48 Hours - Body of Lies
Episode Date: January 18, 202431-year-old Leisha Hurst attended Barstow College to become a teacher and began dating a fellow student, 34-year-old Jeami Chiapulis. He bragged about being a war hero and cancer survivor. Ch...iapulis seemed to be the man she could finally settle down with. The couple had plans to marry when Hurst vanished on January 22, 2009. “48 Hours" correspondent Maureen Maher reports. This classic "48 Hours" episode last aired on 7/9/2011. Watch all-new episodes of “48 Hours” on Saturdays, and stream on demand on Paramount+.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
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Download the Booster Rewards app today. Between the Barstow area and Las Vegas, I mean, there's just thousands of square miles
of desert.
Lisa Hearst could have been anywhere in this massive desert of San Bernardino County.
Talk to team one. Okay, go ahead. There were hundreds of people, an extensive amount of resources that were utilized to try to search for Lisa.
Her mom was very pretty and full of life.
Her mom was very pretty and full of life.
My daughter, Lisa Hearst, turned out to be a great mom with those two girls.
Before Lisa Hearst's disappearance, she became involved in a relationship.
Lisa Hearst believed that Jamie Chiopoulos was a great guy and that he'd fall in love with her and her two children.
He just reminded me of a person that wanted to be with kids all the time.
Jamie Chiopoulos said he was a combat veteran in both Iraq
and Afghanistan.
She wanted to marry Jamie Chiopoulos
and become a family with Jamie.
January 22, 2009,
Lisa Hurst took her daughter to school.
After dropping her daughter off at school,
she just vanished.
I was just devastated and scared.
Lucy became missing and we went out looking for her.
And we kept looking for her. You should already all be assigned to a search team.
We're going to work our way south.
It was a very large scale search.
Numerous foot searches with a couple hundred people just stretched out in a line.
Really dedicated to try to help the family find Lisa.
I was hoping and praying.
It was a nightmare for us to be out there looking.
I know that I cried a lot.
In my investigation, I found no one that could say anything
negative about Lisa.
I was wondering who could have done something to her.
Could you think of anyone who would have wanted to harm her?
No.
Lisa Hearst's disappearance didn't make sense to us
until we learned of the lies and deception.
All the lies.
Lies.
This case is about deception.
None of it was true. House of
cards, if you will, was getting ready to fall. Living a double life. Diabolical, absolutely evil
is what I call it. Evil. They had sworn to take it to their graves. Body of lies. I'm sorry. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi.
Hi.
Hi.
Hi.
Hi.
Hi.
Hi.
Hi.
Hi.
Hi.
Hi.
Hi.
Hi.
Hi.
Hi.
Hi.
Hi.
Hi.
Hi.
Hi.
Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. He even had a photo of the elite ranger unit he had served in.
It all appealed to single mom Lisa Hurst and her father, Lynn.
I was impressed with him because of my military background.
Did you like this guy?
He seemed like a very nice man.
Very nice man.
A man who sensed Lisa's kids, Ashlyn and Tyler, were the way to her heart.
He knew, like, our jokes and stuff, and he'd give us gifts and stuff,
and he'd get stuff for Mom.
Did you think that your daughter was in love with this guy?
Yeah, she was.
Okay, happy birthday, Lisa.
Lisa was a graduate student living in Barstow, California.
Lisa was a graduate student living in Barstow, California.
The mother of two young girls had lived 31 years without making an enemy.
That's why in the hours after she went missing in January 2009, it made no sense at all. Hey, boy!
Lisa grew up surrounded by love and the safety and security of close family.
Those were the gifts Lynn and Debbie and her older brother,
Walden, gave the little girl.
Happy-go-lucky, always smiling.
I think what really set off her personality
was her deep blue eyes.
Girly girl or a little bit of a tomboy with sports?
Tomboy.
Yes, she was.
She played baseball.
She was very good.
Home was the endless, starkly beautiful desert
outside Barstow. Lynn was a Vietnam
vet, a working man. Debbie worked as
a medical assistant. It was a nice place to raise kids. But Lisa
wasn't a kid for very long. Outgoing or shy?
Outgoing.
And then just blossomed into a beautiful woman, I thought.
She was an adventurous teenager,
and Lisa struggled to manage all the newfound attention from the boys.
She was unlucky at love,
starting with her high school boyfriend, Jesse Poveronica.
So when she came home and told you she was pregnant, what was your reaction?
I wanted to strangle her, but there's not much you can do
and realize that you've got to be there for your kids.
It was Ashlyn and she was just a baby.
Baby Ashlyn was born.
I told her I'd be there, and I was.
Lisa's family was incredibly supportive,
and this teenager worked hard at being a good mom,
even after she and her boyfriend broke up.
She was a little scared at first,
but realized, you know, she's bringing a life into the world,
and she was accepting it.
Hi, my Ashlyn. Hi. She was really a life into the world, and she was accepting it.
Hi, my Ashlyn.
Hi.
She was really proud of her.
Take a look.
That's time.
There would be another relationship with cross-country truck driver Ruben DeLeon.
Ashlyn!
It was serious, lasting almost five years.
And then she got pregnant again.
Yeah.
There's your new sister.
Then Tyler arrived.
Lisa and Ruben seemed ready to be a real family.
Good job, Daddy, Tyler!
You seem to be about like me, huh?
I thought they were going to get married.
I thought Reuben and Lisa were going to settle down and have a family.
Lisa even bought a wedding dress.
But that didn't work out, so it tore her apart.
That was hard for her.
Yeah.
She tore it up. She took the scissors to it.
To the dress? To the dress afterwards. She was hard for her. Yeah. She tore it up. She took the scissors to it. To the dress.
To the dress afterwards. She was so devastated. So in 2005, Lisa became a single mother again,
trying to make it all work for Ashlyn, then eight, and Tyler, who was only five.
She was our mother that took good care of us and she taught us a lot.
Under the desert sky the three girls settled down and began repeating the
precious rituals of family that Lisa had learned as a child.
There it is.
What kind of mom was she?
I'm going to turn you.
I don't think you could find a better person for her situation.
Raising two girls, they were very well brought up.
Lisa Hurst, along with her two daughters,
was finally growing up.
Yeah, Lisa!
She would attend Barstow College with plans to become a teacher.
Did you feel like once she went back to college
that she was kind of finally on track?
Yeah.
But life without a partner was lonely and difficult for Lisa.
Taylor, go get your PJs on.
She really wanted to get married, I think,
and settle down and have a family
and someone to actually be there for her
and be part of her life.
Then, in October 2006 at Barstow College,
she met fellow student Jamie Chiopoulos.
And before long…
She said, okay, do you want to go meet my new boyfriend?
Jamie Chiopoulos was anything but a typical student.
He was a 34-year-old war hero and a cancer survivor.
He had a big house, a big heart, and as far as Lisa could tell,
Chiopoulos was single and available.
Obviously, she wanted him to be in her life.
And Jamie Chiopoulos wanted Lisa in his life.
She graduated, and they were set to finally become a family.
The kids and their single mom were thrilled.
And I really thought that she had found the right person. So in January 2009, a new life seemed to be truly dawning for Lisa and her
two girls. That's why what happened next was such a surprise to Lisa's family. The police department came and knocked on my door.
Lisa's car had been found 50 miles south in the town of Hesperia, abandoned.
The windows down, the keys in the ignition.
And I says, that's not Lisa.
My heart suck.
A massive search for Lisa Hurst would soon begin.
And another search would also start.
Into who really was Jamie Chiopoulos.
I wasn't scared of anything, but I was scared of him.
scared of him. In 2014, Laura Heavlin was in her home in Tennessee when she received a call from California. Her daughter, Erin Corwin, was missing. The young wife of a Marine had moved to the
California desert to a remote base near Joshua Tree National Park. They have to alert the military, and when they do, the NCIS gets involved.
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When Lisa Hurst vanished
on January 22, 2009,
and police told her parents that her car
had been found abandoned,
her parents knew
something was very wrong.
The car was
in a place that it shouldn't have been put.
Lisa's father immediately
called her apartment and learned
from his granddaughters, Ashlyn,
12, and Tyler, 9,
that Lisa had not come home the previous evening.
She'd never leave her kids that long.
It'd just be school and then home.
So where could Lisa be?
The last person to have contact with her was her boyfriend, Jamie Chiopoulos,
who that Thursday afternoon of Lisa's disappearance
had picked up her daughter Tyler from school
while Ashlyn walked home alone.
I said, where's mom? And he said, college.
Chiopolis told Tyler that her mother was here
at the University of La Verne in Victor Valley,
where Lisa occasionally took graduate classes.
It would be later at night because she took later classes.
That night, Chiopolis
got the girls settled in
and he even picked up dinner.
Then we just started doing normal stuff
like homework and then he left.
Lisa rarely
left the girls home alone, but
when she did, she would always
call to speak with them.
Would she have gone out with girlfriends and partied
all night? There's no way.
Lisa's just too responsible for those two girls.
She loved those kids.
And that is when her two little girls got scared.
When it was 5 in the morning, I started freaking out.
Then I got kind of scared.
Detective Keith Libby from the Barstow Police Department
opened the investigation into the disappearance of Lisa Hurst.
Her oldest daughter is the age of my youngest son,
so it was pretty difficult.
From the very beginning, everything about Lisa's case was suspicious.
From the location where her car was found...
She had no connection to that area
to what her boyfriend jamie chiopolis told detective libby the first time they met he
was saying that they weren't actually engaged was he basically denying that they had a relationship
to you oh absolutely in fact chiopolis dropped a bombshell, telling Detective Libby he was actually married to a woman in the Army who lived out of state.
It just didn't make sense. When I walked out of the house, I was thinking, this guy's up to something.
That was no surprise to this woman, who dated Chiopolis a lifetime ago.
I think it's very possible that he hurt somebody.
time ago. I think it's very possible that he hurt somebody. Jamie Tatro lives in Georgia,
2,000 miles away from Lisa Hurst. But had the two young women ever met,
Jamie would have cautioned Lisa to stay far away from Chiopolis. I was, you know, a 16-year-old girl and, you know, impressionable young. was 1992, and love at first sight.
He was beautiful, rock star, long, long hair.
Chiopoulos said he played the guitar and had a band.
And was any of that true?
No. I'd never even seen him pick up a guitar.
The two dated for over a year, and they even had a child together.
But the more time Tetro spent with Chiopoulos, the more lies she caught him in.
It was all coming out who he was and who I'd been with all that time.
And who is he really? Who is this guy?
I don't even think that he knows.
He will tell a lie, and he will try to live it out.
And after a while, you don't know what's true anymore.
When Tetro broke off their relationship, Chiopolis drifted west and dropped off the radar.
Until 2002, when he joined the United States Army as an infantryman based in Hawaii.
He eventually settled in Barstow, California.
Back then, he was very popular. Everyone liked him.
Science major Joyce Franson remembers meeting Chiopoulos in 2005, when he enrolled at Barstow College.
He was in my biology class, and he had a lot of charisma.
He also told his new classmate he was a war hero. He told me he was a
Green Beret in the army for 14 years and he was medically discharged from war burns.
While Chiopoulos bragged to all about his war record, there was something he kept secret from everyone. The fact that he had a wife.
In 2006, Chiopoulos had married this woman, Army Lieutenant Colonel Catherine Taylor.
The couple shuttled between Barstow and her base in Texas. She had done some time in Iraq
and that she was stationed at, I believe it was Fort Sam Houston, Texas. And with his wife away, that left Chiopoulos ample time to lead his double life.
While she was deployed, he was going to the community college in Barstow,
and he also was establishing relationships with several different women.
Including Joyce, who became much more than a friend. He told me he was single and
he treated me like a queen. So not only was there Catherine, his wife, and Joyce, it was around this
time that Chiopolis also began dating Lisa Hurst. Jamie Chiopolis was playing the field with many women. While it's likely that neither his wife nor Lisa knew anything about the others,
Joy says Chiopoulos had mentioned Lisa to her,
describing Lisa as a student who had been harassing him for a date.
I kept telling her, there's something wrong.
Over time, Lisa's mother Debbie had begun to suspect something was not right with her daughter's fiancé.
He's going to hurt you. We had a talk about that before all this happened.
And what did she say?
Mom, things are going to be fine. We're getting married.
Celebration.
Celebration.
And when her daughter vanished, a mother's intuition turned to dread.
The evidence was piling up.
And when detectives searched Chiopoulos' house,
they hit pay dirt.
While we were searching his house, we found the receipt.
Home Depot receipts listing items Chiopoulos had just purchased.
They included bleach, duct tape, gloves, a pickaxe, shovel, and a large trash barrel.
It doesn't take Scotland Yard to figure out that those are items that can be used to get rid of a
body. There was the marriage and the receipts, and there would be one other bizarre discovery
in Chiopoulos' trash, a used condom.
It just seemed disgusting to me the way he answered it. He said, well, that's Joyce.
Chiopolis was with Joyce Franson the night Lisa disappeared.
The last thing he said to me was promise never to tell anybody anything, no matter what happens in your life.
They had sworn to take it to their graves.
Four days into the investigation of Lisa Hurst's disappearance,
Detective Keith Libby knew he had his man, Jamie Chiopoulos.
And so did Lisa's mother. In my gut, I kind of felt it was Jamie.
But even with the discovery of Chiopoulos' marriage
and the receipts showing his purchases for duct tape, gloves, a pickaxe, and shovel,
there was still no body.
I was thinking definitely foul play.
I was thinking he could have killed her.
Desperate for answers, they focused on the woman Chiopoulos told police he was with the night Lisa disappeared.
I didn't think there was anyone else.
Like Lisa Hurst, Chiopoulos had promised to marry Joyce.
He told me that was his heart's desire.
But that is not what Joyce told Detective Libby when he interviewed her just four days after Lisa disappeared.
She said she knew Jamie but hadn't seen him in over a year.
It took my pointing out to her that we'd found a condom
and it might have her DNA evidence on it for her to say,
okay, I was there on Thursday night and I had sex with him.
That is all Joyce would tell police.
She failed to mention the night Chiopoulos had called her in a panic
with an odd request.
Could she help him get rid of a car?
It also happened to be the very same night Lisa Hurst went missing.
Chiopoulos said he needed to help a friend who had fallen behind on car payments.
He needed someplace to dump the car, so it would appear that it had been stolen.
I never had a reason to distrust him.
Joy said Chiampolis followed her here to the town of Hesperia, to a neighborhood that she said had
a bad reputation for crime. They left the car right here on this roadway with the windows rolled down
and the key in the ignition. After they ditched Lisa's car, the two then drove back to
Jamie's house where they had sex. And Joy says that is when Jamie told her a truly unbelievable story.
He told me that he had family in the mafia and they had recently delivered him a package. And he was being threatened to get rid of it immediately.
It was a trash can, a sealed trash can with duct tape.
So now, just hours after dumping a car,
Joyce and Chiopolis then drive to a remote part of the desert
Joyce and Chiopolis then drive to a remote part of the desert,
where she says Chiopolis spent hours digging a hole to dump that mysterious package.
You never saw what was in there? No. I was in the car. I stayed there the whole time that he dug the hole.
He kept telling me, don't worry about it.
Joyce claims she was too scared and too confused to say no.
Joyce, this is crazy.
Did you not say, no way?
What was going through your mind?
I did say that to him,
but I didn't know what else to believe or what to do.
And did you wonder what might have been in the trash can?
Yes, very curious.
Did you think mafia, trash can, body?
Everything crossed my mind.
That is, except for telling Detective Libby what she knew.
You're not being truthful. And there's no doubt in my mind you're not being truthful.
I was scared. And when they said there was a missing person, I just totally froze.
You panicked.
I panicked.
And with no physical evidence to tie Chiopoulos directly to Lisa's disappearance,
the investigation came to a halt.
We weren't getting anywhere.
But Libby was about to get help from an unlikely investigator, Lisa's brother, Valdem,
who had gone to Hesperia looking for his sister
just hours after they discovered she was missing.
Valdin had recovered a pair of orange rubber gloves
and a plastic shower cap.
They were laying in the roadway there.
And the important thing that he did was he took a photograph of them,
a nice, clear digital photograph, which showed the condition that they were found.
Whether it was intentional or otherwise, he never mentioned to Jamie Chiopolis that he took the photo.
Volden handed the cap and gloves over to Chiopolis,
and Chiopolis would turn them over to police.
Five hours later, it wouldn't take long for the detective to make a startling discovery.
They said, ah, he switched these around.
Chiopoulos had actually given police a different pair of gloves and a different colored cap.
But why?
He had done something to try to avoid detection while driving the car
and then trying to avoid prosecution by destroying the evidence.
And with that, a critical piece of the puzzle fell into place.
The Home Depot receipts and Chiopolis' bizarre double life.
Now Detective Libby felt he could make a strong case against Jamie Chiopolis.
We obviously knew that there were going to be some challenges without her body.
However, we were confident that we had a good case circumstantially.
Libby would get no help from Chiopoulos, who was no longer talking
because he had committed himself to a local psychiatric ward.
He's probably trying to buy time to set it up as an insanity defense.
Three weeks after Lisa Hurst disappeared,
on the same day Chiopoulos checked out of the mental ward and into this motel,
police moved in.
And then we just went ahead and arrested him.
Jamie Chiopoulos was charged with Lisa's murder.
But where was Lisa?
I felt that his arrest might shake loose some information from him
leading to the whereabouts of Lisa Hurst.
We know that he purchased items from Home Depot,
specifically a pickaxe and a shovel.
Lisa's family was already dealing with the painful reality
that she would likely not be found alive.
Some of the things that we would look for,
a hump, disturbed dirt, use your nose, odors.
If there are odors out there,
there's a good chance the dog will notice them.
I didn't want to accept it.
But they still desperately wanted to bring her home.
That's why we're here.
She's out here somewhere.
I will be looking until I can find her.
And you really were stuck in this horrible limbo.
Mm-hmm.
Geopolis, however, remained silent.
And soon the entire community
would join in the search for Lisa.
Hundreds of volunteers canvassed
the vast California desert looking for her.
There's just thousands of square miles of desert.
This is almost the perfect place to bury a body.
I mean, if you just took the area
that we're looking at right now,
you tell somebody to go look for a body, it's just virtually impossible if it's buried and concealed well.
To find Lisa, investigators might be forced to make a deal with the one person who knew where she was.
Sometimes you have to make a deal with the devil to bring the angels home.
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While the community searched for one of its own,
Lisa Hurst's family prayed that they would find the young woman they all loved.
Just isn't there. I need closure too.
And so do my grandkids and the family.
How certain are you that Jamie killed Lisa?
Absolutely certain, without a doubt.
Initially, right after he was arrested,
Chiampoulos remained silent over the whereabouts of Lisa Hurst.
And without her body, prosecutor Sean Doherty could not seek the death penalty.
But Lisa's loved ones had their own ideas about justice.
He shouldn't be able to be alive.
Tell me what you would like to have done.
Tie him down and just leave him there.
The truth was, Lisa Hurst,
who thought she had found the man of her dreams,
had actually encountered a nightmare.
He's manipulative and diabolical.
Jamie Chiopoulos had built a life that didn't
actually exist, that he was the war hero, that he was the combat veteran. Later, I found out that
he'd never seen any type of combat. He wasn't a ranger at all. Did he tell women that he had
cancer? Yes, he never had cancer. He would also come across as, I care. I'm the man you're looking for in your life. I'm
a good listener. And was he any of those things? Not at all. Yeah, I don't know that he can ever
tell the truth. With Chiopolis keeping quiet, there was little hope of ever finding Lisa's body.
Still, District Attorney Doherty thought he could make his case for murder and get Chiopolis locked up for life.
I thought it was convincing and compelling enough to take to a jury and go, this all points one direction.
Getting Chiopolis convicted of murder was key, but so was bringing Lisa Hearst back to her family.
To do so, the DA was forced to make a deal with the devil. In exchange
for a reduced sentence, Chiopoulos would admit to killing Lisa. But even more importantly,
he would have to reveal where in the vast, hot, unforgiving desert he had buried her body.
When he brought us out here, he was walking, he was shackled.
Had he not told us, we wouldn't have found him.
We were searching 50 miles south of here.
It's past the plastic.
This way.
This way. This way.
Roughly this distance from the curb.
From the roadway.
After hours of digging under the hot sun,
detectives finally found Lisa's body
as Chiopoulos looked on.
There was no remorse. There was no emotion.
It was a feeling of relief that we'd found her.
It was a feeling of relief that we'd found her.
And it was also a feeling of anger that we didn't find her without his help.
On October 8, 2009, Lisa Hurst was finally brought home.
It was very important to me, because then we could pay our respects to her.
And Jamie Chiopoulos got his reduced sentence,
only 15 years to life in a California prison.
That's not justice.
I had to look at the benefits of recovering the body
versus a life sentence.
So in your mind, was it worth it to offer the plea?
Yes, it was worth it.
But at least one mystery remained.
Chiopoulos admitted to killing Lisa,
but just how had she died?
It was only after Chiopolis was sentenced that he agreed
to tell police his version of what had happened, claiming it was an accidental drowning.
And so you guys were having sex where initially? Where did it start?
In the pool. In the pool.
And what happens while you're having sex?
Took her in the pool. Lisa likes to be choked. She said it made it better.
She said she was very lightheaded and just needed a break.
So I went inside to get a drink.
When I came out to the pool, she was face down in the pool.
I thought she was just unconscious.
And she started turning purple and got very cold.
And then, of course, I realized what had happened.
But police didn't buy it for a minute because they say the evidence refutes it all.
I believe there was probably some type of violent altercation in the garage.
Investigators believe the bleach Chiopolis bought at Home Depot was used to clean up a bloody, brutal murder.
It probably involved some type of injury that there was a loss of blood.
What do you think happened that last day?
I really don't know what happened.
I know if there was a fight, Lisa would have fought as hard as she could.
So do you think he was planning this?
Oh, yeah.
For weeks?
Probably.
But why would the master manipulator want to kill the single mother of two little girls?
His house of cards, if you will, was getting ready to fall in on him.
Chiopoulos was juggling Lisa Hurst and Joyce Franson,
two women who thought they were going to marry him.
And to make matters worse for Chiopoulos,
his wife, Lieutenant Colonel Catherine Taylor,
was about to return to California from her
base in Texas. I think he just had so much pressure coming with his wife showing up soon, and he knew
that sooner or later the lie is going to fall apart. Police now had their motive, a serial liar,
a killer done in by his own conceit. But there was one more crucial question.
Did Jamie Chiopoulos act alone?
She knew.
She knew all along.
The police investigation was far from over
because Chiopoulos finally revealed more
about what happened the day Lisa Hearst died.
And I told Joyce what had happened.
And Joyce said, well, what do you want to do?
For the first time, Chiopoulos would implicate
his girlfriend, Joyce Franson,
telling cops he wasn't alone
when he buried Lisa Hurst in the desert.
She pissed me off.
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It's just the best idea yet.
Hot shot Australian attorney Nicola Gaba was born into legal royalty.
Her specialty? Representing some of the city's most infamous gangland criminals.
However, while Nicola held the underworld's darkest secrets,
the most dangerous secret was her own.
She's going to all the major groups within Melbourne's underworld,
and she's informing on them all.
I'm Marsha Clark, host of the new podcast, Informants Lawyer X.
In my long career in criminal justice as a prosecutor and defense attorney,
I've seen some crazy cases.
And this one belongs right at the top of the list.
She was addicted to the game she had created.
She just didn't know how to stop.
Now, through dramatic interviews and access,
I'll reveal the truth behind one of the world's most shocking legal scandals.
Listen to Informants Lawyer X exclusively on Wondery Plus.
Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.
And listen to more Exhibit C true crime shows early and ad-free right now.
With Jamie Chiopoulos now locked up,
investigators turned their attention to his 24-year-old girlfriend, Joyce Franson.
If she didn't dig, then she definitely helped him put Lisa's body into that hole.
Detective Libby believed Joyce knew that Jamie had killed Lisa and then knowingly helped him bury her body in the desert, in a place where it would never be found.
Yeah, she's timid, she's shy, but she had great motivation to keep it quiet, and that was because she was saving her own butt and trying to prove her love for this guy.
But Jamie proved unworthy of that love.
But Jamie proved unworthy of that love.
Questioned by police after his sentencing, Chiopolis said that Joyce knew everything.
Joyce came over that night.
Okay. And I told Joyce what had happened.
And Joyce said, well, what do you want to do?
Jamie said Joyce helped him to plan the cover-up.
So we both agreed to bury her body.
Joyce said she knew of a place.
Detective Libby confronted Joyce and broke her down.
During that conversation, she admits that she took him out to the desert,
showed him where to bury the trash can.
She denied knowing the body was in the trash can.
But on November 24, 2009,
based on what Chiopolis had told the cops, Joyce was charged with five counts as an accessory
after the fact in Lisa's murder. It's a place I never wanted to visit again.
It's a place I never wanted to visit again. While awaiting trial, Joyce returned to the desert with our cameras and her attorney to
tell her version of what happened.
He spent hours there that morning digging it by himself and he discarded the contents
of the can in the hole when I wasn't looking.
And she would swear to us that Chiopoulos buried the mysterious package entirely on his own.
I remember thinking, who is this person? He's not the person that I've known for four years.
I'll bet that she definitely knew that she was in that trash can when she showed up at his house.
There's no doubt in my mind in that regard.
Did you have anything to do with Lisa Hurst's death?
No. The burying of her body, the cleanup after the murder?
No.
Did you know that she had been murdered?
No.
Did you know that she had been murdered?
No.
I think she really did know, and she should also have to pay for that.
Hi, my Ashlyn.
Hi.
How could you sit on that information for 10 months and not tell anyone?
I couldn't. It was the most difficult time.
Did you not think about her family?
I did think about them.
I just feel horrible.
I feel like a monster.
To me, I think she just put on a good act.
I'm sorry.
And you think she knew exactly what was in the trash can?
Yes, I do.
So on July 26, 2010,
Prosecutors would make that case,
with Jamie Chiopoulos set to testify against Joyce.
Joyce Franson helped Jamie Chiopolis dispose of a body.
When you were in court every day, did you ever go up to Joyce and confront her?
No.
Did you want to?
Yes.
I wanted to shake her and slap her across the face
and say, what is wrong with you?
Why couldn't you say something?
After just one day of trial, suddenly it's all over.
The judge unexpectedly offers Joyce Franson a plea deal.
This time the court will hold you accountable for your actions.
Joyce will plead no contest to all charges.
Instead of a possible five-year sentence, she will now serve only three.
I spent 10 months looking for her, and all you had to do was say, I'm scared. Help me.
While disappointed with the outcome, Lisa's mother finally gets her chance to confront Joyce.
I can't forgive you for what you did.
I just pray that God can forgive you.
As close as we could get, justice was done.
Yet no one seems satisfied.
It just makes me sick because they're getting away with it.
And it just makes me sick because they're getting away with it.
Better not beat me again. I'll try you again too.
No.
But Ashlyn and Tyler would rather focus on the mother they had
and the future she was working so hard for.
What do you think she would want for you and your sister as you get older?
To get a good career and go to college.
I feel that she's just right there with me
and feels like she's watching me.
While in prison,
Jamie Chiopoulos was convicted of soliciting
to commit the murder of Lisa Hurst's two daughters.
He was sentenced to an additional 16 years.
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