we didn't have the gun. >> we built our case on the ballistics, shoeprint impression, and dna evidence. without that, all of that there would have been a motive and there would have been nothing we could have charge and got a conviction on this case. >> up next, a teenage girl goes missing. >> this child had walked away in the darkness and disappeared. >> was she the victim of foul play or did she run off with a friend? >> it was horrible. people didn't know what to make of it. >> for weeks, there were many questions but no answers. >> something is not right. you know, it's too weird. >> until police find evidence of an encounter gone wrong. >> she would have put up a tremendous fight. >> this is good science. this is absolute good stuff.

>> teenage love affairs are notoriously passionate, so when 16-year-old tara muncie fell in love with her high school classmate, nick, she expected it to last forever. >> tara and nick was the strongest love that you could imagine, but it was like the car show, fast and furious. it was -- sometimes it was really great and sometimes it was really furious. >> when nick graduated, he joined the navy and was stationed at the great lakes naval base in illinois. tara stayed in virginia to finish her last years in high school. >> she was in love with him and she talked about him constantly. they planned on getting married. >> on the night of january 25th, 2000, tara didn't return home after her shift at a local fast food restaurant. >> it wasn't like tara to do that. tara would always call in, check in. >> tara's parents called the

local sheriffs office but this was a story they had heard a hundred times before. >> a teen missing for a couple of hours is a very routine call. typically, a teenager, any missing person, turns up within 24 hours. >> her last known location was the fast food restaurant where she was seen leaving alone at 7:00 carrying a container of food. sher car -- her car was still in the lot. >> the car was unlocked and the food and hat was sitting on the front driver's seat like she had placed it there. there was no purse nor keys found at the scene. >> the main question was why won she have her car and who is she with and where she's at? >> it was as if tara had dumped her belongings and just left. but it was freezing outside.

so it didn't seem likely she would simply walk away, but by the next morning, tara still hadn't returned home. >> both of us, tara's mom and myself, both knew, deep down, that something wasn't right. >> some people thought she had run off to be with nick. >> that she headed for illinois. that she headed to meet the boyfriend. there was no evidence of her purchasing a ticket at a bus station. there was no evidence she had purchased an airline ticket. >> investigators contacted nick at the naval base. >> he said he hadn't had any contact with her. he hadn't seen her. she hasn't called him. >> his commanding officer had been able to confirm he had bond the base entire time. >> 24 hours after tara disappeared, police received some alarming information. a coworker said that the night before, tara was working the drive-through window and got into an argument with two young

male customers. >> she had had a wordy conversation or a confrontation maybe with a couple of young men that came through the drive through. we're thinking that those are two potential suspects. >> normally there would be video to identify these men. but not this time. >> big disappoint. the restaurant didn't have any video surveillance of any kind. >> that also meant there was no surveillance of the parking lot and none of the customers or tara's coworkers saw anything suspicious. >> they didn't really pay attention to who she left with and who she may have left with in the parking lot. >> this left police and her family without answers. >> we had absolutely nothing. we had nothing. the case was completely clueless from the start. freshan and breath with beneful healthy smile snacks. with soft meaty centers

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when tara munsey disappeared, her friends thought she had run away to be with her boyfriend, nick, in illinois. her parents, however, didn't believe it. >> i think maybe one time tara decided she was going to run

away, i think she was gone for an hour. she would not run away. no. >> when media outlets reported the story of tara's disappearance, hundreds of volunteers joined the search. >> neighbors searched parks. >> i miss her so much. i just want her back. somebody has got her. i don't know why, but she just went nuts or something is not right. it's too weird. >> two long weeks passed and still there was no trace of tara. >> the pressure at that time was extreme, and it was all fueled by the thought that this child had walked away into the darkness and disappeared, and it could happen to yours or mine. >> then, 17 days after tara went missing, a hiker found a body near an isolated railroad track seven miles from tara's house.

>> my first thought is, you know, how can we get there? is it tara or is it something else? >> the body was at the bottom of a 70-foot wooded ravine, almost completely hidden from sight. the victim was naked from the waist up, and had been shot to death. some injuries were consistent with the body being rolled down the ravine postmortem. a drivers license in her back pocket confirmed everyone's worst fears. it was tara munsey. >> tara was quite a girl. one of a kind. and it's just too bad she never got to live for all of us to find out her full potential. >> fortunately, near freezing temperatures helped forensic

investigators. >> her body appeared to be fairly well preserved. i remember thinking at the time that i hope that means that we're going to have some good evidence. >> but the crime scene itself was another matter. >> it was a dumping ground. it was a ravine where people dump their tires, their stoeves. -- stoves. >> it was very difficult for investigators to separate out what was perhaps related to the crime and what was not. >> at the time of the ravine was a single .22 caliber shell casing as well as tara's car keys and parts of a cigarette. >> the cigarette filter was right in the middle of the crime scene. >> the filter was found separately from the cigarette. >> very few people ever pull a filter off a cigarette to motor vehicle it. >> in a bundle thrown to the side, investigators found tara's

t-shirt and on it, a potential clue. >> you could see a faint outline of an outsole of an athletic shoe on the front of the shirt. you could make a positive identification of a footwear impression just like you can make a positive identification of a fingerprint. >> but finding the shoe wouldn't be easy. making new york state number two in the nation in new private sector job creation... with 10 regional development strategies to fit your business needs. and now it's even better because they've introduced startup new york... with the state creating dozens of tax-free zones where businesses pay no taxes for ten years. become the next business to discover the new new york. [ male announcer ] see if your business qualifies. let that phrase sit with you for a second.

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tara munsey's autopsy showed she was most likely killed the day she went missing. she had been shot four times at close range. >> this child was executed. i firmly believe she was shot in the chest and while she was on the ground, i think the rifle was held next to her head and three shots. >> blood under her fingernails showed she had fought they are attack ter. even though her rape kit came up negative, investigators found seminal fluid on her body. all the dna evidence was sent for testing. the ballistic evidence offered a

surprising clue. the murder weapon left an unusual lands and grooves on the fatal bullets. only three times of shotguns could have been used. >> when you are talking about hundreds of different firearms, to narrow down the three, that's pretty unique and good information. >> tara's ripped shirt also provided a possible clue. using alternate light sources, forensic analysts found a partial muddy shoeprint on the front of her shirt. investigators shirt their database of thousands of known outsole designs and found the one they were looking for. >> we were able to tell the police they need to look for an

individual that has a pair of nike brand running shoes. >> the print wasn't large enough to identify the shoe size but it was valuable information nonetheless. then, tara's friends told police something they had been reluctant to reveal earlier. on the day tara went missing, tara and her friends were smoking marijuana after school and an older man was with them. the man who had provided the marijuana, 30-year-old jeff thomas. >> it struck me to the at the time that there was a 30-year-old man there stroke -- smoking marijuana with teenagers after school. >> he did not have regular employment. he didn't have a regular place to live. >> tara and jeff thomas knew one

another. she often baby-sit for his six-year-old daughter. a background check revealed thomas had a criminal record. eight years earlier, thomas attacked a neighbor with a baseball bat and served two years in prison. when questioned by police, jeff thomas denied any involvement in tara's murder and said he had an alibi. >> we found that there had been some holes in his alibi, particularly where he spent the night. >> jeff thomas denied owning a .22 caliber rifle but said his friend, kevin williams, a 32-year-old bricklayer, owned one. police converged on williams house hoping to question him and examine his gun, but williams story was significantly different than that thomas. >> he told us that he owned a .22 caliber and he left it in the possession of jeff thomas

and he has not seen that rifle or firearm since. >> williams admitted he used the rifle for target practice in his backyard. investigators knew this was their chance to find out whether the rifle was the murder weapon. incredibly, investigators found two shell casings under the porch. ballistics matched the shell casing found near tara's body. >> this is absolute good stuff. this is good science which tells you you've just recovered cartridge cases from the murder weapon. >> but where was the rifle and which man was telling the truth? . from a simple misstep, to tripping over a rug, to just losing their balance. and not being able to get up from a fall can have serious, lifetime consequences.

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the prime suspect in tara munsey's murder was jeff thomas, the man who was seen smoking marijuana with tara on the afternoon of her murder. but the murder weapon belonged to kevin williams, a friend of thomas's. both claimed the other was in possession of the gun at the time of tara's murder. then something strange happened.

an unlikely witness came forward with a story of her own. >> there was a lady who was in a vehicle that had been stopped for a traffic violation and she knew something about the case. >> i think i know who may have killed her. >> her name was barbara helton and when she was with police, she told them something she had kept to herself for the past several weeks. she said she knew jeff thomas and he had been staying at her house at the time of tara munsey's murder. on the the night of the murder, thomas returned home visibly agitated. >> he was dirty. he was muddy, and he was upset and he told her that he had messed up. >> i won have hurt her if she

had gave me what i wanted. i asked him what he was talking about and he said she wouldn't have sex with him. it made him mad. he says he told me i shot, you know, i shot her three times in the head. he called it execution style, whatever that's supposed to mean. >> he called it execution style? >> yeah. >> the number of shots fired was inside information. police hadn't released those details to the media for these very situations. >> no one knew but us, the killer, and the medical examiner. >> but if her story were true, why hadn't she gone to the police sooner. >> she was scared of jeff thomas. she was scared for her own safety. >> it was only when she was actually face-to-fais with a police officer at the traffic stop that she was willing to

talk. >> with the information barbara provided to police, they noud had enough evidence to get a warrant to search thomas's car. in the trunk, they found a pair of sneakers with a herring bone tread pattern. they were compared with the prints on the front of tara's shirt. >> we were able to say the right shoe submitted police department could have made the two fragmentary footwear impressions present on the shirt collected from the crime scene. >> also in thomas's car were three strands of blonde hair with the roots intact. >> forcibly removed hairs. this means they had a good chance of having dna material in the root of the hair. it was determined that all three hairs from the car were consistent with tara munsey by

dna. >> and investigators also compared thomas's dna to the biological evidence on tara's body. >> his dna was all over her. it was on her clothes. it was on her body. it was on her inner thigh. it was on the bomb of her shoe. it was underneath her fingernails and it was on the cigarette that was found at the crime scene. and so that was really the nail in the coffin. >> prosecutors believe jeff thomas stopped at the taco restaurant as tara got off from work. he may have suggested they go somewhere to smoke marijuana as they did earlier that afternoon. once there, thomas made a sexual advance. tara refused. there was a fight. tara's shirt was torn.

she scratched his face. at some point, thomas dragged tara out of the car, shot her once in the chest, and three times in the head, leaving his shoe impression on her t-shirt. he pushed her body down the ravine. then smoked a cigarette after ripping the filter off. >> you always break the filters off of cigarettes. >> it's just a habit. i've always done it. >> three of tara's hairs forcibly removed during the fight fell into his trunk as he was getting rid of the evidence. the rifle was never recovered. in march of 2001, jeff thomas

was tried and convicted of capital murder and was sentenced to death. >> to hear the clerk of courts say not only are you guilty, but you are sentenced to death, death, death, it sent chills up my spine literally. >> but tara's mother opposed the death penalty and asked that thomas's sentence be commuted to life in prison. in 2002, the virginia supreme court gave him life without parole. tara's family realizes that without science, her case might never have been solved. >> in the beginning, you know, we thought how in the world are you going to solve a case like this and i don't think it had ever been solved if it hadn't been the pulaski police force, i don't think it would have been

ever solved. >> at the end of the day, it was the forensic evidence that was most powerful. >> a young high school student just taken just a short time in life here. it's tragic. if we can find a truth and justice in that, that's why we're here. as southern southern california smolders from devastating wildfires, marines are working to combat the flames and smoke. cnn rode arog for a view from the air. subtle racism is more dangerous than outright bigotry, according to attorney general eric holder, in his speech he made at morgan state, coupled with the first lady's remarks in topeka. and we are one race away from breaking a 36-year-old triple crown