Dateline NBC - Mystery at Bootleggers Cove

Episode Date: December 15, 2021

When a young woman disappears in Alaska, police look at two brothers as suspects, but would anyone be able to breach their loyalty and find the truth? Keith Morrison reports in this Dateline classic. Originally aired on NBC on May 26, 2008.

I would tuck him into bed and he'd ask me every night, you know, did you find Bethany? And I'd say, no, buddy, I didn't find her today, but I'm going to find her. Little boys have a way of believing their fathers can do anything. Of course, Glenn Klinkhart's little boy had no idea how or why his question, the question, had come to torment his father. Though, the beginning of the whole strange business didn't seem so important that first night, May 4, 2003. It was Sunday evening, sitting at home with the family, I get the phone call from my sergeant. He basically says, oh, we've got a missing girl down at Bootlegger's Cove, and I'm like, okay.

Just about like any other missing persons report, and there are, God knows, lots of those, in Anchorage, Alaska. And told my wife I'll be right back. She's probably just out with her friends. Plinkard is a police detective, experience that long since taught him that most often people who are reported missing have chosen to disappear. How could he know, driving through town to check on this missing young woman, that she was about to tear open an old wound, never fully healed, even after 22 years? That was something that I can't make any amends for, I can't fix. And yet, along comes Bethany. Bethany Carrera, that was her name, the missing woman.

21 years old, bright, fun-loving, all Alaskan. Bethany, flex! They raise them tough in the heart of Alaska, they have to. Winters are long, cold, and dark. Many people still subsist mostly on what they hunt or fish. A natural life. When we first got here, electricity and water was not a popular thing. So you were hauling water and chopping wood and kerosene lamps.

Billy and Linda Carrera moved to the pioneer town of Talkeetna from Massachusetts in the 70s. The town bursts with cruisers and climbers in the summer months. Talkeetna is the launching off point to the one constant in life here, Mount McKinley, the tallest peak in North America. The Carreras raised two sons and two daughters in a log house Billy built with his own hands. And by the pond, Linda homeschooled them all. Let them know they could do anything. I don't think I realized it until I moved away from here.

And people would be like, you can't do that. That's a guy's job. I think you learn to do a lot, a lot on your own. Havala Carreras' big sister, Bethany, was a pistol. Her father, Billy, remembers a story about that. He was showing his son, Jamin, how a mousetrap works by sticking his fingers in one. Didn't realize that a six-year-old Bethany was watching from around the corner when he teased Jamin about giving it a try. Bethany comes running around the corner and says,

I will, I will, and she sticks her finger right in there and it slaps her finger. And Jamin looks at her and says, Beth, does it hurt? And she goes, no. You all like that? You all sort of stick your fingers into things? No, not like that. Bethany grew up fishing, kayaking, mountain climbing, even playing soccer and hockey on the boys' teams. It was tough sometimes, me and her mom. When you see her playing hockey with the boys. Was she a tomboy? Oh, yeah. Locals joke that in Alaska, the men are men, and the women are, too.

But rugged self-sufficiency is a good thing. People respected Bethany. And then came that day, the day so momentous in the life of every parent, every child, when it was time, in her case, to leave this bit of cloistered paradise in the lee of Mount McKinley and go off to college in Anchorage. And then what happened four days later? Shook the earth. In the spring of 2003, Bethany rented an apartment on M Street

in Bootlegger's Cove, a neighborhood right in the water in downtown Anchorage. It was really a nice place. She had arranged her college classes. She was preparing to study medicine. She landed a part-time job cleaning apartments in the complex where she lived. And thus the stage was set for all the days to follow. It was four days after she moved in a Saturday.

Bethany failed to pick up her brother Jamin from the Anchorage airport, even though she'd promised to be there. That was odd. It was something that was unlike Bethany, not to show up. Linda told Jamin, don't worry. She and Bethany had made a plan to meet the next morning and shop for furniture. Sunday, Linda drove to Anchorage. She knocked on Bethany's door.

No answer. The door was left unlocked, which kind of surprised me. Her bike was in the room, so I thought, well, then she must be jogging. So we waited around for a while, and then I started getting a little nervous. She tried to stay calm, went to the garage sale she and Bethany had planned to visit, couldn't focus, went back to the apartment. Still no Bethany. And so I finally went to the police, and they told me that this in-person was usually at the bottom of the list and that she's probably just this and that. I said well I thought all that too but this is not like my daughter. Linda called Billy back in Talkeetna and she said you need to

come to Anchorage. Bethany's missing and I'm of course I'm just in shock. What do you mean? Detective Klinkart arrived at Bethany's apartment Sunday evening. He did not tell Linda he was actually a member of the homicide unit. Klinkart went inside. Her bed hadn't been made. There was a book that had been turned over. Her purse is still hanging in the closet. Her cell phone is sitting on the counter. Kids don't leave their cell phones.

No, no, no. Everything told me that this was an apartment that she had been in, and she just stepped out, and she had every intention of coming right back. But outside was something truly odd. The building right next door had been destroyed in a fire that very morning. Ruled an accident, an electrical fire, but still... When I smell that smell, it definitely makes me suspicious, simply because of my history. That's a smell that you never, ever forget.

Because of my history, did he say? Oh yes, he did. That smell, the look of that burned building cut through his defenses, opened up the old wound. The awful memory flooded his brain. That fire, years ago, that destroyed a part of him, his sister so liked Bethany. And where was he then for her? He shook it off, went to double check the cause of the fire, got some experts in to take a look. I said, well, what do you think? And they looked at me and said, this isn't arson. The minute they said that, I mean, the hair on the back of my neck just stood up. Arson?

Klinkard knew painfully well from personal experience that people trying to destroy evidence quite often burn things down. What there was no evidence of at all was Bethany. We had a burned out building where we didn't have forensics. I had her apartment where I had no forensics. I had nothing. And then for some reason, maybe the fresh turmoil over that old memory, he went to Bethany's parents and made a promise.

He told them he would find her. Rash, perhaps, since already he sensed the chances of finding her alive were slim they literally just said we're gonna give you our daughter please please find her Havala Carrera was far away in South Africa doing volunteer work when her mother called. Bethany? Missing? No, couldn't be. I don't think it even hit me. I didn't even come home right away. I just thought, I'll wait it out. She'll show up in a couple weeks.

And when she returned and Bethany was still missing, it made Havala angry if anybody suggested her sister might not come back at all. I just thought, she has so much potential, so much life left, so much to offer to others, you know? It can't be over yet. And back in Anchorage, it was as if the whole city had decided that same thing. They came in the hundreds from the city, from Talkeetna especially, to search for Bethany.

Don't leave any stones unturned. Detective Klinkart, meanwhile, in his particular way, was looking too. First, he had to eliminate those closest to Bethany, her boyfriend and her family. They were all quickly ruled out as suspects. But what about that fire next door? Was Bethany's disappearance connected somehow? Of course it was. What happened in his own life screamed it had to be connected.

The burned building, it turned out, was part of the same complex as Bethany's apartment. And hadn't Bethany just been hired to clean and show apartments? So immediately the detective in me is going showing apartments. Ooh, well, now we've got all kinds of potential suspects. Maybe the landlord and Bethany's new boss could help. Bethany, it turned out, had told her boyfriend that the man, his name was Mike Lawson, called her shortly before she disappeared to set up a training session. So Klinkhart went to see Mr. Lawson and recorded the conversation. Hi, Mr. Lawson? Yes, hi, I'm Detective Klinkhart. Can you see me? He was very cool, very calm.

He indicated that, yes, he had talked to Bethany, that he had called her. It was about 8 o'clock Saturday morning. Lawson told Klinkhart he had simply returned Bethany's call, but he said he had not arranged to teach Bethany how to show apartments that day or any other. In fact, Lawson told Klinkart, she doesn't show apartments. I do. There's no plan. We weren't going to meet. It was about some keys and she said she got them fixed. Lawson's brother, Bob, lived with Mike and he was there too. His brother, very quiet gentleman. But at one point I'm talking with Mike, and Bob kind of interrupts for a moment and kind of starts to say where he was.

Now that was curious. The Lawson brothers told Detective Klinkhart they hadn't seen Bethany the day she disappeared, but their manner seemed strained. They had alibis, however. Said they spent all day at home together watching NASCAR on television, then went out drinking that night with friends. And that was that. And yet, Klinkhart's antenna was picking up something.

He pressed Mike Lawson for more. I wanted to know what he thought about her, not just what he saw. And I'll never forget, he said, nice girl, very nice girl. I was a parent. God bless you. I went to college. Didn't go off. Mike told Klinkhart he was a father himself, had two grown children.

So imagine what Klinkhart thought a few days later, when one of Mike's co-workers, a man named Franco, told Klinkhart he was disturbed by the way Mike talked about Bethany in the days after her disappearance. His words, he says, that f***ing b***h has given me so many problems. And I just was in disbelief. I just couldn't believe that he'd say something like that

about somebody that had disappeared. On top of that, said Franco, Mike's fourth wife had just left him, and he'd been talking openly about taking it out on other women. He met some girl in a bar, and he called her a bar whore, and he told me that he had basically took his frustrations out on her. He took all his madness out on her, and I asked him, so what do you mean by that? And his response was, basically I did her at the same time I was on her. And I asked him, so what do you mean by that? And his response was,

basically, I did her at the same time while I was beating her. In fact, it was because Franco found Mike's behavior so strange that he called Klinkart, who showed up at their job site with more questions. And while he was there, Klinkart peered through the windows into the dirty, messy interior of Mike Lawson's car for any sign that Bethany had been inside. He needed a search warrant to do any more than that. So Klinkart left to get one. And what did Mike do then? He was walking around his car, searching his own vehicle, just like they did.

Franco said Mike told him he needed a couple of days off to find a lawyer to take care of some things. And when he returned? It was raining, pouring down rain. He pulled up on the job, which is all muddy, dirty, and it was completely detailed, spotless. His car, it looked brand new. It had been scrubbed. Anything that would have been there was gone? Completely gone. I got nothing out of that car. Well, now that was certainly suspicious. Remember, Mike said he was home watching television the day Bethany disappeared. But was he? Klinkard looked up

Lawson's cell phone records, which told him that just about the time Bethany is believed to have disappeared, there was a flurry of calls from Mike Lawson's cell phone. These calls were made from his cell phone to his own house. The house he said he was in all day. To the house he said he was in all day. It seemed Mike was desperately trying to reach his brother Bob at their house across town. And where was Mike when he made those calls? Detective Klinkar checked cell tower records and found his phone was down on M Street making a flurry of calls back to the house. M Street, where Bethany's apartment is.

There's a two-minute conversation between Mike Lawson's cell phone and his brother's cell phone down in South Anchorage. And that two-minute conversation was the one thing I had that told me that there was something going on and that these brothers, they both knew. If I could figure out what that conversation was about, I could find Bethany. The cell tower records told Klinkart that Mike Lawson's cell phone went back to the Lawsons' home for a while and then traveled 45 miles north and dropped off the radar for three hours. Where did he go? Where can you go? This is Alaska.

You drive two hours out and two hours back, you've covered a lot of ground. Klinkard's gut told him that wherever it was Mike had gone, Bob would have gone too. But it also told him that neither brother would ever tell on the other. If no one talked, how would he ever find Bethany? It became pretty clear by the fall that here we had these two guys right in our sights, but we had nowhere to go. Three seasons came and went in Talkeetna, Alaska. Winter settled in. But for all the looking, there was still no sign of Bethany Carrera.

Her younger sister, Havilah, had kept the hope alive. But by that cold, dark winter, she'd lost it herself. I remember the day it finally hit me, and it was like I was, I just kind of woke up at like six in the morning, couldn't sleep anymore, and was cleaning the bathroom downstairs, and it just like, I just broke into tears. I just knew she wasn't coming back. Detective Klinkard, meanwhile, was stuck. Nine months and still no sign of Bethany. I don't have a homicide. I don't have a body. I don't have a crime scene.

But he couldn't just walk away. Wasn't that how he failed his own sister all those years before? Wasn't that why the guilt nagged him so? His investigation kept coming back to the Lawson brothers. Klinkard knew Mike and Bob were exceptionally close. So close their relationship endured an affair between Bob and Mike's third wife. When Bethany disappeared, Mike and Bob lived together, owned a business together. Mike was the talker. He was the slick guy.

But he wasn't a get-your-hands-dirty, get-in-the-trenches-and-work-hard. That was Bob. Bob was the guy that could get stuff done. They were kind of a yin to a yang. Detective Klinkard was certain Mike and Bob Lawson knew something about Bethany's disappearance. But Mike quit talking to police altogether, so Klinkard got Bob alone and asked him some questions on videotape. Do you believe that your brother's involved in the arson or Bethany's disappearance? I really don't. I just, gut deep down, true blue from my heart, I really don't think Mike's involved.

Really? Klinkart felt sure Bob was lying to protect his brother. He continued to press Bob for more. Here's the other thing that we need to make sure that you wouldn't get involved in this, even for your brother. No way. If my brother came home and told me he did something like that, I'd tell you. I'm not going to jail for anybody. I'll tell you that flat out.

Again and again, Bob told Klinkhart he knew nothing about Bethany's disappearance. How could he pry these two brothers apart? And then, a very useful discovery. Mike had a criminal record, a fact the brothers had lied about when they applied for a business loan. Klinkart told the FBI, which was only too happy, to file federal fraud charges. Both men were arrested and faced time in jail.

Would that encourage Bob to talk? I got a missing girl, and I need Bob to start thinking that I'm serious. If he won't do the right thing, maybe I can make him do the right thing. So let's arrest him. Let's put him in jail, which is exactly what we did.

Bob had a choice. Tell what he knew about Bethany's disappearance and go free, or remain in jail on those federal charges. His attorney, Sidney Billingsley, came to negotiate a deal and could see the toll this was taking on him. He had aged by several years. I mean, he was a different man. Whatever this was had weighed heavily on him. And he said that. I mean, it was killing him to do this, to cover up for his brother. That's when Bob finally cracked and told

Detective Klinkart he received a panicked phone call from his brother the morning Bethany disappeared nine months earlier. He said, I'm in trouble. And I think I said, well, what the hell or whatever. He said, I shot somebody. There's a stubborn streak that runs through the best and the worst who make Alaska home.

For nine months, the Carrera family waited patiently for police to find Bethany. And for nine long months, Bob Lawson denied he knew anything about the disappearance of Bethany Carrera. Until this. Mike called you that morning and he said he woke you up. But remember, Bob had made a deal. Tell Detective Klinkard about that frantic two-minute phone call from Mike the morning Bethany disappeared. Or join his brother Mike in prison on those fraud charges. And so now, finally, Bob started talking.

He said, I need you to help me. Klinkard pressed for detail, and Bob told him Mike asked him to come to the duplex and bring plastic and duct tape. Bob knew then, he said, that whoever Mike shot was dead and refused to help him. I just was over and over, how the f*** could you? How the hell? What the hell? I can't believe it. I think at some point he wound up saying, well, I'll just take care of it. Bob said Mike didn't go into detail, just said there was a struggle and the gun went off. I remember drilling him over and over like, you know,

what the hell's wrong with you? Yeah, I can't believe this. What was his answer? He hated women. He was pissed at women. Now Klinkard asked the question that would cut through Bob's defenses. Bob said Mike told him he had left a body in the woods. So you think that she was just left out there undressed? No.

Do you think he covered her up? Did he mention it? I don't know. Did he take any shindig? He said he put some leaves on her or something. And just left her out there? Yeah. Okay. Bob?

Were you there? No. But remember, Klinkhart believed, based on cell phone records, that the two men were together that day. And so he tried to tap into Bob's conscience. I'm going to be talking to the family and I'd like to be able to help them. And that's when Bob finally revealed he'd done much more than just talk with his brother that day. I was there. Okay. That's okay. Bob, exhausted,

agreed to come back in a few days. Detective Klinkart knew Bob had struggled with alcohol, drugs, and depression, and that revealing his brother's secret would torment him. I just want to know that you're going to be okay tonight? I'm fine. And five days later, Bob was back at the police station, ready to tell his whole story. Someday when I'm eulogized, all I want somebody to say is I stood up and did the right thing. I always try to do the right thing.

He said that awful day began with Mike's call for help, and when Bob arrived at the duplex, Mike appeared to be high on cocaine. And in the bedroom, slumped against a wall, Bob saw a girl. Bob, is this the girl whose body was in the bedroom that day? Yes. I'm sorry. No, no, no.

It is the first information that I truly now know from somebody's mouth, from Bob, from somebody who's there, that Bethany's dead. And I just remember thinking, Jesus, and I said something like, what have you gotten me into here? I said, if I was smart, I'd walk right now. And I didn't. What did your brother say to that? Nothing. He didn't say anything? He said, well, at some point during this thing, he said,

it's not your fault. He said, I did it. And he said, I'm sorry I got you into this. Bob said there was a broken shell necklace on the floor. He and Mike rolled it up in plastic along with Bethany's body and then put her in the back of Mike's SUV. Bob cleaned up the scene, patched a hole in the wall where it looked like Bethany's head had hit it. And then the two men drove toward Fairbanks, 360 miles north, Bob said, where Mike knew a good place to hide a body. But by the time they passed Elkietna, Bob was getting very nervous. I'm thinking every minute we go with her in there, there's a chance of...

And it's flu that happens. You have a flat tire, somebody hits you. I'm thinking, let's just get rid of her somewhere. So they pulled off at milepost 129 and dumped Bethany's body in the woods near a gravel pit. Then the brothers returned to the duplex at night and... Mike said we got to burn the place. Bob told Klinghart Mike drove

and Bob lit the fire. Then they met up with friends and spent the night drinking. Bob seemed relieved to have finally shared his secret. You think you made the right decision? Yeah. Okay. It still hurts. I still kind of feel like a rat.

Why? Maybe because it's my brother. So it was. Brothers with a bond so strong, Bob had once been forgiven for having an affair with Mike's third wife. Klinkhart got on the phone to another family, Billy and Linda Carrera. He said, I think you need to stop by and talk to us. And I'm like, oh, what is it? He said, just stop by and I want to say hello. And I knew right away.

Even though we kind of expect it, you really don't expect it, and it was really hard. There's always a hope in a mom that there could be some kind of mistake. Of all the times I've had to tell people that their loved one is dead and not coming back, it was the one that was probably the hardest on me. Why that one?

I got to know this family, and I watched that hope. I watched them, you know, have that hope and that faith that she was going to come home and that I was going to bring her home and that it was going to be okay because she was a fighter. She was a tough girl. She was going to make it. And I had to tell them that that hope was no more. Harder still because with the investigation still open and Bethany out there somewhere

The Carreras couldn't tell even their closest friends their daughter was dead And Detective Klinkhart couldn't tell them everything he knew either They asked me, how do you know? And I just said, I can't tell you Part of Bob's deal was a promise to show investigators exactly where he and Mike put Bethany's body And to be fair, he did try, but... It's February. This is mile 129 of the wilderness of Alaska. There's six feet of snow at this area. So now they needed to wait until spring. And Billy, deeply religious, struggled with rage against the man who had done this thing. I just wanted to just

cut this guy up like I would a train kill moose. And I've done enough of those. Oh, but this wasn't over. Even though Detective Klinkhart believed Bob's story that Mike killed Bethany, he still didn't have hard evidence to back it up. Bob would have to work harder to give up his brother. But of course, as everybody knows, a brother's betrayals don't tend to end well. We didn't know where she was and what happened, why or how she was gone. That was something that chewed on me for a year. A year had passed since Bethany Carrera was murdered in Anchorage, Alaska.

It was one thing what he did to my daughter, but what it's doing to affect the rest of my children was something that was ongoing. But because Detective Klinkhart's evidence against Mike Lawson was not complete, and because he couldn't find Bethany's body, her family and their grief could only guess. May 1st, 2004 was unusually hot in Alaska, and Bethany's parents, preoccupied by their year of troubles, were talked by their friends into a raft and went drifting down the river, dodging ice flows, feeling like kids again for a little while. Life seemed almost good. And then two days later, there was news.

The date was May 3rd, an anniversary. It was a year to the day since Bethany disappeared. Spring had arrived. The snow had all but melted away. And that afternoon, Detective Klinkard set out for the gravel pit where Bob Lawson told him they'd find her. We drove up and we went into that gravel pit and I could see the snow. It was undisturbed. Nobody else had been there. My heart starts racing. I'm thinking to myself,

my God, this is it. Bob was telling the truth. This is it. We are been there. My heart starts racing. I'm thinking to myself, my God, this is it. Bob was telling the truth. This is it. We are almost there. At first, nothing. And then a flash of blue, a fleece jacket. And? I find some puka shells.

The necklace? The necklace. There's only one person who I'm looking for that has puka shells. Hawaiian shells from a necklace Bethany was given three days before she disappeared in the middle of the Alaskan woods. There were bones, too, and clumps of hair. A year of exposure to weather and wild animals left little of Bethany to find. And then Klinkhart got in his car and went to see Bethany's parents.

And I find it a miracle that a year to the day, they found Bethany. For a year now, Detective Klinkhart's 5-year-old son had been asking about Bethany too, asking the way a boy asks, who thinks his father can do anything. Klinkhart drove to his son's school playground, told him he'd found Bethany in the woods.

And then he said, where is she? And I said, well, I took her home to her mom and dad. And he kind of looked at me and smiled and he said, good job, dad. That's all he needed. He just needed to know that I found her and brought her home to her mom and dad. There's a lot more in that for you, though. Oh, yeah. That day you found her wasn't just the first anniversary of her death It was another anniversary, too Yeah, May 3rd, my sister's birthday His sister, Dawn

It was 1981 Glenn had gone with his family to the Kenai Peninsula for Easter Dawn, 16 years old, was granted permission to stay home alone. She didn't tell her parents she'd planned a party. Glenn was 15 at the time. He could have said something, but he didn't. I knew my sister was going to have a party. I was always the one to kind of hang around,

make sure everybody got where they were going, make sure everybody got home okay. The grown-up for your big sister? Yeah. But you weren't that weak. I wasn't there. It was Easter morning when the call came through to Kenai, where the family was. There had been a fire in our house.

I later learned, unfortunately, on the radio, that my sister was murdered and she was dead. You heard this on the radio? On the radio that my sister was murdered and she was dead. And... You heard this on the radio? On the radio. It was one of the party goers. He'd returned after the others left. He'd sexually assaulted Dawn.

He'd tortured her and then set her and the house on fire. He was arrested a few days later. I spent a lot of time wondering, you know, what if I'd been there? Could I have stopped him? Would he have even come back if he had known I was there? And so for a very long time, I kind of put that away. I put that in a box. I put her away.

I put May 3rd away. And I just kind of went on with my life. And so now, solving Bethany's murder had become far more than just any other case. If Klinkart could bring Bethany's killer to justice, maybe he'd also fix what was still broken in him. But in spite of Bob Lawson's statements and having found Bethany's remains, Detective Klinkart still didn't have enough evidence to charge his brother Mike with murder. He needed more and knew he could only get it with

Bob's help. So he tried to convince Bob, said he had to do it to save himself. Why? Because in the end, said Klinkhart, Mike would point the finger at Bob and say he killed Bethany. I told Bob, I said, you know, you may not believe me right now, but I'll tell you right now, when this all comes down, you know who he's going to blame? And he looked at me and he said, no, he said, he's going to blame you. And you can just see the wheels were turning. He didn't want to believe that. And that's when Bob finally agreed to cooperate fully and help police gather the physical evidence they needed to charge Mike in Bethany's murder. I gotta tell you, it's the hardest thing I've ever done in my life.

Blood, as Bob Lawson's brother Mike had amply demonstrated, is thicker than water. Mike had forgiven his brother for sleeping with his wife. But then, Bob had certainly returned the favor, helping Mike dump the body of a young woman and covering up the crime. Bob had guarded their secret for nine long months before turning on his brother. A decision made even more difficult because he knew Mike was unstable and had attempted suicide. I'm going to be honest with you, I said, Mike, if you're going to do it, I'm going to do

it too. I said, I'll do it. If you go, I'm going to go. In his suicide note, Mike told Bob he was, quote, the best of brother one could want. And he wrote to Glenn Klinkhart, the detective who'd been after him from the start. He wrote this, I did nothing wrong. Now find the real person who had something to do with Bethany.

To use my brother to get to me was about as low as one could go. Was it? By the time Detective Klinkhart went to see Mike in jail some months later, Bob had decided love for brother had its limits, and he'd given police enough evidence for an arrest. Well, I got some bad news for you. You're being charged. Let me be specific so you know, okay?

About Bethany. And Mike's response was an admission, but also an apparent effort to minimize what he had done to put the Carrera family through it. I don't want that. I'm a father boy. I'm a father. I did do this to somebody. It was an accident. Oh, yes.

Back at home in their shared house, Bob, the brother who turned on Mike, behaved as if a weight had been lifted. His attorney, Sidney Billingsley. Seemed relieved, focused, happy to be talking to a counselor, happy to be back with his friends, you know, having a somewhat normal life. He wrote an apology. It was printed in the newspaper. He asked if he could meet Bethany's family in person. I wish I would have met with him. Because I think if we would have met with him, we would have told him that we forgave him,

and I think it would have been easier on him. She wishes they had met him? They were waiting. The trial was coming. Bob would be the key witness against his brother. If that's what I've got to do, somebody's got to tell the story. If that has to be me, I will. Okay. You can't be bad got to do, somebody's got to tell the story. If that has to be me, I will.

Okay. You can't be bad enough to do it. But as the trial drew closer, Bob began to brood about his betrayal and about what he'd helped his brother do. Bob was a man who had done a very bad thing for his brother, and that tortured him. For the last 20 years, it was them together, inseparable brothers. He had basically turned his brother in for his own salvation, and those two things just bothered him.

Bothered him more than anyone knew. Until the day Detective Klinkhart called Bob's attorney was stunning news. He said he killed himself. He left a suicide note in which he apologized to his family and then wrote, Klinkhart, I'm not going to testify against my brother. For the prosecution, Bob's death was an absolute disaster. The legal rule is crystal clear. All that devastating material Detective Klinkhart had recorded with Bob on videotape

had suddenly become inadmissible in court. Bob, is this the girl whose body was in your bedroom that day? Yes. Why? Well, if Bob couldn't be cross-examined, then the videotape could not be played for the jury at all. So now the question, without Bob to tell his story, did they have a case at all?

I just thought, it's all just going to come apart. It's all game over. There was one crucial piece of evidence Bob left behind, something that was now more important than ever. I really have hope that justice will be done, you know, and I pray that I can handle it if it's not. Linda Carrera had been waiting a long time for justice as the system ground slowly toward trial. More than four years had passed since Bethany went missing. Mike Lawson, Bethany's landlord, had been charged with kidnapping, murder, arson, and tampering with evidence.

But the key witness against him, his brother Bob, was dead. And Detective Klinkhart's prediction that Mike would turn on Bob now seemed to be coming true. My client is innocent. He didn't do the murder. We know who did it. Bob Lawson did it. Would Mike go to trial with that claim? And if he did, could the prosecution counter it? Without Bob to testify, the case against Mike was much weaker.

It was up to Prosecutor Sharon Marshall to make the best possible case with what she had left. Bethany Carrera got exactly four days in that apartment. Because on May 3rd of 2003, Michael Lawson, the manager of those apartments, murdered Bethany Carrere. Detective Klinkard sat second chair at the prosecution table, ready to help the prosecutor tell the jury their version of what happened that Saturday morning. That Mike Lawson lured Bethany to a vacant apartment, perhaps to sexually assault her, then shot her as she fought to escape. Told them Mike dumped her body miles away with his brother's help

and then burned down the building where he killed her. Bethany's boyfriend testified about his last conversation with her the morning she disappeared. She said that Michael had called while she was asleep to arrange some work plans. There was some direct physical evidence of the way Bethany died. A criminologist testified she was shot at close range, less than a foot. As for that fire that started soon after,

remember Bob said he lit the fire the night of Bethany's murder and was baffled that it wasn't reported until shortly before seven o'clock the next morning. ATS Special Agent Lance Hart testified that he thinks the fire Bob said smoldered out, and someone came back and lit another fire not long before it was reported. A newspaper delivery person was passing by the building at 6 47 a.m. just as the fire blew out one of the windows. House is on fire. Smoke billowing out the windows. Shit started. She said she saw a man in a white SUV driving slowly by. Short brunette hair, sunglasses is what I noticed.

And why did you notice that? Because it was still kind of dark out, dawn-like, and I thought it was kind of early for sunglasses. Mike owned a white SUV, and both Mike and Bob had short, dark hair. But Bob, now dead, could not explain a thing. Could the prosecution win the case without him? Well, in fact, the prosecution, though badly damaged by Bob's suicide and the inadmissibility in the videotaped interview with Detective Klincard, still had and was about to use one remarkable piece of evidence, which would show that in a way Bob was still alive, could speak from the grave. Would you be willing to talk to your brother?

And if so, would you be willing to let us tape record that conversation? Sure. Two years before Bob's death, Klinkhart had persuaded Bob to allow him to secretly record a telephone conversation between the two brothers. And unlike Bob's allegations, this was admissible. Because the jury was about to hear Mike himself talk about what he did.

I want to be able to tell you I love you, Mike. I love you too, Bob. Before the call took place, Clinkhart had given Bob tips on how to draw out the most useful information from Mike. And now this recorded conversation was the only thing left of the prosecution's star witness. This shit beat me up, Mike. You know, I've been drinking every night. I go to the bar, I have two shots of Crown to every beer. The recorded conversation took place nearly a year

after Bethany disappeared. By then, Mike knew his brother had spoken with police and was clearly suspicious. You know, they just didn't go away this whole thing ain't going away mike i just need to talk to you i don't know how we can talk about this but i don't want to talk unless i can talk to you stark ass naked in a room where i know you're not wearing a wire and nothing's buffed well i don't know how in the hell that would Mike seemed agitated that Bob kept pressing him to talk about what happened. You sunk me. Don't you get it? You showed where the cat buried the kitty litter. You showed everything.

You're their star pupil. The prosecutor explained that when Mike said, you told him what the cat buried in the kitty litter, he was referring to dumping Bethany's body out in that gravel pit. And, using that tip from Detective Klinkhart, Bob gave his brother an out by minimizing what he'd done, calling it an accident. People are more likely to admit to a lesser offense.

And Bob did, as he was instructed. If something happened there and there was a g***m accident and that thing happened, that's a whole different ****** story. That might not be a life deal, Mike. If that's what the ****** happened... Who is this ****** right now?

I don't believe that story. Well, I do. You tell me that and I'll ****** go to bed for you. You tell me that. I can't. Bob continued to press, and the reluctant Mike shared enough information to implicate himself in Bethany's death. Tell me it was an accident, Mike, and I'll back you any way I can. You know it was an accident. I told you it was an accident.

But there was something that happened before that that you don't know about that I can't go into before she ever showed up. Just give me a name, Mike. Who was there? Me. And who else? Coca-Cola. Prosecutor Marshall explained that in the drug world, Coca-Cola is often code for cocaine. Mike told Bob he feared he'd get the death penalty if investigators knew Bethany was shot while Mike was in possession of illegal drugs. Mike, I'm just trying to f***ing understand.

I haven't been able to talk to you. We never talked about it. Yes, we did. Yeah, we did. We were mum with a f***ing word. Put us in his grave. I was taking it to mine. And then Bob asked a question that seemed to come from somewhere in their shared past. Remember, when Bob arrived at the crime scene, Bethany was naked. Can I ask you one more question? Yeah.

Was there any sex involved? No. And that is not Michael at least in the life. Mike swore on his children's lives he didn't sexually assault Bethany. God, why are you doing this to me? Well, Mike, I'm sorry. I just have to f***ing understand. I swear to God I will hate you for the rest of your life if this is all being recorded. Are you doing this for the people? No, I'm not. You swear on Mom's grave?

Yeah. Say that. I swear. On what? I swear on Mom's grave. The final betrayal. The ultimate oath on Bob's road to suicide. But was the recording Bob's only legacy enough to convict?

Remember, before the trial, Mike's attorney tried to pin the murder on Bob. But now Mike had a new attorney and a new strategy. What happened is exactly what Mike Lawson spoke about in his repeated admissions. In other words, it was an accident, said defense attorney Mike Moberly. Mike Lawson had been cutting cocaine in an empty apartment when Bethany walked in. Moberly said Lawson was startled and accidentally shot her. Claimed the prosecution had no evidence to prove otherwise. It's safe to say that the physical evidence had not panned out for you to develop a cogent theory of

what exactly happened. That's correct. But could it have been an accident? In her rebuttal, prosecutor Marshall reminded the jury Lawson asked Bethany to meet him that morning for job training. She couldn't develop her theory about sexual assault because she didn't have enough evidence and she had to keep secret something she knew of Mike's past. But she could and did remind jurors that Mike's brother Bob arrived at the awful scene and found Bethany naked. When he comes in, she's naked. She's alive, according to Michael Lawson, because he took her clothes off so she won't run. So all this time, you have her sitting there without her clothes on, alive with a bullet in her chest? What, you call your brother? This is an accident? By the time Bob arrived, he said,

Bethany was dead. And the only person who knows for certain what happened inside that apartment before he arrived was Mike Lawson. And he wasn't talking. So what was it? If Mike Lawson intentionally killed Bethany as the prosecution contended, it was first-degree murder. But if it was an accident, as the defense claimed, it could be manslaughter. It's what happened, under what circumstances, why. And that's something that the state's case has not offered you, other than to make leaps of faith that the evidence just does not support.

The prosecutor looked grim. And you just think, how am I going to face this family if this jury comes back and says not guilty. When one day goes into two days, goes into three days, then goes into four days. I probably lost four years of my life, but that's okay. Finally, after four days, they had a verdict. We, the jury, find the defendant, Michael Lawson, guilty of murder in the second degree. Second degree murder. They found him guilty, all right, but on some of the lesser charges. Not first-degree murder, not kidnapping, not arson. Many of the jurors watched Lawson's reaction as the verdict was read.

When first-degree murder was not part of the equation, I seen a sigh of relief on him. And he smiled, like I wanted to get up off the chair and smack him. I thought we'd let the family down. And then, a surprise. The jurors were not finished. We're going to ask your forbearance for one more task. There would be a mini trial to address one more count, being a felon in possession of a gun. The jury wasn't allowed to know anything about Mike Lawson's previous convictions until now. And there's a reason for that. They have to convict him on the evidence that we have. But now, prosecutor Sharon Marshall could finally reveal her secret to the jury

and dropped a bombshell. This ATF agent on Lawson's felony record. In this particular case, was the defendant found guilty? He was. And what was he found guilty of? Two counts of aggravated sexual assault. Lawson had been convicted of rape 18 years before. It was, for some members of the jury, deeply troubling. Now the idea that Bethany may well have been killed during an

attempted sexual assault seemed obvious in a way it hadn't before. When we stood up to walk out for deliberations again, I had tears in my eyes. I was so angry. I was very angry. I was very distraught about the fact that we didn't know, but I feel he wouldn't have gotten as fair of trial if we we had known as fair trial as he did. This time it didn't take four days. It was just five minutes to a verdict. Guilty. And the Carreras were back in the courtroom six months later

to find out what Mike Lawson's future would hold. Mr. Lawson, I sentence you to 99 years. The maximum allowed for second-degree murder, which just happened to be the same as the maximum for first-degree. And thus were the Carreras, save, of course,

the seemingly endless prospect of appeals finally finished. He's an unusual man, is Billy Carrera. He has long since decided to take very seriously his deeply felt religious belief and says he has forgiven the man who killed his daughter.

When I began to look at Mike Lawson as just a human being who made some really bad choices in what thoughts he chose to entertain, then I was able to look at him as not my enemy. Are you fooling yourself? I've asked myself the same question. Am I living in denial? How is it that I don't feel pain from the loss of my daughter? You don't feel pain? I honestly don't feel, you know, pain from the loss of my daughter. And you don't feel pain? I honestly don't.

He'll never see her again, or walk with her down the aisle, or play with her children. And yet... I've just got a lot of good memories of my daughter. So all I can say is that God really does heal the brokenhearted. Perhaps so. Detective Klengard, through Bethany, finally confronted his demons, too. Bethany was born in 1981. My sister died in 1981.

You just can't help but think, you know, maybe sometimes things do come around, and sometimes you're given another chance. And if you're given an opportunity, do you take it? Do you do the best you can? And I hope that when you ask the Carreras that it was good enough. But then we already knew the Carreras, so we knew it was. We did find out what happened to her. People say sometimes, well, how do you feel about that?

And I say, I feel fortunate, because people go years without ever knowing what happened to a. People say sometimes, well, how do you feel about that? And I say, I feel fortunate. Because people go years without ever knowing what happened to a missing child or adult. There was a roll of film still in the camera. Klinkhart found it in Bethany's apartment that first awful day. And on it were the last pictures ever taken of a girl so brave she once stuck her finger in a mous mouse trap just to see what would happen.