Dateline NBC - The Night Brianna Vanished

Episode Date: November 17, 2021

In this Dateline classic, Police and FBI in Reno, Nevada search for a brazen criminal following the disappearance of college student Brianna Denison. Josh Mankiewicz reports. Originally aired on NBC on October 29, 2010.Josh Mankiewicz sits down with Brianna’s mother, Bridgette Denison, to find out how she’s doing these days, and to talk about how she channeled her pain into positive change.  After the Verdict available now only by subscription to Dateline Premium on Apple Podcasts. LINK: https://apple.co/3HAcMkv

I was just in hysterics crying, like there's blood on the pillow. Someone was stalking the young women of Reno, and now one of them had vanished. There was obviously, you know, there was something really bad. Her name, Brianna. She was just 19 years old. I just want to say to my daughter, Brianna, that I love you and I miss you and nobody's ever giving up. Nobody was giving up, but nobody was any closer to solving the mystery. Where was Brianna? Within a three-mile radius, there were hundreds of registered sex offenders.

Then a tip about a woman who'd found something odd in her boyfriend's truck, women's underwear. And when she asked him for the truth, she discovered something even stranger. Did you do this? Oh my God, did you? I'm Lester Holt and this is Dateline. Here's Josh Mankiewicz with The Night Breonna Vanished. Sunday, January 20th, 2008. In a neighborhood just up the hill from Reno's silver-plated heart, college students Jessica Diehl and KT Hunter were waking up after a long night of music and partying with their friend Brianna Dennison. Brianna, back home visiting her friends, had slept on the living room couch. But when Jessica Diehl woke up...

We went out to the kitchen and started making breakfast. The kitchen was right in front of the couch. And Brianna wasn't sleeping there anymore. At first, they weren't concerned. And we figured maybe she was upstairs in one of the roommate's empty rooms. KT went upstairs to the bedroom to see if Bri was sleeping there. I knocked on the door, just was like, hey, time to get up. About 9.45, KT tried once again to wake Brianna.

Once again, she got no response. I just am pounding on the door and things start entering my mind so I start just pounding on my other roommate's door. It was just like just all these things running through my mind like what is going on where is Bri? Only then did it hit KT that Brianna was not in the house. What scared KT was what Bri had left behind. Her whole life was there, her cell phone, shoes, purse, all her clothes that she had brought, everything was at my house. So she couldn't have left? No. Especially since it was wintertime and freezing cold that night. KT called Brianna's mom, Bridget. She called around 10. And your first thought was?

Not good. So you were worried right away? Well, yeah, because her cell phone was there, and she had no car. I knew she wasn't out walking around with no shoes on. So I said, I'll be right there. Back at the house, KT made another discovery, a terrible one. I called her mom right back and I'm like, I was just in hysterics crying. I'm like, there's blood on the pillow. And so, then I called 911. This is Robert. Can I help you? Hi, I need the police at my house. My friend spent the night last night on my couch. She's gone and there's something that

looks like blood on the pillow and all her stuff's still here. Brianna's mom, Bridget, couldn't get to Katie's house fast enough. So your mind's got to be working overtime. Well, yeah, I was really freaked out. There was something really bad. Blood and my child without her cell phone. I mean, what kid is without their cell phone? Soon police were everywhere. Veteran homicide detectives Dave Jenkins and his partner Adam Wignanski were investigating the scene at Mackey Court. Their combined 53 years of police work told them the same thing. It was pretty apparent that this was not a voluntary missing person. Family and friends gathered at Bridget's house.

And I said, I need this in the media, and they went with it and they didn't stop. Denison is described as 5 foot tall, 98 pounds, was last seen wearing pink sweats and a white tank top. Victoria Campbell covered the story for KRNV-TV. Police officers everywhere searching through garbage cans, searching the sewers, pulling up the manhole covers, checking down to see if she had been placed inside a sewer. Where was Brianna? Her pillow told a frightening story. Friends had seen blood on it. Detectives sent it to the crime lab. They identified some stains of mascara and a pattern between the stains.

Patterns that looked like bite marks. Suggestive that that pillow had been pressed hard against the face of Miss Denison. Days later, tests confirmed the blood on the pillow was Brianna's. Reno is a casino town that's not easily shocked, but this case hit everyone hard, even reporter Victoria Campbell. She was one of ours, and we weren't going to let her go without a fight. Brianna Dennison was a dazzling beauty with a thousand-watt smile, a straight-arrow kid with a huge heart who had a tough start in life.

Her dad passed away suddenly when she was just six years old, and her younger brother, an infant. Her mom, Bridget, says that made their family even closer. We had to team up, and the kids all had to help. You know, I had a little baby, and she became very protective of me. As she got older, she stayed close. That doesn't happen with a lot of kids. She stayed close, and she followed the rules, and the more she followed the rules and the more she followed the rules,

the more freedom she had. Brianna decided on college in California and was in her sophomore year at Santa Barbara City College. She had a steady boyfriend, was studying psychology, and wanted to work with kids. Then came winter break and Brianna came back to visit her hometown friends. And you thought, great, home safe. I never really felt like she was unsafe because she was so responsible. So detectives wanted to know, how did this responsible girl end up missing? They began to retrace Brianna's steps the day before she disappeared. Saturday, January 19, 2008, started with Brianna at her mom's house, doing laundry and puttering around in sweats.

Brianna had plans to join her Reno friends at a concert that night. About 9 p.m., Brianna went into her mom's bedroom, gave her a hug goodbye, and asked if she wanted a check-in call at the end of the night. And you said? I said no, because I knew where she was staying. By 10 p.m., Bri and her friend from high school, KT Hunter, were at the concert. She wanted to be at the front. She wanted to, you know, enjoy it. So we pushed our way to the front. We had so much fun dancing and stuff. At some point between 12.30 and 1 a.m.,

detectives determined KT and Bree met up with another girlfriend, Jessica Diehl. All three left the concert together on a shuttle bus. I actually got a picture of her when we were driving. We were riding the bus. Bree and her friends were dropped off at the Sands Regency Casino Hotel, the center of the college party crowd that weekend. As KT recalls, nothing felt out of place. During that time, meet anybody new? Anybody that later seemed suspicious to you? There was nobody we met or anything that seemed suspicious. About 2 a.m., one of Brianna's friends, Jessica, decided to leave the party and head back to KT's to crash. She later told police she said goodnight to her friends and went outside and then flagged

down a guy driving an SUV in the parking lot, a total stranger stranger to get a ride home. I could have probably easily walked, but it was freezing. So I just got a ride from the parking lot. Someone was leaving. It was bad, bad idea. Coming up. And then there was something else bad happening in the area. The previous month, there had been a stranger sexual assault abduction in that same neighborhood. Was a rapist stalking the women of Reno? When Dateline continues. KT and Bree had breakfast at a casino diner, and police later obtained a video from the casino's security camera.

Those were the last images of Breonna Denison before she disappeared. After breakfast, a friend dropped them off at KT's home on Mackey Court. It was about 3.30 a.m. At the house, Breonna made a significant decision. She decided to sleep on the living room couch. She wanted to text her boyfriend anyways and maybe even call him because they were fighting at the time. The couch was a few feet from the front door, and the front door was glass-paned, giving anyone on the street an easy view of the couch. And that night, the door was unlocked, which was not unusual. It was kind of like a hotel. We'd all lock our individual doors,

but the living room was kind of just a lobby that you just kind of left it unlocked in case someone forgot their keys. Around 4 a.m., KT said goodnight to her friend and went into her bedroom right next to the living room. Last words were, if you need anything, just come in my room. Detectives looked at her cell phone records. At 4.23 a.m., Brianna text messaged her boyfriend in Oregon. Exactly what happened after that, in the pre-dawn hours of a 24-hour town, was a mystery. Because by 9 a.m., the couch was empty and Brianna Dennison had vanished. Now, with the evidence they had before them, homicide detectives Adam Wignanski and Dave Jenkins thought Breonna had been abducted.

We suspected that she might well have been taken out the back door. Besides Breonna's blood and teeth marks on that pillow, crime lab technicians found another important piece of evidence on the back door. We were able to get a touch DNA profile off the rear doorknob of the residence. Touch DNA meaning someone had just grabbed the doorknob with their bare hand? There had been sufficient skin cells transferred on just the mere grabbing and opening of the door to allow a DNA profile to be obtained. But whose DNA was it? Where would the evidence lead?

And would they find Brianna in time? Her mother was in a living hell. That night, what are you thinking? I'm thinking what any parent would think. Everything goes through my mind and it's just, you know, it's easy enough to imagine. Brianna Dennison had disappeared. Detectives believed she'd been abducted from the house, her attacker taking her out the back door in the middle of the night. The crime lab found a trace sample of DNA on the door handle, and that didn't match anyone in the house.

So detectives were pretty sure that DNA had been left by whoever had taken Breonna. Reporter Victoria Campbell was on the air almost nonstop. We learned early on that Breonna's favorite color was blue. Blue ribbons covered every inch of this city, every car antenna, every fence post, every mailbox, every telephone pole. Breonna's picture was everywhere. People gathered to pray for her safe return. We are the biggest little city in the world, and we are the ones to find her.

The family set up a command post at a casino, and every morning hundreds of people showed up to help in the search, some after working all night. You would see people still in their work clothes, still in the black pants and white shirt of a slot machine repairman or a change person from a casino would put on a parka over their work clothes and go stand in line to search all day. It would not take long for police to identify a suspect. That is a person of interest, somebody we need to talk to. Remember the man who

drove Jessica back to KT's home the night of the abduction? The total stranger she flagged down? Investigators released an image of his SUV and urged the man to come forward. Robert McDonald worked the case for the Reno PD. We had an individual that's unknown to these women that had drove one of them home to the to the residence. He could have come back and and certainly had abducted Brianna. Within days, the man contacted police. His DNA was tested, and he was cleared, a dead end. But now detectives had another lead that would take this case to a different level.

It would no longer be a case of one missing young woman. The previous month, there had been a stranger sexual assault abduction in that same neighborhood. Brianna's still missing, but immediately you're thinking sexual assault. When you get down to it, very few motives to abduct a young woman. Back in mid-December, a little more than a month before Brianna was taken, a 22-year-old foreign exchange student had been attacked in the early morning hours in a parking garage on the University of Nevada, Reno campus.

It was just a few blocks from the house on Mackey Court, and in that instance, the attacker approached his victim from behind. Arm across the chest from one arm, and then the other hand cupped her nose and her mouth. She went unconscious shortly after that, most likely from being smothered. The next thing she remembers is coming to in a vehicle. The woman was driven a short distance, then sexually assaulted inside the car. During the assault, she was told not to look at the suspect. When the assault was over, she was brought back to her residence and told to get out of the car and not look back.

She hadn't looked at his face, but she had seen a lot. She was absolutely certain that the offender was Caucasian. She also described the suspect as having very noticeably thick and meaty fingers. He spoke clear English without discernible or noticeable accent. And from the words the man used, a behavioral analyst gave detectives a profile. The offender was not well-educated, was kind of a loner, likely employed in the construction trades.

Even better, the victim described his vehicle so well that detectives figured out the make and model. It is most likely a 2005 to 2006 Toyota Tacoma extended cab, four-wheel drive pickup. And the victim gave police other crucial clues. She saw a baby shoe on the floor of the car, and there was something else that made the suspect stand out. When he was done, she said, the man took her underwear and kept it. But even more important, police were able to obtain a sample of her attacker's DNA. And when the crime lab compared that sample with the one they took off the back door at Mackey Court. It was a match.

That's when we knew that there was someone out there who was making this a habit and what we hoped would become a deadly habit. For Brianna's family, that news was devastating. But it also gave her mother some hope. You just hope that he lets her go like the last one. You know, all through the process, I pretty much had hope that we would find her. What else do you do? There's nothing else you can do. The alternative is hard to think about. Police released a description of the attacker and of his vehicle. Suddenly, it seemed everyone in Reno was looking suspiciously at white guys driving extended cab pickup trucks.

But a third victim was about to come forward, and she would fill in a big piece of the puzzle. Because she had information no one else in this case had. She had seen her attacker's face. Coming up, a Valentine's Day appeal straight from a mother's heart. Just want to say to my daughter, Brianna, that I love you and I miss you and nobody's ever giving up. When Dateline continues. Four days after Breonna disappeared, police released a description of the man who they now knew had struck before, a sexual predator linked to two crimes. He's a white male, somewhere between the ages of 28 and 40 years old, between 5'6 and 6' tall. He drove an SUV or an extended cab pickup.

As that became ingrained in the collective mind of Reno, another woman came to police saying she had been attacked back in October 2008, three months before Breonna's abduction. She didn't want to subject herself to the inevitable indignities that come from a woman reporting a sex crime. Then, when she heard about Breonna, she knew she had to tell police her story. She said she was attacked in a parking garage on the University of Nevada, Reno campus, just a few blocks from the house where Breonna would later be taken. She said her attacker grabbed her from behind. Lieutenant Robert McDonald.

Put his arm around her and knocked her to the ground. Told her not to scream. He held a gun to her head and raped her. There was no DNA, but the victim gave police something almost as valuable. What did that victim tell you that you didn't already know? She had an opportunity to see the offender's face. And from her description, a police artist did a sketch that was released to the public. And one more thing, like the attack on that foreign exchange student a month later, the man made her hand over her underwear.

Police were now convinced he was keeping his victim's underwear as some sort of trophy. But they didn't release that information. Not yet. It was now the biggest manhunt in the city's history, trying to find a rapist and kidnapper before he struck again. We had three linked, serious, violent felonies by the same individual in a 400-yard radius area in the same neighborhood. In a pretty short period of time.

It was a very chilling thing for our community. People were rightfully scared to death. Parents started pulling their daughters out of the University of Nevada, Reno. Those who stayed were on high alert. Owners of gun and specialty stores saw a spike in their business, selling weapons, pepper spray, and even tasers. Police knew that DNA would be the key to breaking the case. The county crime lab tested 3,000 criminal DNA samples

that had been sitting on the shelf, but there was no match. No match in any national database either. Detectives looked hard at the hundreds of registered sex offenders in the area. And we began doing face-to-face interviews with any individual who didn't already have a DNA profile in the system. Investigators gathered 700 new DNA samples from men they questioned and from others who just volunteered.

They came down and said, hey, I think I match the description. I want to give my DNA just so you don't have to worry about me. But there was no match there either. We were pretty comfortable that that individual would likely not be our suspect. And that when you did find the guy, he'd say no. We were pretty certain that the offender would probably not be too excited about giving up his DNA. The search dragged into February, 25 days since Brianna disappeared, the posters and ribbons around town were fading a bit. But her family still held out hope that she was alive.

Bree's mother, Bridget, made a Valentine's Day appeal on TV. I just want to say to my daughter, Brianna, that I love you and I miss you. And nobody's ever giving up. There are thousands of people looking for you. The next day, the weather had turned warm, and the snow had started to melt in Reno. At lunchtime, a man was taking a shortcut across a field in an industrial park south of town.

He stumbled out of something he thought might be a body. Then he called police. This is breaking news. A grim discovery in South Reno today. We raced to the scene. You know, initially we're told that it's a young Caucasian appearing female. The field is about nine miles from the house on Mackey Court. We do know that police have gone...

Reporting for KRNV, Victoria Campbell was there. People started walking up, pulling over, coming over. Is that Brianna? Is that Brianna? I was on a search team. I've been looking for her. I hope it's not her. On the other side of the yellow tape, Detective Wignanski could see what was coming. This is not what we want it to be.

This was not the outcome. I knew deep in my stomach that it was her. But for a seasoned homicide detective, that horrible sight isn't the worst part. What bothers you is that other victims like family who are 24-7 wanting to know what happened to their loved one, and we have to be the bearer of that news. And it's, uh, it hurts. Wignanski's next stop was Bridget's house. Did police tell you in that first conversation that they thought it was probably her?

Yeah. And then I kept asking about her nose stone, or, because she doesn't have pierced ears I asked if they could tell if there was no pierced ears and she the scar on her ankle and they just said the elements they weren't able to tell so we had to wait for DNA. The next day after an all-nighter by the crime lab, police made it official. An autopsy today has determined that the remains of that female discovered in the field are those of 19-year-old Brianna Dennison. The official cause and manner of death was strangulation. It is a sexually motivated crime. All I can say to that is, at least I'm not waiting four years later, wondering.

That's about the only positive I can get out of it. Back at that field, detectives found something that looked like the killer's calling card. There was two sets of panties that were on her right side that were tucked underneath her right side. Thong underwear, one pink and one black,

with an image of the Pink Panther cartoon character. Crime lab technicians tested everything and determined that neither pair of underwear belonged to Brianna. The Pink Panther underwear had DNA from an unknown person, but the other pair were identified by forensic DNA evidence as having belonged to one of the roommates in the residence where Ms. Dennison had been abducted from. They belonged to K.T. Hunter, the friend of Brianna's who lived at Mackey Court. There was more DNA on that pink thong, some of it from the suspect, some of it from Brianna.

And that hip strap matched to the ligature marks on Brianna's neck. She was strangled with the stolen underwear. Even though Bridget knew that the killer couldn't hurt her daughter anymore, she still couldn't stop worrying. I went from being fearful for Brianna's life to being fearful for whoever he was going to get next time. You were not just thinking about the last victim, you were thinking about the next one. I was. Were police encouraging to you? Did they make it sound like they thought this was going to be solved? Yes.

One of the detectives actually promised me that they would find him, which I thought, wow, that's being pretty confident. Now investigators weren't just looking for a rapist and kidnapper. They were looking for a killer. Reno had a murderer in its midst, and the whole town was on edge. But weeks passed with no arrest. More than 40 detectives chased thousands of leads. But all the public heard was silence. From the outside, there was this perception that you guys weren't getting anywhere. Was that frustrating?

Very. Yeah. Every day we'd come to work, and we knew that... We were a phone call away. We were a phone call away. But would that phone call ever come? Hoping to shake out a lead, police finally released the information about the underwear found with Brianna. They had guessed right. That one tawdry detail would break this case.

Coming up, closing in on a killer. When I obtained that photograph and our initial sketch that we had from the forensic sketch artist, it was eerily similar. When Dateline continues. Homicide detectives Wignanski and Jenkins were consumed with the hunt for the killer of Breonna Dennison. I didn't have a single day off, and I don't think I was at home for more than five or six hours on any day from January 20th until sometime in the middle of June. They had the killer's DNA, and they were looking for a white male who drove an extended cab pickup truck. You looking at every extended cab pickup you pass? Oh, gosh.

Extended cab pickup, the physical description, when you were in a grocery store, when you were in a parking lot. I had a lot of license plate numbers that I would see in the community and make a note and we would follow down. But there was nothing. You know, we feared the worst. You know, that, God, we sure hope nothing else happens. There had been some promising leads. Thinking a killer who strangled his victim with underwear might also visit sex workers, police started canvassing some of the local brothels.

The Moonlight Bunny Ranch is about 35 miles south of Reno. The owner at the time was Dennis Hoff, who sat down with us in early 2008, just weeks after Brianna went missing. Police asked me for help, and I said, let's talk to the girls. Let's talk to the girls and see if we can find somebody that fits that profile that comes into the ranch. One of the women who worked at the Bunny Ranch told police about a regular client who seemed to fit the profile. She was scared. He had tried to choke her a few times in a party.

You mean during the session? During the session. Police asked the woman to entice the man back to the ranch. When the customer came back, the next session, the girl kept the condom, and she kept the glass that he drank out of, and we turned that over to the police. The DNA was rushed to the crime lab, but it didn't match the killer.

An investigation that had started off so well, with so many clues about the killer, his habits, his truck, his DNA, had now gone almost cold. Detectives pressed on, following more than 4,000 leads, all of them to dead ends. But one day in November of 2008, 10 months into the investigation, Wagnanski was thumbing through yet another stack of tips, and one of them caught his eye. One thing just struck me as odd, because they were talking about underwear. The anonymous tip was about a woman who had found someone else's thong underwear in her boyfriend's truck. Did they have a name? They said that the last name was Bela and had a first name that started with a J.

A driver's license search produced a name. James Bela. About the right age? About the right age. Physical description? You look at his driver's license photo and... Well, the eerie part was when I obtained that photograph and our initial sketch that we had from the forensic sketch artist, it was eerily similar. It seemed an interesting lead. Wignanski drove straight to Bila's house. No one was home, so he left his card. Wrote on the back of my business card, which obviously identifies me as a robbery homicide detective. Mr. James Bila, please call me at your convenience. And about 45 minutes later, Bila called Wignanski. He sounded a little uncomfortable, but who wouldn't be?

You have a detective that leaves a card on your door. You expect these people to be a little nervous. The detective told Bila he'd like to talk to him about an investigation. Bila agreed to meet Wignanski after work the next day. I hung the phone up and I just sat back down. And my wife looked at me and said, what's wrong? And I said, the guy never asked me what I was investigating. When you leave a card that says homicide, most people, most decent people call and say,

oh my God, what's happened? You know, who do I know that's been harmed? He didn't do nothing like that. Pretty unusual response. You've been looking for a long time. This was 10 months of terror. The next day, as Wignanski drove to meet James Bela, his instincts told him James Bela was different than the hundreds of others he'd spoken to. Right down to the truck Bela used to drive.

He had recently owned the right kind of truck. Absolutely. Matched perfectly. Four by four extended cab pickup truck, Toyota pickup. But he didn't want to get his hopes up. Thousands of guys drive pickup trucks in Reno. What were the chances this would be the right guy? It was like a common practice. Hey, we're just going to go talk to the guy, get a DNA swab, submit it to the lab, move on to the next step. But it would turn out to be anything but common.

Coming up, a detective comes face-to-face with a potential suspect. Will he crack under questioning? So, hey, I'm investigating the murder of Breonna Dennison. And his mood just totally changed, and I could just see bees of sweat forming on him. When Dateline Continues. Reno homicide detective Adam Wignanski was sitting in a Wendy's parking lot, waiting for James Bila, who was a potential suspect in the murder of Brianna Dennison. It had been 10 months since Brianna had been killed,

and Wignanski was willing to wait the 10 minutes it took for Bela to drive up. He shows up. He shows up in his truck parked just to the right of me. Bela got into Wignanski's car. And it was weird because when I shook his hand, one of the witnesses said that he had meaty fingers, you know, like construction type hands and stuff. And that's exactly what it felt like. At first, the detective kept it casual. He told me he was from Chicago. We talked about the Cubs and him being a White Sox fan, me being a Cubs fan. And then he told him. I said, hey, I'm investigating the murder of Brianna Dennison. And his mood just totally changed, and I could just see beads of sweat forming on him. So he was very, very nervous, very nervous.

I said, look, all I need is just a simple DNA swab, and that's it. Submit it to the lab, and it's no big deal. He goes, no, I'm not going to give it to you. Remember, detectives had expected one person and one person only would refuse to give them a DNA sample, the killer of Breonna Dennison. He goes, look, you could call my girlfriend. She'll be my alibi. Detectives went to speak to Bela's girlfriend, but far from giving him an alibi, she confirmed for detectives that she had found another woman's underwear in Bela's truck. She suspected at that time that he was having some kind of an affair. Knowing that one of the victims had seen a baby shoe in her attacker's truck,

detectives asked Bela's girlfriend if she had a child. She told them, yes, she had a four-year-old boy and that James Bela was the father. She agreed to give them a sample of her son's DNA. Police knew that if the boy was the son of the suspect, the two of them would have similar DNA. Adam and I were very aware that they would share half of the profile with each other. It would take a couple of weeks for an overworked crime lab to process the sample. During that time, police kept an eye on Bela, and detectives started digging into his background. They learned that Bela lived a couple of blocks from where the crimes had been committed, and that he was a regular at a sports bar in the same neighborhood.

Bela worked in construction as a pipe fitter. He had only a high school education and had been a B and C student. And all of that fit the profile police had been working with. We were trying to find things to eliminate him, and we couldn't. Detectives brought Bela's girlfriend in for more questioning. Remember that field where they found Brianna's body? We learned that his girlfriend actually worked in that building. She told them Bela used to drive her to work, and on that day in February 2008, she said she was looking out her office window. And watched as Brianna Dennis's body was being discovered, and called James Bela from that window as she was watching,

and let him know that I think they found the girl they were looking for. She told detectives Bela hardly said a word on the phone then. But within minutes after he hung up, police found out Bela had told his boss he was quitting. But he told his girlfriend that he had been laid off. Detectives found out that the very next day, Bela had left town and later sold his extended cab pickup truck. Eight months later, he had returned to Reno in a new truck. That's when his girlfriend discovered that underwear. Now, finally, the DNA

results came back on James Bela's son and confirmed what detectives already felt in their gut. The child was 99% certain to have been the biological son of the unidentified suspect. The following day, when Bela went to pick up his son at a daycare center, detectives arrested him. I placed him in my car and I said, James, you're under arrest for the murder of Brianna Dennison. And it was a good feeling. Coming up, the suspect's girlfriend asks the question. Did you do this? Oh my God, did you? Did you? When Dateline continues. Back at the police station, Bela wouldn't talk.

He was charged with kidnapping, with three counts of sexual assault, and with the murder of Brianna. Now, detectives were finally able to make that phone call they had promised they would make to Brianna's mother, Bridget. Adam called me. I was at home. And he said, we have him. Can you come down? And you're feeling what then? Pity? Hatred? Anger? Relief that he would be off the streets now. Detectives had made another promise, this one to Bela's girlfriend. They said they would let her know the results of her son's DNA test. And when they told her that her son's

DNA was a close match to the DNA of the killer, she came to the police station to speak to Bela. There, police cameras captured an incredible moment, as horrible as it is remarkable. Did you do this? Oh my God, did you? Did you? I don't know if I should hit you or hug you. Did you shoot me? Did you look me in the face. Did you? Did you? No, it's not the time. Well, I don't know what the time is. Down the hall, detectives were glued to the monitor.

It's gut-wrenching. She begs him to convince her that it's not him. And he never does it. In fact, I think he acknowledges that he is, in fact, the murderer, although he doesn't admit it directly. She doesn't want to believe that the father of her child could be a killer. Because if you didn't do it, it would fight to prove your innocence. Because what? DNA? DNA? What the f*** does it matter? You get an attorney? Oh, yeah. Yeah, that'll work.

Yeah, that's gonna work, huh? Later, detectives got a sample of Bela's DNA, and it matched the suspect's DNA from all the crime scenes. At last, detectives were sure that the man they knew so much about but had been unable to find, the killer who had terrorized Reno, was finally in custody. Bela was facing the death penalty. He would later plead not guilty. Prosecutors played that extraordinary tape for the jury. If that wasn't enough, prosecutors had rock-solid DNA evidence.

More than two years after Brianna was murdered, and after three weeks of testimony, it took the jury just six hours to reach a verdict. We, the jury, in the event of a counts. And the jury gave James Bela the death penalty. That verdict meant the end of a long and difficult ordeal for the city of Reno, but especially for Brianna's mother, Bridget. For her, this was also the beginning of something. We spoke again just after the trial. The first interview I did, you were coming apart at the seams.

You've come a long way. I have. It's been two and a half years. You have to make a choice. You know, you can be miserable and let it control your life, or you can move on and hopefully try to not let this happen to anyone else. For that reason, Bridget set up the Bring Bree Justice Foundation, advocating for a Nevada law that would require anyone arrested for a felony,

as Bela had been in 2002, to give a DNA sample to be added to police databases. Known as Breonna's Law, it passed in 2013. It's not like it brings Breonna back to me. I guess I can just move on and do other things. It hasn't brought her back, but it kind of brought you back. Yeah, kind of. Kind of. That's all for now.

I'm Lester Holt. Thanks for joining us.