♪ three girls, 8, 9 and 10, were beaten to death early today while spending the first night of a week-long stay at a girl scout camp in northeastern oklahoma. >> we'd seen plenty of heinous murders, but something like that, three girl scouts at a camp? >> the closer i got, i could just see that this young girl was -- was dead. >> and i started to scream. >> my god, what happened inside of that tent? >> the idea that somebody could

come into this camp at night and not be discovered with all these girls and counselors around, it's pretty stunning. >> my daughter was one of them. lori died in the night. and everything did change from that moment to right now. >> whoever wrote the note said that "i'm gonna kill three girl scouts," and the counselors thought it was just a prank. >> that's what commences the largest manhunt in oklahoma state history. who exactly is it that we're up against here? >> it never, never occurred to me that after you got there, you might die. ♪

♪ ♪ hmm ♪ in oklahoma, a manhunt underway. three girl scouts discovered beaten to death today, and at least one of them was sexually molested. >> what hit me in 1977 as a young reporter, the hardest was, these are kids. and that's one of the things i never got over. ♪

>> camp scott opened as a girl scout camp back in 1928. it's out in the woods just south of locust grove, a little town that barely covers one square mile of mayes county. >> i can honestly tell you, i never had heard of locust grove, oklahoma, before. we had to break out the maps just to try to figure out where it was and what roads we could use to get to it. >> in mayes county back then, there were probably around 30,000 people. this is a place where the cherokee nation was resettled in the trail of tears. it is hilly. it is wooded. there's a lot of water, and it's a perfect place for scouting camps. >> well, my first summer that i ever went to camp scott was in 1971, and after that, there was never any doubt in my mind that that's where i wanted to spend every summer. >> as a child growing up in

small-town georgia, i was a girl scout, too. i loved being a scout, and i still remember the promise by heart. "on my honor, i will try to do my duty, to god and my country -- >> -- to help other people at all times to obey the girl scout laws." >> 1977 was the first year that i was actually hired to be a girl scout counselor. >> i can actually smell camp scott. i can smell the sycamore trees along the creek. it's summer, and it's morning, and the light is just kind of dappling through the trees. >> my fondest memory of girl scouting is just singing around a campfire. ♪ as friends we have grown together ♪ ♪ walked along trails together ♪ ♪ gazed at the stars together ♪

♪ together we have done many things ♪ ♪ many things ♪ that's a girl scout song. >> when those girls got on that bus to go to camp, they didn't want to die, and they should not have died, and we've lived with that for 45 years. >> i'm harold berry. i'm retired from the highway patrol. i was at home in bed, asleep. my headquarters called.

they told me that the girl scouts had called them, said they'd found a little girl dead up there. >> the first thing that i thought was this child must have become frightened in the night and ran into a tree and died. i mean, crazy thinking, but i'm trying to make sense of what i was seeing. >> i drove my patrol car down there to see what was going on, i get out of my patrol car, and all i see is the one little girl exposed. i checked the two sleeping bags where the little girl was laying on one of them, and there were bodies in both of them. >> this had been something done intentionally. from that moment on, it really felt very surreal because this was not something that happened at girl scout camp. >> in my mind, i can't visualize someone being that sick that would take the life of them little girls in that way.

i called the sheriff's department over at pryor and told them that i had a triple homicide, and i needed the sheriff and county coroner. >> i worked for a weekly newspaper, "the pryor jeffersonian." we had a circulation of about 5,000. i was at home in bed with my wife, about probably 7:00 in the morning, and the phone rang. it was the pryor police department dispatcher. he said, mike, get your camera and all the film you have and go to camp scott. >> my job was to secure that scene, and then it dawned on me, i've got two different crime scenes. i've got girls here. but apparently, these girls were taken from a tent. >> the sheriff asked me to go in the tent to take pictures inside. and i would do the crime scene photos working as a -- not a journalist or reporter, but as a crime scene photographer.

i knew it was a scene of great trauma because there was so much blood on the floor of the tent. you try to capture the reality. you don't think about it at the time. it's composition, focus, exposure, click. all of my pictures are in black and white. my memories are in technicolor. >> when you see things like that, you're almost in shock as somebody could do those kind of things to another human being, a child, an innocent little child. my god, what happened inside of that tent? >> the area was so green. it was so peaceful. birds. and the sheriff was there, pete weaver, and they were standing around this cluster of sleeping bags. you try to isolate from the tauma. it's been 45 years since this happened, and it still comes back to me. >> mayes county sheriff

pete weaver says there are no suspects in the case. questioned by newsmen who were kept away from the campsite, he said the girls' bodies were found about 150 feet from the tent. >> there was no indication they were dragged. apparently, they were carried. >> was there any evidence that they had been sexually assaulted? >> there was evidence to that effect, yes. >> i remember squad cars, highway patrol cars, detective cars, sheriffs. and the only thing you really knew was that three girl scouts were dead. ♪ death don't have no mercy in this land ♪ >> in locust grove, people say they're scared. ♪ death don't have no mercy in this land ♪ >> i locked my door night before last. that's the first time i ever locked it. >> it was easily the biggest story that i ever covered in my life. >> ever. >> by 1977, i was a really young reporter. >> i was back at the station reading the newscast. >> in the news this morning, the girl scout murders at locust grove. >> this story just demanded

almost constant attention. the brutality, the senselessness. ♪ come to your house in the morning, it won't take long ♪ ♪ look in the bed and find your children gone ♪ >> they brought in troopers, osbi agents, tulsa p.d., reservists. they asked for volunteers. had hundreds of people there. all these people came in, and then they just sent them out. and some strange things started happening. ♪ (clearing throat) what do you... got there? a hospital bill for me? mm-hmm. for $1,200? ga-a-a-ap! did you say "gap"? yeah, he did. he's talking about expenses that health insurance doesn't cover. ga-a-a-ap! uh-uh. aflac! that's why there's aflac. it pays you money to help close that gap. aflac, huh? don't tell me he high stepping.

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♪ in tulsa, the news is already breaking. as you might expect, parents are freaking out. the girls haven't been publicly identified yet. >> we needed to get our kids out. the executive director at the girl scout council arranged for buses to take them back to tulsa. >> i'm sure for a lot of parents, they're there still wondering, is it possible that, you know, my child was one of those killed? >> when the bus finally arrived, the parents' relief was obvious. >> it's a pretty emotional scene as the campers stepped off the bus and into the arms of their parents. but sadly not every mom and dad will be able to hug their daughter. ♪

♪ >> arriving at camp was kind of an experience in itself. you leave the highway, then you're onto what they call the cookie trail. it's like you've stepped through some kind of portal. it's taking you from civilization into something almost prehistoric. >> the girls were scheduled to arrive coming up from tulsa on sunday afternoon, and they did. hundreds of them. >> we met the kids at the bus. carla and i were in the kiowa unit.

we took the girls to the camp and let them pick their tents. and just helped them get settled in until it was time for dinner. >> there were three. counselors slept in their own tent. campers slept with their friends or newfound friends in each of the seven tents. >> there were four girls per tent except for the last tent, and they were arranged around the main campfire and the counselor's tent. >> during dinner, just this incredible storm rolled in, and it rained hard. finally, the rain relented enough that we were able to start hiking back down to their units. >> it's in that last tent, tent number 7, where little girls, ages 8, 9 and 10, were bunking together. >> it was about 7:00, 8:00 by

then, and it was dark and it was time to settle in. >> we dried off as best we could. the girls were still active, giggling, shining their flashlights all over. it's very exciting the very first night. some girls are just so giddy and excited and hyper, and others are a little afraid, because it gets very dark up in the woods. there's just blackness. >> eventually, things get quiet and everybody goes to bed. later that night, i heard a noise, and it wasn't like anything i had ever heard before. the noise was coming from an area near our unit. i started to go over and

investigate and just see if i could shine my flashlight and see what it was. couldn't see anything, but the noise would stop as i got closer. i didn't want anything to pounce out of the woods at me, whether it was an animal or whatever it was. i didn't want to tangle with it, and i backed away. i tried to rouse the other counselors and say, you hear that noise? you know, what do you think it is? and they were kind of like, eh, i don't know. it's probably just a critter, an animal, whatever. i awoke when my alarm went off. as i was walking out of the

unit, i kind of looked to my right because i saw something in the road. i saw a couple of sleeping bags. and as i walked closer, i could actually see the figure of a young girl lying partially on the road and maybe partially off of the road, and the closer i got, i could just see that this -- this young girl was -- was dead. i went back, and i said, you know, there's a dead kid in the road. we need to count our kids! >> carla went one direction. i went to the last tent. there was blood on the floor and on the mattresses and no sleeping bags. >> susan said, there's nobody in tent 7. we were short three children. >> there was a young girl laying out with a bag half covering her, and i started to scream.

>> i started running. i was just running like hell. i woke up the camp director, barbara day. her husband richard was there, and he was an emergency room nurse. >> and my husband richard and i were trying to understand what she was saying. she was describing a girl, a camper laying on the road. >> the victims who had arrived at camp scott only last night were identified as 9-year-old michelle guse of broken arrow, 8-year-old lori lee farmer of tulsa, and 10-year-old denise milner also of tulsa. >> i'm betty milner, mother of denise milner. they didn't know how to find me, and someone took them to the school where i worked. >> i was finishing up a night shift in the emergency department and got a call to the nurse's station for a phone

call. >> they took me to the office and they told me that they had found three girls beat to death, and my daughter was one of them. >> the executive director of the girl scouts was on the other end and just said, i hate to tell you this, sir, your daughter was found out behind her tent dead this morning. that's all i was told. so when i went home to tell sheri, that's the only thing i knew was that lori was dead. >> i looked up, and bo was coming to the back door. i knew something was wrong. and you said, sit down. we need to talk. do you remember what i said? >> you didn't want to sit down. >> i said, no.

i'm not going to sit down. and you just know whatever it is is going to change everything. and he said, lori died in the night. >> the search goes on for the murderer of three little girls in a girl scout camp near tulsa. >> as investigators hunt for evidence, hope for clues, stolen glasses, a note. >> whoever wrote the note said, i'm going kill three girl scouts. and the counselors thought it was just a prank. ms tries to stop me. ms is like riding into headwinds, but i keep pushing forward. does ms define me? no, it does not. i take ocrevus, an infusion treatment that's two times a year. a prescription for adults with relapsing or primary progressive forms of multiple sclerosis, ocrevus is proven effective in reducing relapses in rms,

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was 4 years old. >> denise milner, she was just one of those quiet girls. but she also looked like a person that was just an old soul. in that way, she was just a very striking girl. >> denise, she loved people. everywhere we went, she always met somebody that she wanted to talk to. >> it was to have been a big week for lori lee who had been anticipating her 9th birthday party this saturday after a week at her first camp. >> the lori that i remember is just the happy big sister. when i close my eyes and just picture her in our family, it is of the laughter and sweetness. >> lori actually lived on the street behind my house. we rode the same bus together to school. lori, she just had this kind of like a little mother instinct about her, not just with her own siblings but with everybody around her.

>> sunday morning, we finished packing up, and i believe we went over to the girl scout headquarters about noon. >> up until the day to go to camp, denise was excited about it, but then she decided she didn't want to go. i told her if she would just go and see what it's like, if she didn't like it, then we would come and get her. >> we watched lori get on. and i saw her in the window. we waved, and we said, i love you. >> all the campers were writing letters home to their parents that night. >> this is her letter. "dear mommy, daddy, we're getting ready to go to bed at 7:45. i've met two new friends, michelle guse and denise milner. i'm sharing a tent with them.

we're all writing letters now because there's hardly anything else to do. with love, lori." >> denise said, "dear mom, i don't like camp. it's awful. mom, i don't want to stay in camp for two weeks. i want to come home." >> it never, never occurred to me that after you got there, you might die. >> sheriff's deputies are allowing no one inside the camp and are saying very little about the investigation. >> we knew that this was going to be a major national story. the investigators were really focused on gathering any kind of physical evidence they could. because they knew the pressure was going to build. >> they found the girls in each one of these sleeping bags, and there was evidence that they'd been molested.

it was bloody with indication of blunt force trauma. >> we took pictures of, uh, stuff that we found in the area, glasses, hairbrushes, and things that were just scattered. >> one of the things that they found was a flashlight the attacker had left behind. >> there was a 9-volt lantern laying next to the milner girl. it had a black trash bag wrapped around the front of the lens with a hole in it. >> and the light just comes out very small, just enough where you can kind of -- you know, you can direct it. >> there are a few clues. a red flashlight was found near the bodies, and it has yielded one good fingerprint. >> they recovered hair, and ultimately they would recover what they believe was semen. >> in 1977, of course,

scientists knew about dna. but how it would be used in law enforcement was still very much in its infancy. police were focused on incidents that were reported in the camp, and there was a note left that really caught the attention of investigators. >> we had pre-camp, which is a week of just putting the staff together, just making preparations for the girls to be there. >> at that time, i found out that my purse was missing. whoever stole my purse had reached under my bed from the outside. >> earlier in the week, one of the tents had a big, large rip in the front flap of the fabric. we also found we were missing a

lantern and a small hand ax. i was also missing some items that were actually found with the bodies. >> counselors also remember a note found in an empty donut box in the months before campers arrived. >> whoever wrote the note said that, i'm going to kill three girl scouts. and the counselors thought it was just a prank. >> innocent mischief or some kind of a warning? it only adds to the mystery for police who are desperate to identify the killer. >> the first person i remember talking to is pete weaver, the sheriff, and interviewing him. if i remember correctly in those first interviews, there wasn't any suspect. >> what is clear is that michelle and lori were murdered first and that denise was led away from the tent, or carried from there, and then raped and

murdered at the site where ultimately all the bodies were found. >> in third grade, i moved to broken arrow, oklahoma. i had gotten sick, and i remember being devastated that i could not attend girl scout camp. when news broke of this tragedy, i remember specifically being in our living room. >> residents around locust grove believe it was an outsider, and that worries them. it also scares them that police aren't talking about a motive or a suspect. >> it was in this moment when my mother was telling me what happened to denise, michelle, and lori that i came to learn what murder was. >> once they identified the crime scene areas and roped off those areas, then all these people came in, and then they just sent them out. >> that's what commences the largest manhunt in oklahoma state history.

helicopters in the air, dogs on the ground, just a massive effort. >> next to the camp, in the little town of locust grove, people say they're scared. for them, the authorities can't move fast enough to catch the killer. >> well, i'm horrified, naturally, like everyone else. >> from almost the get go, one name was on their radar. >> oklahoma authorities believe they know who killed three young girl scouts during a campout near locust grove earlier this month. i was always the competitive one in our family... 'til my sister signed up for united healthcare medicare advantage. ♪wow, uh-huh♪ now she's got a whole team to help her get the most out of her plan. ♪wow, uh-huh♪ with coverage that's better than ever for dental... ...vision... ...prescription drugs and more. advantage: me! can't wait 'til i turn 65! aarp medicare advantage plans, only from unitedhealthcare.

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the only thing you really knew was that three girl scouts were dead, but we didn't know exactly how they died. we didn't know the circumstances. we didn't know there was a suspect. >> yeah, and apparently there was from the very beginning. >> oklahoma authorities believe they know who killed three young girl scouts during a campout near locust grove earlier this month. >> talking to various investigators, it seemed pretty clear to me back then that almost immediately they suspected gene leroy hart. >> i think that gene leroy hart's name came up pretty

early because his family just lived within a half a mile of the grounds. >> of course, it wasn't just hart's easy access to camp scott that raises suspicion. it turns out gene hart also had a history of violence against women. >> he was accused and subsequently charged and convicted of picking up two women from a bar and ten taking them and raping them. >> at the time the little girls were killed, gene leroy hart had been an escapee for almost four years. >> it's speculated that pete weaver, the sheriff, had a personal vendetta against hart because hart had made him look foolish by escaping twice from his jail, and that's really what was motivating this. >> i think the investigators would say at the time, they only started suspecting him when they found the cave. >> this locust grove area is a hilly area. it's got a lot of cliffs in it, a lot of canyons, a lot of caves. we were looking for evidence. anything that we could find that

you could tie it into somebody. there are three principle cave sites that factor into this case. all of them within the vicinity of camp scott. in searching these sites, they would find some items that they would eventually use in the case against him. >> they found photographs and could trace them back to gene leroy hart. they found the plastic tape that he used to put over the lens of his flashlight. >> and they found the sunglasses that a counselor identified as hers. >> with those they would be able to put him in camp scott within a day of the actual murders. >> a first-degree murder warrant is out for leroy hart. police zeroed in on hart after finding torn up pieces of a wedding picture in a cave near the scene of the murder. they identified the people in it, then found that hart once worked for the photographer while he was on a work release program before he escaped from jail.

>> authorities came to believe that gene hart had been in the vicinity of the camp in the days leading up to the crimes, and that these cave sites were sites that he had been using during his time as a fugitive. >> i found a cave, and when i got inside the cave, i got to looking around. and at the opening of the cave, somebody built four little fires. and four fires is significant in a culture. so i'm sitting in there, and i was thinking, okay, this is indian. >> agents soon discover more than one cave along with an abandoned cellar that gave them clues and something more disturbing. >> within the first four or five days after the murders, the sheriff went to the cave, and they found where somebody had painted "the killer was here" on the wall. >> there was a sense in the

community that developed that he was being framed for this because he was a native american, or back then they would have said because he's an indian. it really did become a racial issue, because gene leroy hart was a cherokee. and this happened when the american indian movement was growing and wounded knee had happened. and there was a big fight for native american rights. >> there has been racism in my home state against native americans, and his tribe rallied around him. >> it was suspected for years and years after he escaped from prison that gene leroy hart was in that area. certainly he was on pete weaver's radar screen, because gene leroy hart was a well-known individual in locust grove. he was a football hero. >> the high school football team, the pirates, they were a big draw.

anybody who followed football in the early 1960s in locust grove would have known gene hart. >> gene leroy hart, his story initially was he was the all-american boy, how could he do this? high school football star. >> as he was coming out of high school, he had offers to play football on scholarship, but he chose to not go to college and to stay there and work and get married, raise a child. >> it would be hard for any of us to think that he did it, but things can happen, you know? >> just a good old boy from northeastern oklahoma. he was those things, but he was also something else. >> agents started tracking gene leroy hart, a convicted rapist and a recent escapee from the mayes county jail. >> a line will form here. we'll move through here.

>> i've seen reports of as high as 600 or 700 people, boots on the ground. just a massive effort to no avail. >> finding a guy like gene leroy hart, who knew those woods, who knew everyone in town -- i agreed with what some investigators told me at the time, if he didn't want to be found, they weren't going to find him probably. >> the trail just disappeared. >> i can tell you it is one of those things that sort of fed into this developing story of, who exactly is it that we're up against here? >> we don't know where he is, but we need to find this man before it happens again. (applause) ♪ anything else exciting going on? of course. (engine revs) (beeps) car: watch for traffic. ♪

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there are five tactical squads strategically located around the area, four of those manned by oklahoma highway patrol units, and one of those is an fbi tactical unit. i just know that this man is probably the most experienced woodsman that you could comprehend. >> as part of this massive manhunt, they brought in some dogs who apparently were very well known in the canine tracking community. >> they brought what they called the superdogs. they came from out of state. and so some strange things started happening. >> we're reading in the newspaper hart has put a curse on the dogs. i mean, those were the headlines. >> somehow mysteriously two of those dogs would actually die while participating in this. >> before you know it, they were

blaming gene leroy hart for the death of these dogs. >> there was talk among the search that gene hart was a shapeshifter, that he could turn himself into a bird or an animal, that he could leap from tree to tree. >> they have stories of people that change, a man that changes from a man to a wolf, and he'll run off. everybody was just making all these little stories up, and fantasies were just, you know, going crazy. >> a lot of this are part of the legends and myths of native culture in oklahoma. but that was out there, that idea that there was something special about him, that he wasn't just another fugitive.

>> i simply took it as a way of trying to explain away the fact that they had had a miserable experience of trying to find one guy in eastern oklahoma with millions of dollars worth of man hours and time. >> hart proves to be so good at hiding from authorities that they eventually called off the manhunt. months go by, and while there are numerous sightings, nobody seems to be able to put their hands on gene leroy hart. >> he became almost this mythical figure, this antihero type. they were never gonna catch him. >> sometimes i would watch the news and somebody would say that they couldn't find who did it, they were all chasing him, and it was just like, i can't -- i can't even -- it's too much. i couldn't deal with it. >> in the early stages of the investigation, answers for the families were just as elusive as finding who the actual suspect

was. and there was a level of frustration in oklahoma that was setting in that -- who would do this? >> we were all just struggling with the same thing in our own way and just trying to get through the weeks and the months. >> every day was a struggle. and the first thing i'd open my eyes in the morning, it was just another day she wasn't there. >> i picked the camp, the week, and i can't make that guilt go away. >> everybody was really scared. i remember lots of stories where people just stopped letting their kids go outside. >> i didn't want to go near the windows.

i didn't want to sleep in the bed. i was terrified that this person was gonna come back and get us. >> right after it happened, i remember life changed a little bit. all of a sudden, doors were locked. it made me think twice before doing anything after that. >> it changed the way people live. not many stories changed the way people live, but this one did. it changed how you watched your kids, what you let them do, where they would go. >> authorities are now beyond frustrated. and as the hunt drags on, it becomes pretty clear that conventional police methods aren't going to find hart. tat's when harvey pratt and his brother, both law enforcement and both native american, go undercover. >> we just kind of hung around different places and went to different little stores, and we

looked like everybody else. we didn't look like investigators. >> what harvey pratt eventually found out was that gene leroy hart was likely hiding at the home of a native medicine man named sam pigeon. >> they were tipped off that hart may be holed up in a cabin in a remote part of an area called the cookson hills. >> the cookson hills was a place known for the outlaws that would find refuge there. it was one of the toughest, most isolated places in north america. >> that was the old stomping grounds of guys like pretty boy floyd, bonnie and clyde, and various others because i think it was easy to hide. >> a lot of criminals in that whole area back in the 1870s,

1880s, there are probably more gunfights in western history in that area than anywhere else in the country. it was just a haven for outlaws. >> ten months after the girls were brutally murdered, ten months of literally beating the bushes to find the suspect, authorities finally had gene leroy hart in their sights. but is he the killer? 45 years later, a cold case and a new sheriff. >> there are people who have suggested that some of this evidence could have been planted. 45 years later, how can you be certain? is a man on trial for a crime he didn't commit? >> it had been such a high-profile case at the time that i just assumed everything that could be done had been done on it. when i saw that only one item had been submitted for dna evidence, i was a little shocked. >> it's a need to know everything, and i don't think we

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that hill right there, that's the girl scout camp. >> it's been 45 years since this happened, and it still comes back to me. >> lots of questions about who committed this crime, but if the question was put to you, who killed these girls? >> we've got suspect number one in the state's most infamous murder case now in custody. >> they believe gene leroy hart was being framed. >> there is another person who's maybe a better suspect for this crime. >> three little girls lost their lives, and we've done dna evidence on one item.

and i knew there were hundreds of other items available. >> you have 40 years of a lot of conspiracy theory hogwash, and it's time to put some of it to bed. let's tell the whole truth. >> so you could close this case right now? ♪ anybody who went to sleepaway camp remembers it. the green, the woods. when i was a girl scout, it may have been the reason some girls joined camp. and that's one of the reasons these murders hit so hard. >> ten days ago, three girl scouts camping near locust grove, oklahoma, were murdered. today, authorities say they are

looking for a 33-year-old escaped convict named gene leroy hart, whom they expect to charge with the crime. >> we didn't know much except that three girl scouts were likely murdered. >> local, county, and state police searched another area not far away today, and their search was unsuccessful too. >> hart's a local guy, a native american, and he's also an escaped convict with a long rap sheet, a rapist and a kidnapper. >> this went way beyond any crime anyone had ever heard about in that area or in the united states in general, and people were afraid. >> police expected that it would be difficult to find the suspect here in these hills because he is a native here and has successfully evaded the police for more than four years since he escaped from the county jail in 1973. >> you asked for an opinion. my opinion is he's somewhere still in the area.

>> imagine being a girl scout then there in broken arrow, oklahoma. >> coulda, woulda, shoulda been on that trip. it has stuck with me my whole life. did i get scared? a little bit. there was fear of -- i hate to use this expression -- but the boogeyman could be real. >> weeks soon turn into months, and the families of these murdered little girls are desperate for some sort of progress. they're in a kind of limbo. >> i feel like our life was work, children, what happened to lori? >> the hardest thing was that my family and friends couldn't talk about it because nobody wanted me to talk about her, you know? like, don't they know that if you don't talk about it, you

still think about it? >> an undercover agent, a native himself, was the key. >> once they started zeroing in on a native american and they started getting some informants that were saying some things about him, then that's when they asked me if i would go up there and do some undercover work, and see if you can't locate or talk to somebody that will give him up. >> and the osbi agent gets a tip. >> hart may or may not be in a cabin in a remote area called the cookson hills. it's a very wild and mountainous area. what you will see in news reports described as a small tarpaper shack. >> the rumors are that he's using native american magic or medicine. and i said, if i'm doing that, i said, i need to have some

protection. >> and so that's why i did the same thing. i used the same things. i had to bless my bullets. that means that if i have to use a weapon, i'll be accurate, i'll be safe. the plan was to circle the house so he couldn't get out. >> they don't know if he's alone. they don't know if he's armed. they just start running in. an agent with gun drawn gets inside. >> gene leroy hart came running at him, and he said, "you don't want to die today." and he stopped. he said, "you don't want to die today."

>> eight state agents arrested hart, handcuffing him, they said, as he tried to run away. a nursery man who shared the cabin said hart had discussed the murders but denied committing them. >> he said he didn't do it. >> watch his truck. light. jerry, light. >> today hart was taken to a courthouse in pyror, oklahoma, near the campground to be arraigned on three counts of first-degree murder. >> my van was covered in dust, and i took my hand and i wrote, we got hart. h-a-r-t. real big. you know, we got hart. >> and so the news cycle kicked off again. i mean, here we are, ten months in, and now a lot more copy to write, because we've got suspect number one in the state's most

infamous murder case now in custody. >> i think some of the press called, and i said, all we're interested in is justice. and it seemed like now we're moving toward that. that was probably very naive on our part. >> you would think that people in that area would rally around law enforcement because these were three girl scouts. >> this is locust grove, where the killings took place last year and where gene leroy hart grew up. usually in such cases, there are a lot of hard feelings, but many people here don't believe hart did it. >> no way, shape, form or fashion. no way. >> why? >> huh? >> why? >> because i know gene like i know me, and i'm not capable of that kind of a crime, and gene's not either. >> they believed gene leroy hart

was being framed. >> the mother of one of the dead girls says the sympathy makes a fair trial difficult. >> we don't know if he's guilty or if he's not guilty. and i don't think that people who don't know any more about it than we do should say, oh, i feel like he didn't do it. i knew him three or four years ago. >> the case became controversial with many of hart's former neighbors questioning whether he would even receive a fair trial. >> he will never get the justice. there is no justice in the white man's law. >> the accused was native american, and the population was a large percentage native american. we were seen as outsiders. we were the parents of the kids from tulsa, big town. >> in oklahoma, this still goes down as the most serious crime ever committed in this state. and everyone in the country was going to be following this. >> state prosecutors are now

lining up their evidence, and they're feeling pretty confident. >> no one knew it at the time, but really this roller coaster that the state was on at that point was really just beginning. a lot of the drama is yet to come. >> and the overwhelming question is now, is the wrong man on trial? oh, no! bye, bye cough. later chest congestion. hello 12 hours of relief. 12 hours!! hmmm, ok. not coughing at yoga? antiquing not coughing? not coughing at the movies?! hashtag still not coughing?! aaah. oww! mucinex dm gives you 12 hours of relief from chest congestion and any type of cough, day or night. it's not cough season. it's always comeback season. i've got nothing to eat. nothing. hold on, i can do something. ♪ turning nothing into something ♪ ♪ turning nothing into something ♪

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they felt that they had their man. there was some back patting saying, we did, we got him. >> at a certain point i said, this is the guy that killed them children. >> if i didn't feel like we had the right guy, we'd still be looking because i can't imagine pinning this on somebody who was

innocent. >> on the eve of the trial, the little town of pryor, oklahoma, is jam packed with people. >> oh, my god, there was probably more media there than there were people in the trial. media was everywhere. >> about 900 prospective jurors have been summoned for this trial. >> it takes 10 days to find a dozen people who say they have no opinion. the legal teams look something like david and goliath. hart's defense lawyers were gary pitchlynn, a native american who just graduated from law school, and garvin isaacs. the prosecution on the other hand has a big name, buddy fallis. >> buddy fallis is a prosecutor out of tulsa. a famous guy who's in the oklahoma law enforcement hall of fame. just did thousands of cases. >> i just can't overstate how at least one-sided this looked. fallis and his team going up against -- who is this guy again? garvin isaacs?

never heard of him. >> all move to the sidewalk, please. >> move back to the sidewalk. >> gene leroy hart made his way to the mayes county courthouse this morning. >> sheri farmer was there for every event. richard guse was there a lot. bettye milner was there. the courtroom was pretty much full. most of the spectators were pro-hart. >> in opening arguments this week, the district attorney said he would link items found at the crime scene to the cave where hart was believed to have stayed. >> but barely have opening arguments ended before the defense does something pretty audacious. >> it was suddenly announced that they were going to make gene hart available for a media interview session. this kind of came out of the blue. the questions had to be submitted in advance. >> we would select a certain number that we felt were not

critical, could do any damage. >> today hart broke a long silence and talked to reporters. he refused to answer any questions about the killings, but tried to explain why residents supported him. >> i am not a hero. i have no desire to be a hero. but maybe i represent the fears and doubts that many people have about any system that has the means and the power to overwhelm each of us, each and every one of us. >> this is his press conference. what are your impressions of the way the media has treated you? what do you think about watergate? >> how do you feel you may have been treated in the jail that you've been spending time in? >> my mama always told me never to say anything about your host. >> these were the questions that the news media ask a man accused

of murdering three children and already was in prison for rape and burglary. >> he came off so clean. hart came off like an all-american boy. >> back in the courtroom, the families watched as hart's lawyers begin confronting the evidence and dismantling it. >> there was a defense attorney who started bringing up every conceivable alternative that there could possibly be, and it was amplified to create doubt. >> you know, trials live and die on their evidence, and prosecutors here feel like they've got plenty. >> the prosecution had evidence found in an old, abandoned cellar they believe tied mr. hart to the crime scene. >> tape just like the tape that held that flashlight together, sunglasses stolen from the counselors and those wedding photos. >> sure, it's all circumstantial. but, my god, how many circumstances can there be?

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all trials are different. this one i wouldn't say was a circus, perhaps a carnival, because garvin isaacs was theatrical, lots of grand gestures and arm waving and smiles to the jury. >> his defense attorneys tried to show hart was framed. >> the defense strategy is pretty simple, sow reasonable doubt. >> hart's attorneys hinted the police may have planted evidence on hart when he was arrested. >> those sunglasses.

the defense asks if the counselor's glasses were really in the cellar or if they were planted there. >> in talking to an officer from the locus grove police department, those glasses had been in the property room after the initial search of the campgrounds. so how they got from there to the cave, if they were even in the cave, was one of those early questions that came up. i don't know why he would have misinformed us or lied. >> there was not, all things considered, a lot of obvious evidence to be found, which has been another maddening thing in this case. >> that flashlight was found at the murder scene, and it tied gene leroy hart to where he had been hiding out. >> there was believed to be a fingerprint on the flashlight. >> and that to investigators, they thought that was going to be a slam dunk. >> defense lawyers say the

fingerprint is so smudged, it can't be reliably matched to hart. >> they had sperm they say connected hart to the crimes. >> when this crime was committed in 1977, there was no thought of dna. >> at this time, all they could do is they could take these sperm cells and look at them under a microscope. i mean, you're pretty much confined to what a microscope can tell you. all they could say was, i think, a high likelihood that they're from the same person, but that's about it. >> not good enough, says the defense. still, prosecutors have one piece of evidence they are confident directly ties hart to the murders. those wedding pictures. >> after a week of scouring the locust grove area, officials found their first solid lead near the camp. two photographs of three women. police connected the pictures with convicted rapist gene leroy hart, who had served time here at the granite state reformatory and assisted the prison photographer who had taken the pictures.

>> still, a new witness is casting a bit of a shadow over granite state's warden, pete weaver. >> at the trial, we had a jailer named allan little come in and testify that those pictures were in pete weaver's desk when hart broke out of jail. he said pete weaver hated gene leroy hart. he would pull the pictures out of the desk and throw them down on the desk and say, i'll get that son of a bitch if it's the last thing i do. >> there is a sense in which, you know, a trial is a storytelling competition and the side which is able to tell the better story, the one that makes sense to the jury that resonates with them is probably going to be successful. >> and what better story to offer? maybe it was someone else. >> garvin isaacs reminded jurors witnesses had told of seeing this man, william stevens, near the girl scout camp the day of the killings.

they said he had scratches on his arm and red stains on his boots. >> was it bill stevens? that was the guy, i believe, that was in the lexington state prison. >> bill stevens was one of the suspects. the way this come to light was through a lady named joyce payne. >> joyce payne insists she gave stevens a flashlight exactly like the one discovered at the crime scene. >> when you connect a flashlight with the guy that's a rapist in prison, and at the trial joyce payne testified to that. >> garvan isaacs gave alternative theories that evidence had been planted or that that evidence is shoddy. they were succeeding in poking holes. >> and after 12 days in court, both sides finally rest their case. >> i was assuming deliberating might take a while.

but early morning, we got a call that they had reached a verdict, and they tried all three cases together. so it all happened really quickly. the guses weren't even in the courtroom. >> it took jurors five hours to make up their minds. >> not guilty, not guilty, not guilty. >> when the verdict of not guilty was announced, gene leroy hart, a cherokee indian, buried his face in his hands and cried. >> was the jury right, which means the real killer is still out there? >> you have 40 years of a lot of conspiracy theory hogwash, and it's time to put some of them to bed. let's tell the whole truth. who's on it with jardiance? ♪ ♪ we're the ones getting it done. we're managing type 2 diabetes

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there were tears as the trial of the mayes county courthouse in pryor came to its stunning conclusion. gene leroy hart was judged not guilty. >> stay back. >> i was just blown away, and i said, i cannot believe that, that he was found not guilty. >> people of mayes county had to see it for themselves, had to hear the verdict ring through the courthouse and rip through the hearts of the girls' families. >> when it was all over, we felt like we really had been victimized twice. first by the person who committed the crime and second by the justice system. >> when he was found not guilty and we stopped by the cemetery, i just said, we failed.

we failed. >> you know, the outcome of this trial didn't affect the fact that he still owed the state somewhere in the neighborhood of 300 years. so gene hart went back to the oklahoma state penitentiary in mcallister to serve out the rest of his sentence. >> and then another twist. after hart is back in maximum security at the oklahoma state penitentiary as inmate number 79547 -- >> he is doing some exercise in the prison yard, and as soon as he finishes, he starts to walk off the prison grounds, and he collapses. so gene hart, after all of this, suffers a heart attack. he dies right there in the prison yard. >> they did an autopsy, and they did find that he had severe heart disease. it was this heart attack that

killed him. >> and many now wonder, did the truth die with him? the girl scouts close camp scott. the years come and go, and it sits empty and fades away. those three little girls never grow older, but their families do. decades later, mayes county has a new sheriff, mike reed. and he's confronted with the biggest unsolved case in oklahoma history. >> starting out as a young sheriff, the last thing i wanted to do was wade off into something that was 40 years old. almost every day, really, i take my children to school and pick them up. i live right close to the girl scouts.

the quickest way to town from my house is to drive right by there, so every time i drive by there, my mind for just a split second goes all the way down that telephone poles and looks down there at that tree. and there's just no way of driving by there without it hitting you in the arm, going, remember? >> have you had long stretches of time where you haven't thought about this case, or has it consumed you? >> oh, no, it's a very consuming case. i have most definitely had to step away from the case. you'll work on the case for a while, and it -- it consumes you so bad that it's starting to affect you emotionally. >> reed begins sorting through boxes and boxes of old evidence, including those clues from the cave and in and around

the campground. so what links hart to the crimes? >> there is stuff throughout the camp that is reported the next day that is missing, stolen. >> some of the stuff was found ten months later, not at the camp, but in the very house where gene hart had been hiding. >> okay, so there was a blue mirror and a corncob pipe that had been in the foot locker of one of the counselors. it had been taken out of her foot locker the night of the homicides. those two items were actually found in sam pigeon's cabin where gene leroy hart was actually arrested in '78. >> at the scene, you have a flashlight. it has masking tape on it. inside the flashlight, there was also part of a newspaper that was pushed up to hold the battery in place. now, having said all that, hold that right there, 'cause that's gonna be a big part of the puzzle that's coming. >> first off, reed says there's

no doubt about the cellar's connection to hart. it's right there at his childhood home. >> you see this old shack and cellar and stuff right out there? that was where hart's mom lived. and hart lived there. of course, that hill right there, that's the girl scout camp. so that tells you what the proximity. >> that cellar is where they found those wedding pictures, some sunglasses stolen from the camp, masking tape, and a copy of a newspaper. half of the newspaper that is found at the cellar is in the flashlight. >> it matches the newspaper found in the flashlight. >> exact tear, everything. >> if hart's in the cellar with one part of the paper, and the other half is in the flashlight at the camp, then hart was at the camp. >> so i actually started reenacting the evidence of the crime that i had. when you are entering the tent,

this would be where the steps are. here is the first cot. you take a couple of steps back, here is the second cot. i had brought my equipment with me. a red flashlight, a roll of duct tape, black, that is close resemblance to this. the suspect has a rope that is a little thinner than this. immediately as you're stepping in you strike the first child in the head. she had one blow that was a death blow. here it shows where the blood splatters was. >> and he considers a disturbing possibility that hart was targeting 10-year-old denise milner. >> you can walk up to a tent. you can step in, you can go "wham." you can take about three steps, "ka-lam, ka-lam." and now i have one child to deal

with, which is the child that i believe i wanted. if i was just wanting to hurt people, why didn't i just beat her down like i hit the other ones? she don't have those blows. there's hardly even a speck of blood over here. and you have a whole nother aspect that comes with this is her clothes, her undergarments, her pajamas, all of that was removed off of her inside this tent. the suspect has a rope. you know, there's some sort of a loop ligature around the neck but it's just twisted and twisted and walked this child out. this child was duct taped to this tree. she has a gag. it -- it's bad. >> and it's also familiar, because gene hart had done that before. >> the same type of taping and

controlling method of the victims was used in the 1966 kidnaping and rape. same thing. ligatures, they was taped, they was bound, they was taped to trees while they was -- same exact m.o. >> the deeper he looks, the more questions he's got until he finds something they missed. could 21st century tech solve a case that was decades old? msg into headwinds, but i keep pushing forward. does ms define me? no, it does not. i take ocrevus, an infusion treatment that's two times a year. a prescription for adults with relapsing or primary progressive forms of multiple sclerosis, ocrevus is proven effective in reducing relapses in rms, and slowing disability progression, and reducing brain lesions in rms and ppms. don't take ocrevus if you've had a life-threatening allergic reaction to it, or have hep b.

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we knew everything about her life. i gave birth to her. i washed her hair. i knew what she wore. it seems impossible to not know everything we can know about how she died. >> gene hart may have been found not guilty, but there's still plenty of disagreement on whether he killed michelle, lori, and denise. >> i can't tell you with any other certainty other than my own personal judgment that gene hart did not commit the crimes. i can't prove he didn't, just like they couldn't prove he did. >> this is a story that sort of lends itself to conspiracy theorists, and there are a lot of them out there. >> there was a lot of different opinions that was out there when you started looking into the case.

it was like, my gosh, this -- this is -- this is overwhelming almost. >> over the years, there have been all kinds of theories. there were theories about others who could have committed this crime. bill stevens, a violent criminal, a convicted rapist. was there enough to connect him? >> absolutely not. number one, we have his dna. his dna did not match. number two, there were polygraph tests taken and passed. >> as for the woman who testified that she gave stevens the flashlight? after the trial, she admitted she lied and is charged with perjury. in reality, that flashlight leads straight back to hart. >> and the tape right here matched up almost exactly, part of it found near the victims, and then part of it found elsewhere. >> yeah, there's considered a fracture match, and it is exact. and one side of it was the edge on the flashlight.

the other side of it was the roll of masking tape that was at the cellar. that's where all the other stuff is that's recovered that linked him back to the scene. >> what about the rest of the evidence found in the cellar, like those wedding pictures that pointed to hart? >> there have been suggestions that maybe some of this evidence could have been planted by investigators. >> if i want to plant these pictures to put gene hart there -- 'cause i know they're his -- why in the world wouldn't i just walk out here anywhere at the camp, at the scene, and just drop them and just walk off? because there's 50 or 75 officers there. somebody's gonna walk up there and go, hey, look there. it makes no sense whatsoever when you bring it all to the light. >> i thought of all possibilities of hart being not the one who did it, it being

someone else. i've thought that many, many times. >> but no one has ever been able to come up with another credible person. >> but all this evidence is purely circumstantial. what reed wants is physical proof that ties hart to the murders. and that's where one of lori's old schoolmates comes in. >> after lori's death, i just felt like people forgot. other crimes happened. life happens. what about lori? is anybody working on it? i didn't know. that was hard. >> i got a call from sheryl stokes. she told me she was now with the national center for missing and exploited children, and she had lived with the hope that someday she could help, in some way, our family.

>> in 2013, we started a forensic case review. it seems like all the leads have been combed over and gone through, and still no answers. but there are new technologies every day. there's always something that can be done that hasn't been done. >> our job is to make sure that that law enforcement agency and those families have the resources that we have available in order to bring that case to a successful conclusion. >> when the girl scout murder happened, it had been such a high-profile case at the time that i just assumed everything that could be done had been done on it. so when i pulled it out and started looking and saw that only one item had been submitted for dna evidence, i was a little shocked. i knew there were hundreds of other items available for dna testing. and so we started working on it.

>> in the late '80s, that one item that was sent to the fbi for dna analysis was a semen stain from michele guse's sleeping bag. >> from biological evidence, from a sperm, they were able to come up with a partial profile. it was officially inconclusive. >> in the beginning, dna could only do so much. back in the '80s, i had to have a pool of blood to get a dna sample from. today, you can put thousands of cells on a pinhead, and that's all they need. >> we went back and looked at what was available, the evidence that we actually had in our possession. i believe originally there were around 400 pieces of evidence that were collected. we started with, of course, the items that were around the bodies.

the sleeping bags that the girls were in, bloodstains, semen stains, hairs. >> we even went to the point of cutting into one of the sleeping bags, pulling it apart, and getting some of the stuffing out of the inside of it. >> technology is continuing to change and get more precise. that one little thing that can solve the case might be part of dna testing. >> this evidence is decades old, untested. will it be able to tell us anything new about this case? >> do i think we will get answers that could satisfy curiosity? yes. does that give closure to the families? i don't -- i don't know. but the answer's there. >> all the dna testing that's been done on this case, it excludes every suspect that i've

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you know, i've learned going back into this case that time does not heal all wounds. >> because of some of the conspiracy theories in this case, i think that even with a full dna match at some point, you would still have a significant number of people who would say, nah, it's fixed. >> they're able to get samples that they can match that they weren't able to get before, and they keep getting better and better at it. >> one of the items contained hairs that had been collected from the floor of the tent. and so they go through and look

at every one of the hairs, see which one has the best potential for giving us a dna profile. they analyzed several from the floor of the tent. one of them did give us a partial profile. >> all the dna testing that's been done on this case, it excludes every suspect that i've ever heard or know of that's been brought up in this case, except for one person. and that person would be gene leroy hart. >> what about the review from the national center for missing and exploited children, that panel of forensic and behavioral experts examining the case from every angle? >> over that course of the three days, we listened to all of the facts, all of the lab analysis, everything about that case, and we came to a consensus of opinion. gene hart was in fact the right person. >> you've got a suspect who's dead. you've got a jury that acquitted him. even if you close this case now,

is that going to bring any kind of closure or finality to this community? >> the only reason i'm even doing this is to try to at least give a little bit of peace one way, shape, or form to the family, because i know what it's like to stand over and look at my little baby girls sleeping, and they can't. >> i don't think that there'll ever be closure, and i can tell you from working with families who someone says that word "closure," to them, closing is like closing a door and you're done with it. >> for me, i guess as much closure as i'm going to get, i've already had it. solving the case will not give me closure. >> there were some things that i felt compelled to do in lori's memory and honor, and that was to help other families. >> we want to see this through

for lori. we want to see it through for our family. but we also want to see it through for denise and michelle. >> the farmer family could have dropped from public view, but they didn't. they went to extraordinary lengths. they changed their lives to be advocates for victims. >> we had some who came feeling the anguish that you've heard bo and i describe. and then i've seen them reach out and help the next family after them. >> please welcome to the stage lori farmer's incredible parents, sheri and bo farmer. >> this is really for lori and denise and michelle. we continue daily to realize how many people they have touched.

>> even when i think that i'm beyond it, life has a surprising way of reminding you. i can't replace the lives that te children would have lived. i want to think that they would have had beautiful, magnificent lives, and i wish more than anything that that was the end of the story. and still no end to their heartbreak and sorrow. for now, the farmer family is reluctant to concede that hart was the murder or that he acted

alone, so despite the evidence 40 years later, investigators are keeping this case open. that's our program for tonight. thanks so much for watching. i'm deborah roberts. from all of us at "20/20" and abc news, good night.

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