. he was gone and we were missing a child. >> please bring hannah home to us. we all miss you. we love you so much. >> the next thing we heard was, suspect down hard, jackpot, jackpot. >> two murders, a kidnapping, a maive manhunt. dramatic new details about the rescue of hannah anderson. >> there's a male, there's a blond female. and then there's a cat. >> and the kidnapper's own dark past. >> i heard his name and my heart stopped. >> follow the journey to the idaho wilderness where four horseback riders stumble upon hannah and her abductor. >> she had a look of fear on her face. >> the deadly confrontation. the daring rescue. >> this was the moment that we

were waiting for. >> and hannah anderson's exclusive first tv interview. >> in the beginning, i was a victim. but now i consider myself a survivor. >> she speaks out and answers her critics. >> most of them think that i'm not innocent. but i am. >> the rescue of hannah anderson. but first, a "dateline" mystery. >> i could be dead right now. it doesn't make any sense that he left me alive. >> she was a new bride, married just six days. then came that horrible night. >> i see kind of a dark shadow. all i remember was the bright flash of the gun. >> a mysterious man she told police burst into their new home and killed her husband. >> i told him i loved him. >> it's a heartbreaking story. but it was puzzling, too. who was this strange man or was there a strange man at all?

>> brand new bride tells a story of some mystery man that's got to set off alarm bells. >> she was somebody we had to look at. >> suddenly, she's the one under scrutiny. >> the detective asked me if i killed my husband. i knew something was coming. >> i'm lester holt and this is "dateline." what really happened in the middle of the night? here's josh mankiewicz. >> albuquerque, new mexico, a mile high city. famous for its annual balloon festival. and the city where a match made in heaven came in 2005 when a friend of katherine bailey's set her up with a man named scott. >> what was it that made your friend think that the two of you would be a good match? >> i'm not sure if it was anything than he was a tall handsome man and she knew that's what i looked. >> scott pierce certainly was tall at 6'8" and more than 350 pounds. he was a gentle soul, trapped in

the body of an nfl lineman. the two soon fell in love and nature played an important role in their lives. both, their own good-natured urs and their love of nature. >> what did you like about him besides he was 6'8"? >> he saw the beauty in anything. he would stop to take a picture of anything. >> scott was behind the lens for pictures like these. >> we would make special trips to the desert when the cactuses were blooming. we took a lot of photographs. >> but nature alone wasn't important to scott pierce. he was also nurturing. this big guy also had a big heart. he dreamed of one day becoming a nurse practitioner. >> if i had a plant and it was almost dead and i was like ready to give up on it, he wouldn't let me because there was a chance it could come back. he just wouldn't give up on anything. >> in may 2008, nearly three years after they were matched, scott and katherine who worked

in retail, took a big step as a couple. they bought a house in northeast albuquerque. >> this was your first home? >> uh-huh. i qualified for had on my own actually. but with his nursing career finally taking off, we're going to be living okay. >> what appealed to you about that house? >> it looked very homey and gave us more room. we didn't need a huge house. we were both simple people. >> apr month later they were married. >> i scott take you katherine, to be my wife. >> was there a honeymoon coming? >> the honeymoon was going to take a back seat for a while. which was fine. we had a house. we still had boxing everywhere. >> that decision to buy that home at that time on that schedule would one day become a choice katherine and others would examine and re-examine.

because that honeymoon the new couple had put off would never come. just six days after the wedding, scott and katherine's new life took a turn no one saw coming. >> he actually stayed up late that night watching a movie. and then came to bed. next thing we know the dogs are barking. i got up, went down the hall. i noticed the back door was open and i thought, it's 3:00 in the morning, i didn't have my glasses on and i thought why would scott leave the back door open? >> so the back door had been open when he went to bed. he probably would have noticed it. >> yes. his routine was to go through the house and check that everything was locked. >> then from nowhere, katherine noticed something strange. >> i see kind of a dark shadow that looks like he's pointing a long pointy thing at me. and i said, scott, stop messing around. >> you thought it was your husband? >> it didn't make sense it would

be a stranger in my home. it had to be scott playing a trick. >> tell me about this man with the shotgun, white, black, hispanic. >> a black shadow. that's literally all i saw. then it snapped. this wasn't scott. >> what did you think? >> your mind works very fast. he said get down on the ground. so i did. he said, where is manny? >> i said what, what did you say? >> he said where's manny? and that's when from the corner of her eye, katherine caught sight of her husband. he had woken up to see a man pointing a shotgun at his wife. >> he was charging this guy. >> your husband of six days was coming to your defense? >> yeah. at that point, it was kind of a blur. all i remember was him turning very fast, but i saw the bright flash of the gun. and i think that kind of temporarily blinded me. >> where is the guy with the gun?

>> the only thing i can imagine is that he ran out the back door as soon as the gun went off. >> katherine grabbed the phone, called 9-1-1 and said she found scott on the kitchen floor with a gaping wound in his neck. >> did you say anything to them? >> oh, yeah. i told him i loved him. i put my hands-on his face and i told him i loved him. >> he had his hand up on his stomach and i -- >> by the time they loaded him into the ambulance and took him away, you didn't have a lot of hope? >> i wouldn't even say that. i wasn't going to give up hope until somebody told me finally. >> and minutes later at the hospital, someone did. >> i remember the doctor finally walking in and he said so tell me what happened. i said no. is he alive?

i wasn't going to play this game. i wanted to know right away. he said no. >> at age 41, scott pierce was dead, six days after his wedding. and just like that, katherine pierce was a widow. what had happened in that kitchen? who was manny? the mysterious man for whom the killer had come calling. and who held the answers to all those questions? >> a whole lot of questions in this case. police were quick to set out to answer them and they started with katherine pierce. when we come back, it's more than her story that's under scrutiny. it's everything. her clothes from that night. her marriage. even a life insurance policy. >> i knew something was coming. >> did she have something to hide? ♪

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a new day dawned in 2008 and as the sun came up, katherine pierce realized she had been transformed. in just six days, she'd gone from smiling newlywed to blood-stained widow. and to a possible suspect in the murder of her husband scott. >> you know when a husband or wife dies, it's very natural for police to at least look at the surviving spouse? >> i knew something was coming. it wasn't unusual. >> and soon katherine was face to face with veteran albuquerque

homicide detective mike fox. >> a brand new bride tells a story of some mystery man coming into the house and executing her new husband. that's got to set off alarm bells. >> she was somebody we had to look at. >> tell me about katherine pierce's demeanor. >> she shocked me how well she was able to put it together. >> calmer than you would expect? >> yes. >> detectives had many questions, especially after looking hard at the crime scene and finding something confusing. the killer had dumped out katherine's purse on the back deck. but on the purse, no fingerprints. so was this a robbery gone wrong or was the purse some kind of diversion? >> we knew we were dealing with somebody at that point had used rubber gloves or something like that. >> which says to you what? >> it tells me that whoever was involved was going in there to kill somebody and not leave any evidence behind.

>> burglars sken generally do not carry shot guns. >> no. >> if somebody surprises them, instead of shooting them, they just runaway. >> typically, that's what i've seen through my career. >> so even though the fact that katherine's purse was sort of dumped out and searched through, everything about this says planned murder, not planned burglary? >> correct. >> but planned by whom? tell me about scott pierce. anybody didn't like him? >> no. everybody liked him. great guy. nothing bad in his background at all. >> you, no doubt, did your due diligence to find out whether that marriage was as happy as it appeared to be? >> yes. talking to people around them, everything was fantastic. >> but detectives had heard that story before. when they looked deeper, they learned that katherine's husband had a life insurance policy. the payoff was in the mid six-figure range. and she was the beneficiary.

when they canvassed the homes nearby, police found neighbors who heard a man and woman talking around 3:00 a.m. detectives wonder had that been scott and katherine. within hours of her husband's murder, they confiscated the clothes katherine was wearing when she said her new husband was gunned down right in front of her. >> police took their clothing to test it. >> everything is evidence at that point. i understood that. >> you weren't concerned? >> not at all. the detective asked me if i killed my husband. >> straight out? >> and i said no. and he seemed fairly satisfied with that. >> but detectives asked katherine to run through her story again looking for inconsistencies. so she went through what happened that night again. just as she did in this video she would later make for her attorneys. >> from here i turned around and there was the person, the tall person standing here.

so i said, oh, scott, stop messing around. and then he said, get down on the ground. that's when i knew somebody was in my house that didn't belong. i saw scott standing at the other end of the room. i held up my hand and i said scott, wait. the gun went off. his head was right here. and his neck was blown open, all of this. his throat, everything to back here, it was just -- it was gone. >> did she say or do anything that made you suspicious? >> no. nothing showed that she wasn't telling the truth. but, unfortunately, in her situation i have to go after her as a possible suspect. it's to find out if she is involved, a. and b, if she's not, later on make it so when it goss trial, it's not brought up by a defense attorney who tries to make it

look like she's the one that did it. >> but remember, there was something katherine heard on the kitchen floor that night. something that came from that shadowy figure who had held a shotgun to katherine's head before firing the fatal shot at scott. the killer had also asked her a question that would soon become the focus of this investigation. >> he said, where is man yes? >> manie? >> he said where it manny? >> it was a name that meant nothing to homicide investigators. but katherine pierce said she knew exactly who the man was after. now, police were looking for him too. >> so who was this mystery man named manny and could he help break this case? >> it didn't quite seem right that this random person just happened to break in. >> police are getting closer when "dateline" continues. new t. now we have bold new tastes like never before. you like things made by hand. we're now grilling up freshly made egg-whites.

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it was just a few hours into a sunny saturday morning in albuquerque, june 2008. katherine pierce was in a police car being taken home from the hospital where her husband of six days, scott, had just been pronounced dead. from the start, she had been treated as a suspect in her husband's murder. katherine's story was that a shadowy figure had broken into their home in the middle of the night and had then killed scott. but for some reason, spared katherine's life. detective mike fox was working homicide for the albuquerque police. >> it didn't quite seem right that this random person just

happened to break in and was looking for a guy named manny. >> manny, it was the name that was about to break this case. it had to do, it turned out, not just with katherine pierce and her husband, but with the house, the piece of property they had just bought as they began their life together. the couple had moved in just a month before the murder. a month before that question asked by the intruder in the middle of the night about where to find manny. >> you knew who he was talking about? >> yes. i did. >> that's who you bought the house from? >> yes. >> they had moved out how long before? >> almost exactly a month prior. >> suddenly the murder case had moved off of katherine pierce and on to the presumed target that night, a man named manny. it turned out he was known to the albuquerque police and within hours after detectives put out word they were looking for him, manny called police. he offered to come in, sit down and help out anyway he could.

>> i'm guessing the first question is who is looking for you that wants to kill you? >> yeah. who would want you dead? >> he says? >> jason skaggs. he's the only one i can think of that would want me killed. >> this is jason skaggs. manny told police he and jason worked together at a roofing company. originally, from california, skaggs was an ex-marine. a former trucker with a minor criminal record. and some of the story manny was telling police added up. at 6'3" and only 200 pounds, jason skaggs matched almost exactly the description given by katherine pierce of a tall, slender intruder. but he was not, as far as police knew, a killer. to detectives, a home invasion that ended in murder seemed to be outside jason skaggs' criminal skill set. >> if he was the guy in katherine pierce's house with the shotgun, he was a rookie.

>> that didn't really match up with the gloves and some of the other things that were kind of popping in our heads as somebody that might be more experienced at this. >> the detectives started tracking skaggs' cell phone. >> the cell phone started pinging off of el paso, texas. >> sounds like a guy on the run. >> thought okay, is this guy just heading for mexico? >> but it turned out el paso was just the closest cell tower to elephant butte lake. the campground where jason skaggs was spending the weekend with his wife. and not only did he say it, his employer backed him up. even with what seemed an airtight alibi, detectives brought in skaggs. >> jason, you mind saying your name and date of birth. >> my name is jason skaggs 5/12/73. >> he stuck with his story of a weekend trip at the lake. what police didn't know his wife had been interviewed and show

told a different story. detective fox broke that news to jason skaggs. >> at that point, i could see that we had the right guy. >> how can you tell when you have the right guy? >> when a person is cooperating with you, they have a certain demeanor. when you start to turn things on them and start to show what they're telling you isn't the truth and that i know it and you can see a change in the eyes. so it just all starts to unravel. >> you can tell and see that? >> oh, yeah. it's probably the most exciting part of homicide investigation is breaking a murderer with their own words. >> to detectives, it was looking more and more as if jason skaggs had been the man with the shotgun in katherine pierce's home. >> the woman in the house describes you. >> i've never broke into anyone's house. i have never shot anyone in my life. >> by accident -- >> i have never shot anyone in my life, never. i have never shot a human being

in my life and i have not broke in anyone's home. >> we're going to solve this. >> you'll find out it wasn't me. it wasn't me. i wasn't in their house. >> police kept hammering away. and that's when jason skaggs changed his story. he said he wasn't the man in katherine pierce's home and he wasn't the person who pulled the trigger on that shotgun and killed scott. but he did know exactly who it was. >> coming up -- >> a duffel bag, a gun and gloves. do these belong to the killer? who was in the house that night? hey love.

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albuquerque police were moving full force in the first 48 hours after the murder of scott pierce. scott's widow katherine returned to the house they had shared to find more than a piece of her heart was missing. quite a bit had been stolen now by that shadowy figure with a shotgun. it wasn't just the life of the man she married less than a week before. it was also the future they had planned together. but gone, too, was katherine's camera, a gift from her husband who had so loved photography. >> of all the things he could have taken, that was actually the best thing because it still had all my wedding pictures on it. i hope he saw the pictures. i hope it sunk in what he just did. >> who had killed scott pierce was still an open question. but police thought they were zeroing in. because remember, katherine said

the shadowy figure who had come into the house in the middle of the night was looking for a man named manny who lived in the house previously. when detectives found manny, he said a co-worker named jason skaggs was the likely killer. when questioned, skaggs denied any role in the murder and said he and his wife had been camping april couple of hours from albuquerque on the night scott pierce was killed. but detective mike fox soon broke down that alibi and so in the police interview room, he went after skaggs with a new tactic. >> i mean, you're thinking at that point that that was skaggs saying where is manny? >> yeah, i'm saying whatever part you played in this, a good guy was killed. and you got to feel bad about that. i mean, i got into that they had been married a week, they just moved into the house. if you're a good person, that has to weigh on you. >> whether skaggs was a good person is debatable. whether he cracked under the pressure is not.

soon he was singing like akah nary. >> i wanted manny to get hurt and i wanted him arms, legs, things to be hurt or take him a while to recover. >> skaggs said he wanted manny hurt because manny had slept with his wife. skaggs admitted the home invasion was all about jealousy but said he never wanted anyone dead. but jason skaggs also had a surprise for detectives. >> i said, you went in there with a shotgun. he said no i didn't go in there. i had someone else go in there for me. and we're like, what? >> who did skaggs say was his accomplice? >> he said clifton bloom field. >> that name mean anything to you? >> no, the name didn't ring a bell at all. >> but it didn't take you long before you knew a lot about him? correct. this was a serious guy. >> serious and scary. clifton bloomfield was 39, an

ex-con who had done prison time for robbery, kidnapping and assault in arizona. after his release, he had moved to new mexico, where he dabbled in acting. here playing a prison inmate in the val kilmer movie felon. >> but bloomfield's new c'eira parentally wasn't working as well as his old one. he was soon arrested and pleaded no contest to a home invasion robbery. bloomfield was now on probation for that crime released from jail less than a year earlier. he had been set free into the custody of a co-worker at a roofing company. a man named, you guessed it, jason skaggs. clifton bloomfield, he was the kind of guy you would send into somebody's house to either beat them up or kill them? >> yes. he physically met the description. he was also tall and slender. >> when police searched bloomfield's home, they found a

black duffel bag containing a shotgun, bulletproof vest and a mask. also latex gloves used as police soon learned, by the killer who had dumped out katherine pierce's purs to try to make this murder look like a botched burglary. detectives now believed jason skaggs was telling the truth. it had been bloomfield behind the shotgun. his criminal history fit the crime. he had been convicted of a violent home invasion robbery before. it wasn't long before police tracked down bloomfield and arrested him. >> this is a guy who has done prison time. i would think he's not going to talk. >> i didn't think he would. >> but maybe bloomfield had seen those wedding pictures of scott and katherine on the camera he had stolen. had he also picked up a conscience somewhere on his journey because the hardened con surprised detectives by opening up. >> i was a little shocked. but pleasantly shocked. >> as police would soon learn,

clifton bloomfield's version of the truth changed with the new mexico wind. but among the several statements bloomfield gave was an explanation for his mission that night. looking for man any. >> the plan was to kill him. >> if you're going to kill him, does skaggs want to talk to him first or take him somewhere? >> no. he just had one message for me. he said [ bleep ]. tie him up and give him the -- and put a round in him. >> but in the house that night, bloomfield said he realized that the manny he knew from work, bore no resemblance to the 6'8" hulk bearing down him in the dark. >> it wasn't manny? >>. [ whispering ]

>> did you intentionally fire or accidentally? >> i don't know. >> he says he was about to leave when scott pierce charged him. true or not, the result was that bloomfield put himself behind a murder as a favor to a friend. except he killed the wrong man. >> this was all just spectacular bad luck. if you had moved into that house a month later, your life would be different. >> it would be very different. >> if your husband were a sounder sleeper, hadn't woken up. >> things could have been different. >> if the guy with the gun had left when he realized manny didn't live in the house anymore. >> yeah. so many things, wrong place at the wrong time. >> bloomfield and skaggs were charged with murder. for detective mike fox and his colleagues, it was a job well done. a case quickly solved. >> scott pierce is murdered early on a saturday morning and less than 48 hours later, you have all the suspects in custody and confessions.

>> yes. >> good job. >> came together pretty well. >> case closed? >> that's what we thought. >> they were wrong. katherine pierce was about to learn that the shadowy figure she had confronted that night was one of the most cold-blooded killers her part of the world had ever seen. and her involvement with him wasn't over. >> coming up -- a twist that stuns katherine pierce. >> it doesn't make any sense that he left me alive. >> it would stun the police too. when "dateline" continues. explaining my moderate to severe chronic plaque psoriasis to another new stylist. it was a total embarrassment. and not the kind of attention i wanted. so i had a serious talk with my dermatologist about my treatment options. this time, she prescribed humira-adalimumab. humira helps to clear the surface of my skin by actually working inside my body. in clinical trials, most adults with moderate to severe plaque psoriasis saw 75% skin clearance.

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in the weeks after the murder of her husband scott, katherine pierce was still living in the home where he had been killed by mistake. instead of moving out, katherine cleaned up the blood stains and stayed. she says she was determined to face her own fears. >> i began to get up in the middle of the night and kind of walk through the house with the lights off just so i could get that out of my system, so i wouldn't be afraid of it. i walked down the hall without the lights on. i went to the back door, i let the dogs out. >> you walked through the kitchen? >> i relived it over and over and over again. >> and that made it easier?

>> if you repeat something over and over and over again, it lessens a little bit every time. >> but katherine was also facing a broken-hearted truth. that she lost the love of her life. >> i had no idea what my future would hold, especially in the romance department. >> you could not conceive of ever finding that kind of love again. >> no, i could not. >> and now the detectives who had quickly closed the case by getting a confession from that armed intruder, clifton bloomfield were about to realize they weren't done with either bloomfield or katherine pierce. >> that's when the crime lab here in albuquerque got a hit on clifton bloomfield's dna. but it had nothing to do with the murder of scott pierce. this was a dna sample left at the scene of a completely different albuquerque homicide. the killing ground was in this neatly kept home in 2007. some six months before the

murder of scott pierce. the murders of a couple had been front page news and sparked citywide outrage and fear. they were beloved figures, pioneers in the city's korean american community. they had come to the u.s. in the '70s, worked multiple jobs, raised four successful children and lived the american dream. mr. yi had just retired so they could travel and then they were murdered in their own home. detective mike fox had a personal connection to the case. >> he actually was my neighbor at one point. i would see him out gardening. very pleasant man. >> not a neighborhood where you expect this to happen? >> no. this is another crime where you have a victim that hadn't done anything to deserve it. >> and the crime, detective fox and his colleagues had investigated had been especially vicious. mrs. ye had been beaten and suffocated with a plastic grocery bag.

her husband had been beaten to death. but before he died, mr. ye took a swipe at his killer and his dna was found under mr. ye's fingernail. police now now it was the dna of clifton bloomfield. he had not even been a suspect in the murders. >> part of me was shocked but part of me was like, makes sense. the brutality of the murders. >> news that bloomfield had committed two more murders sent a shockwave through katherine pierce. >> i realized that i really could be dead. he could have killed me for fun because i was in the wrong place at the wrong time. >> or because you possibly could have identified him. >> anything. why leave a witness behind? it doesn't make any sense that he left me alive. >> the story gets stranger. before getting the dna hit on bloomfield, albuquerque police and prosecutors had already

arrested, indicted and jailed two other men who they believed were responsible for the ye murders. one of the men had even confessed. but the dna of those two men was never found at the murder scene. dna now linked only clifton bloomfield. those results came back from the crime lab just days after the murder of scott pierce. >> my lawyer called me up and said, we found something. it looks like he could have been arrested before he ever killed scott. >> i kind of get the feeling that's when you began to get angry? >> yes. somebody like that, why did it take so long to put him behind bars? >> katherine's lawyers, ben davis and brad hall. >> how long did it take them to test that dna. [. seven months. >> during that time, mr. bloomfield was on the street and one of the things he did was kill scott pierce? >> correct.

>> they had seven months to prevent the murder of scott pierce and they chose not to do that. >> carrie brandenburg. >> should they have submitted that dna earlier? >> hindsight, yes. we have limited resources, we had cases that were going to trial that we need dna on and so there's a priority. >> so this was something that fell through the cracks? >> i can't say that it fell through the cracks because that insinuates that something wrong happened. and i can't say that anything wrong happened. the process worked the way it always works. >> but that answer wasn't good enough for katherine pierce. this widow was about to begin a crusade. and clifton bloomfield was about to come out of the shadows. >> coming up -- >> i'm not the monster that they make me out to be. >> haunting words from the killer himself. katherine pierce and you are

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the range of emotion katherine pierce experienced after the mistaken identity murder of her husband scott had gone from devastation to relief when his killers were caught and then to anger when she realized that if a double murder investigation six months earlier had been handled differently, clifton bloomfield might have been in jail instead of in her kitchen. >> dna evidence could have prevented him from killing scott. it infuriated me. i couldn't believe that such a minor, insignificant detail from a previous murder could have saved scott. >> that detail she's talking about, the dna that linked

bloomfield to the murders, the dna taken from under mr. ye's fingernail. it sat in the albuquerque police crime lab with no tests being performed to identify it for months. the match didn't come until after scott pierce was dead. katherine pierce thought the process had failed her. so she filed a lawsuit against the city of albuquerque, its police department and various detectives, including the man who had helped to quickly solve scott's murder, detective mike fox. it's kind of ironic, you find her husband's killer in less than 48 hours and you still get sued for not having found him earlier? >> i guess one of the pitfalls of being a police officer. no one is ever really happy with the police. they always like the firemen better. >> by 2012, katherine's lawsuit was headed for trial. katherine was dreading having to revisit the time of scott's murder. she had already done it once in

this video. assembled by her attorneys as they prepared her case. you had moved on a little bit. >> moved on. i don't want to relive it. >> did you feel at all bad suing the police department that brought in your husband's killer in a couple of days? >> no, i don't feel bad. for me, it was more about bringing awareness to what the police are doing or not doing in this case. all i want is for them to do their job all the way through. >> you talked to police and they say, one, we did do our job, we brought those guys in the minute we knew they were suspects. dna is not like it is on television. we don't have an answer in 15 seconds. >> and i do understand that. >> and we got a lot of murders, we do the best we can. we wish we could solve every one, we wish we could close every one right away. but that's not real life. >> and i know the police department or the detectives did not come in and kill scott. i get that. it's not about smearing the

albuquerque police department or detectives. it's about giving them more incentive to do their job better. >> just before trial, the city settled with katherine pierce for close to half a million dollars. her attorneys. >> the city admitted no liability in that settlement? >> routine. >> what's that mean to you? that the city settled just before it went to trial? >> you don't pay a lot of money if you didn't do anything wrong, do you? >> although it settled the suit, the city defended the work of its police department throughout what it called a complex investigation. to katherine pierce, it felt like an ending to a sad string of what ifs. what if she had moved into this house a week later? what if scott hadn't woken up? what if the dna from the previous homicides was tested sooner? she had had what felt like a very long run of very bad luck and the connective tissue in all of it was clifton bloomfield.

>> i'm not the monster they make me out to be. i'm not perfect either. >> this is clifton bloomfield. in an interview in 2009 given to the albuquerque journal newspaper. >> i've done my share of wrongs. i've done plenty of dirt. >> bloomfield was willing, even eager, to talk about the pierce case to explain what went wrong. >> tell me about what happened. >> i feel bad about what happened there. the pierce case was a tragedy. imagine, in the dark to see -- you tell a person to stop and you have a shotgun in your hand. and they continue trying to grab it from you. >> it's hard to imagine being

blase about murder but then clifton bloomfield has committed a lot of them. maybe that's why he tells the story as if he's an observer and not a participant. >> get down on the ground. >> bloomfield's version doesn't quite match with that of katherine pierce. the only other survivor of that night. >> i saw that interview when he exaggerated a lot. he said scott was reaching for the gun. that never happened. i think scott just lunged. he turned and pulled the trigger. i think it was as simple as that. >> tragedy. weak. another tragedy. he was a nurse. tragedy. >> and the list of tragedies clifton bloomfield brought about just kept going. faced with the death penalty in the ye murders, bloomfield cut a deal. he pleaded guilty to murder charges and in exchange for a

life sentence, he admitted committing two more killings before the ye's, before scott pierce. the first was a talented designer found strangled in his home in 2005. three days later, the body of an 81-year-old retired school teacher was found beaten and suffocated. >> but he wasn't even a suspect in any of those? >> no. he was good. he wore gloves, he made it so no traces of him would be left behind except when he got scratched. >> suddenly, he's not just the guy you brought in on the scott pierce homicide. suddenly he's what, a serial killer? >> he's his own kind of serial killer. he's not hunting prostitutes or somebody that looks like his mom. >> he just kills and keeps on killing. >> he's just killing for the art of killing. >> how many murders do you think clifton bloomfield has committed

for which he's never been charged? >> i honestly couldn't tell you. ten wouldn't surprise me. >> bloomfield declined "dateline's" request for an interview. he filed an appeal of his five murder convictions. jason skaggs pleaded guilty to murder in the pierce case and is serving a 30-year prison sentence. meantime, the da's office in albuquerque freed those two men, the original suspects in the ye murders. one of them settled a lawsuit with the city for nearly a million dollars. the city, again, admitted no liability. and katherine pierce has at last been able to move on. the woman who once thought she would never find love again has recently remarried. fulfilling one of the wishes scott had for her in their brief time together. >> when i was trying to talk about forever in our pillow talk, he said i might not live to be an old person.

he said if that happens, i want you to move on and find somebody. wow. what a gift. >> and you did. >> and i did. i could be dead right now. i know that. it's like being given a second chance. so i'm running with it. >> and now, in our second hour, the story everyone has been talking about. the kidnapping of hannah anderson and the daring rescue that brought her home. >> this was a hard time, but if i could get through this, i'm sure i can get through a lot more. two murders, a kidnapping, a massive manhunt. >> give her a chance, run, please. >> tonight, new details about the investigation. he was telling her that he had a crush on her. she was really weirded out by it. >> i heard his name and my heart stopped. >> and the dramatic encounter in

the mountains with hannah and her kidnapper. >> there's an amber alert flash and i said, that's the girl we seen on the mountain. >> the remarkable rescue. >> this was the moment that we were waiting for. >> and hannah's first tv interview. >> my mom raised me to be strong. >> she answers her critics. >> most of them think that i'm not innocent. but i am. >> here's dennis murphy with the rescue of hannah anderson. >> the main house was fully engulfed in flames. >> he was gone. and we were missing a child. >> please bring hannah home to us. we all miss you, hannah. we love you so much. >> a man with a rifle and an abducted teenager in his control. moving ever north off the grid in idaho mountains where face wrs few until a party on

horseback rode up behind them. >> she had a pure look of fear on her face. >> with one rider sharp observation, showdown time was at hand. >> the next thing we heard was suspect down hard, jackpot, jackpot. >> i consider myself a survivor. way up beyond here in the wilderness country of idaho, there's a river that flows into this one with a nickname that goes back to the days of the explore explorers, lewis and clark. it's called the river of no return. it turned out to be all of that for one james dimaggio who made his last camp near the river of no return and didn't get out alive. his violent story regarded as a double homicide, kidnapping and manhunt as big as the west begins in the foothills of san diego county, california. boulevard, california, not much t