's false, and they know I'm innocent.

Speaker 66 And so I don't worry about my feelings, creature comforts.

Speaker 38 Why was the verdict thrown out?

Speaker 12 It had nothing to do with Amy Lloyd or her explosive testimony or the sting tape tape recorded at the airport.

Speaker 25 All that was fine.

Speaker 8 So what was the issue?

Speaker 16 The bullet that killed Trent.

Speaker 60 An FBI expert had linked the fragments of that bullet found during the autopsy to bullets like these that were found in Shane's father's house.

Speaker 3 But after Shane's conviction, the FBI realized the test it used was in fact bad science and stopped using it.

Speaker 29 These are things that we've been arguing for years, frankly, shouldn't have been admitted.

Speaker 4 And the court agreed with the defense.

Speaker 8 When this reversal happened, what was that like?

Speaker 34 Well, it was a blow.

Speaker 47 I mean, it was a real blow.

Speaker 31 Kind of an irony, isn't it?

Speaker 1 It was one of the smaller pieces of evidence.

Speaker 21 In my mind, yes.

Speaker 42 When what you thought was done gets undone, what does it do to you?

Speaker 47 It's, oh, wow, here we go all over again.

Speaker 48 We've got to go through this yet another time.

Speaker 48 And the yet another time we realized pretty quickly was going to be without some key evidence.

Speaker 47 Yeah.

Speaker 48 Amy Lloyd wasn't coming back.

Speaker 41 No, Amy Lloyd was not going to testify a second time.

Speaker 39 That was the deal she made. Testify once, then disappear.

Speaker 20 There was no way to bring her back. Because once someone has that level of cover, you can't undo it, bring them back.

Speaker 11 And then do it again. And then do it again.

Speaker 2 Remain seated, come to order. No option but to make a deal.

Speaker 34 Shane got to plead guilty to second-degree manslaughter.

Speaker 39 And did you, in fact, commit the crime that you were pleading guilty to?

Speaker 53 Yes, I did.

Speaker 12 Which meant that at least he now admitted to firing that fatal shot.

Speaker 48 And I thought, well, we bargains. He, you know, spends another 10 years in jail.
I'm not too bad with that.

Speaker 42 Oh, but it wasn't 10 more years.

Speaker 12 It wasn't any more years.

Speaker 4 He got the time he'd already served.

Speaker 44 Five years, plus just three days of house arrest.

Speaker 48 Three more days. Three more days.

Speaker 28 He walked out of the courtroom, went home, and that really checked my ass.

Speaker 30 It did help a little, said Mike DeGiro.

Speaker 5 When he successfully sued Shane in civil court for wrongful death, the jury awarded him $63 million,

Speaker 27 later reduced to $33 million.

Speaker 10 No matter, said Mike.

Speaker 27 He hasn't received a penny, doesn't expect to.

Speaker 42 But money was never the point.

Speaker 48 He's never really accepted responsibility for what he did.

Speaker 4 Shane went on with his life, and then a few years later, he was involved in a serious car accident. He's in a wheelchair now and was back in court on an unrelated case.

Speaker 50 And what about Amy?

Speaker 7 If that's even her name now.

Speaker 15 How's she doing now?

Speaker 60 She's living a new life.

Speaker 9 What'd she do?

Speaker 42 You want to tell me anything at all?

Speaker 19 I'm sorry, but I'm not going to be able to tell you anything about her current life.

Speaker 59 At all.

Speaker 36 At all.

Speaker 8 As for Mike, he had a choice, he knew.

Speaker 15 He could sink into bitterness or...

Speaker 8 So where do you put your frustrations over this?

Speaker 47 Well,

Speaker 48 what has come from all this is a,

Speaker 48 we consider very positive thing.

Speaker 2 The Trent DeGiro Foundation has awarded nearly 100 scholarships to walk-on football players and others at the University of Kentucky and at local high schools.

Speaker 2 Young people with determination and personal courage, just like Trent.

Speaker 10 You'll never make any sense of his death, but you can make sense of his life.

Speaker 48 We can make sense of what

Speaker 48 we've done

Speaker 48 to commemorate Trent, to remember Trent, and

Speaker 48 giving these young folks an opportunity that Trent won't have.

Speaker 26 That's a whole other story, but

Speaker 35 remarkably, Trent's friends remain exceedingly close.

Speaker 27 Even all these years after that shot in the dark.

Speaker 43 They feel like family now.

Speaker 31 Well, they are family.

Speaker 48 I think it says so much about

Speaker 48 what Trent meant to these kids,

Speaker 48 young adults now, and what they mean to us.

Speaker 48 It's been a blessing to us.

Speaker 6 They all get together and laugh and tell stories

Speaker 33 and imagine.

Speaker 21 Who would he have become as an adult? Gosh, I'm sure it would have been magnificent, just as he was as a teenager. I'm kind of pissed that I don't get to meet his wife or meet his kids or

Speaker 21 share all the adult things that we've had the opportunity to share with each other.

Speaker 21 But I think, you know, when I get rid of those like base feelings, you know, the underlying feeling is just a gratitude that he was in my life, even for a brief moment in time.

Speaker 23 That's all for now.

Speaker 52 I'm Lester Holt. Thanks for joining us.

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