Dateline NBC - Horror at the Lake

Episode Date: November 9, 2021

Investigators desperately search for a killer after Florida teacher Denise Hallowell is found murdered. Dennis Murphy reports.

Tonight on Dateline. Oh my God. Oh my God. I need someone fast. I need EMT. The subject found his mom with an axe in her head. I can still hear her trying to breathe. Carlos said that someone had broken into the house and murdered his mom. This is just a ghastly crime. How could this school teacher have an enemy? Correct.

I don't know anybody who would have done that. I remember feeling so sorry for Carlos that he had lost his mom in such a horrific way. You know, we're telling anyone to stay alert. Call us if there's something suspicious. There may be an ax murderer on the loose. Yes, sir. We started seeing cars showing up at night.

Who are these people out in the woods? Were you frightened? Yes. We were nervous. What did you get out of that lake? Three security cameras and her cell phone. That was a huge, huge fight for us. You can see the connected dots and footprints very easily.

My stomach dropped. Probably the most I've ever cried in my life. I'm Lester Holt, and this is Dateline. Here's Dennis Murphy with Horror at the Lake. The lake in northwest Florida is as much a secluded nature preserve as it is a haven for retirees. It's like living in an Audubon drawing from the 19th century, where sandhill cranes stalk the grounds amidst the raccoons and deer. Lake critters would pop up from the murky water outback to look around. I'm thinking of alligators.

Oh. Are there? Our lake is pretty shallow, so we don't have those big, scary alligators, just little guys. Just little four or five foot alligators. Right, yeah, yeah. Home to a single mom school teacher and her son. Their waterfront house nestled back in the woods. A serene setting.

Then all those cars in the night started showing up. There were a lot of cars going in and out. Hindsight made it all of a sudden even more frightening. There had never been much crime out here, and what there was was petty stuff mostly. Until that summer day. It was just really horrific. It was unnerving for me to have something like that happen in my own county.

The two responding deputies agreed they could never unsee what they found in the house. It's not anything you ever forget. It's just something that you consciously make an effort not to remember. Who's out there, Sheriff? Yeah, exactly. July 2019, on a Saturday morning in Inverness, Florida, a mother and her son left their lakeside home to attend a funeral an hour and a half away. On the way back, they stopped at a favorite bakery for pie, apple for him, chocolate cream for her. When they arrived home, they shared the pie and settled in for the afternoon. She took a nap. Whatever happened next, and it wasn't at all clear what that was, was very bad. Horrific. It was a little after six in the evening when the 911 dispatcher

picked up to the frantic pleas of a boy who would turn out to be 17-year-old Carlos Hollowell. A nightmarish scene. I need EMTs. I need people. Okay. So, on the phone with me and take a deep breath and calm down so we can get this information. Okay. I can't. I can't. I can't. It was his mother, Denise Hollowell, bleeding in her bed.

Do you think she's beyond any help? I don't know. I don't know. Okay. How long ago did you find her? Just now. Just now. It came out as a suspicious death. A note was in the screen that the subject woke up and found his mom with an axe in her head. An axe to the back of her head. Deputy Robert Bang and Sergeant Laura Anstead of the

Citrus County Sheriff's Office had responded to their share of shootings and stabbings over the years. But this was something else altogether. Axe? The word axe was in your initial information, huh? It was. It was. It sounded like an intruder. Someone had come into the house. He'd woken up because his dogs were barking, and he thought someone was in the house. Oh, my God. The dispatcher gave Carlos, the boy on the 911 line, clear instructions. Listen to me. I want you to go outside. Don't touch anything, okay?

All right, just stay outside with me. I'm going to stay on the phone with you until somebody gets there, okay? The dispatcher tried to keep Carlos calm. Listen to me. Take a deep breath through your nose, okay? And out through your mouth. You have to, okay? I need you to stay calm. Opening up the gates. Okay, open the gates.

Oh, my God. Just stay on the line with me, okay? Oh, my God. The deputies headed up the driveway, taking mental notes as they went. Preserving the scene would be a priority for the investigators following behind them. There were a few footprints. I noticed, obviously, dirt driveway, saw footprints. Grabbed a stick, circled it really quick, and then secured the gate,

let dispatch know so that everybody would stay off to the side and not disturb that evidence. At the front door of the home, Carlos was told to wait outside. There might be other people here, huh? Absolutely correct. With guns drawn, they entered cautiously, proceeding down a hallway to the victim's bedroom. And there it was, in all its ghastliness. She was laying on her left side, facing the other direction. And you can see it's a full-size axe.

And it was embedded until there was only about the other direction. And you can see it's a full-size axe. And it was embedded until there was only about an inch left. And she was alive? Well, she wasn't conscious. Her body was still functioning. She was breathing. Breathing, but barely. They'd need more hands to attempt CPR.

You can't remove the axe to roll her on the back. So once fire got there, we kind of propped her up from behind, and they attempted CPR while she was on her side. Outside the residence now, more deputies arrive, both by air and on the ground, one of them recording audio as Carlos pleaded for information about his mother. Anything at all? Right now they're just working on making sure she's okay, okay? She's breathing? She's breathing? She's still breathing. The boy watched as his childhood home was strewn with yellow crime scene tape. In the front yard, emergency lights flashing, sheriff's radio squawking.

I just want to know why this big tape put around my house. I need to know if she's going to be okay. He prepared to hear the worst. She's not making it, is she? I don't know. I'm just standing here with you, man. I have no idea. It turned out she was gone. She was.

You were not able to recover her. That's correct. Crime scene techs arrived, followed by the ME. Carlos was told the news. His mother, 57-year-old Denise Hollowell, was pronounced dead. The county sheriff called for a full-on manhunt. Helicopters, dog teams, boots on the ground. Apparently, there was an axe murderer on the loose.

Nothing less than a madman. When we come back, what had happened in that house? I felt my knees buckle and I had to hold on to the post. Denise's lifelong friend and neighbor

was left with a mystery and memories. We always planned to be grow old together off the lake. That didn't happen. The pleasant home on the lake had become a house of horrors. Denise Hollowell found murdered in her own bed.

Her 17-year-old son Carlos reported the macabre discovery. The Citrus County Sheriff threw everything he had into the search for the woman's killer. We deployed not only air, land, and by water, we put our canine units out there and we saturated our areas of the county. Neighbor and good friend Amy Alford heard the thump of helicopters overhead that July evening. What in the world? My other neighbor down the road called me and she said the driveway was lined with sheriff cars. And then she said there was a forensic unit there. And then that really worried me.

And then she learned her friend was gone. I felt my knees buckle and I had to hold on to the post. It was just a blur after that. We always planned to grow old together on the lake. That didn't happen. Another lifelong friend, Peggy Ness, had seen Denise just hours before at that funeral service for their mutual friend who'd passed away. Denise seemed great. Peggy relayed the mind-numbing news to another friend, Adele Hunnell.

I was just leaving work, and she called me and told me. The friends, Amy, Peggy, and Adele, had always been there for Denise. From her early-on work as a veterinary tech to seeing her earn her teaching credentials. Was she a good teacher? Oh, yeah. The kids adored her. She'd been married twice, relationships that didn't last long. It was very much Denise they remembered to exchange her vows with one of the fiancés while skydiving. She's so adventurous, so they said their vows.

On the way down? I think either on the plane right before they jumped or on the way down. I'm not sure which. As she grew older, Denise's life centered on her students and her church and enjoying her time at the weekend place on the lake that had been in her family for three generations. It was right next door to her friend Amy, whom she'd met so many years before. I've known Denise all my life. I don't remember meeting her. She was just always the... This high, huh? Yeah. She was about five years older than me, so she was like a big sister. I admired her. They'd spent countless idyllic childhood hours messing about the lake where their families had bought adjacent lots. We had a hobo swing. A hobo swing is a burlap sack full

of Spanish moss tied from a long rope. So we'd take a jump onto it and it would have a big old arc. Sounds like Tom Sawyer. Sounds like an America that's disappeared. Right, yeah. Denise wanted to share that lifestyle with a child and she pondered seriously adopting. She herself had been adopted. She discussed the big life change with Adele. Was that to fill something she needed, do you think, to have the child in her life? Or did she want to give to the child? She wanted to give to the child because she said she knew what it was like to be adopted and be able to have a great life.

And she said she wanted to pass that on to another child. She contacted an adoption agency, one that plays children from Central America. Do you remember her going to Guatemala to find the child? Yeah, I remember how nervous she was. I remember, you know, how excited she was. It took perseverance and a good deal of teacher salary money. But one day at a hotel in Guatemala, she was introduced to a boy of four who ran into her arms and dissolved her heart.

He was named Carlos. Here's the new child. What'd you think? He was adorable, very polite, called me Miss Adele all the time. So she calls you up and says, I got somebody I want you to meet, huh? Yeah, and she was just ecstatic. Amy had adopted two little girls of her own. He immediately hit it off with my own daughters who were the same age and they just ran off to play. Amy's daughter, Bayouche. He was like, hey, I'm your new neighbor, Carlos.

As the years went by, Carlos, a charmer and bright as a penny, grew into the boy every parent might want. The straight-A student who skipped a grade. An athletic standout on the ball fields. He wasn't just popular. He was popular, he was smart, he was athletic. Natural leader? Yeah, definitely. And he had a mom who adored him. He was regarded as Denise's golden child. Carlos turned out to be the fix.

Yes, absolutely. And they bonded so well. I even remember I was jealous because my girls and I struggled a lot. And she and Carlos just hit it off perfectly. Eventually, Denise and Carlos moved full time to their weekend place. Young Carlos took to the lake as eagerly as Denise once had as a girl. He was never happier, it seemed, than when he was fishing. He'd even found a girlfriend, Kayla, someone Denise had grown fond of. So Mrs. Halliball was nice to you, huh?

Yes, extremely nice to me. Now, what did your parents, Kayla, think of Carlos? They really liked how mature he was, how he carried himself. They could sense how intelligent he was. Now, on that humid July evening, in the horror of that bedroom where Carlos had found his mother attacked, their happy lives were utterly destroyed. And a murder investigation, an urgent one, was up and running. Coming up, was Denise a random victim of a crazed axe murderer who wandered in from the woods?

I hear barking from my side of the house. The front door was wide open. Or was the killer someone she knew? Boyfriends or any issues with boyfriends? When Dateline continues. Deputy searched the wooded area around the Hollowells lakefront property. Who was out there? Too soon to know. Sheriff Mike Prendergast. In its early hours, you don't know what's happened. Could be an intruder. It's just a happenstance type of case where someone was breaking in trying to see if they can find something easy to steal. The victim confronts the intruder.

The intruder grabs something nearby, uses that to disable or kill the victim, and then the intruder finishes what they were going to do with their crime. The break-in gone wrong. Detective Rob Ramos was on call that Saturday. What did you know when you got rolled out? They said it was possibly a break-in and that the son ended up finding a mom in her bedroom with an axe in her head. After a brief fill from the on-scene deputies, the detective went inside the home to the bedroom. Once you walk in, she's laying on her left side, her back towards the door, and there's an axe

that's embedded in her. You know, seeing something like that, it's not something we respond to on a daily basis. You barely hear of cases like this. What was it? A home invasion gone terribly wrong? Maybe someone from the victim's past or present taking revenge? Could it have been a transient out of the woods? Carlos, the victim's son, told the police the axe was from the shed out back. There were only theories at that early stage. Detective Ramos joined the deputies out front. That's where he met Carlos. So he's got to be an important witness for you.

Oh, yes. He's the only witness. The detective knew he needed to speak with the boy right away, get his story down, the timeline of the day. What had he and his mother been doing in her final hours? So once Carlos had calmed down, he rode with deputies to the sheriff's office and told the detectives what had happened. The car trip to the funeral and back, eating pie.

Last time I saw her was around 2.30, 3. We both went to our separate rooms to take our naps for the day, which is what we normally do. Carlos said he watched some video clips on his phone, then fell asleep. He estimates he was out for about two hours when he was awakened by his dogs barking in late afternoon. I hear barking from my side of the house, which is abnormal. Our dogs are supposed to be in that little fenced-in area. So I walk out to the front door.

My mom's door is closed, as always, but she does let the dogs out every now and then while she's taking a nap to just let them go to the bathroom. So the front door was wide open. I figured she might have forgotten to close it, and I looked outside. Our dog, the two green gates that you guys walked through, completely open.

So I went to go find the dogs, checked around the property, looking for them. I couldn't find them. So I went to go wake my mom up to help me find them. And that was when he said he found his mom the way he did, still alive. And I could still hear her trying to breathe. The obvious question for the boy, who did he think would do this to his mother? I don't know anybody who would have done that. All my mom's close friends,

anything would be people at church. This is the only people that I know. She don't have any enemies? Not that I know of. Well, boyfriends or anything? She had issues with boyfriends? Not that I know of. If she did, I didn't know about it.

Anybody have a beef against her? Were there any lawsuits? No, no arguments, no anything. Same thing with Carla. We asked them if she had any issues or no one. They like to stay to themselves and enjoy the company. The detectives wrapped up the interview in the wee hours. By then, the story of the woman found murdered in her lakefront home was out there.

An absolutely wildfire headline. An axe murderer on the loose. Yes, sir. Out in the woods somewhere. Yes, sir. I mean, that's a terribly fearful kind of crime to have. It is. The sun wasn't even up yet when Carlos's girlfriend Kayla was awakened by a knock on the door. A woman from Child Protective Services was there at her parents' home. A mute Carlos standing beside her. She basically said, we have Carlos Halliwell here and his mother has just been killed. It was just surreal. Like, I couldn't really believe what she was saying because it was just really horrific. None of it made sense to you? No, I couldn't imagine who would want to

to hurt her. She was an extremely nice lady, super caring. I couldn't imagine. Who could? Child Services, in that pre-dawn Sunday morning, was hoping that Kayla's parents would take Carlos in for a while until things got sorted out. But her parents thought a young girlfriend and boyfriend under the same roof was not a good idea. They declined. The Child Protective Services agent with Carlos in tow

next knocked on Amy's door. So what was the Child Protective Service asking you to do? She asked us if we would keep him for a little while. He's only 17. Could we keep him until he was 18? Amy took Carlos under her wing and supported him as he planned his mother's funeral. I just wanted him to stay busy and have something to focus on. And so I got him immediately working on this funeral so that he would have something to occupy his time. Detective Ramos, meanwhile, had a million questions and no good answers. Pressure's on you to find whodunit and get him off the street. That is correct. It was time for the detective to turn back the clock and find out a lot more about his victim, Denise Hollowell.

It's surprising what you learn, shocking really, when you begin to peel back the onion. Coming up... He was troubled. There was someone else in Denise's life. His door was bolted shut. His windows had been locked, according to him. In the early hours of the Denise Halliwell murder investigation, her son Carlos gave Detective Ramos a lead. The way they ripped our family apart. He recounted a traumatic incident involving his mother and little brother.

Turns out Denise had another son, Angel. She'd adopted him from Honduras when he was eight years old. She wanted Carlos to have a brother. Amy says Denise hoped adding Angel to their family would make them complete. But it didn't turn out that way. Angel came with a lot of baggage. He was troubled, and I think he was more from the streets than Carlos was. She says Denise could see the two boys weren't a good fit. Did Denise express her frustrations about this with him? Yes, yeah. She was very disappointed, more for Carlos. She wanted him to be happy. And this new brother was not giving him the experience that she hoped he would get from it. Right, yeah.

And Angel's relationship with his mom was no better. It got so bad, authorities were brought in. Carlos told the detective all about it. I wasn't done recovering after what happened between my mom, my younger brother, and me. Even though it happened a while ago, it was just starting to come back up again. What was that? I have no idea. It was a big DCF case, and it was even in the newspaper, the Chronicle, and stuff like that. My mom was charged with, totally charged with child abuse. Could that case be connected to her murder? Buster Thompson from the Citrus County Chronicle covered the story back in 2015. The sheriff's office told us at the time that it was a runaway case that turned to child

abuse allegations. And one of the senior command in the sheriff's office said one of the worst cases he'd seen. It was, that's how he had described it. It all began when Denise called 911, panicked that Angel, who was now 12, had run away. The sheriff's office had been called out to assist and find this runaway child. A few hours later, Denise found Angel hiding in neighbor Amy's shed. At that point, deputies decided to look around the Hollowell house and didn't like what they saw. In the report, they noted, the victim's room is very bare, an air mattress on a metal frame, some books, and a bucket was found in the victim's room. And the deputies

noticed something else. His door was bolted shut. His windows had been locked, according to him. He had been made to defecate and urinate in a bucket. Deputies on the scene sounded the alarm and alerted the Department of Child and Family Services. Both boys were removed from the home. So Angel, my name is Sunshine. Later, Angel was brought in to speak with a member of the child protection team. So tell me more about this issue with your mom. She gets mad and she stabs me

and all that stuff. I just like run away. Okay. And she slaps you? Where will she slap you? On the face. Angel told the social worker this wasn't his first time running away. He'd taken off three years earlier. When you ran away that time, how did you get out? Oh, from a window. You got out a window? Yes. Okay. And after you got out that time,

did your mom do anything to the windows? Yes. What did she do? She locked them. She locked them? How? Like, she put nails to them, like, boards and stuff. Nails and boards? Yes.

And that wasn't all. She locks the door. To your room? Yes. And how does she lock that? Like, she locks it from outside. I'm not sure why. She just locks it every night. I'm not sure why. She just locks it every night. Every single night?

Yes. Okay. And his story got worse from there. She makes me take my clothes off and I have to clean the bathroom. Angel also said it wasn't just his mom punishing him. He said his brother was abusive, too. Has your mom or Carlos ever hit you anywhere else on your body? No.

Well, yes. Yeah? In my private. Okay. And who hit you there? Sometimes both of them. Both of them? Yes.

What will they hit you with? Just this. Angel had told a similar story to deputies the day he ran away. They reported seeing three-inch bruising on his hips and interior of arm and scratches on his face and neck. Angel was deemed to be credible, so Denise was arrested and thrown in jail. Her story made front page news. She's a teacher and a mother in jail. Exactly. It's the last thing a mother and a teacher want to have is accusations of child abuse. Children, that's who they protect. So four years before her murder, Denise's world was crashing down around her.

But not everyone was buying Angel's story. Denise's friend and neighbor Amy found the whole thing hard to believe. It didn't make sense. It didn't sound like who Denise is. I mean, I knew she was frustrated with him, but it didn't make sense that she would ever be abusive. And things just weren't adding up. Investigators had only heard Angel's version of the story.

Others were about to weigh in. And what looked like unthinkable acts of child abuse might be something else entirely. The allegations that were made by the younger brother were simply so fantastical that it required me to evaluate what happened. Coming up... He's never been hit, not that I know of. Carlos defends his mother and claims Angel was the violent one. He'll throw punches, try to scratch, hurt the dogs.

When Dateline continues... As law enforcement continued its all-hands-on search for Denise Halliwell's killer, local reporter Buster Thompson kept his readers updated on her brutal murder. Since this wasn't Denise's first time making headlines, he said local folks were keenly interested. This ghastly murder, how was it playing in the community? This blew the community out of the water to hear that news that this woman, Denise, this has happened to her. The last time Denise made headlines four years earlier, her arrest for child abuse was the buzz on every street corner.

A story her neighbors hadn't forgotten. There's their teacher in a jumpsuit on the front page in a mugshot. It's very traumatizing, especially for a small community, and this case just brought her reputation down to its knees. She'd been arrested, resigned from her teaching job, and her two sons were banned from seeing her. Denise had been in jail for about two weeks when local defense attorney Bill Grant got the case. I was approached by several people to please visit with her, and that's when I read those affidavits the government and law enforcement provided. And I knew from my experience that these can't be accurate. Remember the child's in school.

Counselors, teachers. People are aware of scratches, bloody hell. That's correct, and they're trained for that, and we're very good in our community with that. Grant says after meeting Denise and reading reports about Angel from his school, pediatrician, and Denise's own notes about her son's behavioral problems, he was convinced she had not broken any laws. So we were able to access a lot of records that showed that he had some issues. And she, Denise, was a meticulous diary keeper.

Yes, she was. Did that help her? Yes, it did. It helped tremendously. Denise had explanations for what the deputies had seen at the house. She said that Angel had fits of rage and was impossible to control. Yes, Denise locked the boy's bedroom door because he would sneak out. Yes, she locked his bedroom window so he wouldn't crawl out the window because he had a history of running. So she did everything appropriate, including sleeping by his door. Denise said the bucket was just a safety measure in case he didn't make it to the toilet. The bed had clean sheets. There was nothing in the bucket. So all the things that they just showed up

and took pictures of were easily to dispel. Armed with this information, Grant focused on getting Denise out of jail, something her 13-year-old son Carlos had already attempted. The older boy tried to bond his mother out, called a bail bondsman. And my office, yes sir. He was actively seeking to get his mom out of the jailhouse. Grant told the court his investigation uncovered evidence that would clear his client. The judge was persuaded enough to give Denise an ankle bracelet and release her. The state continued its investigation into Denise, and so did her lawyer. Grant found more evidence affirming Denise's innocence. He reviewed an interview her older son did with a social worker,

where Carlos said right off the bat Angel was lying. All accusations against mom are false except for the ones that I know of locking Angel in the room and that has a specific reason. When he's really frustrated he'll tend to throw things, he'll throw punches, try to scratch, hurt the dogs but he won't hurt himself. And the locking in the room is because Angel will throw things? Throw anything that's near him, which is why he doesn't have things in his room. He'll take it, he'll throw it against the wall, smash his windows. He doesn't care. Has he ever told you or do you know of any time that anybody's hit him? In his genitals?

Yeah. He's hit me. He's hit you? He's never been hit He's hit you? He's never been hit. Not that I know of. Carlos said his mom never made Angel clean the bathroom

while naked. The only time mom ever tells you to get naked is to get in the shower. And that's just something she says. Strip down, get your ass in the shower.

You smell. Like normal bath time? Yeah. But he's not made to do anything like to degrade him or embarrass him? No.

From Carlos' point of view, Angel was the one abusing his mom. He'd throw punches, he'll scratch. Mom had a few marks about a year ago. One right here, just a big old gash right by her main blood valve. And Angel has long nails. He doesn't cut them. And he cuts very deep. And Denise's friend Adele remembers both Carlos and Denise being wary of Angel.

They would go to bed at night and lock their doors because they were afraid he was going to come in and do something while they were sleeping. Angel had already told his story to a social worker. Now Grant had the chance to challenge the boy himself in a deposition. We may all ask you some questions, okay? Yes, sir. Now, Grant knew he had to walk a fine line, be delicate enough with a 12-year-old not to traumatize him, but tough enough to get to the truth.

When I saw Angel there, my heart cried for that child, that he's saying these things that I know to be not true. What did the boy say? Basically, he was concerned with the way that his mother treated him, that he was locked in his room, that she wouldn't allow him to crawl out. But Grant dug deeper, and a different, more nuanced picture started to emerge. So you're saying that you only get into the rage when she spanks you? Yeah, and hits me. Well, what happened at school then when you had the fit of rage in front of the teachers? I was mad. Like... You were just mad at the teachers?

Yeah, I was angry. And so, how many times have you had these kinds of incidents at school that had nothing to do with your mom? Like, a lot of times. He then asked Angel about his home life and showed him photos of happy times with his mother and brother, things Angel hadn't mentioned to the social worker. So, your mom takes you on vacation, right? Yeah. Several places, correct? Yes. All over the southeastern United States, is that right? Yeah. She takes you fishing? Yeah. She buys you ATVs and motorcycles for your brother? Yeah.

You get to ride and play on your land that you live there with your mom? Yeah. At every turn, Grant found more evidence to prove Denise's innocence, including Angel's behavior after he was removed from her house. When he was placed with foster family, he was accused of violent acts, of running away, of certain things that he was accusing his mother of not allowing him to do. So are you saying to the prosecutor, we got an unreliable witness here? Oh, without a doubt. Grant submitted his evidence to the court, then they waited and waited. Denise spent five months wondering if she would lose her children and be sent to prison for years. Coming up, an ugly question about an even uglier murder.

In trying to figure out what had happened, did anyone say, look, maybe it's the child who's no longer here? Yeah, I did. Investigators working in the Denise Halliwell murder were looking closely at the child abuse case brought against her years before, hoping to find a connection to her killer. Her son Carlos told police the abuse charges all came down to his little brother making up lies. Lies that left deep, ugly scars. How did that traumatize you from the lies that your brother was saying? Because the way they ripped our family apart, I watched my mom get arrested, which that didn't do well for me. And then being separated from her without

contact hurt. How long ago, how long was that separation? Months. Around three months. Then mother and son waited another two months for the prosecutors to make a decision. Denise's attorney says she recognized she did make parenting mistakes, but nothing close to criminal. He thinks the whole thing should never have happened. First of all, the prosecutors, just let's be real clear here, she was arrested, but I got the government to never even charge her. Okay, that's a big deal. They never filed on her? They never filed on her. So what's the picture that came together?

The picture ultimately came together that it was clear Denise had not violated any criminal law. The government dropped everything, released her from any obligations. While that was a giant relief, being cleared by the government, clearing her name in the court of public opinion was a whole different story. Her attorney suggested she tell her side to the media. She did an interview with Fox 13. It's been a total of five months, and a nightmare for five months. In the report, she said from the very start,

she tried to explain to the deputies at her house the problems she was having with Angel. I had logged three years worth of behavior on my youngest son. I offered that immediately on that day. That was also ignored. Don't be quick to judge, and that's exactly what happened here. Denise knew she needed to move on and start rebuilding her life. Having Carlos home was a first step. How do you put something like that back together? It went back very well. It was not difficult for Carlos and Denise. There was clearly great affinity between the two. Clearly great affinity. Denise was hopeful Angel would come back, too.

Denise was enthralled at the prospect of being reunified with her youngest son, who made the allegations against her. She thought she'd get him back. She did. She wanted him back because she had plans for his therapy. But she was told by professionals who had evaluated Angel that going back to live with her was not in the child's best interests. Several forensic people indicated that if she was still in that role in his life, that it would thwart his rehabilitation. So she signed away her rights as his mother. The state put the boy in foster care. Denise's friend Amy said Denise never spoke of Angel again. Is that odd? Yeah. I think I might have tried to bring him up once and she was like, no.

Denise's focus turned to getting another teaching job. It took an entire school year before she was back in the classroom in a new position. She worked with autistic children. So she's not taking on an easy assignment in her new position. She worked with autistic children. So she's not taking on an easy assignment in her new job. Right, right. But she did great with them. They loved her. The parents loved her. So were you thinking she's had this awful experience with the criminal justice system, but now she's back on track? Or did you think there was trouble? No, I felt like she was back on track. Carlos is back under her roof. Yes. What's going on with them? Oh, they're happy, they're going on trips all

the time, adopted a couple more little dogs. Carlos, now 17, was spending more time with his girlfriend Kayla. Was this your first serious boyfriend? Yes, he was my first serious boyfriend and we were both pretty attached to each other. We were kind of opposites. He's really outgoing. I'm more reserved, laid back. He was super sweet, super intelligent, so we just always had a good time. One fond memory that stuck with her was when they went to an orientation at a local college. We went on like a little date after, kind of just talking about his future and our future, and it was a little bit more of like a serious conversation. That young couple earnestly

dreaming of the future could never have imagined the tragedy just ahead. Carlos's mother savagely murdered. The news was hard for Kayla to process. What did you think? This is horrible news for you. Your boyfriend's mother, you liked her? I was just trying to be present for Carlos. I was trying to fight back tears. Kayla had no theories about who would want to harm Denise. But others in the small community of Inverness were beginning to wonder. What about the son she gave up? Angel was now 15.

In trying to figure out what had happened, did anyone say, look, maybe it's the child who's no longer here? Yeah, I did. Maybe it was that second child. Detectives quickly set out to find Angel, and what they learned about his whereabouts raised more than a few eyebrows. Coming up, strange and suspicious doings near the Hallowell home. I had a goat that disappeared. The neighbors said, have you been noticing these cars? It started making them a little nervous. When Dateline continues. Detective Chris Holloway of the Citrus County Sheriff's Office

was playing catch-up on the Denise Holloway case. He was out of town at the time of the murder. Now, two days later, he was in charge. His team briefed him on what they had so far. You saw the pictures by that point, huh? Yes, I did. You can't unsee them? No, you'll

never unsee those. The gruesome crime scene photos of Denise dead in her bed. But after that initial flurry of sheriff's helicopters, search dogs, and boots on the ground, the investigation had moved into a quieter phase. As detectives ran down each and every lead, they took a deeper dive into the history of Denise's trouble with her younger son, the one who'd accused her of child abuse. There were people that remembered that being a very tough time in that household, and people thought maybe the kid was responsible. They did. So you might have been able to come up with a version of why he would be the guy.

Oh, yeah. We were definitely looking at that right off the bat. As a theory, it seemed to make some sense. The younger boy, in his mind, abused by a cruel mother, returning to take revenge with that axe from the shed. They chased down that theory, but it quickly ran out of steam. Angel could not have done it. He had a premium alibi. He was actually incarcerated at the time. So he's in

stir. The boy's life, it seemed, hadn't gotten any easier after his time with Denise. He'd committed armed robbery a few months earlier, and now at the age of 15, was behind bars when Denise Hollowell was killed. A quick and easy theory went into the shredder. So the detectives pressed on with what's called victimology, learning as much as they could about Denise Hollowell. The good friends had a common thread in their stories. Denise was a hard person to read. Very private, very private. She didn't believe in airing her dirty laundry.

She didn't always reach out until after the fact. Even her son Carlos told detectives his mom kept her life at a distance from him. She also stays private from me as well. I only need to, I only know what I need to know. In that vacuum of information about what was going on with Denise, the idea arose that maybe she was in some sort of trouble and simply hadn't confided in anyone. Investigators spoke to neighbor Rick Anderson and his wife Juanita Baker. They recounted some troubling incidents over the years, like all the cars in the night. The neighbors at the corner called and said, you've been noticing these cars coming into the neighborhood down your road,

and it started making them a little nervous. Mysterious cars driving near Denise's property. And Rick remembered the day he got a call from Denise to please come quickly. The house was on fire. So I shot over there, and I went walking around. Some plastic has caught on fire and burned. And from the flames and the heat, the vinyl siding of the garage was all melted. It almost caught the house on fire.

The cause of the suspicious fire was never determined. When detectives spoke to Carlos, he mentioned his mom had become alarmed when she thought there was someone outside the home. Our neighbor, Rick, even came to our property with his small handheld gun to make sure no one was there. I just saw him out in the yard and put the gun and I was like, oh, what's going on? And the Hollowell's neighbor on the other side, good friend Amy, said some of her animals started going missing. Her chickens had been killed. One of our cats was sliced in half. And more recently... I had a goat that disappeared about the same time all the cars were coming and going. What was going on around the lake?

There was enough unsettling commotion about her secluded property that Denise asked Rick to set up a security system for her. She bought a camera system and then called me, and I went over, and Carlos and I and her went through and set it all up. So she had a security system for the house. The investigators had actually come upon Rick's security system outside the house, but it was mothballed and no longer working. Once we got the search warrant, they did get inside the house,

and that's when we start, once again, grid by grid, section by section, looking at everything in the house, every square inch. Anything jumping out at you from this first search? There was no damage at any of the locks, any of the doors. I know the sergeant said she noticed some footprints on the path to the house. Any of those kinds of forensic details turn out to be of interest later? No, no. I believe the footprints were ruled out to be either one of our deputies when they first arrived on scene, or were going to be Carlos's when he was going back and forth with them. A smartphone, of course, can be a detective's best friend.

And right away, they ask Carlos for his. Do you have any problem with this going in? No, it's completely fine. That's cool. And they were very interested in his mother's phone. Does she have a cell phone, too? Yes. Where does she usually keep that? Usually keeps it on her nightstand.

Okay. But when they searched the home, the phone didn't turn up. Unfortunately, the victim's cell phone is nowhere to be found. Which is a question. That is a big question. That phone is potentially a treasure trove. It is. Still, the search of the home wasn't a complete bust.

They did find something in Denise's bedroom that piqued their interest. They found some owner's manuals for some security cameras. A different setup than the one installed by the neighbor.

So the light bulb was ideas. We've got a manual here. Where's the camera? Where's the camera for it? Correct. And when they took a closer look at the furniture, there were a few places

without dust. Odd. What had been sitting there to keep the dust from settling? We found the chargers when I walked through the house. You could see where the dust was. There was no dust where the cameras were. The thought was this. If you had to ditch something quickly because the cops were coming,

where better to fling something than that lake out back of the house? I contacted the dive team leader and asked them to do a cursory search in that area. And what they found was about to break the case wide open. Coming up. What did you get out of that lake? Three security cameras and her cell phone. Sunken treasure. Hopefully it would have captured the whole entire incident.

A few days after Denise's murder, Carlos's girlfriend Kayla paid a visit to him at Amy's, the neighbor who had taken in the boy temporarily. I wanted to, you know, see how he was doing, try to support him as much as I could. And, you know, we kind of just talked like normal, tried to stay off, you know, the topic of his mom, tried to get his mind off of things. Kayla couldn't imagine what Carlos was going through. I remember feeling so sorry for Carlos that he had lost his mom in such a horrific way as well. Meanwhile, investigators were busy trying to find out who was behind the heinous act. After coming across that security

camera manual in Denise's bedroom, they had shifted their focus from inside the home to the lake out back. They deployed a dive team to look for the missing security cameras. Monday I got the phone call, we need to go scope out the scene. Deputy Jimmy Sudlow was one of the divers out in the water that day. So we went and got the mud boat from the hangar. They launched the boat into the murky waters behind Denise's property. To me it looks like you can't see a hand in front of you. Correct, it looks like that, but once you get below the looks like you can't see a hand in front of you. Correct. It looks like that.

But once you get below the surface, you can actually sometimes get a couple feet of visibility. The lake itself covers thousands of acres. A thorough search could easily take many days. But luck was on the dive team's side because not 20 yards from the house, in waist-deep water, they found the evidence that would be crucial to the investigation. They spotted it from the reconnaissance boat. I see a white, round object, very clean, no marine growth, no nothing on it. And I get in the water and I retrieve it,

and it turns out to be a camera base. I keep looking around that vicinity real fast, and I locate a camera. The divers contacted the detective with their great news. So the following day, we did actually a full search of the area. In all, what did you get out of that lake? Three security cameras and her cell phone. Denise's cell phone, a bonus of all bonuses and a completely unexpected prize. Were the items found in the lake the turning point in the investigation? That was a huge, huge find for us. Huge except problem. Everything was soaked. Sheriff Prendergast and his team cast a wide net in hopes of extracting any information. The water log devices, I assume, are shot. Is there a technical whiz somewhere that can coax information

out of a thing that's been in a... There is a technical whiz, and we're fortunate to have him working for us, but we're also trying to look back at the camera company and find out what type of information we might be able to extract off of the cameras. Just think if the security cameras could be brought to life again. You thought they had a story, but you didn't know what it was. Yeah, you figured they were recording. The recording has to be somewhere and hopefully it would have captured the whole entire incident. Somewhere out there in the cloud is an image of the perpetrator with the axe. That's what we're hoping. The sheriff's tech whiz got to work testing those waterlogged pieces of evidence,

but the process would take weeks. We're continuing to go through and look at cell phone records and laying this all out and having conversations with the state attorney's office as we're attempting to get into the cell phone and harvest that information that's out there. Then one day, the results finally came back, and disappointment. The security cams yielded no image of an axe-wielding killer. Likewise, there were no useful pics on Denise's phone

or in the cloud. Still, the device itself was crucial for building a timeline. I believe on her phone, we was able to tell when it was on the charger, when it got disconnected from the charger, and when it finally died in the water. So we were able to have a closer timeline. And the timeline seemed to match what Carlos told detectives. Denise's phone arrived at their home around 3 o'clock. It was plugged into her charger at around 3.12 in the afternoon,

when Denise was presumably napping. Then at 3.45, the phone was disconnected from the bedside charger. At around 6.18 p.m., Denise's phone was going berserk. The detectives theorized it was being submerged in the lake. And it was able to tell them something else. Ownership. Who did the waterlogged security cameras belong to? The phone was our huge thing because security cameras were linked to the phone. Meaning those cameras they fished out of the lake unquestionably belonged to Denise. And while amazingly, investigators were able to recover security camera images from Denise's waterlogged phone, none of them were from the critical moments of the murder.

But the more the detectives spun scenarios for who might have wanted to kill Denise Hollowell, the less likely it seemed to be a stranger, a madman, emerging from the woods. How does a perpetrator come upon an axe, murder his victim, and then take the security cameras and toss them in the lake out back? That's a strange sequence of events. Oh, very strange. Weeks into the investigation, detectives had exhausted most leads. Have you discounted the theories of a home invasion gone wrong? Have you discounted an angry boyfriend, associates of the boy in the house?

We had discounted a lot of theories that were out there because there was just no evidence leading us to that. Which made them consider suspects closer to home. Coming up, not far from that home, a friend and neighbor was living in terror. Each one of us had wasp spray next to our bed so that we could shoot him with wasp spray. You thought he was a killer? I thought he was a killer. When Dateline continues.

As detectives narrowed their investigation, they kept coming back to the last person who had seen Denise alive, her son, Carlos. Carlos was indeed a bright, charismatic golden child, with his welcoming smile and the yes ma'am, yes sir handshakes. But the more investigators dug into family history, they learned he concealed another personality altogether. Neighbor Bayush watched the wheels come off her lakeside friend. What I hear is that it got progressively worse because he was partying and stuff, and he was actually starting to get in trouble. He got kicked out of that Christian school that he was going to for a while, and I think that's when Denise stopped sort of putting him on a pedestal. Those close to Denise told detectives

his mother laid down the law about his sneaking girls into the house after dark. They argued about where and whether he'd go to college. His school grades had cratered. Rick and Juanita along the shoreline could hear the raised voices. It'd be very colorful. Really?

Oh, yeah. With both. She's vocal and so is he, huh? Once it gets going, she deals bull right with him. Carlos, by his own telling, had been drinking since the age of 11, taking all manner of prescription pills. And detectives heard he was dealing drugs in the woods near his house. Hence, all those mysterious cars. He'd intentionally wrecked the beloved pickup his mom had bought him.

He'd done several things, ran his car into a tree. Why did he do that? Was that a purposeful act? He says it was a suicide attempt. I think he did it just to make her mad, just to show her. One day, Carlos gobbled a handful of pills and OD'd. Investigators learned he was committed to a secure mental health facility for a few days and ultimately diagnosed with bipolar disorder and depression. He was put on medication. By the spring of 2019, Denise seemed to have had it with a willful son throwing away all the opportunities she'd tried so hard to create for him.

Carlos was thrown out of the house. He was taken in by a married couple he'd come to know through a mutual friend. They were Damien and Stephanie Irving. He is a warm, beautiful, funny, charming, smart person who is struggling also with many issues. The couple seemed to enjoy having Carlos around. Carlos is a really nice guy. I mean, the first time I met him, he was like so chill. He actually listened to us a lot. I mean, he didn't rebel.

I think in his perspective, he seemed happier, maybe a little less stressed because they were a little bit more lax on the rules. But he did mention a few times that he missed his mom. And she missed him. But investigators learned the issues between mother and son went even deeper. As evidenced by a list of demands, Carlos texted Denise before he'd even consider moving back home. I want a notarized agreement from the bank with everything you say you will do on it. I want it signed. A vehicle that I could depend on for college that you cannot take away from me at any time unless I fail in college. A guarantee that you will pay for my apartment and distribute my college money for

any other college-related expenses. The list went on, as though it was written by a lawyer. Honestly, I mean... If you want me back in the house, here are the conditions. And that's what I mean. Like, Carlos was a calculated person. Like, I'm not using the word lightly when I say he was intelligent, you know? Family friends told investigators Carlos and his mom patched things up he moved back home i think maybe they swept it under the rug and did what they need to do to get along again

all of these anecdotes the cops were hearing the mother-son fights the suicide attempts the boys while partying made detectives think back to their first impression of Carlos. Something about him was just off. What are you hanging in there, man? I'm just trying to accept the fact. When I watched the video back, he's flattened. He just doesn't have a whole lot of emotion to go behind it. His mother's been murdered, an ax in her head.

And nothing's going on? No, it does not appear. Whatever's there just seems false. And even though Denise's good friend Amy agreed to take Carlos in the morning after her murder, she could barely choke down her fear of this boy she'd known all these years. The reason why her husband had bought a large guard dog for the family. We had wasp spray in every room, because, you know, it shoots 20 feet. So each one of us had wasp spray next to our bed, so that if he came anywhere near us, we could shoot him with wasp spray. Were you frightened for your well-being? Yes. I was torn because on the one hand, he could have just been a kid whose mom was just brutally murdered and he was in shock. And I know Denise would have wanted me to help.

To do the decent thing. Right. On the other hand... You thought he was a killer. I thought he was a killer. Amy wasn't alone. By now, investigators had zeroed in on Carlos as their prime suspect. We had our suspicions that it was Carlos because his story wasn't added up. What made your nose twitch? How was the story coming out different? Everything.

He went from, I went outside at one point, now he's adding that he ran around the house, now he's saying that he went to a different part of the yard. His story's like... Maybe he's remembering stuff. It's been a bad day. It could be, but when she started questioning him what he just told you, that changes right behind it again.

And there was something else. Detectives remembered asking Carlos about surveillance devices around the home the night of the murder. We have a lot of those signs that say surveillance or beware of dog and stuff like that. You guys actually got surveillance up? No. No. So like a scare tactic? We have one camera on the side of the house that doesn't even work.

It's just there. Just for looks. Carlos was referring to the broken outdoor camera his neighbor Rick had helped install. But he made no mention of the three perfectly good indoor cameras detectives later found dumped in the lake. Investigators could see exactly where in the house those cameras had been hooked up. Their charging cords left dangling. The evidence was stacking up against the teen. The evidence was not leading us really on any direction other than the fact that the son was in the home alone with the mother and the dogs. It kept coming back to the son, didn't it? It was absolutely pointing right back at the son. So investigators kept eyes on him.

A week into the case, child services removed the 17-year-old from Amy's home and placed him with another family. I hugged him, and I wished him well, but I was relieved when he was gone. Weeks passed as detectives worked to piece together the evidence. He was still our prime suspect, but we didn't have enough to hold him. They felt they still needed a little more. By mid-August, the missing link came to them in the form of Carlos' own cell data. Its GPS tracking ability proved to be invaluable.

They would confront Carlos with its story in their second interview. The detectives picked him up at his foster family's home and brought him back to the station. Does he realize what's going down? No, he doesn't have a clue. Coming up, are these the footsteps of a killer? You can see the connected dots and footprints leaving the house very easily. And going to where?

He's actually on the phone while he's throwing the things in the lake. September 16, 2019. A little more than two months after Denise Halliwell was brutally murdered, investigators brought her son Carlos in for questioning a second time to confront him with key evidence. But if Carlos was nervous,

he wasn't showing it. He was excited. He was like, yeah, I wanted to know more about the case. We get him in there, start talking to him. I let him know that, hey, I'm new to the case, even though it's months later. Just run me a quick rundown of what happened that night. Carlos recited his story again. The nap, the barking dogs, finding his mom. When he was done, detectives Holloway and Ramos challenged Carlos with a different version of the story, the one told by

his own phone. On your phone, there's no dead time. Your phone's being used almost the entire time. No, I mean, somebody physically using it. Why was that important? Because it meant he was lying about being asleep. Analysis

of his cell activity showed he was actively using it around the time of the murder. And, get this, forensic investigators were able to track all his motions every time his finger touched the screen, when his phone was plugged or unplugged, even whether it was being used in landscape or portrait mode. Of course, every time you flip it, plug it in, any time you access something, every website you look at, you're looking at sports, stuff like that, just like you told us before.

But it shows it was active almost the entire time you were home. Like, back and forth on the house, or just on one steady thing? They're both stuff. Carlos appeared to be squirming, but he stuck to his story. He had been asleep.

Yeah, as soon as the dog was gone, that's when I woke up, and that's when I started moving back around. And then we also get the cell phone tower data as well. Remember, Carlos had used his cell to make that frantic call to 911. I need someone fast. I need EMTs. I need people. The phone tracked him footstep by footstep as he moved about. When plotted out, it was almost like an animation.

We were actually getting a step every second. You can see the connected dots and footprints leaving the house very easily. And going to where? Goes down to the lake. At the same time, he's on the phone with dispatch. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Okay, just stay on the phone, okay?

Oh, my God. He's actually on the phone while he's throwing the things in the lake. The timeline synced perfectly with the time that Denise's phone and those cameras went dead. On your phone itself, it also tracks your GPS locations, that whole time frame from when you called 911. I didn't go down by the lake. I could see it, but I didn't go down there. The direction on the down there, GPS, I mean, it looks like they connect the dots the entire way.

So you start turning over your cards. We start going one at a time. We start letting him know that we know what he told us about finding his mom was false. I don't remember going down there. Okay. You know we have a dive team, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And then we searched the entire lake behind there. Have we found anything out there, you think? Nothing. Nothing to move? No, sir. Nothing to move? No. I mean, he's adamant. I actually had to bring the cameras into the room. Tell me about that.

So I have the evidence brought in. And I asked him, I was like... See, does that look familiar? No, sir. Yeah, just one. It's out of here. Okay, then, yeah, that's one of the ones that are facing towards the window. Guessing we found.

There's only one in the house? No, you know there's only one in the house. No, sir, I know of one. There's three cameras in the house. Okay. What else do you think we could have found in the lake that day? I don't know. You don't know what else we could have found out there?

No, but I assume her phone since she's got the cameras. Once we start showing them, he knows the gig is up. There's no more bluffing. Because he could sit there and bluff all day. The evidence is not going to lie, and it didn't. After all the denials and the sticking to his guns, Carlos appeared cornered. What his interrogators didn't tell him was that they'd already obtained an arrest warrant for him. They had it in their pocket all along.

The cuffs went on. After a long evening, the sheriff did a perp walk with the accused. Not a madman from the woods, as so many seem to want to believe, but the son of the victim. Inverness, Florida would wake to another startling headline about the Hallowells. It was the boy, and he was going on trial. But so was Denise. Coming up, is this why Denise was killed? The story from prosecutors is that Carlos is not getting what he wants

because his mom is holding him down. Or was it more complicated? In front of Carlos, she said, I don't want him anymore. Yes. When Dateline continues. Kayla Cook was in the middle of her school day when she got an urgent text from a friend. She basically said, Carlos just got arrested. And so I looked it up and it turned out to be true.

For Kayla, the arrest was upsetting, but hadn't come as a complete surprise. Her parents had distanced their daughter from Carlos after Denise's murder. They had stopped me from seeing him. They finally had the conversation with me about how he was probably the one who did it. That must have been a difficult conversation, huh? I think that conversation, it was probably the most I've ever cried in my life. The arrest didn't come as a shock to Denise's friends either. In the months prior to her murder, the usually private Denise had confided in those she trusted,

saying she was afraid of her own son. She asked me to make sure her dogs were okay if something happened to her. That was what I knew. What. That was what I knew. What? That's what I knew. It was very serious. Yeah. That's kind of chilling to be told of a boyfriend. Very chilling. Carlos was charged with first-degree premeditated murder, to which he pleaded not guilty. Despite his age, 17 at the time of the murder, the state attorney chose to try Carlos as an adult. That call was a blow to his public defender, Ed Spate. It does go from being punishable by about six years in a juvenile program up to facing the possibility of life in prison. By the time the trial began in July 2021, almost two years had passed, and the Carlos Hallowell who

entered the courtroom did not look at all like the smiley teenager he once was. Carlos had changed. More tattoos throughout his face, on his arms. Very stocky, buff, gruff person. Reporter Buster Thompson was in the gallery as the state presented its case. The story from prosecutors is that Carlos is not getting what he wants. He's not able to be with his friends because his mom is holding him down. He says he wants to go to vocational school, but his mom's getting in the way. And it all builds up to him swinging the axe into her head. It's Carlos being fatally selfish. You solemnly swear or firm...

To help prove premeditation, the state called Detective Chris Holloway. He told the jurors about a disagreement Carlos said he had with his mom on the day of the murder. Now, what did he tell you that they argued about? It was about his schooling. If he wasn't going to go to college, she was not going to support him whatsoever. But school wasn't the only point of contention. His mom was fed up with Carlos' partying, too. Step right on up there, make yourself comfortable.

Carlos' good friend Kylie was called to testify about a text she received from Denise the day before the murder. Carlos is trying hard to get his life together for his future. He really needs his friends to help him be successful by not giving him or bringing him weed and beer. If he can't do this, he won't be staying here. When Kylie saw Carlos later that day, she showed him the text. His response was, yeah, like, I'll take care of it or something along those lines. Is that ominous? It's a little ominous. That, again, went to another notch in this kind of premeditation. But the key to the case was all of that digital evidence.

The state called digital forensic investigator Corey Allen to show how Carlos tried to cover up after he killed his mother. He testified about Carlos' movements as he was on the phone with 911. You have the lake over here, and you have several GPS pings in here, and then one section of them right here in the house. That, coupled with the evidence retrieved from the waterlogged devices, proved Carlos was the one who disconnected the cameras and threw them and his mother's phone into the lake before law enforcement arrived. And the state saved its say-goodnight evidence for last.

They played that interview of Carlos talking to detectives. On your phone itself, it also tracks your GPS locations, that whole time frame from when you called 911 on. Turns out as they confronted him with that rock-solid evidence, Carlos's story started to change. Once I found my mom, I did panic. I did panic. Carlos admitted to throwing his mom's phone and the security cameras into the lake, but said he couldn't remember much else. You'd have to remember some of it. I remember, okay, I remember being outside at the shed and grabbing the axe. And that's it. That's all I remember. They kept on pushing him. I remember sharpening the axe

and all of a sudden it's in the back of her head. So after you hit her with the axe, is that when you called 911 right after? Immediately. The state called it a full-on confession. And with that,

the prosecution rested. It seemed like a slam dunk, but not to defense attorney Spade. He had a different spin on the case, even though he didn't contest that Carlos was indeed the killer. You're saying he is the one with the ax in his hand. He does commit the crime. Yes. But you're saying the crime is not murder. Is that right? We argue that it was manslaughter.

So you're going for a lesser here, huh? Yes, sir. If he were convicted of manslaughter, the worst he faced is 15 years in prison. While the state portrayed Carlos as a teenager fed up with his mom's rules, who as a consequence planned her murder, the defense countered with a psychological argument, saying Carlos was struggling with lifelong abandonment issues, saddled to a mother unable to handle him. Jurors, in the moment he simply snapped. Carlos's defense attorney had heard about Denise's parenting style from Damien and Stephanie Irving,

the couple Carlos temporarily lived with before the murder. When I was asked by detectives, do you believe he could do this? My answer was yes, but not because I believe he was a murderer. It was yes, because I know what Denise is capable of. So I think she probably must have done something really, really bad. In the six months leading up to the murder, they said they had front row seats to the toxic relationship between Carlos and Denise.

She is very controlling. And it's like, it's her way or he has to go. It's just like she wants a puppet. The issues going on inside the home escalated to physical fights. Damien was so concerned, he called a family meeting between mother and son. I looked at her and said,

you guys need to stop putting your hand on each other because if you don't, one of you guys is going to end up doing something bad. It was clear to Stephanie that Carlos had deep-rooted issues tied to his brother Angel and the fallout from the abuse allegations. Carlos had a real fear of abandonment because he lost his brother. When he saw Denise just give that boy away, he felt he could be next. But the jury wouldn't get to hear any of those stories of domestic drama.

The judge excluded them. We weren't even allowed to mention the fact that he had a brother. Or the fact that Denise had been arrested for child abuse. What's more, the judge excluded testimony from doctors, whom the defense planned to call, about Carlos' mental and emotional state at the time of the murder. You had very little to work with. We had very little to work with.

And so, within the limits imposed by the court, Carlos' defense attorney was about to put Denise's mothering on trial by calling Stephanie Irving. You solemnly swear or affirm testimony. Stephanie recounted how she and Damien offered Carlos a place to stay. Denise brought Carlos very late in the evening. She basically said she did not want him back. She believed that Carlos was causing her stress, that she wasn't able to tolerate anymore.

She said, in front of Carlos, she said, I don't want him anymore? Yes. I don't want him anymore. Crushing words, said the defense, for a boy who had been rejected before. After calling only one witness, the defense rested. Carlos chose not to testify. So each side now made its final arguments. Members of the jury, there is no doubt that the defendant in this case

killed his mother premeditatedly, putting the axe in her head. If he'd planned it, he'd have disconnected the cameras, gotten rid of the cameras, and gotten rid of the phone before. Those were the actions of somebody who had acted without thinking, was panicking, not somebody who was planning and premeditated. After three days of testimony, Carlos' future was in the hands of the jury. It took them less than 90 minutes. We, the jury, find the defendant is guilty of murder in the first degree as charged in the indictment.

Guilty of premeditated murder. It's also incomprehensible. It begs an answer to the question, why? The only person who can answer that is Carlos himself. Let me show you a chair. Come on this way. And he agreed to sit down and tell us what really happened in a jailhouse interview. Why do you think it happened?

Why couldn't you get past that day? Every day I ask myself that question. Just make it through the next day. But I made the conscious decision to kill my mother. Two months after Carlos was convicted, he was back in court for sentencing. And when Judge Richard Howard made his ruling, he didn't hold back. You see the size of this thing? This was buried in her skull up to the hill. It is the ruling of this court that the defendant to be sentenced to life imprisonment

without the possibility of parole. There is, though, one caveat. Because Carlos was a minor at the time of the homicide, his sentence will be eligible for review by a judge in 2044. By then, he'll be 42 years old. Carlos addressed the court and spoke directly to his mom as though she were in the room. Words can't describe how I feel right now and how much I miss you and how sorry I am for what I've done. I love you so much.

He loved her, yet he killed her. What was that? There were so many unanswered questions. Well, now you're going to hear the story in Carlos' own words. Carlos, my name is Dennis from Dateline. We sat down with him, dressed in jailhouse orange, to try to get inside his head. He said early on he and his mom got along well.

Things were great, actually. You know, things were fun. That is, until his younger brother Angel entered the picture and accused his mom of child abuse. That was tough for me because they actually came to the house and arrested her in front of me. I actually saw it happen, and that, to me, was scary. At the time of allegations of child abuse, you backed up your mother's position. She didn't do this kind of thing to me.

Correct. There's no hands-on. There's no psychological abuse. Have you changed that? Are you now saying that your mother did abuse you? Yes. And a lot of people want to take the side of, no, it didn't happen. You did. What would you do, man? What would you do if you were adopted into somewhere, taken out of one home and put into another? This is all you know. And then that threat of being taken out at home again for a second time, being taken, ripped out from your family. Eventually, he was allowed to move back home. Denise was cleared of any wrongdoing, but Carlos said things weren't the same. Things got a little bit more strict and a little bit distant. You know, my mother and I, we were close.

We were tight. You're saying were. Past tense? Yeah, we started falling off a little bit. The connection we really had just wasn't... I didn't really feel that anymore. She's opened up her heart and her bank accounts and her household to raise you, give you whatever you wanted, put you on the best road.

Until it was time to give back. Until it was time to give back. Time to give back, as in help pay the bills, said Carlos. He claimed as he got older, his mom expected him to contribute money to the household. Their relationship only worsened when he started abusing drugs and alcohol. He said when they fought, his mom's words turned from anger to rejection. I don't love you. She never adopted you. She regretted adopting you?

Her exact words were, if I didn't adopt you, you would still be on the streets. So a young man you owe me. Yeah, and she definitely made it clear, very clear how much she spent on me. Those alleged words of rejection came up again, said Carlos, on the car ride home from the funeral on the day of the murder. Well, at first it was, you know, why the heck are you not going to university, man? I paid for your college, your disappointment to me. And then it got to the same typical, should have never adopted you, you would have still been on the street,

you would have never had the opportunity that I would have given you. Those are kind of harsh words, huh? I don't take those words kindly, no. Carlos said later that afternoon he went outside to do some yard work, said he had to chop down a tree. He got out the axe and started to sharpen it. I started thinking about, you know, everything my mom and I talked about in the car. You're not worth anything. You're a disappointment.

You know, these words that she has told me over time that are all accumulating and just kind of built up in one day. Hit a boil? Went to the tree. Never actually ended up chopping the tree. So the axe is in your hand and you're headed back to the tree. Never actually ended up chopping the tree. So the axe is in your hand and you're headed back to the house. What's in your mind? I was going to walk inside and just get a cup of water and come back out.

But it ended up not working out that way. Did you go to your mom's bedroom? She's asleep? What do you do, Carlos? I swing the axe. Drove the axe into her head. Yeah. I didn't look.

Tried to turn away from it. As soon as I opened my eyes, I looked. Kind of like freak out. And I hear attempts of breathing. There's your mom in her bed, gasping, making noises, axes in her head. What is going on with you, Carlos? Um, telling my mom I can get help. Carlos is a little late for that, huh?

Yeah. How could she do anything that was so repellent to you that you would go to get the axe and kill her? There really is no excuse for it. There's no reason I should have done that. When people look, they don't see remorse. You know, you're talking it, but they're not seeing anything deep there. You know what they mean? Yes. I have a very hard time being emotional. In private, I will shed a tear. Were you crying for yourself or for what you'd done? For both.

Because there's poor me and poor mom, right? There's a point where you take responsibility. People are still looking for you to say, I am as sorry as I can be that I killed my mother in the way I did. I am very deeply and truly sorry for what I did. I did something very heinous and very unimaginable. I miss her. I love her. And I wish I could take things back, but I can't because I did that.

I made that choice. Do you accept that you should be incarcerated? Yes. You don't have a problem with that? No. None whatsoever. You take a life, you owe a life. Two lives destroyed, but so many more changed forever. Consider Amy, Denise's lake sister.

She and Denise had plans to grow old together. They used to meet by the lake and talk about their lives. Amy still comes down here from time to time to reflect and think about her sweet lost friend Denise. How do you want Denise to be remembered? She was a beautiful person inside and out. Very caring, compassionate, fun, generous. She was a good friend, a good big sister. A woman in the end great-hearted enough to reach out and adopt two children in desperate circumstances. In the early years, it seemed such an inspiring family story. Denise and her golden boy.

Who could have seen the ending? 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.