Dateline NBC - The Alibi

Episode Date: June 7, 2023

Andrea Canning reports on the homicide of private first class soldier and young mother Karlyn Ramirez. Originally aired on NBC on January 11, 2019.

I called my mom immediately. I just cried. I cried. I couldn't feel. My body went numb. I told her, Carlin's gone. She's gone. She was a beautiful young mom, doing important work. She was an intelligence specialist. Some of her work was very sensitive, top secret. I believe she had a top secret clearance. When she was found dead, everyone wondered, did her work cost her her life?

I remembered him telling me, did she come into a lot of money that she couldn't explain? Maybe she was selling secrets? Maybe. That's like out of a spy novel. What about other secrets, the personal kind? We knew they were having issues. Right before they got married,

she found out that he was cheating. But somewhere out there was a stranger keeping secrets too. My data guy starts going through her Facebook. She'd made reference to firearms in her social media. We saw that they were communicating her gas mileage. What a weird thing to do. A mystery that would drag on for months.

And then, one final secret uncovered by science. You start peeling the layers back until the number is visible. A puzzling death, a diabolical plan, and some determined detectives. I'm Lester Holt, and this is Dateline. Here's Andrea Canning with The Alibi.

Across the spectrum of love, is there any more precious than that of a mother for her daughter? You are my sunshine, my only sunshine. Our story tonight is about that maternal tie You are my sunshine, my only sunshine. Our story tonight is about that maternal tie that endures from generation to generation. It begins in a military town near the Mexican border, Del Rio, Texas, a small city anchored by the Lachlan Air Force Base. Carlin Ramirez grew up there. She was an easygoing child, says her mom, Susan Garcia Ramirez. Carlin, when she was young, she was real calm and quiet.

Carlin loved to sing. She just, she would sing all the time. Whenever she was out with her friends, you know, she would sing for them. Rosana Flores was one of those friends. What was it about Karlyn that you wanted to be her friend? Her smile, her voice, a very big heart. I can honestly say she never saw any bad in anyone. Her friends, Anais Abara and Valerie McKechnie say it wasn't all about singing. We would go to the local bar here and we would dance.

And they say the dancing could literally happen anywhere. That's Carlin in black. Yeah, it was like fun times at the Walmart parking lot. Only in a small city, right? She went to college in Del Rio, started in nursing, and then transferred to criminal justice. Nothing that prepared her mom for what she did at 22. Enlist in the Army. She didn't ask me. She didn't get my opinion. She told me after she had done it.

Your family is a military family? We are. My dad was Air Force. My sister is retired Air Force. And then I was in the Army Reserves. After specialty training in information technology, the Army sent Karlyn to South Korea. Off duty, she found time to give back. She found herself volunteering at an orphanage. So nice.

Well, she starts sending me pictures of a little boy that she's in love with. And she says, Mom, I want to adopt him. I said, no. In Korea, Carlin found another kind of love. She began dating a handsome sergeant named Malik Kearney. She was attracted to his confidence, to his air, the way he carried himself. He was a decorated soldier?

Yes. Did she like that about him? Yes, they worked out together and they ran. They're very competitive. Carlin gushed about Malik to her friends. She said that he was a great man, that he treated her right. And then she told me they were engaged. Engaged and expecting.

Pregnant, the Army transferred her to Fort Meade, Maryland, home of the National Security Agency and one of the nation's most secret and secure facilities. Was she happy? Was she excited? She was excited. She started working and absolutely loved it. Top secret, some of it? She would say, Mom, I can't share anything about what I do. Meantime, the Army moved Malik to Fort Jackson, South Carolina,

where he trained recruits in chemical warfare. The couple was 500 miles apart. While living by herself in Maryland, Carlin became friends with another soldier, Marissa Manthe. Marissa loved working with Carlin. She was the light of the office. She was loving. Everyone loved her. Marissa was a single mom with a young daughter. So when Carlin was nearing the end of the office, she was loving. Everyone loved her. Marissa was a single mom with a young daughter. So when Carlin was nearing the end of her pregnancy, they decided to share a house together. It had a backyard. It had a decent-sized kitchen, and it was right by base. Did you ever have security concerns about the townhouse or the area? We did have. Carlin had mentioned that she came home one day

and felt like stuff was moved around in the house. Really? Yeah. If somebody says that to me, I'm getting worried. The two women kept the doors and windows locked and worked together to make their townhouse a home. Marissa helped Carlin set up a nursery. And then, on April 23, 2015,

Cataleya Bale Ramirez was born. Grandma Susan was on the first flight from Texas. What was it like for you seeing Carlin and her new daughter Vale together? Your baby's now had a baby. Yes, it was amazing. I got her and I wouldn't share her with anybody. Vale was healthy and beautiful. Carlin, radiant. Their townhouse was filled with the joyful sounds of Carlin singing to Vale. She particularly loved You Are My Sunshine. You'll never know, dear, how much I love you. She was happy. It looked like she found her purpose in life. Three months after Vale was born, Carlin and Malik married in a small ceremony in South Carolina. After the party, Carlin went back home to Fort Meade in Maryland with the baby. She said it was hard, the distance and not seeing him all the time. Susan stayed in touch with her daughter. I spoke with Carlin every day, sometimes

twice a day. But Tuesday, August 25th, would be different. Susan called Carlin that morning. And she didn't answer. And is that, I mean, you two have such a close relationship. So I waited and I called her again and she didn't answer. So I sent her an email to her work email. Never got a response to that. Called her on my lunch break and she didn't answer. I said, if you do not call me back or message me, I'm going to call the police. A now frantic Susan reached Carlin's commanding officer at his home. He promised to have someone on the base find her. I hang up with him and I put the phone down and I hear a ruffle. Our front yard, we have River Rock.

And so I looked out, and I saw three uniformed soldiers. Oh, gosh. And I knew. That's just made me sick. Sick. That's what it did to me, too. It's what any relative of somebody in the military dreads. I mean, I'm a Marine Corps wife myself.

That's the last thing. You don't ever want to have to see that. And I yelled my husband's name, and I just, I dropped to my knees, and I said, something happened to Carlin. And then they knocked. She was right. Something had happened to Carlin.

What did they say? We regret to inform you. Just like they always say. When we return, what the soldier said next would leave this mom horrified and confused. I couldn't even imagine what

could have possibly happened. In Del Rio, Texas, Susan Ramirez's husband opened their door to an Army casualty notification team. And the worst news imaginable, their Carlin was dead. What did they say? We regret to inform you. Just like they always say, same words. They had a chaplain with them and couldn't give me any specifics. I asked for the baby. They said that she was in the hospital. So what scenarios are running through your mind? I couldn't even imagine what could have possibly happened.

The answers would come 1,700 miles away at Carlin's townhouse in Maryland. Homicide detectives Kelly Harding and Dan Myers of the Anne Arundel County Sheriff's Office were on the case. A maintenance person saw a dog walking around into an open back door of the townhomes. He called 911, and the officers got there, and Carlin Ramirez had been murdered. Patrol officers led the detectives to a second-floor bedroom and an appalling scene. It was Carlin and her four-month-old daughter together. She was laying in the master bedroom, and a little girl was they thought initially also hadn't been murdered but

it turns out that she was just sleeping alongside her mom. The baby was unharmed. The investigators began their search for clues with Carlin's body. She was laying on the floor near the crib. Her pants and her underwear had been removed. Did that suggest to you that there may have been a sexual assault? It's something that you have to consider. The crime scene investigation ramped up. CSIs dusted for fingerprints and collected hair and DNA samples. Carlin had been shot three times. Ballistics experts traced the bullet's trajectories and recovered a bullet from the floor. They were able to narrow down the weapon to a few

different models. The caliber of the projectile was.357,.38 special. Of course, a hard look at the spouse is homicide investigation 101. So the day after they found Carlin's body, detectives flew to South Carolina to talk with Malik. He'd been placed in an interview room and he was waiting for us. They started by asking about Carlin. What can you tell us about her? She was alive. Malik's superior officer had given him only the vaguest of details

about what happened to Carlin. You tell me how she passed away? How busy? You guys are coming to answer all my questions. had given him only the vaguest of details about what happened to Carlin. Why? That's what we're hoping you can help us with. I don't know. I didn't know anything about it. I didn't like her. I didn't have anything against her. They wanted to know Malik's whereabouts the day of the murder.

He told them he worked his usual shift, Monday, leaving around 2 p.m. He said he stayed in his apartment until he reported for duty Tuesday morning. Didn't go out on Monday night, go anywhere, talk to anybody? No, I mean, I'd stay in the morning, text my phone, stuff like that. The questions got personal. Detectives had been told Carlin was planning to divorce Malik. I'm telling you, as an outsider, it looks like y'all were done. She was done with you, right? She'd been gone. I didn't know.

They'd learned about a brief relationship Carlin had with another soldier at Fort Meade shortly before she married Malik and asked him how he felt about that. It was before we married. And I forgave her. I told her I forgive and forget. Did you ever cheat on her when you were in an exclusive relationship with her? Cheat? No. The detectives cut to the chase. You didn't kill her, right? No.

Did you have somebody else kill her? No. Was he being really cooperative with you? He appeared to have nothing to hide. Malik let them download his phone, and that wasn't all. He volunteered his bank records, offered fingerprints, and provided a DNA sample. He gave police permission to search his apartment and car. The detectives got to work. Right away, we talked to neighbors that in his

apartment building, they said that his car never left. Malik Kearney's apartment and car, a distinctive Jaguar XJL, came up clean. And all his electronics, his cell phone, and Netflix account put him at home that night, 500 miles from the crime scene. Police checked toll plazas and license plate readers between South Carolina and Maryland. There was no sign of Malik's Jaguar anywhere on what would have been a 15-hour round trip. Would you say that he had a good alibi? Yes. Malik Kearney was free to go. The Maryland detectives were back to square one at the beginning of what would become an incredibly complex homicide case. An investigation that would span a half dozen states, involve hundreds of witnesses, multiple government agencies, and a mountain of forensic

evidence. Coming up, could Carlin's top secret work have cost her her life? I wondered if she was targeted or knew something she wasn't supposed to know. When Dateline continues. A little more than a week after she was killed, Private First Class Carlin Ramirez was buried with full military honors. Flags were presented to her parents, husband, and daughter. Susan had little time to mourn. She was busy caring for Carlin's daughter, Vail, in Texas,

while her father, Malik, was on active duty in South Carolina. Susan was also doing everything she could to help solve the case. Investigators asked again and again, who would want Carlin dead? I would say, you know, I am wracking my brain, and I wish I could tell you, but I just cannot think of anyone. Detectives cast a wide net. They spoke with Carlin's roommate, Marissa, multiple times. They were curious about the soldier Carlin had the brief relationship with before she married Malik. Could her death have been the result of a love triangle gone bad?

Their line of questioning made me think that they were looking at the soldier that she was involved with. The guy she was having the fling with at work? Yes. What kind of questions did they ask about him? What their relationship was like. Did he love her? Did she love him?

Did Malik know? Did you have to check into the soldier that she had the little side thing with? Certainly. And he was devastated that this happened. He provided his phone, his whereabouts. We concluded that he was telling the truth where he was during the time. With the boyfriend cleared, some of Carlin's friends and family thought the murder might be connected to her top secret work at Fort Meade.

I wondered if she was targeted or knew something she wasn't supposed to know because of her job. The detectives were looking for any sign that Carlin might have been recruited as a spy by foreign agents. I remember specifically them telling me, Did she come into a lot of money that she couldn't explain to you? No, she didn't. Maybe she was selling secrets? Absolutely not. That's like out of a spy novel.

Yes, yes. That theory. What did you learn about Karlyn Ramirez's role in the military? She was an intelligence specialist. Did you have to explore the fact that maybe this has something to do with her job? There was no evidence of a handler or any sort of misbehaving with her information. Espionage was ruled out. Weeks went by without a break in the case.

Homicide detectives are still conducting several interviews, still processing evidence from the scene. The crime scene investigation intensified. They had my house taped off for almost a month, just going through evidence, going through the house, trying to find things, trying to find leads. And Marissa lived in fear, remembering Carlin's concerns about someone creeping around their townhouse. Carlin had said she thought maybe somebody had moved things around. Did your mind go at all to the possibility that it could have been someone random. It even almost seemed like a hitman had did it

because it was so meticulously planned out. Carlin's roommate told us that they had security concerns, that someone had maybe been in the townhouse at some point. It was always something we kind of kept in the back of our minds. Did you have to consider the possibility that maybe Carlin had a stalker, someone who was watching them, watching her? Yeah, it looked extensively into her background and into her communication.

Investigators pursued the few leads they had. All the while, Susan was pushing them for answers. Two or three times a week, you know, they would hear from me. It must have been getting frustrating that she was murdered, her killer is out there. Yes. And her daughter is with you. You must have just felt that fear. Constant fear. Vale was not out of our sight. But she heard nothing. On what would have been Carlin's 25th birthday, the family took Vale to visit her grave. Bye-bye, Mommy. By that time, Malik was living nearby. The Army had allowed him to transfer from South Carolina to Fort Sam Houston.

He had gotten orders to get closer to the baby, and as close as he can get was San Antonio, so he can come and spend time with the baby on the weekends. The Ramirez family struggled to find normalcy. Back in Maryland, the investigation seemed to have stalled. Anne Arundel County offered a $20,000 reward for information about the case. The reward generated no promising leads, and homicide detectives wondered if Carlin's death could be part of a larger, even more sinister crime. Coming up, investigators pursue a stunning new theory. There's no likely suspects, so the first thought is a serial killer or some unknown individual. And then, an eyebrow-raising revelation about Carlin's estranged husband. She said that they had been intimate for several years.

It had been months since Carlin Ramirez had been found murdered at home with her infant daughter in her arms. With all leads exhausted, homicide detectives wondered if Carlin's death might be part of a pattern. They reached out to profilers with the FBI's Behavioral Analysis Unit. FBI Special Agent Jonathan Schaefer would join the team. The story is that the husband's in South Carolina. There's no apparent likely suspects. So the first thought is a serial killer or some unknown individual.

That's where they'd requested the profilers. Had there been any serial killers in the area that could possibly tie to this then? No, there wasn't at that time. It was a long shot. Did this lead anywhere, contacting the BAU? Their opinion was that probably somebody close to her did this. With no obvious progress in Carlin's case, friends began to despair. It scared me that Carlin was never going to get her justice. But what they didn't know was Maryland detectives and the Army's Criminal Investigation Division had been quietly collecting a massive amount of electronic information. Of course, police had initially talked to Carlin's estranged husband, Malik, but his phone records had indicated he was at home,

500 miles away when Carlin was murdered. But months after they'd asked for it, police finally had not only Malik's data, but the data of everyone who had been contacted from his phone. We then requested and received information from the people that Malik was communicating with. All their tedious digital searching paid off. It was a development that took them in a whole new direction. Buried in Malik's phone records were numerous calls and texts with a woman named Dolores Delgado, a former soldier living in Florida. When investigators poured over her phone records, a dramatic discovery.

We had learned that Dolores was actually in South Carolina during the time of the murder. That phone data not only had Dolores in South Carolina, it placed her in Malik's apartment complex. This must have been a big break. This was a huge break. On a Wednesday afternoon in March 2016, Detective Harding turned up unannounced on Dolores' doorstep in Cocoa Beach, Florida. Knock on the door, and I say, hi, I'm Detective Harding.

I'm from Anne Arundel County, Maryland. I'd like to talk to you. That's a shock. And she was very shocked. She said, about what, Malik? And I said, yes, actually. In an interview room at the sheriff's office, the detective asked Dolores about the night of the murder,

if she was in Malik's apartment, and if he was with her. She admits that she was there that night. What happened at Malik Kearney's house? She was in the living room, and he went to bed. As far as she knew, he was there the whole time. Was this a sexual relationship? She said that they had been intimate, you know, for several years. So she's the longtime paramour. They definitely had a long relationship. The detectives now knew one thing for sure

after talking to Dolores Delgado. Malik Kearney had lied to them about being faithful to Carlin, for starters. Do you have a girlfriend now? But most critically, about what happened the night of Carlin's murder. Didn't go out on Monday night, go anywhere, talk to anybody? No, I did not stay in the morning and text my phone. If you have somebody that can account for your whereabouts during the time of a murder, why wouldn't you offer that to us? Why would you keep that secret? The detectives had to consider that maybe Malik just didn't want to admit he was cheating on his

wife with Dolores. They took a closer look at this girlfriend, who told them she and Malik hooked up when they were both serving in Kuwait years earlier. Then, when Harding and Myers examined Dolores' phone data, they learned she also lied about owning a gun. She told me that she was almost ignorant about firearms. But in her phone, I could see that she was looking for a very particular firearm. On her phone, there was a text that read, My last $357, I paid $400, so I want to stay in that range. Detective Myers dove deeper into Dolores' life.

My data guy here starts going through her Facebook. There was some things going on with firearms, some information about where she purchased firearms previously. This is the woman who had no knowledge of firearms. Right. The posts led Myers here to a gun shop near Dolores' home. The shop had a sales receipt and a federal firearms transaction record for a Taurus.357 revolver. Both forms were made out to Dolores Delgado. The revolver Dolores bought matched the caliber of gun that had killed Carlin.

We saw that his gun was one of the ones on the list. Of itself, this purchase of a gun wasn't a smoking gun. But the detectives had to wonder why Dolores would lie to them about owning a weapon. And there was something else. Myers soon learned that Dolores had put a box of.38 caliber ammunition up for sale on Facebook. Now that's obviously, you can't say it's the same bullets, but it matched all the characteristics. All this sleuthing took months. And while the detectives were working, Delores moved

to San Antonio, Texas, into an apartment not far from Malik Kearney, 150 miles west on their farm in Del Rio. Carlin's mom knew nothing about this new person of interest, despite staying on the detectives. It's me again. I just don't want you to forget my daughter because she was very much loved. The investigation now encompassed a half dozen states, but Maryland detectives and FBI agents were homing in on Dolores Delgado.

What were you all learning about the relationship between Malik Kearney and Dolores Delgado? Just how, for lack of a better term, weird it was. They were friends. They were friends with benefits. They were lovers, but not really romantically involved. They were just sort of best friends with a romantic bent. There was another weird thing. Dolores Delgado's phone was full of texts between her and Malik Kearney that weren't on his phone. And what a twisted story those texts would tell. Coming up, a tip from a complete stranger could blow the case open. He said, one night we got rid of a gun.

I think that was your murder weapon. When Dateline continues. It was a bittersweet day in August 2016 when Karlyn Ramirez's loved ones celebrated her life on the first anniversary of her murder. Back east, lead detectives Kelly Harding and Dan Myers had developed two prime suspects, Carlin's husband Malik Kearney and his longtime mistress Dolores Delgado. As they studied the couple's text messages, the detectives found something curious. Malik had wiped a lot of texts off his phone that still existed on Dolores' phone. Her texts made them look at the night of Carlin's death in a whole new light.

We saw that they were communicating her gas mileage. What a weird thing to do. Not only that, they were talking gas cans as well. The detectives had Dolores' bank records, which showed a purchase at this Florida Home Depot. We were able to get a copy of the receipt of their purchase, which included two gas cans. Finally, they saw the pieces of their puzzle coming together. At the start of the case, Harding and Myers thought it was unlikely that Malik would have been able to travel all the way to Maryland, kill Carlin, and return undetected.

But this new evidence changed everything. Take us through what you believe happened that night. Dolores is providing all the tools, the firearm, the ammunition, a vehicle, and really the important alibi of her staying and using his phone. The detectives saw it as an elaborate plot. Dolores was in Malik's apartment, pretending to be him, texting on his phone and streaming his Netflix account, creating an electronic alibi, while he killed Carlin.

This scenario explained why they didn't find Malik's Jaguar on any license plate readers. If he did that long drive in Dolores' car and carried extra fuel to avoid gas station security cameras, there wouldn't be any trace of him. So he drives straight there. You believe he kills Carlin Ramirez relatively quickly? At the most, he would have been there for 10 minutes. And then turns around and... And goes back and only stops the one time. It's just on the roadside in a dark area to fill up the car

and then immediately gets back in the car and continues to drive. 13 months after Carlin's death, Malik Kearney and Dolores Delgado were arrested in San Antonio. Out of the blue, I get a phone call at work, and they asked me if I could come to San Antonio that evening, and I said, for what? They said, there's been an arrest in your daughter's case. But he didn't tell me who.

Susan and her husband made the long drive across West Texas. That's when I first met the federal prosecutor. They're the ones that told me that Malik had been arrested and his girlfriend. What were you learning about Dolores? I didn't know anything about her. She was no one. She was no one to me.

Assistant U.S. Attorneys Jim Warwick and Ken Clark met with Dolores and Malik. I introduced myself to Mr. Kearney. And you also got a chance to speak with Ms. Delgado. We presented to her the facts that we had and the evidence that we had compiled against her at that point in time. After the arrests came a new lead, a tip to Detective Harding from an ex-boyfriend of Dolores' in Florida.

He called me and said, hey, one night I was hanging out with Dolores and we got rid of a gun. And he said, I think that was your murder weapon. I mean, do you get calls like this every day? This is pretty remarkable. I wish, but we don't. Investigators met with the tipster in Merritt Island, Florida.

He said that not long after Carlin's murder, he and Dolores Delgado had burned some clothing and sneakers here. And that wasn't all. He told them he destroyed a revolver for her, dismantled it, and that the two of them threw the pieces of the gun off this pier. An FBI dive team out of Miami was soon on the scene. The water was gin clear that day, and divers found forensic sunken treasure. There on the bottom, rusted, covered with seaweed, and encrusted with barnacles,

were the pieces of a handgun. The parts were rushed to the FBI crime lab in Quantico, Virginia. Dateline was given rare access to the FBI's world-renowned crime lab. In his first ever interview, firearms expert Brett Mills told us how he examined and reconstructed the weapon. First, he carefully cleaned the frame of the gun. When I finished cleaning it, there was no serial number there. From our reference collection, I knew where the serial number should be.

It was gone because Delgado's ex-boyfriend had ground it away, totally obliterated it, or so he thought. Mills had a plan. We call it serial number restoration. There are still compressed layers underneath that still has that impression of the serial number. Using acid, we can restore that number. He demonstrated the process on a gun from the FBI collection. Once you've polished it, you go in and you literally start peeling the layers back with the acid until the number actually is visible.

It's amazing how it just reappears, serial number. Sometimes it does. Other times, you might not be able to restore any type of number at all. There was another way to determine if they had found the murder weapon. Mills would try to match the telltale markings on the bullets that killed Carlin to the gun from the river. These fine striations that you see are the equivalent of a human fingerprint. But there was no way the recovered weapon would ever fire again. So Mills removed its barrel, gently cleaned it, and attached it to a working revolver for a test firing. He demonstrated that process with a similar revolver.

Mills was able to do six test firings with the recovered gun. Everything he found was added to the evidence. Now, prosecutors would have to see if it would hold up when the defense pointed the finger at someone else in Baltimore federal court. Coming up, trial begins. Could a major twist tip this case? It was right before Christmas. So it was like an early Christmas present? Yes. And then the verdict and the emotional fallout. In August of 2018, Malik Kearney's trial began in federal court in Baltimore.

He was charged with interstate travel for the purpose of domestic violence resulting in death. The trial would be the culmination of a three-year investigation that had gathered thousands of pieces of electronic and physical evidence in an extraordinary forensic effort. Prosecutors Jim Warwick and Ken Clark wanted jurors to see Malik Kearney not as a superstar army sergeant, but as a killer. A soulless executioner who took Carlin's life because she wanted to divorce him. And endangered his baby daughter by leaving her in her dead mother's arms. He was used to getting what he wanted. Relationships could end with Malik Kearney, but they had to end on his terms.

The government showed jurors their digital evidence. There was a tremendous amount of electronic data, including text messages and photo messages that she shared with Mr. Kearney. Including photos Dolores had sent Malik of her car's odometer to demonstrate its driving range. And critical correspondence about what they said was the murder weapon. One particular text message was very important. He's test firing the gun, and he texts her saying, this gun is so darn loud. This was part of the prosecutor's plan to put Dolores' gun in Malik's hands. FBI firearms expert Brett Mills told jurors about the results of that serial number restoration test he did on the gun recovered from the river.

I wound up pulling up all but one of the digits. It wound up matching the bill of sale for Ms. Delgado's purchase of the revolver. Is that like a bingo moment for you when you put this stuff to the test and it works? Finding out that the number I restored was basically the exact same one that was on her bill of laden, that was awesome. And Mills had something else to tell the jury. Remember, he'd done a test firing like like this one, through the barrel of the recovered gun. And what happened when you test fired those bullets and compared them to those bullets from the crime scene? We did a comparison from the victim, and we identified those three bullets as having been fired from that revolver that was recovered from the creek.

The prosecutors introduced that interrogation video of Malik Kearney. I loved this woman. I loved her. I loved her to death. We did that so that the jury would realize that he was being untruthful. Do you have a girlfriend now? No. No? Okay.

And there was something on the tape that prosecutors wanted to be sure jurors noticed. Incredibly stupidly, he never actually asked, how did my wife die? Do you want to know what happened to her? I told him that you guys were going to tell him what happened. But the U.S. attorneys knew their case would hinge on whether jurors believed their star witness, Dolores Delgado.

Dolores had agreed to cooperate three months after her arrest. It was right before Christmas, too. Oh, so it was like an early Christmas present? Early Christmas present for 2016, yes. Prosecutors argued that Malik's longtime mistress would do anything for him. On the stand, she backed that up. Dolores testified about how she gave Malik her gun,

her car, those gas cans, even packed him a sandwich for the drive, and provided him with that crucial electronic alibi. In your directive, Dolores Delgado, you said Malik wasn't home that night, was he? And she answered no. Was that the beginning of the end for his alibi? It is. Placing him at a location other than where his phone was was critical for this case. The prosecution rested. The defense argued the government had proven nothing. They argued someone else did it. That maybe jurors should take a closer look at the government's star witness, Dolores Delgado. After all, it was her gun disposed of by her ex-boyfriend that killed Carlin. And with Carlin out of the way, she'd have Malik alter herself. Malik's lawyers showed the jury a text from Dolores to a friend sent before Carlin's murder.

Crazy bitch is gonna be put out. But the jurors didn't buy it. They quickly found Malik Kearney guilty. Carlin's mother had been in court every day. How did that feel, Hearing guilty? I was so glad because with the guilty verdict, I don't have to worry that I'm going to have to have any dealings with him. At his sentencing, the judge called Malik Kearney a predator and sentenced him to life, plus another 10 years on top of that. Dolores Delgado was sentenced to 17 years for her part in the crime. Why do you think Malik Kearney and Dolores Delgado did this?

I think Malik Kearney killed Carlin because she was the first woman in his life that was willing and able to stand up to him, and he couldn't handle that. As far as Dolores, she was a pawn to Kearney, that she would just kind of do whatever he said. It was important to Carl and Ramirez. It was important to the baby. It was important to the Ramirez family to bring them some measure of justice. Today, the Ramirez family and Carl's friends

are focused on raising Vale and teaching her about her mother. You are my sunshine, my only sunshine. She sang to her when she bathed her. She sang to her when she dressed her. Vale hears that loving voice today. Carlin's sister put a recording of her singing inside a teddy bear. You'll never know, dear, how much I love you. We are at this point the constant in her life. We want her to feel protected, loved, everything that I know her mom would have given her.

That's all for now. I'm Lester Holt. Thanks for joining us.