the story by the defendant, oh, my god, my wife accidentally shot herself, was seen through. i hope they find him in the same humiliating way that he left high daughter, half-naked, in high daughter, half-naked, in the prison somewhere, dead. -- captions by vitac -- www.vitac.com lyons was found in a parking lot unconscious and near death. there were no witnesses. no one knew what really happened. but vicky's mother was determined to find out. west texas is far removed from big cities like dallas and houston. the land is flat and dry, dotted with the occasional oil well or cotton field.

at the crossroads of interstate 20 and route 87 is a little town called big spring. out here, when the local high school marching band is invited to the state tournament, it's front page news. that front page belongs to the "big spring herald" newspaper which chronicles all the town's activities, no matter how big or small. >> i worked in the circulation department, and it was very nice. i knew all the peoples there. i'd known them for a this long time. >> very quiet baby. in 1980, crystal was living in big springs with her husband and baby. >> very quiet baby. she didn't like getting her

hands dirty or feet dirty. if you took off her shoes, she would take one step and dust off her shoes. she was very, very into being clean. >> like many working mothers, crystal was often pulled in two directions. one day when the babysitter didn't show up, crystal's supervisor gave her a tough choice. >> i told my boss i didn't have anyone to take care of vicky that day, and he told me if i didn't bother to come in, i didn't have a job. >> since crystal had taken vicky into work before, she decided to do it again. her coworkers liked the little girl, and crystal kept her eye on vicky as best she could. while crystal was moving papers to the loading dock for afternoon delivery, a reverend drove up. >> when i was town, i'd go there every day. pick me up the paper every day. >> as the delivery vehicles were preparing to leave the loading dock, crystal heard her

supervisor tell vicky to go outside and play the parking lot. >> i was just fixing to tell him i don't feel comfortable about any of this, so i'm just going to go home and you can make your decision. >> before she could say anything, the supervisor saw vicky lying on the ground not moving. >> she could tell, even the distance that she, you know, had been hit. >> when crystal got there, vicky was unconscious and not breathing. no one else was there, and there was no indication what happened. vicky was rushed by ambulance to the odessa hospital about an hour away. crystal followed in her car. as if crystal and vicky hadn't already been through enough, the ambulance broke down along the way. >> we almost hit it. we were right behind the ambulance and we almost hit the ambulance because it slowed down to such a point that we had to get out of the way.

>> eventually, the ambulance got to the hospital and vicky was rushed to intensive care. >> that's when it really hit me, that she may not make it. she was mine and bill's only child. it was hard. they finally took me and bill in to see vicky. she was in a coma, and then she started, what they thought, throwing up blood. so, they asked us to leave. we hadn't even been in there maybe two minutes. >> as they left the room, they noticed unusual marks on vicky's face. >> those were tire marks on her face. yes, they are. >> crystal had the presence of mind to get her camera and take pictures of these marks on

vicky's face before they disappeared. had she not taken this important step, the story that follows might never have happened. coughing disrupts everyone's life. that's why so many people are turning to delsym for longer lasting cough relief. delsym has an advanced time release formula that helps silence coughs for a full 12 hours. up to twice as long as other cough liquids. all night... or all day.

while vicky lay in a coma with her mother by her side, police questioned everyone at the newspaper, but no one had seen the incident. police issued an all points bulletin for j.b. hardeman, the man seen leaving the parking lot in a hurry just minutes before vicky was found. >> i was leaving. my wife got me some chicken so i went by the chicken place got me a box of chicken. come back down there and they were running the papers, i got me a paper and take off. >> hardeman was a minister but made his living peddling fish in the back of his truck. police caught up with him in the nearby town of snyder. >> we have a warrant for your arrest. for what? for running over a girl in big spring and leaving the scene of the accident. i don't know a girl in big spring.

>> snyder police put hardeman in a jail cell where he overheard officers talking on the phone. >> after talking to the police, he told me he couldn't find anything but one spot of blood. that kind of shook me up. >> after almost three weeks in a coma, vicky, who regained consciousness, she suffered severe damage to her skull and one eye. she could not walk or even speak. as time went by, vicky's condition slowly improved. one day, crystal took vicky to the newspaper office to see everyone who had been concerned about her. when one of the employees leaned into the car to say hello, vicky reacted violently.

it was the first time vicky had spoken since the accident. >> and vicky just started kicking and screaming, you know, what little voice could come out. that was the first sign of a voice, actually, was just this -- it wasn't even a clear voice. it was just more of a screech-type thing. >> but vicky was not well enough to explain her reaction. crystal decided to conduct her own investigation. crystal believed the answer to the mystery of what happened to vicky were those marks on vicky's face, marks which hospital employees identified as tire marks. crystal made a list of all vehicles she could remember seeing in the newspaper parking lot prior to vicky's accident. then she needed to find a way to compare the marks on vicky's

face to the tires of those vehicles. crystal rubbed black shoe polish on each tire. and then pressed plain white paper against it. she kept careful records of which tire impression came from each vehicle. in all, she took nine tire impressions from two vans and a pickup truck. then she showed her detective work to the police. >> i said, you arrested the wrong person. i said, you have harassed a black man who is just a sweet, harmless old man, who never did anything wrong to anybody. i said, you need to, you know, fix this. >> the grand jury questioned reverend hardeman but did not indict him. the spot of blood on the truck turned out to be fish blood.

crystal did not believe reverend hardeman was the one who ran over vicky, but police refused to investigate further, saying it was a civil matter, not a criminal one. at the time, the newspaper's parking lot was unpaved and bumpy. it was possible that a driver may have driven over vicky and mistaken the bump for a pothole. for the next three years, as she nursed vicky back to health, no one in the small town of big spring was willing to help her. one day while reading a magazine, crystal saw an article about a man known as the sherlock holmes of tire marks. this was the break that crystal had been praying for. let's take a look

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peter mcdonald literally wrote the book on tire impression evidence. he was formerly the chief designer for the firestone tire company. he also assisted numerous police agencies and taught at the fbi academy.

after reading the magazine article about mcdonald, crystal lyons called him in ohio. she explained the case as best she could and told him about the pictures she had taken, which appeared to show a tire mark. luckily for the lyons family, mcdonald was no stranger to tire impressions in human flesh. >> my heart went out to her with this almost like tattoo on her forehead. >> with the evidence crystal had gathered, mcdonald thought he could help. >> i think it's amazing that she had the foresight to make rubbings of suspect tires. i don't always get that sort of work from police on a major homicide case. >> crystal had labeled each of the tire impressions with the date and its position on the

vehicle. >> two of the vehicles i could eliminate very quickly. one was a big snow tire type design. another was a passenger design, but it had major grooves that were kind of lightning shaped, which was different than the imprint on vicky's forehead. >> but the last three imprints were interesting. they were golden sonic 78s, a relatively rare tire no longer manufactured. the imprint on vicky's face looked similar, but mcdonald wasn't sure that the size matched. >> the same tread pattern appears in normally about 12 different sizes, so it's important, to me, to confirm that it's not only the same manufacturer, the same brand, but that it has exactly the same

size. >> but crystal's photographs did not contain a size reference. how could mcdonald determine the size of a tire impression on vicky's face taken three years earlier? another photograph was taken, this time with a scale reference. the human skull grows most rapidly in the first three years of life. but between the ages of 4 and 7, the distance between the eye sockets and mouth usually remain the same. this knowledge helped mcdonald to compare these two photographs with a scale of reference. on vicky's forehead, mcdonald saw tiny lines made by tire sipes, which are narrow cuts put in the tire to improve traction. >> and they are a forensic scientist's greatest tool, because i can help determine the

wear of the tire. >> sipes are made by small metal blades placed in the tire mold. to make the tire stronger, the blades sometimes have a raised area called a tie bar. as the tread wears, the tie bar is exposed and the tire's imprint changes. in vicky's skin, mcdonald found interruptions in the sipes caused by the exposed tie bar. he determined the tire had worn down about .05 of an inch. but the last imprint showed the same degree of wear and matched in size. mcdonald believed that the right front tire of a newspaper truck, driven by an employee we'll call bob jones ran over vicky.

jones was the man who said hi to vicky after the accident when vicky reacted violently. in 1985, crystal lyons filed suit against the "big spring herald." claiming jones hadn't taken the proper precautions when backing his truck out of the parking lot. the unfortunate accident would mean a lifetime of neurological difficulties for vicky and crystal wanted justice.

vicky lyons needed dozens of surgical procedures because the accident damaged her hearing, vision, and sense of balance, but she was able to attend school. >> they just asked me if i'm like mentally retarded or if i had a stroke. i'd rather them ask me what happened then like sit there and stare at me. >> there was no way to just do what the doctors had suggested, which is put her in a wheelchair and just forget her. i couldn't do that. she's my child.

i love her. >> crystal lyons says she didn't sue the "big spring herald" just for financial motives. she wanted them to take responsibility for the accident that left her daughter permanently disabled. >> i wanted everybody to know the truth. and in order for vicky to get the appropriate medical attention and have a life that money was going to be involved. >> vicky lyons tries not to think about the accident, but she remembers it. >> i remember my mom's boss telling me to go play in the parking lot and had some toy dishes with me. and i went behind this truck. i was just playing in the sand. >> on the day of the accident,

the driver of the vehicle, in a rush, backed out over vicky in the unpaved bumpy parking lot, apparently, without realizing it. >> i saw him, like, look in his rearview mirror. >> even before the lawsuit, jones suspected he might have been the one who ran over vicky. >> the driver made a comment to crystal that he did not think he did it, but if he did it, he was sorry that it happened. >> i'm willing to forgive him because i'm no person to judge, so -- and he's got to live with what he's done. >> "the herald" wanted to settle the case. >> the newspaper offered to pay $750,000 towards the care vicky would need for the rest of her life.

crystal accepted but demanded one more thing. 15 minutes in the judge's chambers for her and vicky to meet with a representative of "the herald" alone. >> vicky, i asked her if she had anything to say to him and she told him, you destroyed my life. that was pretty much the end of a lawsuit right then and there. >> the "big spring herald" did not report the news of the settlement. the paper now has new owners and a completely different staff. >> crystal had the insight to take the photographs. she had the insight to get the tire imprints. she had the insight to tear out this piece of paper in a magazine with peter mcdonald's name on it. without her having done all that, obviously, i don't think any of this would have gotten done.

>> crystal was able to arrange for the best medical care for vicky, and vicky has learned to speak and walk again. although vicky tries to put the accident in the past, she lives with its legacy every day. >> i like getting out, but i don't always get out that much because i don't like how people make me feel when i go out somewhere. >> but vicky is thinking about getting out more. she's finished high school and is considering college. her mother, now divorced, is already attending college in denver, studying forensic science. >> i really applaud that. i bet she'll be really good in the section on how to make

imprints they were a beautiful family, a striking raven haired couple with their delightful little girl. in 1995, mother and daughter left home for a shopping trip and were never seen again. the search for answers would lead investigators into a world of evil, fantasy, and perversion. peace and quiet, that's what attracts many to limerick,