away with murder but the technology is going to bite people. >> this is my first homicidal arsenic poisoning and i hope it's my last. >> it's just you the have to look for truth and justice. you never give up the fight. up next, a bullet riddled car, a missing driver and no witnesses. >> it would seem that she was still alive when she was removed from the car. >> who would do such a thing like this on a public roadway? >> was it an ambush or a random attack. >> it was a head scratcher from the get go. >> some tiny evidence provides the answer. >> it was on her skin, on her jacket. you can't get rid of this stuff. everyone celebrates independence day. some celebrate a little bit too much.

that's what police thought when they found a deserted car around 4:00 in the morning with the engine still running off route 118 just north of los angeles. >> a lot of people thought maybe somebody was drunk and they had abandoned their car alongside the road. >> but a closer look revealed something more serious. >> we had several bullets that had went through the wind shield, into the vehicle and two additional bullets that had went inside the vehicle. >> a woman's shoe was inside the car. another was outside. blood was on the steering wheel. the driver's seat and floorboard. police fanned out all over the area. there was no blood trail, no victim. >> it was highly unusual for us to have a violent crime scene like that where the victim was missing. >> the car was a rental and had been leased that day to megan barroso.

it looked like she had tried to use her phone to call for help. >> she had gone to a fourth of july party with her friend and some other young people i believe in the beach area. >> according to friends, megan left the party alone at 2:45 in the morning, a little more than an hour before her car was found. police checked local hospitals. but no one matching megan's description had checked in. >> we didn't know if this person was dead or alive at that point. there was a significant amount of blood in the car, not enough to suggest that the person was in fact dead. >> my daughter was out there somewhere, and i was hoping that i would get a call from her, any day, any minute. no call came. >> investigators found five shell casings at the end of the

exit ramp and another about 200 feet away. >> our forensic people were able to tell us that it most likely was an ak 47 type rifle, an assault type rifle. >> knowing that megan had been assaulted with this ak-47, again, is just send chills of agony through my mind. >> investigators also noticed a fresh scrape along the driver's side of the car. it looked as if megan's car had been sideswiped. then investigators got a huge break. they learned that megan's rental car was one of the first to be equipped with an event data recorder. >> the event data recorder is a huge step forward in traffic safety. it's like the black box in an aircraft that gives us a better understanding of how crashes happen. >> the recorder, a small onboard

computer is always on. in the event of a crash, it automatically saves the previous five seconds of information. when megan's car hit the median, it activated the data recorder. it revealed that five seconds earlier meagan's car was at a complete stop. >> i think he started shooting at her. she was probably ducking. but at some point she probably realized i better get out of there. >> the recorder showed megan floored the accelerator. >> she jammed that gas pedal to the floor and she tried to get out of there. >> blood inside the car showed megan was wounded and possibly still alive. but where was she? >> we knew we had a body somewhere. we just couldn't find her. [ male announcer ] if you're taking multiple medications,

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as police searched for 20 year old megan, they tried to reconstruct her activities on the night of her disappearance. her friends said she left a fourth of july party at 2:45 in the morning and was alone. her abandoned car was found at this bottom of an exit ramp off a deserted stretch of highway

about an hour later. >> we found that megan didn't have any boyfriend problems. she didn't have anyone that was upset with her. in fact, it was the opposite. everybody liked megan. >> someone had fired multiple shots into megan's car, with what investigators believed was an ak-47 assault rifle. to recreate the shooting, analysts used lasers to determine where the shooter was standing. >> we use a laser beam because it's a nice straight light beam that we can just project through a number of holes. and it makes a good display and allows us to see where the bullet has passed through, what it's interacted with. >> the laser analysis showed the shooter stood 60 feet away from meagan's car when he started firing, and he closed the distance with each shot.

one shot hit the hood. three hit the windshield. another hit the driver's side door. investigators concluded the shot fired through the passenger side door happened somewhere else. >> it came in from a completely different direction. it couldn't have been part of the same series of gunfire without a dramatic change in the position of the shooter. >> this gun shot, along with the sideswipe on megan's car led analysts to conclude this altercation happened on the highway. with the laser information and event data recorder, investigators put together this animation of what they thought happened. it was clear, someone tried to force megan off the highway by sideswiping her car. then meagan's attacker moved to the passenger side and feared into her back seat. as megan drove off the exit ramp her attacker must have sped in front of her, blocked her path and started shooting.

there were four shots. she floored the accelerator. a fifth shot went through the side door and hit megan. the brood evidence shows megan tried to reach for her cell phone, possibly to call police. her car hit the median. the assailant apparently dragged her into another vehicle and drove away. >> you have to assume that the person who carried out this crime was very, very bold, very much a risk taker. >> there were questions about who would do such a thing like this on a public roadway. and 118 is a very public roadway. >> the blood inside the car meant megan was wounded but was probably still alive when she was abducted. >> at that point, i realize that my daughter was in horrible trouble, that this was not, you know, not a good situation.

and this was a real big, bad thing that was happening. >> the sheriff's department, along with other law enforcement agencies offered an award for information leading to an arrest, but three long weeks passed with no leads on megan's abduction. then an simi valley resident called with information. he described a video with sexual acts so horrifying it needed to be reported to police. >> lo and behold, here's this man raping women. >> the caller had no doubt it was his roommate. the tape showed him raping

numerous women on camera. >> it was horrifying to see a woman being raped and sexually assaulted. >> when investigators asked sanchez's roommate whether anyone in the house owned an assault rifle, he said he did. >> i'm sitting on the bed, and he tells me, well, yeah. the gun's right here. it's underneath the bed. and as soon as i looked at it, the hair on the back of my neck stood up. >> it was an ak-47. detectives also found something near the trash outside the house. >> i excuse the myself from the interview to take a phone call, and i walked outside the residence. and over by some trash cans, i saw a garment of clothing on the ground and walked up to it. and i saw that it was a green jacket. >> it was a green gap jacket with an orange lining. it was fairly distinctive. and he saw what he believed to be a bullet hole in the side.

>> it was the same color jacket megan wore on the night she was abducted. was it possible megan was still alive? the great american novel. so you can happily let life get in the way, while planning for tomorrow. so you can finish the great american novel banking for the life you have investing for the life you want chase. so you can

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just days after investigators found megan barroso's green jacket in the trash outside an simi valley home, a search team with a cadaver dog discovered some skeletal remains in a ravine ten miles from the site. dental records confirmed it was megan barroso. >> i was devastated. you know, i mean, i'm thinking i'm drowning now. this was absolutely terrible. you know, it was like the lights are out now, you know. this is bad. >> the medical examiner recovered bullet fragments and determined that megan died from a single gunshot wound to her abdomen. >> but there was not forensic evidence to conclusively say that she had been sexually assaulted. >> it looked as if megan was still alive when she was left in the ravine. >> she was in a fetal position with one arm bent under her head

like in a sleeping position. that wouldn't be a position that a body would land in. >> then the medical examiner noticed something unusual, red glitter. >> what they call pixy dust in megan's hair and on her clothing. and it was red glitter in essence. >> megan's green jacket was found outside the home of vincent sanchez, a part time electrician who came to police attention when his roommate found a homemade videotape of sanchez sexually assaulting several women. when police studied the videotape in detail, they discovered the women were the victims of the simi valley rapist, 15 unsolved rapes police have been trying to solve for the past five years. >> the perpetrator would break into the home.

victims, primarily in the evening, some of the victims were young teenage girls, 15, 16 years old, with parents sleeping in another room, within the household. >> when questioned by police, sanchez admitted he was the simi valley rapist, but denied having anything to do with meagan barroso's murder. >> very hesitant to answer. didn't want to talk any more. said he didn't know her. didn't know what i was talking about. had nothing to do with that. >> investigators searched sanchez's pickup truck for possible clues. it was clear the truck had been thoroughly washed and cleaned. but tape lifts of the upholstery found something very difficult to get rid of. tiny specks of red glitter. investigators also found red glitter in the green jacket found outside sanchez's home. they even found one microscopic

speck on the ak-47 rifle sanchez's roommate turned over to police. to find out if all this glitter was from the same source, investigators sent it to edwin jones, a forensic scientist with one of the largest checks of glitter in the world, with close to 1,000 specimens. >> i have an unusual hobby of collect micro things. and i've been collecting glitter for many years before this case and since this case. >> under a microscope, jones discovered that this red glitter was a hexagon shape, approximately 250 microns. >> it's red on one side, silver on the other. it's a unique type of glitter that only one company had made. >> jones discover thad this glitter was not a best selling item. only 10,000 bolts had ever been

made. investigators learned that during the fourth of july party, megan attended, the host through rid glitter on everyone, including megan. >> i said, do you still have the bottle, she said yes, i do. so we then went and recovered the remaining portion of the glitter. >> scientists confirmed the glitter in megan barroso's hair came from megan's friend, and it was the same glitter found in sanchez's truck, on the ak-47 rifle, on megan's jacket found in sanchez's trash and in megan's own car. it was the only piece of evidence that tied sanchez to everything. investigators also searched sanchez's truck for blood. >> when you detect with luminol, it lit up like a christmas tree. >> dna testing revealed blood on

the passenger seat was megan's. >> there was a horizontal apparent bloodstain right in the area of where megan's wound was to her side. indicating that she had been sitting upright in the passenger seat of that truck at one point. so she wasn't dead. she was sitting. >> forensic tests on the scrape mark on the side of megan's car matched the paint from sanchez's truck. investigators test fired the ak-47 and compared the bullets to fragments found with megan's body. >> we tied that rifle to the crime scene and to the body both with the fragments that were taken from the car, from the crime scene. certainly, that helped to tie the rifle in to mr. sanchez. and mr. sanchez, then, to the crime scene. >> then police discovered that sanchez's real target that night wasn't megan barroso at all.

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investigators learned that on the fourth of july, vincent sanchez had an argument with a former girlfriend, and he was angry, because she hadn't invited him to her family

picnic. >> we theorized he took that ak-47, he got in his truck and he was probably out looking for his girlfriend. >> whether he planned to use the weapon on his girlfriend or her family is unclear. but along the way, investigators believe sanchez saw meagan at an intersection, changed his mind and decided to follow her instead. the evidence shows sanchez tried to get megan to pull over. he then fired into megan's back seat. again, megan refused to stop. sanchez pulled ahead of her. cut off her path and started shooting.

meagan tried to get away. she was hit by the shot through the car door. megan may have reached for her phone to call for help, lost control and hit the median barrier. sanchez then abducted megan and drove off. the whole time she shed the distinctive red glitter into his truck, onto his rifle and on her jacket. medical experts believe megan was alive when sanchez left her in the canyon ravine. he left her there without her pants and probably took her jacket as a trophy. in october of 2001, sanchez pled guilty to being the simi valley rapist and was sentenced to life in prison. he also pled guilty to megan's murder. sanchez claimed he didn't sexually assault megan. >> the defense in this case,

their main objective was to save him from a death sentence. >> but given sanchez's past, jurors concluded he did sexually assault megan. and sentenced him to death. no one doubts that sanchez would have claimed more victims. but a strange combination of evidence, ranging from laser ballistics to analysis of a car's onboard computer to something as seemingly insignificant as glitter proved his guilt. >> he was just amazing what the criminalists were able to do and the experts were able to say to put together a very vivid picture for the jury as to what happened out there. >> i would say the most compelling science was the blood, the blood found in vincent's vehicle and also the pixy glitter.

it was amazing that they could put those pieces of pixy glitter together and show it was at all those different places and it was consistent amongst each other. least part of the story. >> when i saw the video, i started feeling very confident that we were focusing on the right guy. >> all they had to do now was to find him. ♪ i want to love someone and stand by my side ♪ 16 year old oshawn had dreams of star dom.