you can lose a child, without knowing it, in a second. it wasn't an if. it was a when are they going to tell us that she's not coming home. this is not what was supposed to happen. >> the note was under her blanket. >> i saw it sticking out, and i grabbed it. >> their daughter was a runaway. >> i am frantic because i didn't know how to find her. >> they called police. they searched. and then a jogger found a red shoe and a pool of blood. >> here they are, three people at the door. >> i just started sobbing. >> they'd found her daughter. but not the boy she was with. it was as if he'd never existed. >> we couldn't find anything about l.j.

>> months went by. still no trace of l.j. and then a rookie took the case. >> how'd you feel about it, that this was now going to be your case? >> i didn't know if i was capable of doing this. i cried for two hours. >> a teen found dead. >> we still don't have an answer. >> a mysterious missing suspect. >> she said that l.j. had killed someone before. >> and hers to solve. i get the feeling, jaclyn, you're learning how to become a detective as you go. >> this is the case that taught me. >> you have no sure-fire way to keep your children safe. >> i'm lester holt, and this is "dateline." here's dennis murphy with "the girl with the red shoes." >> reporter: veronica kasprzak bratcher is a determined woman. did someone ever say, you can't save them all, to you? >> my mother is probably the one that would say and still says that. but yeah, i heard that a lot. >> reporter: she rarely

listened, though. the desire to do good, to save a child was too strong. though sometimes, in the quiet hours, she wonders if she did the right thing. >> if i wouldn't have picked that house. if i would have not taken a shower. if i would have done something else, she wouldn't have been in that situation. >> reporter: of course, no one could have known then that it would end up like this. >> unified police department. >> i need to report a runaway. my daughter is missing. >> reporter: her daughter was anne grace kasprzak. though when veronica first met annie, she wasn't a kasprzak at all. she wasn't even her daughter. she was a client, just 7 years old, with a rough childhood. >> she'd been through some abuse, and she had a hard time trusting other people. >> reporter: back in 2005, veronica was a case worker for utah's division of children and family services. her job was to find homes for kids who no longer had one. annie was one of those kids.

>> annie has kind of a larger-than-life personality. whatever annie does, she never did small. if there was something she liked, she loved it and she was huge. if there was something she didn't like, it was big. and there was no question about it. >> reporter: drama came with it, huh? >> oh, yes, oh, yes. >> reporter: veronica tried for years to find annie a stable home. but after annie had been flung back to the state nine times, veronica, young, naive and stubborn, made a surprising decision to adopt annie. did your superiors tell you, you know, we don't do that, veronica? >> oh, yes. >> reporter: don't cross that line. you have a professional relationship with this child. but don't bring her into your home. >> well, and that was very true. and because at the time, i also happened to be about six months pregnant. and so i'm sure the thought was, okay, crazy pregnant lady. she doesn't know what she's doing. but it was very much, are you sure? you can't save everybody. >> reporter: but veronica was determined to try. she and her then-husband dennis adopted 10-year-old annie in

january 2007. annie, who had bounced around from house to house, finally had a home, parents and brothers who adored her. >> she was the immediate cool big sister. she liked being the oldest, being in charge and teaching them all of this cool stuff. >> reporter: she was wanted, happy, making memories. opening gifts on christmas morning. her first trip to the beach. not that everything was perfect, mind you. >> there was still definitely a "i'm going to test you. as much as you say you love me and you're keeping me, i'm going to make -- i don't believe you." >> how would she challenge you, for instance? >> just the quintessential, i'm not going to do what you say. i'm going to do whatever i want. >> reporter: so psychological tussle going on here? >> uh-huh. >> reporter: which only intensified when annie entered her teen years. >> she was about as boy crazy as i could imagine. she always had a boy that she

liked or that liked her. and it was never a, here, let me see. it's a, oh, i'm so in love with you. this is forever. i couldn't imagine anybody being more amazing. she was very all in. >> reporter: but annie was also into her education and her future. she wanted to be a therapist just like veronica. she even wanted her new family to adopt more kids. >> well, what about this other girl, mom? she's there. and she's really having a hard time. i think we should bring her home. it was -- >> reporter: she was really becoming your daughter in a way, huh? >> yeah. >> reporter: veronica eventually divorced and remarried. she and her new husband james settled here, in riverton, utah, a quiet suburb of salt lake city. annie had james wrapped around her finger. >> i took her with me to help me pick out her mother's valentine's day gift. and there was a shoe store right across the way. she had a way with me. she could talk me into just about anything. and one of them was her favorite shoes that she found. and she was so excited about them. and they were a red pair of shoes. >> reporter: just a few weeks

later, march 10, 2012. annie, now 15, was watching her brothers while veronica and james went out for dinner. >> and then when we came home, everything seemed the same. i mean, annie had changed from running around the house in shorts to jeans. and i just kind of chalked that up to, okay, she's gotten cold. and i had a massive headache i couldn't get rid of. so i went to take a shower. and annie had gone downstairs to her room to listen to music. and we just figured it was another saturday. >> reporter: but it wasn't. when veronica finished her shower, annie was gone. james searched her bedroom. >> the note was tucked underneath her blanket. and i grabbed it. and it just said, i'm sorry, mom, that i haven't been totally honest with you. >> reporter: annie, it turned out, was keeping a secret. in the note, she wrote, "i lied to my friends. i told them i was "p." "p." veronica and james knew that stood for the word no teenager's parents want to hear, pregnant. just a few months earlier, they

had learned that annie had had sex for the first time. >> she had had sex, and so to annie she had assumed that, well, because we've had sex, i could be pregnant, or i am pregnant. >> reporter: but the pregnancy test was negative, and annie was now on birth control. why would she lie about being "p"? even more alarming was where annie said she was going. "by the time you read this note, i'll be on my way to california. please don't try and look for me because i don't want to be found." >> the first thing we did is we called the police. and then the second person i called was chris. >> reporter: 14-year-old chris bagshaw. annie had brought him over to the house a few times. >> he was kind of quiet. i kind of took it as all right, i'm here with my girlfriend's parents. and i want to make sure they don't kill me. >> reporter: was he in and out of the picture for her as the boyfriend of the moment? >> uh-huh. >> reporter: his stock would rise and fall? >> yep, she was crazy about him.

>> reporter: chris told veronica he didn't know where annie was, but he did have some potentially significant information. chris said annie told him she was running away with a guy named l.j. >> we were shocked. because, i mean, we didn't know all of her friends because they changed a lot depending on who she was hanging out with at the moment. but it wasn't familiar at all. >> reporter: a police officer came and took a report. james, meanwhile, called up the gps function on annie's cell phone. >> it put her around or about the golf course out in riverton and within a mile of that, which is around the bridge area. >> reporter: the bridge at the jordan river, just a coupl miles from their home, a place joggers and horseback riders frequent during the day and young lovers at night. james, veronica and the officer watched as annie's phone pinged across the computer screen in realtime. you're watching her move. >> yes. >> when it moved so fast, our immediate assumption was, okay, she's getting in a car. >> reporter: so this is a hot pursuit now, looking for your girl? >> yep.

>> reporter: and then the signal just stopped. veronica drove to a walmart near where they'd tracked annie's phone. >> and i have her picture on my cell phone. and i'm showing it to the people that are sitting at the front, the greeters, going, have you seen this girl? >> reporter: are you collected? or are you a wreck while all this is going on? >> i am frantic. >> reporter: veronica went back home. she and james watched the front door. and they kept calling annie, but her phone went straight to voicemail. in the best of worlds, she's out with some young boyfriend you may or may not know, off on a lark of some kind. but it'll come to an end. and you'll get her back and regroup. >> yeah, our worst-case scenario at that point is, okay, she's going to come home pregnant. >> reporter: worst case scenario? not even close. >> what had happened to annie? and who was the mysterious l.j.? when we return -- >> he had told us that l.j. had driven by the house threatening chris. >> and a jogger makes a grim

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march 11, 2012. spring was still officially days away, but in draper, utah, its promise was clear. morning dew on the brush. the crisp air. the sun rising over the wasatch mountains. it should have been a beautiful day. but for a jogger on the jordan river parkway that morning, it was anything but. >> 911, what is the address of the emergency? >> you know, i'm not real sure. i'm at the river bottom, and there's some pools of blood. and i'm guessing it's just an animal, but in the water right by the river there's a shoe. >> reporter: sergeant chad carpenter was one of the first on the scene. this is what the jogger sees, blood here. pooling blood? clotted blood? >> yeah, so basically in this area right here, you had the blood droplets. and then on the cement right

here you had mud in this area. on that beam right there. in this area you had a little bit of blood. and then you had pooling down on the ground right there. and then in this area, down to those rocks, was where the majority of the blood had been deposited. >> reporter: down there is where most of the blood was? >> yeah. it was a large amount of blood. >> reporter: with all the wildlife around, they thought it might be animal blood, but -- >> we called forensics out and we did a presumptive test, which was able to tell us that it actually was human blood. >> reporter: human blood. that changed things. >> that made us think, okay, we might have a body in the water. so we called the highway patrol helicopter. >> reporter: the helicopter was in the air for just under an hour before it spotted something about a mile north of where the jogger saw the blood. it was caught up in some branches. as the chopper got closer, it was clear. there was a body in the river. sergeant, when the divers pulled the victim out, what were the injuries that they observed to

her face? >> she had a laceration here on her forehead. her face was very swollen so we weren't able to tell to what extent the injuries were. and we couldn't even identify who she was. >> reporter: their jane doe, dressed in a red and white plaid shirt, looked to be about 20 years old. her features possibly asian. and obviously, she had been murdered. leading the investigation was a young detective named derek johnson. tell me about him. >> right when he came into the academy he sat next to me and started teasing me. and the rest of the class time we just harassed each other and laughed and giggled all day. >> reporter: jaclyn moore met derek at the police academy. she was a hair stylist who had gotten bored with rinses and blowouts. >> i wanted something more challenging. so i went on a ride-along with a local police department and fell in love. >> reporter: that took a lot of guts to do that. >> yeah. it was challenging and scary,

but that's what i was looking for. >> reporter: she and derek hit it off immediately. you guys became friendly competitive head butters, huh? >> yes. when we both applied at draper and he got hired, we started our competition. >> reporter: their competitive streak clearly apparent when a new position opened up. >> a detective spot came open, and we both applied and he got it president. >> reporter: did you think, rats? >> i did. >> reporter: he got it and i didn't? >> yes. >> reporter: now derek had caught his first case. which was also the first homicide the small town of draper had seen in years. >> someone called police just after 10:00 this morning to report they had come across a gruesome scene. >> reporter: by the time veronica and james saw the reports annie had been missing for nearly 20 hours. the information that it's an asian woman in her 20s, i think, was the initial report. that would seem to rule out annie, certainly. >> initially, we were thinking, no, that's not possible. there's no way. >> reporter: but then, a detail sergeant carpenter shared with salt lake city's nbc affiliate ksl tv.

>> there was a shoe found at the crime scene, and there was one on the body. >> reporter: a red shoe. the same kind james had bought annie for valentine's day just weeks earlier. veronica and james tried to stay calm. >> we called the police. and we said, hey, our daughter's missing. i think logically i was going, they're just going to rule it out. i just need them to rule it out. >> reporter: but they couldn't rule it out. >> after i called the police, i called my parents to come and pick up our boys. and i just started sobbing. >> reporter: police soon determined the 20-something asian victim was really 15-year-old annie kasprzak. she had been killed by blunt force trauma to the head. veronica and james had thought the rapid pinging of annie's phone meant she was driving away. now there was no hope offer ever coming home. so there's the very worst moment of your life at that point. here they are, three people at the door. >> they confirmed that it was annie. i think we were in shock. we went into automatic, what do you need from us? tell us what you want.

you can have it. look at anything. >> reporter: veronica told investigators what she learned from annie's on-again/off-again boyfriend chris bagshaw. that annie had run away with a boy named l.j. >> when you talked with l.j., how did you talk to him? >> i talked to him once. >> okay. >> actually on the phone. >> okay. >> reporter: police spoke to chris bagshaw and his father at their home. >> and when you talked to him on the phone, did he speak with an accent or did you notice anything distinctive about his voice? >> no. >> reporter: naturally, police also had to ask chris where he was. >> i was with my grandma. >> okay. >> and at one point i did walk up to see if my friend can hang out, but he wasn't home. >> okay. >> reporter: they went through the usual questions. >> when you walked to your friend's, what did you have on? >> just regular jeans and a t-shirt and my red jacket. >> just blue jeans? >> yeah, blue jeans, nike shoes and a t-shirt underneath. and he had his red hoodie on. >> do you mind if we see your nike's?

>> yeah, sure. >> reporter: chris wanted to help. he gave those nikes to investigators, as well as his clothes. he even gave a dna sample. and after his interview, chris' dad called up sergeant carpenter. >> he had told us in this phone call that l.j. had driven by the house, was threatening chris. >> reporter: so here's more information that this l.j. is a very real and threatening person? >> yes. >> you know, i never wanted to do this. >> reporter: detectives also spoke to chris and annie's friend spencer riddle. spencer said he was at the gym with his brother the night annie was killed. >> sometimes you just have got to point and shoot. >> reporter: on his phone detectives found this video of spencer, annie, chris and another friend hanging out. taken just weeks before annie was killed. detectives looked carefully. was annie throwing a gang sign? they asked spencer about it. >> did she have an interest in gangs or --

>> not that -- she didn't really tell me. i'm just -- maybe she does because of some person named l.j. that i have no idea who it is. all i know is she told me he was in a gang. i don't know for sure. >> reporter: before he left the interview, spencer shared one more thing with police. >> she said that l.j. has killed someone before. she never gave me the name, but she said that, she knows that or something like that. that's why she was scared when apparently l.j. threatened chris to come kill him. >> reporter: you thought l.j. was your killer? >> we thought l.j. was involved. >> reporter: did boy-crazy annie fall for a gang member? in her room, police found this poem she had written to l.j. and with it, for the first time, a name leyton jendon. but police couldn't track him down. not showing up on social media and kid stuff? >> nothing. not even on any driver's license database. we checked all of the gang databases that we have in the salt lake valley. nothing. >> reporter: jaclyn wasn't working the case then, but she

remembers crossing paths with spencer at the station. >> and he immediately tensed up, clenched his fists. his eyes got big. he couldn't take his eyes off of me. and i thought, this kid has done something wrong. and he thinks i'm coming to arrest him because i'm approaching him in uniform. >> reporter: did you share that with derek? >> yes. he said, we've received more information now, and we think we have another suspect. >> reporter: another suspect. a new name altogether. based on information from an eyewitness who may have seen annie kasprzak the night she was killed and knew who killed her. coming up -- is this how annie was murdered? >> and is this the man who murdered her? >> what if i told you she's dead? >> i didn't do it. at's really n.

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annie kasprzak had been brutally murdered and dumped

into the jordan river. >> we kept asking, are you sure it wasn't an accident? the idea that somebody else could do that to her was just -- even now, it's hard to imagine that that's even possible. >> reporter: and now draper police were working hard to catch her killer. >> we're trying to actively locate suspects in this case, any witnesses, so we can actually bring this case to a conclusion for the parents. >> reporter: and within a week of annie's murder, they found that witness. her name was joanna, and she had been picked up on a fraud charge by neighboring west jordan pd. during her interview, she started telling detectives about a young girl she had seen a week prior. the cops thought some of what she said sounded eerily similar to annie's case. so they called draper pd, and detective derek johnson and his colleague came over to hear what joanna had to say. >> tell me what you know about this girl. >> it was the second time i've

seen her over there. >> reporter: there at the home where a man named daniel ferry used to live. danny ferry is a guy known to law enforcement? >> yes. >> reporter: as maybe a drug dealer? >> drug dealer. he was a member of a gang called vario loco town. and law enforcement has dealt with danny quite a few times, yeah. >> reporter: ferry had a long rap sheet. in fact, derek had served a search warrant on his home a year earlier. and now here was joanna telling derek that she saw a girl who sounded a lot like annie at daniel ferry's home on the night annie was killed. joanna also said the girl showed up with someone police had been searching for but couldn't find. >> she came with l.j. >> reporter: l.j., the guy annie had written that note to. the alleged gang member. the one chris bagshaw said annie had run away with. >> we had annie's entries that said l.j. we had joanna telling us about

l.j. >> reporter: on that night, said joanna, l.j. and the girl disappeared into the garage. she assumed they were having sex. then when they came out, she saw daniel approach the girl. >> he asked her if she wanted to [ bleep ] and she laughed. and she was like, no. and he just kind of grabbed her head and just rammed it into the wall. >> reporter: she said the girl was knocked unconscious. l.j. and another friend named "v" tried to calm daniel down. and then the three of them carried the girl out to the garage and changed her clothes. >> tell me about the clothes they changed her into. >> there was a lot of red. that's what i remember the most. >> what parts do you remember being red? >> pants and shoes and a shirt like a white red. >> the shirt was white and red? >> yeah. her shoes. shoes had white laces, and we were tying them. >> reporter: then, joanna said, daniel, l.j. and "v" wrapped the

unconscious girl in a blue tarp, put her in a white suburban and took off. and when they came back hours later, she said daniel was covered in blood and the girl was not with him. >> i asked daniel where she was, and he said that she went swimming. he said, she put up one hell of a fight once we got there. >> reporter: joanna's story rang true, leading derek johnson to believe the mystery girl was annie and daniel ferry was her killer. jaclyn was part of the team that secured daniel's home while detectives searched it. >> i was about half a block away from daniel ferry's house. i could see his house, but i was more concerned with people coming in and out of the street. >> reporter: did you see people coming and going that night? >> yes. daniel ferry's family was trying to get in. >> reporter: a tense scene. daniel himself wasn't there. but detectives did learn something more in another interview with joanna that bore out their star witness' story. >> did you see blood on the carpet? >> yeah. >> was it carpet or hard floor? >> it was carpet.

>> okay. >> i'm positive it was carpet. >> reporter: now the search team found the carpet in ferry's house had been ripped up and the walls were freshly painted. you've got signs of a cover-up? >> yeah, it's looking more and more like this is actually true, all this information that we're receiving. >> reporter: did you find blood-like splotches on the wall? >> we found indications that there would be blood on the wall. >> reporter: they swabbed those areas and then went looking for daniel. they found him at an apartment complex, arrested him and brought him in. >> do you want to talk to us without counsel? >> yeah, whatever. but what's it about? >> let me ask you that. what do you think? >> i got no clue. >> reporter: it was, detectives thought, the typical bad guy response. they were sure daniel knew something. they asked him about l.j. >> who the hell's l.j.? >> that's what i'm asking you. >> dude, i don't know no l.j. >> reporter: and then about annie. >> tell me about annie. tell me about annie. >> annie who?

>> annie. >> who the [ bleep ] is annie? >> annie is a girl that was at your house for a party last weekend. >> dude, i have no idea who annie is. >> we've already talked to a lot of other people that all verify she was there, danny. >> okay. show me a picture, then. >> reporter: you showed him a picture of annie. >> yep. >> brittany? is her name brittany? >> no, it's annie. >> reporter: detectives thought daniel was lying, and they were done playing around. >> what if i told you she's dead? >> i didn't do it. what the [ bleep ]? if you guys think i did this, i do want a lawyer. >> okay. >> because there's only -- >> we're done. >> the only thing that is shaking me. >> we're done daniel, because i think you did it. >> well, if you think i did it, then you've got the wrong guy, man. for real. >> good luck. >> find the right guy. >> reporter: derek was confident he had. they booked daniel for annie's murder. did this name mean anything to you? ferry? >> no. >> reporter: guy's known for doing drugs. >> uh-huh. >> i didn't understand it. annie was extremely anti-drugs. >> reporter: annie's 15. the guy arrested is what, 30 years old? >> uh-huh.

>> reporter: a person known to the police, as they say? >> uh-huh. >> that compounded the, oh, guilt of, boy, what bad parents are we that not only did this happen to her, but that we didn't even know she was hanging out with people like this. >> reporter: l.j., whoever he was, still hadn't turned up, but detective derek johnson still thought he'd wrapped up his first homicide. all he needed was the lab to confirm that the blood found in daniel's home was annie's. but then the lab called and everything unraveled. >> coming up -- not the best time for a rookie detective to be taking over. >> how did you feel about it? that this was now going to be your case? >> i cried for two hours. i had only had a few months in detectives and i didn't know if i was capable of doing this.

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annie kasprzak had had a rough childhood. she was passed along from foster home to foster home before she was adopted by her case worker, veronica. annie's life finally seemed to be turning around. then in 2012, annie, just 15, was found murdered, her body floating in the jordan river.

>> there was never a second that your mind didn't go to, this is not what was supposed to happen. >> reporter: draper police were on the hunt to find her killer, and a week after annie's murder they believed they had. known gang member and drug dealer, daniel ferry. >> i know that she was at the house, but how she got to the house, that's something we're working out. if she'd been to the house before, we don't know. >> reporter: an eyewitness said she saw daniel ferry assault a girl the night annie was killed. that witness also said the girl had shown up with l.j., whom police could never find. but in the course of their investigation of ferry, detectives learned something interesting. and you had another l.j. in that crowd, didn't you? >> yeah. >> reporter: daniel ferry? >> yeah. >> reporter: what was his nickname? >> he used two. one was joker and the other was little joe. >> reporter: little joe? l.j.?

>> yeah. >> reporter: maybe their witness was confused or deliberately hiding the fact that ferry and l.j. were one and the same. either way ferry seemed like their man. but the d.a. wanted more evidence before filing charges. derek johnson and chad carpenter thought the blood samples taken from daniel ferry's home would push the case over the finish line. you and derek have to think you're done there, you got it? >> a lot of our investigators thought that we had it nailed. >> reporter: while they waited for the blood results to come back from the lab, they went searching for the carpet that had been ripped out from the ferry home, the carpet joanna had said the girl had bled on. >> we sent investigators to the landfill here in salt lake county, and all of the carpet that had been brought in from all the different places had been piled together. so our investigators went through each piece of carpet. >> reporter: that's a nasty job? >> that was terrible. we actually burned our clothes afterwards because we were walking in all this stuff. >> reporter: they found a couple of carpet scraps but no way to prove they came from ferry's

house. making those blood samples they'd taken from the wall even more critical. it was weeks later when they heard back from the lab. and then the bloodwork comes back and oops? >> bloodwork came back, and it was negative for blood. >> reporter: not only were the samples not annie's blood, it wasn't even blood at all. a major blow to the investigation. didn't mean he's not good for the crime? >> it doesn't mean that he's not good for the crime. it just led us to believe that, okay, it didn't happen here, at the ferry residence. >> reporter: so ferry might be good for this thing, but boy, you're just not getting there? >> yeah. >> reporter: the only bright spot, daniel ferry wasn't getting out of jail. he was also being investigated for an unrelated kidnapping and assault case in a neighboring town. so he's on ice while you guys can develop your theories about his involvement in this thing? >> yeah. >> reporter: they continued to investigate ferry. months went by. lead detective derek johnson was promoted to sergeant. which meant former hairdresser jaclyn moore's dream of making

detective finally came true. maybe a case of beware what you wish for. one of her first assignments was the annie kasprzak murder. how did you feel about it? that this was now going to be your case? >> i cried for two hours. >> reporter: really? you closed the door and -- >> i actually drove to my parents' house, and i cried at their house. >> reporter: what was your anxiety? >> i had only had a few months in detectives, and i didn't know if i was capable of doing this. derek told me when he passed it off to me that it was probably going to be a cold case. i had five huge binders staring at me and hundreds of items of evidence in our evidence locker. i didn't know where to go. >> reporter: did you think i should have stayed in the salon cutting hair? >> no. no. i knew i could do this. it was just very overwhelming. >> reporter: jaclyn decided she needed to start again from the beginning, following the chain of evidence that led her colleagues to daniel ferry. she thought she might link ferry to annie through his phone calls. but when she checked --

>> all of his cell phone records showed he was in the middle to northern part of salt lake county. he had never gone south close enough to where annie was killed. not even near her house. >> reporter: and she well knew the physical evidence wasn't there either. >> none of the dna came back saying annie was ever a friend or ever at his house. >> reporter: and no matter how much derek and the other investigators leaned on him, daniel ferry didn't budge. he's saying all along, it's not me? >> yes. >> reporter: now jaclyn, her detective's badge still shiny new, started to believe he might be telling the truth, which would mean annie's killer was still walking free. coming up -- a trail of phone calls. >> what do you think is going on? >> it looks like a fight. it looks like they're yelling at each other and hanging up on each other.

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for months, the investigation into annie's murder had centered on one suspect. >> daniel ferry is an adult and a known gang member and criminal, and it was easier to believe daniel ferry killed annie. >> reporter: but detectives had never found enough evidence to make a murder charge stick. and it turned out, there was an explanation. remember, while under suspicion for annie's murder, ferry was arrested for an unrelated kidnapping in a different town. the charge stuck. ferry eventually pleaded guilty and was sent to prison. draper police came to believe it was this kidnapping that star witness joanna had recounted to them.

she had seen a totally different crime. not annie's murder. what's more, it happened on the same night annie was killed. no way daniel ferry could have committed both crimes. so now, rookie detective jaclyn moore went back to the boxes and binders piled high on her desk. >> i felt lost. i decided i need to start from the beginning and see what information derek had when he first got the case. >> reporter: and so began the education of a detective. she started reading through pages and pages of annie's notes and journal entries. who does annie turn out to be, the more you learn about her? >> she's very lost. she wants to be loved by anyone and everyone. >> reporter: and jaclyn saw that there was one person in particular annie wanted to be loved by. chris bagshaw. his name was scribbled all over her journals. veronica remembered annie gushing about him. >> she liked him. he was different. he had enough of the bad boy

going on that he wasn't a goody two-shoes, and so she didn't feel like he looked down on her. >> reporter: annie's diaries revealed something else, too. >> she and chris had sex. >> reporter: chris was the boy annie had slept with just months before her death. after which, remember, she lied about being pregnant. >> i am starting to think that she made up the pregnancy to keep chris around because he didn't want to be with her anymore. >> reporter: next, jaclyn pored over annie and chris' phone records from the night of the murder. not only was chris the last person annie spoke to, but the pattern of their calls spoke volumes. >> 30 seconds here and then it hangs up. immediately one of them calls the other back. sometimes the call is ignored. sometimes chris' phone is blocked. >> reporter: what do you think is going on? >> it looks like a fight. it looks like they're yelling at each other and hanging up on each other. >> reporter: then, while going through the case file, jaclyn found an interesting piece of evidence that investigators collected when they searched chris' room.

a tornup note written by chris that, when pieced together, looked like this. it seemed to be an inventory of details regarding annie's murder. and all the way at the bottom was something that caught jaclyn's attention. >> i notice he writes that she was wearing a white jacket. >> reporter: which was odd, because when the body is recovered, is there a white jacket there? >> no. i called veronica and i said, does annie have a white jacket? and she said, yes. and i said, is it still at your house? and she said, no. we haven't seen it since she left. >> reporter: how does he know about a white jacket? >> right. he would have seen her that night. >> reporter: one more thing about that note. written at the top of the page were the letters "akd." someone's initials or maybe an acronym? >> i believe it meant annie kasprzak death. >> reporter: her more experienced colleagues had looked at chris, too, of course, but eventually moved on. and for good reasons. chris had no criminal record and no eyewitness put him at the scene. and there was still the

mysterious l.j., annie's reported boyfriend whom police could never find. not in any police database, not anywhere. that is, until jaclyn knocked on one more door. [ knocking ] >> hey. >> how's it going? >> hi. are you jack? >> yeah. >> i'm detective moore. this is detective johnson. >> reporter: her close buddy and predecessor, derek johnson, was by her side when she went to interview annie's friend jackson. he told them the same story that they'd been hearing all along, annie telling friends she was pregnant. nothing new. but then they asked jackson if he new who l.j. was. his answer floored them. >> she would always referred to this guy as l.j., and i asked her, well, what's his real name? and she said chris. >> reporter: a stunning revelation. was l.j., all along, just annie's nickname for chris bagshaw? jaclyn knew she was getting somewhere, but there was still one big problem -- daniel ferry. he had been in the news so long

he was clouding her investigation. >> as i was interviewing annie's friends, they were all giving me stories about annie's night, and it was based on what they'd heard from the news. >> reporter: so that's a tainted source for you? >> yes. >> reporter: you want somebody who doesn't know what's out there in the press? >> yes. >> reporter: so jaclyn took a bold step and went to her bosses, asking them to publicly clear daniel ferry. it was a year, almost to the day, after the murder of annie kasprzak when the news broke. >> draper police have been tight-lipped about this investigation, but today they did say that daniel ferry is no longer a person of interest in the murder of annie kasprzak. >> reporter: ferry, for months the prime suspect, was officially no longer a suspect at all. when the case fell apart, were you disappointed? >> exhausted. >> reporter: exhausted by the police investigation. >> exhausted that this was just not ever going to end and that, okay, here's a big thing that kind of rocks your world. and guess what? we're going to have to do this at least a couple more times

because we still don't have an answer. >> reporter: to them it seemed as if the investigation was going backwards. yet clearing ferry brought veronica one small comfort. >> it was, like, okay, you have not completely failed as a parent. you did not miss this big drug-dealing world going on in your daughter's life. >> reporter: not much comfort for jaclyn moore. the rookie detective had convinced her supervisors to clear ferry. now she knew it was on her to solve the case. and then, nearly a year and a half after annie's murder -- >> an officer-involved shooting. >> reporter: -- another tragedy. >> officer has bullet wounds through his shoulder. we are getting a helicopter in the air. >> coming up -- >> the death of an officer. was it also the end of jaclyn's case?

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september 1, 2013, it was 6:00 a.m. derek johnson, once the lead detective on annie's murder case, was now a sergeant. he was just finishing his graveyard shift and headed back to the station when he noticed a car parked on the side of the road. it looked like a stranded motorist. derek stopped to help but never

made it out of his car. >> that motorist had a gun, and he was angry. >> reporter: draper police chief brian roberts. >> and he fired at derek johnson while he was sitting in the driver's seat of his car. >> reporter: derek, wounded, tried to drive away but lost control and crashed head-on into a tree. he died at the scene. >> it was hard. yeah, it sucked. it -- you have to give me a second. so derek, he was a good guy. good cop. good friend. >> reporter: derek was just 32 years old, leaving behind his wife and his 6-year-old son and his family at draper pd. >> you know everybody talks about a cop's cop and the best cop you can have and how he treated and served the community. derek was one of those guys. >> reporter: for jaclyn moore,

the loss was two-fold. >> he was starting to get some free time to come help me with the case and tell me more about what he did when he was on the case. and then he was killed. i didn't have anyone else to ask. >> reporter: you'd lost your friend. your old competitive friend. >> i lost my friend, and i lost any information that i needed on that case. there was no one else. >> reporter: because he was kind of the institutional memory of this thing, wasn't he? >> yes. >> reporter: jaclyn had only herself to rely on now. in the balance, justice for annie, now dead for a year and a half. she strongly suspected chris bagshaw knew more than he was telling. what she needed but didn't have was something tying chris to annie the night she was killed. so jaclyn reviewed every interview, every piece of evidence on chris. the clothes he handed over to police early on came back clean.

no presence of annie's dna or blood anywhere. but then there were the shoes he handed over. >> do you mind if we see your nike's? >> yeah, sure. >> reporter: jaclyn listened to chris' interviews again and again and noticed something interesting chris said about his shoes. >> she had a bloody nose last time i hung out with her, and we were sitting right next to each other, and she did drip it on my shoes. >> do you remember where on the shoe? >> it was on my shoe laces. i'm not sure which shoe it is. >> when was that? >> about five days ago maybe, me and my friend spencer were hanging out, and she just came over. >> okay. >> reporter: spencer, the guy from that cell phone video. remember, jaclyn had seen him coming into the station in the days following annie's murder. she had a gut feeling back then that he was hiding something and detectives at the time asked for his phone. >> do you have an idea why we took your phone? >> for call logs? >> well, no, that's part of the

reason. but there was a message on there that we're kind of interested in. do you know what that message is? >> reporter: it was a message from chris. the cops might come back to your house. i need you to tell them that annie got a bloody nose so i don't get blamed. >> he told me about the -- he said something about the bloody nose. that i actually don't remember seeing. i remember hearing it though. >> reporter: lab results eventually did show annie's blood was on chris' shoes. detectives questioned him about it during a second interview. >> okay. it would have just been one drop? >> yeah. >> reporter: but then his story began to change. >> where did it drip on your shoe? >> there was a little bit on the shoelace and then there was a little bit right here. >> okay. so those are two separate drops you could see? >> yeah. >> reporter: in fact, the lab found more than just those two spots of blood. they found several. but, studying the case file, jaclyn noticed that the lab didn't test every spot to see if it belonged to annie. they also hadn't tested the bottom of chris' shoes. so what do you do?

>> well, at that point we went with a private lab to see if they could test the shoes further. and there is a new machine out called the mvac. >> reporter: a strange mix of high and low tech. >> it's like a steam cleaner and vacuum. so it spits out steam and then vacuums it back up. >> reporter: the mvac can collect minute dna samples other methods miss. and when the crime lab tested the mvac samples from chris' shoes, jaclyn couldn't believe it. >> it appeared the bottom of the shoe, both shoes, were soaked in blood. >> reporter: it seemed like damning evidence, but after testing that blood further -- >> it came back with two males and two females. >> reporter: again, nothing you can take to the jury. >> right. >> reporter: she tested some of the other evidence, but it didn't lead anywhere. there was one last hope. >> when she was recovered, her left pants pocket was pulled out. so we're thinking the suspect may have used her pocket to pull her into the river, so his dna might be on that pocket. >> reporter: now, when the mvac process vacuumed that pocket,

did it find anything? >> male dna. enough to get a profile. >> reporter: but there were also what dna techs call inhibitors, sand from the river and the dye from annie's jeans that could block an accurate reading. so jaclyn decided to hold off testing until a new, highly sensitive dna kit became available. i get the feeling, jaclyn, you're learning how to become a detective as you go. >> this is the case that taught me. >> reporter: but she was about to learn another lesson about being a detective. things don't always go as planned. >> coming up -- evidence lost. >> this case has had so many dead ends. >> and evidence found. >> i said i have this cell phone map and i can't explain it. look at it. when consultant josh atkins books at laquinta.com.

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annie kasprzak had been dead two years. brutally taken away from the

family who had given her a second chance at life and who had loved her deeply. >> i miss waiting for the time where she would've grown up and figured out, okay, life is okay. i can trust, i can relax, i can settle down. i feel like our ending was taken from us. >> reporter: their happy ending gone. and annie's killer, whoever it was, still walking around free. somebody is getting away with annie's murder, huh? did you think it was going to get resolved, james? >> eventually. everything always gets resolved at some point. >> reporter: sometimes it doesn't. >> sometimes. >> reporter: what did you think, veronica? >> i think i got to a point where i had to come to terms with the idea that it might not. >> reporter: detective jaclyn moore had compiled strong circumstantial evidence against annie's sometime boyfriend chris bagshaw. police had even found blood on his shoes. but no physical evidence that

definitively put chris at the river where the body was found. the last, best hope, dna from annie's pants pocket. preliminary tests showed it was male. this belief about the pocket has turned into the gold nugget of this whole case. >> it's true. there's dna on this pocket and it's male dna. it's not annie's. >> reporter: and if you can compare it properly where you're going to get a name out of this thing. >> uh-huh. so i'm extremely happy. >> reporter: this is a good day in the investigation. >> very good. >> reporter: this was the last little bit of dna left in the entire case. so to be sure they could identify who that dna belonged to, jaclyn told the lab to wait to test it until they got a new, more sensitive kit from the fbi. one that could see through the contaminants in the sample. >> the feds were sending down a new kit that would block those inhibitors. >> reporter: so this is an even more refined science? >> yes. >> reporter: she waited for that kit for months.

and then, finally, a call from the lab. >> they said, no, we didn't get a profile. there were too many inhibitors. >> reporter: but there's not supposed to be inhibitors with this new technique, right? >> right. i asked them exactly that. well, why are there inhibitors? this new kit was supposed to block them. and they said they didn't use the new kit. >> reporter: a critical mistake. and there was no do-over. >> i was extremely upset. we had waited for months for this kit. we had had in-person meetings, several meetings with this lab asking them to please use this kit. >> reporter: what do you do? go for a ten-mile jog? kick the dog? what? >> i told my boss, and i wanted them to get in trouble. but there's nothing you can do. the dna's gone. >> reporter: how do you absorb a body shot like that to your case? >> this case has had so many dead ends and so many issues come up, i was starting to get used to it. i was starting to think maybe we're not going to actually solve this case.

>> reporter: but jaclyn was tenacious. she went back to where she started, back to the phone records. her late friend, sergeant derek johnson, had mapped out the pings from chris' cell phone from the night of annie's murder. >> but that map was confusing. it was all over the valley. the south end of the valley. and it was moving faster than you could in a car. >> reporter: she pored over chris' records, trying to make her own map. but all those numbers were like a foreign language to her. >> so i decided i was just going to put myself through a cell phone training and learn on my own. >> reporter: you're kidding? >> no. >> reporter: you're putting yourself back to school? >> yes. >> reporter: this is more of jaclyn learning how to be a detective. >> yes. >> reporter: she took a week-long course on cell phone investigation taught by a former homicide detective. his name was cy ray, and he was a busy man. >> i said, hey, i have this case, and it's two years old. and i have this cell phone map and i can't explain it. will you look at it? >> reporter: is he interested or is he, go away, kid, you're

bothering me? >> he seemed interested as long as it took five to ten minutes to look at. >> reporter: almost immediately, ray's expert eye caught something in those cell phone records. >> this is one of the most unique calls i have seen as an investigator in my history of working these type of cases. >> reporter: could it be the key to solving the case? coming up -- how a phone call from her mom may help catch annie's killer. >> i told her, i said, you know, if you're ever missing, he's the first person i'm calling. in one advanced pac for an astonishing level of clean. and keeps clothes up to 3 shades whiter. new all powercore pacs.

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help of a new player, sy ray, a former homicide detective from arizona with nearly 20 years experience. he now runs a company called zetx that specializes in cell phone investigations. >> when i sent him annie's, chris' and spencer's cell phone records, he looked at them and said, yeah, i want to do this. >> reporter: sy agreed to help pro bono. he reviewed 35,000 of chris bagshaw's calls and texts and noticed something very unusual. >> we've mapped, as a company, probably 18 million phone calls. i don't know that i've ever seen a set of records as unique as this. >> reporter: one call stood out, an incoming call at 9:01 p.m. the night annie was killed. >> it's a 1:59 in length. and what really stood out is we see these 25 handoffs. >> reporter: handoffs, the signal bouncing from tower to tower. >> but the 25 handoffs were only between these four towers that we were looking at here. >> reporter: sy created this map of the pings.

and right there, somewhere in the red, was the area he believed chris' phone likely was in when the call was made. >> we could tell that we're dealing with an area about 12 square miles. and now the challenge is going to be can we position where within that 12 square miles that the phone is located at. >> reporter: next, sy took his high-tech scanner and tracking equipment and drove around with jaclyn trying to locate the area that produced what they saw in chris' records. >> we were looking for a very isolated area where we had four towers that were servicing an area. but the signal strength had to be so similar within those four towers, and a very poor signal at that, that it would cause the handing off that we saw. >> reporter: eventually they found it, the only spot in town that caused the strange pattern of pings. it was at the jordan river, the very spot where annie was killed. sy discovered it was the geography of the area that caused the pings to bounce around. >> so what's happening is we have this bowl. it's just a natural depression because of the river cutting

through here. and that phone is just jumping back and forth between these four phone towers. >> reporter: which also explained the rapid pinging veronica and james observed when they tracked annie's phone. annie hadn't gotten into a car as they suspected. she was at the river, and the records proved that chris bagshaw's phone was there, too. >> we feel very, very comfortable saying, at 9:01 p.m. on march 10th, the phone was within 100 meters of where we're standing. >> reporter: of course, a skilled defense attorney could argue just because chris' phone was there, didn't mean he was. except for one important detail. it turned out of all the people who could have called chris that night the one who did, at precisely 9:01 p.m., was annie's mom, veronica. that was because of something annie had told veronica earlier that morning, something about chris. >> he had asked her, what would you do if i asked you to run away with me? >> reporter: run away. >> and then i told her, i said, you know, if you're ever

missing, he's the first person i'm calling. >> reporter: which she did, and without even realizing it, helped police place chris bagshaw at the scene of the crime right around the time her daughter was killed. it was early morning october 16th, 2014, more than 2 1/2 years after annie's murder when veronica got another life-changing call. >> jaclyn was on the line. she says, well, we're in colorado and we're in the process of arresting chris. and i say, what? tell me that again. what a second, i don't understand. >> reporter: chris, now 17, had moved to grand junction, colorado, and was living with his mom. he was completely unprepared for the undercover officers who approached him on his way to school and for the young detective who met him in the interview room. >> chris, hey. nice to meet you. >> nice to meet you, too. >> reporter: jaclyn had wanted to question chris all along.

now she finally had her chance. >> is this an interview? >> yes. >> reporter: but just as soon as it began -- >> i'm not going to talk to you without a lawyer. >> okay. >> reporter: -- it was over. >> well, we have a warrant for your arrest. >> for? >> murder and obstruction of justice. >> i thought i proved myself innocent? >> nope, you didn't. >> reporter: chris was extradited back to utah. veronica and james were grateful to police, but they knew nothing could bring annie back. >> while we support the police department and the attorney's office, and we appreciate all the work they have continued to do, it does not change what happened. >> reporter: they braced themselves for what would be coming next. can you go through a trial? are you steeled for it? >> i don't think it's optional. >> reporter: another year came and went.

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february 29th, 2016. almost four years since annie's murder, and darwin christopher bagshaw's trial was just a week away. he had refused to talk to police and pleaded not guilty. >> we were preparing for trial the following week, and i got a phone call that chris' attorney scheduled a hearing that day. >> reporter: jaclyn, now a sergeant with the utah state police, ran down to court and barely made it in time. when she got there she saw chris standing before the judge. >> the case is set for a change-of-plea hearing today. are we going forward with that mr. bown? >> yes, we are. >> reporter: there was no deal offered, just a change of heart. >> are you pleading guilty to charge because you're guilty of it? >> yes, your honor. >> reporter: chris' attorney said chris wanted to take responsibility for what he had done. >> all right. then as to count one, murder, a first-degree felony, how do you plead? >> guilty, your honor. >> reporter: a guilty plea, confirming what jaclyn had

pieced together over the years of her investigation. and she had a theory about how it all went down. >> so march 10th, annie is discussing over the phone what her options are for her baby with chris. and chris is telling her he's come up with a plan and they can run away and be together. >> reporter: jaclyn thinks chris really believed annie was pregnant. so he persuaded her to meet him at the river. but -- >> chris has no intent on running away. chris' only reason for being there is to kill her. so he just starts beating her until she dies. >> reporter: turns out to be a very sloppy crime. the amount of blood. the shoe, unobserved, apparently, not collected by him. >> i don't think that late at night, how dark it was, he even knew how much blood was there. >> reporter: it's chilling, even as you tell it, isn't it? because you're talking about a child killing a child. >> uh-huh. >> reporter: this is a kid who'd been in your house, veronica.

>> uh-huh. >> reporter: do you feel betrayed that this is the child that took your girl? >> i feel that he betrayed annie more than he betrayed us. annie knew him and annie trusted him. >> reporter: at his sentencing, chris, now 18, sounded remorseful. >> i am very sorry for everything that's happened. and i want to apologize to annie's family and to may my family and to everybody in court today for putting everybody through this. >> still trying to put words into everything that has happened. >> reporter: but for veronica, no amount of "i'm sorrys" could make up for what she and annie's entire family lost. >> may you feel sadness. may you feel loss. may your tears heal your soul. but may your conscience never clear. i will grieve my daughter every day.

>> and so for the charge of murder, a first-degree felony, i will sentence you to an indeterminate term not less than 15 years. >> reporter: 15 years to life in prison. chris bagshaw will be eligible for parole when he is 33 years old. today you'll still see joggers and bike riders traversing the path along the jordan river. young lovers still walking hand-in-hand. but somehow that once-serene setting will never be quite the same. do you ever go down to the bridge area or is this all you're putting this behind you? >> when i worked the case i would go down a lot. but no, i don't go down there anymore. >> reporter: jaclyn has other cases to work these days. but this one, annie's case, will surely always hold a special place in her heart. do you think derek would have approved? his confidence in you would have been vindicated finally? >> i wished so bad he was there. >> reporter: you were the kid detective that became a veteran in the course of this.

>> uh-huh. >> reporter: what did you learn about human nature along the way? >> a child can murder another child. an adult can give up on a case that's solvable because it seems too hard. >> reporter: this was a lot that you'd taken on from your days of cutting hair. >> yeah. >> reporter: did it also tell you, i'm glad i did this, that i made the transition? >> yes. it was worth every second. it was worth all of the stress. it was worth all of my weekends. it was worth missing sleep. >> reporter: annie started off as a case for veronica, too, but she became so much more. she completed their family. and when the time came to let her go they brought her back to a place she had visited only once, a place one day she hoped to live. >> we let the kids play. and we put her ashes in the

ocean, so that she would never be in one place, and so that wherever we were at, we could feel like she was there. >> reporter: despite the horrific events that took away her daughter, veronica is still as determined as ever to continue to do good work and to help children in need. she and james adopted three more children in 2015. it was just what annie would have wanted them to do. >> and that's our story for tonight. let me take a moment now to tell you about something special that the "dateline" team has put together for the next few sundays. a new magazine show we're callicall ing "on assignment." and it starts this sunday. here's a sample. >> not too often you travel to a war zone to find a sanctuary.

we're heading for a tropical forest that few dare to visit. just a precious treasure of the world. and its o's our responsibility find some way to protect them. >> this is the scam capital of the internet right here. you're saying the clinton server was unprotected? you're laughing. >> are we giving up on people, pulling the plug on them, when they could live? >> i think in some cases we may be making premature judgments. >> we wanted to ask about the off-label prescription of anti-psychotics in children and what they're doing to keep kids safe. they would not talk to us on camera, so we've come here right outside washington, d.c., to a public meeting. let's go inside. >> this is going to be extraordinary for people thinking about the most decorated olympic athlete they've ever seen saying he went in with no self-confidence. >> i felt just like a gigantic piece of -- >> you don't think the war on drugs is working? >> it's over, lost. however, if you say, i need

help, we're going to try to help you. i owe you guys my life. >> puppies. if you have a dog in your home you love more than some family members, you can get it cloned. >> you can get a community to forgive, you can begin to make change and build trust. >> then they start to see beyond the uniform. they start to see you. >> they start to see you. >> that's "on assignment" sunday at 7:00, 6:00 central. join us later that night for "dateline" at 10:00, 9:00 central. and, of course, i'll see you each weeknight for nbc "nightly news." i'm lester holt. . r a prominent attorney found dead in a san francisco home. what we know about a possible suspect. also, a home care crisis in california. that's next. 6

. >> we're in shock. the entire office just can't believe what happened. >> a fun loving person. it's going to be a big loss for the city. >> shock and sadness. a well-known local attorney stabbed to death. good evening. thanks for being with us. >> we begin with a developing story, a brutal and bloody