Dateline NBC - Raising the Dead

Episode Date: November 25, 2025

In rural Wisconsin, a couple is found stabbed to death at home. Thirty years later, the daughter of one of the original suspects comes forward, reigniting the case. Keith Morrison reports. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Tonight on Dateline. She loved horses. She was a horse girl. Well, he was just, he was a cowboy. You never, ever thought that something like this would touch your life. That somebody would break into your home and kill you. My sister was stabbed. Tim was stabbed. It was pretty much gut-wrenching devastation. The major scene took place inside the house.

What did you see when you got in there? A lot of blood. Probably the worst scene in my entire career. There was some strange going. on before this occurred. Tim's truck was blown up? Is that right? There was an explosion and all of a sudden it was burning. He had gotten at least one threatening letter. The letter scared me. I just said you need to be careful. There were a lot of suspects, a lot of people who might have done it. I thought that's insane. There's been a mistake. In my heart, I know he did not do this. He's an innocent man. Thirty years without an answer. And then finally there is one. It's pretty tough to talk about.

I mean, murder is shocking, but this? Two deaths, three decades, one shattering twist. Murder at the farmhouse. I'm Lester Holt, and this is Dateline. Here's Keith Morrison with Raising the Dead Dead. The morning was gray and solemn. It was Friday the 13th of June, 2025. We are present at Oakwood Cemetery in the city of Waiowiga.

This is the official recording for the court-ordered exhumation. They knew, every one of them knew. It could all turn on this moment, raising the dead to solve the murders. Evidence doesn't lie. Was the man in the grave the killer? Did you hear that he had made statements about getting away with murder? I did. Or would he, now long dead, point to someone else?

He's not a man. He is a monster. It all started on another Friday in tiny Waiowiga, Wisconsin. That was March 20th, 1992. Tanna Togstad and her boyfriend Tim Mumbru were heading for a night out at a bar, Tim's sister, Tina. Their plans were they were going to go watch a band called Sweetwater. Are you coming? This is Tanna's brother, Rick.

They were up there dancing and stuff. They liked to have a noisy good time. Oh, yeah, yeah, they did. Yeah, Tanna and Tim, they enjoyed having fun, yes. And why not? She was 23, he 34, and their love was still new, exuberant. They were on a double date with their friend Jill and her boyfriend. It was elbow to elbow.

Tim and Tanna started dancing country swing, which takes up a lot of room, and it's a very fast-moving dance. Not everyone loved that, as Jill could see, even if Tanna didn't. I said, I might be a good idea. for us to leave. I expected an argument, but she's like, yeah, I think I'm ready to go, too. You don't forget certain moments.

Even now, Jill recalls it fresh, like a wound. She gave me a hug, which was odd. We weren't real, you know, physically affectionate at all. And then she said, you know, will you come over to my house tomorrow morning? When Saturday broke, Jill saw that it had snowed overnight. She didn't feel like going to see Tanna. I talked myself out of going over there. We did that often, you know, I guess broke commitments.

And I thought maybe she would call me later in the day and say, hey, are you going with us tonight? But I never heard from her. All day that Saturday, no one heard from Tana and no one heard from Tim, which was unusual, given Tanna's family lived right next door. And then the following day, Sunday, they couldn't help but notice Tanna and Tim's trucks hadn't moved, and Tanna hadn't fed her horse. And so, they walked over to her farmhouse, went inside.

What they saw could not be erased or undone. I was the detective on call for the weekend, and my weekend was winding down. It was mid-afternoon when Al Craker, then a newly promoted police detective, got the call, go to Tanna's farmhouse. They just said there were people deceased, and I was to head over there. The chief deputy was in route. Oh, boy, that big deal here. Yes.

When I got to the scene, everything was roped off with the do-not-cross sheriff line. Another detective took him inside the house. What did you see when you got in there? A lot of blood. Then he takes me to the bedroom, and that was like there was a war in that room. Tim's body was on the floor. Could you tell what had been done to him? He had a lot of blood on his chest.

He'd been in a hell of a fight, was stabbed 27 times. His throat cut. Tanner's body lay on the bed. Totally exposed with no clothes. and then she had one single piercing to the heart area in the chest. Man. Did you ever seen such a thing before? Never.

Never. In fact, that was probably the worst scene I've ever seen in my entire career of 41 years. Not even Tanna's little dog Scruffy was spared. Scruffy, we believe, was stabbed out by the front door. Did it seem to you like it was done by one person or more than one person? That was tossed back and forth. Could it be one? Could one possibly do that? Whoever entered took him by surprise.

And was very, very angry. Yes. Inside the farmhouse, crime lab techs went about the dismal work as best it could be done in 1992. Blood was collected from various spots. There was semen collected on Tanna, so we believe she was sexually assaulted. They lifted what fingerprints they could,

though perhaps surprising, given that chaotic scene, they didn't get any useful matches. But there was this. The door was taken because we had a bloody palm print. They collected anything that they thought might help in the future in case this case didn't get solved immediately. Just as well, because it did not get solved immediately. Neighbor-eyed neighbor with suspicion.

Are we next? As the families lived and relived their pain, never giving up on justice. I don't give up, no matter what. They were sure they knew who did it. Guilty as hell. He knows that he did it. The evidence was overwhelming. And they were sure they knew who didn't do it.

It's not possible. I was just in disbelief. There's just no way. No way. But of course, that's why we have joy. juries, isn't it? I said, he'll either be found guilty by the 12 in the jury or by God. That Sunday in March, 1992,

amateurs monitoring the crackle of police radios picked up the news that Tanna and Tim had been stabbed today. neighbors lit up the phone lines as they tried to reach the couple's families. Get home as soon as you can. I said, well, what happened? Tana's brother, Rick, was out getting farm supplies when his wife called the store to find him. Just in a panic. She said, Tana's dead, Tim's dead. What happens inside you when, you know, in your stomach and your heart? The pain and the anger and... I guess I was completely distraught.

Tanna's friend, Jill, who, remember, had planned to see Tanna again, hours after they'd all left the bar on Friday night, was working when she got the news from her mom. At first, I thought, well, this has to be some kind of mistake, and I didn't, I was just in shock. Tim's sister Tina had been expecting him to visit that weekend. I can't even explain. how horrific it is to have something that savagely, brutally horrific happened.

She called her brother, Todd. In the phone wrong. It was Tina. She told me they both had been stabbed at death. Meanwhile, Tana's family told investigators about some strange noises they heard from their just a few yards away, night of the murders. Tanna's sister heard a dog barking in the middle of the night. She got up to explore and see what was going on,

and she looked out this window right over here. She saw a pickup truck leaving the residence and it sped off very fast. That was after 4 a.m. on Saturday. The detective figured it could have been the murderer, or murderers, getting away. But why would anyone want to murder this young couple, couple, both from local farming families. Tim remember was 34, Tanna, just 23. She was just a goofball.

She was an absolute goofball. And captivating, said friends Michelle and Tammy from the minute they met her in high school. It was her smile. And it would just light her face up. And you would just see just behind the eyes, oh, there's a little bit of trouble. She loved horses, but also dogs and cats. Cowboy culture. We got along really good. It was just her love of life and her fun personality. Fun, even when getting busted by the cops. We ended up getting underage drinking, but not Tanna,

because she told the cop that she wasn't feeling all that great. And she's like, sucker. You got it, not me. And I'm like, really? When her father died, Tanna moved into his farmhouse. To pay the bills, this being Wisconsin, she worked at a local cheese factory. Boys, her friend said she was cautious,

didn't put up with any BS. For her, I think her night and shining armor would be a cowboy. And around Halloween of 1991, she found him. Tall, slender, great smile, attractive-looking man. If you saw him standing someplace, you would think he came in on a horse. Her cowboy, Tim. All of our family have been rodeo people. We're all really close.

Tim's friends, Carol and Mark. It was good to everybody. Easy going, good with the kids. Tim was the protector when his sister, Tina, was 12 years old. We were hunting, and I had fallen through the ice, and was up to my neck, and he was the first one up there to run up to me and grab my gun and pull me out of that. After a stint in the U.S. Navy,

home, Tim got a job doing maintenance at the local iron foundry. But his passion was rodeo. He would protect the kids by being the clown to distract the bulls so that the bulls wouldn't hurt the kids. It was thanks to Tina that Tim first laid eyes on Tanna. He had been looking through Tina's photos. A picture of Tanna was in those pictures because Tanna was at my baby shower. And he saw her, and he's like, who is she? I need to meet her. Awkward. Tim was still married to his second wife, Colleen. They had a four-year-old son, so Tina said maybe not a good idea. But Tim didn't listen. And anyway, he and Colleen were getting a divorce. It was weeks away from being finalized. Tim, when he set his mind doing

something, he was going to do it. So Tim and Tanna became an item. They rode horses, they went dancing, they fell hard for each other, said Tim's brother-in-law, Mike. He was in love with her. Devoted, apparently, until his last breath. He did everything he could until he couldn't do nothing else. And it was to protect her and to keep her safe. But why them, of all people?

Neither Tanna nor Tim seemed to have any enemies. There was no obvious motive, not from the crime scene anyway. Was there any sign of robbery? Not that we could tell. Once the family was allowed to go in there, once the scene was released, they couldn't pinpoint anything that was taken. So somebody just walked in on the middle of the night as they were in bed? Yes.

In a town like Waiowiga, with fewer than 2,000 people, somebody had to know something. Tana's brother Rick was sure of it. What was in a little town? Well, little town, as they say, everybody knows everybody and everybody's business. Way back at the beginning, soon after that awful Saturday in 1992, investigators already had some solid leads. They knew who they needed to talk to.

He had a temper, and he was into knives. Investigators were pretty sure of it. They'd soon figure out who killed Tim and Tanna. Did the sheriff tell you that he thought it could be solved very quickly? I think they did think it was going to be solved very quickly. As Detective Kregor interviewed family and friends, he learned that there had been signs. terrible signs, that something bad was coming.

Scary stuff. About two months before the murders, Tim's truck was parked in the driveway. Then we heard just the most horrific boom, you could imagine. Something exploded underneath the hood, and his truck caught on fire. And his whole entire truck was engulfed in flames, and it was 20 feet in the air.

Everything that he had from his home was in the back of that truck. And he was in the back of the truck, throwing things off. They were all yelling at him to get out of there, and it's just burned up. Of course, they called the police right away. They couldn't find out if there was something put in there to detonate or what. Nobody knew why or why or who... Right, correct. Then, poison pen letters arrived.

About a month before the murders, one warned Tanna that Tim was a jealous, violent man and that he was using her. Another warned Tim that Tanna was sleeping around. The final threat came just days before the murders. A message scrawled on a bathroom wall at the foundry where Tim worked. Tim Mumboo must die on Friday or something like that. And Friday was the day it happened, right? Friday night into Saturday morning. Yes.

Did you get the sense from these incidents that somebody was targeting, at least Tim and maybe both of them? Yes. But who? I suspected everybody. Anybody that looked at me crossways. And one obvious man to suspect was a guy known as Scooter. Scooter was Tanna's ex-boyfriend. What did you know about Scooter?

He had a temper. Uh-huh. And he was into knives. Tanah's family and friends had stories about Scooter. He could be scary, they told the detective, and violent, too. This is where Scooter punched the wall. This is where Scooter kicked the wall in or broke the door or whatever. He threw a beer bottle through the back window of his truck,

and she was sitting in the passenger's side. It came through the window and just ruptured the window. I don't know if she got hit by the bottle. But I went to see Tana the day after, and she was still picking glass out of her hair. Thing was, investigators learned Scooter was determined that Tanna couldn't leave him. He did not take the breakup well. He'd threatened her. If I can't have her, nobody will.

So we just assumed it was him that he finally did it. He was a good suspect. Yes, he was. He had nobody that could give him an alibi. I interviewed him many times. I was convinced he was our guy. But relationships. If Tanna's ex was getting the third degree,

So was Tim's. In fact, Crager discovered that Tim's not quite ex-wife, Colleen, was the one who'd written those menacing letters to both Tanna and Tim. Was it obvious right at the get-go that it was Colleen? Yes. The divorce was especially bitter because Tim, who'd moved in with his sister, Tina, wanted more access to their four-year-old son, according to family.

The divorce that he was going through was the most wicked divorce. thing I'd ever seen and heard. I needed to remove my baby daughter from the house because of what was being said on both ends of the phone. Did you question Colleen? Yes, but she was a very small, petite gal, and there was no way that she could do this. If she wanted it done, she would have to find somebody

to do it for her. So was it a murder for hire? Certainly there was a motive, possible one anyway. There was a $100,000 life insurance policy. That had to make you think a time or two? Or three or four. They couldn't find the murder weapon, the knife, but they had two viable suspects,

and they didn't stop there. They widened a search and rounded up men who lived in the area who were known in the past to have been violent. One of them was a guy who worked at the foundry where Tim worked. and also lived close to Tannis Farmhouse. His name was Jeff Teal. He was capable of doing it.

He had a record. He carried a knife, but his threats usually were with a gun. Jeez. Nice fella. Yes. A fella investigators learned, who liked to drop her two of the hard stuff. If you ran into him in a bar

or someplace where he's having a bunch of liquid fight, you just stayed away from him. He just always carried a knife and he come off as a very mean hombre. I just remember a lot of talk about violence with him, domestic abuse. Kind of the guy you would think, we've got to look at him for sure. Well, they did. They did look at him for sure. What might his motive have been? Investigators found out that Jeff Teeler had stolen some wire from the foundry.

And Tim had turned him in. What did you think about him as a possible? suspect. With his background and his build and strength, he was certainly a person that we had to go after. Tim and Tana, such a bright young couple, were gone. The whole county seemed in mourning. as their families laid them to rest. All I remember is I could still see her laying there,

and the rest of the whole thing was just... I don't remember any of it, really. I was in shock. Tanna's mom led out such a guttural. It sounded like an animal. It was devastating. She screamed, oh, my Tana. Why my Tana?

That's the worst thing. It was pretty much gut-wrenching devastation. It was like, you don't even know the amount of pain that's involved. In a separate ceremony, Tim was honored as any cowboy would hope to be. There was a team of black horses that was the escort out to the cemetery. And they were the capes and like you'd see like in old movies or something like that. So it was like the old west typeer. thing.

Tim's brother-in-law, Mike, remembers how investigators roamed through the mourners. They videotaped the whole thing, and I understood why. I mean, most time a person does something like this, they may come back and act like nothing's wrong just to see. Did it help? Not much, apparently. This wouldn't be quick and easy after all. But every day, the investigators chipped away at their leads,

and one by one, their list of potential suspects narrowed. This was 1992, remember. It was two years before the O.J. Simpson case made DNA a household word. Back then, Detective Crager and the others could only compare blood types. But that simple test was enough to rule out their very first person of interest, Tanna's ex-boyfriend, Scooter. He did not match. So then I left him alone and moved on. moved on to Tim's ex, Colleen.

The investigators brought her in again and again, trying to suss out whether she hired someone to kill Tim for the insurance money. That was looked at very hard. In fact, I think we even held that up for a while, the payment of it, until we were totally convinced that she probably didn't have anything to do with it. Eventually, investigators would rule her out.

But they kept the... looking at Jeff Teal, that known to be violent character from the foundry. He had left town three years after the murders in 1995, but the next year, in 1996, they got a sample of Teal's blood. That's around the time DNA was becoming an evidence gold standard. They ran a test with Teal's blood. And? Investigators concluded Teal was not the killer either.

Well, they kept at it, but there were. were no arrests, no new suspects. Then in 2008, Mike Sassie took over the case. Sassie, one of the original deputies of the crime scene, was by 2008 an agent with the Wisconsin Division of Criminal Investigation, the DCI. Myself and my partner started to methodically go piece by piece by piece through this investigation, organizing it into the modern age. They dug all the way back to the first days of the investigation looking for leads that back in 1992 didn't look like leads it was granular so to work and it seemed to pay off when in 2012 they found something or rather someone and they pounced on it

I get to a name of Glendon Galker Glendon Gowker was one of the men they'd looked at back in 1992 Linden Gowker then worked for a man named Lane Shields, and he ran a Western store at the time. Why was that an issue? Tim and Tanna bought their cowboy gear in that store, so a kind of connection. Anyway, back in 1992, they interviewed Gowker multiple times,

strapped him into a polygraph at one point. Nothing came of it then. But now? I literally go to Google, and I looked at my partner, and I said, is it Glendon C. Galker? He said, yeah, why? I said, because he's in Oklahoma and he's in custody for a homicide he committed in Oklahoma in 2010. And it was a brutal murder. The case was splayed across the internet. In September of 2010, a 19-year-old man named Ethan Walton drove out

with his girlfriend to meet with Galker at his home outside of Prague, Oklahoma. Galker lived in a trailer home down a dead-end road. Ethan thought, He was there to sell Gouker some land. There was a property deal that was fictitiously put together by Gauker. Instead? Gauker kills him and puts him in 55-gallon drums. He calls the girlfriend into the shed. She comes in, and he sexually assaults her.

She's naked and literally gets herself free. She squeezed through a window to escape. then ran for dear life through a field to the nearest neighbor's place and made it. Galker in hot pursuit shooting off his gun before the police cut up to them. And now Galker was facing the death penalty

for killing the boyfriend. As this hits warp speed, like we might be onto something here. We now have somebody that's in custody for the same situation. That's involved in our case and was a suspect back in 1992. It marries up very similar to

to Montana. It sounds to me like this guy fits the profile of a psychosexual serial assaulter, if not killer. Correct. You think you got something here? Yeah, we think we got something. Absolutely, we do. After the murders, a certain terror descended on Wapokka.

County, Wisconsin. This was a safe community. Tanna never locked her doors. For the longest time, I went through, oh my gosh, is it something that did they go after Tanna and now maybe Michelle's next or I'm next? Yeah. Yeah, that was a definite

fear. Yeah. As long as the case went unsolved, that fear lingered. Now, Agent Sassy and his unit had revived a person of interest, Glendon Galker. As they dug into his time in Wapaka County, they discovered police had interviewed him even before Tim and Tannen's murders

for another crime back in 1990. Glenn and Galker had been a person of interest in a rape in the village of Iola, which is 20, 30 miles from this location. Just your sort of guy who would do this? Yes, he's a guy with a violent demeanor. He was never caught for the rape. Back in 1990, in the days before common use of DNA testing, investigators simply didn't have sufficient evidence to charge him,

and the case went cold. But now, Galker was in jail in Oklahoma, charged with rape and capital murder, and Oklahoma had his DNA. And it matched. No question, Gouker was the rapist. So maybe Galker killed Tim and Tam. kind of want to talk to him right and galker agreed to cooperate but with one very big

condition the death penalty he was facing it'd have to make that go away and after some wrangling they made a deal so we go down and we confront him and i said i know you did this who were involved in the togsted mumbrugh case and he starts shaking he just literally starts shaking i didn't He swore he did not murder Tim and Tanna. So, who did? Galker pointed the finger at this man, Lane Shields, his former boss at that Western shop that Tim and Tanna frequented. Galker listed off all sorts of crimes he said he'd committed at Lane's behest,

anywhere from arson to burying bodies. Galker told them Shields had asked him to murder Tim and Tanna. He asked me, he said, We're going to kill two of them. He said, I don't want him shot. He said, I want him, and quote, slaughtered my cattle. It freaked me out because of my... He insisted he refused the job.

And Gauker said, after the murders, Lane admitted he was responsible. I asked him directly, did you do it? He said, I brought somebody in. When you said, no, he said, I brought somebody in from the outside to do it. Galker offered to take a polygraph to back up his claims. They conducted it the very next day. Regarding the two victims, did you stab either one of them?

He fails questions about did he kill? Sure. Tantogsted and Tim Umbrill. So what was true and what wasn't? The investigators headed back to Wisconsin to try to run down Galker's account. They got nowhere. And so they returned to Oklahoma. And this time, Galker told them a different story.

There's only one thing that I haven't. He admitted he was at Tanna's farmhouse the night of the murders. But he said he didn't stab anybody. He was just the driver. And you're saying you never went in that house? No. I certainly drove. I was not in the house.

It was never in that house. You don't find anything for me in that house. It was Lane who went into the farmhouse, he said. With that guy Lane had hired. I drove. and this guy out there that night. The night of the homicide. I drove.

All right. That's all I did. Who's the other guy? But he brought him from outside. Lane and the unknown third person who he said was an Irish guy committed the homicide. Tell me what's said when they walk out. I don't say anything.

Bull . Are you kidding me? No. tell you the guy that the lame brought, this guy, this is this kind of guy. The guy scared that me. This guy was a predator. What'd you make of his story? Well, obviously the hair stood up on my neck. But could they believe him? The truth and Glenn and Gowker were not well acquainted at all. That was obvious. So, are our chips all in on this poker table? Absolutely not. I mean, he is a con man.

But a lot was writing on this. If there was even a chance his Lane Shield story was true, it had to be resolved one way or the other. Just maybe this admitted murderer, this slippery liar, would help them finally catch

their killer. Murderer, rapist, admitted career criminal, Glendon Galker. It was hardly the sort of man any investigator could take it as word, certainly not Mike Sassy or his partners. It helped, mind you, that Gowker came clean and pleaded guilty to that whole other murder in Oklahoma. But his story claiming that his former boss, Lane Shields, was responsible for the Tim and Tanna murders. Well, it might be true. But they couldn't know without learning more about Lane Shields. And then they caught a break.

We were able to actually draft and go up on a state Title III wiretap on Lane Shields. This has only been done maybe a few times in Wisconsin. You wouldn't be able to get one unless it was a pretty good case. Correct. How to get Lane talking about the murders? Well, get everyone else talking. We beefed the media up out of Green Bay in Madison, and we put billboards up near the crime scene

out on our major highways around there. If you know any information who killed Tim Montana, their pictures were on the billboards. Please call. Now, the thinking went, a nervous lane would want to make sure the men with him at the murder would keep their mouse shut.

So they set up a phone call, Galker to Shields. And of course, unbeknownst to Shields, they listened to every word, full of, what, hope, expectation. Instead, what they got was the nasty, deflating feeling of having been had. They're not saying what you thought they'd say. Right. What we were led to believe they were going to say.

Lane didn't sound worried or threatening or indicate any involvement at all. It was just worthless chit-chat. So what did they say? There were no confessions. There were no admissions. There were no, they're coming after me now. We didn't get what we were looking for. This wasn't the chatter of guilty individuals that you were hearing. Right.

As for the rest of the so-called evidence Galker had provided? We pulled out every investigative, high-end investigative technique that we could, and we didn't get anything that corroborated what Galker was telling us. If that didn't put Galker's account to rest, this did. They searched Lane Shield's property. You come in here, trash my fucking house. They interviewed Lane. He was angry, sure, but more than willing to talk.

I gave you everything when you were here. We've talked back. I agree. To the investigators, the hard-as-nails, Lane came off as up front, even honest. I should have an evidentiary hearing on these people that are putting heat on me because it's not true. I run a fucking business here.

So when he told them he was innocent, they believed him. Hard as they tried, investigators could find nothing incriminating. Agent Sassy walked away knowing Lane was not their guy. As for Galker, it had enough of him. Was there ever any point in the conversations you had with him when you said, Glendon, you're full of it? Yes, and that was it.

All that time and money they'd spent on Galker and his story, their deal to allow him to avoid the death penalty for his own crimes in Oklahoma. It was all for not. They wanted so badly to solve the Tim and Tanna murders and Glendon Galker had simply played them. For more than two and a half decades, Tim and Tanna's families were in the dark about the ups and downs of the investigation.

There were no arrests, no resolutions. It never got easier. It's really stressful. It's very stressful. Rick Todd's. I didn't blame the investigators. He knew how hard they were working. Still,

always seems like right around the anniversary, you know, the newspapers and local TV stations and everybody wanted to know what's going on. And, you know, and then I'd get all nerved up and I'd be hard to live with. And I'd be just, you know, wanting this thing solved and it wasn't getting done fast enough. Tim's older sister, Tina.

There's no closure, you know, and I watched my family suffer from so much unforgiveness and hurt, and that hurt would turn into anger and distrust. I mean, many of us didn't know who might be over our shoulder or why because there was no answers. 2018, Detective Captain Nick Trager of the Wapaka County Sheriff's Office had taken over the case. By then, the world of DNA evidence had opened up.

like a flower. And Traeger wanted to try something new, familiar DNA. That is the now widely accepted method of finding unidentified suspects by searching for their family members in DNA databases and then using family trees to narrow it down. Basically means, okay, not this person, but maybe somebody related to this person. Correct. Say in the same genetic, you know, line. Yeah, so that was the thought process. they submitted that seaman found on Tanna's body to criminal databases and got back nothing they were out of new methods to find their killer out of names

they were rudderless and then a surprise it was April 22 a woman called investigators she was a child at the time of the murder she said but she thought she knew who did it A credible suspect, a suspect she knew all about. 30 years after the crime, she was still carrying this around and she wanted to do something about it. Correct.

She believed she told them that her DNA could finally identify the man who murdered Tim and Tanna. And who was that person? So she turned on her profile and it was like the Christmas tree lit up. Really? Yes. Murder casts its dreadful damage wide, and for a long, long time. Through the years, Tim and Tanna's families never stopped looking for answers. What is it about you, your personality that made you push so hard for all these decades to try to solve this?

Well, I don't give up. Maybe it's just as well. Rick didn't get to know what he was up against as he vowed to get justice for his sister. I just don't stop. I won't stop. I will not stop. We prayed a lot that somebody would come forth

and somebody wouldn't be able to live with themselves. Three decades after those brutal stabbings in Waiago, Wisconsin, the families seemed to get their wish. When a woman called investigators in 2022, her name was Heather. She told the investigators she had heard about those murders when she was just a little girl. And ever since, she'd had this awful feeling that her father had something to do with it. And this got investigators' attention because her father was Jeff Teal. Remember him?

Teal, the known violent offender, was one of the original self. suspects. But why did Heather wait so long? Well, it turned out. She didn't. She told investigators the same thing way back in 2010 when Agent Mike Sassee had the case. Do you remember Heather Teal coming forward? Yes. What did she have to say? She was emotional. She says, I think my dad had something to do with this. And I knew that he was ruled out. That's because three years after the murders back in 1995, Jeff Teal got into an armed standoff with law enforcement and then escaped and skipped town. He didn't end well. He dies by suicide, I believe, in the state of Washington. It's how investigators were able to get his DNA. The sheriff's department and

detectives at that point in time are sent his clothing of when he died. That was blood on the shirt, is that correct? Yes. And that is sent in to a private lab, and he is compared to the seaman left at the crime scene, and he's not a match. In other words, the DNA on his shirt said he didn't do it, and he was cleared. Jeff Teal was buried near his home in Wisconsin, and the suspicion about his involvement in the case was buried with him. But Heather Teal was so sure her father was behind the murders. Thirty years after the crime, she was still carrying this around, and she wanted to do something about it. Correct.

So Captain Trager and his partner went to see, Heather, and her mom, Marie. You've always believed he's involved in this. What made you believe that? Because he did it, and then said, it's funny how you can get away with murder these days. Jeff even saying to Marie, I've gotten away with murder. And his ultimate dream was to kill somebody. He used to tell me that all the time. Did you believe him?

Oh, yeah. He's had a gun in front of my face that if I ever called the cops on him, he's going to use it. A lot of childhood memories. My biggest memory of my dad is his obsession with knives, too. Sitting in his chair, his rock and recliner, sharpening his knives. On top of all that, they said, Jeff made it pretty obvious how he felt about Tanna. He was obsessed with Tanna. How do you know that?

I had heard, and I can't remember who I had heard it from, if it was Tanna herself. Jeff wanted to date Tana. Tana wanted nothing to do with Jeff. I always would think back when I heard that she was murdered or whatever that okay Jeff doesn't live far from her wanted to date her

she wanted nothing to do with him and how he always said he wanted to kill somebody and remember Tanna's dog Scruffy was stabbed to death too apparently trying to protect him and Tanna well Marie told investigators Jeff had a history of killing dogs two of them right in their neighborhood

they were two huge dogs I mean they were really really big and Jeff shot them both I saw him shoot him and kill him. He picked them up and he threw him in the back of his truck. Hold on. You saw Jeff shoot whose dogs? Neighbors' dogs.

But DNA doesn't lie and DNA cleared Jeff Deal. Just to be thorough, they did a cheek swab anyway of Heather. So we collected her DNA, which she gave along with her mom. And I guess there was really no intent other than to, I guess, kind of have it, because Jeff was eliminated. Then, just as they were getting ready to leave, Heather offered investigators something else. I'm on Ancestry, too.

She had explained that she does the genealogy as well. She told investigators she'd been working on her family tree on Ancestry.com and offered them access to her account. The FBI had been helping with the investigation and got to work. And the FBI agent had reached out to Heather to turn the feature on where law enforcement can view your profile. So she turned on her profile, and it was like the Christmas tree lit up. Really? Yes.

Heather was right. There was a connection with her father. But here came the twist. And it was a big one. So the FBI agent said we are very close in the family, but it's not Jeff Thiel. After 30 years of waiting, investigators finally had a DNA match, and a new name, was this their man? Summer of 2022, 30 years after the murders of Tim Mumbrew and Tanna Togstad, investigators finally had a new suspect.

Genetic genealogy pointed to Heather Teal's first cousin and Jeff Teal's nephew, a man named Tony Hayes. Nobody had ever heard of Tony Hayes in the case file. So we started looking into, you know, where does Tony Hayes live? Who is he? And realized that he lives less than two miles from the original crime scene. Like a lot of men in town, Tony worked at the Iron Foundry. But unlike his uncle Jeff Thiel, he had no criminal record.

Just unbelievable. He's been there his entire life and he's a nobody. Hiding in plain sight. Correct. So we spent several weeks following. following Tony, and it was the same thing almost every day. He went to work at the foundry, and he went home, and he worked around the farm. What to do? Get the man's DNA.

So they rifled through his garbage, but nothing. So he had to get creative. Yeah, I would think. I mean, because you're chasing him around looking for him to drop. Yeah, throw something out the windows. Yeah. They noticed that Tony's car was missing its front license plate. So they came up with the plan. Let's write him a warning for no front plate and have him touch a brand new pen,

and then we'll send the pen down to see if he's a match. Clever idea, but it would involve you kind of conducting this ruse traffic stop, right? That's what we did. I'm true proponent with the state patrol. I stopped you for no front plate on the vehicle today. I'm just going to ask that you sign to acknowledge that you received a warning. Got a pen right there for you as well. They sent the pen with Tony's DNA to the lab.

And it was a match. Wow. What was that moment like? It was unbelievable. I've never felt so joyous in my life. And yet, nothing about him looked like a killer. He was just a regular guy, a father of four with no criminal record of any kind. Not even a hint of any impropriety.

He lived quietly on the same farmer's family had owned for decades. We spent a lot of time goofing off at the farm and with our grandparents. Tony's sister, Sherry Hayes, Gust. But as we got older, he was my defender. I always looked up to him. Jody Lynn Morgan met and rode the school bus with Tony when they were just five years old. He's the gentle giant. As long as I've known him, always has been.

So they grew up liking each other and then loving each other. They lived together for about two years. had two kids before deciding to go their separate ways. And then a couple of years after that, Tony went on to marry Tracy. How'd you meet him? We both liked to fish, so we met in a bait shop. You know, that was his thing, right? Yeah, both of ours.

Tony and Tracy had two kids of their own, and eventually grandchildren. The couple celebrated their children. 25th wedding anniversary in June of 2022. And two months later, investigators went to the Iron Foundry, found Tony, and asked to speak with him. So he came in, very nonchalant. It was low-key. Hi, Tony.

We introduced ourselves. We asked just kind of some basic background questions of him, who he was, where he lives, some work history. He knew Tim Montana personally? He said he had never met him. He knew of Tanna only because they lived in the same town. Interesting. Did he wonder why you were talking to him about this all these years later?

He questioned why we were talking to him. We explained that his name had come up in the investigation. Now, investigators asked him directly. Did you have any involvement whatsoever in this incident? in what incident with Tim and Tanna. No. No. We asked if he'd be willing to give his cheek swabs and fingerprints to us, and he agreed to.

Tony also agreed to take a polygraph, so investigators took him down to the sheriff station, performed a cheek swab, and had him take that polygraph, and then they placed him in an interview room. I'm sure you want to know how you did. Yep. Okay. You did not pass. Okay. it was very clear when it came to the questions

regarding Tim and Tanna's death that you are your lying. You continue to deny and lie and we will show you the evidence that we have it's not going to look good for you. That makes sense? Well, it makes sense. I don't believe that I could have done something like that.

And did he actually fail it? Yes. So they confronted Tony and explained that he was the match to the semen of the DNA that was left at the crime scene. Your seaman that was found on her body at the murder scene. I still won't buy it. It doesn't matter if you buy it, Tony. I get it. I get it.

You need to explain it. And what I found interesting was he never said, hang on, guys, you're talking to the wrong person. That's not me. He just kind of sat there. and it was like, I don't understand. Did he ever say anything that would suggest that maybe he did remember doing something? So Tony took a long time to kind of get going.

But once he did get going... It's going to sound stupid, but I never knew I did it. Okay. August 11th, 2022. At the sheriff's office, investigators led Tony Hayes to an interview room and asked him questions about the murders of Tim Mumbru and Tanna Togstad. That is where he first mentioned what he called clicks or blurbs from the night of the murders.

Memories of some sort. Over the years, little by little, you know, I'd see a little click here and there, but that I was wondering if I had something to do with it. But I'll tell you straight up, and I'm not lying that, I don't believe that I would do that. But then he recalled going at a binger that night and ending up at Tanna's house. I remember the house. I remember them. You remember that house?

Yeah. Remember the steps. I remembered a, like, a barbell or something. Which, when you look at the crime scene photos, there's a dumbbell in the bedroom. What's another blurb? I remember walking down the road. I got into my truck and drove home. Could that be the truck, Tanna's sister, saw driving away late that night?

But even as his memories seemed to incriminate him, Tony remained adamant. He could not have done this. I don't remember nothing about hurting any people. Investigators pressed him for a possible motive. You were never attracted to Tanna when you saw her? No. Never wanted to date her, never jealous of some guys that were dating her. Tony was dating Jody at the time and denied any attraction to Tanna,

but then he started describing what sounded like a motive of sorts. It happened when Tony was just seven years old. His dad had been racing snowmobiles with Tanna's dad and another friend. And suddenly the belt on Tony's dad's snowmobile blew and he was hit by the snowmobile coming up behind him. He killed my dad instantly. The third guy coming up ran that guy over. It was a horrible accident.

Only Tanna's dad survived, though he died a few years later. His father's death said Tony resurfaced 14 years after the fact on the night of the murders. I was drunk, and all I could think about was that accident. I didn't go there to hurt anybody. I didn't. But I honestly can tell you that I don't know what started, what happened, what started at all. I don't. What took you so long in this?

in this room to tell us the story about your dad and the snowmobile and Tanna's dad being involved. Because I didn't want it to sound like I had this planned because I didn't. Planned or not, investigators felt they had enough. It's 139, Tony. I have to place you under arrest for the homicide of Tana Togsted and Tim Mulgroom. Okay. Investigators were convinced they finally had their man. Tony's family was blindsided.

Our youngest son messaged me in the afternoon and said that the cops were at our house. And I couldn't even drive down my road that I live on because I had it all blocked off. Did you, Tracy, have to somehow deal with that. question that you might be, you know, married to and living with a man who had done a very, very, very terrible thing all those years ago? No. Not even when they got the DNA comparison with the semen that they found on the body. In my heart, I know he did not do this.

There is no possible way he could have ever done something like that. So no. The investigators talked to Jody, too, of course. Well, the first thing I said was, no, you have the wrong guy. You have the wrong guy. Back in 1992, Jody and Tony had only just moved in together. And yes, the murder happened nearby, but... Did you notice any changes in Tony's behavior after that?

No. No, nothing, nothing at all. But then, landing with a sickening thud, that DNA, Antony placing himself at Tanna's house, remembering that barbell, the snowmobile accident? Why do you think those things came out of his mouth? And what do you think it all meant? He didn't say any of those things until he had proclaimed his innocent a hundred times and was shown pictures and videos. They repeatedly told him he must have done it. He did it. He did it. They kept coming to down harder on him.

Tony's family knew they needed help, and they turned to defense attorneys John Birdsell and Nicole Muller. Usually when we get contacted, we get contacted by maybe one family member. Yeah. And the interesting thing was is that everybody believed in Tony Hayes' innocence so much, all his family, all his friends, that we had a conference call for people that wanted to help him financially to hire us. On that conference car, there were 55 people.

And right there, before I even met Tony, I was like, there's something going on here. There's something wrong with this picture. Bert Saul and Mueller got to work that summer of 2022, trying to get their heads around 30 years of records they received from the prosecution. It took months. It was almost as if they just brought a truck with a bunch of boxes and dumped it out on the front lawn and said, there you go, work it out. And in the middle of all that working out, they read about. the sheer depravity of the crimes. This is not somebody who just got drunk and had a bad night,

like the interrogators tried to suggest to Tony. Something else was going on here. Which, it seemed to them, fit those other suspects. Remember? The suspects we've told you about. Basically, there was three there. Three? Three.

Yeah. Yeah. Glendon, Goker, Lane Shields, and Jeffrey Teal. But remember, all three had been pretty thoroughly investigated, and all of them were cleared. In Teal's case, by his own DNA, which excluded him back in 1996, but 26 years later, thanks to familiar DNA technology,

it identified his nephew, Tony Hayes, as the likely killer. So now, free trial, a legal skirmish began. Defense versus prosecution. The defense wanted to claim Jeff Teal was not excluded from all the blood evidence of the crime scene.

and because of that remained a potential suspect. Wapaka County DA Kat Turner objected. Jeff Teal seems like an obvious suspect to go after. He's dead. He was a bad guy. So he had already been excluded in 1996. The judge sided with the defense. So investigators decided,

Let's show for a third time that he's been eliminated, and that way the defense can't use Jeff Thiel as the person who committed these crimes. But testing Jeff Teal's DNA wasn't easy. He was six feet under, which brings us back to that gloomy day in the cemetery. So we asked the court to allow us to exhume Jeff Teal. We did. The man in this casket had kept his secrets to himself for almost 30 years.

But Jeff Teal was about to give one up. We rushed to the testing. The DNA analyst worked on nothing but that until he had the analysis complete. And again, excluded Jeff Teal from all of the blood evidence that was available. All of the other evidence, prosecutor said, pointed straight at Tony Hayes, who was due to stand trial for murder in just two weeks. But when the prosecution revealed the new evidence, Tony's attorneys argued they didn't have time to prepare a response. And the judge agreed with the defense. He ruled that if the trial went ahead, the prosecution could not tell the jury about any DNA evidence involving Jeff Teal.

Did you think that was a good decision? No, I did not. And we very, very, very, very strongly argued to the court that it was inappropriate because everyone in the room, with the exception of the jury, knew that Jeff Teal had been excluded as a potential contributor to any of the biological evidence. Tough luck, said the defense. They had years to do this, and they were trying to act like they were the victims. Even the judges, like, that's really, he used the word twice, disingenuous.

For the prosecutors, and Tanna and Tim's families, it meant an agonizing choice. Go to trial with a weaker case, as they sought, or set a new trial date, who knew when, with a stronger case. In the end, they decided to go for it. Tanna's friend, Jill. They said the case is strong enough, we will go forward. And so, on July 7th,000. 17th, 2025, it began. Please be seated.

One of the biggest trials in Wapaka County history. Finally, a jury could deliver justice, said Tana's friends and family. What was the most important thing in your mind that they had against him? Well, the confession was huge to me. I mean, it was just like, wow, it's on tape. There was things that he said that unless you did it, you don't make that kind of stuff. up. No, he wouldn't know. Did you feel a kind of weight on you as you're trying to bring this case to a successful conclusion? Absolutely. This is a small, small town, and you want as the

prosecutor to get justice for those people who you care about. For three decades, this crime went unsolved. Assistant Attorney General Amy Otani opened for the state. For three decades, the person that committed these crimes believed he would never get caught. Hotani told the jury that Tony Hayes stabbed Tanna and Tim in the early morning hours of March 21st, 1992. And she said the prosecution had the receipts. So what ties Tony Hayes to this crime? His semen on Tana's body, his handprint in blood on Tana's door, his own memories of killing Tim and Tanna.

The handprint evidence first, found on the door for years of bloody emblem of this case. A forensic analyst for the state crime lab testified she was able to make a match to Tony Hayes. Item AB, FRD2 was identified to the left palm a Tony Garrett Hayes. A.B. F.R.D.3 was identified. to the left palm of Tony Garrett Hayes.

How confident can you be in a handprint? I believe they're reliable. However, I would not feel confident if that was the only evidence. It wasn't. Remember that male DNA on Tanna's body? Over 30 years, it had been seriously depleted by repeated testing. But new testing methods require very few cells.

So when the analysts retested the DNA for investigation, they used the minuscule amounts that remained. Were you confident that there was enough, even at that level, to think you get an accurate result? From speaking with our genetics DNA analysts, I was confident. It's a principle of DNA testing that there cannot be 100% certainty. So the prosecutors called it DNA analyst with the Wisconsin State. crime lab, who had worked out an exact probability to show it most certainly was Tony Hayes' DNA. The random-mash probability, the profile would not be less common than one in 234 quintillion. Okay. And that's 234, followed by 18 zeros, right? Correct.

In other words, the likelihood of the DNA on Tana's body being from anyone other than Tony Hayes was astronomically small. But perhaps the most compelling evidence came from Tony Hayes himself during that marathon interrogation. I remember getting into the scuffle. You're in a scuffle with who? With him. Would you call it a confession?

I would call it an admission. Uh-huh. I don't know that he confessed to everything, but he did acknowledge, remember committing the crime. Prosecutors played that interview for jurors, all five plus hours of it. They heard Tony recall fragments from that night. Whatever happened that him and I started hustling,

I'm pretty sure she was the one that said, what the fuck? And that's when I hit her. Okay. And then I was, you know, fighting with Tim. Mm-hmm. And then you go back to her. I must have.

He said that he recalled some details of the order that Tim and Tanna were killed in. And he said he remembered a knife. There was a knife. I remember having a hold of his arm and we tussled. And then I had the knife. He said he remembered trying to have sex with her. I said to her. What made you...

Okay, I'm sorry. Keep on. She started to stir, and I had to have stabbed her. And this, as the interview was ending, I remember thinking, holy fuck, what did I do? In the end, the prosecutors told the jurors it was the weight of all the evidence

that pointed to Tony Hayes. Despite living a seemingly law-abiding life for 30, years, he remembered, and he knew what he was hiding. He knew what he had done. I'm confident you'll find him guilty. Not so fast, said the defense. The prosecution had it all wrong. When they lie and manipulate to get someone to make a statement, that is not discovering the truth. That's planting it. Tracy Hayes dealt with the trial, just as she had dealt with the years of heartache since her husband's arrest in 2022.

She took it day by day, going to court, sitting right behind her husband, stoic and silent. We were told we couldn't talk to him. I couldn't give him a hug. Quint tell him, I love him. Anything. What'd you do? I knew he was there. He knew I was right behind him.

And she listened intently to defense attorney John Birdsell. What kind of a sick, twisted, psychopathic person would commit a crime like this? Not gentle Tony Hayes. The state had the wrong man, he declared, thanks to a deeply flawed investigation. You're going to see the utterly botched crime scene collection of both fingerprints and DNA and blood for that matter. And it's like once you have a compromised crime scene...

How do you trust anything from that scene? It's just not possible. That door, for instance, with handprint evidence on it, other prints were on it as well. Prince that should never have been there, said Birdsole. One of the detectives, the main detectives, fingerprints on it. Fingerprints on the pomperd or just on the door? On the door.

What's more, the defense insisted, no one could be certain any of the prints on the door actually belonged to Tony. The problem is that it's subjective. And I'm not even going to call it a subjective science, because it's not a science. But the whole point at trial, the analyst, she had to admit she couldn't be 100% short. And the DNA from the crime scene? Utterly unreliable, the defense attorneys argued.

It's quality undone by repeated testing and decades of storage. And so they said the state was driven to extreme measures examining DNA residue in tubes and spin baskets. So they're just retesting their old equipment, basically. As well, the defense alleged the state's analyst had added data to the DNA profile developed from the crime scene. were used to compare it to Tony. Correct?

Correct. We saw the DNA profile was a engineered profile. And when you are engineering facts, you're not finding the truth. The analyst denied engineering facts. On redirect, he testified that he updated the DNA profile to reflect new standards. So you didn't add anything. Objection. Right?

Objection rule. Correct. But the defense attorneys reserved their greatest outrage for that hours-long interrogation. They argued that any admissions from Tony Hayes were false, pried out of a frightened man by investigators using a controversial interrogation procedure called the Reed technique, which critics, say, uses manipulation and pressure tactics. You can't just keep saying, I don't want to remember this. I don't want this to be true.

That stuff's got to go. Now it's got to be, I did it, and now I've got to come up with the answers. There's a lot of people who are waiting for your explanation. I don't have one. I don't. And when Hayes insisted he did not commit the murders, the investigators kept at him,

told him they knew what happened that night. We are telling you, and this is true, your semen was on her body. So regardless of whether you're the kind of guy that could ever do that, regardless of the guy doesn't want to believe he did that, when I say, Jay says, you did that, no dispute. How do you feel with that? Well, I sure wish that I remembered it.

As for those fragments of memory he'd told them about, those were flashbacks investigators said to a nightmare he'd been trying to suppress for decades. You know you stabbed her through the chest when you were having sex with her or right after. You see it, but you don't want to say it, but... Those are the facts.

And we can't see that from the scene. The defense called an expert in false confessions to the stand. He believed what they said, that he was, there was no question that he was there and that it was his seaman, so now he had to figure out how that could have happened. Dr. David Thompson testified that when he evaluated Tony Hayes, he found them to be suggestible, vulnerable to the investigator's tactics.

When you look at those personality characteristics, and then you look at the investigator's tendency to provide suggestive questions to him, that combination, I think, is very significant. When they lie and manipulate to get someone to make a statement, that is not a not discovering the truth. That's planting it. Well, but, you know, he's a grown man. He's not some kid. No, there's no buts about it, okay? Uh-huh. But the defense attorneys weren't done.

Instead, they put a different man on trial. Jeff Teal. Remember, the judge had ruled the jury could not hear the prosecution's DNA evidence, which they said excluded Teal as a suspect. And now the defense went after Teal hard. they called his ex-wife Marie Stanchick to testify to his bad character. I do. Did he ever physically hit you?

Yes. I was pregnant with Heather then, and we were on our way to Lamas classes. And he hit me in the mouth, and I got a fat lip. And then, just months after Tanna and Tim were murdered, this. He'd held a gun in my face and said he was going to use it on me. And she told law enforcement, Jeff Teal told me that he was, he was going to kill me and get away with it, just like the Togstead Mumbruh homicide. They told jurors Jeff Teal had reason to murder Tim and Tanna.

Tim had reported Teal for a theft at the foundry, and Tanna had rejected his advances. So we have direct connection and direct motive to both the victims. How did it go down on that long ago, night? The defense leaned on the tale told by convicted criminal. General Glendon Gowker, that he, Gowker, drove two men to Tanna's house that night, and one of them, an Irish-looking guy, the guy the defense decided with Jeff Teal. Surely there was more than enough reasonable doubt, the defense told jurors, to find Tony Hayes not guilty of the murders.

If you pause or hesitate, when considering all of the manipulation, mistakes, cover-ups, lying that you heard in this trial that I didn't make up, if that makes you pause or hesitate, you know your duty. Now it was the jury's turn. There's always more to the story. To go behind the scenes of tonight's episode, listen to our talking date lines. series with Keith and Andrea, available Wednesday. In August 2025, a jury of 12 at the Wapaka County Courthouse went out to decide if Tony

Hayes murdered Tanna and Tim. Tim's sister Tina leaned on her faith. We walked around that courthouse seven times praying. I was praying for were God's justice. Tanna's brother Rick, on his 33-year journey for justice, was trying to stay calm. When they went out, were you feeling relatively confident at least? I felt as though we were going to get a good verdict. Even though the defense had persuaded the judge

to throw out all the DNA evidence clearing alternate suspect Jeff Teal, so the jury never got to hear about it, Tim's family remained upbeat. feeling real confident because I thought the prosecution did an amazing job. We thought for sure we had a slam dunk. Jurors would later reveal that when their deliberations began, six jurors believed Tony Hayes was guilty and six not guilty. It was extremely hard to know that his life was in somebody else's hands.

Tony's family and friends were all too aware that a guilty verdict had to be unanimous. Was I confident when they went in? He can't be confident. I'm confident that he's not the guy, but it's not me. It's them. Of course, you're worried and you're scared, but I feel like it had been proven. But then the days went by, right, one after the others. It meant that they were really looking this over.

Among Tana and Tim's family members and friends, anxiety was setting in. I was more and more nervous the longer the jury stayed out. You could hear those guys arguing in the room. The jury. And you could tell they were arguing about something, but we didn't know what. On Monday, August 11, 2025, day four of deliberations, the moment of truth was at hand. The jury came back, and the judge read its verdict.

We, the jury, find the defendant, Tony Garrett Hayes, not guilty. When they came back and they said not guilty, that was beautiful. Tony's friends, Joe, Jason, and Liz. I cried. Tears of joy. They got it right. Thank God the jury. I was just thinking of Tony, right?

I can't imagine what he'd been through during that three years of being put in that position, right? Tony's wife, Tracy, would get her husband back. What was it like to give him a big hug when he finally came out of there? It was awesome to take him home to our children. And he got to see his grandpa. His grandpa said that was the best day of his life.

Of course, it was a different reaction on the other side of the courtroom. What was that was like when the judge read the verdict? I couldn't believe he even said it. What? It's just like, wow. My heart just dropped. My stomach turned. A complete shock that 12 people could be that deceived.

Took you outside of your body almost. Pure rage. I couldn't breathe. Today, Tony is back home with his family, breathing the clean air of Waiawega's farmland, feeding his cows. He's a free man. His wife, Tracy, feels free, too. So what now? Just live day by day.

I'll see what happens. See where God takes us. How would you and Tony adjusting to this? Good. He finally gets the sunshine and the fresh air. Have you gone fishing lately? No, not yet. We will, though.

He owes me that. On the advice of his attorney, Tony himself did not speak with us. His criminal case is over. Hard to accept for Tim and Tan as family members and friends. Those people on that jury let out. a man that butchered two people. And he is now walking around, going to have family time, play with his grandkids. Tanna never got to have a kid.

Tannen never had a life. It's a hard pill to swallow. Yeah. Was he found innocent? He was found not guilty. Tanna's brother Rick, who lives just three miles from Tony, filed his civil wrongful death lawsuit against him. He said it isn't about financial kids.

I don't want his house and I don't want his retirement. Acknowledgement is what I want. It's going to be expensive, that acknowledgement. Rick set up a go-fund me page. And meantime, the crime against Hannah and Tim remains officially unsolved. Even though investigators and prosecutors believe they know the answer, nothing to do about it now. You're going to be able to get used to it, live with it? I don't know if I'll ever get used to it.

Sometimes not knowing is better than knowing. That was a piece of wisdom right there. As Tanna and Tim's families and friends try to make peace with the outcome, they take some comfort from their memories of the vibrant young couple taken far too soon, who lived long enough to find each other and fall in love. That's all for now. I'm Lester Holt. Thanks for joining us.