The Lake Erie Murders (2018–…): Season 2, Episode 6 - Night Shift Nightmare - full transcript

A small michigan town
rocked by a brutal murder.

We hadn't a lot of crime
in that area. Nothing like this.

A teenager disappears
in a nine-minute window.

Quite a few people
said, "yeah, she was in there.

She was all alone."

Police suspect
a crime of passion.

He said he loved her.

If you loved somebody,

wouldn't you want to help find
who killed her?

A veteran detective
takes the mystery on...

I had to do it the hard way.
I had to eliminate people.



...Before this small
community is torn apart.

How do you protect yourself when
you don't know who to fear.

...By a soulless killer.

He made his decision
on the spur of the moment.

That's what haunts
your nightmares.

Northwest of lake erie
just past detroit

is the close-knit community
of burton.

It's a quiet neighborhood,
and the center of town

is not much more than
a street corner.

just before dawn,

a customer stops
by the local convenience store.

At that time in the morning,

the only place that was open
was the gas station.

Somebody had walked in.



The doors
were standing wide open.

There was no clerk there.

he called in at that point.

When the police arrive,

there's still no sign
of a store clerk anywhere.

They thought maybe she was late.

Well, 20 minutes came,
and 20 minutes went.

The clerk was still nowhere
to be found.

Officers contact the
district manager, who tells them

the employee should be there
is a 19-year-old woman

who was working the third shift
from 11:00 p.M. To 7:00 a.M.

We got a description of the girl
that was the clerk.

We put the name out
of wanda musk.

well, wanda was adopted
at basically 5 days old

in korea by my brother.

This one.
Yeah.

Master sergeant.
Master sergeant musk.

There she was.
How cute.

Ross musk was
stationed in south korea

for a decade.

When he came home,

he and his wife brought an
adopted daughter back with them.

Back then, with korean babies,

it was like a registry.

These babies were born,

and there
was no place for them to go.

So, pretty much, they were given
to couples.

After her parents'
divorce in 1983,

wanda stays with her father,
who is close

to his sister carol
and her family of four girls.

My brother and I,
we had made our agreement

that if something happened to
ron and I,

he would take care of my kids,

and if something happened
to him, we would take wanda.

So, when ross dies in 1989,

14-year-old wanda is formally
adopted by her aunt and uncle

and comes to live
with their family in burton.

Wanda was always part of us.

You know, there's four of us,
and here's wanda.

So it was the five of us.

Wanda was one of those
people you wanted to be around.

She lit up the room.
She was very positive.

She was going
to community college,

was really big into art.

That's her passion.

And she wanted to be
a graphic arts designer.

That's some of her art.
Some of the artwork.

Her favorite animal
was flamingos.

On her senior pictures,

she did this drawing
on the wall for them.

Wanda, you know,
she was her own self.

She had her own ideas,
and she was very independent.

You couldn't tell her
what to do.

We never asked her to move out.
She wanted to, you know?

After graduating
from high school,

wanda gets her own apartment
across the street

and starts attending
community college.

She was really proud of that.

It's a good feeling
to be able to go to school,

have a job
and your own independence.

She had a lot of dreams.

To help pay for her school...

All right, yeah.

...Wanda starts working
at the local convenience store

2 miles from her apartment.

She had a friend
that worked there.

Not my idea.

But at 19,
you don't tell a child

what they can do it either.

You let them make
their decisions.

After two weeks
of learning the ropes,

she starts working
the third shift at night.

She basically liked
the third shift

'cause you could study.

It wasn't as hard,
and she was a night owl.

My mom's worried
because she had thought

they had been robbed before.

And I said, "yeah,
I don't think it's a good idea."

and they had told her that
they'd never had any issues.

And so she felt
it was gonna be safe.

Mom said, "well,

you should talk to her
'cause she'll listen to you."

and I never got a chance.

This happened her first night
alone at work.

It's been 20 minutes
since police arrived at the scene.

Wanda is still nowhere
to be found.

The first stop
in the investigation

is her family's house.

A city of burton
policeman came to my door

and asked if wanda was there.

I said, "no." I said, "why?
What's going on?"

he said, "well,
she's not at work.

You know, they can't find her."

I said, "is her car there?"

and they said, "yeah."

I said, "she wouldn't have
left her car.

And if there'd been
a car problem,

she would've called me

'cause she knows I would've
been right there to get her."

so, we went over to her place.

no, she wasn't there.

then we walked back across
the street to our house,

and he got a call.

...In the genesee district.

Just over an hour
since wanda disappeared...

A body has been found
on vassar road.

...A paper boy
discovers her body.

...In a desolate rural location

6 miles northeast
from the 1-stop.

This right here is the
area where wanda's body was found.

Her head was pointing south.

She was laying on her right side

with her left leg
over her right.

Her shoulders were flat to the
ground, and she was facedown.

Her body was nude.

The only thing she had on
was tape covering her eyes

and the back of her head.

Blood on the ground
near her body is consistent

with the massive trauma
to her skull,

proving she died here,

beaten to death
with repeated blows to the head

by a blunt weapon.

This is an ideal
location because it's so remote,

and most of the houses
in the area,

if you look around,
the trees are blocking

the windows of the house,
so they can't see out.

I think the killer
knew that area.

And he took to that area

'cause he knew
it was abandoned or remote.

But that's when he killed her.

Being naked, we
assumed, and later found out,

that she was sexually assaulted.

Semen was found on her thigh,

but at the time, dna
was in its infancy.

It could almost be a year
before you get any results.

You've got
this pretty young girl

working at a convenience store

in the middle of the night.

You know, I have a daughter.

If that ever happened to my
daughter, I don't know what...

you know, what I would do
because it was so traumatic.

We hadn't had a lot of
crime in that area,

like, nothing like this,

in the first 13 years
I worked almost.

So, yeah, it was quite a shock.

It's just like...
it was my daughter.

You know, it hurts.
It hurts really bad.

Me, I'd rather be told up front.

And he was pretty blunt
on what happened to her.

And then the other kids
would come home,

and as each child would come in,
you had to tell them.

I don't know if I mentally
blocked it out

because I couldn't accept it

or if I went deaf
because I could not hear a word.

The next thing I remember,
it was all over the news.

Just a whirlwind of reporters,

police, and people
asking questions.

And we wanted answers.

We were looking for any clues.

And we were looking
for her clothes.

You've got to make sure
that you document everything

from point a to point b.

Finding no evidence
in the 6 miles

between the 1-stop
and the crime scene,

police widen their search area.

Did they stop someplace?
Is there a third scene?

Did anybody see him
where he sexually assaulted her?

Was it at point b
where he killed her,

or was it someplace in between?

We were searching by the
expressway 3 miles away

and found more of her clothing.

So that added to the confusion
about what could have happened.

Wanda's shoes,
sweater, and underwear

are eventually found
on different roads

in a 9-mile area.

You want to hit the
ground running in the first 48

because that's when you're gonna
get your possible suspects,

who she was fighting with,

what was going on in her life
at that time this happened.

If there's a spouse
or a boyfriend or girlfriend,

always want
to start with them first.

For two years, wanda had dated

and then broken up with
burton local eddie reikert.

She dated eddie for a few years.

In the fall, I know they had
a falling-out,

and I'd heard they broke up.

I'm so done with this!

Wanda!
We need to talk!

Go away, eddie!
It's over!

I don't want to talk anymore.

Wanda, don't treat me like this.

You're getting
information from the family.

Treat you like what?

And they're telling you, "hey,

this is
a turbulent relationship here."

so naturally,
you're gonna be on point

when you're looking at it.

Eddie, go away.
It's over.

Because we don't know
what this guy is...

what his potential is.

They broke up, and he was upset.

And he tried to break back into
her apartment.

Open up, wanda! So help me,
I'll kick this door in!

I'm calling the cops on you,
eddie.

Just two weeks
before her murder,

wanda had called 911
to report eddie.

My ex-boyfriend
is trying to kick my door in.

He told me that he was gonna
make her hurt as bad as he did.

what are you doing here?

19-year-old wanda musk
disappeared before dawn

from the gas station
where she was working alone.

An hour later, her beaten body
is found by the side

of a desolate road 6 miles away.

the first person of interest
is wanda's ex-boyfriend.

You want to eliminate
him, or you want

to make him
the focus of your investigation.

As investigators focus
deeper on eddie reikert,

they discover
more troubling details.

When cops question him,

eddie reveals he spoke to wanda
the night she disappeared

as he tried to patch up
their relationship...

What are you doing here?

...And he would often
visit wanda at work.

Come on, wanda.
Want a snack?

Sure.

He says, "I would
stay some time with her,

but the manager of the 1-stop
didn't like her to do that."

we started thinking
that maybe she was seeing

somebody else at the time

and he was kind of
a jealous-boyfriend type.

Two weeks before she was killed,
he called me on the phone.

And, I mean, he was mad.

He told me that he was gonna
make her hurt as bad as he did.

Eddie claims he was
at home asleep

at the time wanda disappeared.

But with no one
to confirm his alibi,

he remains a suspect
until police have more evidence.

after scouring the crime scene
and its surroundings,

investigators meticulously
search and process

the 1-stop gas station.

I was the first one
on the scene.

I took the entrance
on the west side there.

We had to make sure
that we locked it down

so that nobody could get in.

The crime lab comes in.

The crime lab basically takes
over the scene at that point.

You have a lot of items
that the killer could have touched.

The money was still there.

They processed the floor to get
the footprints off the floor.

The counter was processed.
The cash machine was processed.

The crime lab collects
prints on over 500 pieces of evidence.

But the vast data from forensics
gives them no tangible leads.

And crushingly,
there are no security cameras

on the premises.

Nowadays, almost every
business has video cameras.

People have cellphones.

In 1993, nobody had cellphones.

There was no cameras
on the business.

Somehow somebody had to get her
out of there

without making a scene.

But we couldn't rule out

that she didn't go on
her own volition either.

Wanda's car is still
in the store parking lot,

so she must have left on foot
or in someone else's vehicle.

But with no video cameras
catching her disappearance,

police must rely
on eyewitnesses.

You put the story out
to the media.

And people come forward 'cause
they want to do the right thing.

They'll come in.
We interviewed them.

You have a lot of people that
have been in and out of there

both before
and after she's gone.

So you're getting statements
from all those people.

Quite a few people said,
"yeah, I was there.

I got gas there.
She was in there.

She was all alone."

Using cash register receipts,

investigators piece together
a more precise timeline,

revealing that wanda disappeared
in a 9-minute window

between 6:38 and 6:47 a.M.

George mansour was
walking his dog

when he passed the 1-stop

during that critical
period of time.

And he tells police
that she wasn't alone.

He saw wanda being led
away from the convenience store

in what appeared to be
an arm bar lock.

He assumed it was a boyfriend
and girlfriend

and they were
just walking buddies.

He said, "I thought
that it was kind of weird

just the way
she was getting led out.

But she wasn't screaming.
She wasn't making a big deal."

George mansour was too far away

to positively I.D. The man,

but his witness statement
supports a clear theory...

wanda musk
may have known her abductor.

Not a lot of strangers
would be going in there.

It's not by an expressway.

It's not where strangers

just would being driving down
that road for...

So, yes, you're thinking it's
got to be somebody she knew.

That's what I think
kind of got us.

Like, how did the person
get her out of the store?

How did they do this?

Because we were always taught
don't go anywhere with them.

Get on the ground.
Scream. Do this.

You know, it was instilled in us

from our dad
'cause he had all girls.

The police really felt it had
to be someone

who knew her
and cared about her.

They felt like it was,
you know, a crime of passion.

Well, if it was someone she knew
and we were very close,

then chances are, it was someone
we all knew.

How do you protect yourself
when you don't know who to fear?

Suspicion of wanda's
ex-boyfriend,

eddie reikert,
immediately intensifies.

Police want a dna sample

from him to check against
the semen found on wanda's body.

But eddie immediately hires
a lawyer

and
refuses to hand over his dna.

When they tell you that,
obviously it alerts to say,

"okay, why wouldn't you
want to give me your dna

if you're not involved
with this?"

we were told by the police
that he wasn't cooperating,

and they believed
he was hiding something.

That didn't settle well,

because all of us,
we're trying to solve the crime.

He said he loved her.

If you loved somebody,

wouldn't you want to help find
who killed her and not hinder?

I mean, if you have
nothing to hide,

why don't you just
come out with it?

You know, if you're innocent,
you're innocent.

A witness has come
forward who saw wanda musk

leaving the 1-stop store
quietly and without struggling

shortly before she was
brutally murdered.

Her ex-boyfriend eddie

is now refusing to supply
his dna for testing.

As investigators work
to get a court warrant

to force him to comply,
they catch a big break.

A second eyewitness
comes forward.

As it got closer to the time
she was abducted,

there was a woman
that walked into the store.

Hey.

She saw an individual in there,
kind of an off character,

so she gave a description.

Police immediately
develop a composite sketch

and circulate it to the media.

It looks nothing
like eddie reikert.

When the sketch came out,
I remember crying

because
I didn't know who it was.

You know, just trying
so hard to help,

but I didn't know who that was.

The sketch is generic, you know?

It could be anybody.

There was a lot of speculation.

But do we know that
that's the guy that did it?

Certainly he was there at the
store, and he was gone,

but was that really the guy?

But less than a week
into the investigation,

several tips come in
about a local teenager

who looks a lot like the sketch.

Witnesses claim to have seen him
following wanda

and watching her at work.

John allen was kind of a loner.

He lived just down the street,

probably half a mile
from the 1-stop.

We'd had run-ins with him

because we caught him
taking a lawn mower one time

and a couple other little
things, petty things.

We knew that he was not playing
with a full deck

sometimes, you know.

17-year-old john allen
is brought in for questioning.

And police discover a disturbed
kid with a learning deficiency.

He was a strange fellow,

and he has kind of a reputation

of being a troublemaker.

And we started to feel
like this could be our guy.

They both went
to kearsley high school,

so they knew each other.

Maybe he knew she was working
third shift there alone.

He gradually opens up
and tells police

he had a crush on wanda,
even occasionally stalking her.

And he admits he was
at the 1-stop that night.

John allen's claim
about what he purchased

and when is corroborated
by store receipts.

He was making statements

that wasn't released
in the media

that we thought, "you know,
this could really be our guy."

John insists he wasn't
her killer, but he saw who was.

He claims two men took wanda
from the store

and that they attacked her
with an iron bar,

beating her in the head.

Police had never made public
the fact

that wanda had been killed
with a blunt weapon.

You start looking at him like,
"why would this guy know this

if he wasn't the guy
that was there?"

When pushed about
his suspicious story,

he suddenly breaks down.

I killed her.

John allen is immediately placed
in custody.

So, they said john allen
confessed and they arrested him,

but we didn't have any details.

I remember we felt relief

and felt that there would be
some answers.

You know, hoping and praying
to be able to make sense

of what had happened to her.

But the troubled teen
has the mind of someone

much younger...
a mental disability

that makes many question
his guilt.

Even when we arrested him,
confidence level

that he was actually
the suspect wasn't 100%.

There was a doubt
in a lot of people's minds.

John allen was very vulnerable

because he had that disability.

So then you could put words
in his mouth.

You could do anything.
Not saying that that was done.

But then I don't think
he understood the ramifications

of even what was happening.

We kind of thought maybe
he might have got

railroaded or something.

You know, we wasn't sure.

How did this kid do it alone

and take her out there
and kill her?

It didn't make sense to us.

Police take a dna
sample from john allen

that they hope will deliver
a definitive answer.

But in the early '90s,
results can take months.

In the meantime, jerry parks
enters the story.

A veteran of 150 investigations,

the retired detective is asked
by the genesee county p.D.

To bring his considerable skills
to the case.

November 14, 1993.

This was a sad place to be.

The lady in there

was an 18-year-old
kearsley high school girl

trying to work
her way through college.

She was working by herself.

Store's pretty much the same
as it was then.

I'd been in the store before
and she was working.

She was a beautiful girl.

Also,
my daughter worked at that store

before she quit and became
a flint city police officer.

It wasn't just a case.

It was family.

His daughter had worked there.
It could have been his daughter.

Jerry said, "I'm not
gonna charge you anything.

I'm just gonna come in
and work on it."

I start from day one,

and I go over every one of the
officers' reports.

I go over every one
of the witnesses.

I've solved a lot of homicides.
A lot of them.

I've never seen a more
persistent guy in all my life.

Once he starts, it's just like
pushing a ball down a hill.

He just keeps going
and going and going.

I killed her.

John allen has confessed
to the murder of wanda musk,

but both investigators
and wanda's family

aren't convinced of the mentally
challenged teenager's guilt.

So veteran detective
jerry parks,

fresh to the case, digs deep
into the 17-year-old's story.

They had john allen in custody,

and I just didn't feel
right about it,

even though he had
made admissions.

When parks re-interviews allen,

the confused teenager
changes his story,

saying he bought different items
from wanda that night

which no longer
matched the receipts.

We got search warrants
of his house

and went through it,

and talking to his parents,

they didn't feel that he would
do something like that,

but nobody feels that
their child

would do something like that,
I don't believe.

After nine months of waiting,

the growing doubts about
john allen

are finally settled
by the dna results from the lab.

It was not john allen.

The dna went through
and cleared him.

And so he was released.

I think john
liked the attention.

He just coincidentally knew

a lot of information
about the crime scene,

and he'd try to lead us
along, thinking

that he was the suspect,
when he really wasn't.

And then we had to switch gears

and start looking
for the real guy.

You know?

Parks refocuses
the investigation

on the first suspect...

ex-boyfriend eddie, whose story
also starts to go off the rails.

He was a hothead,

and when
I first started talking to him,

he got his dates mixed up,
where he had been

and where they had been
on that day.

He didn't help me anything.

I just believed that maybe
he wasn't telling us the truth

and that he was
the guilty party.

The person
who walked by the store

said he thought because the man
had his arm around the girl,

that they were
a boyfriend-girlfriend.

So the description also led us
to believe it was him.

Jerry parks

manages to get a warrant
for eddie's dna.

When you do this for a while,

you start to get
intuition about it,

if this guy is lying
or if he's not lying.

They did argue on and off.

He would come there to the
1-stop to check on her.

He's got no alibi,
no verifying witnesses to say,

"hey, I know ed was right here,"

so we were all confident
that he did it.

The boyfriend is always
suspect number one.

But six months after
his dna was forcibly collected

and compared to the semen
found on wanda's thigh,

the test results come in.

Eddie is cleared
of wanda's rape and murder.

As it turned out,
he had nothing to do with it.

Of course, after that, he still
didn't want to cooperate.

But that's way it is.

When he was released,
I had mixed feelings.

I felt that a lot of time
was wasted,

and we were back
at the beginning.

We were starting over.

And then
there was the fear again.

Okay.
So, it's still someone we know.

It's now been 10
months since wanda was killed,

but detective parks has
no intention of giving up.

He becomes
a one-man cold case unit.

I had to do it the hard way.

I had to eliminate people,
not so much

as trying to find
the person that did it,

but be able to prove
the people that didn't.

It's not fair to have somebody
be a suspect in a case

when he had
nothing to do with it.

Parks was taking dna
from everybody he talked to,

and he was sending it up there
to the point where

they had a backlog of dna cases.

Years pass with no
breaks in the case,

and for the waiting family
and the residents of genesee,

life never goes back to normal.

This is just a repetitive
process over and over and over.

New suspect, run their dna.

Next suspect.
"we're running their dna."

this happens for years.

And so now
you're raising children,

still
not knowing who is the killer.

And then you become
an overprotective parent.

But when you go through this,
you lose friends.

They don't know
how to deal with it.

So they just disappear.

Brought the family closer.

Since wanda's murder,
nearly 400 dna samples

have been collected and compared
to the semen found on her body.

There have been no matches.

You start to kind of lose hope.

You know, you're dealing
with somebody

that probably doesn't know
wanda musk,

that just could have been
a drifter traveling through town

and saw an opportunity
and took advantage of it.

Then, in 2011, the
state of michigan passes a bill

requiring all felony convicts
to submit to dna testing.

Detective parks was hoping that

when they go through the
michigan prisons and make them

submit their dna,

that that was going
to bring closure to the case.

I felt like it was
one of those last hopes.

At kinross correctional
facility in northern michigan...

...Dna samples are
being collected

from all felony convicts.

looks like they got me now.

In the search
for wanda musk's killer,

investigators are hoping for a
dna match with one of 6,000

convicted felons
in the michigan prison system

now being tested
under a new law.

I was sitting at my
desk in the detective bureau.

I got a phone call,
and it was the msp lab,

and she said, "well, we got
a hit on the dna

that was on her thigh."

I said, "no kidding."
I said, "who is it?"

and from that point on,

it was like a freight train
rolling.

Boy. You know,
just to get the feeling

that now we know 100%
that that is him.

The dna matched.

Great day.
He called.

He says, "we got him."

I said, "no way."

he said, "yeah, we got him."

The inmate
is matthew lorne alder.

He's been in the michigan
prison system

since 1995,
serving a life sentence

for the horrific murder
of another young woman

a year after wanda's death.

When they said that the guy
was in prison all this time,

well, that made sense.

That's why nobody
ever found him.

Alder grew up in detroit

and joined the marine corps.

After his discharge,

he drifted from town to town
around michigan

and down to the carolinas.

Internet was available then,

and I looked up him

and what he was convicted of.

Reading that was the worst thing
I could have ever done

because I know what he did
to that other girl.

That's what haunts
your nightmares.

In September 1994,
a year after wanda's death,

alder, along with a friend,
christopher tull,

picks up 19-year-old lisa gipson
from a bowling lane

in roseville,
70 miles southeast of genesee.

They bring her back
to their house, where a friend

staying on the couch hears them
raping her for several hours.

When the friend sees lisa
being taken out

with a bag over her head,
he calls the police.

The two men go to an
abandoned warehouse in detroit,

where they kill her
and burn the body.

And when he came back,

the cops were right there
at his house.

I was surprised
he was so lackadaisical,

because he had some burns
on him.

He had a long butcher knife.

He had the gas cans.

Matt alder and chris tull

are arrested on the spot.

We were always in fear
of someone that knew wanda.

So now to know this was just
some sick predator,

that was so far off

from what they had been looking
for all those years.

Detective parks
and sergeant williams

drive to the state prison

to confront wanda's killer
face-to-face.

We went up to kinross,
jerry and I.

Matt was brought
out of the cell.

He was alerted by a newspaper
article that wanda musk

was one of the cases
that was solved.

So he knew we were coming.
It was just a matter of time.

But matt alder refuses
to tell them what happened.

I'm not telling you anything

unless you give me a deal
on my sentence.

There was this one time,
this convenience-store clerk...

Instead, they get the full story
from alder's cellmate,

to whom he had often bragged
about his crimes.

And I knew I could get away
with it.

We interviewed the
prisoner who shared a cell with matt.

He was looking to see

if we could knock some time off
his sentence.

The inmate, serving
time for armed robbery

and looking for a deal, writes

down all of alder's
admissions to him,

including the gruesome details
of wanda's murder.

This guy had 16 pages
of notes and details

of all his conversations
with matt alder.

Wanda musk
was right in the thick of it.

Every time I read
those 16 pages,

it just gives chills
down my spine.

matt stopped into the 1-stop
to get a cup of coffee.

He made his mind up
when he made eye contact

with wanda musk

that she was gonna get
abducted and killed that night.

Then there was a woman
that walked into the store.

and so he purposely
left his coffee there,

parked his car
down a nearby street,

and when the lady
left the store,

he went back in, and that's when
he abducted her with a knife.

I forgot my coffee.

don't talk too much.
Don't stop. Okay?

no.

got her in his car,
and he took her

to what I believe
was one of our local parks.

Raped her repeatedly.

and when I was done,
I took her out.

I got her to kneel.

It's okay. Come on.
Come on out.

Please let me go.

Shh. It's okay.

Kneel down, and I'll drive away.

please.

Told her he was gonna
let her go.

I'll let you go.

took out the ball bat...

I'm so glad we met.

...And beat wanda musk to death.

and then he threw away
her clothing.

Alder had brutally
killed lisa gipson in 1994

and wanda in 1993.

But as they dig deeper
into his history,

they soon find many more
connections to unsolved murders.

Wasn't his first rodeo.
He had done this before.

The 16 pages written
by matt alder's cellmate

reveal the terrifying truth.

Wanda musk was murdered
by a serial killer.

I'm pretty confident here
looking you in the eye

and saying
he could be responsible

from anywhere to 11 to 14
that he killed.

If he wasn't put in prison,

lord knows how many people
he would have killed.

On January 15, 2014,
matt alder is brought to trial

for the rape
and murder of wanda musk.

During the trial, he
looked right over at our family.

He had such a cold stare.

I don't believe
that he has any remorse.

There was absolutely
no emotions from him at all.

Even the judge and
the prosecutor were taken back.

The man has no soul.

Gets to prison, brags
to all of his buddies,

he can just take
any woman and kill them.

Wow.
Is that what your life is about?

Just killing something
'cause you can kill it?

He was an opportunist.

He made his decision
on the spur of the moment...

"I'm gonna abduct this girl,

I'm gonna rape her,
I'm gonna kill her."

I think he personally loved
to kill,

and he liked to see them die.

Matt alder is
convicted and given 30 years

on top of the life sentence
he is already serving,

he will die in prison.

What would her life be now?

Who knows?

Marriages, kids.

She'll never have that.

She was with us
and part of our family.

And we're glad that we did
get to enjoy that part of it.

Yep.

I'll always
remember her just being bubbly,

and we all fed off of that.

And I think that's what
you miss the most.

I've got to make the best
of my life that I can

because she didn't get a chance.

That balance is hard
because she is every day missed.

You just remember her smile.

She was always happy.
Always.

A lot of prosecutors
and other policemen,

they look at these old cases,

and they only read names.

I don't read names.
I see faces.

I see people
that should be alive.

It just isn't right.

So I put the pictures there

because I don't want
to forget them.

Every day I go to work,
they're looking at me...

"what are you doing for me
today?"