will be etched in my memory. the greeting card stands out. the bullet from 1989. the likelihood of us finding that one bullet that allows us to compare it to that one gun that we can't find is -- the work that was done on that is amazing. >> up next, a teenage girl varnishes from her bedroom. >> all they had was evidence that she was gone. >> investigators hoped her computer would hold a clue. >> you can create whatever kind of persona you want when you're online. >> for almost two years, her case went unsolved until another girl from the same town also went missing. >> all we had was a suitcase, a boyden an a tattoo on an ankle. >> police suspected a serial killer was on the loose. one who had a penchant for redheads. >> the end result wasn't sex. it was power and it was murder.

on a typically hot day in lubbock, texas, a worker at a landfill noticed something out of place, even for a trash heap. >> the guy that was standing out there saw the suitcase being dumped and it appeared that something was in it. >> curious, the worker opened it and looked inside. >> he had thought it contained a mannequin at first, quickly determined that it was a young lady that had been put in that suitcase. >> her body had been folded into a fetal position, many bruises and injuries. >> the victim was a young woman, nude, with red hair. she had no identification except for a small tattoo that said "summer."

the medical examiner said the suitcase. the official cause of death was asphyxiation. >> that's a pretty horrific way to die being in that suitcase and still being alive. >> she was also two and a half months pregnant. >> the community was in shock. you start questioning who is this monster who is doing this? who would have done this to someone? >> fingerprints revealed the woman was 29-year-old summer lee baldwin. a single mother of four children. of who had a previous arrest for prostitution. >> she was a young lady that was struggling, like many of those young ladies do. they're just struggling to make it from day to day, caught up in a world that sometimes is very impossible to get out of. >> finding summer's killer

wouldn't be easy. her profession meant dealing with lots of unsavory people, and any clues left in the landfill would be difficult, if

this make and model was sold only in walmart stores. >> i go to walmart. i found the suitcase, same suitcase, same upc number in it, an employee there told me that they were going to be able to track any purchases made on that upc number with their system. walmart had a pretty sophisticated tracking system. >> investigators learned an identical suitcase was sold on the day summer was murdered. at 3:00 in the morning. the same customer also bought something else. >> it's not common to go shopping at 3:30 in the morning for suitcases and when you couple that with the fact that he's purchasing latex gloves at the time, it sent out many red flags. >> investigators checked the store's surveillance cameras to get a look at the suspect. >> the person in the video appeared to be a hispanic male or a darker complected white male approximately six foot tall. stocky and appeared to be early 20s. >> all investigators needed now was to find him.

investigators were looking for the man who murdered 29-year-old summer lee baldwin and placed her body in a suitcase. surveillance cameras in a nearby walmart store showed a man buying an identical suitcase just hours before her body was discovered in a land fill. surveillance cameras also

identified the vehicle the man was driving. >> there was a pickup, the pickup appeared to be a red color. >> the man bought the suitcase with a credit card. >> we discovered the name of row sin da rodriguez as the man who had used this credit card. >> and records showed that same card was used just minutes later to bite gasoline. investigators noticed there was a hotel across the street from the gas station. >> a female there that works at the front deck recognized rosendo from a driver's license photo. she said he registered under thomas rodriguez. >> the hotel room key provided investigators with some important information. >> it doesn't show when you leave your hotel, but every time someone enters and uses one of those card keys when they enter into a hotel room, a record is kept of that. >> the hotel key revealed

rodriguez entered his hotel room at 3:46 a.m. less than an hour after buying the suitcase. >> we were able to find what appeared to be blood on the carpet on the boxspring and on the bed sheet. >> outside the room, in a hallway was a trash can and inside that trash can was a' holiday inn bag. inside it was a walmart bag. inside the walmart bag was a set of latex gloves. >> but where was rodriguez? a check of had his cell phone records gave police the answer. >> within hours after he had disposed of the body he's on a bus and during this trip, he takes a picture of himself in the green and white shirt that he had worn smiling at the camera as if nothing had happened and sending it to one of his girlfriends saying i'm on my way backing to san antonio. >> in san antonio, police proceeded to rodriguez' parents' home which was where they found

him on his computer. when questioned about summer baldwin's murder, he denied any involvement. but the forensic evidence found on the latex gloves in the hotel trash left no doubt. >> those latex gloves were processed for dna evidence. both sides. >> on the outside was summer baldwin's dna. on the inside was summer baldwin's dna again. this time, mixed with rodriguez's dna. and rodriguez' dna also matched dna from summer's rape kit. to investigators, are it was an open and shut case. but to be thorough, investigators searched rodriguez's computer. it seemed like a for malt.

but this time, it was more than that. >> it was apparent in looking at row din da's computer that he was very involved with trying to meet girls on line and trying to perhaps have sex or something along those lines. >> from the moment rodriguez got to his parents' home, he ran a number of searches for the name summer baldwin. but there was another name he searched repeatedly. >> boom, there it is. joanna rogers. what news do we have about joanna rogers. >> 16-year-old joe and that rogers, a high school student, had been missing for the past 1 months. her parents had last seen her the night before she disappeared around 1:00 a.m. when she returned home from her job at a sandwich shop. >> her mother told her that she would see her in the morning. joe said she would see us in the morning and she loved us and she went to bed. >> the next morning, joanna was gone. her parents knew immediately

something was terribly wrong. >> she didn't take her car. she didn't take her keys. she didn't take her money. she didn't take any clothes. except for what she was wearing, no cell phone. nothing. that raises a flag immediately. >> she had just disappeared. and i didn't know what happened. >> there was no evidence of an intruder. and joanna's parents who slept just down the hall had heard nothing. at the time, police and volunteers conducted an extensive search for joanna, but turned up nothing. >> joe and that, wherever you are out there, we want you to know that we love you, and if anybody knows where she is, please call the sheriff's department and help us find her. >> now that investigators knew rosendo rodriguez was following joanna's story on his computer, police were alarmed. >> that made us immediately

think if he did this with summer baldwin, why couldn't he have done this with joanna rogers.

investigators were convinced that rosendo rodriguez murdered summer baldwin in a lubbock, texas hotel before he put her

body in a suitcase which was later found in a city landfill. >> based on information found in rodriguez's computer, investigators also suspected he have been involved in the disappearance of 16-year-old joanna rogers who had been missing for the last 18 months. >> he was going from news story to news story to news story regarding specifically summer baldwin. and then later on joanna rogers. he was trying to see if all the pieces were together at that point. >> rodriguez's computer also revealed another troubling coincidence. he had been in contact with joanna before she disappeared. and joanna bore a striking resemblance to summer baldwin. >> there might be' profile here with him head heads, fair skin, fair skinned a certain age group.

we were now starting to wonder if possibly we had a serial killer. >> but investigators needed more proof. joanna rogers' cell phone records showed no calls to or from rodriguez. but they did find proof rodriguez made cell phone calls to the land line in joanna's bedroom. and that he had done so on the night she disappeared. >> we figured that he probably called her on his way over to her house and then called her when he got there. >> the thought that joanna might have suffered the same fate as summer baldwin was more than her family could bear. >> it was almost too much. you know, it was overwhelming. >> it was just like a slap in the chest. >> if the two cases were related and joanna's body was in the city landfill, a space the size of three football fields, how would investigators find it?

>> we have basically 1250 acres of trash. that becomes a crime scene. >> but investigators got a huge break when they learned landfill officials were far better organized than they thought. >> one of the things that i was quite amazed by was how strategically placed or lined out the trash is that is put in grids. they can actually go back and determine a region or area where trash was dumped from a particular area of the city. >> so volunteers searched the area where trash from joanna's neighborhood was dumped. but even then, it was almost will two years worth of trash almost a quarter of a million tons of it, to dig through. hundreds of volunteers participated in the search. >> to us, it was a phenomenal effort that they were willing to do for our daughter. >> after 12 weeks, investigators had to consider the possibility

they wouldn't find joanna's body. and that the risk for the volunteers outweighed spending more time. >> it's rat infested disease infested debris. i don't think people understand just what a surprise that was for folks, what they the risks that they took and the things that they endured. >> but finally, after months of disappointment, a backhoe moving a pile of trash uncovered a suitcase. inside was the decomposed body of a young girl. with red hair. dental records confirmed it was joanna rogers. >> now when her mom wanted to grieve for her, she could go do it. >> i'm so happy we found you, honey. i wish we could be together. but we will be one of these days.

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thanks to digital technology, investigators needed just two days to tie rosendo rodriguez to summer baldwin's murder. >> i guess of the things i've learned on this case are that the smallest piece of evidence sometimes can come out to be or make the biggest difference in a case. so you never overlook anything. >> it came back to that upc code inside that suitcase that tracking code and that's what led to everything. >> based on the evidence, prosecutors believe rodriguez picked up summer baldwin and they went to the holiday inn hotel. they had sexual relations and at some point, there was an argument that turned violent. >> the money you're going to pay me. >> the forensic evidence shows rodriguez can he beat summer until she was unconscious.

blood spatter hit the floor. bed spring and bed sheet. rodriguez then drove to the local walmart where he bought a suitcase and a pair of latex gloves and paid with his credit card. from there, he purchased gasoline and according to his hotel key, re-entered his hotel room at 3:46 a.m. rodriguez put summer's body into the suitcase while she was still alive. and threw the gloves in the trash along with the suitcase receipt. the gloves contained both summer's and rodriguez's dna. rodriguez disposed of summer's body in a dumpster which was later picked up by a truck and dumped in the landfill. rodriguez's cell phone revealed

his get away route to san antonio. but it all started with the barcode inside the suitcase. when rodriguez was arrested for summer's murder, evidence in his computer tied him to joanna rogers' disappearance 18 months earlier. computer forensics showed he communicated with joanna online and called her on his cell phone around 2:00 a.m. on the night she disappeared, most likely to tell her he was waiting outside. >> so what do you want to do? >> prosecutors believe the two argued over the possibility of a sexual encounter, an argument that turned violent.

and the evidence showed rodriguez did the same thing he did to summer baldwin. after he killed joanna, he placed her body in a suitcase and put it in a dumpster which eventually made its way to the same landfill. unfortunately, no dna evidence was recovered from joanna rogers' autopsy. >> because of the nature of the status of the body, we were not able to make certain determinations as cause and manner of death. >> but the discovery of joanna's remains was an astounding accomplishment for everyone who took part in the search.

>> the sheriff's office did a fantastic job getting can the body and bringing her back so she can have a proper burial. >> it's important to the family. i think that's important to her and her memory. >> rosendo rodriguez went on trial for the murder of summer lee baldwin. the case with the strongest forensic evidence. he was convicted and sentenced to death. >> this case would never be involved but for the forensic evidence. the dna evidence, the blood evidence, the forensic computer evidence, the trace in the suitcase. >> rodriguez eventually confessed to joanna rogers' murder. >> somebody will always try to figure out a way to get away with a crime. but that's what we try to do is catch those people. >> there is no perfect crime. forensics is always going to be there. it's just like a warrant.

you can try to outrun it but it's always going to be there. >> no matter how much you know and you can watch all those tv shows, there's always something new. and by golly, there's things we still don't know about and they'll get you. up next, a woman goes missing, and her family thinks it's foul play. >> michele wasn't going to take off and leave her kids. you know? >> investigators learn some of her friends have shady pasts. >> he had been convicted of rape and attempted murder in arizona. >> but without a body, police have no solid clues until a suspect makes a tiny mistake. >> he had gotten a call that they may have possibly found a body or something near his property. and he says, that's not possible. but wait a minute. what do you mean that's not possible?