at where they are now and you realize, they're already in a special place that's just as bright. that's all for this edition of "dateline." thanks for joining us. . i'm craig melvin. and i'm natalie morales. and this is "dateline." i'm craig melvin. >> i'm natalie morales. >> and this is "dateline." i was robbed of my sister. i had to grow up without one. in an instant she was gone and it changed everything. >> she dreamed of a career solving crimes, but crime claimed her first. >> my daughter, please, please, don't let this be true. >> home alone on a sunny

afternoon she vanished. >> we just said, oh, my god. isn't this one of her ear rings. >> ribbens on the ground. tire tracks on the lawn. >> there was evidence of a violent struggle. >> what had happened and who was behind it. >> everything was a mystery. was she still alive? was she not? >> it tore us apart. >> for years they demanded answers. then came the cold case squad with a new bag of tricks. >> i always felt this was a case that could be solved. >> they wanted justice as much we did. >> as a mother, she fought and fought and fought. >> we just never gave up. don't mess with a mother bear. welcome to "dateline."

tara was just 19. beautiful woman with big dreams. then suddenly vanished. snatched from safety of her own home. little evidenced to go on. no witness to reveal who took tara or why. so investigators thought. it would take years and a team of determined cold case detectives to uncover that long buried clue and the story that would blow this case wide open. here's keith morris with a knock at the door. it was a monday afternoon. baking sun. school bus made methodical way along the streets of putin gorda florida. stopped, started and started again. miles from the harbor, beach river, center of town whose warmth had drawn them to the gulf coast.

veronica and her younger brother walked home. >> i remember halfway down the road remembering that i forgot my key. the closer we got to the house, i seen my sister's car soive said, okay, cool. i don't need the key. she's home. >> then she noticed the door wasn't quite closed. >> it was closed. it wasn't latched. i remember walking in and oprah was on the tv. >> what did you assume when you saw the door open and tv on. >> i thought maybe she left in a hurry and went with a friend and didn't close the door all the way. >> she was tara. her older sister not quite 20 then. veronica called out, no answer. she walked through the house. bathroom light was on. >> i went and looked in the bathroom and i went in our

bedroom and i seen her purse and everything on top of her dresser. then i'm like where would she be without her purse. that wasn't usual. that's when i called keith. >> keith was keith mcphillips her mom's fiance. he was just leaving work. told veronica he was thinking of stopping for coffee on his way home. then he told him about tara, that her purse was home, but she wasn't. >> what did you think when she told you that. >> something wasn't right. if tara was going to go somewhere, she wouldn't leave her stuff. she was responsible. >> keith canceled the coffee plan. drove straight home. >> as soon as i got home, didn't look right. all kinds of tracks on the floor and stuff and i said what are these marks on the floor and she said i don't know. >> tracks? >> muddy food prints. >> in the living room and master

bedroom. and something else. something only they would know. our tv would be turned a certain way. when i looked in it was straight. and i noticed stuff missing off the dresser, jewelry was gone, money was gone. >> what was going on in your head as you saw this as you noticed things were missing sglg i knew something bad. >> and it was. what happened to that grownup girl in this modest house in the little city by the sea. on the first of october 2001? a mystery for so many years. >> she was so sweet, loving, kind, caring, full of life. >> tara's mother. >> she had dreams and ambitions, she was a cheerleader. a catcher for softball. she loved art. most of all, we were a family.

she loved her family and we loved her right back. >> they were new to pew ta gorda. had moved from pennsylvania. un. had moved from pennsylvania. punta it's a change. especially when you're older. we had a bet going how long it would be before she got here because we are so close. we had a bet going and i think she lasted three weeks. >> i'm going to stay here on my own. i'm not. >> she got a job. made plans to start college. already decided she wanted to be a crime scene investigator. >> she had her books and everything. >> and though sharon's then female wasn't officially her stepdad, they had a father daughter sort of relationship. >> yes we were very close. yeah. always hung out together. she would make her famous peanut

butter and jelly triple decker sandwiches. she would be the one to make them all. she was my buddy. >> now he didn't know where she was. >> right that afternoon he called sharon just finishing her workday at the office. >> i'll never forget that call. >> i remember saying i haveo leavnow. it was a 40 minute ride and i cried that whole way home. to please don't let anything be wrong. please, please. >> i remember my mother pulling up. >> how did she look. >> oh, panicked. >> keith had called 911 as sharon rushed home. an officer was there when she arrived. >> my first thing was you need to do something. my daughter is not here. i just knew. i just knew. >> coming up. what had happened to tara? >> why wasn't anybody taking action and figuring out where she was? >> ear rings in the carpet. ribbons on the ground. tire tracks on the lawn.

>> it was obvious we had a serious problem. >> gut wrenching pain. please, please, don't let this be true. >> when "dateline" continues.

jts . so there they were as even deepened. frantic about tara. what happened. where was she? >> it was getting late. why wasn't she home.

>> the policeman who came to help them only seemed concerned about the jewelry and cash that appeared to be taken. not sharon's missing daughter. >> they were concentrated on the burglary. >> didn't seem to understand what she was saying. >> they just didn't get what was going on. >> trying to say maybe she's at a football game. >> there was a football game that night. >> yes. then they went through her friends and then actually they called one friend and this person was dating a tara. >> sharon almost shouted it wasn't her tara. the officer tried a different tactic. >> we'll put a bolo out. be on the lookout. >> the family knew if she went anywhere, she would have told them. deputy said since tara was an adult, they would wait 24 hours before calling her a missing

person. maybe she just left on her own. >> if my daughter was a run away or a troubled child or whatever the case may have been, i would have told you that. i know my child. >> how frustrated were you. >> so very frustrated. >> veronica, not quite 14, remember, was terrified. >> why wasn't anybody taking action and figuring out where she was? >> keith and sharon called everybody they knew in town. their best friends offered moral support, came to the house. and one of them noticed something on the floor. >> we just said oh, my god. we walked in and she was bending over pulling it out of the carpet. we knew it was embedded in the carpet. >> yes. it wasn't just laying there. >> she pulled it out and said sharon, isn't this one of her ear rings. she said yeah. >> so then. then eventually we found another one. >> yes >> and then the third

one. >> like ground into the carpet. >> yes. just. >> we had to pull them out. >> they also noticed a small palm tree in the front yard had been damaged along with the decorative bricks around it. >> then tire tracks. >> what, across the lawn. >> across the lawn. >> how close did the tire track come to the house. >> it wasn't a big yard, but they went up to the door. >> and they found two ribbons. the kind tara wore in her hair outside the front door. and scuff marks on the bedroom dresser. >> that was on the dresser drawers in our bedroom. >> one of the missing pieces of jewelry was a ring that tara had given to keith. >> my dad ring she bought me. i didn't care about anything else, but that. >> the officers left the house

with nothing learned. nothing resolved and still no tara. sharon and keith didn't sleep. not a wink that night. >> what goes on in here as you're sitting up all night. >> gut wrenching pain. >> big hole. >> praying that oh, please, please, don't let this be true. >> before the sun came up, sharon called 911 again. and a new officer arrived. >> a woman deputy. i'm never forget that and she came and i remember saying to her, please help me. and she did. she got the ball rolling. she listened to me. >> the deputy called in crime scene investigators. >> i remember my mother waking me and my brother up and seeing so many people there. and the crime scene van outside. >> now, deputies were taking the disappearance seriously. mike was the captain of the

charlotte county sheriff's office back then. >> sometimes you respond to scene or call where someone is missing and you can tell from the family interaction it's not a big deal. this was not the case with tara's mom. it was often we had a serious problem. >> first thing, find out the last time anyone had seen or spoken with tara. they knew by the time veronica got home before 4:00 p.m. she was gone. learned the last phone call began at 11:49. ended at 12:05. talked to a colleague at the mall jewelry kiosk where she worked. said she would be by to pick up her paycheck and go shopping, but first, their arranged for a septic repair company to stop by the house. maybe the owner of the repair company new something. >> one of our criminal investigation division sergeants on his way into work stopped by this guy's house and asked him had he been to tara's home.

yes, he had. had he seen tara. yes, he had contact with the female there. >> and he said she was perfectly fine when he left the house that afternoon. so assuming they was true, who else came to the house on october 21 and took away their tara. coming up. >> something needed to happen. >> a frustrated family reaches out to someone new. >> if you met sharon, you wouldn't tell her no. i looked her in the eye and i told them i would do everything i possibly could to try to help them. >> a turn in the case was coming. when dateline continues.

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winds up tragically and horribly often being somebody very close to them. >> i actually asked them myself, did you check us out? >> what did they say. >> they said they did.

>> they said oh, don't worry, we did. >> meanwhile, they pushed through fear and anxiety and did what they could. >> you look through garbage bags. >> you go everywhere and anywhere in the woods, dumpsters. >> i would do it every day. >> we would go in the woods so far we didn't know where we came out half the time. didn't even know where we were. >> the investigators searched for tara as well. >> the investigation shifted this morning. deputies searching 500 acres of pastor. >> if someone called and said we saw a suspicious vehicle in this area or vultures over here. we did go and search. we had a couple of times we used cadaver dogs in certain areas. >> four weeks after tara vanished, she turned 20 and they tried to stay positive. >> you had a birthday party. >> had to. we had the presents.

i'll never forget this. i went to open one and my son said you're not opening that. she's coming back. and i didn't open it. >> months went by. they couldn't accept what their heads kept telling them. that tara had been snatched away and murdered, but no one was telling them anything. the investigation seemed to stall. wasn't going anywhere. >> something needed to happen. >> didn't feel like it was happening. >> exactly. >> out of sheer desperation, they hired a civil attorney. a woman named amanda down sglg what did they want you to do. >> they wanted anyone's help. lawyer's help, civilians help, community help. anyone's help finding their daughter. i think by hiring a lawyer, they believed they could assist them in fact finding.

finding their daughter, searching for anything. they were grasping. >> what did you tell them? >> i looked her in the eye, i looked keith in the eye and i told them i would do everything i possibly could to try and help them. >> you know you would have been perfectly within your rights to hook at them and say, look, i'm sorry, but that's not what i do. >> if you met sharon, you wouldn't tell her no. >> well, did they want you to sue somebody or just get information or what. >> i don't think that their goal was to sue anyone. i think their goal was to find tara. >> then, nine months after tara disappeared, a man traveling on a desolate road on the out skirts of punta gor da pulled over for a pit stopped and walked other o out and found not a girl, bones. >> you want to find her.

>> but not like this. >> but then you don't. you don't want it to be like this, you know. you just hope and pray every day she's alive. >> but it was her. it was tara. >> enough of the teeth were there to make a positive identification it was tara. >> by then, sharon and keith were at home waiting for the results. detective went to tell them. >> it's never easy, huh. >> hardest thing you ever have to do. >> then when they come to your door, with clergy. >> you see them coming. >> yes. and then the reality is that's it. you're never going to see her again. it's so devastating. it's the worst pain ever. she didn't belong out there. >> 284 days after tara vanished,

they knew finally she was never coming back, but they were no closer to knowing how she wound up out there in the woods. >> coming up. >> now what, find the killers and make them pay for the crime. >> new leads at last. >> isn't that your connection. >> it was a great connection. >> and new questions for someone who had been at the house that day. >> i feel like i've been harassed. >> when "dateline" continues. i mean, could you be any more dramatic? i've had it. i'm taking mucinex sinus-max. eh, that stuff's all the same. this is different. it fights pressure, pain, and congestion. a-thank you. those are my 3 best qualities. get the straps. carl? you know that i get carsick! carl! mucinex sinus-max. with a triple-action formula that fights pain, congestion, & pressure. start the relief. ditch the misery. let's end this. today's senior living communities have never been better,

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hello. here's what's happening. president trump is spending the weekend at mar-a-lago report in florida. he leaves washington after the release of that republican memo that accuses the fbi of political bias and getting a wiretap of trump campaign adviser. approved the release of the document which democrats say is an attempt to discredit the

russia investigation. now back to "dateline." welcome back to "dateline." i'm craig melvin. nine months after tara disappeared, her bones were found in the woods outside of town. detectives began to comb the site searching for any include to lead them to tara's killer. here again is keith morrison with a knock at the door. >> in the end, bones and a few teeth were all they found. there was every reason to think tara was murdered and then dumped in the woods, but

murdered how? by whom? sharon's attorney -- i think it might have been a choking or strangulation was not recovered. >> the medical examiner though found evidence that four of tara's ribs were fractured. >> a fracture that occurred at the time of death. >> so there's a big big slam into her ribs somehow. >> the medical examiner found there was evidence of a violent struggle. there was evidence of blunt force trauma and that would contribute to her death. >> detectives scoured the woods looking for anything that might tell them something. they found a belly button ring near the bones. the kind tara wore. and the remnants of only one piece of clothing that belonged to her. a pair of panties. no hair, no fiber, no dna of any

kind at the scene that would help them aid killer. >> it was frustrating for the family. frustrating for the detectives and frustrating for the prosecutors that worked on the case including myself. >> so detectives went back to the beginning. they reviewed all the witness statements they had taken over the course of the nine months tara had been missing and there was a note about a man who turned in some jewelry three days after tara went missing. a ring and a bracelet. which turned out to belong to tara's family. >> it would have been in the possession of saint john took a couple of pieces of jewelry to his probation officer. >> glen saint john, who went by pee-wee. >> was on probation for felony burglary. did pee-wee kill tara? he insisted no. he didn't take the jewelry either. somebody gave it to him. >> told him he received that jewelry from phil bar and phil

bar told him it came from the missing girl's home. >> phil bar. he was the owner of the septic repair business? was pee-wee telling the truth? would he ever tell the truth. >> he told multiple different stories. >> what did he say. >> he said a little more each time he was interviewed. he would change his story to the point it made him an uncredible witness. he admitted he seen the body at some point. it was a little interesting in that particular area tara's bones was recovered was within a couple hundreds yards of one of pee-wee's favorite fishing spots. >> it was a great connection, but mr. saint john was a very incredible witness. >> that story about getting jewel jewelry from phil bar. >> no jewelry from tara's home was found in possession of phil bar. >> anyway, bar told

investigators tara was fine when he left her house that afternoon, but questions went on and on and phil bar who had a business to run didn't appreciate that kind of attenti attenti attention. bar complained to a local nbc reporter about it. >> it's been stressful. i realize the police are doing their job and looking into things. nonetheless, i feel like i've been harassed. >> several times he himself confronted the detectives. insisted he was innocent. i am telling you the truth i had nothing to do with this girl's disappearance. i'm getting the shaft here. >> it was a problem. detectives certainly had suspicions, but evidence, there was none. and most everyone they questioned who knew bar, was a bit shady. hard to believe. prosecutor concluded he simply didn't have enough to make a charge stick. >> the dna evidence in this case

that was collected from the or was not relevant back to to this case. there was no indication that the perpetrators had left blood or a body fluid at the home. >> and so, cases typically go cold when you run out of leads. when you run out of information. you run out of ideas. >> tara's mother sharon again, and, again, demanded to know what, if anything, was going on. prosecutor feinberg had no choice. he couldn't tell her. the frustration was clear. you could see it on her face. hear it in her voice. the family was devastated and they wanted answers. i can understand that.

>> she fought and fought and fought for justice. jus for tara and as sharon would say, my tara. she's always said, my tara. >> justice for tara was just not happening. in fact, it was growing cold. stone cold. eventually, mike retired. as did these cops up north. retired and moved to sunny florida. >> got very bored. >> >> coming up. i always felt this was a case that could be solved. >> enter a cold case squad.

could they do what no one else had. >> how important was that? >> extremely important. >> when "dateline" continues. one bottle has the grease cleaning power of three bottles of this other liquid. a drop of dawn and grease is gone. oh! there's one.a "the sea cow"" manatees in novelty ts? surprising. what's "come at me bro?" it's something you say to a friend. what's not surprising? how much money matt saved by switching to geico. fifteen minutes could save you fifteen percent or more.

tara's family struggled. >> it was hard. i was robbed of my sister. i had to grow up without one. >> in 2003 t after six years together, sharon and keith finally got heard.

>> when i was getting ready to walk down the aisle, i was very sad because my baby girl wasn't going to be in that wedding party, but she was there. we made sure she was there. >> we had a big big picture made up of her. >> but the anger remained. and intense frustration as year after year, sharon demanded answers and didn't get them. in 2008. almost seven years of the murder, appeared on a crime stoppers video. i want to know how they wake up in the morning. how do they go on with their life knowing they did this for a person. don't think for a minute you got away with this because one day and i truly believe this, one day there's going to be a knock at that door and they're going be in cuffs and that's what i want. >> nothing came of it. the whole world had moved on, forgotten apparently, but then a

year later, 2009, punta gorda got a new sheriff and he thought some of the unsolved cases in town needed a new look and called upon the retired detective mike. these two who had been detectives up north before they too retired and moved to punta gorda. mike and kirk. >> i moved to florida and came down here to hunt and fish and play golf and go boating and go to the beach and just relax. and that lasted a couple months. got very bored. >> and so three bored exdetectives put on badges again to form the sheriff's first official cold case unit and decided early on, they would work on tara's case. prosecutor feinberg was finally optimistic. sort of. >> i always felt that this was a case that could be solved. if it had a new set of eyes, it

had somebody that could put the case together, connect all of the dots. >> what requests did you make of them. >> we wanted to know more about every piece of evidence, every -- we had to rule out every piece of dna in that house. so it was closing doors, it was excluding other people. >> you have to learn from looking in the files. >> that's what the three did. as a large photo of tara kept watch, again, there was no dna to help them. all they had really were lingering suspicions about the workman who went to tara's house the day she vanished. phil bar t guy who owned the septic tank business, his helper that day and their buddy, pee-wee saint john, but nothing proved anything. kirk, we call him the scribe. he organized it in a way that was easier to understand sd. >> what had been difficult to

understand. >> you didn't know what we could get into court. >> you couldn't figure it out because it was a miss. >> had to try to do the analysis on it. that's what took so long. >> an awful lot of detective work amounts to a lot of reading. all were followed up. detective chased down a 2001 walmart receipt, minor forgettable purchase except the time stamp on the receipt cast serious doubt on phil bar's all a all . he overheard them talking about killing this girl. he heard david mcman say we shouldn't have done that girl that way. if i don't get out of town, i'm going to spend the rest of my life in jail. phillip said something similar.

pee-wee is saying i've only seen a body. bar tells him shut up, we're all going to end up in prison. >> somebody with credibility. >> better than we had before. >> overall, key problem remained. >> terrible witnesses. >> meaning detective spoke with other people who had also heard the men talk about the murder, but they were not the type of jury would likely believe u much of what they said sounded like drug and booze soaked gossip. wasn't enough to support charging pee-wee, but thought the prosecutor, maybe he could find a way to go after bar and mcman. he had an idea. bring some of the key witnesses before a grand jury just to see who passed the credibility test and who didn't. >> i've prosecuted over 100 homicide cases and the compl complexity and amount of information we have to review to determine if we can prosecute this case was the most i had

ever seen. >> the idea worked. grandy indicted both for tara's murder. dave was arrested in maryland where he grew up. u.s. marshals mounted a man hunt for phil bar. >> kind of lost track of him. we were then able to locate phil in the vermont area very close to the canadian border where we think he had fled with the intent possibly of leaving the country. >> but the case against the men needed more. and so, the cold case team kept investigating and in 2014, one of them came across a name buried deep in an old file. right after tara disappeared next door neighborhood told investigators she saw bar and another man at tara's house that day. couldn't see much. her view was blocked by a fence. that went no where then.

except the neighbor happened to mention that her sister-in-law had been visiting. >> mike said i know someone by that name. so mike then went out and located her and spoke to her. >> what did she have to say. >> she floored me. >> why, that visitor was not blocked by the fence like her relatives were. she had been sitting in full view not more than 15 yards from tara's front door. and she saw a lot. >> she did see the vehicle pull in a couple different times. then the second time she saw the vehicle there, it was backed up to the front door and the two guys got out and opened the tailgate and walking back and forth inside the front door. >> how important was that in the -- >> extremely important. she identified david as being at the house with bar. she identified him there at a time when the pickup truck was

backed up to the front door. what other reason was that pickup truck backed up to the front door other than to take tara out of that house. >> you realize how close it is. >> we went out to the house to get a better idea of what this woman was sitting and what she could have seen. >> so she's sitting right here. >> that's like 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, like maybe a dozen steps away where this truck is parked. >> yes. that's close. >> it's very close. >> so if the back of the truck, it would have been how far from the door, like right up to the door like that. >> that's correct. in this general area on the outside track, tire track, was found the hair ribbons. >> wait out here. >> right out here. >> so suggesting that they put her in the back of the truck and the hair ribbons came loose as

they were putting her there or driving away. >> that would be a pretty good explanation. >> this makes it all more real when you see how close this must have been. the woman said she didn't actually see what the men were doing because the cab of the truck blocked her view, but still this was way more than they had before. and finally, 14 years after tara vanished, bar and david were going on trial for her murder. >> what had happened at the house that day? a jury finally hears the story. >> we believe she confronted them. >> a mother's perseverance brought the case this far. >> she fought and fought and fought. >> would a verdict bring justice at last? when "dateline" continues. and. robitussin delivers fast, powerful relief to fight your cough in 12 hour shifts. robitussin 12 hour cough relief,

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>> reporter: it was october 2015 when the trials began. 14 years almost to the day since tara's life ended. >> she's only a year younger than me, so when i think back to where i was in 2001, i was just finishing college and obviously that was a goal of hers. so i did feel a connection to her and thinking about her and where she would have been at my age now. >> reporter: and the defendant

is now on trial. phil bar owned a septic tank repair business. dave mcmannis was his helper the day tara disappeared. bar used his business a cover for stealing from the homes of unsuspecting customers. and here is what happened, said the state, that 1st of october 2001. tara's landlord asked bar for a rea pair estimate. bar and his helper mcmannis began their work day by smoking crack. around noon, four hours before veronica arrive home from school, the men most likely knocked on the door and tara let them in, unaware they had robbery, not work, on their minds. >> dave mcmannis was taking the property while bars was sdrathing her in the bathroom. we believe she found out. she heard something or saw something that mr. mcmannis was doing where he was in a place where he shouldn't have been and she confronted him. and two people with impaired

minds do things that normal people wouldn't do. and their solution to that was to kill her. >> the woman who had been sitting out in the front yard told the jury how the two men had been laughing and joking when they arrived, but later when she saw them backing their truck up to tara's front door, breaking that small palm tree in the process -- >> it was almost like they had a mission, that they had a plan and one went straight to the tailgate and put the tailgate down of the truck and the other went straight to the front door. >> all business. >> all business. >> reporter: that, said the prosecutor, is when they cleaned up and took tara's body in a bed sheet, loaded it into the truck, and waited for dark when one or both of them dumped her body in the woods. but to tell that story took two long trials, each peopled by witnesses the jury might not think were very credible. people who supposedly heard bar and mcmannis say things like -- >> "we raped and killed the

girl." >> "they're not gonna find her." >> "i'm going to kill you like i killed the girl in florida." "the girl i killed was 20." >> reporter: one witness testified about overhearing a conversation between barr and mcmannis. >> phillip barr was saying to david mcmannis, "i didn't want to kill her." and she overheard david mcmannis respond, "she had to die." >> reporter: not very believable, said the defense attorneys. just people making things up, said barr's lawyer, mark de sisto. >> we contended that those conversations never took place. >> reporter: some of those witnesses were inmates, too, snitches. >> i never met a confidential informant that's gonna inform just 'cause he wants to be a nice guy or a good citizen. there's always something in it for him. >> reporter: that woman, the star witness found by the cold case team, who said she saw the two men coming and going from tara's house? >> could it be she made herself believe this over so much of a time to make sure the bad guy goes away? >> reporter: dave mcmannis's attorney, michael bross, said his view those detectives focused on the wrong man.

said phil barr's accomplice must have been peewee st. john, the man who'd turned in jewelry three days after tara went missing. >> there's enough circumstantial evidence to believe that he was involved if not in the murder, but definitely in the complicity to cover it up. >> reporter: the only thing that dave mcmannis was guilty of, said bross was being a sarcastic guy. >> the majority of the statements that were made were sarcasm at best. so if he's guilty -- >> it's a claim. yeah. and that's kind of an easy out for saying terrible things, isn't it? >> well, it was inappropriate statements, if said at all. david is known to be a jokester and sarcastic. even during the course of the trial, he would say things that were sarcastic. >> reporter: the trials, two of them, dragged on for more than 15 months with delay after delay in a case that had taken more than 15 years to get to this point. sharon and keith's marriage didn't make it that long.

but they attended both trials together. >> we started this together, we're going to finish it together, no matter what. >> reporter: and after all that time? in each case, deliberations took less than 90 minutes. the verdicts: guilty. both men were sentenced to life in prison without parole. mcmannis has filed an appeal; barr lost his. >> i think everybody would agree that but for sharon, neither trial would've taken place. she fought and fought and fought for justice. >> reporter: tara's little sister veronica has two children of her own now. >> they know their aunt tara. they have necklaces with her pictures on it. and my daughter, you would think that she had met her. she dreams about her. >> never met her, but they love her. that warms my heart.

>> reporter: a few weeks after the trials were over, the prosecutors, detectives and their spouses got together for dinner with sharon, keith and veronica. detective mehl made a presentation. >> she was a fighter and she kept us fighting for her, for you and your family. >> they've had the picture hanging in their office for a very long time. and they -- they passed it onto me. i could look at it now and go, "we did it. we did it." >> you've given us a new chapter in our life. >> reporter: the family gave the cold case detectives and prosecutors gifts as well. each was engraved: "justice for tara." >> they put in so much hard work and time and respect, compassion. so we wanna give them a little

token of our appreciation and love for everything they've done. they gave tara peace and justice. >> that's all for this edition of "dateline." i'm craig melvin. thank you for watching. i'm craig medical videotape. >> and i'm natalie morales. >> and this is "dateline." she was crying and crying. i said what's wrong? she said debbie is dead. >> a dark house, a husband with a gun, a wife dead on the floor. >> make sure that she is still breathing. >> i don't think she is. >> there was no question who killed h