The Night Lynsie Disappeared

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Speaker 4 I don't go undercover every day. That's what made me nervous.

Speaker 5 They had a secret plan.

Speaker 1 Were you armed? Yes. And you weren't a liar?

Speaker 6 Yes.

Speaker 5 To solve a baffling case, a college student on a Friday night out who vanished.

Speaker 7 She was a very shy girl, but she was something special.

Speaker 5 The possible suspects? Just about everyone.

Speaker 1 The friend, the boyfriend, the mysterious older man, even her mom.

Speaker 8 I was shocked that they even suspected me.

Speaker 5 So why were police at a dead end? Enter this guy.

Speaker 1 He sees things other cops don't see?

Speaker 9 Phenomenal.

Speaker 5 They call him the Evidence Whisperer. He's about to crack this case before your eyes.

Speaker 1 The answer was in the details. It was right there.
And you won't believe how you walk out of there thinking I spooked him. It worked.
I hoped.

Speaker 4 I wasn't quite sure.

Speaker 5 I'm Lester Holt, and this is Dateline.

Speaker 1 Here's Josh Mankiewicz with The Night Lindsey Disappeared.

Speaker 1 Sometimes the facts are as clear as the Southern California sky. But other times, you have to know where to look to see the truth.

Speaker 1 This man has made a career of noticing what others do not.

Speaker 10 What's his reputation?

Speaker 11 A meticulous investigator. Just pours over the volumes of evidence and finds things that other investigators did not find.

Speaker 1 The evidence whisperer, correct.

Speaker 12 So that night I went out dancing.

Speaker 1 Does this man act guilty?

Speaker 13 Since I knew Lindsay, I think.

Speaker 1 Does he know more than he's saying?

Speaker 14 I mean, I didn't know anything was going on. All right.
I just said, where's Lindsay? Okay.

Speaker 1 What about this man? Can you believe the story he's telling?

Speaker 14 I was supposed to pick her up twice, and she was so out of character, she didn't show up on either day.

Speaker 1 The evidence whisperer wasn't present at either of those interviews, but watching them helped him solve the mystery of what happened to a vivacious young woman and bring answers to the mother who loved her.

Speaker 8 I was always proud of her. She was a real fighter.

Speaker 1 Lindsay Eklund arrived on July 22, 1980. She was the youngest of three.
Maybe that fighting spirit isn't visible in her photos, but her mother, Nancy, says it was always there.

Speaker 1 Lindsay had a passion for animals. She helped out in her spare time at a local shelter.
Kim Davidson, who worked at Lindsay's middle school, remembers young Lindsay also had a sense of compassion.

Speaker 7 I was standing outside, I was freezing cold, and I didn't bring a jacket that day.

Speaker 7 And I felt these little hands up on my shoulder and a sweater come up around me and I turned around and it was Lindsay and she said, I just can't stand sitting here watching you shiver and just wrap me up in her sweater.

Speaker 7 She just melted me.

Speaker 1 And Lindsay gave back in other ways. Her mother says Lindsay would lie about her age so she could give blood.
Remarkable in itself because Lindsay struggled with her own disabilities.

Speaker 1 Her left arm was paralyzed, her left leg impaired. Did she ever talk about how she became disabled?

Speaker 7 She had brought it up to me and said that she was in a car accident and that she was thrown and when she was a little girl, but very, very just like matter of fact, didn't, you know, not pour me or not feel sorry for me or anything like that.

Speaker 1 But growing up, Lindsay needed so much care. Her mother, Nancy, was with Lindsay like her her shadow.

Speaker 8 Somebody had to be with her 24 hours a day. And that was you?

Speaker 6 Yes.

Speaker 8 It was her and I alone.

Speaker 8 She was my only purpose in my life was to make her as normal as she could be.

Speaker 1 By the time Kim met Lindsay, Lindsay's dad and brothers had moved away. Kim remembers a very tight family unit of just two.
How close were Lindsay and Nancy?

Speaker 7 Unbelievably, extremely.

Speaker 1 But as Lindsay reached adolescence, that started changing. Like a lot of teens, she wanted her own identity.
She changed the spelling of her name from this

Speaker 1 to this.

Speaker 1 By high school, there were girlfriends, even some boyfriends.

Speaker 1 And by the time she was 20, after so many years of mom and daughter being each other's best friends and confidants, Lindsay began to keep some things in her life to herself.

Speaker 1 like where she was really headed one night in February 2001. Does it make any sense that she would lie to you about what she was going to do that night?

Speaker 8 I've never known her to lie to me, but you don't know what you don't know.

Speaker 1 It was a Friday night. Lindsay was in college part-time and working, but still living at home.

Speaker 1 She told her mom that instead of their usual Friday night dinner, she was staying the night with a girlfriend named Andrea. someone Nancy had never met.

Speaker 1 And then a young man named Chris came to the door to pick Lindsay up.

Speaker 16 She introduces you to this guy, Chris.

Speaker 1 Did Chris say hello to you? Uh-huh. Was he polite? He had good manners.

Speaker 1 But Nancy says something felt wrong.

Speaker 8 I had a feeling about him.

Speaker 1 What feeling? I don't know.

Speaker 10 But you put it aside.

Speaker 1 Of course, Nancy was used to things feeling wrong. She'd spent so many years worrying about Lindsay.
It was a struggle to let go. But she did.

Speaker 8 The last thing I said to her was, remember your seatbelt. And she looks over her shoulder and she says, back at you, mom, love you.
It's the last thing she said to me.

Speaker 1 Nancy locked up the house and went to bed. The next day, Lindsay was supposed to call after she was done tutoring two girls from the neighborhood.

Speaker 1 But when the call never came, Nancy drove over and found out Lindsay never showed up at her job.

Speaker 8 All of a sudden, my daughter is not where she's supposed to be.

Speaker 1 She had taught these little girls like for four four months about. And you have no way of reaching her? I had no way.
Yes, they went to the hospital. Nancy Eklund was frantic.

Speaker 8 I started calling hospitals. I called the morgue.
I mean, that's how desperate I was. See if there was a Jane Doe in the morgue.

Speaker 1 There was no Jane Doe. And there was no Lindsay Eklund.
Most people who disappear like that,

Speaker 1 they come back within a couple of days.

Speaker 9 If not 24 hours, yes.

Speaker 1 Is that what you thought was going to happen?

Speaker 9 I think we did.

Speaker 1 Karine Loomis was a detective with the Placentia Police Department. You had no unidentified bodies.

Speaker 9 We had no unidentified bodies.

Speaker 1 You checked the ER?

Speaker 9 We checked everything. We checked everybody, we checked everything.

Speaker 9 There was just no sign. It was this as if she vanished.

Speaker 5 Coming up, Lindsay had a secret that she'd kept from just about everyone.

Speaker 1 Since the last time you saw Lindsay a week ago, no,

Speaker 17 I don't think so.

Speaker 5 When the night Lindsay disappeared continues.

Speaker 1 Her daughter was missing. Nancy Eklund began handing out flyers and counting the days without Lindsay, ticking them off on little post-it notes.

Speaker 1 She also went to talk with Detective Corrine Loomis of the Placentia Police Department. Nancy wanted Corine to know about her Lindsay, how Nancy always knew where she was.

Speaker 1 They were best friends. It was a speech Corine Loomis had heard before.

Speaker 9 It's typical with a lot of parents or family members when they report a missing person. Sometimes they

Speaker 9 give you the idea that this is an idyllic family life because I think there's a fear that if they don't paint a very rosy picture of this person, we're not going to be sympathetic and look for them.

Speaker 1 That you're not going to work hard.

Speaker 18 We're not going to work hard.

Speaker 9 And I think there was a little bit of that with Nancy.

Speaker 1 Placentia Placentia PD was working the case. They brought in the usual suspects, like the boyfriend.

Speaker 4 When you guys were dating, she hasn't been dating anyone else, to your knowledge.

Speaker 1 His name is Matthew Ramirez. He was at college with Lindsay.
They'd been on and off a bit, but then...

Speaker 20 When I went to her house Thursday, you know, she was like, I want to break up.

Speaker 1 As can happen with young romance, what was off was soon back on. Lindsay and Matt were back together in time for the weekend, but not in time to make plans for that Friday night.

Speaker 1 Then in came the last person known to have seen her, Chris McAmis, 21 years old, out of school. He told the cops he was unemployed.
Lindsay had met him through friends about four months prior.

Speaker 1 And it turned out, he never drove Lindsay to Andrea's house for a sleepover. Chris said that was a lie Lindsay made up for her mother.
The real plan was to go clubbing all night in San Diego.

Speaker 12 She says, don't tell my mom that we're going to San Diego because my mom won't let us go or won't let me go or something like that. And definitely don't tell her that we're clubbing.

Speaker 1 Chris told police that when their night of clubbing went bust, they headed home earlier than expected. He dropped off the other girls, he said, and then headed to Lindsay's house.

Speaker 1 Chris said it was after 4 a.m. when he finally got back here to Lindsay's neighborhood.
And he said that Lindsay was worried that her mom might hear his truck pull up at that hour.

Speaker 1 So Chris said Lindsay asked to be dropped off not at her house, but here at the corner about 50 yards away.

Speaker 1 That sounded strange to police until they heard from Lindsay's friends that at other times she had asked to be dropped off right here.

Speaker 1 Chris said he then drove home and police even found a photo from a bank ATM of what looked like Chris's truck heading north on the right street at the right time. To the cops, Chris's story added up.

Speaker 1 And that was when police learned Matthew and Chris were not the only men in Lindsay's life. There was someone else whom both Matthew and Chris had mentioned to investigators.

Speaker 1 An older man who drove Lindsay around. No one knew his name.
They had heard Lindsay refer to him as her friend.

Speaker 12 That's all anybody

Speaker 19 knows him by.

Speaker 8 As her friend. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Nancy had no idea Lindsay was friends with any older man. She was about to find out.
Two days after Lindsay vanishes, you get a phone call.

Speaker 8 Yes.

Speaker 1 You're pretty much at your wit's end at this point. And the phone rings and it's a guy named Marty.
Did you know him, Marty? No. As far as you know, did Lindsay know him already?

Speaker 8 No.

Speaker 1 Marty told Nancy that he'd gone to pick up Lindsay at school, but she wasn't there. He said he had money of Lindsay's that she needed for tuition.
None of that made any sense to Nancy.

Speaker 1 After Lindsay goes missing, Nancy, her mother, gets a phone call from a guy named Marty.

Speaker 9 Marty Rossler.

Speaker 1 And what does Marty Rossler say to her?

Speaker 9 Marty says that he's befriended Lindsay. He's a friend of Lindsay's and he's concerned because he hadn't heard from her.

Speaker 1 What did you learn about Marty Rossler?

Speaker 9 Marty Rossler was not Marty Rossler.

Speaker 1 Marty Rossler was really Marty Pregenzer. He did not have a criminal record.
What he did have was a relationship with Lindsay that he hadn't told his wife about.

Speaker 1 He told police he'd often pick Lindsay up and give her rides, but that was about it.

Speaker 1 Marty was 58.

Speaker 9 And she was 20? And she was 20.

Speaker 1 And they were boyfriend and girlfriend?

Speaker 9 Don't think so.

Speaker 17 There you go.

Speaker 1 So police brought in Marty. Over two days, they they recorded those interviews, at times on video and sometimes just on audio tape.

Speaker 17 When was the last time you saw Lindsay?

Speaker 1 A week ago. No.

Speaker 17 I don't think so.

Speaker 15 Absolutely.

Speaker 17 No, absolutely not.

Speaker 9 Marty said that he had last seen Lindsay the day that she went to San Diego on that Friday. Did you believe him? We really didn't believe him.

Speaker 1 They didn't believe him because of a tip they'd received.

Speaker 1 A clerk at a local clothing store had called to say she'd seen Lindsay and a much older man who matched Marty's description together at her store after the day Lindsay went missing.

Speaker 15 I flat wasn't there on that day, okay? I have been in that store, all right? And I said, I'm like you. I mean, I'm easily, you know, identified, okay?

Speaker 15 I mean, probably every place I've been with her would would know that I was in there with her, okay?

Speaker 9 It was a very long, very long interview.

Speaker 10 Friendly?

Speaker 9 no no i remember drilling down on him because i really thought that he might know where where lindsay was you're a parent yes okay how many kids do you have two

Speaker 4 if you had a child gone for eight days

Speaker 9 okay vanished vaporized in thin air

Speaker 9 would your heart not be broken oh Absolutely. Do you not feel some compassion for Nancy?

Speaker 15 Unbelievable. I think this is a nice girl.
And, you know, this family's had their share of

Speaker 15 hardships.

Speaker 22 And this is just, you know, I mean, I feel so, you know, helpless.

Speaker 9 I don't think you are helpless. I think you can help us.

Speaker 1 Marty insisted he couldn't, that he didn't know what had happened to Lindsay. Detectives weren't buying.

Speaker 17 Have you harmed Lindsay?

Speaker 20 No.

Speaker 20 No.

Speaker 22 Never.

Speaker 22 Neither by accident?

Speaker 15 Accidents happen.

Speaker 19 Never touch them. Okay.
No.

Speaker 19 Never touch them.

Speaker 23 Okay.

Speaker 23 Has you put her someplace where she's left?

Speaker 1 No, no.

Speaker 1 Police searched Marty's home and found nothing. No proof that Marty had anything to do with Lindsay's disappearance.

Speaker 1 So they moved on to a new suspect, someone closer to Lindsay than anyone else on earth.

Speaker 1 Coming up.

Speaker 8 I was shocked that they even suspected me.

Speaker 1 Lindsay's own mother.

Speaker 5 Were investigators ruling her out or roping her in?

Speaker 8 I don't know what this is all about.

Speaker 5 When Dateline continues.

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Speaker 1 Nancy and Lindsay had been together all Lindsay's life. Now, alone, Nancy waited, ticking off the days.

Speaker 1 In the dark about where her daughter was and about the pace of the investigation, police were were not keeping her in the loop.

Speaker 1 So Nancy was delighted when they called to say they were coming to visit. You look at the boyfriend Matthew.

Speaker 1 You look at Marty, the older guy, the relationship nobody knew about. He denies it.

Speaker 10 You look at Chris.

Speaker 1 He says, I dropped her off. I never saw her again.
Right.

Speaker 1 And you look at Lindsay's mother.

Speaker 9 We did look at Lindsay's mother. You have to.

Speaker 8 So I made my cookies and all this kind of silly stuff that I always do.

Speaker 1 Yeah. The cops weren't coming for coffee.
They arrived with a search warrant.

Speaker 8 I was shocked that they even suspected me. I didn't know what even a search warrant was.

Speaker 1 The house Nancy and Lindsay had once shared was torn apart. How much of a suspect was Nancy?

Speaker 9 I don't know that Nancy was on the radar for a long time. She was on the radar long enough to be able to set her aside.

Speaker 1 After that search, they did just that. They believed this anguished mother had nothing to do with the disappearance of her daughter.
So they took Nancy off the list.

Speaker 1 They also took off the boyfriend, Matthew. He had an alibi that held up, putting him somewhere else at the time Lindsay went missing.

Speaker 1 So that left just two.

Speaker 15 I haven't seen her since that day.

Speaker 1 Marty, whom police didn't trust because of his secret relationship with Lindsay, and because he had lied about his identity. And the man who dropped Lindsay off off at that corner.

Speaker 1 The last person to see her before she vanished, Chris McAmis.

Speaker 23 You go on in here, grab a seat of FBM.

Speaker 19 Do you remember Crime Limit?

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 1 April 2002, more than a year after Lindsay went missing, detectives decided to start over. They brought Chris McAmis back to see if his story still held up.

Speaker 13 I really wouldn't like to think that Lindsay has been like either abducted or something has happened to her.

Speaker 12 Like what? Like what?

Speaker 13 I'd really rather, I'd really rather

Speaker 13 think that she was a friend or something like that.

Speaker 1 Police turned up the heat.

Speaker 9 Let's cut the bull about the impositive. Let's just sit down to meeting in a strip away that I'd like to think.

Speaker 9 And in my Pollyanna mind, you know, if all things are in a perfect world, then I'd hope she follows an odd beef someplace, okay?

Speaker 13 It's a possibility she's dead.

Speaker 1 Right.

Speaker 1 Police thought Chris seemed oddly calm, talking about a friend who may have been murdered.

Speaker 19 Well, if it turns out somebody killed her,

Speaker 17 what do you think should happen?

Speaker 13 Find them.

Speaker 13 I want to find them anyway.

Speaker 13 They're going to do.

Speaker 19 How long do you think they should have been?

Speaker 19 Long as it takes.

Speaker 20 Like what?

Speaker 1 That's as strong as you could get out of him.

Speaker 9 That's as strong as we could get out of him.

Speaker 1 Not, he ought to go to hell, or I'd personally electrocute him.

Speaker 9 I'd personally electrocute him. He should get the gas chamber.
She was my friend.

Speaker 9 She wouldn't deserve that. She wouldn't hurt a fly.
There was nothing.

Speaker 1 His lack of emotion was suggestive that perhaps Chris should move to the top of the list, but it was not evidence.

Speaker 1 After the interview, Chris McCamus was free to leave, and detectives weren't any closer to learning what happened to Lindsay Eklund.

Speaker 1 And neither was Nancy, who remained convinced her daughter would one day just come home. You thought that one day she would walk back through the door.

Speaker 8 Yes.

Speaker 1 She believed it because she wanted to, and because over the years, several people had told her they'd seen Lindsay.

Speaker 8 They never saw the front of her face. They always saw the back of her.
And I held on to every word they said.

Speaker 1 Her friend Kim remembers how hard it was on Nancy thinking Lindsay had just left her.

Speaker 7 She went through the period of her being angry at her and thought, okay, maybe she is. Maybe she did leave me.
And she threw some of her pictures out and clothes out.

Speaker 1 She threw Lindsay's stuff away.

Speaker 7 She did, I think, because she was so angry and thought, how could she do that? How could she leave me? How could she leave me?

Speaker 1 It was torture for Nancy, no matter what version of events you believed. And police still weren't telling her anything.
Nancy, during all this time, feels

Speaker 1 like she's been sort of cut out of the loop. Yes.

Speaker 1 Like

Speaker 1 you're not telling her anything. Maybe you're not actually working on it.
Right. Whatever you are doing, you're certainly not sharing it with her.

Speaker 9 Nancy was pretty angry.

Speaker 9 We worked this case diligently for a long time. At some point, you hit the wall.

Speaker 1 There are nine detectives in Placentia working everything. Drugs, gangs, rapes, murder, and cold cases.
By 2008, it was clear Placentia PD had hit that wall. They would need help on this one.

Speaker 1 And who they needed was a guy named Larry. Tell me about Larry.

Speaker 9 Larry is phenomenal.

Speaker 1 Phenomenal because, what, he sees things other cops don't see?

Speaker 9 Phenomenal because he sees things cops don't see. I don't know anybody who could have done a better job job than Larry.

Speaker 1 The Evidence Whisperer was about to listen to what the facts of this case were really saying.

Speaker 5 Coming up, was there something that police had missed? You bet. That picture of the truck spotted on the night of the crime, something about it just doesn't seem right.

Speaker 5 And the Evidence Whisperer is all over it.

Speaker 5 When the night Lindsay disappeared, continues.

Speaker 1 By 2008, Lindsey Eklund had been missing for seven years. The case had gone from cold to frozen in time.

Speaker 1 So Placentia PD decided to outsource the investigation to the cold case unit at the Orange County DA's office, to a guy named Larry Montgomery.

Speaker 1 With more than 30 years working homicide, Larry's put away his share of bad guys, not usually by knocking on doors. Instead, Larry works by looking very closely at the evidence.
He doesn't work fast.

Speaker 1 In fact, Larry is meticulously slow. And that was just what this cold case needed.
Was there anything in the original investigation that struck you as something that you needed to re-examine?

Speaker 10 Everything.

Speaker 1 Everything that had led Placentia police into that wall, trying to decide between two suspects.

Speaker 14 I mean, I'm concerned about this girl, okay?

Speaker 23 You know, and she's missing.

Speaker 1 Marty, Lindsay's older friend who kept their relationship a secret and lied about his name.

Speaker 1 And Chris.

Speaker 13 In my heart, it seems like she might be so wide.

Speaker 1 The last person known to have seen Lindsay when he dropped her off at that corner. At that point,

Speaker 1 any idea on your part

Speaker 1 which of those two was a more likely suspect?

Speaker 10 No, I don't know until I get into it and see the details.

Speaker 1 You're no doubt aware that you've got a reputation for believing that,

Speaker 1 I don't know if God's in the details, but guilt's in the details.

Speaker 10 And innocence.

Speaker 1 Guilty or innocent? Was it Marty or Chris? Larry even considered another possibility. Could it have been random? Someone who'd seen Lindsay at just the wrong time.

Speaker 10 So you've got a bad guy just waiting, hoping that a girl drops out of a car at 4.25 4.25 in the morning.

Speaker 1 It happens. Yep.

Speaker 10 And you consider that, but then you weigh it.

Speaker 1 And you go, is that a good possibility? Probably not, but still keep an open mind. And so Larry sat down and read through the entire case file, all the witness statements, all the interviews.

Speaker 1 He did that for two years.

Speaker 14 Here we go down this Deadhouse Road again.

Speaker 1 He watched the February 2001 interview that police did with a very unhappy Marty.

Speaker 1 Doesn't it strike you as tremendously suspicious that Marty would call after Lindsay disappears, talk to Lindsay's mother, and give a phony name?

Speaker 10 If you didn't know the background of Marty, then absolutely.

Speaker 14 When I talked to the mother on the phone, I just gave an identifier. Okay? I mean, Marty Wrestler.
That's what I said.

Speaker 14 Okay. Right.
All right. Which is a lie.

Speaker 15 Which is a lie.

Speaker 1 Watching that interview, Larry chalked up Marty's dishonesty as an attempt to save his marriage. I don't want my wife to be brought into this thing.

Speaker 1 Larry also took a closer look at the idea that Marty and Lindsay were together at that clothing store after she went missing.

Speaker 15 I flat wasn't there on that day, okay?

Speaker 1 No one ever found any security video of that, and Larry's learned over the years that well-meaning people often get dates wrong.

Speaker 1 And Larry learned a key fact. Marty had actually participated in those early searches for Lindsay.
You eliminated Marty fairly quickly then. Yes.

Speaker 1 Marty's behavior matched up with that of an innocent person, not with a guilty one.

Speaker 10 That's correct. He is actually doing exactly what you would do if you were looking for Lindsay.
He was searching.

Speaker 1 So Larry Montgomery turned his attention to Chris McAmis. Guilty or innocent?

Speaker 1 Chris was the last person known to be with Lindsay. He told police he drove straight home after dropping Lindsay off.

Speaker 1 And police found that photo of what looked like his truck heading north away from Lindsay's neighborhood, which took him past this ATM camera. The video from the ATM camera.

Speaker 1 Police at the time saw that as

Speaker 1 not ironclad proof that Chris was telling the truth, but suggestive that what he said,

Speaker 1 he actually did. Correct.

Speaker 1 But when Larry compared photos of Chris's truck with the photos from the bank, he saw something no one else had noticed. The paint on the back of the side view mirrors on Chris's truck was white.

Speaker 1 What about the truck in the photo?

Speaker 10 Truck in the photo had a dark spot in that area, which means whatever mirrors were there, if there were mirrors there, they were black.

Speaker 1 So it's not the same truck.

Speaker 10 That's right, it's not.

Speaker 1 Suddenly, Chris's alibi had a big hole in it. Larry moved on to Chris's history with women.

Speaker 1 Two ex-girlfriends talked to police about how Chris would become unhinged by rejection, or what he called disrespect.

Speaker 1 Larry heard about how Chris had once crushed a pet crab with a hammer right in front of one of his girlfriends because he thought the crab had killed one of his fish.

Speaker 1 This is a guy with some significant anger issues.

Speaker 10 It certainly appears that way.

Speaker 12 She told me it was from a car accident.

Speaker 1 Larry listened to Chris's interviews and caught him talking some of the time about Lindsay in the past tense.

Speaker 25 Head was pretty much stuck like this.

Speaker 6 Okay.

Speaker 1 Then Larry found something in the paperwork from Placentia PD that proved Chris McCamus had lied to the police early on about his whereabouts on Saturday, February 17th, the day Lindsay didn't come home.

Speaker 1 Chris had told the cops he stayed close to home, but Larry checked Chris's credit card statement.

Speaker 10 There was one entry on February 17th, and it turns out it was Santa Clarita, which is 50 miles north of where Chris lived.

Speaker 1 Why would Chris be in Santa Clarita?

Speaker 10 Well, that's what I wanted to know.

Speaker 1 Digging through the reports, Larry found information about Chris's dad, that he was in construction, and that in 2000 and 2001, he had a job site in Santa Clarita.

Speaker 21 You can't tell now, but back in 2001, this was a major construction site. Now Chris had told police that he did not work for his dad that winter, that he was on unemployment.

Speaker 21 But Larry saw some big cash deposits going into Chris's bank account in addition to his unemployment checks. So he thought that Chris might have been working for his dad off the books.

Speaker 1 And Larry came up here to ask around.

Speaker 1 And they told you that it was Chris's father's construction company?

Speaker 10 Chris's father did some of the tractor work at that site, and Chris worked worked there. And Chris was one of the tractor drivers that the superintendent said was there every day.

Speaker 1 Is this where you thought to yourself

Speaker 1 that's where Lindsay Eklund is?

Speaker 10 I thought chances are excellent that if I killed Lindsay and I was in Chris McAmis's situation and I had use of a tractor out in the middle of nowhere,

Speaker 10 I might use that tractor to dig a hole to put her in.

Speaker 1 Now, all the evidence Whisperer had to do

Speaker 1 was prove it.

Speaker 1 Coming up, an undercover operation. Were you armed?

Speaker 6 Yes.

Speaker 1 And you were wearing a wire? Yes.

Speaker 5 Could she help them get the proof they'd need?

Speaker 4 His color in his face went white.

Speaker 5 When Dateline continues.

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Speaker 1 It was October of 2010, nine years after her daughter disappeared. Nancy Eklund was still waiting and doing what she could.
She was now at 3,535 days without Lindsay.

Speaker 1 She didn't know it, but a few miles away, Larry Montgomery was tightening the noose around Chris McAmis.

Speaker 1 Larry had recruited a motorcycle cop from a nearby town to go undercover.

Speaker 4 They needed a police officer who looked like a college student and didn't have the mannerisms of a police officer.

Speaker 1 Officer Spring Sandelli fit the bill. How were you dressed?

Speaker 4 Jeans on and just a little shirt, something that a college student would wear, but something that would also appeal to a guy.

Speaker 1 Were you armed?

Speaker 6 Yes.

Speaker 1 And you were wearing a wire?

Speaker 6 Yes.

Speaker 28 Hi, are you Chris?

Speaker 28 Yes. Hi, my name is Nicole Anderson.
I'm from Forest College Torch Magazine.

Speaker 1 Officer Sendelli was posing as a student reporter, complete with a phony press pass. She knocked on Chris's front door.

Speaker 1 Chris had talked to a student reporter from Lindsay's College in the past about the case.

Speaker 4 You use your real name? No, I used a fake name, told him who I was, and...

Speaker 18 Well, we just received word at the Torch magazine that remains have been found that they believe belong to to Lindsay.

Speaker 28 So I guess they're doing DNA testing right now and in the meantime I'm supposed to go contact friends family to get their initial reaction for a story.

Speaker 4 Okay. When I told him that the police believe that they found Lindsay's remains his demeanor changed.
How? Quite drastically actually. I could see that his color in his face went white.

Speaker 1 The police had not found Lindsay's remains. That was a lie.
Police do it all the time, and it's legal. In fact, Larry had tried to find Lindsay up at the construction location where Chris had worked.

Speaker 1 And he'd gotten some interest from cadaver dogs, but nothing more.

Speaker 1 Just down the street from Chris's house, Detective Bryce Angel of Placentia PD, who'd been assigned to work with Larry, was listening and keeping an eye on the action.

Speaker 1 So you're watching him while this interview happens on his front doorstep?

Speaker 11 Yeah, I was sitting,

Speaker 11 you know, 10 houses down watching the reporter, or the undercover police officer. Once she left the area, we were in business.

Speaker 1 What happens?

Speaker 11 Later that night, he was seen coming out of his house and going into the garage, lights go on, and we're talking like three o'clock in the morning.

Speaker 11 But it was clearly a sign of somebody who couldn't sleep.

Speaker 1 Detectives were sure that they had rattled their suspect. The next day, they trailed Chris when he left his house.

Speaker 11 At some point, it became apparent that he knew that we were following him.

Speaker 1 They broke off surveillance

Speaker 1 and brought Chris in.

Speaker 1 Larry had read all about Chris McAmis,

Speaker 1 and he'd looked at tape of every time Chris had been in for an interview.

Speaker 23 Here's what the situation is.

Speaker 1 Today, he and Chris were going to meet for the first time.

Speaker 23 I have been investigating this case for about two years now as a co-case investigator.

Speaker 1 Larry had a plan to get Chris to talk without asking for a lawyer.

Speaker 23 You probably want to know what's going on, what's happening while you're sitting here.

Speaker 1 Larry promised to fill him in on the case in detail, thinking Chris would want to know if the cops had the goods. And then maybe he'd have something to say.

Speaker 23 Since you're under arrest, I do have to advise you of your rights, which I will do in a moment. After that, what I'd like to do is I'd like to explain to you everything.

Speaker 1 Larry read Chris's rights, and then before Chris could really respond, Larry laid out his case. He said he knew Chris had never dropped Lindsay off that night

Speaker 1 because the ATM photo that at first fooled investigators actually proved Chris wasn't there.

Speaker 23 It wasn't your truck. But for years, it was thought of that it was your truck, and it's not.
Matter of fact, your truck did not go by that night.

Speaker 23 It wasn't fair.

Speaker 1 He told Chris about the credit card statement and how he found someone who remembered Chris working on the job site.

Speaker 23 All of a sudden, big red flags.

Speaker 1 You know,

Speaker 23 you are working. You are up there when you said you were not.

Speaker 23 But he said,

Speaker 23 you guys don't work on Saturday. Lindsay disappeared on a Saturday morning.
None of your credit card usage up there is on any weekend. All of it's on weekdays except for the day Lindsay disappeared.

Speaker 23 So you're not up there working that day.

Speaker 1 He told Chris the lie about Lindsay being found.

Speaker 23 We went recently, got DNA from mother and dad of Lindsay and had that checked against the body. And it's Lindsay.

Speaker 23 So now we've got Lindsay up there, right in the area where you were, right at the time when you did not drop her off, and we have enough to prove the crime.

Speaker 1 And knowing about Chris's anger issues with previous girlfriends,

Speaker 1 Larry summoned up a little empathy to draw Chris in.

Speaker 23 I know that you have that ability to be angry, but I don't know what would cause her to get you that angry, or what she could have done.

Speaker 1 Chris didn't say much until a little body language revealed that Larry was on the right track.

Speaker 23 Was it a premeditated thing?

Speaker 23 I didn't think it was.

Speaker 23 So what does she do?

Speaker 1 Larry finished talking. He was hoping Chris would give it up.

Speaker 25 I think I need a lawyer to talk to you about this with me.

Speaker 23 Well, it's up to you.

Speaker 1 The Supreme Court has made it pretty clear, if someone declares that they want an attorney, the interview is supposed to stop until one can be hired or provided.

Speaker 1 But in this case, Larry was walking a line, believing that asking for a lawyer isn't the same as wondering if you need one.

Speaker 1 Karine Loomis was watching from another room. That's about as close as you can get to the I Want a Lawyer line without actually crossing.

Speaker 9 Saying that I want it. Right.

Speaker 1 Were you holding your breath when he said that?

Speaker 9 Yes. This was a make-or-break interview.
If he didn't confess, he was going to walk again.

Speaker 11 Coming up, I knew that was the moment of truth.

Speaker 5 Years of mystery come down to one chance.

Speaker 29 Nobody likes to be labeled a monster, only you have the other side of the story.

Speaker 1 What kind of story would he tell

Speaker 5 when the night Lindsay disappeared? Continues.

Speaker 23 I need to know what occurred so I do the right thing because

Speaker 23 something happened there.

Speaker 1 Larry Montgomery spoke for 45 minutes. He'd given Chris McGamas everything he had.

Speaker 23 Take a look on your credit card usage.

Speaker 1 The photo. The job site.

Speaker 28 How well did you know Lindsay?

Speaker 30 This is not a very convenient time right now, so

Speaker 1 a phony story about finding the body. And then the interview had suddenly stopped dead.

Speaker 25 I think I need a lawyer to talk to you about this with me.

Speaker 23 Oh, it's up to you.

Speaker 1 And because Chris said, I think I need a lawyer, and not I want a lawyer, Larry thought whatever came next would be admissible in court.

Speaker 1 Detective Angel, who'd been letting Larry do the talking, then spoke up.

Speaker 11 So I knew that was a moment of truth. I had to interject something very quickly.

Speaker 29 Chris, nobody likes to be labeled a monster. And in this case, that's the way way it's pointing.

Speaker 29 Only you have the other side of the story.

Speaker 5 Nobody is going to be able to speak for you.

Speaker 11 That's why we're here now.

Speaker 11 That's it.

Speaker 29 It's a reason everything happens.

Speaker 29 I'm sure there were some circumstances that happened that night or that morning.

Speaker 10 He kind of sighed and he laid out a story.

Speaker 25 All right, what happened was

Speaker 9 this is it. He's going to give it up.
I was sitting next to the detective from the other agency, and I reached over and grabbed his arm and I said, he is going to confess.

Speaker 1 It was sad, and it was ugly.

Speaker 25 She, uh,

Speaker 25 I was going to take her home. Okay.

Speaker 25 She was telling me, why don't I just sleep over your place?

Speaker 25 Because

Speaker 22 I don't want to upset my mom.

Speaker 23 Makes sense.

Speaker 1 As Larry had suspected, Chris never dropped off Lindsay at that corner.

Speaker 22 I was trying to kiss her and then she

Speaker 25 elbowed me in the chest.

Speaker 25 And then I went to my

Speaker 25 I went to my kitchen in my apartment

Speaker 25 and I drank

Speaker 1 a lot of vodka.

Speaker 25 And then I went back and I tried to do the same thing.

Speaker 25 She pretended to be asleep.

Speaker 22 And I

Speaker 25 pulled her pants down.

Speaker 25 And I was totally drunk.

Speaker 22 She got up, said, oh my god, what are you doing?

Speaker 25 I'm calling the police.

Speaker 22 When I got up and walked to her, she tried to knock me out with my phone, with my home phone.

Speaker 25 Did she do it? To my face. Yeah, she

Speaker 25 like this to my face. Okay.

Speaker 25 And being drunk,

Speaker 25 it enraged me.

Speaker 22 It set me on fire. And I grabbed her,

Speaker 22 threw her onto my bed, and

Speaker 22 I got her into a

Speaker 1 headlock. Okay.

Speaker 25 And she died.

Speaker 23 Then what did you do?

Speaker 25 Then I tried to figure out what I should do because I couldn't believe how it just happened that way.

Speaker 1 Quickly, huh?

Speaker 22 It just, I couldn't believe it. I thought she was just going to pass out.
And I ended up killing her.

Speaker 1 That was it. Lindsay Eklund had been killed before anyone realized she was even missing.

Speaker 1 Chris says he then drove up to the work site. and used a skip loader to dig a hole.
He held on to Lindsay's body for a few days. And then when no one was around he buried her.

Speaker 1 Did it feel any better to finally know?

Speaker 8 No, because I was really devastated. There was a relief but I wasn't any happier because of it.

Speaker 1 After the confession, detectives left Chris in the interview room with another detective to watch him and Chris simply could not stop talking.

Speaker 25 Unbelievable.

Speaker 23 Tetzer.

Speaker 25 Oh, it's been so long. I finally, you know, it feels better when you finally just say

Speaker 25 what you were supposed to say.

Speaker 22 You know?

Speaker 25 I know my life is ruined now.

Speaker 22 You know, if I'm gonna get the death penalty for this,

Speaker 15 you're gonna have to ask them those questions.

Speaker 1 Alright. See ya.

Speaker 1 Then Larry came back. All was meticulous.
He wasn't done. He wanted that final detail.

Speaker 23 Where approximately was it that you dug the hole to put her?

Speaker 1 Where exactly Chris had left Lindsay?

Speaker 23 Right up in here.

Speaker 1 He explained to Chris that even though they'd found her remains, which wasn't true, the gravesite had shifted over the years from flooding.

Speaker 23 Which was where the tractor was parked and exactly where you dug the hole.

Speaker 1 With the detectives, Chris returned to the site that had become Lindsay's final resting place.

Speaker 30 And right where this tree is, I pulled my truck over

Speaker 30 and parked it.

Speaker 30 This tree to our left here? Uh-huh. Right where this tree is.
It didn't used to exist there when we had construction. Okay.

Speaker 1 He wasn't sure of the exact spot.

Speaker 30 It's over in this vicinity.

Speaker 1 But it could be way up there or way over here.

Speaker 23 brush. That brush over there? Yeah, one.

Speaker 21 It took more than a day of digging to find what was left of Lindsay.

Speaker 1 First they found a shoe, then a jacket, and a bracelet. That's how Nancy knew they'd found her.
The coroner confirmed it using dental records.

Speaker 30 The back of my truck was over here.

Speaker 1 Two years after he confessed, Chris McCamus pleaded guilty to second-degree murder. And that machine was over there.

Speaker 1 His sentence is 15 years to life.

Speaker 1 You told me that you thought you would let this consume your life too much. Oh, it did.

Speaker 8 It does to this day.

Speaker 1 Well, now it's over.

Speaker 1 What are you going to do?

Speaker 8 I don't know. A new life is opening up to you, and I don't know.

Speaker 1 I don't have any answers.

Speaker 8 I just had to get over this.

Speaker 1 That's all for now. I'm Lester Holt.

Speaker 5 Thanks for joining us.

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