>> if the police had not done such an outstanding job in pursuing this for so many years, cannon would probably still be walking free. up next, a mother and child are kidnapped in broad daylight. >> i didn't have any clue what anybody could have done. carjack, kidnap, murder. >> at first surveillance cameras tracked the movement. >> they knew it was her. they knew her card had been used. and she looked very calm. >> she was alive now. maybe she'll be alive five minutes from now. >> but police soon lose the trail. >> we realize that both of these were in. >> they used the only tools they have to find the victims. >> they need to act quickly in order to try to save their lives.

it was a hot summer day in greenville, north carolina. the hayes family stopped at a local store for some snack food before going out for the day. as jeremy hayes and his brother-in-law went inside the store, his wife ginger decided to change the baby's diaper. when the men came back outside, the car was gone. at first, jeremy assumed it was a joke. >> ginger was up to her old tricks again playing pranks and moved the car around in the parking lot. so they looked around the parking lot. >> jeremy called ginger's cell phone, but there was no answer. that's when he called police. >> i didn't know what had happened. i didn't know what in the world, you know, could have happened to make her, you know, just leave. >> are you saying this was a carjacking? >> i don't know what's going on. >> we received a call earlier. >> you have them? >> no, sir.

>> the police told jeremy there had been a witness, a mail carrier who had called police a few minutes earlier, claiming he saw a kidnapping. >> police. >> there was a red ford focus. there was a girl bent over getting something, and this guy pulled up behind her and it looked like he pushed her in and took off. >> he observed a black male push a white female into a vehicle from the back seat towards the front seat. the black male ended up getting in the driver's seat. the vehicle was last seen heading north on memorial drive. >> they realized this family was in danger. they had to work very, very quickly because they knew they were just minutes away from the moment that this family was taken. >> the police put out an all-points bulletin on the car. >> they know it's a red ford focus that the family had rented. so everyone in the area is

looking for this car. >> the missing woman was 25-year-old ginger hayes. her son nicolas was 11 months old. >> i was extremely worried about what happened to them. you know, i was really close to her. and that was pretty much the only thing i was thinking of was i hope they're okay. i hope they're okay. >> police checked ginger hayes' credit card and learned that someone used it at a supermarket less than an hour after the kidnapping. police checked the store's surveillance tapes and saw ginger hayes and an unidentified man. >> it was a white female and a black male going through the line that matched the register receipts of miss hayes' car transaction, the timeframe of it. >> the man fit the general description given by the witness, but was careful not to show his face to the security camera. >> he's always kind of looking down.

you don't get a real clear shot of that person on the videotape. the best time was when they came around a corner and started down an aisle. that was the best shot of the person's face on that particular video. >> but where was the baby?

ginger hayes and her 11-month-old son, nicholas, were kidnapped from a parking lot in greenville, north carolina. >> this was broad daylight on a saturday morning. nobody expects a crime of that nature to happen in a time frame like that. >> i didn't have any clue what anybody could have done, you know? carjacked, kidnapped, god forbid, you know, murder. >> 45 minutes after the kidnapping, surveillance video showed ginger and an unidentified man going through a grocery store checkout line. >> it gives you that little bit of hope, you know? she's alive now. maybe she'll be alive five minutes from now or an hour from now, et cetera, until you have time to find them. >> but the baby wasn't in the surveillance footage, leading police to believe that the perpetrator had an accomplice.

>> i knew my daughter well enough to know, and i had seen her with nicolas enough to know, that had he not been in jeopardy at that point in time, she would have fought like a wildcat. >> investigators were hopeful that robbery was the kidnapper's only motive. >> he's probably promised her freedom and her child will not be harmed. so she gives him the money, go back out, and, hopefully, they're set free. >> several hours later, police found the hayes' car in a suburban neighborhood 45 miles from the kidnap site. >> but when the car's found, ginger hayes and nicolas hayes are nowhere to be found. >> inside were the baby's toys. the car was parked in front of a home that belonged to a man with a criminal record, 24-year-old timothy evans, who had previous arrests for robbery and assault. >> timothy evans did roughly fit the description that was given

to us of a black male with a stocky build and about a medium height. [ sirens ] >> police converged on the home and took evans in for questioning. >> he claimed that he didn't have anything to do with the car, that he was asked to watch the car for someone else. >> evans led police to andre edwards, the man he claimed left the car in front of his house. >> that's it right there. want me to do it? >> police department. >> is andre edwards here? >> inside, police found edwards, along with several others. >> there were four other people taken into custody besides timothy evans. they had no idea what this black male may have looked like, so they took everybody in to try and sort things out. found on elizabeth pittman was a cellular phone and some jewelry, which was later identified as belonging to ginger hayes. >> police asked the only eyewitness to the crime, the mailman, to pick the perpetrator from a lineup.

he chose 31-year-old andre edwards, a known crack addict and career criminal with more than 40 arrests. >> he immediately picked him out, and said that's the guy i saw push the young lady into the car and take off. >> but edwards denied any involvement. >> he said if you tell us where ginger and nicolas is now, they could still be alive. you won't be as much trouble as you are in. he said, i don't know anything you're talking about. >> they were racing against time. and it's rare that you find your suspect before you find your victim. >> then investigators tried getting some information by asking another way. >> whatever story you have to tell me to allow me to find the child alive, then tell me that story. let's just save a life. you didn't have to tell me that you actually did it. all you had to do was tell me a friend of mine might have told me you need to go look here. but he wouldn't do anything.

>> shortly after edwards' arrest, police got a call from a man named c.d. thompson. he had been walking his dog on a farm 50 miles from the kidnap site. >> immediately, i felt a lump just come in my throat, thinking that we had two deceased victims. >> thought it may be a baby doll because i was near an area where people have dumped trash over the years. i saw flies around it, and the way my dog was reacting, i knew it was no baby doll. it was a human being. >> there, police found ginger hayes dead from multiple blows to the head. 30 feet away was her infant son, nicolas, lying face down in the dirt. >> i was very shocked. the emotion was already set. i'm going to have to deal with the demise of a child, which was one of my greatest fears. >> but as sergeant saunders got closer, the baby began to move.

>> when he raised his head and started to crawl, you know, you went from fear to this is great. >> the baby, wearing only a diaper, was severely sunburned, but otherwise unharmed. he was airlifted to a regional burn center for treatment. >> the hospital medical doctors at the burn center in chapel hill estimated that the baby probably would not have survived the night given the degree and severity of the burns to the body from the sun. i basically call it a miracle that that child is even alive today. it probably won't have been if mr. thompson hadn't been out there walking his dog that afternoon. >> i don't know what purpose god may have for nicolas, but i don't believe that it was just luck. >> but joy was mixed with grief. ginger hayes had been brutally murdered.

>> to find out that my nephew was still alive was awesome. and that ginger was not just was incredibly hard to deal with.

it was the worst kind of crime, two innocent victims chosen at random.

>> she was changing her baby's diaper. and because of her taking care of her child, ultimately, she becomes a victim. >> a suspect, andre edwards, was in custody after the only eyewitness, the mailman, picked him out of a lineup. >> i actually told him that both nicolas and ginger were deceased. and to see what his reaction was to that, no emotions. "i feel ya, but i don't know what you're talking about." >> but there was one problem. how did the mailman get a good look at the perpetrator since the abduction happened so quickly? and the mailman told an incredible story. he had seen this same man earlier in the day before the abduction. he was on foot walking through a nearby neighborhood and seemed to be following the mailman as he made his deliveries. the mailman said every time he

thought he got far enough ahead of the man, he seemed to catch up. >> the fact that the mailman is doing his route, he's stopping several times and he keeps seeing this person was odd. red flags are going to start to go up, and that's what happened with this mailman. >> initially, the mailman was concerned that he, himself, could potentially be a victim, because at each stop that he made, the black male was always at his vehicle. he would always catch up to him at the point where it was going to be a stop, a mail stop. >> so the mailman saw this man's face before the incident in the parking lot, but police still needed forensic proof. so investigators examined the stolen car for blood, both inside and out, but they didn't find any. then they dusted the interior for fingerprints. >> a potential advantage to processing a rental car would be that a rental car is normally cleaned after each use before another customer takes possession of the vehicle.

>> 17 partial fingerprints and 19 partial palm prints were found that did not belong to jeremy or ginger hayes. fbi analysts compared them with fresh prints from andre edwards. >> his fingerprints and his palm prints came in contact with this vehicle numerous times. >> now, andre edwards, you know, said he didn't know anything about the car. very quickly, they were able to prove that he had been inside of it. >> that meant edwards was lying. but it didn't prove he was a murderer. the medical examiner estimated that ginger was murdered about two hours after she had been kidnapped. the cause of death was blunt force trauma. she had also been sexually assaulted. >> the medical examiner could actually see the curve in her

skull when they performed the autopsy. she alerted them to start looking for something that looked curved in nature. >> at the crime scene, the area was littered with discarded tires. all were covered with brush, except for one, just 20 feet from ginger's body. >> when they looked at it, they thought them saw the what might have been blood. they thought they saw what might have been some hair on the rim of the tire. >> the tire rim was rusty. so that may have actually led to the amount of hairs that were recovered when it was processed. if it had a smoother finish, any transferred hairs may have been lost. >> more than 50 hairs were recovered, but none had roots attached that could be used for dna analysis. >> there were head injuries. you would assume that those hairs were broken off during an assault, during an attack. >> the hairs were dyed brown.

the physical characteristics of the dye and the hairs themselves were consistent with hairs collected from ginger hayes. >> the hairs recovered from the tire rim exhibited the same microscopic characteristics as the known head hair samples coming from the victim. >> during police questioning, investigators noticed some dark brown stains on edwards' shoes and clothing. those stains were blood, and the dna profile of that blood was compared to the blood found on the tire at the crime scene. the results left no doubt. >> certainly, the presence of the victim's blood on the subject's clothing is suggestive of certainly an interaction between these two individuals. >> semen recovered from the rape kit provided the final proof. dna testing showed it was from andre edwards.

andre edwards was charged with murder, attempted murder, rape, and carjacking. but his lawyer claimed he was impaired because of drug addiction. would the jury believe it? we needed 30 new hires for our call center. i'm spending too much time hiring and not enough time in my kitchen. [ female announcer ] need to hire fast? go to ziprecruiter.com and post your job to over 30 of the web's leading job boards with a single click; then simply select the best candidates from one easy to review list.

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just a week before her

death, ginger hayes and her son, nicholas, got to spend a week with her mother and father while her husband, jeremy, was away on a boy scouts trip. it was a week her family will always cherish. >> so it was just -- it's indescribable, you know, the joy that you feel when you have that child and the grandchild and you're just getting to watch. it's like watching a flower bloom. you can't put words to that. >> just one week later, as ginger hayes was innocently changing her son's diaper in the parking lot of a convenience store, she came face to face with a crack addict who needed money and didn't care how he got it. >> the word "senseless" was thrown around a lot. what he did was really for no reason. >> edwards was driving his girlfriend's car and it ran out of gas. he walked through residential areas where the mail carrier first noticed him.

edwards stopped at the same strip mall where jeremy and ginger hayes stopped to get snacks. edwards saw the car running with the door open and decided to steal it. he probably didn't know that there was a baby in the back seat until later. edwards drove to a store 45 miles away and forced ginger to withdraw $100 from her debit card. investigators believe edwards may have had an accomplice watching the baby in the car at the time. edwards drove to a secluded field, assaulted ginger, then beat her to death with a discarded tire. investigators found blood spatter on his shoes, his shorts, and the tire. he left the baby in the field, apparently willing to let him die from exposure.

edwards parked the car at a friend's house, unaware that he had left dozens of fingerprints behind. >> you can almost see the timeline being laid out just based on forensic evidence. >> edwards' lawyers claimed their client was so impaired by his drug addiction, he didn't know what he was doing. >> his defense throughout this whole process had been, oh, he couldn't understand. he didn't have intent. but people know what happened. the result of what happened was a woman lost her life and a family was changed forever. >> he knew well enough between right and wrong that when he sat in the interview room, he did not admit to committing a crime. he knew he should not admit to anything. >> in february of 2004, andre edwards was convicted of charges ranging from robbery to kidnapping to first-degree murder. he is currently serving life without parole.

elizabeth pittman, who was in possession of ginger's cell phone and jewelry, claims she was given the items by edwards at the picnic and was not charged. today, nicolas hayes is a healthy grade school student, although he has permanent scars from the sunburn. his father says he has only vague memories of what happened. >> told me that the monsters were going to get him. i asked him about what he meant and he said, well, mommy, holds me, but the monsters hit mommy. >> the blood on his shoes, the blood on his pants and shirt all matched ginger hayes' blood 100%. there was never any question as to whose blood was found on his shoes, his shirt or his pants. >> nobody could look at it and say, yeah, it was someone else. in fact, i think one of the investigators put it so well during the trial on the stand

saying, there aren't enough people in the world for it to be another person. that's how accurate the testing was. they knew it was andre edwards. guilty. up next, a young boy witnesses a terrible crime. >> she was gagged! she's been tied. her hands were tied and everything. >> the chief suspect virtually turns himself in. >> he appeared exactly like the composite sketch. >> we have him with no alibi. >> but forensic tests failed to tie him to the crime. >> it was not a cheerful day for the prosecution. >> i couldn't believe they were going to let him walk to possibly do this to somebody else. >> could forensics provide the answer? the laural village mobile home park in delaware was home to 32-year-old kaye robinson. a single mother living with her 11-year-old son.