evidence. so really without that all we would have had would have been a motive. and there would have been nothing that we could have charged and ever got a conviction on in this case. >> up next, a teenage girl goes missing. >> this child had walked into the darkness and disappeared. >> was tara munsey the victim of foul play or did she run off to be with a friend? >> it was horrible. people just didn't know what to make of it. >> for weeks, there were many questions but no answers. >> just not right. you know, it's just 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 the 16-year-old fell in love with her classmate nick zeroba, she expected it to last forever. >> tara and nick was the strongest love that you could have imagined. but it was like the car show, "fast & furious," 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 to get married. >> on the night of january 25th, 2000, tara didn't return home after her shift at a local fast food restaurant. >> it was not like tara to do that. she would always call in and check in.

>> tara's parents called the local sheriff's office. but this was a story they heard 100 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. her car was still in the lot. >> the car was unlocked and the food was sitting on the front driver's seat, why she placed it there. there was no purse or keys found at the scene. >> the main question is why wouldn't she have her car and now who is she with? or where is she? is this someone she doesn't want her parents to know who she is with? >> it was as if tara had just dumped her belongings and just left. but it was freezing outside so it didn't seem likely she would

just walk away. but by the next morning tara still had not returned home. >> both of us, tara's mom and myself both knew deep down something was not right. >> some people thought she had run off to be with nick. >> is she headed for illinois? is she headed to meet the boyfriend? there was no evidence of her purchasing a ticket at the bus station. no evidence she purchased an airline ticket. >> investigators contacted nick at the naval base. >> he said he had not had any contact with her. he had not seen her. she hasn't called him. >> his commanding officer was able to confirm he had been on the base the entire time. >> 24 hours after tara disappeared police received some alarming information. >> a co-worker 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 confrontation with two young males who came through the drive-through. we're thinking they could be two potential suspect. >> normally there would be video to identify these men, but not this time. >> big disappointment. the restaurant didn't have any kind of surveillance video. >> this also meant there was no surveillance video of the parking lot and none of the customers or are tara's co-workers saw anything suspicious. >> they didn't really pay attention to anything, or what transpired outside in the parking lot. >> this left tara's family and police without answers. >> we knew absolutely nothing. we had nothing. the case was completely clueless from the start. wow, this hotel is amazing. oh no.

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when tara muncie disappeared, her friends thought she ran away to be with her boyfriend, nick. her parents didn't believe it. >> i think one time she was gone

for an hour, she would not run away, never. >> when media outlets reported the story of tara's disappearance, hundreds of volunteers joined the search. >> neighborhoods, searched parks, they looked for her everywhere in the snow, and cold. >> i miss her so much, i just want her back. >> somebody has got her. i don't know why, something is not right. it is just too weird. >> two long weeks passed and still there was no trace of tara. >> the pressure at that time was extreme and all fuelled by the thought that this child had walked away in 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 was how fast can we get there? was it tara or 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, post-mortem. a driver's 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 is just too bad that 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 dumped their tires. their stoves. it was very difficult for investigators to separate out what was perhaps related to the crime and what was not. >> at the top 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 the cigarette to smoke 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 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.

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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 the rifle was held next to her head and three shots were fired. >> blood found under tara's fingernails showed she had fought her attacker. even though tara's rape kit came up negative, investigators found seminal fluid on her body. all of the biological evidence was sent for dna testing. the ballistic evidence provided a surprising clue. the murder weapon left an unusual combination of lands and

grooves on the fatal bullets. only three types of .22 caliber rifles could have fired those shots. >> you're looking for a sears, a marlin, or revelation, by the way, marlin manufactures them. so it is only one manufacturer doing all three. when you talk about hundreds of different firearms to narrow it down to three that is pretty unique and good information. >> tara's ripped shirt also provided a possible clue. using alternate light sources, forensic analysts found a partial muddy shoe print on the front of her shirt. investigators searched their data base of thousands of known out sole designs and found the one they were looking for. >> we were able to tell the police that they need to look for an individual that has a

pair of nike brand running shoes with a herring bone out sole design. >> the print was not 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 odd at that time that there was a 30-year-old male there smoking marijuana with these teenagers after school. >> he didn't have a regular employment. and we're not even sure that he really had a regular place to live. he stayed at times in his girlfriend's basement. >> tara and jeff thomas knew one another. tara often baby-sat for jeff's 6-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. >> thank you for coming in today. >> we found that there had been some holes in his alibi, particularly where he had 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 from that of jeff thomas. >> kevin williams told us that he owned a .22 caliber rifle and that he left it in the possession of jeff thomas and he has not seen that rifle or firearm since.

>> williams admitted he sometimes used the rifle for target practice in his back yard. investigators knew this was their chance to find out whether kevin williams' 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 absolutely good stuff. this is good science which tells you, you have just recovered cartridge cases from the murder weapon. >> but where was the rifle? and which man was telling the truth?

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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'. 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 her 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 hilton 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 night of the murder, thomas returned home visibly agitated. >> what happened? you're all muddy. >> he was dirty, he was muddy, he was upset and he told her that he had messed up.

>> i asked him what he was talking about. he said she wouldn't have sex with me. it made me mad. >> and she says he told me i shot her three times in the head. >> execution style. >> 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 hilton's 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 face with a police officer, the traffic stop, that she was willing to talk. >> with the information barbara hilton provided to police, they now had enough evidence to get a

warrant to search thomas' car. in the trunk they found a pair of sneakers with a herringbone tread pattern. transparencies of the treads were compared with the partial prints on the front of tara's shirt. >> we were able to say that the right shoe submitted by the police department could have made the two fragmentary foot impressions on the shirt collected from the crime scene. >> also in thomas' 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. >> investigators also compared

thomas' 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 bottom 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 filter 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 court say not only your guilty but you're sentenced to death, death, death sent chills up my spine literally. >> but tara's mother opposed the death penalty and asked that thomas' 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. >> it was the beginning we thought how in the world your going to solve a case like this and i don't think it would have ever been solved. if it wasn't the police force it would never be solved. >> at the end of the day we had a lot of circumstantial evidence but it was the forensic evidence that was the most powerful. >> young high school student,

just taken such a short time in life here. it's tragic. it's tragic. if we can help find the truth injustice in that that's what we're here for. up next three women are in florida. >> these women who were here by themselves thought, this is great. we are seeing tampa bachlt the evidence suggests they took a boat ride and then disappeared. but there was little else to go on. >> there are hundreds if not thousands of miles to look over to find a piece of evidence. >> hairs, fibers, any fingerprints would have been washed away. >> the public billboard turn citizens into investigators. >> i thought it was an excellent idea, brilliant.