that's all for now. i'm lester holt. thank you for joining us. she had this look of absolute terror on her face. she was scared. she really, really was afraid and i don't know why. >> she was a sunny, free spirit who had yearned to make it in hollywood. but she made headlines instead when she vanished. >> one day she was gone. her pets were gone. >> i knew that something happened. >> did something drive her away? or maybe someone? there was that old friend turned enemy. >> they seemed to be very passionate about hating each other. >> there was the new friend, young and handsome, a man of mystery. >> he said, i'm not what people think i am. and i thought, wonder what that means? >> tonight, police are on the trail from her beach resort on the atlantic to the deep wards

near the pacific. >> i told her, this could end up killing you. >> a brother and sister desperate to learn the truth. >> it's just chilling for me to think about that. >> a keith morrison mystery. "the stranger." they noticed it first in her favorite place, the private beach club that faces out other than the south atlantic. took longer for the story to spread up and down the historic streets of this oldest of all american cities. until it reached the ears of a young reporter named justine griffin, crime beats august steen florida times. >> this one was definitely one of the most bizarre that i've covered. one day her car was gone, her pets were gone. >> the she justine is talking about was a local fixture here in st. august steen, the striking blond of a certain age named britney who had, without a word to anyone, up and vanished. hardly a big story for after all people do come and go around st.

auguststeen. this was july, 2010, heat ratcheting up, good time to head north maybe. >> just as the weeks went on, it sort of got more strange. >> a little bit strange? in fact, the disappearance of britney tavar was about to become the biggest and perhaps strangest story of justine griffin's young career. not just that britney disappeared, but that she vanished on such an important day for her, the day she was due to appear in a st. auguststeen court and bring charges against a bitter enemy. >> she had enormous amount of anxiety. >> this is britney's sister, pat belama. pat lived clear across the country in portland, oregon. she couldn't do much about her sister's worries. couldn't help her confront her nemesis in court. pat knew that britney was good after looking after herself. >> we were polar opposites. i was much more academically oriented than she was and sort

of more stayed and analytical. she was very agile and athletic and i wasn't. so i spent my childhood following her up trees and trying to jump over creeks and she could do it and i couldn't. scattered family. five siblings in all. andrew, one of britney's three brothers kept track of her from his place up in the northeast. >> she was very extroverted. she marched to the beat of her own drum. >> so, when they heard she was missing, pat and andrew had to consider the possibility that britney had decided to try something new. >> well, she very much had a sense of inventing herself, you know, her whole life. >> like if angie went to hollywood years ago, wanted to be a movie star. >> she wanted certain things in life and she thought if she believed in herself and went out and tried, you know, she would get those things. >> didn't get those things. up until now, at least. but she had some family money. settled comfortably in st.

auguststeen. took up photography, sold real estate, bought a nice house and joined a private beach club called "the sar gnat ta" where she developed a group of very close friends. for example, brenda limpky. >> brenda was a single woman living on her own and i just thought she was very strong and very brave. yeah, she had money. she didn't have to worry about that, but still, you know, she had to create a life for herself, a social environment. she was interesting. she wasn't boring. >> joanna simons was also a friend from the club. >> i invited her to come to choir one night at this church i was going to and she came and seemed to really enjoy it. so she joined the choir. >> was he is a spiritual woman? >> i think she had a very much spiritual side to her. >> they enjoyed her personality. you know, she could be very sparkly and vivacious. >> i was impressed that she had so many close friends who cared

so much about her. >> so, because britney's family members lived so far away, it was friends like joanna and brenda who first tried to solve the puzzle of her absence that week in july. >> i called a few times but i didn't hear anything. and then thursday came and i called thursday and i knew, i knew thursday that something happened. >> so brenda called britney's family and they asked her to go around to the house, but frankly, just looking at the place from the outside she didn't see any sign of foul play. back in portland, britney's sister pat didn't quite know what to do. >> i had a long-time friend who was a police officer so i called him and said, what do we do? well, just get a lock smith. send brenda back with a lock smith and have her go into the house. >> which several days after britney dropped out of sight, brenda did. and inside, nothing seemed

amiss. although, she had apparently taken some of her pets, her two little dogs. >> her dogs were gone. her little white bichons. but britney also had cats and they were still in the house, alone. >> one of the doors was open for the cats to go in and out. >> some people do that, it's true. but britney -- >> my sister loved hcats very, very much. she would never go on a trip and leave them to fend for themselves. >> where had britney gone? why would she take her dogs, leaf her cats and take off and vanish from the very day she was all set to appear in court to resolve a bitter feud, a feud which she told her family kept her in constant fear. >> it was very strange that the day she was supposed to be in court now she's gone. coming up -- what was britney running from? and did this free spirit sometimes trust the wrong people? >> over the years, eight

different people lived in her spare room.

noek ♪ . ♪ ♪ something was off, something very wrong here in the dripping heat of the st. augustine summer. friends of brittany tavar had been unable to reach for for several days. >> everyone that knows brittany knows she would never take up and leave like that without telling me. >> so brittany's family, frantic but far away in opposite corners of the country called a lock smith. asked brittany's friends to go inside her house, have a look around and the place seemed perfectly normal. except one or two little things didn't quite make sense. >> there was some anomalies, the air-conditioning was blasting. she would never leave it blasting. >> there was one more thing. it wasn't something wrong.

it was just a little too right. one of the friends who searched brittany's house was tim martin, the man brittany had been dating. >> she was unorganized, but the house was very clean so looked like maybe somebody was going somewhere. >> somebody had fixed the place up. >> yes. >> the good news was everything was tidy. there was no sign of a crime scene. the bad news is the home looked too clean. >> certainly could be that brittany simply cleaned the place more thoroughly than usual and backed up and left and left the back door open for the cats. in the absence of foul play, there wasn't much they could do. no law for a grown woman taking off without telling anyone. >> we hired a private investigators that would start looking around to get the police involved in the case. >> over the next few days, brittany's family began their own investigation. and soon discovered a few very

brittaniesque secrets. >> we didn't know that over the years eight different homeless people lived in her spare room. she usually had some kind of an arrangement with these fellows that they would help her with stuff, like the first guy helped with the yard work. i mean, she would never tell us that because of course we would say, bad idea. >> yeah. >> you know, you can't invite strangers to live in your house, you know. >> that's a very interesting thing that a single woman living on her own would do. >> she wasn't really practical. the risk of it either she would have dismissed it or maybe that was what was interesting about it. but i think she really liked the idea of helping people. >> kind of like bringing home a bird with a broken wing and you're going to fix it or something like that and make it right. >> right. she grew up in a family that serving the poor is an environment we grew up in. >> she was hosting a young man

named joe roberts. >> she was trying to start up some enterprise and she was going to help her do the computer work. >> according to friends, brittany was a doting landlady, bought new joe clothes and a computer. she showed him off at the serenata beach club. >> here she is, joanne, i want you to meet this guy. she is so good looking. he is so nice. >> he seemed like he could be my brother, my younger brother. he just seemed like such a nice guy and that he was just -- he just really wanted to try. >> they accepted him as somebody brittany was trying to help and who might help her. >> very charming. i thought he was well mannered. he thought the girls were really shallow his age, that they just wanted to go out and have one-night stands and he didn't want to be involved in relationships like that. he really wanted sincere relationships with women. >> in addition to which he was, those women could plainly see, a

bit of a hotty, and of course, you know how gossip can be. good-looking young guy, brittany treated very kindly. >> he stayed in the master bedroom. where did she stay? >> she had a room over by the pool. the swimming pool. she liked to listen to the fountain at night. it helped her sleep. >> there had been speculation there was something romantic or sexual about inviting this young man in. >> you know, i joked with her about it. she would always say, no, she likes megan foxx. he's not interested. i'm too old. >> still, who really knew what went on behind closed doors. any way, they couldn't ask joe, he never stayed anywhere very long and he wasn't around anymore to shed light on his exlandlady's disappearance. so still playing amateur sleuths, brittany now asked the of course question, was there anyone here in st. augustine who might want to harm brittany? and the answer was, a resounding

yes. friends like joanna simons told at the serenata beach club in the days before she disappeared, brittany seemed terrified. >> i saw her one day leaving the hot tub area to go into the pool. she had this look of absolute terror on her face. >> why brittany was terrified began with a very weird story but a neighbor she had gotten to know, this woman. her name is ann leyden. >> everybody knew brittany. she stopped you, she would want to chat and, you know, get into your life. >> you couldn't get away from her for a while. >> no. she's a busy body. >> and if ann doesn't speak very kindly of brittany now, you have to understand it was very different in the beginning. then they were friendly enough to become partners in a little dog breeding venture. >> she wanted to breed her dog with one of mine. >> but then complications. brittany began a romance with a

guy named billy, he moved right in. and everything was hunky dory until -- love is unpredictable and in this case it didn't last. >> they got into some stupid fight so billy calls up and says i'm coming to get my stuff. and she said, come by yourself. >> but billy didn't go there alone. it was accompanied by ann leyden and her husband. >> brittany said don't come in the house and they came in. >> but she was cussing and screaming and whatever. and i said, okay, i'm leaving. >> what happened? >> she hit me over the head with a wine bottle. and she was sitting on top of me strangling me and michael and billy pulled her off. >> two sides to every story, of course. brittany said ann and her two men refused to leave. >> you would think that's her house. if i say get out of my house, you should leave my house. >> and yes, it was true they

fought, said brittany, but in a report to police, brittany claimed she didn't start it. in fact, after the fight subsided, it was brittany who called the police to accuse ann of assaulting her but -- >> they went over to talk to ann and came back and arrested brittany. >> arrested brittany? but why her? >> she admitted she put her hand on ann's throat and they arrested her based on that. >> the charged brittany with battery. he spent the night in jail. >> it was a very traumatic experience. she called me up crying. >> in court, brittany was sentenced to probation, anger management classes, community service and one-year order to stay away from ann leyden. but ann oddly perhaps chose to be closer to brittany. she and her husband joined brittany's san chew ware, the serenata beach club. >> i felt so bad for her because that was a place that she really, really got peace and she

was able to socialize with people and enjoy herself there and then all of a sudden here they show up in the hot tub all the time. >> and before long, the conflict, the growing fear was all brittany could talk about. >> she was fearful for her life and i told her this could end up killing you. coming up -- did brittany's terror drive her hundreds of miles away. >> her dogs were found roaming the streets. >> that was just the beginning of a long strange tale. >> they were following her credit card trangs actions, north carolina, idaho, oregon -- >> when "dateline" continues.

♪ what a respite was the serenata beach club, what a lovely perch from which to enjoy the brilliant sun, the warm,

soothing current. but on those summer days in 2010, events at the serenata were perhaps a little too warm. day after day, the sworn enemies faced each other across swimming pools and hot tubs. and all the while, brittany seethed with an expanding collection of insults and incidents, heaped on her by her ex-friend ann. >> i was like, brittany, can't you just let this go. and she just couldn't let go of it. it was so -- it was an obsession actually. >> brittany accused of ann of keying her car. >> so she began carrying around a video camera, as a kind of visual body guard. until the day when ann, tired of being taped, swam over to the camera. at that point, pool side, inside brittany's bag. >> yes. and i knocked the camera in the pool. she pushed my buttons. she went around telling the whole neighborhood, everybody, i'm scared for my life. >> it was after the dunking of the video camera that brittany

launched legal action against ann. by this time she invited joe roberts into her house and she enlisted the help of the handsome young border to prepare a dvd to show the judge. when she got to court, said brittany, she was going to tell the judge how dangerous she thought ann was. in fact, she was afraid ann was going to kill her. >> i think all her friends made very clear she was quite traumatized by this. she was just very, very much afraid of ann. >> the court date was wednesday, july 7th, 2010. the morning arrived. ann came with her attorney, sat in court, waiting. and waiting. and brittany did not show. so, that was the very day she disappeared. a convenient reprieve for ann? too convenient? bizarre thought the crime reporter, justine griffin. in light of how important that court date was to brittany. >> she had become very obsessed with this restraining order.

everything she was doing to make sure this restraining order was going through. brittany was afraid to show up? afraid of what might happen? these were not necessarily genteel ladies then? >> no, no. they seemed to be very passionate about hating each other, especially toward the end. >> so on the days following brittany's disappearance, some people around town wondered how much ann leyden knew or what she might have to do with it? after all, if anybody had a motive, it was ann. all the anger, the emotion, the bitterness finally culminated in some violent confrontation? >> were they looking at you as a suspect, do you think, the media? >> of course. that's the first thing you were going to think of. i had the news and the helicopters and all that you know, filming the front of my house. >> the local police department caught wind of it, of course. >> that's basically where detectives started asking questions. >> but not very many questions. and not for long.

in fact, according to ann, there was really only one thing those detectives asked her, did she know anything about where her arch enemy had gone? >> what did you tell them? >> i haven't seen her. >> and poof, just like that, the police ruled out any involvement on the part of ann leyden. there were other reasons, too, of course, for doing that. one of which was that brittany was just the fine the day before she failed to show up in court. >> they had surveillance footage at this gas station that showed her getting out of her car, putting gas in and driving away. nothing unusual. >> and between the time that video was recorded on july 6th and court the next morning, it turned out ann leyden had an unassailable alibi. so, what could brittany's family do? for all their efforts, they couldn't persuade the police, that a crime occurred, something bad happened to brittany.

thus the investigation stopped. those who loved brittany had to choice but to follow what leads they were on their own. >> we were keeping cool heads, being vigilant and doing everything possible, prompting them to do things they hadn't done. did my sister go on a cruise? did she leave town for a week or something? search this area. you haven't searched this area. why haven't you done this? >> but they also hired a private investigators, remember, and he had an idea. if they couldn't find brittany, maybe somehow they could find her dogs. >> we were checking the pounds. we were doing anything and everything you could possibly imagine. >> word about the dogs spread. and a week after brittany's disappearance, a call came in and what do you know -- >> tiny white dogs -- >> looked like a rabbit at first. >> her dogs were found in columbia, south carolina. >> ah. >> without collars. >> just roaming the streets and they were both found separately. >> how did they connect two dogs

in south south carolina with her? >> she had micro chips with her information and veterinary clinic scanned them and figured out they were from florida and belonged to britbrittany, yep. >> one of the dogs is found, two or three states away. no tags, now finally there's probable cause. there's no question that was a key, a key break. >> that was enough to get the police involved, but unfortunately at that point it was 11 days after she disappeared. >> finally, st. augustine police took over from the band of amateur sleuths. pat flew to florida to do what she could to help. met with the police. did the rounds of local media. tried to keep the search for her sister front and center in the public mind. >> the family long ago ruled out any possibility that this is just a purely innocent departure for her. i mean, that just is not possible that she would abandon

her pets and stop calling her friends. >> i really felt that there was a short, a brief window of opportunity while there was still some publicity about the case and then people will move on. there will be other stories. >> quite reasonable worry, especially when the search for brittany seemed to be going nowhere. >> her picture had been everywhere and had she been anywhere, somebody in florida, somebody would have seen her picture. that's why we started to think, she really has disappeared. >> and then suddenly a break. almost two weeks after brittany disappeared, the police finally picked up her trail, looked like she was on a long, winding road trip. what they found were her credit card transactions which headed north from florida to south carolina where her dogs were found. >> they were following her credit card transactions. there were transactions in north carolina, idaho, oregon. >> question was, was brittany alone? or was she with someone else? was he is the driver?

the willing passenger, or was there something else going on? and what about that young drifter who disappeared along with brittany? >> he said, i'm not what people think i am. and i thought, wonder what that means. uld save you fifteen perct or more on car insurance. everybody knows that. well, did you know you that former pro football player ickey woods will celebrate almost anything? unh-uh. number 44... whoooo! forty-four, that's me! get some cold cuts... get some cold cuts... get some cold cuts! whooo! gimme some! geico. fifteen minutes could save you fifteen percent or more on car insurance. whoo! forty-four ladies, that's me! whoo...gonna get some cold cuts today!

♪ the teenagers stays out all night, the awful sinking feeling when a loved one is out of touch. usually, of course, everything rights itself. but not for the family of brittany tavar. in july of 2010, they found themselves stuck fast in the purgatory of missing persons. the place where families must go to wait for what? they do not know. >> you alternate between it's not real. it isn't really happening to having these terrible, terrible moments where you realize that something irreversible has happened. >> brittany's two little dogs had been found, abandoned by the side of the road three states away in south carolina. brittany would never aban done

them, loved them. yet the credit card record looked like she had done exactly that. she had been driving her car across the country. at least a nationwide alert was issued for her car. the answer what happened to brittany tavar should not be long and coming. the family held its collective breath and waited and hoped. >> we were dealing with the bank authorities, they were talking to the police. if there's any activity one guy had a pager on him with one of the cards. if anybody tries to put anything through on this card, our guy's pager is going to go off. >> by now the local police had been joined by u.s. marshals and the fbi. >> and attention now turned to the young man who had been living at brittany's house, the one she had been showing off at the beach club, 26-year-old joe roberts. seems that joe had left around the same time that brittany disappeared. and police now had to consider

the distinct possibility that brittany had simply washed her hands of the feud with ann leyden and taken off on a cross-country trip with young joe. for justine griffin, that only made the story more interesting. >> i mean, living in her house for free, so. >> makes you think, doesn't it? >> yeah. they thought maybe the two of them had just left, could have just gone on a trip together, just left town. >> no. really it was all speculation. in fact, nobody had a clue what those two did. and then another lucky break, or it seemed like lucky. the good nuz in mid july just four days after brittany vanished, a cop stopped her toyota out midwest. brittany wasn't driving, joe was. >> july 11th, roberts is stopped by police in wyoming for speeding. >> the bad news, that cop stopped the car before the alert went out. he wasn't looking for the car or

brittany or anybody. he says he didn't recall seeing a passenger, but then he wasn't looking for one. >> they left him go with a warning. >> and now that car and whoever was in it was long gone. but that stop triggered a serious effort to find joe roberts. >> it was after that that they had released an arrest warrant for him with grand theft charges. >> so the investigation took a turn. the police hoping that finding roberts would lead to finding brittany. once again her family went to the public were help. >> what we really need is the broadest possible audience of people to be looking for joseph roberts. that's the lynch pin. that's the key. that's the only way we'll get an answer. >> the police went on tv, too, hoping to raise public awareness. >> we believe that the car is going to relate to people more so than him because it's a rav-4, deep blue color vehicle with florida tags.

he could blend in. >> trouble was, only a few days after brittany disappeared, just after the time of that traffic stop, the credit card trail abruptly ended. they must have stopped using the card. and without the credit card trail, the police had no idea where roberts and brittany were now. or if they were even still together. and if not, where was she and what was he up to? >> what we're concerned about is that he meets someone else at a coffee shop and living in someone's house right now and that's why i think it's very important to get this story out as much as possible. >> all that effort finally produced another break or would what seemed like a break and justine's next big story, police discovered somebody caught roberts on video tape just four days after he and brittany disappeared. >> there was surveillance footage of him walking into a walmart in ontario, oregon, and him buying a tent and some clothes.

>> that's him. no brittany. again, by the time somebody found the walmart video and got it to the florida police, roberts was nowhere to be found. >> they alert eed police in tha area, once he got to the walmart, he was going to go off the grid with his tent to live in the woods. >> but just who was this kid any way? what is his story before brittany took him in? a lesson in recent history seemed in order. the curious story of young joe roberts. >> he said to me something really interesting, which i thought was kind of stopped me for a second. he goes, i'm not what people think i am. and i thought, wonder what that means. coming up -- that strange and charming drifter, was he hiding a shady past? >> the more i got to know him, the more he started scaring me. >> when "dateline" continues.

♪

it's a strange thing, rather cruel actually how an answer so desperately sought can slip away just at the moment of capture. police had finally sniffed out the trail left by joe roberts. the one person who seemed to know what happened to brittany tavar. but before they could catch up to joe, he was gone in a puff of oregon fog. >> the investigators had alerted police and law enforcement all the way up through washington, past seattle and the pacific northwest because they thought he was headed in that direction. >> meanwhile, investigators warned brittany's family -- >> what they were telling me, he had a history of falling off the radar screen. >> and sure enough, that's just what he did. and days turned into weeks, summer turned into fall, no sign of him. police suspicions' turned darker.

>> it's important for us here in florida to not lose interest and putting off this guy is 2,000 miles a i way. he could be coming back to our backyard for all we know. >> life went on for the rest of the world. but not for those who loved brittany tavar and knew full well that time is not on the side of the missing. >> i did feel the more time went on the less likely we would be to find him. >> brittany's family found themselves in kind of limbo, a barren landscape shared by more people than they had ever imagined was possible. >> people would say to me, you need to talk to so and so, his sister disappeared. there are hundreds and thousands of missing persons all heart breaking stories. and you're just a number in a pool of people who are going through this or have gone through. back in florida, police had been digging up everything they could find about joe roberts. as crime reporter justine griffin learned, joe had been on the road, roaming the country. ran out of money about the time

he got to st. augustine where he began living off the kindness of local women. >> came here and got a job working as a clerk at a kangaroo gas station. when he couldn't afford to stay at a local motel, he would sleep in his car. this is how he came to know a few other women in st. augustine. >> one of them was a co-worker, single mother named cheryl davenport. joe needed a place to stay, cheryl invited him to her place. put him in a spare bedroom, right down the hall from cheryl and her two little children. >> he was a nice guy. he was always really good around the kids. so cheryl wasn't worried about joe. no reason to be, apparently. >> joe has too much of a pretty boy face, wasn't very intimidating at all. i think i was more intimidating than he was. >> but then cheryl began to tell it. rather more disturbing things about joe. >> he told me that the reason why he left home he had run some type of internet scheme to where he was getting people's credit

card numbers and stuff like that and they had found out and so he took off. >> he confessed this to you. >> yeah. and he said that him and his family don't get along because they believe he has mental issues, severely messed up in the head and that he was convinced he didn't have issues. >> when he moved in, said cheryl, he told her he used to have a drug problem but swore he stayed clean, certainly while at least living with cheryl and her family. >> he actually looked for a job for the first month and then he slowly just got lazier and lazier. >> what was he doing? >> he was going on drug binges. that's when the anger like started coming out. the more i got to know him, the more he started scaring me and the more he started upsetting me. >> and that's when she says she demanded that joe get out of her house. and then -- >> he was about this close into my face and he went like this like he was going to punch me in the face and i just looked at him with a dead stair and i was like, joe, i swear to god, if

you hit me, i will take you down. >> so he left and found brittany. who police would learn told her friends not long before she disappeared that she was getting a little exasperated with joe, too. >> she said that she would come home and he would have gone through her stuff and that they got in a few little fights. i was kind of worried. i asked her about that -- no, she would go, no, it's okay. it's okay. >> did you warn her? >> i did. i did. i warned her about having people into her house. >> and now still no word. >> we still didn't stop believing that there was a chance that she was alive. >> police rededicated their efforts to find the elusive joe roberts. >> we have run out of leads frankly when it comes to his trail going west. it's less populated than we are and if he doesn't have his vehicle on the road and keeping a low profile, that's hopefully somebody will see him in a store when he goes for some provisions

or groceries. that's why we want to turn up the heat on him. we are looking for him and there's no question about that. >> then, sure enough. >> we figured it would be something trite or petty he would get caught for. sure enough, that's what happened. coming up -- the drifter makes a mistake. and brittany's family learns the truth. >> just chilling for me to think about that.

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♪ for three long months britdbritd brittany tavar was just missing. they have produced no sign of brittany or joe roberts, the young border who disappeared along with her. nothing, not a thing. and then, on october 12th -- >> he was caught in seattle in a grocery store in the area trying to steal lunch meat. >> his captor was a clerk in a grocery store. >> he wasn't a sheriff. he wasn't a police officer. he was somebody that was

employed by a grocery store to deter theft. >> but it wasn't until after the seattle police showed up and arrested roberts on the shoplifting charge that they discovered this was one very wanted man. and so called the police in st. augustine florida. >> sometimes we just have to count on luck and sometimes we have to count on their mistake. in this case, i think he made a mistake and we had a little luck on our side. >> and then a little more luck. >> they had found brittany tavar's car parked in like a north seattle library parking lot. the keys had been locked inside of it actually. >> so, the police had the car but no brittany. it wasn't long before policemen from florida were sitting in a seating interrogation room with young mr. roberts. her family waited again, it was time to hear what roberts would say. only he could resolve the mystery. why she had been out of touch for months. >> you always hold out a small

amount of hope that she would be alive and you never give up hope. >> and then within three hours, there in that police station, joe roberts finally answered the question that had been hanging over hope happen dread what happened to brittany tavar. it was the most dreadful story this crime reporter ever written. taken right from the confession roberts gave to police. >> she woke him up very angry that something wasn't done correctly or that he didn't do it at all and was bugging him early in the morning, trying to get him out of bed, yelling at him. >> now, why would she do that? didn't take for a minute for her friend to figure that out. >> this whole big argument with joe was him not being able to get this dvd or cd up to perfection about what they were going to take to court. >> the court case against ann leyden, that is.

and so her friends speculated about what happened that last morning of her life. she must have vented on her temper on a man who had a drug habit, possible mental health issues and anger problem. >> i got to the point where he got pushed to the point of no return. >> in a statement to police, roberts said they argued the night before her disappearance and then the next morning brittany went off about something. which is when -- >> he grabbed a hammer and hit her in the head a couple of times. >> that anger issue again. >> right. and she was laying on the kitchen floor bleeding and in the report he says there was lots and lots of blood and at first he tried to stuff her body in the attic of their house. but he said that she was too heavy for him to carry all the way up the stairs and then decided he was going to leave town and dump her body in the woods. roberts would tell investigators he brought the dogs with him to buy him time. people who knew her well would

think it was strange that she left without her animals. >> it was a shock, of course. then joe roberts answered another question. this one with no good answer. where was brittany? >> she was found on a state road sort of where some homeless camps in the area that is mainly just woods. >> one of the most terrible things would be to know that someone you loved died in fear, you know, died in a moment of terror and pain. and that was a very, very hard thing for me to accept. it just was -- even today it's just chilling for me to think about that. >> but at least -- >> we never would have found the body if he hadn't told us, you know. it was in a forrest somewhere. maybe we show up in 20 years but we wouldn't have found it. >> having offered his detailed confession to the police, roberts pleaded not to first degree murder. but ultimately his case did not go to trial. after years of legal

wrangling -- >> state your name. >> joseph roberts. >> roberts pleaded guilty to second degree murder on an amended indictment in may 2014. >> you still think this plea is in your best interest. >> yes, sir. >> and was sentenced to 30 years in a florida state correctional facility. as brittany's family struggles with the aftermath of her loss, her friends look after brittany's dogs. >> they're in great shape. happy, healthy. they're really good dogs, you know, brittany would have wanted that. she would have wanted somebody that loves them to have them. >> and her friends mourn, as does her family. >> my sister was the one that my parents worried about the most, you know. she was the one they were concerned about because she had the hardest time getting her feet on a path in life, finding her way. we never, ever, ever dreamed that anything like this would

happen, that anything violent would happen to her. i guess you have a point from which you move on, but there isn't really closure, that is actually something that the homicide detectives know, there isn't closure. it's a cliche that people use, but there's no closure. brittany tavar lived life on her own terms, naive maybe, reckless sometimes, and it cost her dearly. >> she just thought she was invincible. she didn't think anything bad would happen. >> well, that's part of who she was. she did have a very big heart. >> though she did and lived out loud and was exuberant and generous and for those who loved her, is eternally missed for all of those things. >> she was my sister and i've been robbed the rest of my life with my sister. i've been robbed of that relationship. i've been robbed of those conversations. i've been robbed of that friendship. that's all for now.

i'm lester holt. that's all for now. i'm lester holt. thanks for joining us. -- captions by vitac -- www.vitac.com coming up on "early today," major revelation from president obama on america's underestimating isis and are u.s. ground troops inevitable to fight in syria. thousands of air travelers delayed from the facility fire. >> it is so infuriating. >> the united states, for god sakes. it is causing trouble all over the country. the monster truck rally that goes terribly wrong. mr. and mrs. george clooney make their debut as husband and wife. and where you can score free coffee today. it is monday, september 29th. "early today" starts right now. good