Dateline NBC - The Mystery on Albion Road

Episode Date: August 25, 2021

In this Dateline classic, investigators try to piece together events that led to a woman being found on the side of a road covered in blood and severely brain damaged. Josh Mankiewicz reports. Originally aired on NBC on March 25, 2011.

My poor baby. How could this happen to her? He came upon her suddenly in the dead of night. Maybe 20 yards away, I realized it was actually somebody laying in the road. A young woman, unconscious, covered in blood. What possibly happened to this girl and why she was out there in such a strange place all alone? We don't know if it's an attempted murder or if it's just a bad accident. Soon they found a name, a loving family. I just remember praying like I've never prayed before in my life.

But still, no answers. Somebody did that to her and is not coming forward. There was a boyfriend. My first impressions were that he knew exactly what happened. But he said he didn't know. Only she could tell them. But her memory of that night was gone. There's no words to describe how horrible it was. I'm Lester Holt and this is Dateline. Here's Josh Mankiewicz with The Mystery on Albion Road. How would it feel to have brutal life-altering injuries, but to have the memories of how

you got those injuries wiped out the instant you received them? How would it feel to have a gulf in your mind that stands between you and justice? November 11, 2009, 1.30 a.m., a moonless night over the wheat fields outside Pullman, Washington. As Bob Cady drove home from the bar he owns, Albion Road was pitch black and dead quiet. As I came off the road, initially what I thought I saw on the road was somebody's McDonald's bag in their drink that they'd thrown out the window. Just trash in the road? I thought it was trash in the road.

I wasn't going to pull off to the side of the road to drive around garbage. I was just going to drive over it. But as Bob drove closer, he saw the object in the road wasn't garbage at all. As I got maybe 20 yards away, I realized it was actually somebody laying in the road. A young woman. She couldn't have been more than 20 or 25 years old, bleeding, barefoot, and unconscious. Bob Cady parked his truck sideways in the road to shield the woman from oncoming cars. Then he ran down the hill a few hundred yards

until he could get a cell phone signal. There's a lady living, laying in the middle of the street. She is breathing. I can hear her breathe. Okay. Is she awake? No. We've got to get a car out of here quick. I had a pretty strong feeling that she wasn't going to be able to lay in the road for very long. Speeding up the hill were three emergency medical technicians.

You look at the situation and it almost looks unreal. She was pretty much covered from head to toe in dirt, blood. And she had a very, very irregular pulse. It was there, but it was very weak. And as they loaded her into an ambulance, they were full of questions. What possibly happened to this girl and why she was out there in such a strange place at such a strange time all alone. She was only wearing a shirt, a T-shirt, jeans, and no shoes.

Sheriff Brett Myers and his deputies arrived on the scene to find a mystery. What was the temperature that night? Temperature was probably about 35, maybe 40 degrees. So anybody walking around out there without shoes or a coat, I mean, that doesn't make sense. Doesn't make sense, no. But we don't know if it's an attempted murder or if it's just a bad accident. All we know is that we have an injured female in the middle of the road and we have very little evidence. But soon they had her name, courtesy of a bank card they found in her pocket. It was issued to Kristen Grindley, and investigators soon learned there was a recent graduate of nearby Washington State University by that name. They got a phone number for her parents, Rick and Pat Grindley, across the state in Woodinville,

Washington. He said, I'm calling about your daughter that was in the accident. Pat Grindley bolted awake. What had happened to Kristen? How badly was she hurt? And I just remember screaming, is she alive? They handed the phone to me, and there was a chaplain with the police department and saying that, you know, your daughter's been airlifted to Spokane. And I just remember just, you know, praying like I've never prayed before in my life, that, you know, Kristen, hang on, we're coming, you know, hang on. When the terrified parents finally arrived at Sacred Heart Hospital, they were ushered into intensive care. It's just shocking. I mean, you just,

I mean, Kristen's a very beautiful girl. And then this year, you know, her hair all cut and matted with blood, you know, just seeing your own child go through what that pain must have been like was just as impossible for us to take. I felt like I was going to collapse. What was your initial prognosis when Kristen came in? Pretty guarded. Dr. Benjamin Ling was the neurosurgeon assigned to Kristen's case. She was in a fairly deep coma.

Under CAT scans, she did have bruising of her brain. How serious a brain injury is that? On a scale of 1 to 10, I'd say probably like a 7. As Kristen lay unconscious in the ICU, family gathered at her bedside. Brother Patrick, sisters Kelly and Shannon. We got in there and there was like one inch on her body that you could touch, like on her arm. The rest of her body was in bandages, blood cuts, tubes. It was just so hard to see her, but overall more reassuring to see that she was okay, that she was still breathing.

Every member of the family spent hours watching over Kristen in those early days. But one of them never left Kristen's side, her mom, Pat. My poor baby. You know, how could this happen to her? Exactly what did happen is a question that would consume not just Kristen's family, but investigators and prosecutors as well. Together, the road rash on her body and a long trail of blood on the asphalt suggest Kristen might have been hit by a car, or fallen from a car, or been thrown from a car.

But when Kristen was found, there wasn't a vehicle in sight. If anyone else was involved, they were gone. Real simply put, we knew that somebody else knew what happened. I just remember clenching my fist every time I went in there because just seeing her like that and knowing that somebody did that to her and is not coming forward and is hiding. The Grindleys were going to do all they could to make sure whoever hurt Kristen was found and brought to justice.

Coming up, the investigation's key witness, Kristen herself, was still unconscious and fighting for her life. I said, Kristen, I just need you to get up one more time. When Dateline continues. The Grindleys are a close-knit family, accustomed to gathering for vacations at their lake house and at concerts by family favorite Jimmy Buffett. Now they banded together around 23-year-old Kristen's hospital bed, praying for a word, even a twitch, any sign that she might wake up and pull through. There's no words to describe how horrible it was.

You know, all those, from the time she was born, it just was flashing through my head, you know, everything, you know, everything she had done. Kristen Elizabeth Grindley, Pat and Rick Grindley's second child, had been a handful from the start. When she first started to walk, she would get up on her feet, and then she would just run. The determined toddler grew into a confident young woman. Upbeat, friendly, outgoing.

Vivacious. Charismatic. Positive. Hilarious. Kristen was always at the center of a big group of friends, always up for fun, and on top of the trends. When Twilight came out, we had like this obsession with it. We all got into Twilight, Facebook, Myspace because of Kristen. In her senior year at Washington State, Kristen started dating a fellow student named Richard

Pazma. He was her first steady boyfriend and Kristen fell hard. What was she saying about this guy? That you know how great he was and that she really liked him and it was nice to hear her that excited about a guy. They were attached to the hip from the very beginning. She wanted to marry him and have kids with him, and they started planning their future, like, talked about getting married right away. Now, just a year later,

this once lively, loving young woman lay motionless in a hospital bed. Rick Grindley thought back to his daughter as a strong-willed toddler. That's all I remember is, like, telling her as I stood over her, I said, Kristen, I just need you to get up, you strong-willed toddler. That's all I remember is like telling her as I stood over and said, Kristen, I just need you to get up, you know, one more time. Family and friends started a Facebook page for Kristen, hoping she would somehow feel the love they poured onto the screen. In the hospital gift shop, her sisters bought a stuffed panda bear,

one of Kristen's favorite animals. But Kristen didn't notice the toy, so they clutched it themselves on the nights when it was their turn to watch over their sister's bedside. You could tell that it was like when she'd go through like spurts of pain or something. It sounded like she'd hold her breath or something. About a week into Kristen's hospital stay, Rick first saw a glimmer of life on his daughter's face. I bent over really closely and said, Kristen, what was that? And she just said, hurts. Gradually, painfully, Kristen Grindley was fighting her way back to consciousness.

Kristen turned her head around to me and she was like, hi, sissy, and smiled. She goes, I love you, Mommy. And I just, I started to cry. It was, it was an amazing feeling. Soon, Kristen could utter a few more phrases. It became clear to the Grindleys that her memory was shaky. She remembered who she was, but not too much else. In those early days, they didn't press it. The important thing was Kristen's palpable determination to get better. Kristen's swift recovery was surprising to her doctors at Sacred Heart and thrilling to her family and friends. But sheriff's investigators were also keeping track of her progress, waiting for a sign that Kristen's memory was returning.

They knew the truth about what happened out on Albion Road that night remained locked somewhere inside her mind. We want her to pull through, and we would love to have her information, if she has it. But as Kristen regained her strength and her voice, the gaps in her memory became more noticeable. I remember talking with her and saying, Kristen, do you know where you are? And she'd say, no.

And then I'd say, you're in Spokane. She'd say, I'd say, repeat it. And she'd repeat it. Then I'd go out for a cup of coffee, come back 10 minutes later, and say, Kristen, do you know where you are? And she'd say, no. How would Sheriff Myers ever piece together what had happened that night on Albion Road,

considering that Kristen couldn't even remember where she was from one minute to the next. It makes your job, what, 10 times more difficult when the actual victim doesn't remember anything about the crime. It made this case very difficult. Kristen's family and friends prayed her memory would heal, but with all the support for her in the hospital room and online, there was one person who hadn't visited, called, or posted on the Facebook page. Someone you might expect to be there at her bedside. Kristen's boyfriend, Richard Basma.

Did he know anything about what had happened the night Kristen was found, bruised, bleeding, and alone in the middle of Albion Road. Coming up, who was the man in Kristen's life and what had happened between them? One time he locked her out and I remember her just crying and telling me about it and so she didn't want me to tell our parents. When Dateline continues. 23-year-old Kristen Grindley was inching her way back to health after a mysterious accident in the dead of night. But all her memories of that event had been wiped away by the serious brain injury she'd suffered. Richard Pasma, the young man with whom Kristen had once shared her heart, hadn't come to see her in the hospital.

And now those close to Kristen wanted to know if the man Kristen had once called the love of her life had something to do with what was almost the end of her life. Like, I had, like, a gut, like, I can't explain it. I don't know why. Like, just this gut feeling in my stomach that, like, something wasn't okay. Richard had become the center of Kristen's world

almost from the moment they met at a popular campus bar. He was a tall, slim engineering student with an interest in politics and big ambitions for the future. For Kristen, his intensity sparked a powerful attraction. They started dating and we never saw her. Caitlin, Kristen's college roommate and best friend, says that as soon as the romance started, Kristen pulled away from everyone except Richard. None of our best friends that were there like every year through college, none of us really were friends with her because she never wanted to leave him.

Retreating from the world to spend time with a new love isn't unusual, of course, but Kristen's friends say her boyfriend was unusually possessive. He was upset with pictures on her Facebook page, and he sat her down and made her go through and delete pictures with her that had other men in the picture, other boys in the picture, because he didn't like that. In the fall of 2008, about six weeks into the relationship, Kristen's dad came to visit the new couple for Dad's weekend. Friday night party, he didn't show up. The breakfast the next day, he didn't show up. We kind of had to track him down before the football game, and then he decided, well, I don't really want to go to the game. So it was, you know, he came across to me as a bit immature.

Kristen's mom, Pat, says her daughter called home devastated. Crying on the phone, very upset that she didn't understand why he wouldn't want to meet her dad. And I said, it doesn't sound like he's the person for you. And she said, you're right or you don't understand him. I don't remember what she said, but I just got the feeling that she liked him enough to continue. Part of being a parent is watching your kids grow up

and watching them make choices that maybe you wouldn't have made. Absolutely. So you grit your teeth and say, okay, she's dating Richard. Right. But it may have been worse than Pat knew. Kristen started to confide alarming details of her relationship to her sister Shannon. One time he locked her out of his house and she ended up having to walk all the way back to her apartment. And I remember her just calling me the next morning and just like crying and telling me about it. And so she didn't want me

to tell our parents. Shannon kept her sister's confidence and Kristen and Richard seemed to grow closer. In the spring of 2009, they moved in together to a small home just off campus. Around that same time, during a visit with the Grindley family, Pat says Richard once lost his temper when she and Rick wouldn't let him drive after an afternoon of drinking. He pretty much blew up. There were four of us adults there, and my friends were just floored. Clearly, Kristen's family and friends had disliked and mistrusted her boyfriend from the start. Could that be the reason he hadn't come to visit her in the hospital? Or was there something more? Was it possible that Richard Pazma had something to do with the events of November 11, 2009,

the night Kristen was found on Albion Road? That question fell to Sheriff Brett Myers. From that first night, the sheriff knew the first person he needed to talk with was Richard Pazma. So you get to the house, and you meet Richard Pazma? We did meet Richard Pazma. The sheriff's conversation with Kristen's boyfriend would start at the couple's home and continue in an interrogation room.

Coming up. First impressions are big in law enforcement and my first impressions were that he knew exactly what happened. The boyfriend's version of the events of that horrific night. Where did he say he was? He said he had been out on Albion Road. Albion Road where Kristen was found. Right.

But was he the one who left her there? When Dateline continues. From the time Kristen opened her eyes and uttered her first word, her progress was astounding. Here she is just six weeks after she arrived at the hospital unconscious. She's smiling, moving, answering questions. What's today? The 31st on a Thursday. Right.

Things most of us take for granted. But for Kristen Grindley, each felt like a little miracle. By now, Kristen was recuperating at St. Luke's, an inpatient rehabilitation facility. Videos posted on Facebook chronicled her progress. Kristen exercising. Playing games to Facebook chronicled her progress. Kristen exercising, playing games to strengthen eye-hand coordination. Simple tasks, but with Kristen's injuries, they required grueling effort. January just seemed like a cloud lifted off of her, and all of a sudden she was starting to ask the question, why am I here?

Now, when Kristen searched for the life she had lived, she had only shards of memories seen through a haze. She asked her family for reminders, seeking out treasured pieces of the past. They brought her dog, Coda, to St. Luke's for an enthusiastic reunion. There was one part of the past Kristen seemed much less excited about. Her old boyfriend, Richard Pazma. The love Kristen had felt for him so strongly now seemed to have vanished along with her memory. She said, yeah, I'm going to break up with that guy. I don't like that guy. I'm going to break up with him.

She kept saying, I need to break up with that dude. Finally, I said, honey, I'm going to break up with that guy. I don't like that guy. I'm going to break up with him. She kept saying, I need to break up with that dude. Finally, I said, honey, who are you talking about? And she said, Richard, I hate him. I need to break up with him. That was the very first time that she even mentioned his name. But Richard Pazma's name had been at the center of the investigation by Whitman County Sheriff Brett Myers ever since the night of November 11th. Just a few hours after Kristen was found, the sheriff was in the doorway of the couple's home,

sizing up her live-in boyfriend. First impressions of Richard Pazma? First impressions are big in law enforcement, and my first impressions were that he knew exactly what happened. He didn't say that he knew what happened. No, he didn't. In fact, Richard told the sheriff he'd been out searching for Kristen. He said he had no clue where she was.

And so the sheriff broke the news that Kristen had been airlifted to a hospital in critical condition. He was overly concerned about Kristen, but yet his emotions didn't really match the level of concern that he was presenting. It was almost like a really poor acting job. Not possible that this was just Richard's way of reacting to some bad news? That's always possible, but we knew we needed to speak with him. Sheriff Myers brought Richard back to the station for questioning. He says he smelled alcohol on Richard's breath. Richard acknowledged right off that he and Kristen had been arguing that day. They had kind of this argumentative relationship.

Stormy? And yeah, it was stormy at times. That evening, Richard said they'd gone out separately. When he came back home, he said, Kristen started to fight again. So at 1.30 a.m., he got in his truck and left the house alone. He indicated he had reached over and locked the car and looked over his shoulder, and as he pulled away, he said she was in that doorway. Richard said he went out four-wheeling, driving fast on rural roads to blow off some steam. Where did he say he was? He said he had been out on Albion Road. Albion Road where Kristen was found. Right. Dashboard video from police cars in the area backed up that part of

the story. And Richard told the sheriff something odd happened when he returned home after 2 a.m. Richard said he'd heard someone throwing around the recycling bins in his front yard. And he went downstairs, he says, to tell Kristen. He said it was only then that he realized she wasn't home. He woke her friend Caitlin, who was staying over that night, and the two of them went searching in vain for Kristen. Had vandals really been in the yard that night? The sheriff sent deputies back to Richard's house to check it out.

Recycling bins did not appear to have been moved. Still covered with leaves, did not appear to have been moved. Yeah. Why tell a story that can be so easily disproven? He's just trying to explain why it couldn't be him and why he, in the middle of the night, decided to start looking for Kristen. It was the first solid clue backing up the sheriff's hunch that Richard Pasma knew more than he was telling. An even bigger clue came from Kristen's friend, Caitlin. She told sheriff's deputies that while she and Richard searched for Kristen that night, he told her over and over he was scared Kristen could have been in the bed of his truck. It was a very different story than the one he was telling the cops.

An hour before we interview him, he's telling Caitlin that he's afraid she fell out of the back of the vehicle. And then when you interview him, he's saying there's no way she could have been in the vehicle. Doesn't even bring it up, absolutely never even mentions that there's a possibility that she could have fallen out while he was four-wheeling. When we offered that up to him as a plausible explanation, he refuted it and said, there's no way. After about 40 minutes of questioning, Richard asked to speak to a lawyer. The interview was over, but the criminal investigation was just beginning. That same night, the sheriff ran a routine check on Kristen Grindley's name on a police database. Anything interesting about Kristen's previous contacts with law enforcement?

There was one contact that she had had with campus police. She had been the victim in a domestic violence situation. University police made an arrest in that case. Kristen's boyfriend, Richard Pasma. According to the April 2009 report, an officer in a university parking lot had heard a couple screaming at each other on a stairway. I saw Pasma strike Grindley with a fully extended right arm and open hand across her face, the officer wrote. Grindley recoiled in shock. I heard the sound of his hand hitting her face from approximately 20 feet. Kristen's mom hadn't known a thing about that incident, but looking back, she says it confirmed suspicions she'd had all along.

Suspicions she had asked Kristen about in the months before she was injured. I came right and asked her numerous times, does he hit you? And she would say? No. And you believed her? No. I just had a feeling. For Sheriff Myers, the report that Richard had been arrested for slapping Kristen was a jarring discovery.

But it didn't prove a thing. Just because someone's been arrested for domestic violence prior doesn't necessarily mean that they're guilty of a heinous crime. Had Richard committed a heinous crime on the night of November 11, 2009? Or was there some other explanation for how Kristen ended up unconscious on Albion Road? And without her memories to add to the case, would the sheriff be able to piece together the answers and find justice for Kristen?

Coming up, a dramatically different theory about what happened that night. Unfortunately, the person that caused Kristen Grindley's injuries was Kristen Grindley. When Dateline continues. Two and a half months after Kristen Grindley was found clinging to life on Albion Road, she finally moved out of a medical facility and back to her parents' house in Woodinville, Washington. Having her home was, of course, a blessing, but Kristen's parents wouldn't rest easy until someone was held accountable for her injuries.

To the Grindley family, everything pointed to Richard Pazma, their old suspicions about his behavior during the romance, the domestic violence arrest back in April 2009, and his evasive answers in that interview with the sheriff the night Kristen was hurt. Oh my God, what did he do to her? What did he do to her? Couldn't have been an accident. Never. The Grindleys suspected Richard had thrown Kristen from his pickup truck or even injured her elsewhere and then dumped her on Albion Road. They waited anxiously for the results of the sheriff's investigation, hoping for a charge they considered tough enough. What would be enough?

Attempted murder. But Tim Esser, the prominent local attorney Richard hired the night he was first questioned, says there was no reason to charge his client with anything. And you might be surprised where he does place the blame. Unfortunately, the person that caused Kristen Grinley's injuries was Kristen Grinley. To understand what happened the night of November 11, 2009, Esser says you need to know a side of this couple that you haven't heard from Kristen's friends and family. Do you think Richard loves Kristen? I kind of think he does. He says it wasn't by choice that Richard stayed away from his injured girlfriend's bedside.

He wanted to contact her. The sheriff told him not to. His parents contacted them, and Mr. Grindley told him, don't ever contact us again. Esser says the claims Richard was controlling, even violent, are way off base. He says Kristen was the one who couldn't walk away from a fight. And Sheriff Myers says some of the couple's friends said the same thing. If you'd interview friends on one side, of course, the friends would say that the other one

in the relationship was difficult and liked to fight and would be jealous and accusatory. His friends said that about her and her friends and her friends said that about him. Exactly. But what about that April 2009 incident when a police officer in the campus parking lot saw Richard slap Kristen on the face hard. Esser says there's another side to that story, too. An arrest is different than a charge. That arrest never led to a charge. In fact, it was Kristen who asked to have the charges dropped, saying she had started the fight. Kristen blamed herself and said she actually hit Richard first.

Absolutely. And so what? Therefore, it's okay for him to hit her back? No, I'm not saying that. Of course, it's not okay to slap someone back. But, you know, it's presented that there's an abusive relationship and he's the abuser. I don't think that's accurate. As for the events of November 11th, Esser says again it was Kristen who provoked a conflict. He says she was being unreasonable that day, objecting to Richard's father coming to stay with them even though he owned the house they were living in. After the couple parted around noon, Esser says Kristen wouldn't let it drop. From about 12 noon until about 1 a.m. the next morning, 12-13 hour period, she made

I think something like 113 phone calls. She called Richard 113 times? Yeah. Characterize somebody who calls their boyfriend 113 times in one day. How would you characterize it? I'm not the attorney in this case. I think it's pretty obvious. It sounds frantic. It sounds immature. It sounds like the kind of thing kids do. It also, I guess, could sound obsessive.

I wouldn't disagree with that. Esser's focus on Kristen's behavior isn't, he says, meant as character assassination. It's at the heart of his theory of what caused her injuries. She was so obsessive, Esser says, that when Richard came home late at night, she started the argument for a third time. So obsessive that when he tried to go for a drive in his pickup,

she sneaked into the back without him knowing it. She somehow managed to climb in the back of that pickup, the bed, and somehow managed to fall out. She must have fallen out, Esser says, while Richard was coasting along Albion Road, still not realizing she was in the truck. He says perhaps she fell because she tried to stand and was unsteady on her feet. Kristen's blood alcohol level, tested when she arrived at the hospital,

showed she had been drinking that evening. Her family says that played no role in her injury. Esser says it did play a role. The attorney acknowledges his version of what happened that night is unusual. We're trying to show that something happened that is pretty bizarre. And to support that, Esser had a powerful piece of evidence, a letter Kristen wrote to Richard shortly before she was hurt. I know I have a problem, Kristen wrote. I need to control my alcohol consumption, and I need to learn to walk away from a fight. She promises to fix a list of things, her drinking, her temper, yelling, and fighting. We thought it was pretty significant.

Even more significant, Esser says, is the lack of physical evidence against his client. The sheriff and his team had spent months combing through Richard's truck, the house he shared with Kristen, and the scene on Albion Road. But they'd come up with no blood spatters, no marks on her clothing, nothing at all to show that Kristen had been in the back of the truck that night, or that Richard had hurt Kristen in any way. There's no evidence that he caused the occurrence. No evidence that he caused her to fall from the truck, or that he threw her out of the truck, or that he did anything overtly to her at all. Correct. Despite all that, Sheriff Brett Myers wasn't calling off his investigation of Richard Pazma. A few months after Kristen returned home, Myers told

her family he was prepared to bring charges against Kristen's former boyfriend. Coming up, but what could those charges be and what does Kristen herself say about that night when Dateline continues. While Rick and Pat Grindley waited to see whether Richard Pazma would stand trial for playing a role in their daughter's severe injuries, Kristen was facing daily trials of her own. Have you been doing some cooking at home? I know that's been a goal of yours. I've just been helping. Relearning the everyday tasks that can overwhelm someone with brain damage.

At that time, Kristen didn't have the cognitive skills to drive or hold down a job, and her emotions were sometimes muted. And it's just so great to have Kristen healthy and back with us. But in July 2010, eight months after the accident, she and her parents felt Kristen was well enough to sit down with me and talk about what she did and didn't remember. How are you? I'm doing great. I'm doing good. Kristen was alert and engaged, though there were clearly pieces of her past she couldn't recall. What's the first thing you remember after the night of November 11th of last year?

I remember waking up and I was talking to my dad about where I was and what I was doing. Is this like a movie when you wake up and say, where am I or what happened? The first thing I asked him was, I believe, like, where am I? You know, like, why am I here? All that time later, Kristen could only remember fragments of her life in the weeks and months leading up to November 11, 2009. I kept thinking I didn't graduate. And I kept telling my parents I have to go back to school to complete it. And they're like, no, you graduated. I was like, how did I forget that? Some of Kristen's memories of her year-long relationship with Richard Pazma were fuzzy too. What'd you like about him? I actually can't remember that really. Kristen said she did remember Richard hitting her in that

school parking lot in April 2009. But what about Richard's claim, which she backed up at the time, that she hit him first? You still think that's true, what you told the police at the time, that Richard hit you because you had hit him? Like, I do think that happened, and I don't think that happened, but I think we were arguing. So I think that's kind of, like, what led to the slap. As for November 11, 2009, the night that left a hole in Kristen Grindley's life, she told me she couldn't remember a thing. You want to remember what happened that night.

I do. Even though it might end up being a pretty unpleasant memory. Yeah, I mean, it would stink, but I would like just so I can like remember. I mean, just to remember it, I think would be good. You want to know. Just to know, yeah. By now, Sheriff Myers had spent months on his investigation, but with Kristen's memory of the event gone, seemingly forever, and with no physical evidence to show Richard had hurt her, the sheriff had reached a dead end.

However, as he reviewed his files, the sheriff kept coming back to Richard's two inconsistent stories, his puzzling statement to Kristen's friend Caitlin that just maybe Kristen had climbed into the back of his pickup without him realizing it. And his claim to the sheriff that he'd watched Kristen standing in the doorway as he pulled away. So for Richard's stories to both be true, he would have had to be able to look at her, see her in the doorway. Then the minute he looks away, she runs forward and

secretly hides in the bed of his truck. Somehow, she's got to be able to jump in the back of that truck, crouch down without being detected. It just doesn't fit. She'd have to know how to fly. She pretty much would have to, yeah. The sheriff and his team studied that truck and Richard's story from every angle. They concluded that Kristen must have been in the truck that night, that Richard knew she was there, and that he knew she hit the pavement with his truck cruising at high speed. They were convinced he left her lying there, hovering near death, without so much as tapping his finger three times to call 911. Maybe Richard fled the scene because he'd somehow pushed her from the truck. Or maybe he was driving drunk when she tumbled out of the back and he feared a blood alcohol test.

Investigators and prosecutors weren't sure exactly how their victim had been hurt. But they didn't need a definitive answer to make their next move. Criminal charges have been filed in the case of a WSU graduate injured and left for dead last year. In the summer of 2010, after an eight-month investigation, Richard Pasma was booked, fingerprinted, and charged with a felony. It was a very long way from the attempted murder charge once contemplated by Kristen's family. Richard stood accused of leaving the scene of an injury accident, punishable by up to five years in prison.

What did you think when Richard was charged? I started crying, and I thought that the charges weren't enough. Still, the Grindleys hoped that during a trial, they might learn more details of what happened to their daughter. But that's not how things unfolded. Just 10 days before the trial date, Richard Pazma came into the courtroom not to face a jury of his peers, but to enter a plea. In Washington state, it's called an Alford plea. And under that agreement, Richard did not admit wrongdoing. In fact, he once again maintains that as far as he knew, Kristen was never in his truck that night.

But he acknowledged there was sufficient evidence for a jury to find him guilty of knowing Kristen was injured and not calling for help. She was not conscious at the time. She was bleeding from her head and other injuries. As part of their plea deal, the prosecution dropped their request for the exceptional sentence of five years. The sentencing hearing in November 2010 was the first time Kristen Grindley and Richard Pazma were in the same room since the night a year earlier when their romance came to an abrupt, terrifying, and violent end. I hope someday Richard confronts what he did to me and gets help. Until he admits that he has to change to get his anger under control,

I fear that he will hurt others like he did to me. Richard Pasma was the last to speak at sentencing. He had never talked publicly about the case, and he declined Dateline's request for an interview. Because he was taking the Alford plea, essentially pleading no contest rather than guilty, he didn't take responsibility for what happened on Albion Road. And if the Grindleys had been hoping to hear words of remorse, they were disappointed. I know you guys think that I'm not sorry, but I'm sorry for all of your troubles in the last year. And I wish this never would have happened.

I hope that just after today we can all just move on and move in a positive light and have it all just go away. Your Honor, thank you. Richard was sentenced to nine months in jail. Kristen Grindley will likely be dealing with the injuries she suffered on November 11, 2009, for the rest of her life. But she keeps her focus on the good things ahead. You think of yourself as lucky?

Mm-hmm. Because you're here. Yeah. I'm just very happy that I'm okay. That's all for now. I'm Lester Holt. Thanks for joining us.