Dateline NBC - Wrong Turns

Episode Date: October 8, 2024

A new father is found dead on the side of a road.  Then the shocking stabbing of a young woman in broad daylight leads police on a high speed chase.  Investigators wonder: are these two chilling murders connected? Josh Mankiewicz reports.

Tonight on Dateline. He was my person. Justin just wanted to be a dad so much. I love and I miss him, and I really wish he was here. She said, your brother's dead. And I was like, what? Justin was driven out to that desolate area by the lake, stabbed.

And shot. And then the lake, stabbed. And shot. And then eventually shot, yes. He didn't deserve this. I see the girl's laying by the fire hydrant. She was bleeding everywhere. I got a call, something's happened to your daughter. She had been murdered. It's beyond thinkable.

What would ignite such an evil murder of two people? That pursuit was seen by nearly everybody in Southern California. And now all of a sudden this feels like a much bigger plot. Yes, it did. I've never had that happen. Money, greed, jealousy. If you'd left that night, you'd have been murdered. No question. Yeah. It could have been all of us. One killing, then two.

Who was behind this dark double murder plot? I'm Lester Holt, and this is Dateline. Here's Josh Mankiewicz with Wrong Turns. It's impossible to know where life will take you. Some roads lead to hope. We were just really happy and excited. Others, to heartache. I still don't understand why he couldn't just go on with his life.

The challenge is knowing which fork in the road is the right one. This changed everything, didn't it? It really did. Because when you make a wrong turn, even by mistake, the results can be tragic. In the spring of 2015, Tanya Reppy and her boyfriend, Justin Hilbert, got some unexpected news. I took a test, and it was positive. You already had a suspicion. Yeah, yeah.

A baby boy. Even though it wasn't the best timing, we were both really excited. He went with me to all the doctor's appointments, and he was there with me in the hospital. This is the beginning of the life you were supposed to have. Yeah, it was like I had finally gotten back on the right road. Their relationship had taken some detours, as can often happen with love that starts in high school. They split up. They reunited. The new baby was a new start for Justin, who got clean after struggling with addiction. That's when he got into machining school

and, you know, came up with a plan for how he was going to support his family. Knowing that he was going to become a father made him want to sort of sit up straight and fly right. Yeah, yeah. By June 2016, their son Logan was six months old. Justin had started a new job and felt some pressure to provide for his family. Tanya was living with her mother in Riverside, California. That was just temporary until we were able to get our own place. On June 17, while Justin was at work, Tanya received a friend request on Facebook from a woman named Bailey Sharp. Who's Bailey? I mean, did you know her? No, I had no idea who she was. Curious, Tanya accepted the request, and three days later, Bailey began sending her messages,

saying she wanted to talk female to female. And what Bailey told Tanya was concerning. These Facebook messages suggest that Bailey knows that Justin's cheating on you. And that he's using again. You believe either of those things? I didn't believe the cheating thing. I kind of just disregarded that. But the using thing, that was a concern because, you know, it's a hard thing to stop. Tanya said Justin started using drugs as a teenager. When you're a teenager too and you get into something like that, you

really have no idea what you're getting into. She had helped him through the ups and downs of his addiction when they were younger. Tanya believed he'd been clean since the baby was born, and she was proud of him. She definitely didn't want him sliding backward. When Justin finished work that day, Tanya showed him those messages. She said Justin denied both relapsing and cheating. It turned out, Justin had recently met Bailey at a restaurant, and she had offered him an opportunity to make some money, a drug deal. Tanya desperately tried to talk him out of it. In our conversation that night, I told him, I was like, well, just we'll figure out another way.

Just put a pin in this. Don't do anything. Fair to call this a fight or not? It started as a fight, but we resolved it the same night. So you guys were in a good place. Yeah, yeah. When he left that night, we told each other we loved each other. He gave me a kiss goodbye. He gave Logan a kiss goodbye. And I'll see you tomorrow. Later that night, Tanya continued to receive messages from Bailey,

asking her to meet nearby. Well, Tanya was home with her baby Logan. You didn't go meet her? No. But that whole night, I was awake and just restless. The next morning, Tanya reached out to Justin. I tried to just be like, okay, let's just wipe the slate clean. I think I sent him a picture of Logan to show him how he was doing that morning.

And I didn't get any response. Unusual? Very unusual. He always responds, like, right away. I kept texting him. I tried calling him. Maybe he's angry? I thought that at first, that maybe he's still upset at me,

and he just doesn't want to talk right now. But that's also not normal either when he's upset. Later in the day, she finally received a text from Justin. His phone was broke and had water damage. So my thought at that time was, okay, he's at the phone store and he's going to be over here soon. That must have come as kind of a relief. It was. I was, I was super relieved. I was like, oh, okay, everything is fine. And this is why he hasn't texted all day long. Yeah. Yeah. Her relief wouldn't last.

At Justin's parents' home, his mother, Kathy Hudson, a nurse, was upstairs getting ready for work on the night shift. Her husband, Steve, was downstairs. And that's when she heard it. I heard him scream. I come flying down the stairs and I'm like, what's going on? What happened? What happened?

And he goes, he's gone. He's gone. Detectives were at the house. Their message, Justin had been found dead. That evening, Kathy broke the news to Justin's older sister, Mallory Goins. I think she said, he's dead, your brother's dead. And I was like, what? What? And it didn't compute.

Mallory had to give the awful news to Tanya. I just remember her screaming. And she was, oh God, she was so upset. They found him at Lake Matthews, and I don't know what happened. It was terrible. Terrible doesn't begin to describe this. Justin Hilbert had been stabbed multiple times and shot in the face. His body found on the side of the road near a place

called Lake Matthews, about 15 miles from Tanya's home. I couldn't wrap my head around it. It didn't make sense. Making sense of what happened to Justin Hilbert would take years. It's like this disbelief that you go through, like, no, you can't be right. That has to be wrong. As investigators chased down a killer... She was bleeding everywhere. ...and uncovered a sinister plot. He was actively planning to kill you

where nothing was as it seemed. That wasn't the end of the bad news. No, it wasn't. A real clear picture as what transpired and who was involved, it hadn't materialized yet. Justin Hilbert's body had been discovered by a motorcyclist on a stretch of road near a place called Lake Matthews in Riverside, California. When you find a body out there in the middle of nowhere, what's that say? It can point to a lot of things. It's either gang-related, point to a lot of things. It's either,

you know, gang related. It could be murder for hire. So there's just a lot of options that we have to look at. Within hours, Sergeant Lance Stoyer of the Riverside County Sheriff's Office was running down leads. It was close to seven o'clock till we actually got to walk into the scene and see what we were dealing with. What do you see there? What does it look like? There's no houses, no streetlights or anything like that. It's just kind of a desolate stretch of road. To Justin's girlfriend, Tanya,

it made no sense at all. I'd never even heard of Lake Matthews, and I live in the area. I was like, when I first heard that, I was like, Lake Matthews, where's that? He'd never mentioned it. Yeah, never. Tanya had loved him since they were both 14. He was always funny. He always made me laugh.

And I think that was the thing I loved most. And, like, making me laugh would bring that smile to his face. Tanya came to appreciate Justin even more during one of the breaks in their relationship. That's when she met and married another man who did not treat her as well as Justin had. That marriage didn't last long. And once the divorce papers were drawn up, Tanya called her old high school sweetheart, Justin. I wanted him to know that, you know, I still, I still loved him. Whether or not he wanted to be together or not, that, you know, that would be his choice at that point. But I missed him and

I loved him and I wanted him back in my life. And he said? That he loved me too. And I think it was like that same night or maybe not long after that we met up and that same spark is still there and it just feels, it feels like home.

And you think, how could I have been so foolish? Yeah. Yeah. It sounds romantic. Justin's family was not thrilled. I remember the day he told me he was back with Tanya. And I'll be honest with you, I was very adamantly against it. Because she'd broken his heart.

Yeah, and that's all I thought she was going to do again. Justin's sister Mallory, on the other hand, was not surprised at all. We know that they were meant to be together. They're just magnetized to each other. They can't get too far away. So it wasn't surprising surprising they were back together. It was exciting that they were pregnant. And his love for Tanya ran pretty deep. So it was extra special, I guess, that it was with her. Tanya saw Justin's bond with their son, Logan,

right from the beginning. Logan was a blessing. He got the first moments with him, which I think is really special. They were building a really strong father-son relationship. Like he would spend as much time as he could with me and the baby. Justin had just celebrated his first Father's Day. That was the one and only Father's Day that Justin got. I had, like, a built-in best friend. Mallory was a year older than Justin, who was known to all in his family as Buddy. There was a time when Justin didn't actually answer to Justin.

Yeah. It was as if he thought his name was Buddy for a long time, because that's what everybody always called him. He was at the grocery store, and some checkout person said, hey, Buddy, how you doing? And my brother was stunned. He said, Mom, how did he know my name? When Justin enrolled in machinist school, his stepfather, Steve, saw Justin's future finally coming into focus. He put himself through that school. 100%. Nobody, I didn't help him, his mom didn't help him.

He worked at the gas station and he went to school every day. You must have been really proud of him. I was very proud of him, but always. You know, he was a good kid. Everybody loved him. Which was why Justin's murder was so shocking. Do you think of Justin as having any enemies? No.

Buddy was super loving, super fun. Everybody liked to be around him. He was just that kind of person. I was thinking, who would do such a horrible thing? A transient, a serial killer, who would do this? We couldn't think of anyone. I remember the whole speculation with me and Tanya and my mom of, well, what could have happened? Maybe it was a carjacking. And, you know, knowing my brother, he's not just going to hand over the keys. So it's possible he got killed because he fought back or something, you know, that was kind of where we were going with it. When you say to his family, who didn't like Justin, who had it in for him, they say, no one we can think of. That's right. Everybody liked him. Yes. You've heard that

before, haven't you? Sometimes, yeah. And it's not always true. Correct. Sergeant Lance Stoyer knew Justin's girlfriend was key. Tanya had mentioned those strange Facebook messages from the night Justin disappeared. She identifies to us a female subject. Out of the blue, a friend requested her on a social media platform. Somebody that Tanya didn't know. That's correct. That's Bailey Sharp. Yes.

You'd never heard the name Bailey Sharp before? None of us had. No. Justin had never mentioned her? No. So what about that drug deal Bailey supposedly offered? The one Tanya tried to talk Justin out of making? Did Justin go through with it after all?

And maybe get himself killed in the process? I'm guessing that's probably where the investigation was headed. I think that they thought that it was just going to be a drug deal gone wrong. Yeah. Because people who do that sometimes end up dead. Yeah. But I don't think that he actually left that night to make the deal. I think that he was taken. Taken? By whom? And why? In the days after Justin Hilbert's murder, his mother Kathy was numb. The nurse needed to see her boy, needed to hold him one more time.

My mom insisted on seeing my brother's body and she told investigators she can't believe that he's gone, which I was in the same boat, but they ended up letting her see him maybe a week after he died. As a nurse, I'm going over all the wounds on his body. And I was like, who would do this? How could this happen? I don't know. The pathologist's report provided additional clues for Sergeant Lance Stoyer from the Riverside County Sheriff's Office. The cause of death was a gunshot to the head.

But before that had come an unusual stabbing. He was able to tell us that there was not one but two knives that made the lacerations and puncture wounds to adjust in. Different knives? Two different knives. Suggesting more than one assailant? Possibly. Those stab wounds came well before the shotgun blast that killed him. Yes, they were able to determine that Justin was alive when those lacerations were made,

which indicated to me that they were possibly torturing Justin, because none of the lacerations or stab wounds were life-threatening. They were superficial, obviously extremely painful, but not fatal. They noticed something else. There was dried blood on his jeans that was consistent with him being in a seated position when those stains were made, and it looked inconsistent with how he was found there on the roadway. In other words, Justin's injuries had likely happened elsewhere, and his death had not been quick. It was a prolonged situation where he had been injured,

he had bled, and then the gunshot wound appeared to be more close in time to when we were actually notified. Can you tell what kind of gun, or small caliber, large caliber? Yeah. Based on the injuries that we could see, there was a lot of small red injuries that would have been consistent with possibly like a shotgun that was used, and then just given the severity of the wound to the head, that's what we initially assumed. And as to where he was found, what goes on out there at Lake Matthews? It's a no-body contact reservoir, so there's no boating, there's no picnic areas or anything like that. It's just a reservoir. There's no houses nearby.

So a good place to dump a body. Correct. And nobody will see you. Correct. We're trying to determine was this some sort of gang-related crime or possibly a drug debt. So everything was on the table at that point. That's why we had to contact Justin's family to determine his associates and kind of work backwards from there. Your job's not only about finding somebody's fingerprints and then finding that person and then finding out if they had an alibi.

I mean, it's also examining all sorts of personal relationships that people have with each other and trying to determine sort of exactly what the nature of that is. And there's some of that going on here too, right? Yes, it was a little bit of a web to untangle. And that included those strange messages from Bailey Sharp to Tanya about Justin's behavior. Bailey relates to Tanya that Justin's now using illegal drugs and that they're meeting up, Bailey and Justin, and Bailey portrays herself

as kind of a concerned female friend that Justin's engaged in this type of behavior. Tanya pretty clearly found that suspicious. Yes. Did you find that suspicious? Absolutely. The timing was just too coincidental to not have something to do with the murder. Do you talk to Bailey? We could not locate her.

A lot of the addresses that we had checked were old addresses. People that were living there at the time said that they had either moved there recently or had never heard of Bailey Sharp. Cops were looking for Bailey. Tanya was looking for answers. You want to know what happened because that's all you have left at that point. That person's gone. But at least knowing what happened should at least give you some sort of closure, I guess. So when investigators asked her who might want Justin dead, she mentioned someone from her own past. I don't think that this person, like, it's so far to take it to where you're going to take someone's life. It's hard to wrap your mind around because I think it's that thought of like, that's crazy. That's stuff that you see on TV. Tanya's life suddenly looked very different.

Her first love and the father of her child was gone. And in his place, a new reality as a single parent. She says she tried to help the sheriff's department. They did ask who I thought, you know, could possibly be involved in this. And you said? I said that there's issues with my ex-husband, but I don't think that that's anything. Investigators thought it was worth looking into. Jared Bischoff was Tanya's ex, the man she married during one of her breaks with Justin. It was four years earlier. I was going to go on a date with

his cousin and he tagged along. And I guess we hit it off at that time. Tanya said she was drawn to Jared's confidence. He talked about things in a very ambitious way that just, it kind of made you look at him like, oh, wow, this person's got, like, lots of goals and they're trying to get somewhere. He's going places. Yeah. And the first place he was going was into uniform. He always talked about the Navy, not any other branch. He'd always wanted to be in the Navy.

Yeah. And you were prepared to move all over the world for him? I mean, it does sound exciting when you're young to be able to move different places. But it did conflict with my desire to have a family. Jared enlisted. He and Tanya married. There wasn't really a proposal. It was more like, we should get married because I'm

in the military and it'll be easier. We'll get more money. We'll be able to like get housing easier. So practical, but not super romantic. Yeah, it was very practical. We got married at the courthouse. She moved to San Diego and they shared a condo near the naval base. Justin's sister Mallory stayed friends with Tanya and got to know Jared. Jared struck me as a thrill seeker, like an adrenaline junkie, wanting to do things like skydive and break into apartment pools, like jump the fence to go in and swim in the pool after hours. Tanya says her relationship with Jared began to change

because Jared began to change. From the point we got married, I feel like it kind of started happening fast that I started realizing, oh, this isn't it. What was Jared looking for in a wife? I think he wanted someone that he could, like, turn isn't it. What was Jared looking for in a wife? I think he wanted someone that he could, like, turn into what he felt was the ideal woman for him. Which is a, what, a doormat who also makes dinner?

I guess. I think more just someone that, like a subordinate, someone that you could tell what to do, and they would follow through. Jared also made quite clear he liked his women thin. He bought you clothes that were a couple of sizes too small? More than a couple of sizes. There was like a size zero jeans and I've never even been anywhere close to a zero. And by buying you that, he's saying, I want you to lose weight. I want you to fit into this. Yeah, he said it was like to motivate me. Tanya was motivated to realize she had made a big mistake. The ambitious Navy man Jared was not her

path to a happy life. He was one leading straight to a quick divorce. She moved out of their condo while Jared was deployed and returned to Riverside, where she rekindled her romance with Justin and waited for Jared to return and sign the divorce papers, which he did. But it was taking a while. Yeah, and he seemed to be getting impatient, which, I mean, I wanted to be divorced too. By this time, Tanya and Justin were raising their son Logan together. So, was Jared jealous of this new life Tanya had created so quickly? To investigators, that certainly felt like a possible motive. They needed to find Jarrett, and it didn't take long. He was still stationed 100 miles away in San Diego.

We were able to interview Jarrett at the naval station. He was adamant that he was at work around the time that this had happened. And there's nothing to disprove that? Correct. Tanya had stated that she had last seen Justin about 7 p.m. on the 20th, and then Justin wasn't found until 2 a.m. on the 21st. So we're dealing with a pretty large time window. Was Jared Bischoff provably on the base all that time? Yes.

Cell phone records backed up Jared's story. I kind of get the feeling that despite all the bad blood between you and Jared, you were relieved that he had an alibi, that he was not there when Justin was murdered. Yeah, it was like, okay, it's not this. That's something. Whoever had shot and killed Justin out by Lake Matthews, investigators were convinced it wasn't Jared. So back to square one. Well, not for long. A huge twist in the case was coming,

as impossible to predict as it was to understand. My hands were covered in blood. It was pretty bad. I mean, hard to relive it. Oh yeah, for sure. It had been three weeks since Justin Hilbert's body was left on a desolate road in Riverside. Just eight miles away, another violent struggle was about to take place. There's a suburban park where California Avenue meets Calm Hill Drive. Sam Marquez drives past it all the time. On July 10, 2016, something made him stop. What do you see? I see a girl standing at the street sign right there.

I could tell she was waiting for somebody. And as I was driving by, when I got to this point here, I see the guy walking up. I think it's a boyfriend, girlfriend, until he grabs her, and I'm like right here now. So then when I see that she doesn't want to go with him, that's when I decide to turn around. She's like struggling? Yeah, she's pushing away. Like, she's going this way, he's going this way. Sam made a U-turn and headed back. And I see the guy take off. I park right there.

The girl's laying by the fire hydrant. Face up. Still alive? Still alive. Sam called 911, and while he waited, he tried to comfort the young woman. All I could tell her is that help's on the way. Did she say anything? No, she couldn't talk. She was bleeding everywhere.

When I first got to her, her top was down. I pulled her top up. My hands were covered in blood, and it was pretty bad. Hard to relive it? Oh, yeah, for sure. Why'd you stop? Why'd you get involved? I just thought that was the right thing to do. The woman had been stabbed at least 25 times.

She did not survive. It doesn't seem like a scary area where a lot of people are getting assaulted. No, not at all. It's not a really high crime area. By the time Sergeant Adrian Tillett with the Riverside Police Department arrived on scene, the young woman's killer was long gone and a homicide investigation was underway. Unusual to have such a brazen, bloody crime in broad daylight on a suburban street where a lot of people would have been home. Yes, definitely.

Sam wasn't the only eyewitness at the park that day. Do you need anything? Water? Anything to drink? Anything like that? This man was also there. He said he was friends with the victim. His name is Ricky. We're only using his first name because he's still nervous about everything that unfolded. Ricky said the woman was anxious about meeting her boyfriend. They'd been arguing, and Ricky agreed to be there for her just in case.

I just walked up. I walked up on the hill. You have a 180 view of it. I sat down. I saw the kid coming. Once I saw that, he pulled up. He got his heart sped up, slammed on the grace, got out of the car, ran around, tried to drag her. He said there's some type of struggle, almost like maybe he's trying to pull her into the car, and then he sees kind of a downward motion with his hands, like he's stabbing her. He starts to run down to the intersection to help her.

He doesn't see the actual knife, but he sees the motion. You can see him, like, stabbing and just jabbing. And then once I saw her fall down, I was running off the hill because I told her I would help her. Except Ricky couldn't get to her in time. He could only watch exactly what his friend had feared coming true. And now police had to let the victim's family know the terrible news. She came from a suburb of Seattle, Washington. I got a call from my son that a sheriff's deputy had shown up at the house,

which I thought was odd. The young woman's father is a detective with the Seattle Police Department. I told my son to give him my phone number, and I got a call from the coroner. Who says? Sit down. And you knew? Mm-hmm. Without knowing what it was, you knew. What did the coroner say? I don't remember exactly, but something to the effect of something's happened to your daughter.

I probably said some things I shouldn't repeat here. And we got down to the bottom of it, and she said, I asked something to the effect of, is she alive? And she said no. She had said something about an incident. Their daughter's name? Bailey Sharp.

Yes, the same Bailey Sharp investigators wanted to ask about Justin Hilbert's murder. The woman who had suddenly contacted Tanya on Facebook in the days before Justin died. She'd now been killed herself. What exactly was going on here? You think that has something to do with what happened to Justin? That's when it started making more sense. That's when it started clicking. Bailey Sharp was dead. And without her, investigators looking into the murder of Justin Hilbert had just lost one of the few potential leads they had.

It feels like Bailey's murder both sort of accelerates and decelerates the investigation. Mainly decelerates, because now at this point, we don't have anywhere else to go. She's clearly holding a lot of answers, and she's not around now. Right. Meaning no way to find out what she knew about Justin or what happened at Lake Matthews. Bailey had been in contact with Justin prior to his murder. Remember, she'd also sent Tanya those odd messages about his behavior. Investigators had been looking for Bailey in the days before she was killed.

They did not find her in time. Bailey's family would have to fill in the blanks for their murdered daughter. Erica is her mom. It's one of those situations where you kind of go through and look back and just, you know, you wonder how you, you know, functioned on some days. Bailey grew up the oldest of three kids. She had all kinds of sort of aspirations as a kid. In her bug phase, she wanted to be an entomologist. You know, there was a time where she thought she would be an astronaut. There was a time where when she played soccer, she was going to be a professional soccer player.

That changed when chronic illness hit her. First diabetes and later lupus. She was devastated that she had to quit soccer, that she couldn't play anymore because of her pain. Devastated. That was something she loved, something that she absolutely viewed as a part of her identity. And so she didn't have practice anymore. She never games. Her life was now completely upside down. The pain cut off Bailey from her friends. Her parents say it drove her to self-medicate. We had had the conversation about marijuana and that she said,

I didn't use that to get high. It helped with my pain and it helped me feel hungry. Then Bailey was injured in a zip lining accident. Soon she was searching for something stronger to manage her pain. And someone had said, well, you should try this, you know, which wound up being heroin. And she said, I thought I'd been able to handle everything else. I could drink. It didn't be an issue. Pot wasn't an issue. But she said, I tried heroin and that was it. And she said that was, it just spiraled from there. Bailey ended up in rehab twice. Her parents always hoped she could

pull out of it. Was there a time when you guys were thinking, if we can just get through the next couple of years, she's going to grow up, she's going to be okay? Daily. We figured kind of through high school, you know, if we can just kind of cross that line. And she did.

She graduated. And then... And you thought, maybe we're not home free, but we're on the way. There's hope, yeah. Somewhere. When Bailey moved to Southern California, her parents worried about her sobriety. She'd met a new boyfriend through some mutual friends, a guy who served in the armed forces. Her parents thought he could be good for her.

You think, hey, somebody's in the military, stable, potentially. Used to following the rules. Used to following the rules. This is a good sign. It was hopeful. Then came unimaginable news from California. Bailey was dead, not from drugs, but a murder in broad daylight, right in front of her friend Ricky. Most people do not witness a murder, let alone the murder of someone they know. Yeah, it doesn't happen very often, and you can tell he was shaken up by the incident. You could tell that he was... Yeah, just seemed like maybe thinking about maybe what he could have done different. Ricky told Sergeant Adrian Tillett how he saw more than just Bailey's murder that day.

As Ricky ran down the hill after Bailey was stabbed, he saw the killer get in his car. I opened the back door, it was locked. And I went to open the front door, he just looked at me, I just made eye contact, I could see the blood on his face, and he took off. And, Ricky said, the murderer had a very familiar face. He had the look of a scared person in his eyes.

But, I mean, I recognized his face. The killer Ricky had recognized was about to go on the run. Leading investigators to uncover some hard truths. And that's when he said, what do you want to know? And you're like, well... Everything. About a plot as devious as they come. Money, greed, jealousy.

That's where you really appreciate the wickedness of this scheme. As Ricky watched his friend Bailey slash to death right in front of him in the park that day, his mind went to a terrible place. That man holding the knife wasn't a stranger. It was the Navy man Bailey was dating, the man she was afraid of meeting. According to Ricky, Bailey had only said nice things about him. He can't hit a fly. Like a child, he can't hit a fly. That's all he's ever said about me. But I mean, I recognize his face. And I know that he saw me.

His name was Jared, as in Jared Bischoff. Tanya's ex, the man she married while broken up with Justin Hilbert. And even though Bailey had described Jared as harmless, she was clearly scared of him now. After the stabbing, Ricky said, Jared got into his car and drove off. Police discovered Jared's car was registered to his father's home nearby. Detectives checked there and no Jared. When they learned he'd been married to Tanya,

they showed up at her place late that night. They start asking me if I have seen him. With police searching her backyard, Tanya was confused. That's when detectives told her. Jared was suspected of killing his new girlfriend, Bailey Sharp, earlier that day. The same Bailey who'd been messaging Tanya the night Justin disappeared. So, Justin's murdered. Bailey's murdered.

The thing that connects them is Jared and you. Yeah. And now he was nowhere to be found. You feel in danger at that point? Yeah, yeah, I was. And even the police were concerned. They suggested that we leave for the night until they found him. Tanya was terrified, although not entirely shocked, because she recognized some of that behavior from when she and Jared were together. That sound like Jared to you? That sounds like him when he's completely lost control of his anger.

Riverside police notified other agencies they were looking for both Jared Bischoff and his car. By the next day, they had a lead 100 miles away. A cell phone number that detectives thought might be Jared's was connected to an address in San Diego. We contacted San Diego PD to check that address to see if they can see the vehicle that we're looking for. And as they're getting set up on the address to conduct surveillance, the vehicle drives away and a pursuit ensues. That pursuit was seen by, I think, nearly everybody in Southern California. Probably it started in San Diego and came all the way back up to Riverside. Right now at five, video you'll only see right here. Police in pursuit of a U.S. sailor. San Diego police spotted him early this morning, leading to a high speed... At around 5 a.m., Jarrett peeled out of the San Diego neighborhood where police had spotted his car,

driving 90 miles an hour through streets and freeways. San Diego police located Bischoff driving his white Kia on Interstate 805. Law enforcement agencies across Southern California joined in the pursuit. Bischoff is wanted for the stabbing murder of his girlfriend. They say the two met at a Riverside park where he killed her and drove off in a white Kia. I was watching the news,

and Jared actually called my mom while he was being chased, and he wanted to talk to me, but I didn't want to talk to him. Did you talk to him for a second or not? No. Tanya wasn't the only person Jared tried to talk with. As he was racing out of San Diego, choppers overhead, lights and sirens in his rearview mirror, Jared called his mother and father, too. Maybe he wasn't planning to walk away from this alive.

You've got to be thinking, we may never actually end up arresting this guy. Yes, that thought did cross my mind. How long does that chase last? Probably about an hour. Finally, Jared slowed down and pulled over in the same spot where police began looking for him, at his father's house. It eventually came to a peaceful end in Riverside. He surrendered to officers who cuffed him and took him to the station. I attempted to interview him, run his Miranda rights, and he invoked and said he wants a lawyer.

Justin's sister Mallory found out the morning after. I wake up to, I don't know, hundreds of texts and calls. I'm looking at my Facebook messages, and it said it was him, it was him, there's a car chase. I would never have guessed that Jared would just haul off and start hurting someone like that. Jared was locked up and lawyered up at the Riverside Police Department. He was formally charged with Bailey's murder and he wasn't talking. At that point, it kind of throws us back to square one. Investigators returned once again to Jared's father's house, this time to search for evidence that might connect Jared to Justin's murder. You find anything?

No. No knives, no shotgun? There are knives, but nothing that we believe was related to the murder of Justin Hilbert. If these two killings were connected, it wasn't clear exactly how. Detectives continued their investigation, which included the search for Justin's car. It had been missing since the night he died. And four days after Bailey's death, they got a hit. It came from Santa Ana, 50 miles from where Justin's body had been recovered. We find blood staining on the inside of the vehicle, on the passenger side of the vehicle.

Tests determine the blood belonged to Justin. Suggesting that the assault against Justin began in that car. Correct. So given the fact that he has these superficial stab wounds, if you assume that somebody's in the driver's seat of his vehicle, he's in the passenger seat. It's consistent with the injuries. That wasn't all. There's a fingerprint on the exterior of the vehicle and then DNA from inside the vehicle. A partial fingerprint on the car door and some touch DNA inside.

Investigators ran both and came up with a name. Danny Serrano, 24 years old, was no stranger to law enforcement. Investigators discovered he had a lengthy rap sheet and had been convicted of domestic violence. Was there any relationship that you know of or could find out about between Danny Serrano and Justin Hilbert? They know each other, hang out together? No. No indication that they had ever met before. Investigators dropped by Serrano's temporary home, a cozy little place called Pie Desert State Prison, where he was serving time for those domestic violence charges. Danny had been picked up four months after Justin's body was found, and he denied any involvement in the murder.

His explanation for his fingerprints and DNA being inside the vehicle is he steals cars. That's a sophisticated criminal. He knows to give just enough information to explain away his involvement in something, but not enough to actually hang himself with it. Despite that fingerprint, they didn't have enough to charge Danny with anything. The real clear picture as what transpired and who was involved and why, it hadn't materialized yet. We weren't able to put our finger on it. With no clear answers, Sergeant Stoyer moved on to the other cases piling up on his desk.

Justin's family was left to wonder, would anyone ever be held accountable for his death? I just kept looking at everybody thinking, you know, were you the one? Were you the one? We were hunting for a killer. Then in 2017, more than a year after Justin's murder, Stoyer's phone rang. It was the DA's office. How was that Justin Hilbert investigation going? By now, the lead investigator had retired. I was asked to take a second look at it. We reviewed all the evidence that we had collected.

We were able to identify a couple individuals that hadn't been contacted yet. One of those people was Ricky, who'd watched as his friend Bailey was stabbed across the street from the park. And he would have a very interesting story to tell about a sleepless night the summer Justin was killed. And suddenly you know what it is. And now we have a clear picture as to why. Investigators looking into the death of Justin Hilbert had come to a full stop. Now Sergeant Lance Stoyer was in charge of the case, and he was taking another look at the murders, starting with Bailey Sharp. She'd been in touch with Justin the week he was killed,

and then she was murdered just three weeks later. How many phones did Bailey Sharp have? She had two cell phones. And those were both in her possession at the time she was murdered? Yes. So you have those and you can get into them? Yeah. They're able to do a forensic extraction and get the data that's on the phone. Now Stoyer sifted through Bailey's text messages again and this, something stuck out. We do find some text messages that start to get interesting. From the time that Justin's murdered until Bailey's murdered, there's conversations between Bailey and another individual. His contact is just Alcoholic Ricky.

That's how he's listed in her phone? That's how he's listed in Bailey's phone, is alcoholic Ricky. Alcoholic Ricky worked at a hookah lounge. Investigators tracked him down. So real quick, what I wanted to do is just get your contact information. Make sure we're talking to the right Ricky. With audio recording, Sergeant Stoyer and his partner sat down with Ricky to ask about Bailey and how she knew Justin. However, Ricky started talking about the day Bailey died. You were present when Bailey got killed? Yeah. Oh, okay. Stoyer had no idea that Ricky had actually witnessed Bailey's stabbing. I could see the blood on his face. Because her murder had been investigated by the Riverside Police Department, a completely separate agency. I was caught off guard when he

had told me that he was interviewed by Riverside Police Department for Bailey's murder. This was the first time Sergeant Stoyer from the Sheriff's Department was speaking with him. Stoyer asked Ricky about his relationship with Bailey. Ricky said he met Bailey at the hookah lounge. And in early 2016, about four months before Justin was killed, Ricky said Jared started hanging out there. He was like, can I sit with you? I was like, yeah, why not? Then he just started coming by all the time. He said a favorite topic of conversation for Jared was his very soon-to-be ex-wife, Tanya. So he just said he was going to get divorced and he was going to lose? He was going to lose a lot of stuff, money-wise, everything.

He would bring it up maybe once or twice a week about how much he hated her. Ricky said it felt like just talk. He insisted he'd never heard Jared threaten Tanya or anyone else. Stoyer knew there was more to that story. I could tell that he was withholding information. Stoyer tried to tease more out of the man sitting across from him. Just be honest with us. If you got wrapped up in something, it's understandable.

But the best thing to do is not compound that bad mistake and not tell us what you might have seen or what you might have heard. You know what I mean, Ricky? And finally, Ricky started to crack. He told detectives that on the night of Justin's murder, around 2 a.m., he saw Bailey pull up to the hookah lounge. She wasn't alone. With her was Danny Serrano, the man who'd left his fingerprint on Justin's car. And, Ricky said, Danny was holding a weapon. I was the only one there, and he had a knife. He walked in, he changed his clothes, and he threw a bag in the trash can.

I was like, if you tell anyone, I don't want to hurt you. Did you see blood or anything like that? And then came a lightning bolt. He was supposed to get a payout if something happened to who? Suddenly, Ricky stopped the interview. Why is that? I don't know. Just for the nice thing. Now Sergeant Stoyer was with Ricky alone. At that point, his demeanor changed. I could tell that he was now being forthcoming with the information. I don't like thinking about it because every time I think about s**t, I have nightmares. I'm sorry to do this to you, man, but I need to know the truth.

Okay? What did Bailey tell you? And that's when Ricky's whole story came spilling out. They were essentially stalking Tanya. Right. Surveilling the house, seeing who's coming and going. On that bloody afternoon near the park, Ricky had watched as Bailey was stabbed to death. Now he was about to tell Sergeant Stoyer something else he knew.

Something Ricky had never told anyone. In the days leading up to Justin's death, he'd overheard a conversation between Bailey and Jared at the hookah lounge. The topic? Murder. Ricky, just 19 at the time, said he was too afraid to tell police. And that wasn't all he knew. Right before she met with Jared, minutes before her death, Ricky said Bailey had made a kind of confession. Bailey said, Jared said he was going to get money if his ex-wife died.

So Bailey said, if you pay me so much money, I'll get it done. Ricky said Bailey not only confessed her involvement in killing Justin, but what was behind it? An insurance payout. Did Bailey say how much money she was going to get from Jared? It was 50% of whatever Jared was getting. So how exactly would that work? Jared and Tanya hadn't been together for months. They'd both signed divorce papers and she was with Justin. Except they weren't actually divorced. Not yet. Not on that exact night Justin was killed. Those

papers weren't legally in effect yet. So, since Jared and Tanya were still legally married in the eyes of the U.S. Navy, if Tanya died, Jared would receive the standard military insurance death benefit of $100,000. And investigators say the plan was to split that with Bailey and Danny. Timing was everything. Tanya and Jared's divorce was all but finalized. So whatever fate Jared had in mind for Tanya, it needed to arrive very quickly. On the basis of that payout, which was about to evaporate

when Jared and Tanya were officially divorced, a murder plot is hatched. Yes. Now investigators had enough information to assemble a timeline of what they believe happened the night Justin was killed. As Justin and Tanya argued over those messages from Bailey, detectives said Bailey and Danny were already outside Tanya's house watching. They were essentially stalking Tanya. Right, surveilling the house, seeing who's coming and going. Eventually, Justin walked out of Tanya's place.

They see Justin get into the car, so they see that as their opportunity to grab Justin. They forced their way into his car, investigators said, trying to figure out how they could get Tanya outside as well. Any doubt in your mind that if Tanya had left the house that night, that she would have been killed? And if she brought the baby with her, they both would have been killed? No doubt at all. That was the plan?

That was the plan. As Tanya sat inside the house with baby Logan, investigators said it was likely Bailey and Danny were at that moment torturing Justin in his car. I want to say it was probably 10 to 15 stab wounds. Designed to inflict pain, not to kill. Right. Your lacerations here on the forearms that were consistent with like defensive wounds, also to the hands.

The lacerations, like I had said, up here across his collarbone. Again, superficial, non-fatal. And deliberately so, you think? Deliberate. Torturing him to get him to give up some information? Was there something he knew? It was either information that he knew or his relationship with Tanya. And possibly trying to get Tanya out of her house.

Investigators believe that when she didn't come outside, they shot Justin in the head and dumped his body at Lake Matthews. Stoyer had his theory. Now he needed to back it up. He searched for evidence in cell phone records. You can put Jared, Bailey, and Danny's cell phones at the hookah lounge. We can. Stoyer also took a look at the GPS locations of Jared, Bailey, and Danny's phones the night Justin was killed. Danny's phone wasn't traceable. Jared's was at or near the naval base all night. And Bailey's? It was right outside Tanya's house. It's got to be really sort of eerie to watch these movements of the people that you believe are the co-conspirators.

It is. And to just think about what's occurring as you see that cell phone move through the city. And after Justin's murder, Danny's phone came back on and headed straight for the naval base. And it's there with Jarrett's phone and Bailey's phone and Justin's phone. How long until Justin's phone stops pinging? We had location hits, I believe, for the next day, day and a half. Investigators saw Bailey had texted Ricky about a phone, one that belonged to someone she described as someone who was found by the lake without a face. That sounds like Justin Hilbert.

That's exactly Justin Hilbert. You hadn't released his injuries. We're not released. That's correct. So she was there. She was absolutely there. Because you can't guess that. Remember, someone texted Tanya from Justin's phone after he was already dead,

saying his phone was broken. Had Bailey taken Justin's phone after killing him and tried to make it seem as if Justin was still alive? You never found the phone? Never found the phone. Long after Bailey Sharp died, the story of her final days continued to evolve. She'd started as a murder victim. Now, police believed she was also a murderer, part of a plot to kill Justin, and also lure Tanya to her death.

Armed with Ricky's statement and the cell phone records to back it up, Sergeant Stoyer was ready to go to the DA. Is this the place where you think, okay, we got it? Yeah. So at this point, we're ready to move the case forward. In the spring of 2018, Jared Bischoff was charged with Justin's murder. And so was Danny Serrano. They would sit behind bars for nearly six years, waiting for the case to go to trial. And when it finally did, the prosecution's star witness, Ricky, would make a surprising admission under oath. Something he'd never told investigators. Why did he keep that a secret?

I don't know. Maybe he was scared of some sort of culpability. Sometimes the hands of fate move with agonizing slowness. On the night Justin Hilbert was murdered, Tanya's fate was determined in just seconds. You not wanting to leave your son in the middle of the night probably saved both your lives. If it wasn't for my son, I would have gone out there too. For the last eight years, eight years, Justin Hilbert's son has grown up without his dad.

March 2024. Danny Serrano and Jared Bischoff stood trial together. And the reason for that is because of these two men. Prosecutor Amy Zeuss argued Jared was consumed by greed for that payout from Tanya's life insurance. And at the same time, incredibly jealous that Tanya had moved on with Justin. So the prosecutor said he came up with a bloodthirsty plan. Kill Tanya for the insurance money, Justin for the jealousy, and their six-month-old baby Logan, because he was the living proof Tanya loved someone else. And said Zoys, Jared promised Danny and Bailey a cut of the loot if they helped him with

the murders. In the summer of 2016, two people were brutally murdered that summer within less than a month, weeks apart. The prosecutor's first witness brought the jury straight back to July 10, 2016, to Bailey Sharp, broken and bloodied, lying motionless on the curb. I wanted them to understand and appreciate the violentness, the viciousness of Bischoff. I thought it was important for the jury to see that people who had no relationship with anyone

saw it happening, saw a man stabbing a woman with this crazy knife, and he didn't care. The amount of rage that he must have had in those moments. She argued that even though Jared wasn't physically there when Justin was murdered, he was the person who stood to gain the most. She said the plan was to kill Tanya, Justin, and the baby, and that Jared was also careful to set up an alibi for himself while Bailey and Danny did the wet work, and that by the time it was all over, Jared would get the insurance money and also be rid of a man he hated. Justin's the guy that took Jared's place. Yes. And the baby is the proof of that. Absolutely. You're not required to provide a motive. No. But you did. Yeah. Juries like motives.

I think people like motives because we want to understand the why. And in this case, the why is Tanya and Jared are legally still married. And if she dies, there's an insurance payout. Money, greed, jealousy. That's where you really appreciate the wickedness of this scheme. And that wicked scheme, said the prosecutor, was right there for the jury to see in Jared's, Bailey's, and Danny's cell phone records. Ricky testified, looking frankly terrified to be in the same room as Jared and Danny. He told the jury the same story he'd told Sergeant Stoyer. We had an exact mapping based on circumstantial evidence with the cell phone data, text messages,

where the phones were at certain time frames that corroborated everything he was saying. And then Ricky added a new detail, something he'd never admitted to before. He told the jury that Danny actually asked him to get rid of Danny's bloodstained clothes after the murder. It was closing time. There were a few people there still hanging out. Danny walks in and he has bloody clothes on and he walks to the bathroom. Changes, comes back. And says, get rid of the trash. And then threatens him and says something to the effect of, to be quiet. That was news to the effect of to be quiet. That was news to the prosecutor and to Sergeant Stoyer. I think Danny was pretty intimidating to Ricky. And I think Danny took advantage of that with Ricky and had him dispose of the clothing.

These people were as dumb as they were bloodthirsty. There was definitely a lack of planning and forethought. For his testimony, Ricky received immunity. He was never charged with anything related to Justin's murder. After Justin's death, said Prosecutor Amy Zeuss, the conspiracy began to fall apart and Danny began to distance himself. There's a disconnect from him and Bailey and Bischoff after that first murder. You don't see the same communication, whether meeting in person or talking to each other via cell phone or an app. Do you think Danny Serrano saw a different side of all of this? Or maybe just there wasn't a financial benefit anymore. He never got the money because he didn't kill Tonya.

The life insurance policy was on Tonya. Without that insurance money, the prosecutor said, things also started to head south between Jared and Bailey. When you're looking for a motive as to why Jared killed Bailey, the idea that I don't want to share the money with you is no longer one of those possibilities. Oh, it's not. It's either I'm angry at you that you screwed this up because Tanya's still alive. She didn't come out of the house. Or I think you're going to talk. I believe it was the latter. Actually, maybe a little bit of both. But I also think that he was losing control over Bailey. And he doesn't like losing control.

No. She didn't want to be around him anymore. She didn't want to be alone with him. Was Bailey in over her head? Oh, absolutely. Amy Zoe showed the jury the pants and shirt Justin wore the night he was killed. They can see the holes in the shirt where they were stabbed or the clothes and the amount of blood that these people suffered from. For Justin's mom Kathy who was in court every

day seeing Justin's bloody clothes was painful. It was like reliving everything all over again. That just devastated me, because I was like, that's my son's favorite shirt. The prosecution couldn't show the jury the weapons used to kill Justin, and there wasn't much other physical evidence. So the knife that was used to stab Justin Hilbert's never been found. Nor has the shotgun. That was a big problem, if you believe Jared's defense attorney. He argued there was next to nothing connecting Jared to Justin's murder because, he said, someone else had planned the whole thing. Jared Bischoff said his defense attorney, Richard Swanson,

had nothing to do with Justin Hilbert's murder. Bailey Sharp was the mastermind behind all of this, said Swanson. She basically framed Jared, set him up. She's the one who came up with the idea. Jared may have mentioned something about the fact that he had a life insurance policy to her, and then that's something she latched onto and said, hey, this is a way for us to get some money. You think this is about Bailey's greed and murderous nature, not Jared's? Yes. And she gets it in her head that and murderous nature, not Jared's? Yes.

And she gets it in her head that, you know what, if we just kill your wife, we can all get rich? Well, I don't know how she found out about it. But you think this is her idea? I think the idea of killing somebody is her idea, yes. Conveniently for this theory, Bailey was no longer alive to defend herself. Jared's attorney had an explanation for her murder, too. He argued when Jared stabbed Bailey, it was self-defense. He was afraid of her. All five foot four of her. She grabbed his knife and they struggled and she got stabbed. 25 times.

Quite a few times, yes. Yeah. That's not Jared trying to silence Bailey because she knows about the plot that he's in charge of. I can't say that it wasn't for the purposes of silencing Bailey, but I can say that it's probably not for the purposes of silencing her because he was involved in Justin's killing. And despite cell records showing Jared, Bailey, and Danny's phones at the hookah lounge the night Ricky said he overheard Bailey and Jared's murderous plan, Jared's defense attorney pointed out there was no evidence Jared had actually agreed to take part in anything. The overheard

conversations, nobody could talk about what details were talked about. He said Ricky, who had testified to that conversation, had every reason to obscure the truth. Ricky had gotten involved when he got rid of Danny's clothes, said the defense. He was just out to protect himself. He's going to want to distance himself as much as he can. And so by pointing the finger at somebody else, he can do that. Remember, Jared's phone was at or near the naval base the night Justin was killed. And no one disputes that. He wasn't there. There was no conversations. They pulled all the GPS records from his phone. Which to you means he's not given orders? Correct. Not possible that he gave the orders in person, not on the phone at some earlier time? He was at the base at the time

of the incident. And what about the fact that Bailey, Danny, and Justin's phones all ended up at the naval base by the afternoon of June 21st, just hours after Justin was killed. The defense said that was when Bailey and Danny broke the news to Jared. So when those phones all get together at the base, that's Bailey and Danny saying to Jared, we've committed this crime, now you know about it for the first time, and we expect to be cut in on the money. Yes. But there wasn't any money. Right. And if Jared, again, was this control person in all of this,

he would have made sure that there was money. Swanson argued there was one obvious detail proving Jared's innocence. Tanya, whose life insurance payout was the supposed motive, was still alive. If there was a plot that Jared had to kill Tanya, I think that it would have gone differently than the way it did. Meaning what? Jared would have been a lot more involved in it.

He would have participated in it. He would have organized it, and he would have made sure it probably would have happened if that was what his goal was. The defense pointed to prosecutors' lack of evidence. They'd never recovered a murder weapon. And even though Jared had initially told investigators he did own a shotgun, he said it had been stolen way before Justin was killed. As proof, the defense attorney showed this image to jurors.

He said it was taken from a video Jared's dad recorded of Jared at his car looking for the missing shotgun. He was expecting the shotgun to be there because he had left it in the car. And you think he's having his dad videotape that because, what, that proves he wasn't involved? I mean, because it could also look like somebody trying to cover their tracks. Well, I suppose you could Monday morning quarterback that and look at it that way. Maybe not necessarily proving that the shotgun wasn't

there, but proving that, hey, when I picked up the car, there wasn't any shotgun there. Jarrett's father told us the video was real and denied staging anything. As for Danny's defense attorney, he pointed the finger at Bailey as the one who'd pulled the trigger. His attorney argued there was no proof Danny even knew Justin. Justin's family, who'd waited eight years for justice, sat through every day of the trial. He didn't deserve this. And everybody says, if you're a good Christian, blah, blah, blah, you'll forgive. You're not there.

I will never be there. There is no forgiveness for what I saw that day. After 12 days of trial, the defense rested. The case was in the hands of a jury. And Justin's sister Mallory was worried. They have to be very factual and show very specific things in court. And the way that it sounded to me

was like Danny would be convicted and Jared wouldn't. You couldn't live with that? No, that's a huge insult to injury. There's always more to the story. To go behind the scenes of tonight's episode, listen to our Talking Dateline series with Josh and Keith. Available Wednesday. Bailey Sharp wasn't on trial here. That was only because she'd already been killed.

I didn't want her to be the demon or the villain and not also be perceived as the victim, because she was. Also, no question, if she lives, she faces a murder charge. A hundred percent. Since 2016, Bailey Sharp's parents, Erica and Jeff, had spent years grieving their daughter. Completely unaware that even in death, Bailey remained under investigation for committing murder. That changed the day Jeff was on the phone

with the prosecutor handling Bailey's murder case, and the subject of Justin's murder came up. And I said, wait a minute. Did my daughter have a part in this? And I always said, wait a minute. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Did my daughter have a part in this? And I got that uncomfortable silence. I knew. And that's when he said, what do you want to know? And you're like, well. Everything. That's when they learned Bailey's murder was connected to Justin's in the worst possible way.

I know you said to Bailey, don't use drugs. I know you both said to her, watch out for who you're hanging around with. I'm thinking you probably did not think that you had to say to her, don't get involved in a murder. No. I didn't think I had to say that. It goes against everything that we knew her to be. Erica flashed back to an early court appearance. I just remember seeing Jared's family and thinking, I can't imagine how it would feel to know your child was involved in something like that. Yeah, we, you know, we know.

Yeah, we now know. And it's, yeah, I don't know if there's words. Yeah. You would do anything to stop talking to me right now, wouldn't you? It's not that. I'm struggling to get past the part that she played. Right. That's what I would do anything to not have to think about. I mean, how many parents you heard make excuses for their kids or what they did?

You know, so you're not. I refuse to do that. Yeah. Yeah. She did what she did. There's no way around it. And the only thing we can do now is focus on our family and just moving ahead. Their daughter's descent into addiction gave Jeff, a career law

enforcement officer, a different window into the lives of some of the people he interacts with in his job. It changed the way that I look at drug addicts. I used to look at them as just that, drug addicts that made a choice. I don't think it's so much of a choice as what their brain is telling them they have to do. I have a lot more empathy for that. I mean, how many times were you in a drug house after that and thought to yourself, this could be my daughter lying here? Every time.

In March 2024, Jeff and Erica Sharp attended as much of the trial as they could bear. It wasn't that she wasn't a victim, but she was less of a victim, which sounds horrible coming out of my mouth. But we stayed for Bailey's part of the trial. Justin's part of the trial was not for us to be at. Justin's family and his girlfriend Tanya once attended court hearings together. A united front to get justice for Justin. All that changed during the wait for trial. Tanya's relationship with her son's grandparents slowly fell apart.

I realized that it seemed like they were never going to let go of the element that, you know, if I didn't exist or if I never gotten with Justin or didn't get back with him, that he would still be here. Justin's death took away all the joy and innocence of everything. It's like, if it wasn't for you, I'd have my son. You don't think she had anything to

do with that plot? No, I don't. This is Jared, not her. But without her, this doesn't happen. Yes. The families of both Justin and Bailey waited six hours while jurors deliberated. Then came word of a verdict. We, the jury in the above entitled action, find the defendant, Danny Serrano, guilty of a violation of Section 187. We, the jury in the above entitled action, find the defendant, Jared Bischoff, guilty. Jared Bischoff was convicted of murder, kidnapping, and conspiracy in Justin's death. Danny Serrano was convicted of the same charges. Jared was also convicted of murder and attempted kidnapping in Bailey's death.

So what's it like when you hear that verdict? I was so happy to finally wipe that smirk off his face. You know, you're not this great Navy sailor. You're a killer, plain and simple. Guilty on all counts. Everything. We work in a business that is dark, and so when we do a good job,

it feels rewarding to know that something good comes of this, but at the end of the day, someone's dead. Here, two people are dead. You can't unwrite the past, but they're not going to be doing this to anybody else. That feels good. On June 7th, 2024, Jared Bischoff and Danny Serrano were both sentenced to life in prison. It didn't give me any kind of solace.

I didn't feel vindicated or... It didn't give you the life back that you had before, unfortunately. Yeah, but it was a long time coming. Steve and Kathy acutely feel the loss of their son, their buddy. When you think about Justin, what do you think about? How much do we miss him? Every day. Every day. Every day.

How many photos of Justin are there in your house? Oh, my goodness. He's in every room. He's a big part of our lives. He will always be. Tanya still grapples with the suffering that Justin faced and with the

failed plot to murder her. You were wrong about Jared. He was not just a controlling, abusive guy. Yeah. And he didn't see you in his rearview mirror while he was on deployment. He was actively planning to kill you for the insurance money.

Yeah, I feel angry. I still don't understand why he couldn't just go on with his life. Why he had to do all this. Logan, the baby she had with Justin, is now eight years old. Someone like that shouldn't be taken away, especially like that. What do you tell Logan about his father? I tell him all the stories from our teenage years about how silly he was

and how I see that silliness in our son now. Tanya says Riverside now feels less like home. You don't live in California anymore. Yeah, no. That's not accidental. That's because of this. Yeah. Even though there are really happy memories here that I had with Justin, it's like they're overtaken by this negative stuff,

and it's like I can't even get them out because I'm smothered by this. Whenever she's in town, Tanya often returns to the road where Justin's body was found to remember him and to honor him. What do you say to him when you're there? Just that I love and miss him, and I really wish he was here.

When I talk to him about Logan. That's the funny thing about the roads we choose. They lead us to dark places. They diverge, then intersect again. And maybe sometimes they'll take us home again to the ones we love, even if it's only a memory. That's all for this edition of Dateline. We'll see you again next Friday at 9, 8 Central. And of course, I'll see you each weeknight for NBC Nightly News.

I'm Lester Holt for all of us at NBC News. Good night.