Anatomy of Murder - I Wish You'd Burn

Episode Date: October 21, 2020

Let’s stroll down the hallways of high-school and adolescent romance. But teenage drama turns deadly when a 15-year-old-girl disappears after a night out with friends.For episode information and photos, please visit https://anatomyofmurder.com/Can’t get enough AoM? Find us on social media!Instagram: @aom_podcast | @audiochuckTwitter: @AOM_podcast | @audiochuckFacebook: /listenAOMpod | /audiochuckllc

I was being my own detective, going out and trying to find out what happened to our daughter, because I wanted answers. I'm Scott Weinberger, investigative journalist and former deputy sheriff. I'm Anastasia Nicolazzi, former New York City homicide prosecutor and host of Investigation Discovery's True Conviction. And this is Anatomy of Murder. I'm excited to talk about this case, and it's funny, it's kind of bringing me back

down memory lane a little bit because it's really all about youth and the things that sometimes teenage romance or even a misplaced trust can lead to. And here it led to something awful. I mean, obviously high school brings so many different things, peer pressure. You know, you're trying to be cool. You're trying to get along with your friends. You're trying to meet boys or you're trying to meet girls. Oh, absolutely.

I mean, as I was looking at everything in this case, it automatically brought me back to the first time I had my heart broken. And it really is all about the things that happened to so many of us and just the pitfalls of being young and that youthful innocence that usually it all turns out okay, but sometimes, like here, it just doesn't. That kind of leads me to the story that we're going to focus on today, and it really focuses, certainly in the beginning, a lot on two people, Donald and Katie, and most importantly, Katie Hamlin. You know, Anastasia, you had an opportunity to talk to Katie's mom, Donna. What did she tell you? Katie was her only daughter. She had other children, boys, but this was her only girl.

And when she talked to me about the loss of her daughter, she was really very matter-of-fact about it. And it really kind of broke my heart because while it seemed very straightforward, it told me that she's someone who's been through a lot. Let's see, Katie, you no, she was close with me. She was close with me because I was divorced, and, you know, her father had left. She was just a social butterfly.

Tall, 5'11", long, mint hair. Sometimes she'd dye it. Had a nice figure. I'm sitting here actually looking at pictures of her. I mean, she always had a smile, smiled because she loved her beautiful, bright teeth after she got her braces off. You know, Katie was this 15-year-old, from all accounts, really kind of happy-go-lucky girl who she looked older than her age. But really, it comes to this romance that went on,

you know, the real first love of Katie's life between her and her then-boyfriend Donald. She had a lot of guys that liked her at her age, but she only had one boyfriend, and his name was Donald. They lived in a pretty small town, a suburb really, close by Atlanta. But it's Georgia, and we're talking about back in 2002. It's a beautiful county. It has a lot of back roads. People stick to themselves. But whether it was 2002 or today, the romance between Katie and Donald really would have been the same.

You know, they grew up in this town together. He fell for her and she fell for him and she was head over heels until she wasn't. They were together over a year or so. He was just a very nice kid and came from a divorced parent and he lived with his father and they really liked each other a lot

and I trusted him and trusted her. Then Donald started going down the dark road. And Katie told him, I'm not doing this kind of stuff. So here's a boy in high school who's got his own car. He's driving around. He's going to graduate high school that year. So clearly they were a good-looking couple. But Katie was still only 15.

And as kids get older, they tend to experiment. Donald started to fall in with some alleged drug use, and that just didn't sit well with Katie. She thought he'd be forever, but she quickly moved on, and that, to me, really speaks about her age. But it really wasn't a clean break because they continued to talk, but Donald was already dating somebody else, and his new girlfriend was extremely jealous. They were mean to her, and I think she tried to talk to Donald, but finally realized that she wasn't getting anywhere,

so she just left it alone. Something still wasn't jiving, whether he still had feelings for her or maybe that was making the new girlfriend jealous. Clearly, all the high school dating drama was in full force between these three. The contentious relationship between Donald, his new girlfriend, and Katie became so concerning to Katie that she called police at one time and took a restraining order out, knowing that she feared something may happen.

You know, we're talking about this case, so we know that it's going nowhere good. But when people think about drugs and teenagers, I mean, I don't know, Scott, how do you think drugs play into the average teenage homicide? I think drugs often do play a part. I mean, it connects teens with a criminal element, whether they're buying or perhaps even selling. Either way, it's a bad road traveled. So let's go back in time.

It's the night of July 1st, 2002. Donna noticed that her daughter Katie had gone out and that she knew she was going out with a friend of hers, a guy by the name of Corey. You know, not that much of a big deal. She saw her daughter when she got home. I think it was 11, 11.30. Her daughter went outside to sit on the bed of,

I guess they had a pickup truck, to talk on the phone. And Donna went to bed. But there was a phone call that woke her up during the night. There was actually someone who'd been trying to get in touch with her daughter, a friend of hers by the name of Jamerson, who said that Katie had tried to call him, and he hadn't been home, and he was calling her back. And that is when Donna says she realized her daughter wasn't home,

but again, not a big deal, and she went back to sleep. When I got up the next morning, she wasn't home. Her light was on and the stereo was on. So I thought, well, whose house did she ghost in the night at? But she also then looks in the closet. What was really strange, I heard something in my bedroom. I thought she was in my bedroom trying to get my purse, maybe get some money out or something. So I reached over to turn the light on.

It sort of scared me. And I got up and turned the overhead light on. And what happened is my shelf in my closet fell off the wall. And there was pictures of my children all over the floor, Katie, and there was a picture of an angel. It was like a card you get at someone's funeral. It is spooky when all of a sudden later on you realize what happened. I don't know where I come out on the supernatural, but I do believe that there are signs. I mean, how odd that the night in question, right around the same hours that her daughter actually goes missing. I don't know. I thought that was pretty spooky. It is. If you believe in that kind of stuff,

that would sort of raise the hair in the back of anyone's neck for sure. But by the next morning, clearly there's no sign of Katie. And she's still calling all of her different friends. Have you seen her? I kept trying all day. I even tried to get a hold of my ex-husband to see if maybe if she called him

and I couldn't find her. She's making the call. She's not thinking it's a big deal, but she's basically dead ending everywhere. Every friend that she could think of her daughter being with, she's not with them. And so now hours have ticked by. Her daughter hasn't called, which wasn't like her. She can't find her anywhere. And now she's starting to get worried. So I came home and then called the police. So while this is all going on, about a mile and a half from their home, two people walking along the road find a body. News spread very quickly of that find.

In fact, it became a local news story on the radio, and Donna happened to be tuned into that local station and heard the report. On the radio, they kept saying they found a woman's body in Cherokee County. They kept saying a woman. The way the woman was described in her mid-20s, she did not think at that moment that that could be Katie. And that was because of the age. Her daughter's 15, and here this young woman is listed as in her 20s.

So then when I got home, then I called the police. And they came out. And the officer says, well, we don't know if it's her or not. We're hoping it's not her. It's a woman. I said, you don't understand. Katie looked like a woman. Donna really doesn't think that the body located on the side of the road is her daughter. As she's heading home, she's thinking, okay, I still need to find my daughter, find out where she could be. My brother called and said, you need to come back here.

There's a bunch of police. And then they started looking at her room and looking at stuff. And then they said that they had found a woman's body. So investigators began to ask Donna about her daughter. In fact, they went as far as to ask her if they could collect some of her items. They took a hairbrush. They took some hair out of the hairbrush. A lot of things were going through my head at that time.

You know, why are you in my house and why are you taking stuff if you don't think it's her? And that starts to paint a picture on a Seeger of they do believe that the disappearance and the homicide may be connected. And it also says to me that that body that they found could not have been in good shape. I mean, if it was just someone laying there, you know, I hate to say it, just strangled or something, wearing their clothes, then they're going to be able to quickly put the pieces together. But it's usually when the body is not in good condition that they are having trouble making any idea at all, that when they think that this might be someone that they have to start going through those extra measures. And that

is basically exactly what it was here. You know, there had been a body and she is nude. But more than that, she's burned. Burns to her face, burns to her pelvic area. That is what investigators found when they got there. And very quickly from their examination, this may have been a case that included sexual assault. As they start to ask Donna more questions and she says what her daughter's wearing, well, those clothes were found on her bed,

which meant that Katie had changed before she had gone back out or whatever had happened to her, but it was the fingernail polish. She talked about this fluorescent yellow fingernail polish and that one of the investigators, their demeanor seemed to change. And that is probably what caused them to say they have to look further to see if this is the same person. I just kept saying, why can't you take me down there?

And they just said, well, we need to wait. We need to get her dental records to see. We'll make sure it might not be her. She might, let's see if we can get a hold of your ex-husband, see if she went with him. And I think they know in their heart that as a mom, I just knew it was her. So the body, apparently, they could tell early on, had not been there for very long. So now as they're developing their crime scene, they're trying to determine what around the body could present any type of evidence, any tire tracks, any evidence of somebody coming into the crime scene or leaving the crime scene. And clearly they were trying to determine if the body was burnt there. And all the leaves that were surrounding the body had also been burned.

So clearly lighting the body on fire, it's unfortunate to be able to say those words, but it happened right at that location. The person involved in this case was definitely attempting to cover up some forensic evidence. And interestingly, when the medical examiner conducted the autopsy, they did discover that the DNA on the body belonged to an unidentified male. But they couldn't determine the cause of death. But dental records confirm that this body was in fact Katie Hamlin. It's hard to accept that she was gone because we never got to see her body. When the ME went through his investigation in a seagate and could not determine a cause of death,

what was your first take when you read through those notes? I think I did like a sideway turn with my head with a, huh? It's always hard to go back in time and you don't want to play Monday morning quarterback. But to me, I'm like, there's a woman who is naked. She's dead. Her face and her pelvic area are burned. There is unidentified DNA, not just on her, and the body looked like it had been brought there. I don't know. The circumstances, which are always part of what RMEs use to determine cause of death, it certainly seems to lend itself to that pretty quickly to me. But, you know, maybe out of an abundance of caution, the death was not classified a homicide at the time.

And what about you? I mean, from the investigator standpoint, Scott? I think there's obvious signs that this was an intentional act. Just in the medical sense, if you can't prove it to a jury, it's one thing. But for anybody else to sit back and say that this was not an intentional killing goes against, I think, full reason. But they did figure out that the body was Katie's. And her mother knew that the last time she had seen her was alive and well just the night before.

So now the question was, what happened and with who? It just went sort of blank. I just thought, who could have done this to her? I think the police said they talked to over 400 friends of hers. First person you go back to is the person she had the most contentious relationship with. She recently took out a restraining order on a former boyfriend and that former boyfriend's new girlfriend. So I think that would be my starting point. And it was investigator's starting point, too.

I mean, she had this history with Donald that they had been inseparable for such a long time, and then they broke up, and then there was these problems. And by all accounts, I mean, Donald had been harassing Katie. There'd been all sorts of history between them. He used to call her and then put her on speakerphone to let other people hear it in an attempt to embarrass her. And there was all these claims of him doing things like egging her house. So while that certainly doesn't rise to the

level of what you would expect, then they found her dead in the woods. You have to wonder the person who clearly she had the problem with out in the open, is in the woods. You have to wonder, the person who clearly she had the problem with out in the open, is he the one that caused her to be there? Now, of course, Donna the whole time is trying to determine from investigators what they know. But, you know, when we do these cases, we try to keep everything close to the vest. And there was this unusual wrinkle. When they mentioned Donald and Deja, I was very surprised because at the time

I was actually going out with Donald's dad. Yeah, when I first read that, I was like, what, who, wait. And when I asked Donna about that, she said, yeah, it's kind of this weird thing. We knew each other because of the kids and she was divorced and he was divorced and they went out a few times. It's a little bit of a concern on the investigative side because if Donna and Donald's dad are

talking and there's a conversation about what police are telling Donna, it likely would be innocent. But my fear would be any information that law enforcement may be sharing with the family may end up being told to Donald's dad and family may end up being told to Donald's dad, and that may end up being told to Donald. So as the investigator walking in the room and wanting to sit Donald down and question him, I may be at a little bit of a disadvantage.

I think it's a really good point, Scott. I had to speak to him and said, you know, the police think Donald and Deja are suspects. I just needed to be by myself. That's what I told him. Interestingly, as much as investigators were looking at Donald, it's really Deja that had the thing that stuck out to me right away. Deja didn't like Katie. She made a comment that I thought was very bizarre,

that she wanted to see Katie die and burn. So, Scott, let me ask you about that. Hearing that Donald's girlfriend, who had been harassing Katie not long before she is found dead, had threatened to kill her and said she wanted her to burn, what do you make of what Deja said? Well, I don't know what was in her heart or what was in her thoughts, but, you know, for her, her explanation was it was just one of those things

that had no connection to what the crime was. It was something that she said in passing. But not soon after, Katie's dead and she'd been burned. I mean, as an investigator, I've turned my head and I've even maybe said, well, wait a second. Great, we'll keep looking at you, Donald. But now I really want to look at your new girlfriend. Well, that's your opportunity to determine where were they on the night Katie went missing. And investigators did speak to them separately,

and they said they both acted kind of sketchy and seemed very uncomfortable being there. And with the questions, they both said that they'd been at a family function. I think it was in Alabama. And then they quickly said, you know what, we don't want to talk to you anymore. They both asked for attorneys, and that was it.

I mean, investigators couldn't talk to them anymore. But now they had to look and see if those alibis were actually legit or not. Well, then I thought, well, maybe they were on drugs, and maybe they did do it. Well, let's talk about the lawyering up, because I know everyone sees that on TV. But looking at that, when the questions came down to alibi and they asked for an attorney, I think that would turn any investigator's head to look further. Definitely. I mean, as a prosecutor too, I mean, I can never use that in court and with good reason because innocent people do ask for an attorney's because they are worried. They are worried either

because they don't trust the system or because they're worried that they're so nervous they're going to say something that's going to get them in trouble even they didn't do anything. However, it's common sense to know that it may at least make investigators say, well, is it because they're innocent and just want to make sure their rights are preserved, or is it because they're really guilty and are trying to hide something? It's every reason for them to check out the story now, to determine whether the alibi is solid. And as it turns out, it was. They were able, with multiple witnesses, placed them out of the state the night that she disappeared. So both Donald and Deja are off the

suspect list. But it didn't take long till there was someone next on the suspect list. You know, when they went back in time, they were able to figure out that Katie had been out with her friend Corey, but Corey said that he had dropped her off at another guy's house, a guy by the name of Garris Beckland. Katie said that Garris would talk to her about his girlfriend problems, but then Katie started liking Garrison, He said that Garris would talk to her about his girlfriend problems. But then Katie started liking Garrison.

And she was trying to express that to him, but he was older than her. I said, well, Katie, then you just need to leave him alone. He said, well, he's asking me questions about... I said, well, you just need to stay out of it because, I mean, this girl's going to get mad at you. That's why I said this case has something to do with youthful indiscretion and misplaced trust and just feeling invincible. Katie liked Garris Beckland, and so she was still trying to pursue him. So she went to his house that night. So now they have Garris to talk to, and they bring him in and sit him down and try to determine what he and Katie may have been doing that night together. And Garris told investigators, you know what, I never saw Katie that night.

She came to my home. I didn't make it back. And my parents drove her vehicle right into her home. Another one crossed right off the list. I mean, it's like every time they think they're getting somewhere, there's an alibi or a reasonable explanation, and they're just left with,

well, who was Katie with then next? They got the phone records from the phone company, and then they started going back over, and then they started seeing the phone timeline. They went to the last call that she'd placed, which was to Jamerson Mangrum. Remember that Donna had spoken to him that night because he had called back to say that Katie had been looking for him.

And so investigators brought him in next, and he said that, sure, he knew who she was, but that he'd never even spoken to her that night. And they said, well, actually, we know that you did because we can show the contact from the phone. And then he said, oh, okay, I did. I saw her, but I wasn't with her. Investigators had phone records,

solid evidence that a connection between Katie and he occurred. It was a call at 1.05 a.m. and it lasted 12 minutes. It was a full-on conversation. Something didn't seem right to them and although they'd been down that road before with people, they decided to just better safe than sorry and they got a DNA sample from him. But they knew they had DNA from her body and they got a DNA sample from him. But they knew they had DNA from her body, and so they got a sample from him.

They were going to then compare it to the DNA found from Katie, just in case. And the DNA was his. So they brought him back in and said, okay, we know you're with her because your DNA is found on her body. And so then his story changed again. Now he said, you're right. I was with her. I picked her up at her house. After she called me, she came over to my house. We had sex. It was completely consensual. And then I brought her home. Well, okay, maybe I didn't bring her home. I dropped her off at a party. And that's the last I ever saw her.

During that conversation with investigators, he claims that Gavis Becklin called him to say, from that party, to say that Katie has OD'd and I need help, I don't know what to do. So there's two theories that are going on about who may still be responsible for taking Katie to that location and burning her body. I mean, there's an awful lot swirling here, and none of it's good. Now, don't forget, the medical examiner said they could not determine the cause of death, so they don't have a homicide here. They just have someone's DNA that now is connected to Katie. But remember, she was 15, and he was years older.

And that right there made that consensual sex, if that's even true, rape. Statutory rape. He was arrested and then he was let out on house arrest because supervision of his mother. So here's a really unusual thing that occurs while Jamerson is out on bail on his rape charges. So he's working as a stock boy at a local grocery store. And who walks in? Katie's mom, Donna.

And I went in to get something to go take us to work. And there he was. He had dyed his hair. And they are just face to face, eye to eye. I can only imagine how difficult that moment must have been for her. I mean, that is just incredible. The only words I can use is that. And I was so upset when I got to work with one of the doctors at the hospital, called Kroger and asked for the manager and said, you know,

you have a young man working there that is a suspect in my friend's daughter's murder. I keep thinking about Donna. What life must have been like for her? I mean, she is grieving, but yet there's no one being held accountable. They're not willing to call that murder. I'm not talking about what they should have been doing, but from her perspective, a mother's perspective, what that time must have been like.

And then to see the case just really quickly go cold. for Donna she wasn't gonna let go that easily I just started being like a detective myself okay I need to go find out where this area they found her because I did not know it was just not far from our home no one was really helping me and so on, I would go out and hang flyers on poles of Katie. The district attorney's office actually had them printed for me because they were very expensive because I wanted them in color so it would catch people's eyes. She felt that the police just weren't doing enough. Nothing was happening. She knew that there was more to this. I call him every day and I said, I don't care if you have to tell me the same thing every day. I

want to know if there's something new. Every day I would call him because I wanted answers. Let me ask you this, Scott. You know, so often we see these cases go cold. It's because every lead leads nowhere or they don't have any leads at all. I mean, here you have the opposite. You have multiple feasible avenues of people, but yet it's still a cold case. I mean, with your investigator's hat, tell me what you make of that. You did have one huge roadblock. And the roadblock was, is we don't have anything yet deemed to be a homicide. So ultimately, your hands are tied because even though you believe you're investigating a homicide and all of the evidence points towards a woman left on the side of the road, nude, dead, and her body burnt, how is that not a homicide? You know, it's got to be difficult for the investigators to believe that if they don't get that ruling, if it's not ever deemed medically

to be a death by homicide, then really ultimately, where do you go with that? And that, to me, may make it more difficult for investigators to really keep the pace up and keep their resources up because what are we investigating here? I know you're right from an evidentiary standpoint, but it's like you also know in your heart of hearts

that there's so much more to this and that's exactly what it is, a homicide. So it's really like a catch-22 in a way. So difficult for me when I read through these reports. It's frustrating because you know in your heart of hearts, in your training, you have a homicide here. But your hands are tied because there is a medical examiner who cannot determine with certainty that it was an intentional death. And so I understand both tracks here, Anastiga.

I understand the family being frustrated. We need justice. We need results. We need results. We need someone to pay the price for the loss of a life. Yeah, the rape is horrible, but we're looking for a killer here. And once you take those tools away from investigators, giving them the ability to move this case forward because of a medical examiner's determination,

that's handcuffing. And that's horrible. So this case goes cold for two years. But then there was a task force that was put into existence, a cold case task force, that they were reinvestigating cold cases. And that is when some real movement very quickly took shape. Because they had a different medical examiner look at all the evidence in this case and just listen to all the things that they quickly determined. They looked at her body again and they saw that there had been two bruises observed, one on each clavicle, which is basically your collarbone. But when they looked back, Katie had been to the doctor earlier the same day before she died, and she didn't have any bruising at all.

She had deep bruises on her lower back under her skin that they determined they called pressure bruising. But the most interesting and also horrifying thing was that she had food in her lungs. I mean, Scott, you know that only means one thing. Exceciation. Her breathing was ceased with food in her lungs, which showed it wasn't a natural cause. This new autopsy was able to determine that pressure was put on her back, which caused her to suffocate.

When they put all these pieces together, they were able to determine that she absolutely died from what's called compressional asphyxia. But now that really impacted the case in a major, major way. Let's go. We got a homicide. They formed a task force and then they started getting busy on Katie's cave. So they go back to the beginning and they start going through all the evidence, the evidence that all of the original investigators had worked on,

timelines, phone calls, phone records, interviews with all the potential suspects, all the suspects that were ruled out. And as they start going through some material, a very interesting conversation comes to light. They quickly actually find another witness, someone who says that they saw Mangrum speed away from his house in the middle of the night at like 2 a.m. and return 20 minutes later. But it's what they heard from the inside of a jail cell where Mangrum spent some time that really made them say, now what do we have here with him? You know, this is one of those things that we often call shaking hands with the devil.

It's a cellmate of Mangrum's who says, you know what? He was very chatty in prison. In fact, he talked about this specific case, talked about having sex with a woman, dumping her body and setting it on fire. I mean, these investigators very quickly were able to determine that not only was he seen in a specific timeline driving to and from his home, it puts the actual accusations in his pocket. He told the cellmate what occurred. And they ended up with not just one cellmate, but then this guy said, you know,

what he said to me was pretty quick in passing, but there's someone he's really good friends with who you might want to talk to. And they went and spoke to that guy, and he too said, you know what? What he told me was so awful that, sure, I'm going to tell you exactly. And he said something very similar.

He gave them details that had never been released within that jail, that he shouldn't have known because he'd been incarcerated the whole time. And he said that Mangrum said that he had not only had sex with her and killed her, but that he had taken her out into the woods to try to get rid of his DNA. And that's why he had burned her. But really interesting is that neither of these two incarcerated inmates, they didn't want anything in exchange for the testimony. And that is not the norm that we get in these cases. Now that we have two witnesses who claim he made these statements to them, would you take this case to trial?

110%. I would take it without them. I mean, once you have that the death is ruled a homicide and you start to look at the bruising and how she actually died, you have a guy that you know had sex with her, who admits he had sex with her, but you know it from the DNA, who has lied, lied, lied along the way. I mean, this to me is a pretty strong circumstantial case. I mean, who else but him? I mean, what, so he dropped her off at a party afterwards and then somebody else did that? I mean, I don't see it. But certainly once I had these pieces, assuming that they're vetted and found to be credible, sure, I'd be happy to take this in front of a jury. You never know what they're going to do, but I'd be ready to go right in. So for prosecutors, Anna Seega, how do you approach a jury? Do you warn them in advance

that the testimony that's being submitted in is from someone who's incarcerated? I see, how do you approach a jury? Do you warn them in advance that the testimony that's being submitted in is from someone who's incarcerated? I mean, I know you have to reveal that, but how do you prepare them to then hope that they take the information as face value? You often prepare them all the way back as far as jury selection. I mean, you don't want it to be a jack-in-the-box surprise if they're actually sitting on a jury and now this is how the evidence is going to come. You want to evaluate each one of those potential jurors saying, look, this is the case that I have. I'm not asking you if you're going to say it's enough or not. You don't know that until you're sitting on the jury.

But these are the types of evidence that we are working with in and of itself. Is there anything about it that you cannot use to render a fair and just verdict? And many people will, to their credit, say, you know what? Jailhouse informant, not interested, not listening. Wait, you don't have DNA? Sorry, not interested. Can't do it without an eyeball witness. And that's the exact type of thing you want to know in advance. So you tell them as much as you can as early as you can.

And then they have to obviously evaluate the evidence when they're sitting there during the trial. I've seen you in court. I've had the pleasure over the years to see you talking to witnesses and cross-examining defendants. And in this case, he actually takes the stand. So I really wish I would have had opportunities to see you cross-examine Mangrum.

And it's everything that we hope that we get in these cases. You know, people say, oh, in homicides, the defendants, they don't testify very often. And if you look at the numbers, that is absolutely true. But we get it quite a bit. And actually, we get it more and more. And it is, I hope, in every single case, I was always hoping they would take the stand because I am a believer that the truth shows itself in various forms. And while you're not going to get that Perry Mason moment very often, if they're telling a lie and if you ask enough questions, I believe that it starts to show itself.

And that common sense really rules the day. And that's exactly't do this. Some of the jury decided to just put their heads sort of down like they were writing their notes or whatever, not really pay it eye to eye with him. According to Donna, at least, that some of the jurors even just kind of looked away, which often is a sign that they're not giving too much credence to what that person on the stand is saying. I wonder how difficult it was for Donna to sit through that and to listen to him deny those things. And even though he admitted to having sex with her,

having him have to go through those questions, that must have been extremely sex with her. Having him had to go through those questions, that must have been extremely difficult for her. Remember, she can't show any emotion. The jury is never supposed to be swayed by any sort of emotion from outside anything on that witness stand. So how difficult that must be, and I've often thought that with these family members who they are so inspirational to me

in the strength that they show along the way. And that is just one of those examples that, but for I, you know, but for being in their shoes, you just can't even imagine. Well, the jury agreed with your summation, Anna Seega. On December 16, 2005, Jameson Mangrum was found guilty of rape, murder, aggravated child molestation clearly she was 15 improper disposal of a body and tampering with evidence. Jameson Mangrum was sentenced to life

plus 80 years in prison. He will never be released. And I think the sentence here was just. They took him out. Then when I stood up to leave, I sat down beside his mother and hugged her. Because she lost her son, I lost my daughter. When I spoke to Donna,

it was actually on the anniversary, the 18th anniversary of her daughter's murder. I loved what she said about how she remembers her daughter on those days. We don't mourn that day. My husband and I go out to lunch and we celebrate her life. It can never bring her back, but we keep her memories. You know, we have, I have her memories. And even when we saw the pictures during the trial, we don't remember her like that. We just remember her, how she was, not what we saw on the pictures. When I think about this case, it brings me back to being in high school. And you can almost picture yourself, like, sitting outside in a car,

and a guy that you like comes and picks you up. And, you know, everything's fantastic, and everything's going well. And at some point, it turns so horribly wrong. In her last moments, it must have just been terror. And that, to me, really talks about that misplaced youth and feeling of being invincible and not realizing the evil that really lurks out there. Tune in next Wednesday when we'll dissect another new case on Anatomy of Murder. Anatomy of Murder is an AudioChuck original,

a Weinberger Media and Forseti Media production. Sumit David is executive producer.