Dateline NBC - At the Bottom of the Lake

Episode Date: November 18, 2019

In this Dateline classic, a pilot flees after a deadly plane crash, and becomes a fugitive living a double life for decades. He tells his story to Keith Morrison. Originally aired on NBC on October 12, 2018.

They were kind of a Romeo and Juliet couple trying to run away together. And the tragedy of it all going so terribly wrong. A mystery hiding in a lake. I remember it being so unbelievable that a plane had landed in our family's lake. A couple of young people on it. We're trying to locate it with fish finders. They found it and her. She was a pretty girl.

Some of her long hair was caught in the door. She just looked like she was actually sleeping. But where was the pilot? They were pretty sure he was heading to Mexico. I can remember we had calls from Interpol even. 24 years later, a woman uncovers a little white lie. He said that he was actually 43. I was like, so what else have you lied to me about?

Was he a monster? Was he Romeo? You just don't know. And those are the best stories, aren't they? Now, for the first time in public, the untold story. You're the only person on the planet who knows the truth. A mystery that dropped from the sky and sank out of sight. Decades later, will it finally be solved? I'm Lester Holt and this is Dateline. Here's Keith Morrison with At the Bottom of the Lake.

It is, in its own strange way, a dissertation on love. Love intoxicating, impetuous, foolish. Love that lives like a fugitive in a long secret tunnel of regret. There's a reason that the story of Romeo and Juliet has held up over centuries. Or maybe, could you tell me? Maybe it wasn't love at all. Maybe it was something else altogether. Oh, Diane, why did you take that ride? You know, why did you?

Why did you put your life in his hands? How did it all go so terribly wrong? It began, the way myths sometimes do, with a whispered story, which started right about here, and traveled mouth to ear to mouth among the camps and cabins around a cold, deep lake in the Rockies of remote northwestern Montana. One of the countless glacial lakes carved eons ago, just west of Glacier National Park.

This one called Little Bitterroot, named for the wild local plant that fed ancient tribes. And now, the name for a magical summer place where Kim Kenis Rygrok's grandfather built a cabin in the 1920s. And where generation after generation has stored up a century's worth of memories. It was a family gathering place. We'd swim to the rock out there and stand on it.

A simpler time. You have to have a strong constitution to swim in that lake very much, I would think. Well, it's beautiful, clean water, but it is a little brisk getting in. Twins Jim and John Young grew up on the shores of the lake, too. Free and easy. Back in the days, parents didn't worry so much. As long as we left at breakfast and home by dinner, we were fine. We'd all meet down here and go swimming and stuff.

Camp right here. Swim off the dam. That was kind of the big thing. It was just right up over here. God, it sounds so idyllic. Yeah, it was fun. It was the summer of 1982 when the whole weird saga began. Jim and John were 15 years old.

Kim was 20, about to head off to her junior year at college, when she and her mom drove to the cottage for a final summer visit and encountered a surprise. As we pulled up, we saw someone on this corner of the deck that we didn't

recognize. And I didn't even have the pickup stopped. I was slowing down to pull into the drive there. Mom opened the door and hopped out to find out who was on our deck. She wouldn't run the other way? Not my mother. So I got the truck in gear and came up here as quickly as I could. And she was talking to this young man. What did he look like? He did not look like a lake person to me. You know, he was very well kept looking. He had a white kind of a polo shirt on, and it, you know, it looked like it had just come out of a suitcase. It was just bright white.

Kim's mother made it clear to the young man, no matter how polite or well-dressed, he was trespassing. Were you worried about him? I was actually more worried about my mother. She wanted to know who he was, of course, and what he was doing here. And he was very vague in his answers. And I remember asking, where did you come from? And he pointed over here and he said, over the mountains.

Well, and again we thought, no one comes from that way. You're not dressed like a hiker or a backpacker. And it didn't make sense. How unusual would it be to find a stranger here? This place has been in the family for generations. It had never happened that I'm aware of, to have someone on our deck that we didn't know. Anyway, the young stranger was clearly not dangerous. And after the talking to, he got from Kim's mom, he got up and wandered

off down the shoreline and out of sight. It was maybe 50 yards away where Jim and John had already encountered him, maybe earlier that day. But the fellow they saw looked very different. They remember him as not being well kept at all. In fact, he was soaking wet and, it appeared, injured. Well, he had some pretty good bruises and scratches, you know, across his neck. I mean, you see it come out from out of his shirt, you know, so pretty good gouges on. And he explained this how? He said he had a bear chasing, you know. Through the woods? Yeah. He says, you guys wouldn't have matches, my lighter's wet. What did you do? We jumped on our motorbikes, went down to the store down here. Off to buy matches.

Sort of thing people would do for a stranger around here. Except, well, is it a coincidence? Around the same time as those unusual encounters, some other folks noticed that the lake itself looked kind of odd. Seemed to be a sheen of some sort on the water. Unusual oil slick, maybe? Pat Walsh was a young deputy sheriff at the time. One of the people that saw the oil in the lake was a pilot.

And so he informed the deputies at that time that that is not oil from a boat motor. I was going to say, there are lots of boats in that lake. That's right. And he said, it's not oil from a boat motor. Yeah, I was going to say, there are lots of boats in that lake. That's right, and he said it's not oil from a boat motor. So, what? There have been rumors of smugglers around here from time to time. Had a smuggler's airplane landed on the lake, then taken off again? How can an airplane go down in a lake without anybody hearing it?

Probably wouldn't have made much more than a splashing noise. And if you're in a cabin on the shore, if you hear a splash, it's not going to mean anything to you. And then people around the lake heard about the young stranger and wondered, were these incidents somehow related? Jim and John remembered that the guy was carrying a duffel bag wrapped in green plastic. And when they returned from the store and gave him those matches they bought for him, he lit a fire, and guess what he did? And he started just burning, like,

they probably were maps, you know, but it just looked like newspapers, you know, and then it went to Matt, to some clothing and stuff, but, you know, and he burned everything there. Burned clothes and everything. Yeah. And then, they said, then this strange man just soldered off,

just like he did after running into Kim and her mom. We watched him go a little bit, and then I thought, well, this is probably spying on him. So then we went inside the cabin. You're so polite. Well, not really, because we went inside the cabin and watched him through the window. Watched him through the window. Until he was out of sight. That was basically the last we saw of him.

Oh, but not the last they heard of him. Myths and mysteries can lie around and haunt you for decades. And the revelation that was coming to Little Bitterroot Lake would make very sure of that. Was it smugglers or something else? What secret was the lake hiding? When we return, the sheriff believed that there was a plane in this lake and were trying to locate it with fish finders. But no one was prepared for what they found. She was a pretty girl and she was a young girl and it was it was just a shame. She just there were rumors in the water. A crazy idea was making the rounds. That a mysterious airplane had landed, maybe even crashed, on pristine Little Bitterroot Lake.

And that the odd young man who who wandered the shoreline, encountering several locals, was perhaps the pilot? I don't remember being afraid he might come back or anything like that. Sort of forgot about it? I think we kind of forgot about it. But naturally, the sheriff heard about all this and sent a young deputy named Jim DuPont to take a look around. By the time we talked to DuPont, back in 2008, he'd been looking at the mystery for most of his career. In fact, our old video here hints at how long we've been following this story. Anyway, DuPont was assigned the case way back in 1982, partly because he was a private pilot as well as a deputy,

so he knew a thing or two about small planes. And lo and behold, in the very spot where twins Jim and John said the young man had built a fire? We indeed found a little fire ring, and right away I found what's called a gust lock. And a gust lock is a bent piece of metal that actually fits into the yoke of an airplane. In the fire? Burned up in the fire. And plus there was some wires and a jack plug, like on a microphone jack. And I knew it was a mic jack from an airplane.

So what then? I actually took that gust lock and went to the airport, found a 150, and indeed it fit the 150 that I looked at. A 150 would be a Cessna 150, like this one. So did that mean the rest of a Cessna 150 was indeed in the lake, just like the gossipers were saying? DuPont reported all this to his boss, the sheriff, and the sheriff called in a couple of expert divers, Rick Hawk and Ernie Freeberry. The sheriff believed that there was a plane in this lake, and Ernie and I suited up and were on boats that were trying to locate it with fish finders. You can only imagine the challenge back then, technology being what it was in the 1980s, and the lake in spots being well over 200 feet deep.

Still, the sheriff had confidence they'd find the plane and alerted the media, which certainly came to watch the divers diving and listen to the sheriff's optimistic daily predictions, overly optimistic predictions. He said that to the media quite a few times. Today's the day. And we'd go out and everybody'd work hard and it wouldn't happen. So they'd all go home again.

And then the next day, today's the day. It's just, I mean, everybody was doing what they could do. That went on for days, more than a week. So maybe all that talk about an airplane in the lake was just that, talk. And then the sheriff heard about a thingamajig that was new at the time called side-scanning sonar. So they brought one of those in and lowered it way down to the bottom. If we don't get results here today or tomorrow, we will call off the search because there's a limit to your resources and time and effort here.

But just as the sheriff was about to give up, a breakthrough. When we got a hit on the sonar, he also brought a remote camera that had an umbilical and basically flew that camera down to the aircraft. There it was, the plane, right there on the video screen. What was it like to see that thing? Do you remember? It was, actually, it's somewhat satisfying to know all the hours that you spent out there looking. It really was there. Except now there was another problem. The plane was more than 250 feet down, way too deep to safely send the divers.

So they used the submersible camera to guide hooks onto the airplane, and they pulled it up to a depth of about 100 feet, where the divers were sent down to retrieve it. The water was very clear. They could see the plane, almost like it was flying, down in the cold, cold water. But then they saw something else. The plane wasn't empty.

Inside? It's not pleasant when you see that. The body of a woman. Just a girl, really. She was sitting in a passenger seat. And her seatbelt was still on. What would she look like? As I recall, she was a pretty girl, and she was a young girl, and it was just a shame.

The divers each got behind a wing and sort of flew the plane up to the surface. As the plane came out, the crowd watching saw something many of the people here would never forget. The girl's hair was stuck in the door and her long locks were waving in the water. The twins were there, crowded up close. It was a little more than I expected. I think I'm pulling it out and the hair's hanging out.

I've never seen a dead person before. They put a sheet over the aircraft window to shield prying eyes while the lawmen moved in. I removed her and just took her immediately down to our state pathologist in Missoula. What sort of condition was her body in? She was in excellent condition. She just looked like she was actually sleeping.

That was the eerie part about her. The girl in the lake. Who was she? What was she doing alone in the passenger seat of a Cessna 150 in the bottom of a Montana lake? And if she was the passenger, where was the pilot? Coming up, a modern twist on a story old as time. What emerged was the suggestion that they were kind of a Romeo and Juliet,

that their families had been disapproving of their relationship. They were loping. That was the suggestion. When Dateline Continues. Events around Little Bitterroot Lake were beyond puzzling. As the autumn chill descended, the strange young man, the plane in the lake, the dead girl trapped in the plane.

Then Deputy Sheriff Jim DuPont had trouble shaking that image. Everything starts to transform in your brain of what happened that day, what happened to her when she went down, you know, the knowing that you're doomed type of thing. But where did she come from and why? A few hundred miles northwest of Little Bitterroot, across the border in Canada, in the heart of British Columbia's Okanagan Valley,

is a sweet small city called Penticton, where on a Monday morning almost a month before they fished that plane out of the lake, Royal Canadian Mounted Police Constable Ron Peterson noticed unusual activity

out of the airport. I saw the search and rescue aircraft in because that always has been a search base. So they're looking for somebody. Yeah. When I see things like that, I like to know what's going on.

What was going on was indeed a search for a small plane gone missing the previous evening. The constable found out it was a training aircraft from Vancouver, four hours to the west, which had flown to Penticton the day before, with two on board, both teenagers. And I found that a little bit unusual, especially in those days, because 19, 20-year-olds didn't fly all over the country. Sure. It was a small plane. Couldn't have had very much experience.

No. And that terrain can be very treacherous. So the constable, though no one asked him to, started poking around. I spoke to the main refueler. He serviced the aircraft. He filled them up with fuel. And they'd spent the afternoon beside the aircraft on a blanket, and they were reorganizing stuff out of the airplane and putting it in these bags. Did you wonder if maybe they were smuggling something?

Didn't know. Then Constable Peterson went looking for witnesses who may have seen the plane flying by. And yes, several did. They noticed because it had gone up into a narrow, windy valley, a posted no-fly zone, and not on a flight plan. It buzzed a ski mountain outside town and a nearby observatory with its massive radio telescopes. I spoke to the fellow there and I said, what happens if somebody flies over? Does anything trigger an alarm or anything like that? And he said, oh yeah, he said, this is a no-fly zone over here. And there was a disturbance registered. He said that was a small airplane because he said

we've seen them before. But after that, no idea where the plane went. And there was no emergency locator transmitter on board, since it was a training aircraft and wasn't usually more than 25 miles from Vancouver. Was one of the thoughts that you thought maybe they'd crashed in the bush somewhere and just absolutely didn't survive? Absolutely. Everybody was looking for this plane. That's right. That very same summer Monday, a Cub reporter, brand new, 22 years old, had just started working at the Vancouver Sun newspaper. Margot Harper heard about the missing plane, dug a little, and came up with the names, the people on board. Yaroslav Ambrozek, the pilot, known as Jerry.

A 19-year-old who'd soloed just a year before, an emigre from Poland at the age of 10, and a Boy Scout with dreams of becoming a commercial airline pilot. And his passenger and girlfriend, 18-year-old Diane Babcock. She was a very good student. She was a runner. She was set on a career in nursing. You know, she was ambitious, and she was determined to be successful.

When Margo Harper started nosing around the high school from which Jerry and Diane had so recently graduated, she learned a theory was rapidly circulating here. A theory with an ancient and universal theme. What emerged right away was the suggestion that they were kind of a Romeo and Juliet couple. That their families had been disapproving of their relationship and the suggestion emerged that they were trying to run away together. They were loping. That was the suggestion that they in fact had been trying to get away from parental pressure from an unhappy social scene. Jarek had this strong parental influence that he was trying to get away from a father

who was too tough on him or something and she had a family that didn't want her involved with this Polish kid. From the kind of wrong side of the tracks, et cetera. Yeah, that's what made it Romeo and Juliet. Indeed. But according to Diane's family... I spoke with Mr. Babcock, Diane's father, who soundly dismissed that theory

and said that there was no reason that they would have had to elope. And if Jerry and Diane had wanted to be together, that they could have been together. And I remember thinking at the time, it didn't quite ring true. And I wondered whether Mr. Babcock was appealing to his daughter through the media to come home if she was out there somewhere, that everything would be okay. They were absolutely out of their minds with, you know, worry, desperation, fear. At that point, their daughter was simply missing. And so was Jerry, and so was the plane. Then so it went, Families frantic with worry.

Search and rescue missions flying all over British Columbia, wondering where those teenagers could have gone. And then a week later, everything changed with a strange and alarming phone call from New York City. What was that like? Stunning. I couldn't... What? Coming up... One mystery solved. So many more not. By the last days of August in 1982,

Canadian Search and Rescue had been scouring the mountains for a week for probably a crashed airplane and the missing teenagers Jerry Ambrosek and Diane Babcock. But what happened then stopped them cold. Back in Vancouver, a close friend of the couple's had received a phone call. And it was hard to believe, but the call was said to be from the missing pilot himself, Jerry Ambrosek. What did you think when you heard that? I was just floored. I couldn't comprehend. I don't think anyone could.

When I first heard this, I'm going, you've got to be kidding me. But it was true, at least according to the friend. A young man named Tom Palowski, who reported that Jerry had called him with an astonishing story. A story that explained what happened to that small plane they'd been looking for. The plane had been ditched, Jerry claimed to his friend. Crashed, on purpose, onto the surface of a lake across the border in Montana. And Diane was still in the plane, deep in the cold, cold water of Little Bitterroot Lake. And Jerry, in shock, he told his friend in that phone call, had fled the scene of the crash,

calling his friend somehow now from a bus terminal in New York City. I think one of the things that was so captivating about the story for everyone was, yeah, this notion that somehow this young couple could actually pull off this incredible, magical disappearing act. The idea that they'd successfully run away to be together, right? And that they had defied all odds and that they made it. And then you hear that, well, he's crashed the plane and her body's at the bottom of the lake and he's on the run. It becomes a completely different story. But investigators and reporters alike wondered, was Jerry's friend Tom telling the truth about that phone call?

They put him to the polygraph and he was to be found truthful. All this was pre-Internet, of course, and that's probably why the RCMP had no idea that a sheriff down there in Montana had just begun investigating an oil sheen on the water and reports of a stranger wandering the shoreline. And then, after that phone call from Jerry, the RCMP called the sheriff

and told him about the young couple in the plane way down deep and the young woman still inside. Constable Peterson went to Montana to help out. And in Vancouver, the Mounties put a tap on Tom's phone, just in case Jerry called again. And sure enough, he did. Hello? Yes, I would like to talk to Tom Pulaski from Lewis Go Man. From where?

It's Tom Pulaski from Lewis Go Man in Dallas, Texas. Right, yeah. That Jerry would use an alias was strange. But that he was at a phone booth near this store in East Dallas, Texas? Wild. Hi. How are you doing? What the hell are you doing here?

Then, as they talked, Jerry offered a version of the story that didn't sound much at all like the story of Romeo and Juliet and all the headlines. I went because I was going to. She went because, I guess, she was in love with me or something like that. Yeah. But it wasn't because we both want to. But then, later, same conversation. And that's when she went along. Like he didn't really care what she did. But then, later, same conversation. Jerry said that losing Diane was like half of him dying. She's gone. I'm alone. I'm lonely.

Jerry was calling, he told his friend, to try to make sure Diane was found. But given the circumstances of Diane's death, he said he would not be coming home, would not turn himself in. Did you find a plane with a dead body inside? That's right, it's murder. That's what it's going to be. But you didn't kill her, so why should you, you know,

why should somebody look for you? I don't know why. But listen to me, I don't want her to look for me. Well, but listen, I mean, you can't be, you know, why should somebody look for you? I don't know why. But listen, I mean, you can't be, you know, you don't want somebody to look for you for a thing that you didn't do. I didn't do anything. It's not like I killed her. They can see there's no wound on her or knife or anything that I killed her. But Jerry had already told Tom his decision was made.

He wasn't coming home ever. Did you wonder why he wouldn't, once he lost his girlfriend, why he wouldn't kind of throw himself on the mercy of the court and come back and apologize and try to get on with his life? Yeah, I believe that too. And Tom, his friend, really, really worked on him to do that. Because, you know, the longer you leave it, the worse it gets. The story gets bigger and bigger as to why you ran Because, you know, the longer you leave it, the worse it gets. The story gets bigger and bigger as to why you ran away, you know, and now it becomes more suspicious.

And a bigger story. So reporter Margo Harper embarked on her first international assignment to Little Bitterroot Lake, where they believed they were very close to finding the airplane. And Diane... And I remember thinking, and kind of hoping against hope, that somehow, maybe, maybe she'd escaped somehow, you know? I mean, it seemed inconceivable that the body in the plane could be anyone but her,

but you just don't know until you actually see. And see she did. She arrived at the lakeshore just in time to see the plane emerge from the water. With that indelible image, the girl's hair stuck in the door, her long blonde locks wet from waving around in the water. I remember looking at it and thinking, oh my god, you know, she looks like Ophelia from Hamlet. I remember just walking over to the plane, and I looked inside, and she was perfectly preserved. You know, the lake was so cold.

She was kind of slumped over, my recollection is. Her head was against the side of the door. Her hair was streaming out, and she just looked like she was asleep. You've never forgotten that? No. That image, with her hair streaming out the window and coming out of that watery grave, is one that has really haunted me.

I think almost like no other image in my career. After Diane was taken away, the sheriff invited Margo back to the hangar to see what else was on the plane. They had taken out a life raft, some kind of disguises, survival gear. There was another duffel bag with sleeping bags and extra clothing. And it became, in that moment, crystal clear what the plan had been. It was clear that they were going to, you know, crash the plane, dump the plane.

Ditch it. Ditch it. And jump into a life raft and make their way to shore and try to disguise themselves somehow. And so I filed a story the next day in the Vancouver Sun, which was front page, confirming the, I want to say the elopement theory, but it's hardly an elopement now, is it? It's something else. It's an escape fantasy, really. But the reality? Diane was dead.

And two law enforcement agencies from two countries were now at work to solve the mystery of what really happened at Little Bitterroot Lake. Coming up... He could have gotten her out of there. Well, that's my opinion. More questions about what happened and suspicion about why. Did he really want to run away with her forever? If that's the woman I was going to elope with and I couldn't get her out of the airplane, you would have found me in it too. When Dateline continues.

It was when the Royal Canadian Mounted Police showed up that the mystery behind what happened at Little Bitterroot Lake finally, like the plane itself, emerged into something like clarity, or at least who was who and what they were doing there. The young pilot, 19-year-old Jerry Ambrosek. Jerry's girlfriend, 18-year-old Diane Babcock, descending in the plane to her death. I remember it being so unbelievable. First of all, that a plane had landed in what I considered our family's lake. And that someone was killed. And that we had actually met the person who was flying that plane. Now, Flathead County detectives set about trying to figure out exactly what happened

when the plane came down, and how and why death came to poor Diane. We concluded that she did, she died by drowning. Diane did have a broken collarbone, a fracture in her neck, and a bruise to the right side of her forehead, all most likely incurred when the plane hit the water. But they were all survivable injuries. Except, when they found Diane, she was still strapped in. So, maybe the seatbelt, instead of saving her life, helped end it. Maybe the buckle jammed. Pat Walsh is a retired detective. He was a deputy back then.

Her lap belt had flipped over so the buckle was against her body or she couldn't have reached it in a hurry without realizing. And so the buckle had actually flipped around. Yes, it flipped around, which is going to happen if it's a little bit loose and not cinched down tight. But aside from that, the belt was not malfunctioning in any way. It wasn't jammed. It wasn't locked. And yet, it was obvious Diane did not even try to get it open. Not like you'd think a person would if her life depended on it.

One of the first things I checked during the autopsy was her fingernails. None of her nails were broke. There was no bruising or anything of the fingertips. And you just imagine yourself being in a craft that's sinking, you know, and you're holding your breath and you're scrambling, you know, the belt's stuck. You know, you can't get the belt free. What would, you know, I'd probably break my fingers trying to get the thing break. If nothing else, by straining, pulling just on the belt fruitlessly until you have to give it up, you know. So there was none of that. And I don't understand that today.

Why did that happen? And then suddenly, a new twist. Diane's doctor revealed to investigators that just days before the crash and her death, she'd had an abortion. So that raised Deputy Jim DuPont's antenna, especially given what Jerry had said in one of those calls to his friend, taped by the RCMP after the crash. Anything go through your mind at that point? Did he really want her to be there?

Did he really want to run away with her forever? She is the one that was madly in love with him. It probably wasn't the same type of issue in reverse. So maybe the crash presented an opportunity to not have a clingy girlfriend. Or maybe, as Diane's family would later claim, she was a vulnerable young woman afraid of being left by the only lover she'd ever had, and her emotions told her to get on board even if Jerry didn't really want her to. Jim, a pilot, remember, had been doing some informed thinking,

and he figured Jerry would certainly have had time to save Diane's life if he wanted to. I would guess you'd be lucky to get five minutes. You know, five minutes is a long time when you're in a hurry. You can do a lot of things in five minutes. You can get two people out of an airplane and get what you want out of it. And if there was that much time, why didn't Jerry get her out of there? Why didn't he even take out the two-person rubber raft he'd stashed in the cargo compartment? A theory began to harden

in the deputy's head. He could have gotten her out of there. Well, that's my opinion. That's my opinion, as he could. And you must have been thinking that at the time. I was concerned of why, because I know he also got out

with his equipment. Oh, yes. Jerry's equipment. That duffel bag wrapped in green plastic. He was seen with it on shore after the crash. It contained his clothes and money, though they didn't know that for quite a while. 2,200 bucks he and Diane, mostly Diane, had saved for the trip.

I thought it was very convenient that he got that bag and he wasn't able to get her out. Convenient. It's convenient for him. Yeah, not so convenient for her. No. We've all been 18 and in love, and we know how intense that is. If that's the woman I was going to elope with and run away with, and I couldn't get her out of the airplane, you would have found me in it too. And that really was the heart of your belief, that this guy had done it on purpose. I think he took advantage of an opportunity and let her go down, or just didn't try. Yeah. And he saved himself and not her i mean one of the two things happened that's i don't know how you could explain it any other way and there was one more thing troubling jim dupont maybe more important than

all the other clues namely if jerry ambrosek didn't do anything wrong, why did he run? Not long after poor Diane was lifted out of Little Bitterroot Lake, she was laid to rest in a small family plot in a cemetery across the border in British Columbia. And in Montana, lawmen decided what Jerry did was a crime. They filed charges, negligent homicide. So Jerry Ambrosek was now a wanted man, a fugitive. And the manhunt was on. Coming up, from Canada to the U.S. to south of the border. I wasn't sure he wasn't in Mexico. And more tragedy for Diane's father. How much more can a family injure?

Jerry Ambrosek was like a ghost. An apparition on the lakeshore, and then gone. Vanished into where? There was just one clue to where he may have reappeared, telephonically at least. A phone call placed from Dallas, Texas. That last phone call he made to his friend Tom was traced to a phone booth. You remember those, don't you? Long gone now, it was near a grocery store in East Dallas.

Rick Hawk, one of the divers who'd pulled the plane out of the lake, was also a detective, and he was assigned to find Jerry. He knew about the phone booth, but... There wouldn't have been much of a guarantee he'd go back to that same phone booth, and my sheriff wasn't about to send me down to Texas to sit on a phone booth for an unspecified number of hours, days, weeks, months. He was an 18 or 17 or 18 year old kid. He got all the way to Texas somehow and disappeared. I thought he was under a cactus someplace. A reasonable assumption, one would think. It was like the guy just didn't exist. Months passed, then years. They kept looking,

but with rapidly diminishing expectations. Jerry didn't contact anyone, far as they could tell. I wasn't sure he wasn't in Mexico. Certainly could have been. So it's sort of, what's the point of trying to chase around after a ghost? Well, that's my job. By 1991, nine years after the crash, Deputy Jim DuPont had become the elected sheriff. This 1980 photo is one of the only ones we have of Ambrosek.

And Jerry Ambrosek had joined the list of America's Most Wanted, appearing on several versions of the popular TV program, including Final Justice. He stayed on that very big deal list all the way through the 1990s. About the third time it was featured on America's Most Wanted, I actually went back to D.C. What do you do when you take part in a show like that? Well, my job was to be on the phone

in case a tip came in that sounded real, and none of the calls that came in were credible. It was depressing. Without a tip, short of Jerry turning himself in, there was almost nothing for law enforcement to go on. This was kind of a lost cause during your period this year. I can remember we had calls from Interpol even on some people called and said, hey, I think it's this guy. And they ended up not to be him. In Canada, Diane Babcock's father

called the RCMP once a week for years, and then once a month, hoping for news it never came. Then in 1999, 17 years after the crash, Diane's father and mother were driving to the cemetery where she was buried, as they had done so faithfully each year since her death. It was a bus that collided with them, smashed into their car. Diane's mother, Adele, was killed. She was 65.

I thought, my, how much more can a family injure? By 2000, RCMP Constable Peterson retired. Those unsolved cases stick with you? They do. In your line of work? They do, yep. In fact, sometimes you wake up in the middle of the night thinking about them, you know, long after. And as the 25th anniversary of the crash closed in,

with Sheriff DuPont pondering retirement after four terms. He wondered if what he considered the biggest case he couldn't solve would haunt him long after he took off the sheriff's star for good. This case seemed to really get under his skin. Jim spent a lot of time talking to the family. And whenever there was any communication with the victim's father, Jim would be the one that would talk to him, and he always tried to stay in touch with them. Yeah, that'll certainly get you invested in a case if you know the family. Yeah, I felt he had a personal investment in it, yes.

No matter. The fugitive had successfully done what few had ever pulled off. He disappeared without a trace. As if he was at the bottom of some lake himself. I often wondered what happened to Jerry Ambrosek. Over the years, I had all kinds of theories. Probably the theory that was floating around the journalistic community here was that he was a broken man sitting in a Mexican bar somewhere.

And then, it was almost like it happens in the movies. A twist quite out of the blue. Once again, there was a woman. My, my. Coming up, she wanted an honest man. Being deliberately untruthful really bothers me. She ended up with a wanted man. I was like, so what else have you lied to me about? When Dateline continues.

Returning to our story. It was unbelievable. It was also a mystery. A young couple, possibly eloping, ditched their small plane in a Montana lake. They were kind of a Romeo and Juliet couple. Diane was found dead in the sunken plane. She just looked like she was actually sleeping. But her lover, Jerry, had disappeared.

And for decades, he's been a fugitive. They were pretty sure he was heading to Mexico. Now a little white lie was about to lead to the astounding truth. Did you confront him about these discoveries of yours? I didn't want him to know I'd seen the article. After 24 years, would the mystery finally be solved? Should I make that call or should I just let him be?

For the first time in public, the incredible story. Some people probably see it as a crime story. Some people see it as a love story. How do you see it? Here again is Keith Morrison. There was a woman. Gina Johnson was her name.

This is about what happened back in 2006, 24 years after the Cessna 150 went down a little bitter root lake. Gina had gone through a divorce, and she had somewhat somewhat reluctantly, made a decision to put herself out there online. This getting online, was that a big decision for you?

My work schedule doesn't allow for a lot of going out and meeting new people. Gina works for Texas Instruments in the Dallas area. What matters in her story is what she does for that giant semiconductor company. My job is to help when they are bringing up

a new technology on the line. They send our lab a sample. So it's my job to find very small, minute things that look off and then look closer. Gina's job title? She's a technician in failure analysis. I guess it's a good job for me because I do that in every aspect of my life. Have you always done that?

I'm generally a very trusting person, but when something doesn't add up or it just looks off, I automatically feel the urge to look closer. A kind of built-in BS detector, honed just then on the raw and recent wounds inflicted by a certain ex-mate's cheating lies. So, as she wrote in her online profile, I hate dishonesty. Being deliberately untruthful really bothers me. Anyway, Min responded. And in the spring of 2006, one reply in particular caught her eye. He had an eyes picture. He was close to my age. At the time, I was 33. He wanted to find someone

he was going to settle down with and have a family with and, you know, marry. Saying all the right things. In different order, you know. He seemed intelligent, and he seemed to like a lot of the activities that I would like. And something else in that ad caught Gina's eye.

The words, I am honest and don't cheat or play games. And I was like, oh, good, because that's very important to me. So Gina and this guy, who had the rather vanilla sounding name of Michael Smith, made dinner plans at a local restaurant. And you met him there? Yes, I met him there. He drove a Viper. He showed up in a Viper?

Even back in 2006, a Dodge Viper had a sticker price upwards of $80,000. When I saw that, I thought, okay, it appears that he makes a good living. So they were having dinner, and, well, remember, Gina is a paid professional noticer. And I noticed his class ring. So I took a closer look, and it said he had a bachelor's in aerospace engineering. Okay.

And I thought, well, that's odd. What exactly made it odd? Well, Gina and Michael were supposedly about the same age, but Michael's class ring said he'd finished college around the same time Gina was finishing high school. So Gina being Gina, she said something. Wow, he must be pretty intelligent. And he just smiled really big. And let it go? And let it go. But that stuck in my head, like I just couldn't quite get it out of my head. But as the days passed, they talked of all kinds of things, as people do at the fresh end of a relationship.

Did he talk much about his past? He said that he had only been in love once, and that it was this girl that he had known from when he was a teenager, but that she had been killed in a horrible accident, and that he was just heartbroken over her loss. In fact, they bonded, in a way, over their respective personal losses, more as just good friends, at least at first. We didn't kiss for a couple of weeks.

Really? Mm-hmm. Well, he was patient, and I appreciated that. But when they did get intimate, Gina's radar went off again. Remember, Michael Smith had told her he was, what, 34? Maybe into your 30s, most people can still really maintain that youthful, I might be 20-something look. Okay? Sure.

Speaking from experience, between those 30s and 40s, age just starts to do things to you. Aw, it isn't it. Yeah, it doesn't seem to matter how good a shape you're in or whatever. There were those little things, the details, that he looked older than he actually was. Gina didn't say anything then, just pondered, silent in her heart. And then... We were going through the grocery store,

and he was talking about how good he looked for his age. And he's like, don't you agree? And I looked at him, I'm like, you want me to be honest with you? Well, actually, you look older than you say you are. How did he react to that? He wasn't really pleased with that. We kept discussing this. Yeah. And he, he's like, well, actually I am older. And then I was instantly enraged. Well, I should think you're the woman who loves honesty. Yeah. Because I'd been harping

on how important honesty was to me the entire month that we'd been going out. And he lied to you about his age. And how much I hated being lied to. I was like, okay, well, how old are you? And he said he was not 34, that he was actually 43. So did you get up and walk out on him? No, I griped at him. So what else have you lied to me about?

Because if you've lied to me about that, what else have you lied about? Did you lie about your name? Is Michael Smith even your real name? Uh-huh. And he just kind of hung his head and goes... Oh, boy. And I was like, you're freaking kidding me well as you and i know he certainly

wasn't some guy named michael smith was he coming up should she stay or should she go? I was a little nervous about going on the trip. And that was the easy decision. Should I make that call or should I just let him be? Gina Johnson had held her suspicious tongue for one whole month. Gina, the detailed noticer, didn't believe for a minute that the man she met online was just 34 years old. In fact, she had noticed multiple red flags in the story he had spun. Buttoned her lip about all of it. And then one day she couldn't hold back.

She finally belled the cat. Careful what you wish for. Okay, what's your real name? Tell me, what is it? And he told me. What was it? Jarek Ambrozik. I think he said he went by Jerry or something.

There it was, his real name, the man at the center of our mystery. So why did he change it to Michael Smith? Did he tell you? No, he did not. And then all I could think of was how his profile had talked about how honest he was and how dishonest this was and if you ever needed red flags to tell you to walk out huge red flags huge red flags did you I didn't break up with him immediately if that's what you're asking that's what I'm asking yeah so did you give him another chance yeah the next day I went to work and I actually Googled his real name. Oh. And the very first thing that came up was the story of the plane crash. Jarek was wanted. What was it like to find that out? That freaked me out.

It said he was the most, it was the longest running fugitive from America's most wanted. Wanted, the article said, for negligent homicide in connection with the death of sweet young Diane, killed in the ditching of that plane, all those many years ago. It was pretty shocking. Did you confront him about these discoveries of yours? Uh, I didn't want him to know I'd seen the article.

Why not? Well, for one thing, Gina said she wasn't sure if he was guilty. And, well, she's not proud of this, she told us, but Mike, or Yarek, had invited her to come along on his business trip to Japan. I was a little nervous about going on the trip because there was that thing in my head saying, is he

somebody I need to worry about or really is he harmless? But he liked you. And he very much liked me and he had been nothing but nice to me. But you didn't really want to believe that he had engaged in homicide? Who do you want to? Do you ever really want to believe that somebody's capable of that? So did you kind of fool yourself there?

No. No, I went in with eyes wide open. But before the trip, Gina, well, you know, she just couldn't not say something, could she? Jerry took it well, she said. Not defensive, more wistful. He talked about wanting to go back and be with his family again and being able to one day not have to hide his true identity. And I was like, well, if you're innocent, just go ahead and turn yourself in and go up there and, you know, I'll support you through it. I said, but I just can't see myself being with someone who's living a lie.

You of all people. But he was like, no, I'm just not ready yet. I'm just not ready yet. So to Japan they went. Notice the netting around the top to keep the pigeons out of the rafters. Very clever. Here Gina was in Kyoto, one of the world's most beautiful cities, especially during April, with the cherry blossoms in full bloom. Oh, the place is gorgeous. And he took me to lots of great places. He was patient, but he did start to get impatient with me because I love taking pictures,

and there was a lot of beautiful scenery in Japan, so I was snapping pictures most of the time. Maybe you weren't paying quite enough attention to him. Yes, towards the end of the trip, he started to get a little testy with me because I wasn't warming up to him. And so, eventually, they had words, and the trip to the Far East went south. Mind you, Michael, Yerrick, ever the gentleman, willingly gave up his first-class seat home to Dallas so Gina could experience flying up front on an international flight.

But when the plane hit the ground, the relationship did too. It really bothered me that someone could live this lie. And he was calm. He was cool about it. He said, well, if you ever change your mind, my door will always be open to you. But it was a breakup. It was a breakup. Then, for a few months, Gina danced on the head of her dilemma. How often did you think about it? All the time. I mean, in my head, I'm thinking, well, if he's innocent, why is he so hesitant to turn himself in? Should I make that call, or should I just let him be?

After all, he trusted her to keep his secret. But by that time, Gina had also read about Diane's family. Her father has no closure. I would want the person who was there to be held responsible. It just so happened that while Gina was mulling all this over, that sheriff up in Montana, Jim DuPont, set out on one last wistful vacation before he officially retired. I was with a friend

and we were reminiscing over a beer where we were and he asked me about you know is there any cases you you're leaving behind that weren't solved or anything and I in this case popped immediately into my brain and I wish we had some answers to it I wish we would have found him just to find out exactly what happened and what occurred. Then Sheriff DuPont went back to his office to pack it all up, unaware that 1,800 miles south, a woman in the Dallas suburbs was about to present him with the ultimate retirement gift. I picked up the phone and I was shaking And I just left a message saying that I think I had been dating this suspect

And I said, you know, just give me a call And I'll talk to you about it And when the soon-to-be retiring sheriff got that message I almost fell out of my chair So, happy ending All straightened out And the soon-to-be retiring sheriff got that message? I almost fell out of my chair. So, happy ending. All straightened out. Or maybe not.

Coming up. Meet Michael Smith. What went through your mind when you realized they've got me? When Dateline Continues. When Gina Johnson called the Flathead County Sheriff's Department about a certain ex-boyfriend, she didn't have to wait long for Sheriff Jim DuPont to return her call. He sounded excited. He sounded very excited. And I guess that he knew I was telling the truth because I told him details that had not been published that Jarek had actually told me. I don't know when I've last spoken to somebody who brought an end to an international manhunt before.

Really? I figured it happened all the time. That's right. Didn't take long after that. Dallas PD found an old mugshot of this Michael Lee Smith. Turned out he'd been arrested twice for burglary back in those early years in Dallas. And that photograph looked like his high school picture a lot. So on a Wednesday morning in August 2006, 24 years after a Cessna 150 sank into the frigid depths of Little Bitter Root Lake, a team of plainclothes officers knocked at the door of an upscale house in Plano, Texas.

And there he was. A nice young guy in a polo shirt and asks if I'm Michael Smith. I go, yeah. Another guy jumps out on the side and puts a gun in my face. This is Jarek Ambrozek, the fugitive so many had searched for. The man who pulled off the impossible and vanished for decades. Did you know immediately the jig was up? I did not know. I didn't know at first. I was very disoriented. And so what happened was the guy had papers in his hands and on top of the papers it had my Yerozov Chesov Ambrozov. And so when I saw that, I pretty much put the dots together pretty quickly. He asked one of the officers to fetch the pet parrot he put out on the patio to catch the morning sun. What went through your mind when you realized, okay, finally, they've got me?

I was fairly calm. I didn't really, you know, start to process all this. And then just like that, he was in jail, in a padded cell, as he recalls it, deemed a suicide risk. But there was an upside. He got to call home to talk to his parents for the first time in nearly a quarter century. What was that conversation like? You know, surprisingly, it was very calm, and it was like nothing ever happened, almost. What was it like to catch up with them? It was amazing. They never sort of lost hope over the years. They never actually moved and switched houses and changed numbers

because they always thought I would come back. They never forgot you? Never forgot me. So why? Why did he, or he and Diane, decide they just had to run away in the first place? Why come up with that crazy plan? And why did he run after she was killed? How did he pull off his decades-long disappearing act? Well, that, that is quite a story. Straight out of the movie.

When people say, what is this story about? I mean, some people probably see it as a crime story. Some people see it as a love story. How do you see it? Well, it's definitely a love story. And unfortunately, a tragic accident happened and Diane ended up drowning and I went into shock and lost basically out of my mind. After he left that lake in Montana, he took a train to New York and then hitchhiked to Texas, where the man he was riding with stole the $2,200 Yerrick had managed to save in one of those duffel bags when the plane went down. So there he was in Texas, totally destitute,

hungry, homeless, hopeless. And then he met a guy who gave him a place to stay for free and told him how to get a new identity. I went to a cemetery and found somebody deceased that was like a year old. And so he would not have any record on him, dental records, doctor's records or anything. But he was about your age?

He was about pretty close to my age. Michael Lee Smith, of all the names. Pretty generic name. Same day, went to the records building in Dallas and asked for a birth certificate. Here's his name, here's his birth date. Five minutes later, the guy came back with a certified copy stamped. No questions asked. That would be a little harder these days.

I don't think you can do that these days. But back then, he could. And he used that birth certificate to get a driver's license and a social security card, and then a job as a carpenter and a GED, and eventually a degree from the University of Texas at Arlington, aerospace engineering. And then, hiccup. When you start applying for security clearances with aerospace jobs, they're going to dig deep into your background, and I kind of knew that they would probably find them, not Michael Smith,

and so I kind of pretty much decided the time to switch into and get into computers. He turned out to be quite an entrepreneur. His tech support private lesson web design company made lots of money. You had a nice big house. You had what, two or three cars? Yeah, I had a couple of cars. Viper. Yeah, it was toys. It was a lot of hard work over the years and and eventually the work became the salvation. Eventually, he landed Honda Racing as a client. And with a U.S. passport now, he traveled the world, including that trip to Japan with Gina that we told you about. And then, a few months after their breakup, those officers were at his door, and he was in the clink. Was there kind of a light bulb moment?

Yeah, the first few days that I figured out the only person that actually knew about my past that would do anything would have been Gina. So was this relationship revenge? That's what it looked like to me. Was it a blessing in disguise, though? It was, as crazy as it sounds. And after 24 years living as Michael Smith, I finally got my family back again. But blessing or not, remember, there was a steep penalty waiting to be paid.

Yarek Ambrozek was facing a charge of negligent homicide back in Montana. And no matter that he'd matured into that sleek and polished business owner in Plano, Texas. He was facing as much as a decade in the very humble confines of a state prison. Coming up, for the first time in public, the pilot tells his story. I'm laying halfway in the water, halfway on the wing, with my arm trying to hold the door open and trying to reach in to get Diane. It was a headline-making moment that September of 2006, when Yerrick Ambrosek, ex-fugitive, was escorted off the plane in Kalispell, Montana. I remember looking at the wire late in the afternoon one day.

I'm like, what? And it was just unbelievable. The fake name, the career as a successful software developer. It was the furthest thing from what I had imagined as Ambrosek's fate. Wasn't a broken man in a Mexican bar at all. He wasn't a broken man in a Mexican bar at all. Ambrosek was marched through the airport

and into the custody of an eagerly awaiting Sheriff Jim DuPont. I just sort of actually wanted to physically see what he looked like. You've been thinking about him all these years. Yeah, I've been thinking about him a lot. You could tell he was intelligent. My opinion, he's a sociopath, but I don't know if he's got any feelings or not,

but they certainly didn't pick up any from him. Do you believe he's a sociopath? Yeah, you know, there's good sociopaths and bad sociopaths, and I don't believe he's got feelings. How do you lose your mom, your dad, your family, your friends, and your loved one at the bottom of the lake? I don't get it. I guess I'll never will. It was pretty obvious the sheriff didn't exactly hold Yarrick in high regard.

But there was a legal question now. The charge would be negligent homicide. Could put Yarrick in the Montana state prison for 10 years. In Montana, negligent homicide, you do something really stupid that could cause the death of a person, and sure enough, somebody dies. Negligent homicide. Well, we did something stupid. This was not my idea. This was not just me.

And that's not negligent homicide. That's, you know, two kids in love did something stupid. This is what it comes down to. So Yarek pleaded not guilty, dug in his heels. Here's his defense attorney, Chuck Watson. The word homicide was extremely problematic for Yarek. I mean, he takes responsibility for the fact that he screwed up landing the airplane, and he takes responsibility for the fact that he shouldn't have left. But I guarantee you that he hasn't gotten over her death to this day. Do you see this as a Romeo and Juliet story? There's an element of that in the case. These are two young people who thought they were star-crossed

and decided to take their future into their own hands. Exactly, said Yarrick. The sheriff and prosecutor were so determined it was homicide, but it wasn't anything like that. And he clammed up, let the lawyers do the talking,

waited for the consequences. Now, sitting here with us years later, he's finally ready to give his account in public for the first time of where their crazy idea came from and just what happened when it all went wrong. Here goes. You know, we're just two crazy kids in love, and there's some barriers, I guess, in our relationship that we saw that's going to be difficult to overcome. We ended up watching this movie called Tarzan the Ape Band

and also Apocalypse Now, and so we came up with this crazy plan to elope and live in a jungle, survive off the land. That's nuts. It is nuts, if you think about it now. It didn't seem nuts at the time. It did not. Where did you plan to end up?

South America is what the goal was. To hitchhike down there or something? Hitchhike, taking buses, yeah. Back then, the borders were not as strict. We already passed the Canadian-U.S. border by that time, so it was just a matter of the U.S.-Mexico border and onwards. The idea of ditching a plane came to them while taking flying lessons. They'd land on water and get out before the plane sank.

They'd take the dinghy, put the bags in the dinghy, get in there, row to shore, and the plane sinks, and nobody knows any better. But as they were getting ready to go, that summer of 82, there was a hitch. Diane got pregnant. It just sort of happened. So we ended up, she went to a doctor and then they aborted the baby. It was a few days before actually we took off.

So I asked her, we actually went to the theater the night before and I said, how are you feeling? She said, I'm 110 percent, good to go. So on Sunday, August 22nd, 1982, they went to the Vancouver airport, rented that Cessna 150, and full of excitement, flew east to Penticton, where they hung around all afternoon, and then fooled people a bit when they flew north before turning around to head southeast into Montana. How did you prepare for landing on the lake, the two of you? Before we took off, we ended up switching our clothes to swim clothes. We distributed everything to two bags.

And three hours later, they were flying on fumes as they descended in the near dark toward the shimmering surface of Little Bitterroot Lake. As you were coming in for a landing, you must have been pretty nervous. Sure. Nobody practices landing on water on a fixed-wheel aircraft. He slowed to stall speed. He took off his seatbelt, figured his grip on the controls would hold him in place. Diane kept her seatbelt fastened, lap belt and shoulder harness. And then... When the wheels hit the water, it was like hitting a cement wall.

And suddenly you're in some cold water. Cold water, and I remember tasting blood. And so it was blood in my nose, blood in your mouth. Could you see anything? No, the outside's pitch black. It's worse even underneath the water, so I'm spinning around trying to orient myself. Once I stabilized and I came to the surface, I yelled out, you know, Diane, where are you? Are you okay?

And then from there, she said, yeah, I just can't get my seatbelt off. She probably didn't say it quite so calmly. No, she was actually was fairly calm, I believe. Desperately, he said he tried to get to her, unaware that when the plane hit the water, as shown in this animation, it flipped. So he ended up behind the airplane. And when he struggled through the water to what he thought was the passenger door where Diane was, he was actually on the wrong side across the plane from where Diane was hanging upside down, trapped in her lap seat belt. By the time I got to the door and got to try to open it, and when it did open and the water started rushing in, the plane was almost completely underneath the water because of the broken windshield and the side door windows. I'm laying halfway in the water, halfway on the wing,

with my arm trying to hold the door open and trying to reach in to get Diane. And then all of a sudden the plane just submerges below the water. That's how it ended. The plane did not float. It sank in mere seconds. Diane couldn't get out of her seatbelt, he said, and he couldn't help her because there simply wasn't time. 50, 20 seconds, the plane was, went down. His last glimpse of Diane was not that haunting image of her hair in the airplane's door. No one knows how that happened. No, the last he saw of Diane, he said, the sight he cannot stop seeing, is

Diane trapped in her seatbelt, upside down and sinking, and calling out for him to save her. What was that like? Horrifying. Watching go down there with her inside? It was 20 seconds before. We're the two most happiest people in the world and and my life was just torn to pieces at that moment. You know we never never ever anticipated something like this. What did you do right then when that plane went down? I was hoping somehow she would be able to get that seat belt off. So I'm swimming around just to see if I can, maybe she'll pop up somewhere that she'd

cut the seat belt off and came out. But she did not. No, he said the only thing that floated up was that one duffel bag, the one containing his clothes and the $2,200 they'd saved for the trip, a fact pointed to by many law officers as suspicious. They would say, why did he only get his clothes and the money and let her clothes go sinking down to the bottom of the lake? Just random luck. Law officers will say there's no accident in life. Things are either on purpose or they don't happen. Yeah, well, you know, people always speculate, but it was just a random by chance. Speculate. That's what people did, all right. That a man who truly loved her might have tried harder,

might have sacrificed. Afterwards, this became a problem for some of the people who were looking into the incident because numbers of them would say, God, if that was me, I would have done anything. I would have drowned if I had to. I would have got into that plane. I would have got her out of there.

I would have saved her somehow, even if I died in the process. Why didn't you do that? It's easy to do that when you're standing on a couch with a cup of coffee, but not so easy when you've got 15, 20 seconds and the plane is sinking in front of you and you can't open the door.

When you do open the door, the plane's almost completely underwater. People just don't visualize and picture what this was and how quickly this happened. What took over then, he said, was overwhelming, numbing shock. My limbs were starting to get numb, and I could barely do the paddling in order to stay afloat. So I ended up, I didn't take that one back, paddling doggie style, and got to shore and spent the next few days in shock. And in shock, he ran, he said, around the country for weeks, to New York City, and finally to Dallas, where turning himself in seemed like a very bad idea.

Does that sound like Romeo and Juliet? Or something else altogether? Coming up, justice delayed or justice denied? This is one of those kind of cases where really you're the only person on the planet who knows the truth. When Dateline continues. Trying a criminal case more than a quarter century old is a tall order. Memories fade. Witnesses die. A fact not lost on Yerrick's defense attorney, Chuck Watson. If you take this case apart, the only thing that they can prove, beyond reasonable doubt, is that he left, that he ran away. He just made the wrong decision.

He did make the wrong decision, but it was an understandable decision, a forgivable decision. Not surprisingly, Diane Babcock's family was pushing hard for a prison sentence. They did not believe Diane was some actress in a Shakespearean love tragedy. They did believe she was an unwilling participant who did not live to tell her side of the story. This is one of those kind of cases where really you're the only person on the planet who knows the truth. Sure. Mr. Babcock was hoping that you would spend at least 10 years in prison. He was quite understandably and naturally wanted to blame somebody for the death of his daughter,

and there you were. Could you understand why he felt that way? No. I find their attitude almost appalling. This was not some crime that you see on TV. This was two people in love, eloping, and an accident happened. In May 2007, after Yarek had spent nine months in the county jail,

the prosecutor cut a deal. He dropped the charge of negligent homicide, and Yarrick agreed to plead guilty to criminal mischief and criminal endangerment. The sentence, ten years on each count, suspended. Which meant he would not spend a single day of that sentence behind bars in Montana. The county attorney acknowledged that Dyad's family didn't like the outcome, but alas, what could he do? Their belief, if true, means that she was essentially kidnapped and murdered. And that is a terrible burden for a family to deal with over the loss of a child.

And if I were dealing with a prosecutor who felt otherwise, I wouldn't be happy with him either. Dan's family declined our requests to take part in this report. And Sheriff DuPont is no longer with us. He died in 2012. But in his last years, he grew close to the Babcocks. And he spoke for them

as much as for himself. It was a tragedy to that family. We could have executed Jerry Ambrose and it wouldn't have helped them. They needed to see some kind of justice done. They needed to see some, yeah, and they didn't. Mind you, Eric Ambrose's legal troubles weren't over.

Shipped back to Texas he was to face federal charges including passport fraud. After all, he'd gotten a U.S. passport under a false name, Michael Lee Smith. But again, after another four months behind bars and some stiff fines, Yarek was set free. The federal government, in their wisdom, for punishment, deported him back to where it all started, to Vancouver. So he got a free ride home. To the very place he and Diane so desperately sought to escape as teenagers. Where no criminal jeopardy awaited. A theft charge he'd faced for essentially stealing that airplane

had long since been dropped by Canadian authorities. Jarek Ambrosek was on final approach to freedom, back where it all began. Does it feel like home? It does, especially now with my parents and my sister and her kids being here. It's definitely home. It's a very interesting life you have now.

These pieces that none of them seem to belong together, and you have to put that one over here and this one over here. I had lived like in 24 years as Michael Smith, and I think I was a model U.S. citizen when I did do that. A model fake U.S. citizen. Well, nonetheless, I made lots of money, and then I paid lots of taxes, so I was an exemplary citizen,

model or fictitious, whatever you call it. Still, even after all this time, there are questions. Did he truly love Diana and do all he could to save her? Were they eloping? After all, there was that phone call to his friend Tom when Yarek said Diane was just tagging along. I would have been good.

I was going to shoot him because I guess she wasn't in love with me or something like that. I mean, how do you explain all that? It's there. It's part of the record. It supports their theory that you're a really bad dude who killed his girlfriend.

And now, you know, saying, I was in love, it was Romeo and Juliet. Right. Well, people read anything they want into it. But the only way I can explain this is the shock that I was in. And you know, a lot of people still don't believe you. And probably won't believe you even when you go chapter and verse through the whole story. Sure. And how much you did love her. They still won't believe you even when you go chapter and verse through the whole story. Sure. And how much you did love her.

They still won't believe that. And, you know, all I can do is tell them what happened and how it happened. The rest I can't control. He has written it all down now, every bit of his story, in a book called A Tear in My Life, The Brutal Truth. To set the record straight, he said. And he's created an elaborate website with all the documents from his cases, all of them.

He's an unusual person, Jarek Ambrosek. Stubborn, particular, hooked on the tiniest of details. Was he a crazy man? Was he a monster? Was he Romeo? Was he a grief-stricken boyfriend? You just don't know. Does it help to tell his story? Does he feel responsible, guilty? If you're Yara Kambrosik, it's complicated. You said you were a lifelong Catholic. Is it important to you to feel somehow forgiven for this? You know, I'm not expecting anybody to forgive me.

You know, I know what happened. And I, you know, unfortunately, I lost something very precious to me. And we could have a great life together, but that ended that night. But getting people to accept that, I don't think it really matters to me. And if we can believe him, he is still deeply in love with his teenage sweetheart, that innocent young woman who entrusted her fate to her Romeo, Diane of the vision so haunting, who rose from the lake as if merely asleep. Diane, so long in her grave.

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 each weeknight for NBC Nightly News. I'm Lester Holt. For all of us at NBC News, good night.