Dateline NBC - A Haunting Stretch of Road

Episode Date: March 22, 2022

While investigating the disappearance of a Washington D.C. woman, detectives discover a puzzling connection to a Virginia woman who vanished two decades earlier. Dennis Murphy reports.If you or someone you know is experiencing domestic violence, call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-SAFE (7233) or visit www.thehotline.org.

Tonight on Dateline. I stood outside of that house. I remember thinking, what happened? Where did she go? There were really strange things about her disappearance. It is such an extreme mystery that we just have no idea what happened to Pam. What I had was a great deal of video footage.

When you watch the video frame by frame, you start to see little things that don't make sense. A couple of text messages came in that we need to look at the brother, Dirk. It's awkward to have to ask somebody, did you kill your sister? She told me that she met Jose. I knew that this was pretty serious.

On a first take, how does Jose come across? Works hard, served his country. If he's telling the truth, then that's a man who doesn't know what happened to his girlfriend. It's a big puzzle. You have to put all the pieces together. His first wife, Marta, disappeared off the face of the earth. We have wife number one missing.

And now Pam Butler missing. A double mystery. Could solving one untangle the other? Pam's cell phone pinged. So is Pam alive? Or is this the day we find her body? I'm Lester Holt, and this is Dateline. Here's Dennis Murphy with A Haunting Stretch of Road.

These grainy nighttime images are some of the last known moments in the life of a successful woman. A person who simply vanished without a trace from her home. What happened inside that house? The investigation into what happened to her opened up an entirely new saga about another missing woman. It's a big puzzle. It took decades to unsnarl the stories of the two women, who didn't know one another, but who both ended up years apart in the same place. It's idiosyncratic. That's a signature.

Without a few individuals stricken with a bad case of justice fever, we might never know their stories at all. They found out that I wasn't one to give up. Not the twists. Two women, two children, neither knows about the other. Yes. The setbacks. The cause of death was undetermined. The stark fear of it all.

He says, oh my God, he's going to kill her and he's going to kill me. The fates of Pam and Marta, united in horror on one of the busiest stretches of interstate in the country. When all that stuff started coming out, I was like, oh my God, this guy's a monster. In early February 2009, Pamela Butler, a manager for the federal government, was on a cheer-up mission to douse the winter blues. That was typical Pam, says her brother Derek. She was always the one that would say, you know, let's do something. We're going to do this.

Personality, who would you be talking about when you think of Pam? Just a lovely person. I mean, somebody that would go out of her way to help you. Pam told best friend Rita Moss she'd planned a busy week out on the town with her boyfriend of five months, Jose. Pam and I were texting each other as we normally do. The last text she sent is that she and Jose were going to three or four different restaurants over the next few days. Pam would wrap up her busy social week with an early Saturday evening dinner at Ben's Chili Bowl, a fixture of downtown DC. Her guests, Jose and her mom, Thelma. But two days before they were due to go out, Thelma realized something a little awkward. I said, Pam, we made a date

to go out to dinner for Saturday. Do you all know Saturday is Valentine's Day? Yeah. She said, Mommy, that's okay. She said, we could still go out. The plan was to meet that Valentine's Day at 3 p.m. at Thelma's home and drive to the restaurant. But when 3 p.m. came that Saturday, Pam was a no-show. Calls to her phone went unanswered. So Thelma called her son, Derek, who didn't see any need to worry him. New boyfriend. They're just out having a good time. The next day, Sunday now, Thelma tried again, and yet again on Monday,

which happened to be the President's Day holiday. I say, Pam's still not answering her phone. Something ain't right. She wouldn't disappoint me like that. So after the long holiday weekend and still no sign of Pam, her mom Thelma and her nephew Brandon, who'd recently moved out of Pam's home, went to Pam's house to see if she was okay. Go to her place, mail all piled on the porch. Very unlike her, huh?

Her mail would not be piled up like that. Inside the home, there were more not-like-Pam signs. Troubling. Papers and things thrown all over the table. Everything's in disarray, huh? Disarray. Uh-uh, this is not right. This is not right. Thelma called Pam's workplace only to learn her daughter hadn't shown up there either.

Are you getting nervous at that point? Yes. Thelma called Derek. And my mother says, Derek, you need to see this house. Something isn't right here. He drove to Pam's home, which was equipped with security cameras and an alarm system. It was an out-of-position window blind that caught his mom's attention. It was the kind that could be raised from the bottom or lowered from the top. Then she said, this blind is lifted up from the bottom. She said, Pam never lifts it up from the bottom.

Pam usually lowered the blind from the top, so people on the street couldn't look into her home. Because your sister was very security conscious, wasn't she? Correct. It didn't look right. They checked Pam's phone answering machine. It turned out Jose had been calling Pam, too. Hey, Pam, where are you at?

His message went. And on the desk in Pam's office, he'd left a note for her. Pam, where are you? I've been here looking for you. But Pam was gone. We called the police. And Derek says he called Jose. I said, Jose, this is Derek.

Have you heard from Pam? And he says, I haven't heard from Pam. He said, me, this is Derek. Have you heard from Pam? And he says, I haven't heard from Pam. He said, me and Pam broke up. Broke up? Yeah. Derek says he wanted to know more, so he began his own personal investigation. I said, give me your address. I'm coming to your house.

I need to talk to you. And he said? He said, okay. He says they met in the lobby of Jose's apartment building in nearby Virginia. I said, Pam's missing. Can we apartment building in nearby Virginia. I said, Pam's missing. Can we go up to your apartment? He said, yeah. I mean, very cordial, nice conversation. Jose, he says, expressed concern and compassion. He was telling me how much he cared about Pam, how much he loved her. He said, we broke up on Friday, and I haven't seen or heard from her

since. You know, I wish I could help you, but I just don't know. The reason for the breakup, according to Jose, was jealousy. He said, you know how Pam is. And he said, I was staying in touch with one of my ex-girlfriend's daughter. She was young and she just kind of looked at me like a father. And he said, I was staying in touch with her and Pam didn't like it. Because he was close to this girl from a previous girlfriend. Uh-huh. So he said, you know, so we decided to break up. And he said, you know, I thought we would still be friends. And we sat there and we talked for well over two hours.

So I said to him, I said, you know, I just don't understand, you know, what happened, how she could just get up and just walk away. He said, I don't understand it either. Then Derek says he made an aggressive demand. And I said, Jose, I said, I need you understand it either. Then Derek says he made an aggressive demand. And I said, Jose, I said, I need you to take your clothes off. I said, I just need to make sure that I don't see any scratches or anything on you. That's kind of a police question, huh? Well, he says, OK. He's good with that.

Yeah. So he did. He took his shirt off. He took his pants off. And I looked at him and I didn't see anything. There were no fresh scratches on Jose's skin, but Derek says he wasn't done playing cop. I stood up and I just started walking around his apartment looking. My sister's missing. Is she in here, you know, in the closet

somewhere? And I opened up his drawers and I'm looking in there. He didn't object to that like, whoa. No. I was trying to get a reaction out of him and couldn't get it. When you left Jose's place that day, what did you think of him and where things stood? I thought he was a pretty nice guy. Derek reassured his family. I said, Jose's fine. He didn't do anything to her. He's fine. When Derek got back to Pam's home, police were already on the scene, looking for leads into what had become of Pam Butler in what would be a grueling investigation.

When we come back, where was Pam? Her family was worried. Derek says at first, police were not. They're telling us she still doesn't look like to us that she's in any danger. But Pam Butler was a neat freak. So why was her house a mess? Everything was just totally out of character for Pam. The papers on the floor led me to believe that something made her stopshow in 2009 was completely out of character. And in the days after her family reported her missing, Washington, D.C.'s Metropolitan Police looked for clues inside Pam's home. They scoured the house for physical evidence.

Peter Neuschen, D.C.'s former chief of police, was running investigations when detectives began probing Pam Butler's disappearance. His investigators found no sign of forced entry, no sign that Pam had been in a struggle, and no sign at all of what might have happened to her. If we had information to suggest that Pam was in a particular location, we could go and search that area and maybe find something. That didn't happen in this case.

So a missing persons file was opened, even as police tried to reassure Pam's brother Derek, a former high school auto mechanics teacher. So Pam is now an official missing person, huh? Correct. They're telling us, you know, we want to find out what happened. Still doesn't look like to us that, you know, that she's in any danger. And D.C.'s police wanted to find out from family and friends more biographical detail about who Pam was.

A person who will make you laugh, a person who will have your back if she's your friend. Just a joyful, easy, vibrant person. Rita Moss had met Pam in Washington, D.C. at a conference for rising stars in government leadership. I was the person that said, I'll be at the bar afterwards, and Pam showed up at the bar, and we immediately clicked. Why did you guys hit it off so quickly? We had a lot in common, just even on appearance, and we probably talked on the phone every other day or so. So yes, she was my closest friend. People think of Washington, maybe they know the mall and the Washington Monument and the nice houses in Georgetown. That's where Pam ended up, but not where we came from. Derek remembers growing up with his sister

in a small house in a rough and tumble neighborhood. Not an easy life. She was the one that really held our family together. How did you two get along, you and your sister Pam? You know, we were brothers and sisters. You know, we had our spats like any other brother and sister. She was very orderly, right? She would drive you crazy with that. Our house was extremely neat all the time. From an early age, Pam was driven.

A summer job at the Commerce Department led to Pam hopscotching through government agencies. Pam was just always a go-getter. Before I started working for the school system, she tried to get me to work for the FBI. So that's a very Pam thing. Yeah. She always wanted to see us just do better, you know. Pam's mom, Thelma, says her daughter was happy to share her hard-earned success. She would pay my way to go to the casino.

And you'd have mom and daughter day at the casino, huh? She didn't like gambling, but she never denied me. You're talking about an ideal daughter. Yes, very much. In her mid-40s, Pam was supervising computer analysts at the Environmental Protection Agency. How well she'd done was reflected in her lifestyle. The owner of a single-family house in

a good downtown neighborhood, the one she'd equipped with security cameras, and a Mercedes and a Jaguar in the driveway. She had a lot of nice things, beautiful place to live. Yes. But work wasn't Pam's entire life. For a few years, she took in her nephew Brandon, raising him as her own son with his bundle of typical late teenage issues. Still, that nice house felt empty. A good man, she told her friend, would go a long way to filling the void. She really was not looking to casually date. She was looking for someone to spend her life with. That's when, in September 2008, petite and fit from jogging, 47-year-old Pam started dating Jose Rodriguez Cruz,

a good-looking former military police officer in Virginia who worked at a medical clinic. They met on a dating website. She told me that she met Jose on the metro. E-Harmony. Yeah, that's what I'm told. She told me she met him on metro, which I immediately knew was not the truth. And I told her I knew it wasn't the truth because Pam would drive everywhere. Within a few days, Jose was showing Pam around town a full-on courtship. I bought her flowers regularly, and I bought her a ring for her birthday.

As happy as Rita was for her best friend, Pam's new relationship was a gal-pal buzzkill. Pam immediately started canceling plans with me, so I knew that this was pretty serious. So happy hour was off now? Happy hour was killed. Pam immediately started canceling plans with me, so I knew that this was pretty serious. So happy hour was off now? Happy hour was off. At Thanksgiving, Pam decided the next step had arrived, and it was time for Jose to meet the family. Seemed like an extremely nice guy. I mean, very attentive to Pam, attentive to us. Oh, he was a pleasure to meet. He really was. He was such a gentleman. She seemed happy.

She did. She did. She seemed very happy. What did you think Jose meant to her? The fact that she was seeing him regularly. I knew that she was intending for this to be a long-term relationship. And that made Pam's disappearance all the more sad. When I got the case, and once I looked at all the things that were done,

I wanted to start over. Former homicide detective Mitch Cradle, who worked on D.C.'s sexual assault unit, ended up being assigned to the missing persons case after other detectives had worked it. What did you think you could bring to the play that they didn't know yet? A different set of eyes. I'm experienced and I'm very familiar with this community. I have two informants that live in this particular area, so I was hoping. So you thought you might be able to scratch and get something, huh? Yes, I was hoping I could get something, but as you see even right now, this is how the

neighborhood is all the time. It's quiet. Detective Cradle analyzed the evidence in the growing case file, the uncharacteristic messiness in Pam Butler's home. That's not the way she runs her household, right? Exactly. Everything was just totally out of character for Pam. The papers on the floor led me to believe that something made her stop doing what she was doing with those papers because she's just not going to leave them lying on the floor. And next to all those files strewn about was something else that had caught investigators' eyes. Latex glove on the floor, I guess, huh? Yeah, it was a latex glove there. Had the latex glove been dropped by someone not in Pam's circle,

her abductor, possibly her killer? This is the unknown intruder. Exactly. But who? The surveillance cameras around Pam Butler's home would give important clues. They were activated by motion sensors and had recorded comings and goings in the days before and after Pam went missing. Images that told some, but not all, of the story. Coming up...

It's presumed when we see this hand come out of the door to pick up mail that that is Pam. A camera never blinks. So why did it never see Pam leave her house? She always had those cameras on. And a possible break. Pam's cell phone pinged. So is Pam alive or is this the day we find her body? When Dateline continues. Pam Butler had vanished without a trace, and her family and friends were confounded, suspended between hope and grief. There was a very big void when Pam went missing. Were you waiting for the phone to ring and there'd be her on the line or what?

Exactly. Hoping that it'd be the call to say, I'm okay. Phone never rang. No. It kept me in tears. By now, reporters were getting tips from police about the mystery of Pam Butler's disappearance.

I had a number of sources throughout the department and a source said, this is a case you need to take a look at. 47-year-old Pamela Butler of Northwest. Jennifer Donlan, then a local TV crime reporter, broke the story. There were questions, really strange things about her disappearance. Yes, she was an adult. Maybe she chose to leave. But she didn't seem to be the kind of person who would take up and go to Las Vegas and start a new life. Or to miss dinner with her mother on Valentine's Day.

Pam's family had given detectives a heads up to what they believed was important evidence. The cameras Pam had installed, covering nearly the entire exterior of her home. What I had was a great deal of video footage. When Detective Mitch Cradle was eventually assigned to the case, he analyzed images from the cameras that other detectives had screened. You're talking about the missing woman surveillance system. Exactly. Pretty sophisticated. It was not only that, it was an alarm system. So we're talking someone is only coming into the house who she's familiar with. So she's very fussy about who gets in that house. That's it. And she always

had those cameras on. That was the funny thing. Even when I came over, I texted her two minutes before I arrived. You know, I'll be here in two minutes. And even when I knocked on the door, she would look at the camera to make sure it was me. I'm like, I just texted you. Why are you checking the camera? Just open the door.

In the days before and after the Valentine's Day weekend Pam went missing, her cameras captured what was going on around her house. On Thursday, she's seen arriving was going on around her house. On Thursday, she's seen arriving home, walking across her patio, then showing up in her front doorway. She's at the door and she's collecting her mail, just like a normal day. The next day, Friday, much the same. It's presumed when we see this hand come out of the door to pick up mail that that is Pam.

Later the same day, the day before Valentine's Day, Jose showed up carrying gifts. He's the boyfriend of Robin. Exactly. Got flowers, presents. That was on Friday. And Jose is seen leaving the following day. But the cameras never showed Pam leaving her house. And that became the central mystery of the case. In the worst possible theory,

if Pam had been killed inside her house, how was her body taken out undetected? What happened inside that house? It is such an extreme mystery. We just have no idea what happened to Pam. The video showed Jose going in and out of Pam's home after Friday night. So it was an easy call for detectives to pull him in for some what's-up questions, but not much more. So with missing persons, there are incidents, not offenses. And no real persuasive evidence it was even a crime. Right.

What's more, Jose had an explanation for what had happened. The same explanation he'd given Pam's brother Derek. He said he and Pam had broken up before she went missing. And he was upset and that he had made efforts to get in touch with her after she had gone missing. If he's telling the truth, then that's a man who doesn't know what happened to his girlfriend. The reporter wanted to hear the boyfriend's account for herself, so Jose invited Jennifer into his home for an exclusive interview. We're in his living room, and he didn't want us to tell his name on television,

and he didn't want us to show his face. But he did want to clearly state his innocence. I did not have anything to do with her disappearance. You know, I loved her. Our relationship ended in a way that I didn't expect. Jose told the reporter Pam's security camera video told the story, proof that he'd had nothing to do with Pam going missing. You know, like I told the police, you've seen the video. She did not leave with me.

He was right. We never see Pam leave with him on video. That is for sure. I don't know where Pam is at. I don't know what happened to her. And Jose gave the reporter a very simple explanation for why he was in and out of Pam's home after she went missing. He'd used his key and was simply removing bags of his own things from her home. I was just taking my stuff out of the house. I was just going back and getting my stuff. Just breakup? Yeah, this is all breakup stuff. I know the last thing I've seen was him coming out the door with a big bag, which is

not big enough to carry a body. In the days after Pam disappeared, crime scene techs turning Pam's house inside out for evidence were baffled. No blood. They were pulling up floorboards. There was just nothing in the house that indicated that there was a crime there. Beyond Jose, the boyfriend, the investigators wondered if there was anyone in Pam's life who would want to make her disappear. They looked at those closest to her, including her nephew Brandon, the teen she'd taken in. There were some reports from the family that Pam might have been experiencing some financial difficulties at the time. Brandon was living there, and that perhaps Pam didn't feel like Brandon was stepping up like he should in terms of helping out financially. And that at some point she had reportedly asked him to leave.

The situation apparently got heated. There had been an argument. He did have access to the house. So was it him? As the investigation deepened, the detectives took a close look at technology, Pam's cell phone. In a lot of investigations, a lot of people don't realize that phone towers be pinging and telling you where people are. If they've been watching Dateline for the last 20 years, they do now. Investigators searched in

Virginia and in a park in Maryland. Why? Because Pam's cell phone pinged there. Pam's cell phone pinged. So is Pam alive or is this the day we find her body? Then all of a sudden it stops. Yeah. And that's the thing about it. Once it stops, you have no clue, no idea

where to go. It stops, and that's what happened to the situation. And they searched and searched and searched, and they never found Pam. In the following weeks and months, hopes rose and fell. There were a number of sightings after all of the published media reports

saying that I saw Pam Butler. Turned out not to be her. But five months into the investigation, a fresh lead suddenly opened. And with that lead came a new reason to take a closer look at Pam Butler's family. Coming up... They actually raised Derek as a possible suspect to me.

Like, how? This is her brother. Did a disagreement between siblings end in murder? They would say things to me like, you're the only one that we see that had anything to gain from her going missing. In the months after Pamela Butler's disappearance, new leads dried up, and the police investigation seemed stuck at a hopeless dead end. It was still considered a missing person. It wasn't even ruled a homicide.

A frustrated Detective Cradle says he couldn't devote the time he wanted to Pam Butler and her family. Fresh cases were piling up demanding his attention. I'm investigating 20, sometimes 25 cases a month. So it's hard for me to give this family the attention the case needs. And that's unfair to them. And he felt something else, something ugly. It seemed to him the department just didn't care enough about the victim. I felt as though that this case wasn't getting the intention that it was if she would have been a white victim from an affluent neighborhood. It would have been, in my opinion, totally different.

There would have been resources thrown at it, put some heat on it? Threw the whole house at the case. But that didn't happen with Pam Butler? No, it did not. And they used to bother me sometimes at night because I knew for a fact if Pam Butler was white, man, they would have, they would have did it. Pam's family felt the same way. There would have been a hue and cry, you think, if she'd been a white woman missing? For sure.

When we go missing, you hear nothing about it. D.C. police told us its officers try to use every resource available to investigate all cases, regardless of a victim's race. In 2009, as Pam's brother Derek led search efforts, he stayed in the cops' faces. Sometimes we would just have, I mean, real fights. Were you making a nuisance of yourself down at the police station there? I was trying to, yes. Did you need to do that, though? I felt like I did. I just know my sister. And Derek made appearances on TV, a strategy intended to keep Pam's story in the public eye.

The goal was to keep it going, and I felt like if I kept it going, the police would say, you know, we got to get this off the news. We have to solve this case. But five months after Pam Butler went missing, there was a head-snapping development. TV reporter Jennifer Donilon was getting the inside scoop. My sources told me that they had to take a look at Derek. They actually raised Derek as a possible suspect to me. Like, how? This is her brother.

He's spearheading these massive search efforts for her. Derek, how could that be? It turned out investigators had received anonymous text message tips about him. Early on in the investigation, a couple of text messages came in that we need to look at the brother, Dirk. The first message read, please look into the fact that Pam and the brother were not as close as he tried to make it appear. Another message also put Derek in the frame. Pam Butler still missing. The brother has all y'all fooled. These strange text messages came out saying, you should take a look at Pam Butler's brother.

He did it. Jennifer, the reporter, learned Derek had a property business with his sister. They owned a building together, so they had financial interests. They shared financial interests. There were the wills. He was named as a beneficiary in her will. Then a family member told police that Pam had been planning to end some of her business dealings with Derek because she didn't think he was a good manager.

Is there a reason there? Is there a possible motive there? It was hard for the reporter to believe the brother, who seemed so caring and determined to crack the case, was actually under suspicion for his sister's disappearance. But... Thou doth protest too much. Is that what's happening here? Is the brother pushing so much that it's because he actually is the one who

did something? Police questioned Derek numerous times during their investigation, sessions that turned sour. They would say things to me like, you know, it's not looking really good for you. You're the only one that we see that had anything to gain from her going missing. You're going to inherit her money. Correct. And this Derek is what, just after your sister's reported missing? Correct. The brother did it. And they're going through your credit card transactions and your phone calls? Everything. Everything. Giving the full-blown investigation into you? Correct. Uh-huh. But nothing came of all the questioning, and Derek insisted he had done nothing to Pam. And that's pretty much where the whole mysterious story of Pamela Butler stayed,

in limbo. Your daughter will be remembered every day. On the first anniversary of Pam's disappearance, Derek held a vigil attended by family and Pam's closest friends. And as the years passed, there were more vigils. I will tell you they were very, very painful because you're standing in front of her house, you're reliving the whole scenario. Detective Cradle attended the vigils too, and he kept searching for clues, sometimes spending hours late at night outside Pam's home. A long time ago when I first joined the homicide,

my sergeant said, if you spend enough time on the crime scene, they'll start talking to you. What was this one telling you? Here you are in the dark, years later. At night, watching the house, there's no late dog walkers. There's no one jogging. So it was very difficult. And you were striking out with it. Oh my God, I was, whew, low hammer. It's like I went, man, it's like I went a whole baseball season without a hit. Did you lose faith in

the investigation? I did lose faith in the investigation. I really, in my mind, thought that they would never charge anyone. Why did this case stick with you, Mitch? You're a veteran. You've had unsolved along the way. Yeah, I've had plenty of unsolved cases. This case stuck with me because of Dirk and his mother. When I met his mother, I was just, oh, wow. I couldn't even hold myself together because here it is. I'm sitting there talking to her, and I can't even give her any information. There's nothing I can tell her, nothing I can do. It's nothing. Seven whole years went by,

and still there was no trace of Pamela Butler. No calls to her beloved family and friends, no birthdays or holidays celebrated, no financial activity on her accounts, nothing. Finally, in 2016, a judge declared Pam officially dead. Now her missing person's case could be officially classified as an unsolved homicide, and Mitch Cradle, soon to retire, made a last-ditch plea to his boss. I said, Commander, look, this family needs more than what we're giving them. This case

needs to be handled by someone in the cold case unit. Give one of them dudes this case. And he looked at me and said, okay, Mitch, I will. And when he said that, I was like, thank God. A new detective was promptly assigned, and he plunged deep into the Pam Butler case file. It wasn't long before he turned up new evidence, and the investigation took a dramatic twist.

Coming up, another look at that surveillance video. When you watch the video frame by frame by frame, you start to see little things that don't make sense. And a closer look at Pam's brother, Derek. It's awkward to have to ask somebody, did you kill your sister? But you did? I did, yes. When Dateline continues. In late 2016, seven years after Pam Butler went missing,

a 28-year veteran D.C. cold case detective named Mike Fulton was assigned the case. Story goes that you really wanted that one. I did. You want the tough ones, and this was a big case. Unlike detectives before him, Fulton had the luxury of working Pam's case full-time. He believed he was likely dealing with her murder, even though Pam's body had not been found. She was declared legally dead. And why was that important for you as an investigator?

Ultimately, if we figure out who did it, a defense attorney can't say, look, Pam Butler's alive. She's gonna walk through this door and have everybody sort of turn and look. No body, no crime, right? That's the bumper sticker, right? Exactly.

The judge isn't saying she was a victim of a homicide. The judge is saying she's dead. So once we get the facts to show that she's a victim of a homicide, it just makes it that much easier. Easier to make an arrest and secure a conviction. What's your approach, Detective? Do you put the clock back to day one, hour one on this thing? Absolutely.

So, Detective, this is Pamela's place. Like the detectives before him, Detective Fulton immediately drove out to Pam's house. The house looks different now than it did back in 2009, but this is it. He began to excavate the foundations of Pam's case. You start dissecting her life, you know, who were her friends? Did she have any other boyfriends, ex-husbands, you know, her job, you know, financials. You start going through everything. Everything. But first off, Pam Butler's family. The detective reviewed the original persons of interest and became convinced, for one, that Pam's nephew Brandon, just a teenager at the time, had nothing to do with Pam's death. But he didn't dismiss the suspicions about Pam's brother Derek.

You have to investigate every angle. You're following the money, right? Absolutely. Absolutely. You follow the investigation where it goes. And just as previous investigators had learned, the money trail led to Derek. There was questions I had to ask him that were hard, that he needed to answer. Top Metropolitan Police officials called Derek in to meet with the new detective assigned to his sister's case. A new face. Derek saw only more of the same. You went through some detectives, right?

Oh, yes. At least five detectives, yes. So here's yet another detective you're introduced to. Here's your guy now. I wasn't impressed at all. He just didn't seem to me like he had it in the way that he was talking. He just didn't seem like he was the one. Then quite suddenly, ominously, the atmosphere in this introductory meeting changed. Fulton confronted Derek, cutting right to the chase. It's awkward to have to ask somebody, did you kill your sister? But you did? I did, yes. And he asked me, he said, did you do something to your sister? This new cop is thinking, maybe I'm talking to the killer right here. The brother who benefited from her death? I said, no, I didn't do it. But Derek had a growing

sense of foreboding. This new detective wasn't letting go and drilled down again. You're still on his list. He said, I need you to come down and give some DNA. Oh, this again. So you're hitting another gear here. So Derek did it there. But Fulton was heading down multiple paths in his investigation. He wasn't ready to discount Pam's boyfriend, Jose, even though he had no felonies to his name. He retrieved Pam Butler's security camera footage from the case file. Are these surveillance videos your main bit of evidence in this case? They're a very crucial part of the investigation.

When you watch the video frame by frame by frame by frame, you start to see little things that don't make sense. For instance, the motion sensor lights, you know? Why aren't they working? It's nighttime, so anytime anything came, you know, a cat, anything, these lights would pop on, pop on, illuminate around the house. So sometime in the late hours, you can see Jose come outside, but the lights don't come on. It was true. The video that first showed Jose in the

glare of a motion-activated security light around the time Pam went missing later seemed as though it had been turned off. What's that tell you? Well, that tells me that, I mean, what's going on? And something else caught the detective's eye, something seen in Jose's hand. It appeared to be Pam Butler's keychain. How might Jose explain why he had it? You told us that Pam gave you one key, but now it looks like you have a key with stuff hanging from it. And we know that Pam had a keychain. And we're like, well, wait a second.

Where is this coming from? The detective's suspicions took him on a deep dive into Jose's past. Going back some 30 years, he discovered some troubling stories about Jose and women. Coming up, a man with a secret. Two lives, two wives. How do you pull that off? You learn how to lie to one wife, to the other wife. The comings and goings of Pamela Butler's boyfriend, Jose, captured on Pam's home security cameras,

were more than perplexing to Detective Mike Fulton of Washington, D.C.'s Metropolitan Police Department. So in early 2017, even as Pam's brother, Derek, remained a person of interest in her disappearance, the detective took a hard look at Jose's background. On a first take, how does Jose come across? A normal guy. Served his country. Works hard.

The D.C. detective needed to know more about Jose's personal life. So to get the scoop, he reached across the Potomac River to law enforcement colleagues in Arlington, Virginia, where Jose was living. I remember vividly, it was March of 2017, he says that he needed my help. Arlington PD cold case detective Rosa Ortiz got the call. As she began to investigate, she learned that long before the Pam Butler case, Jose had been married in Puerto Rico to a woman named Marta. They meet in Puerto Rico.

They go to the same school. Marta is a bit older than Jose. Did you want to know who Marta was? I wanted to, absolutely. Detective Ortiz, who speaks fluent Spanish, was able to fill in some blanks about Marta from her sister Neda in Puerto Rico. She was slim and tall. She had green eyes, very pretty. She was very intelligent. She was always laughing. She has a recording of her sister singing cheerfully all those years ago. And she says Marta was even happier after she and Jose had a baby boy they named Hansel and settled in Arlington, Virginia.

She was completely dedicated to her boy. Nothing but the best for him. The picture was that of a happy American family. But when the detective dug down a little, she discovered stories about Jose that shattered the heartwarming image. It turned out that while he was serving with the U.S. Army in Central America, he'd met another woman. He meets her and he marries her in Panama. A woman named Guadalupe. Guadalupe. And then eventually he brings her over to the U.S. And that's the end of 88, beginning of 89.

She's got two wives in the greater D.C. area. Is that the picture? That is. Somebody stashed over here in an apartment living a life and somebody else is somewhere else, and he's shuttling between the two lives? That's correct. And all in secret.

Did she know at the time that he was married to this other woman named Marta? She did not. She had no idea who Marta was. She was totally in the dark on that? She was. What's more, Jose had a son with Guadalupe, too. What's that tell us about the guy, Jose?

He lived two different lives. So how do you pull that off? You learn how to lie to one wife, lie to the other wife. Two women, two children, neither knows about the other, at least for a while. For a while, yes. Marta's sister says eventually Marta got wise to Jose and Guadalupe. She knew. She told her sister that.

She knew they were married. That's when the problems started, and she decided to separate from him. The deeper Ortiz dug into Marta's story, the more she felt an affinity with her. I couldn't help but sympathize with her. The detective herself had also moved from Puerto Rico to Virginia in the 1980s, just before Marta. It's a funny kind of symmetry. It is. Here you've come from Puerto Rico, and your first major, major case is finding out what's happened to this woman.

She has some of the same pathways that you have. Absolutely. There was a connection. I knew that... You knew people that she knew. Yeah, absolutely. So it was easier for me to reach out and find people. People who could tell her what happened to Marta. When Marta finally separated from Jose, their son Hansel was in Puerto Rico with family. Marta, meanwhile, got an apartment with roommates, and she got a job, too.

Another echo of the detective's own past before her career in law enforcement. As she learned, Marta started working in a psychiatric hospital. You'd work there, too. I did. She was doing the same job I did when I was there. Wow. The detective learned when Marta walked out and started building her new life, she also got a boyfriend. She liked him. He treated her so different. She just didn't know that that kind of love existed. And she talked to her sister a lot about how nice he was with her. So it was a big deal to her. They're already establishing a relationship and were planning to come and introduce themselves to my parents. But apparently Jose had other ideas about Marta and new men.

Even though he had a second family, he didn't want to give up Marta. He was following her when she left him. When she went to work, he followed her. When she went to catch the bus, he was following her. She says Marta was terrified of what was happening to her. Coming up, Marta had a very good reason to be frightened of Jose. He basically said, you don't understand. This is my wife.

If I can't have her, nobody's going to have her. When Dateline continues. A string of detectives had spent more than eight years investigating Pamela Butler's 2009 disappearance, all of them with the victim's brother, Derek, on their case. I'm calling and I'm telling them, you know, asking them, what's happening? What are you doing? Wouldn't tell me. Derek himself, meanwhile, was still in the frame.

But as 2017 rolled on, the investigation was zeroing in on Pam's boyfriend, Jose. His first wife, Marta, had left him. And Detective Rosa Ortiz, digging through old police reports, came up with an amazing story of what happened next. A now-retired police officer sees a woman struggling. She tracked down the officer

mentioned in the police reports, former Detective Mike Settin. In 1989, 20 years before Pam Butler went missing, he was on patrol in Arlington when he came upon an alarming scene. So I immediately sped up, pulled over, jumped out. Mike, you're on foot,

and it doesn't look good what you're seeing. What is it? No. I see a domestic violence situation where a man is dragging a woman up the sidewalk. Dragging the woman by her hair, he says. He showed me what happened next. He had his arm around here, and he was basically pulling her like this, but her feet were out from underneath of her, and he was dragging her in this direction. So this is all going down very quickly, Mike, right?

It's going down very quickly, and he's running. He let go of and I just focused on him. And right about here, I just basically tackled him to the ground and held him down. And then, you know, he was fighting with me, told him, you know, stop. The six foot seven detective overpowered the man and cuffed him. Had you witnessed a crime? Yes. There was a physical assault occurring. He would learn the assailant's name was Jose, and the woman he'd been dragging was his estranged wife, Marta. And then I paid attention to Marta,

who was there crying, and she was like, oh, thank you, thank you, you know, help me. And then she started telling me what was going on, and it just blew my mind. He says Jose was apparently in a jealous rage because he found out Marta had a new boyfriend.

He had abducted her from her home and, according to her, kept her in a hotel and was raping her and physically abusing her for two days. Down at the police station, Marta told the detective Jose had used duct tape and rope to assault her. She escaped, and that's when Jose grabbed her on the street. Her story checked out when the detective went back to the scene and spotted Jose's car. Found the car, looked in the back window, saw the duct tape, saw the rope. This is a case that solved itself before you even get to the arraignment. Exactly. In a police interview, Jose seemed to dig himself

an even deeper hole with a chilling statement to the detective. And he basically said, look, you don't, you know, you don't understand. This is my wife. If I can't have her,

nobody's going to have her. Jose was charged with misdemeanor assault and battery and felony abduction. I didn't see him actually take her as she described. I saw him dragging her up the street. So we're going to get him for the abduction. I didn't see him actually take her as she described. I saw him dragging her up the street, so I want to get him for the abduction. But for the abduction charge to stick, Marta had to testify in court. On the fear scale, Mike, here and here, how scared was

she? This woman was off the scale. She told me, this man is going to kill me. I'm afraid he's going to kill me. And she warned the detective. She says, you have to be very careful because my husband is going to kill you, he said. You? Yeah, me. On the day Marta was due to testify in court against Jose, she didn't show up. And because of the fact that she wasn't there, they had a null prostitutes. It means it wasn't going to go forward. Right. They can't go forward because they don't have the complaining person there. A week after she didn't show up for the court hearing, Marta called her sister Neda in Puerto Rico.

One of Neda's children picked up and later told her that Marta had been in tears. And I said, well, if she was crying, she wanted to tell me something. She'll probably call again and I'll pick up. But Marta didn't call again. And Neda didn't call her back that day either, something she'd regret for the rest of her life. I feel so guilty not knowing what she wanted to say. That same day, May 25, 1989, Detective Ortiz learned from Marta's roommates that she'd left her apartment for a shift at the hospital, but she'd planned to quit her job.

Later that day, Marta vanished. A missing persons report was filed soon after. Her roommates see her going to work. She made it to work. She had day shift. And those roommates become the source of the missing persons file, right? Correct, because she didn't come home.

And the question is why? Why were they worried about their roommate? And it's because they knew what she'd been through with Jose. Jose was questioned by police back then, but denied any knowledge of Marta's disappearance and whereabouts. In a recorded police interview, he told the detectives he'd even called her roommates looking for her. I'm worried because she hasn't shown up.

You know, she hasn't come back, she hasn't shown up. And then I said, well, are you sure? You know, she didn't stay somewhere and she's probably at work. Why don't you just tell us where she is? I don't know where she's at. So we can recover her body. I don just tell us where she is? I don't know where she's at. So we can recover her body. I don't know where she's at. I don't know where she's at.

If I knew where she's at, I would tell you. I don't know where she's at. He might not have known, but the mystery of Marta's disappearance and reappearance was about to unfold. Coming up, maybe Marta had never been missing. She says, yeah, this is my ID. This is who I am.

She's alive and well. Or was there another answer? That's a holy cow moment, huh? It is a holy cow moment. Marta Rodriguez's sudden disappearance from Arlington, Virginia in 1989 was a stark revelation for detectives investigating the suspected homicide of Pam Butler in Washington, D.C. She'd gone missing in 2009. Detective Rosa Ortiz learned that, as in Pam's case, police searching for Marta hadn't been sure where to look.

They knew she was missing from Arlington. They just didn't know where she had been. It wasn't as though the cops didn't try. Detective Ray Spivey worked the case at the time. He circulated flyers about Marta, hoping to trigger sightings of her near St. Elizabeth's Hospital where she worked. Did you call out dogs on any special equipment or teams? D.C. had a specialty dog and we arranged through D.C. to search an area of the grounds. Did they hit on anything? No.

Marta's sister, Neda, came to search too, but found no sign of Marta. So the case watchers sort of died? It was more or less a closed case after a year. They ran out of ways to gather evidence. They just came out empty-handed. But in 2017, as detectives tried to find out what happened to Marta back then, they tracked down her son Hansel, now in his 30s. I introduced myself, hey, I'm Detective Fulton. And I just said, hey, you know, I'm following up on some old missing person cases. By any chance, did you have a mother named Marta

who went missing? And he's like, yes. Oh my God, yes. Hansel told the detectives he didn't know exactly what had happened. But right after his mom Marta went missing, his father Jose told him why she was gone. Jose's story was she had always ran off, that she had met some dudes, some drug guys, and she had just ran off and was never to be seen before. That was his story.

So Hansel grew up under a dark cloud. He grew up thinking his mom abandoned him. But there was one big problem with Hansel's story. The detective searching for his mom, Marta, turned up evidence that would totally contradict it. Documents showed that in the year 2000, more than 10 years after Marta had disappeared from Arlington, a routine check of missing persons by Virginia police turned up. Guess what? Marta Rodriguez was alive and living in Florida. Maybe she'd been so terrified of Jose that she'd gone into hiding far away from him.

Not missing at all. Not missing at all. At the time, the Arlington Missing Persons Unit even dispatched an officer in Miami to check if it was really her. And a woman answered the door. She says, yeah, this is my ID. This is who I am. She's alive and well. There's Marta. Yeah. They called back to Virginia and said, yeah, this is my ID. This is who I am. She's alive and well. There's Marta.

Yeah. They called back to Virginia and said, hey, she's here. She's living in Florida. And the case, you know, just got filed away. Tragically, Marta's family says they remained in the dark. They simply closed the case and we weren't told anything.

Nothing. So many years went by and no one knew anything. Marta's mother died thinking that Marta forgot all about her. That she didn't want to communicate with her. So they thought she'd walked away from family and child? Yes.

But in 2017, the detectives learning more about Marta thought it was unlikely she would have walked away from her family. So they did some double checking. They already had a more about Marta thought it was unlikely she would have walked away from her family. So they did some double-checking. They already had a photo of Marta, so they decided to compare that photo to a state ID photo they accessed of the woman in Florida named Marta. And would you believe it?

It wasn't Marta. No question? No question whatsoever. That's a holy cow moment, huh? It is a holy cow moment. It is a holy cow moment, huh? It is a holy cow moment. It is a holy cow moment, yeah. It meant that Marta Rodriguez was, after nearly 30 years, still missing. Did you ever say, I'm going to find out what happened to you?

I did. I said, I'm going to give it all I got. And, you know, until somebody tells me to stop or I retire, I'm not going to give up. The first question the detective wanted answered was, who was the woman living in Florida posing as Marta? So is this a whole other investigation off to the side now? How did this woman get the documentation that allowed her to pose as Marta? I personally found her.

The woman claiming to be Marta? Yes. She's living in Florida? She's living in Florida. Very seldom you get a confession over the phone. It's not as easy as people think it is. But she confessed. As the detective untangled the complex story of Marta Rodriguez,

she was stunned when she learned the woman's true identity. Coming up. Jose said, hey, take Marta's information. Here's her date of birth. here's her social security number. A trail of deceit leading to death. She's not going to need him anymore, huh? She's not going to need him. Did he actually say that?

Exactly. She's not going to need him. When Dateline Continues. Early in 2017, detectives trying to crack the Pam Butler case got a break as they investigated Pam's boyfriend, Jose. They knew Jose's first wife, Marta, had disappeared from Arlington in 1989. And now they discovered a woman had been living as Marta in Florida for nearly two decades. Detective Ortiz was about to find out who she was after ferreting out a phone number and calling her. She cried on the phone call, but she confessed. She confessed that it was her who used somebody else's information to get an ID.

But get this, the woman who said she didn't know about Marta's disappearance turned out to be Jose's sister-in-law. So Jose said, hey, take Marta's information. Here's her date of birth, here's her social security number, you know. She's not going to need him anymore, huh? Did he actually say that? Exactly. She's not going to need him. After all that confusion and deception, it turned out Marta Rodriguez, like Pam Butler, was still apparently missing.

The detective was sure Jose was in some way responsible. So I remember going down to my boss's office and plopping down in his chair, and I'm like, dude, he was married before, and his wife was missing. And it was like, what if he killed his first wife? Is this the big light bulb moment, the big insight in the case? I think so. A pattern was emerging, story after story, like that of Jose's second wife, Guadalupe. The detectives were never able to locate her.

Well, the reason why they were never able to locate her was because she went into hiding. Guadalupe, a third woman in Jose's life who had gone missing. She did the whole underground sort of railroad system. And over the years had relocated two or three different times because Jose was able to locate her so she would go someplace else. So she was totally off the grid. So that's the reason why detectives had a hard time finding her. But eventually, by cross-referencing her name in databases,

detectives were able to track down Guadalupe. We were able to interview her. And then the story she tells, we're like, oh, wait a second. So what did her main story turn out to be? That he was abusive, that I was afraid he was going to kill me. Guadalupe's traumatic story was backed up by Hansel, who moved in with his father and Guadalupe after his mother disappeared. Hansel had firsthand knowledge of the abuse that Guadalupe went through.

He saw it as a child. Hansel had described an incident where she was downstairs begging for her life, and he could hear Jose yelling at her, screaming at her, I'm going to kill you. He saw his father put a gun to her head? Yes, he witnessed Jose put a gun to Guadalupe's head. He says that I come downstairs, and I see my father is just in a rage, and I'm thinking, oh my God, he's going to kill her and he's going to kill me.

And he's like 10 or 11 at the time. Detective, is this like article number one and let me tell you what kind of a guy Jose is? Exactly. But the detectives were more alarmed when they discovered yet another violent relationship. Jose had been running a flea market stall with a woman who had a young child. He apparently wanted more than a business relationship. He called her to meet him. He took that opportunity to abduct her at gunpoint.

Jose became very aggressive and very abusive and ended up forcing her to have sex, ended up raping her. Ends up tying her up, threatening to kill her, threatening to kill the kid. If you don't do what I say, I'm going to kill the kid. He had them both against a will in the basement of this house. When she finally sees the opportunity to leave, she arms herself with a knife. He's got a gun in his hand, grabs her. There's a struggle. She stabs him. There's a neighbor upstairs who comes running down. She's screaming, help me, help me. He's kidnapped me. You know, call the police. But when the police arrived, the tables turned.

He's bloody and she's got a knife in her hand, right? Exactly. And he's saying, look, this is a domestic. She got mad. She stabbed me. And she's trying to explain, but her English isn't good. All the police could see was that she stabbed him. But they didn't know that she stabbed him in an effort to get away from him with her child. So she ultimately ends up getting locked up.

However, the police did check out her story. And they go back to the house and are able to find duct tape in the trash can. So, you know, the case ends up getting dismissed against her. Jose didn't get charged, but the detectives were sure they had his number. He's a violent man. He has a problem with women. He has a problem controlling his anger. Detective Fulton concluded Jose's anger and alleged violence had led to murder, so he decided to arrest him for killing Pam Butler. But until then, he couldn't tell Derek, who was still living under a cloud of suspicion.

He walked around for eight years thinking that people were looking at him like he killed his sister. I mean, that's a hard thing to swallow. And you can't tell him the walls are closing in on Jose. Right. I can't tell him everything I have. I can't tell him, dude, don't worry about it. I know you didn't do it. In April 2017, two experienced D.C. prosecutors took the Pam Butler case. Former military prosecutor Glenn Kirshner, now an NBC News and MSNBC legal analyst, and Debra Sines. She is a character to say the least. But I don't think you want to face either one of them in court.

No. They are what we call heavy hitters. The prosecutors were just learning about Jose's alleged history of violence. We have envisaging violence, bad violence against both wives. We have wife number one missing and wife number two had a gun to her head

begging for her life. We now have Pam Butler missing. But when we realized Jose is now hooked up with another young lady who has a young daughter herself, we decided we had to seek an arrest warrant for Jose. There's urgency to get him on ice, right? No, for sure. For sure. Coming up, is Derek still a suspect? I said, oh Lord, I'm thinking that they're coming to lock me up at three o'clock in the morning.

In April 2017, detectives were preparing to arrest Jose Rodriguez Cruz for the murder of Pam Butler. Pam Butler's brother, Derek, knew nothing of what was going on. He himself was still living in fear of being arrested for his sister's murder, when early one morning, 3 a.m., he got a call from Detective Fulton. I said, oh, Lord, I'm thinking that they're coming to lock me up at 3 o'clock in the morning. Knock, knock, come on.

Yeah. He said, this is Detective Fulton. I said, yeah, what's going on? And he said, I locked his ass up. And it was the best feeling that I'd ever gotten in my life. Jose had been arrested, and that meant Derek was in the clear. Did you think he did it, ever? Hell no. No, not., and that meant Derek was in the clear. Did you think he did it, ever? Hell no. No, not. Derek was clean. Derek was clean. Clean as a whistle. A few hours later,

Pam Butler's friend Rita heard the news of Jose's arrest. I just cried. I sat in my office and cried that this had finally happened. But Jose continued to say he was innocent. He's under arrest, very calm, very relaxed, and he's just, hey, I didn't kill Pam. But you say he was innocent. He's under arrest, very calm, very relaxed. And he's just, hey, I didn't kill Pam. But you knew he was your guy. We knew it was a guy. Yeah. We have him being the last person seen with Pam. We have his first wife, Marta, who's disappeared off the face of the earth.

We have his second wife who tells us that she was beaten, threatened. We have Jose giving his second wife's sister Marta's information and saying, she's not going to need it. So you take all these things and you put it together and it's, Jose killed Pam. No ifs and buts about it. He killed her. Even though Pamela Butler's body had not been found in the eight years after she'd vanished from her Washington, D.C. home, Jose Rodriguez Cruz was charged with her first-degree murder and potentially faced life in prison. That's when Jose realized he really didn't have much hope of beating this, but he did have one card to play, and that was where he disposed of Pam's remains.

That leverage became the basis of a plea deal, a lesser, second-degree murder charge for Jose, carrying a 12-year sentence if he gave up where Pam's body was and told how it got there. He is supposed to tell me how he killed Pam. The prosecutor stared down Jose as he stalled. I'm asking the questions, and Jose won't look at me and I'm getting annoyed and I finally go, look at me! And he starts shaking, his eyes bulge out and he starts sweating profusely. Jose started spilling his guts about Pam and what happened in her basement the day before Valentine's Day, 2009. He says that she got angry with him and says,

why am I working? You're over here watching TV. I'm working. Why haven't you gotten a better job? You're not a man. You'll never be a man. And he looked at me and he said, she called me. And he said a bad name. You can say it. We'll bleep it. A p***y. So I punched her.

And I must have blacked out. Because when I came to, she was gone. The prosecutor was having none of Jose's blackout story. He apologizes. And then he tells me he didn't black out at all. And he says he strangled her to death. The prosecutors had at last gotten a confession. And then finally, Jose revealed the biggest mystery of the case,

how he got Pam's body out of the house. Remember that window shade Pam's family had noticed was raised from the bottom, something Pam never did. Jose put Pam's limp body in a black plastic trash bag, raised the shade from the bottom, and under the cover of darkness, dropped her out of the dining room window, a window he knew wasn't covered by Pam's security cameras. He told you the story? Sure did.

Jose then described driving Pam's body away in the back seat of his car. It's difficult to think of his hands on her. Yes. The thing that haunts me is that terrifying minute or two minutes that it took him to choke her. All Pam's family wanted was to restore some dignity. They said, you know, we don't really care how much time Jose Rodriguez Cruz gets in jail. What we want is for him to tell us where Pam's remains are because we want to give her a proper burial. Using a map, Jose marked the place where he said he buried Pam's body, in the densely wooded median of I-95 in Virginia. That's where this bright, beloved woman had ended up, in a shallow grave between the north and southbound lanes of one of the busiest stretches of interstate in the country. So, Detective, here we are in the median of I-95. These people are going to Washington. These people are going to Richmond, Virginia. I have no idea

what's happened here. Absolutely, and that's the reason why he got away with it for so long. Nobody would have thought to stop here. He buried Pamela Butler. But recovering her remains was another sad chapter altogether. The median where Jose said he buried Pam had since been paved over to create HOV lanes. So Pam's body, under tons of concrete, never was recovered. What did this man do to your family? He took a lot away from us.

Took everything out of me. As for Jose, he was sent to prison. But with good behavior, he would likely end up serving a good deal less than his 12-year sentence for murdering Pam. And that gnawed at Derek Butler. He felt Jose had cheated him. I think he knew that there was no chance of us ever finding the body. So what are you thinking? We've got to extend the sentence? Exactly.

As it happened, Derek would get his chance. Because when Jose told investigators the location of Pam Butler's remains in the median of Interstate 95, that jogged a distant memory over in Virginia. When they were on the scene searching for Pamela's remains, someone at the scene remembered that six miles south from there, they had found some other remains. A state trooper recalled that in 1991, nearly 20 years before Pam Butler was murdered, Civil War relic hunters turned up another body six miles south in the median of I-95. So instead of a shell casing or a button from a jacket, they found a murdered woman.

So they immediately called the police. Back in 1991, there was no good way to identify the woman's sparse remains. So she was listed as a Jane Doe. But the detectives had a hunch. Could she be Marta? The first thing that came to mind, have you guys submitted DNA for testing? The detectives obtained a DNA sample from Hansel, Jose and Marta's son. They sent it off for comparison with a sample extracted from the remains of the Jane Doe.

And at that point, your phone rings? We have a match. And your DNA turns out to be Marta Rodriguez. I couldn't believe it. And this is where they found Marta's body? This is where they found Marta's body. But that was just a starting point. We knew who killed her.

But you gotta prove it in court. But we had to prove it in court. Coming up, Derek makes it his personal mission to bring Jose to justice for Marta's murder. I thought it was gonna be easy when I first started. It wasn't. I told him, some puzzles take longer than others.

When Dateline continues. At his home in Washington, D.C., Derek Butler was fuming, regretting he'd signed onto the plea deal that meant Jose Rodriguez Cruz could likely serve less than 12 years in prison for murdering his sister Pam. I have no doubt in my mind that he would have done it again. Derek was sure Jose had also murdered his first wife Marta in Virginia decades before. And he was going to try to get Jose put away for life. Now you're fired up again,

and you're going to take this fight across the river. Correct. You knew it was going to be as tough or tougher. Actually, I thought it was going to be easy when I first started. Derrick figured the D.C. prosecutors had presented a gift-wrapped, watertight case against Jose to the prosecutor in Virginia. But as 2017 rolled into 2018, it seemed to Derrick Marta's case was was stuck. Year goes by, nothing happens. Year and a half go by, we're pretty close to two years, and they didn't do a daggone thing with it.

I told him, you need to trust us. We're doing this. We're doing it the right way. It's a big puzzle, is how I describe these cases. You have to put all the pieces together. Some puzzles take longer than others. And Derek wanted to go quickly. He did. And in 2019, Derek's frustration turned into action.

I started making phone calls to them, and the district attorney would not even talk to me. When Derek did eventually get through, he says he got the brush off. Told me he didn't have to talk to me. He wasn't going to talk to me. He didn't have to talk to you? Yeah. Wasn't my case. I had nothing to do with it. Yeah. So Derek upped the ante. He rounded up reporters and camera teams and headed to Virginia to confront the Commonwealth attorney in person. He's going to be on the six o'clock news unless he gets with the program here, huh? Exactly. Derek marched his entourage into the Commonwealth Attorney's office. Did they get into the building with you,

or did they try and keep him out? His secretary came to the door, and she said, Mr. Butler can come in, but nobody else can come, and you have to cut the audio and video equipment off. Derek spoke with the DA, Commonwealth Attorney Eric Olson. Cordial? It was cordial, yeah. Seemed like a nice guy, and I have no doubt that he is a nice guy.

Derek Butler was not satisfied, and so he made it his mission to see that Jose Rodriguez Cruz was brought to justice. Commonwealth Attorney Olson was caught off guard by Derek's approach. He came with you guys saying, basically, grow a spine. Come on, you guys got to take this thing on. Well, he certainly did come to our office and he talked to me personally. With all the cameras in the world. About, you know, trying to encourage us. What do you do with this angry family victim? You know, when I spoke to Mr. Butler, I explained there's a difference between knowing what happened and proving what happened. This was a 30-year-old case.

But he told Derek he'd see what he could do. My message to Derek Butler was this. We will do everything we can to try to put a case together. You just have to be patient. If there's any way we can do it, we're going to try. And if you hadn't brought the media pack with you, do you think you would have gotten any breakthrough in it? I wouldn't have gotten past the front door. I'm not crazy. I know that a 30-year-old case is hard to prove. But Olson pushed the case forward. This is the ultimate act of domestic violence. That's the allegation in this case.

He's singing a completely different tune to you now, huh? Right. Now your brother's in arms and you're going to go get this guy. Exactly. I'm here to go get this guy. Exactly. I'm here to get justice for her. She deserves it. It was fairly obvious to authorities that there was need to pursue it as a homicide investigation.

In October 2019, Commonwealth Attorney Olson charged Jose Rodriguez Cruz with the first-degree murder of his first wife, Marta, and assigned Sandra Park and Ryan Fitzgerald to prosecute the case. Who does Jose Rodriguez Cruz turn out to be? Who did you learn this person was?

He was a psychopath. To me, he was just an evil person that inflicted a lot of violence on women who certainly did not deserve any of it. Of course, the challenge for us as prosecutors is what we could use as evidence and how. How legally were we going to get those items into evidence to paint the picture? Their evidence was circumstantial, even thin. They had no murder scene, no blood evidence, no eyewitnesses. And they were relying on a few bones found by Civil War relic hunters some 30 years before. Remember, the bones were recovered in 1991.

And I imagine the remains were sparse. Yes. But while the prosecutors could prove they were Marta's remains, could they convince a jury she'd been murdered? The initial pathology report determined that the cause of death was undetermined. So you don't know how she died. Right. And of course, Jose denied any knowledge.

He was in prison for murdering Pam Butler when Detective Ortiz and a colleague showed up to question him about killing Marta. I'm just here to ask you for that. Just the honest truth. Get the s*** off your chest. Well, I said I can't help you. You can't. You just don't want to. That's different.

Well, I mean, know what to tell you. I think she ran off with some drug dealers. And that's the same story that he had been telling all the other innocent people in our story. With so little evidence to work with, the two prosecutors weren't sure they could win the case. And what's more, Jose had a lulu of a story still to tell. Coming up... Is there anything where you just felt the hair on your neck stand up?

Yes, all of it. Jose spills the grim details of how he killed Pam, even as he insists he's innocent of Marta's death. He wanted the court to believe that Stafford County, Virginia prosecutors. Jose Rodriguez Cruz seemed set to walk out of prison after serving a good deal less than his 12-year sentence, even though he'd pleaded guilty to killing his girlfriend Pam Butler. But now, as the prosecutors sought to put him away for maybe the rest of his life for killing his first wife, Marta,

could they even prove the core truth about Marta's death? Do you know whether she was a murder victim or not? The most basic information you need. Yes. People don't just end up on the media and unexplained. People don't just end up on I-95 unexplained. And there was no one else that would have put her there but Jose. And the manner in which he disposed of her became so important because he'd done it to someone else another time.

Even though he'd already told prosecutors in the Pam Butler case what he'd done, here he was on tape speaking casually, chillingly about Pam to Detective Ortiz and a fellow detective. How did you cure her? Um, it's very hard. You just cured her? Mm-hmm. Did you feel bad about that?

Yeah. And he told the detectives he drove down Interstate 95. Did you pull off this side of the road, or did you just meet him? I just met him. And he confirmed how he disposed of Pam's body. Did you bury her? You did? You got it all? The way he tells it, some of the details,

is there anything where you just felt the hair on your neck stand up? Yes, all of it. Just no compassion or empathy or human emotion whatsoever. You're not seeing any remorse? No remorse. Little did he know, by telling law enforcement how he murdered and disposed of Pam Butler, Jose was handing the prosecutors critical details they could use against him for killing Marta. It becomes signature evidence. It's idiosyncratic. It's so unique that the evidence

of Pam Butler's murder becomes relevant to the murder of Marta Rodriguez. The defendant has acknowledged this is the area in which he placed Pam Butler's body. That's a signature. Marta was dumped very close along this tree line here. And Detective Ortiz told us how she believes Jose disposed of Marta's body. So how do you think it happened? How do you see it going down? I really see it at the middle of the night, dark. Jose just pulls over on the shoulder of the highway, and it's a very quick, unplanned maneuver. He just dumps the body right there.

As the Marta Rodriguez murder case headed for trial, the evidence against Jose that once seemed thin was piling up. I think that's when anyone would begin to realize, okay, they've built the case and they have my story now. What do I do now? Jose did as he'd done in the Pam Butler case. He made a deal with the prosecutors and agreed to plead guilty to second-degree murder.

In April 2021, at a sentencing hearing, he would make his case for the minimum five years in prison, while the prosecutors would argue for the max 40 years. This is sort of an unusual event for a lot of people. There's no jury. You're arguing your case to the judge. Yes. As the court convened, there was Marta and Jose's only son, Hansel.

Hansel. Hansel Rodriguez. He's a driving force for us. He suffered so much, and we needed to bring this to fruition for him. Derek Butler was there, too, staring daggers at Jose. Here you are in this courtroom standing as an advocate for a murdered woman that you'd never met. Oh yeah, Hansel. Didn't deserve to go through what he had went through. When the hearing got underway, Ryan Fitzgerald made a blistering presentation of the evidence. Fair to say you took this personally?

No, it's not that you take things personally, but it's impossible not to tap into what that feels like when you've got his son sitting behind you. Hansel took the stand against his father with a searing impact statement. You could feel his hurt. You felt it when he said, I started to notice other families that had a mom and I didn't have a mom. And then he told the court a childhood secret he'd revealed to detectives during their investigation, that when he was 11, he suddenly discovered that story about his mom running off with drug dealers wasn't true. The incident happened when Jose was in a rage and Hansel ran to hide. He says, my dad has this library, and he has this desk area, and I'm running by,

and I just happen to look, and there's this piece of paper laying there. And the sheet of paper said, I, Jose Rodriguez, am responsible for Marta's disappearance. And he was like, oh, my God, he's going to kill himself, and this is sort of his confession of what he did to his mom, and he said he went and hid. He said he just viewed his life

through a lens of conflict and survival, and you felt it when he said that it defined him. Being a boy whose father killed his mother. Right. The exclamation point came from Marta's sister, Neda, appearing in court via a live video stream. So tragic. Marta suffered so much. The prosecutors closed, believing they'd made their strongest case for a long sentence. The question is, Judge, what are you going to do now that we've told you these things?

That's correct. And they hadn't counted on Jose's next move. At a sentencing proceeding, the defendant has the right to offer the court his version of the events. So Jose rose to tell his story of what happened to Marta. In May 1989, after he and Marta were separated, Jose said Marta got in touch with him. He says that she wanted to meet with him to talk about Hansel. Jose said they met at a hotel, but Marta felt unwell. He says that she was suffering a migraine.

He told her that she could take some of his painkillers that happened to be laying out in a bag. And he directed her to the bag to take the pain pills. Meanwhile, Jose said he took this car to go get some food for Marta. But as luck would have it, he said he ran out of gas. And so by the time he got back to the hotel, he claimed he was confronted by a scene of horror. So when he leaves to go get gas, he comes back late,

and then Marta's dead. Marta had overdosed on pain pills, Jose explained in court, and he panicked. And then he says he calls a friend to help him, huh? Well, he said he calls not a friend. He calls his drug dealer to help him dispose of the body.

Jose claimed his dealer friend told him to keep a lookout while he took care of Marta's body. And then it's the drug dealer who dumps the body. And that was Jose's story about Marta. Think about that, right? In the year before she died, Jose abducted her, abused her, tied her up, attempted to rape her. And he wanted the court to believe that she died of a drug overdose, during which he wasn't even in the room, and he happened to be out getting gas. The judge was not buying this defense at all.

That was our take on it. After a short recess, the judge returned to hand down his sentence. Boom. He imposed the maximum punishment allowable under the law, and I clapped. You're not supposed to do that, Derek. Yeah.

I was hoping that he would get the maximum amount, but I wasn't expecting it. Jose, aged 55, got 40 years. On top of the 12 years, he was already serving for murdering Pam Butler. That is what that maximum penalty is reserved for. It's for people, monsters like Jose. I thought nobody was so broken that they couldn't be fixed.

But I would tell him that you are a person that should have never been born. He's an evil guy. We don't know all the things that he's done. Justice was finally served. Jose will likely die in prison while his many victims try to pick up the pieces of their lives. Marta's sister, Neda, is still filled with regret for not coming to the phone the day Marta called for help. I'm never going to have closure. That's why I feel so guilty, as if I had killed her with my own hands. Detective Ortiz took it upon herself to bring Marta's ashes to Puerto Rico, and Neda laid her sister to rest in a place where Marta had some of her happiest moments. And she would have still been around her family.

She didn't get that? She didn't get that chance. She didn't get a chance to raise her child or have the ability to raise her grandkids. As for Derek, he continues to help other people of color searching for missing loved ones through the non-profit Black and Missing Foundation. But his personal journey is over. You just kept on a-coming and a-coming and a-coming for years. Yeah. Scared as hell sometimes that they were going to come and lock me up.

How do you think about yourself, Derek? Are you a hero? No, just somebody that cares about his family. I have no doubt in my mind that had this happened to me, that Pam would have did the same for me. That's all for this edition of Dateline. We'll see you again next Friday at 9, 8 central. And of course, I'll see you again next Friday at 9, 8 central. And of course, I'll see you each weeknight for NBC Nightly News. I'm Lester Holt for all of us at NBC News. Good night.