Dateline NBC - Bethany Vanished

Episode Date: December 27, 2023

When a young woman goes missing in Virginia, her family embarks on a frantic search. Years later, another woman’s harrowing story may hold the key to solving the case. Keith Morrison reports.

Tonight on Dateline. Bethany, our little shining star. It was devastating, that emptiness. We had to believe that we would find her someday. Bethany Decker was a dedicated student, a dedicated mother. The last thing she said to me is, Mom, I love you. Where did Bethany go? Is this a missing person? Is it a homicide? We don't know yet.

There's no obvious bloodstains. There's no weapon that's found inside of the apartment. One clue that came along was Vicki Willoughby. I tried to get away once, but he pulled me back. She was a woman in fear. Just kept beating me in the head. He said, I could kill you right now if I wanted to. What she went through, unimaginable. Two women turned targets. Could one help solve the mystery of the other? There is this evil person out there that's chilling to think the amount of

violence that he's bestowed on this world. He had to hope. He had to pray. There are still people at risk. He's got to be put away. I'm Lester Holt, and this is Dateline. Here's Keith Morrison with Bethany Vanished. Alright, it's Thursday, November 13th, 2014.

It was just after 2 p.m. when the investigator pressed record. Don't worry about moving and stuff like that, alright? Lying across from him was a woman in a hospital bed, bruised and beaten. She'd survived a violent assault. By some miracle, she could recall every painful detail. He was punching me, punching me in the head, I think. He kept hitting me over and over. And I'm pretty sure at another moment he had his knee at my throat. Psycho. Day of a throat cycle. Her violent attacker was well known to detectives.

They'd been hunting him for years, from one town to another, as he leapfrogged from one abusive relationship to another. He was crafty, dodging arrests at every turn, managing to escape their grasp because there was never enough evidence. Until now, until the woman in the hospital told her story. She would become the key to solving a mystery three years in the making. The mystery of a young mother, three months pregnant, who, without a word, suddenly vanished.

The last day that I saw Bethany was a glorious day. As was every day Evelyn Bales got to see her granddaughter. By that last day in 2011, Bethany Decker was all grown up and very busy, buzzing around Ashburn, Virginia, an hour's drive away, and balancing college, her toddler son, Kai, her new baby on the way.

So spending the day with Bethany and her husband, Emil, was a treat. She came over, and we got to just spend the time talking with each other and sharing, you know, like how she was doing, how everything was going, work and school. I made homemade pizza for her and she loved my ginger snap cookies, so I made ginger snap cookies. Call it a grandma's intuition, but something

seemed to be weighing on Bethany. She wasn't herself. She was more troubled than ever before. I had never seen her so edgy. She was up at my parents' house, and she called me. Kim Nelson is Bethany's mother. Kai was living with her at the time. So Bethany called to check in. But Kim thought her daughter seemed distracted, distressed. You know, the last thing she said to me is, Mom, I love you. Evelyn said when she wasn't talking on her phone,

Bethany seemed to be firing off a text every second. And then suddenly she said she had to leave right away. I actually stopped her at the door. I blocked the front door and I wouldn't let her leave. Bethany found a way around and drove off. And then she went silent. I called Bethany every single day after that, and there was no answer. I thought, well, she, you know, like she's got a lot going on. She's got school. She has a baby. And she was 21

years old. My parents actually drove by her apartment and saw her car parked there. So we thought, OK, you know, maybe something was going on, but she's still there. It's OK. But when two weeks turned to three, Evelyn and her husband decided to go to Bethany's apartment again. On the way down, my husband told me, he said, Evelyn, if we can't find her, we're calling the police. Later that day, that's just what they did. How did the police get involved in this? So we didn't get notified until February 19th, after Bethany's grandmother and Bethany's mother realized that neither one had had any contact with her since that night on January 28th.

Mark Bush is a detective with the Loudoun County Sheriff's Office. He was part of a team called in to look for Bethany. A team that included then-Sergeant Steve Chauchet. You know, you try to gather, is this a missing person? Is it a homicide? We don't know yet. Did Bethany just get fed up and leave? A deputy met Evelyn at Bethany's apartment. When they went inside, it was empty because Bethany was in the process of moving out. But Evelyn was surprised to find what was left behind.

When we went into the master bedroom, in the closet, on the right-hand side on the shelf was Bethany's purse that she always brought to my house, her little wallet. And then there were keys to her car. A purse with some keys? Yes, sir. The sort of thing a person would take if they decided to go on the run voluntarily? Absolutely. Evelyn showed the deputy Bethany's car, who's in the parking lot. It looked different than the last time she'd seen it. That car was covered in dust, completely covered, like it had never been moved. What was in the car? The trunk was completely packed with her personal belongings and clothing.

And at the bottom, we found a computer and three cell phones underneath of all of the junk. Odd? Well, yes. But evidence of a crime? The detectives weren't so sure. There's no obvious bloodstains. There's no obvious bullet holes in the walls. There's no weapon that's found inside of the apartment. Still at the apartment, the deputy got on the phone with Kim. He asked me the question, do you think your daughter's in danger? And, you know, he asked me again, and I'm like, yes, I think she's in danger.

Danger from what? Or who? It had all been so confusing and frightening. What happened to Bethany Decker? It was just like this foreign world, like could never even imagine. For three weeks, her family had refused to dwell on awful possibilities. After all, they heard Bethany was still talking with friends on Facebook. Several messages get sent to her sister, some friends. Kim saw some of those direct messages from Bethany's Facebook. And one of the Bethanys said everything is fine.

And later that she didn't want to talk. Was it a relief? Did you think, oh, she's okay? Yeah, maybe this is how she's like reaching out to us. And so they had waited and tried very hard not to worry. Why did it take so long for them to get in touch with the police? Bethany was always good about reaching out to somebody in the family, even if she was mad at her mom or her grandmother, she'd still reach out to her sister.

If she wasn't reaching out to her sister, she'd be talking to friends. So I believe it was a situation where everybody thought that Bethany was just communicating with someone else. Investigators, however, took a much less optimistic approach. Detectives back then searched the wooded areas all around her apartment. We moved down into using four-wheelers and cadaver dogs and bloodhounds into the fields around the apartment complex. We started using our dive team to search retaining ponds that were near the apartment complex. But they had a big disadvantage. They were way behind. Bethany had been missing for almost three weeks by the time they were called in. Who knew what evidence might have been lost? There was a trash compactor.

That trash compactor could have been dumped three or four times or more before we got to searching. But still, Kim and her family desperately needed Bethany to be okay. In so many ways, she was the beating heart of the family. There's Bethany, the sweet and generous one. Love you, Mom. You're the family. They're Bethany, the sweet and generous one. Love you, Mom. You're the best. A lot of people, when you're in a conversation, they're talking about themselves. But Bethany was always the kind that wanted to know about you and how you were doing.

She'd been born in Hawaii, and an island girl's style seemed to stick, said her sister Ashley. She'd wear the flip-flops and she'd have just the tan and the really gorgeous hair. Growing up, Bethany was a sister to her three younger siblings, but also a kind of mom assistant. She really liked being the leader, you know, of the kids and, you know, whether it's cleaning house, doing chores. Always wanted to sort of do something to help somebody else. Is that the idea? Absolutely. Absolutely. Like I didn't have to ask her to make dinner or to do the dishes or to do things that like she just did them. It's a pretty rare thing, isn't it? It is a rare thing. I just loved everything that she did. Everything, everything, she just did them. It's a pretty rare thing, isn't it? It is a rare thing.

I just loved everything that she did, everything. Everything that she wore, everything that she did. Everywhere that she went, I wanted to do the same thing. Who wouldn't want to be like Bethany? She made life look effortless. Honors program, marching band, lots of friends. When it came time for college, she had her pick of schools. She ended up going to George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, and she saw there was a brand new major called Global and Environmental Change,

and she had always had a heart for the environment and making the world a better place. Bethany visited home often, and during one particular visit, she shared some news. She mentioned that she met somebody while doing laundry at school. That someone was Emile Decker. He was in a fraternity at ROTC. How did the two of them connect with each other? Were they the same? Were they opposites? What were they like together? Complimented. They complimented each other.

I think their two personalities really balanced each other because she was big and bold and loud, and he was a very calm, but a very gentle personality in comparison. In a little more than a year, they went from college sweethearts to newlyweds, and in a blink, they were parents too. They named their little boy Kai. Did she take to motherhood pretty easily?

Very natural. Bethany, like, loved him more than anything. Just the way she would dress him and sing to him and, you know, talk about, you know, his future. Emil was in the National Guard now, too. And his military work often took him away, sometimes far away. And family had been pitching in to help look after Kai while Bethany was at work or school. Eventually, Kai moved in with Kim full-time. That's why this ominous feeling could no longer be denied. Because Bethany would never go so long without seeing her boy.

It kind of just sank in my chest. Like, I just steadily got this cold pit, and it just got worse and worse. As I started realizing something's really wrong, but that only happens on TV. That couldn't happen here. But it was happening here, and it was all people were talking about. Bethany Decker, her husband, Emile, and what's this? Another man? The ultimate motive. Exactly. By the time Bethany Decker had been missing for over a month,

she was the focus of intense community speculation. And some of it was about him. There's people out there casting suspicion on Emil. Emil, Bethany's husband. As police interviewed family and friends, they learned the couple was no longer living together. That detail fed the gossip machine. You've got all these people believing that he must have had something to do with it.

And there was more. Bethany had been living with a new man before she went missing and was pregnant, presumably with the new man's child. And Emil knew all this. The ultimate motive. Exactly. So he's being looked at, he's being tried in public. When investigators started looking into it,

Emil was deployed way off in Afghanistan. But then they discovered, first from people who had seen him and then from military records, Emil was home on leave when Bethany was last seen alive. So they had contacted the military and got permission to speak to Emil, and Emil got leave and was able to come back to Loudoun County.

He came back to the sheriff's office. Came with an attorney who was by his side as he told detectives about the last time he'd seen Bethany, which was at her grandmother's house that last day when she fired off all those text messages and then left in a hurry. Emil said he rushed after her. She's driving back home, and Emil attempts to follow her,

and they stop at a local gas station. He has a conversation with Bethany, fills her tire up. She had a tire that was going low on air. Tried to convince her not to continue going back to Ashburn. But Bethany wouldn't listen, he said, and just took off, apparently back to her apartment a good hour's drive away. And it was late at night, he said, so he pulled off the road and slept for a bit in his car. He said he was a little too embarrassed to go back to the grandmother's residence, and Bethany continued back to Ashburn.

Detectives pressed Emile. What happened to his marriage? And he blamed their problems on the very real demands of his military service. His obligations with the Guard took him away from their marriage for extended periods of time. She was working as a waitress, she was going to school, and she was raising their son. That is tough. I mean, not only an awful lot for one person, a responsibility for one person, one young person to shoulder. Absolutely.

And she's, at the same time, getting high grades at school, taking young person to shoulder. Absolutely. And she's at the same time getting high grades at school, taking high-level courses. She's got a lot on her plate. And although detectives discovered Bethany had a new man, Emil hadn't given up on their marriage. In fact, the week before she disappeared, he took her to Hawaii. It was a trip that he had planned in hopes of saving their

marriage, knowing that Bethany was seeing another guy, knowing that Bethany was pregnant more than likely with another man's child at that point. And he was okay with continuing to try to make this relationship work. Yeah, he offered to raise this next child as if it was his own and try to save their marriage. Bethany's mother had heard that, too. He was trying to repair the relationship? Yes, I mean, she had mentioned that to me. I think that time was very precious and that there was hope that the situation would be resolved.

It was quite a story, and detectives were paying close attention, both to Emil's words and his body language. He had an open body posture. He was forthcoming with information. His information didn't seem to change. He was accepting of his role in a situation, how he had made things harder on Bethany. He wasn't angry, he said. He still loved her. We recovered a whole bunch of videos from cell phone records that showed him sending love messages to Bethany,

that he was upset that he wasn't going to be home for certain events or wasn't going to be home with her and Kai. Here's a holiday message Emil recorded while stationed in the Middle East a couple of months before Bethany disappeared. I just want to give a lovely shout out to my wife who lives in Fredericksburg, Virginia and to my son, Kai.

I love you and I miss you very much. Have a Merry Christmas. Police let Emile go knowing there was one other side of this love triangle. The other man, Ronald Roldan, who seemed to be living quite a different life from Bethany's husband. We knew that he was a ladies' man. He was very outgoing, that he had a lot of friends. Life of the party type.

They found him, of course, the talkative Ronald Roldan, a very curious man he would turn out to be. Do you know what happened to him? It was a kind of hell, that awful time of unknowing, after Bethany vanished. I can't even count how many flyers I passed out. Her family knew it was bad. Of course they did. But they would not, could not stop searching.

Here are Kim and her husband on NBC station WRC. I'm praying and I have faith that she's safe. They got the whole country talking about Bethany. A young pregnant mother has gone missing. Detectives, meanwhile, occupied themselves with hard realities. To them, the facts said

homicide. So they tracked down the other man in her life, Ronald Rodan. I started this, it is Friday, February 25th, and we are... Investigators found him at his mother's house, where he seemed more than willing to talk about Bethany. He's very engaging. He's painting the entire relationship with a rosy picture.

He said they met at a restaurant where they were both waiters. So last March is when you met? I think she started working there in March, like the beginning. Around that time, the Army had taken Emile away. She was definitely alone in a way that I don't think even she was prepared for. She'd never been alone before. Yeah. So she and Ronald struck up a friendship.

Platonic, apparently. And Bethany being Bethany, she empathized when he told her his sad story. I remember her telling us that there was a co-worker at her work that had kids. She said he was kicked out of the place where he was staying, and so she offered him a place to stay. With her as a border that is nothing more, until apparently it was something more,

at least according to Ronald. When she told me that she wanted us to live together, I thought about it because I was like, wow, we haven't seen each other that long. And plus, she's married, even though she's separated. But, you know, I had strong feelings for her. Something about this rosy picture didn't sit right with investigators, especially when Ronald told detectives

he was the father of Bethany's unborn child. But she'd been missing a month, and he seemed unfazed. Okay, Ronald, have a seat right there if you would. So detectives called him

to the sheriff's office for a second, more extensive interview. The last day you saw her was that Saturday, right? Yeah. Okay. Bethany had returned home sometime around 2 a.m.

after spending the day with her grandmother, said Ronald. Seemed exhausted, went to bed, and then woke up in the morning and went out again. I was in the kitchen, and she said, you know, she was like, all right, I'm going to go. I was like, all right, bye. As far as he knew, said Ronald, Bethany was driving back to her grandmother's house across the state border in Maryland. So when he saw her car outside the apartment a couple of days later.

I was like, huh? I was like, I wonder where her car is. Did he adamantly deny that he was involved in her disappearance? Yes. Yes. He continuously stated over and over again that she left on her own free will and accord and that he had no clue where she went. But when the detectives asked Bethany's family about Ronald Roldan, they got an earful. I couldn't locate a single family member that had anything nice to say about Ronald. At first, they said they thought Ronald was just a leech, taking advantage of Bethany's general's hospitality. But gradually, it seemed to them, he began to take her over, as if he was somehow in control of her.

He had to know where she was, and I had heard at a time that he had installed some software on her cell phone to be able to track her. And then, this was alarming. Kai was about a year old and was dropped off at Kim's house with bruising around his eyes. Kim was told Kai heard himself falling from a chair and found out later Ronald had been watching him. The injury that he had with the blackness above his eyes was not aligned with him climbing up on a chair and falling backwards. That's when Kai moved in with Kim full-time, with Bethany's blessing. And yet, she could not seem to shake the guy off, even as he grew ever more controlling and threatening, and even worse, Bethany confided,

he'd become abusive. It was at that time where she started to realize that this was a troubled person, but she couldn't get out of it. So she was in a relationship with somebody that was abusing her physically and emotionally and threatening her family. Was she afraid to kick him out or just leave him? She seemed petrified all the time. And so her family had a kind of intervention. And we talked about restraining orders, which she was like, it's just a piece of paper,

and it's not going to help. We called the domestic abuse hotlines. We were creating a plan for her to be able to escape from this situation. Emile was worried about Bethany, too. When he sneaked her off to Hawaii without Ronald knowing, it wasn't just about reconciling. It was to get her away from that man. But the whole time they were gone, Ronald texted incessantly,

demanding she return. So, police had questions for Ronald. Were you abusive to her? Never. Do you know that she did tell people that you were physically abusive to her? No, I did not know that. Never laid a hand on her? Never. Never laid know that she did tell people that you were physically abusive to her? No, I did not know that. Never laid a hand on her?

Never. Never laid a hand on her. We never got in fights to the point where you're screaming at each other. Never, ever. Do you want to know what happened to her? Yes. You do want to know? Yes.

Do you know what happened to her? No. And then, this. It would help us out a lot if you would agree to take a polygraph. I have no problem helping you guys, but I think I need to speak with someone else. Oh, okay. Someone other than us? Yeah, I mean, like, I think I need to speak to a lawyer.

They had to let Ronald leave because, besides their suspicions, they had very little to go on. No murder weapon, no crime scene, no body. And as days piled up, a kind of limbo set in. What's it like to watch a case kind of gradually go cold? Frustrating. It's completely frustrating. And it stayed that way for years. But just when Detective Mark Bush was about to give up hope, the phone rang. My supervisor told me that I needed to head to Pinehurst, North Carolina. Uh-oh, now what? It keeps you up at night.

You wake up in the morning, it's the first thing on your mind. When you go to bed, it's the last thing on your mind. Sergeant Steve Chauchet was convinced Bethany Decker was dead, and spent many days in this wooded area just 200 yards from her apartment, searching for her remains. This area's special to me because I used to drive around it,

not knowing where Bethany Decker was, but I said maybe I could get some kind of hint from her. I'd say, come on, Bethany, just give me some kind of sign. Show me something. Help me find you. Thing was, all the detectives were convinced there was one guy who could tell them where she was. Ronald Roldan. But he was busy.

We were paying attention to where Ronald moved, what jobs he took on, who was he inviting into his life. He found other women to date and new restaurants to work in. Life, for him, went on as usual, apparently. If Ronald was really their man, police needed a big break. And then, almost four years after Bethany vanished, they got one. Did they ever. I got a phone call from my supervisor who told me that I needed to pick up everything

and head to Pinehurst, North Carolina because Ronald Roldan had shot his new girlfriend. Detective Mark Bush worked the phone. Who was this new girlfriend? And how did she get mixed up with Ronald Roldan? Vicki Willoughby was a waitress, and she was working at a steakhouse, and she just happened to be working with one of their new servers named Ronald Roldan. The two of them struck up a friendship that led to them becoming romantically involved. Apparently, Vicki thought it was casual. But soon, Ronald changed. Became controlling and

threatening, she said, and then physically abusive. Eventually, Vicki saw an opening to leave him. She finds out that a house that she had owned in North Carolina, I believe she was coming back into ownership of that house or the renters of that house were leaving the house. But Ronald followed her to North Carolina, she said, and refused to leave. So it was a small miracle that Detective Bush found her hospitalized, but alive, thank goodness, and talking. You were surprised she was able to talk at all? Yeah, she lost an eye, had to undergo surgery. And the fact that she could talk was even more amazing. And the fact that she was able to recount what occurred seemed kind of unreal.

Here is Vicki's story, recorded right there in her hospital bed, with her broken neck, her bullet wounds, her purple bruises, still hooked up to machines and tubes that made her voice hoarse. But remarkably, she managed to tell police what happened when she refused to have sex with Ronald. He was dragging me around the room, I remember that. Okay.

Screaming, don't get up, don't get up. He was punching me, punching me in the head, I think. Just kept hitting me over and over. She's already been in fear for her life, and she hid a revolver under the couch. She grabs it with her left hand backwards and putting her thumb in the trigger, shoots Ronald Roldan two times in the chest. But then he took it from me, shot me right up close.

Ronald shot Vicki in her arm and her head, taking out her right eye. And then once he shot me, he just kept beating me in the head. The blood was splattering everywhere. I tried to get away once, but he pulled me back. And then he was freaking out. He's like, oh, my God, I'm going to die. And he wanted to see his mother. He wanted to see his mother.

She flees the house bleeding, bloody, hardly any clothes on. That was scary. I couldn't see because of my eye. Took me three neighbors till I found somebody. When the police arrive at her location, which is a neighbor's house, they gather the evidence, they go back to her house, and Roldan is dressed, had taken a shower, and he's on the phone with his mother.

Two bullet holes in him. You try that. She had shot Ronald above his heart and in his gut, so he was rushed to the hospital too. Once he was healed enough, he was transferred to a holding facility on charges that included assault with a deadly weapon. Speaking from her hospital bed, Vicki was still terrified. Oh, he's going to know I said all this stuff. You can't be saying this stuff. He'll get my kids. He already told me if I ever went to the authorities, ever, ever, he'll get my kids. She told the detective she'd lived under the threat of violence throughout her relationship with Ronald. He said I could kill you right now if I wanted to.

But he always made sure that I know that he could kill me. And then Vicki said the most extraordinary thing. He killed her and got away with it. Her? The her Vicki was referring to was Bethany. I just know in my heart that he killed her. His statement to her was, I've made one girlfriend disappear, I can do it again.

That sounded a lot like a confession. Would it finally be enough? Ronald Roldan had a problem. A Vicki Willoughby problem. She'd been brave enough to tell detectives all about Ronald's violent behavior, giving North Carolina prosecutors solid evidence against him. Ronald wouldn't be able to skate by with a denial the way he'd done in the Bethany Decker case. I think they knew that he was a danger

and they had to put him away for as long as they possibly could. But it's always a roll of the dice with a jury. And so the prosecutor ended the uncertainty and made a deal with Ronald. He pleaded guilty to assaulting and shooting Vicki in exchange for a minimum sentence of six years behind bars in North Carolina. Vicki's courage had breathed new life into Bethany's case.

But it also gave detectives in Virginia a deadline to find usable evidence to prove he killed Bethany or watch him get away with murder. We had a 2020 deadline that he was going to be released and deported. Deported to his native Bolivia, making any future arrest infinitely more difficult. So one more time, Detective Bush combed through the case file. And this time, noticed something in the Facebook messages, apparently sent by Bethany, but after she vanished. I was able to put together almost a separate spreadsheet of IP addresses. Nothing wrong with those IP addresses, if they

all belonged to Bethany's devices, but they didn't. Every time Ronald Roldan was checking his email or he was on his password-protected Facebook account, he was checking her email and sending Facebook messages posing as her. What was it like to find that? It was an aha moment. Was it enough? It was now or never. And so they took a chance and charged Ronald with second-degree murder. Shaniqua Clark Nelson and her colleagues would prosecute. Had you ever tried a no-body case before? I have never tried a no-body case. I've tried homicides, but never a no-body.

Without a body, any good defense attorney could say there wasn't even proof of a homicide, let alone any evidence of what Ronald allegedly did to Bethany. Even if we're able to get this past 12 jurors, and they agree with us that he's our murderer and we get our conviction, we still cannot go back to Kimberly Nelson and tell her what happened to her daughter. And so the state made a deal. Ronald Roldan would plead guilty to second-degree murder in exchange for a 12-and-a-half-year sentence. There was one condition. Ronald had

to tell them what he did to Bethany. In January 2023, almost 12 years after Bethany disappeared, Clark Nelson and Detective Bush went eye-to-eye with her killer, who sat next to his attorneys. I'm ready for whatever question you have to ask. So Chaz, of course, what happened? He said that they were in their apartment that they shared, and there was an argument about Bethany going to work. She had actually called in to her job to take on a shift. She was trying to walk away from the conversation. I pushed her. And when I pushed her, she tripped over like her feet at the window sill. Was she bleeding? No. Any bruising, swelling going on at that point?

I'm sure, but I really don't remember anything. Ronald said he put his fingers under Bethany's nose and she wasn't breathing. Why did you not call 911? Just because I didn't think that they would believe what I had to say. What did you think was going to happen if you called that home? I was going to get arrested. What do you believe really happened? I think she finally got confronted with the Hawaii trip with Emil.

And when she admitted that she had been in Hawaii with her husband, I think that flew him into a fit of rage. He choked her to death. The next part of Ronald's story, though, felt true to Detective Bush. When you start talking to him about the disposal, it's very matter-of-fact. It's very step one, step two, step three. There was a bag in the apartment for Christmas tree removal, and I just put her inside of the bag.

Then, Ronald took Bethany to the apartment complex's trash compactor. Do you recall which part of the dumpster that you put her in? It just has this, this like a sliding door. When you put her inside of there, what, if anything, did you do? After that, I closed it and just walked back. He's very much that sociopath who feels no remorse. Ronald Rodan will serve roughly 17 years for killing Bethany and assaulting Vicki. He's scheduled to be released in 2031,

and then he'll be deported. After spending years searching for Bethany, investigators could at least finally tell her family where her body likely was. When the trash compactor got dumped, it went to a landfill. But recovering her remains? Probably impossible. It would approximately be five million dollars to try to recover her, if we could recover her. Detectives played the video of Ronald's confession for

Bethany's family. It was very hard to hear the disregard for human life. You're in a state of shock when you're hearing such things that you can't even believe that a human being would be capable of such violence and such horrific, heinous acts. And I can't allow myself to go there, because if I do, I won't be able to survive. I can't.

So I don't. There was some solace. Bethany's son, Kai, now lives happily with his dad, Emil. And any lingering suspicion that Emil had something to do with what happened to Bethany went away for good, finally. He must have gone through a lot of, well, hell in the period of time between the murder and finally being absolved forever.

In the face of grieving for her and not knowing what happened to her, I don't know how he did it. He's incredibly strong. For years, Bethany's family had kept looking and looking and hoping, and they couldn't save her, which is why they wanted to tell her story, to save the next Bethany.

So what do you want people to take away from her story? What I would probably say is if you are in a bad situation, then get help. Don't believe lies, that there is no hope, and that there isn't a way out. There is. That's all for this edition of Dateline. We'll see you again 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.