this is "nightline." tonight, one man on a mission. shining a light on a dark chapter in american history. >> i think hopefulness is a requirement to do what i do. >> fighting for justice, now his life's work. the plot of a new movie. >> you a lawyer? >> yes, ma'am. my name is brian stevenson. >> the stars backing the cause and the real-life clients given a second chance at living. >> what's freedom taste like to a grown man. >> plus, deception game? a doting mom missing. >> i got home and nobody was there. >> police suspecting her best friend of the ultimate betrayal. the father reunited with his

newborn daughter and speaking out for the first time. how one friendship may have turned deadly. but first. the "nightline" five.

case in point, if you savget xfinity internetple. and mobile together, big savings on your wireless bill. write this down, this is important. amy, this is actually a life saving class. what a nice compliment, thank you! save on fast internet and the best wireless network together. what can i say, i love what i do. that's simple, easy, awesome. get xfinity internet and mobile together and save hundreds on your wireless bill. you'll get unlimited talk and text and no activation or line fees. switch today. >> good evening. thank you for joining us. the fight for justice might be long and arduous but to attorney bryan stevenson, it is necessary.

his relentless pursuit of the truth across a country, haunted by its racist past, now getting the hollywood treatment. how one lawyer and an all-star cast seek to reshape the criminal justice system in america. montgomery, alabama, where the demons of dixie still stand on the lawn. the memorial was haunting, a dark truth one man thought america should see. >> i can't imagine creating something that may engage people. and yet here we are. >> reporter: i walked with bryan stevenson through this copper canyon, a sobers space, dedicated to black men and women lynched in america. what do you want people to sense? >> i think it's the sense that

this violence was lifted up over people. people don't know what it was like to live in a space where were you surrounded by such torture and terror and violence. and nobody did anything. >> reporter: stevenson views america's dark past as directly connected to what he sees as her trouble present. >> we have the highest rate of incarceration because we have allowed ourselves to be governed by fear and anger. it was the same fear and anger that allowed us to be involved in genocide and lynching. >> reporter: getting 135 people off death row. data suggests that for every nine people executed, one has been exonerated. his life's work has been memorialized in a new film "just mercy." >> we all need grace. we all need mercy.

♪ >> i hope from watching the movie and thinking more critically people will kind of see this issue the way i see it. i don't think the threshold question of the death penalty is do people deserve to die for the crimes they've committed, i think the threshold question is, do we deserve to kill? >> reporter: it comes at an appropriate time. they will resume capital punishment at the federal level after nearly two decades. actor michael b. jordan portrays stevenson in the film. >> you a lawyer? >> yes, ma'am. my name is bryan stevenson. >> reporter: and academy award winner, jamie foxx, plays one of his first death row clients. walter mcmillen. >> all they can think of is i look like a man who could kill somebody. >> that's not what i think. >> reporter: what inspired you to want to take this project on?

>> nobody's perfect, but he's really close. he's a much better person than i am. he's really beating the drum for justice, nonstop. >> reporter: walter mcmillen, the character you play. >> the most important movie i ever do. >> reporter: really? >> when we talk about importance, i'm talking about the importance of the message. and when you go on your social media, and you're able to see a young black man being killed by a police officer, because it allows us to address those types of symptoms in an artistic way. here's walter mcmillen. in a sense, wrongly convicted of a crime that, a city he'd never been in, a person he never met and all of a sudden he sits on death row. >> reporter: before his trial. >> before his trial. the worst thing you can give a death row inmate is hope, and all of a sudden, hope walks in, in the form of bryan stevenson. >> you don't know what it is

down there, you're guilty from the moment you're born. >> reporter: when you say guilty from the moment you're born. >> i grew up in texas. i was 8 years old and i got called [ bleep ] by a grown man. how is me being born, how can i receive all of this hate? >> when jamie plays walter, i think he exposes the agony of being wrongly convicted and the trauma. >> reporter: what do you think of michael b. jordan playing you. >> i'm honored. he was terrific. the only thing i asked him not to do is to go on some lawyer drive. i said you can keep the creed body. >> it's to achieve justice. and as long as you keep fighting this, someone from your county has literally gotten away with murder. >> reporter: stevenson and his organization, the equal justice initiative, have dedicated themselves to changing the

criminal justice system and people's lives. one of those lives changed, anthony ray hickman. >> you can say that you got an innocent man off death row. >> reporter: we first met hinton almost five years ago, just days after he was released from alabama's death row where he had served 30 straight years for two murders he did not commit. >> would you believe, this is the first time i've been in the rain in 30 years? it's, it feels wonderful. yes, it feels wonderful. >> reporter: but now, thanks to stevenson, what's left of this life is all his. what's freedom taste like to a grown man? >> ooh. freedom tastes good. it is delicious. there's nothing in this world that's more important than freedom. and when you lose your freedom, you lose everything. >> reporter: he has his freedom, full time job at stevens' equal

justice initiative and has written his own book, "the sun does shine". and his smile. what the criminal justice system took from anthony ray hinton, time nor treasures can restore. >> no one sees when i'm at home by myself the tears. no one sees the scars that is perhaps there forever. >> reporter: you still cry? >> oh, yes. >> reporter: why? >> well, i lived in fear. i fear that any night the police could kick the door down and say i did something. >> reporter: really? still? >> othh, absolutely. if they did it once they could do it again. >> reporter: when's the last time you cried? >> oh, this morning. >> i think if people saw what i saw on a regular basis, if they saw children condemned to die in prison, mentally ill people being abused they would want change. but our system is so insulated they don't see it. >> reporter: for all the darkness you see you are an optimistic man.

>> i think hopefulness is a requirement to do what i do. >> but if they take me to that jail tonight i'm going out smiling. cause i got my truth back. >> reporter: thanks to bryan stevenson, walter mcmillen won his freedom in 1993. he died in 2013. for jordan, one of the film's producers, this was an opportunity to showcase diversity both on and off screen. you push for a collusion rider, whi which is new. >> it means that groups are being heavily considered for a major role behind the camera, black and brown communities, minorities. women, from the lbgtq community. >> reporter: what do you want audiences to take from this? >> i want them to open themselves up. what was great about the movie

is it makes them a human story. >> i want people to be hopeful. i think bryan stevenson is the most hopeful, optimistic person there is. >> i think if we can create a consciousness that bias and bigotry is fundamentally unacceptable in this country, we'll think differently. it won't take six years to get walter mcmillen off of death row. >> reporter: as bryan stevenson knows, justice deferred beats justice denied. but it's a hard-fought hope that assures him, america someday will do better. "just mercy" is in theaters now. up next, a devoted mother murdered. officials suspecting her best friend of the ultimate betrayal. and wondering if that was the last time i was going to do that thing. i thought...i'm not letting anything take me away

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one texas father is trying to make sense of the senseless. his fiancee and baby kidnapped. but only the child surviving. with police arresting the mother's best friend, accused of the unspeakable, now the grieving parent speaking out to abc's kaylee hartung. why he believes the suspect couldn't have acted alone. >> reporter: a holiday season in austin. made sweeter by the birth of a baby girl. heidi broussard welcoming her you new baby. >> everybody was coming over. it was amazing.

>> reporter: the best friend there in the delivery room. >> megan came down. she was the first one down. and she was there the whole entire time. >> reporter: megan, just weeks away from delivering her own baby. >> they were planning to try to have the baby on the same day and all this. and they were excited together. meagan and heidi. >> reporter: but authorities say megan never had her baby. that she faked the whole pregnancy and carried out the ultimate betrayal. >> the desperate search for a missing mother. >> she took her child to school and just vanished. >> that texas mother had just given birth. >> reporter: megan accused of kidnapping baby margo. her best friend found strangled to death but no one yet charged with the murder. >> makes me angry. these beautiful kids don't deserve this. she didn't deserve this. >> reporter: magnetic and spontaneous is how he describes his 33-year-old fiance, heidi broussard. >> she loved music.

anything you brought up, she could always talk about. and her laugh and her smile were so contagious. >> reporter: december 12th started like any other day. shane leaves for work while heidi drops their young son off at school. but when shane returns home that afternoon no sign of heidi or the newborn. >> i just got home and nobody was there. >> reporter: hours go by and he begins to panic. shane calls his father ty. >> he says something's not right, dad, she's not here, and then he started noticing nothing was missing, nothing to take care of margo. >> reporter: and you knew wasn't volunteery. >> no. if you nomar goknow margo, she w leave like this. she'd tell a friend. >> reporter: shane turning to family and friends for support, including megan, heidi's best

friend. they'd met years earlier at a bible school. >> i was like, have you heard from her? she's like no. she started crying on the phone. like where is heidi. and, yeah, she played it off. so well. >> reporter: even as he pleaded toness camer to news cameras for help, some were skeptical about shane. >> i just want her safe. >> statistically, it's almost always the fiance, the husband, the boy prinfriend, the man in woman's life. not this time. >> reporter: instead, it was the best friend police focussed on. after investigators started talking to people close to heidi, they say meagan's story wasn't adding up. she claimed to have given birth december 12th, the same day they disappeared. the gray nissan was at the and

the complex the day they disappeared and they saw a woman carrying a small infant being helped into the rear of a vehicle by a front seat passenger who they later identified as megan in a lineup. >> megan's cell phone was also pinged in that area at the same time that heidi goes missing. cell phone pings don't lie. >> reporter: investigators also say they dug into her internet search history. >> there are nearly 200 searches for the name heidi broussard in the days surrounding heidi's disappearance. on the day that heidi disappears, along with baby margo, on the same account, on the same device, we believe, there is a search around 10:31 p.m. that day, that asks for hits on reason for an amber

alert. here's the kicker. at that time, no amber alert had been issued. >> reporter: a week later in houston, authorities track down megan's former boyfriend. the two were still living to the at this house. >> they find them in the grocery store buying baby formula forehis new baby girl. and they show him a flier, a flier with baby margo's photo on it. he takes one look at this flyer and says that's baby at my house. >> reporter: police had already been surveilling the house, finally going inside, and then a shocking discovery. >> i got a phone call at two-something in the morning. i started crying, and my dad tried to calm me down. and i laid down on the kitchen floor. that's all i remember. >> we did recover an infant, female child that we do believe at this time is margo. however, we are awaiting the results of dna testing to confirm that identity.

>> reporter: outside, a grisly find. heidi's strangled body in the trunk of megan's car. >> i still don't believe it. for some reason, i'm like, it's still not, it's processing, but it's not processing. cause she was a friend. >> i don't know what brings somebody to do this sort of thing. but it's just the worst of the worst. >> reporter: megan charged with two counts of kidnapping and one count of tampering with evidence, but she hasn't been charged with murder at this point. her defense team maintaining their innocence, writing that they are anxious to review the evidence collected thus far. i know you want justice, how do you feel knowing at this time that no one's been charged with her murder? >> i don't understand this at all. >> police could be waiting for all the facts and evidence before they make a murder charge. >> reporter: do you believe megan's responsible? >> i believe so.

or somebody talked her into it. heidi is so strong. there's no way megan could have took her down by herself. >> i'm going to miss you forever. >> reporter: last month, family and friends grieving at a vigil for heidi. >> i'm really going to miss her voice. >> reporter: shane laying his fiance to rest two days after christmas. >> i want her to be recognized for the person that she was the best mom in the entire i got to be the best dad ever. >> reporter: shane is determined to make sure heidi's memory lives on. shane, when margo grows up, what will you want her to know about her mother? >> just that her mom would love her. she still does. >> reporter: for "nightline," i'm kaylee hartung in austin, texas. >> our thanks to kaylee.

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and finally tonight, they are the dog days of summer down under. >> that's our maggie rulli on the ground, literally in australia, meeting and greeting, as best she can, rescue dogs. tommy the koala dog and his friends are trained to find injured koalas that have been hurt in wildfires. the pups are credited with saving dozens of koalas, and their work is just getting started. heroes big and small. that's "nightline." you can always catch our full episodes on