♪ you'll never know dear, how much i love you ♪ >> we are at this point the constant in her life. we want her to feel protected, loved, everything that i know her mom would have given her. that's all for this edition of "dateline." i'm natalie morales, thank you for watching. i'm craig melvin. >> i'm natalie morales. >> and this is "dateline." if you admit that she's never coming home, it's like you're admitting defeat. or that she's dead. >> a hard working life, a loving mother and a woman with a complicated love life. >> working and spent sometime after hours together. >> kathy was trying to break off the relationship. >> the secret was out. replaced by a mystery.

>> she never returned from lunch. >> we considered her h us may have known her wife is having an affair. >> where was she? >> nearly 30 years, 60 investigators and it all kept coming back to one elusive suspect. >> just very calmly said i know how to get rid of a body so it would never ever be found. >> to him, i think murder is something that can be done over a lunch hour. >> just a heart beat away from not having a case. it was now or never situation. hello and welcome to dateline. when kathy didn't appear, they didn't know if they were dealing with cold blooded murder. with little evidence, the trail was cold. they dusted off the old files.

investigators couldn't solve her case then, could he help solve it now? is josh with "she didn't come home." time can be like a river, events streaming by. most barely make a ripple but a few like the sudden loss of a close friend, a child or parent have a way of circling back upon us in a loot of memory and regret. that's the way it been for john heckle and his sister eli salis since that completely normal morning in 1991 when their mom kathy heckle kissed them good-bye, left for work and never returned. do you remember her leaving that morning? >> yeah. i mean, like any other day.

same routine all the time, every time she left us, he kilssed us good-bye. >> a july morning, alisha 13 and john then 9 were home for summer vacation. a little after 9:00 a.m., alisha says her mom called from her job. >> we discussed having dinner and having pork chops. >> uh-huh august. yeah, because that was one of my favorite things she cooked. >> later, they tried to contact their mom at work. >> one of the times we tried to call her was around lunchtime and she had left for lunch. >> yeah. >> and then we waited and called after lunch and she still wasn't back to work yet. >> at 40, kathy heckle spent half her life working at the local paper plant in lock haven, pennsylvania s

pennsylvania. >> i can't remember who i was speaking to but you can hear in their voice there was concern she hadn't come back yet. >> you picked that up? >> yeah, it was not typical for her to not come back and not tell anybody. >> with their dad out of town, they kept trying to reach their mom. nothing. at about 6:30 that evening, alisha called her grandparents, clearance and margaret. >> i answered the phone. it was alisha. she said gram, can you get us some milk. i said what do you mean, can i get you some milk? she said mom didn't come home yet and we don't have any milk. i said alisha, i will be right there. >> and you're thinking what? >> i didn't know what to think, but as a mother, you know this is something bad. something very bad. >> that night, kathy's mother and father contacted everyone they could think of. >> no one had heard from her and that was -- i remember picking

up on that, that they seemed worried. >> i mean, you could just tell. >> your grandparents were acting differently. >> uh-huh. >> their dad john was in upstate new york that monday training with his national guard unit. he didn't learn his wife was missing until the next day. you get that phone call. it's your mom. >> yeah. >> what did she say? >> just the conversation was kathy didn't come home from work on monday night and they didn't know where she was. >> and now it's tuesday. >> now it's tuesday evening. >> you think what? >> i said time to call the state police. >> with the permission of his commanding officer, john heckle immediately left for home. he had menplenty of time to thi on the 5.5 hour ride. he thought about when kathy donated a kidney to save her brother's life and the december day in 1972 when he first gazed

at kathy. >> she just had the biggest brown eyes you could look into. >> six months later, they were married. >> like any marriage, i think we had our ups and downs but overall, i was happy about the fact i didn't have to worry about my family with kathy. >> you thought you were going to stay married forever? >> yes. >> the problem was, john was already married to the military. john's career frequently took him away from home. sometimes for weeks at a time. kathy didn't like that. and john says his wife of 18 years seemed to have that on her mind when she dropped him off for his latest guard assignment. >> she asked me why i had to be there so early, which didn't make sense to me because i was always the first one there. and i said it's my job. >> she didn't want you to go? >> she didn't say i don't want you to go. >> but you felt it? >> i could feel that something was wrong. the look on her face when she

said it, it just didn't sit right with me. >> now kathy was missing and her disappearance would eventually drag into the open secrets that some in and around lock haven would have rather kept hidden. there was no doubt kathy took good care of her family, but as investigators soon learned, this wife and mother was also a woman who was sometimes lonely. coming up. >> i ask her mom was she seeing anyone? she said she reestablished contact with an old friend from school. >> and that old friend had a confession to make. >> he did admit they had had a physical relationship and had only been a few days before she disappeared. >> when "dateline" continues. e disappeared. >> when "dateline" continues broken windshield... take 1...

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by the time john heckle returned from national guard training, his wife kathy had been missing about 36 hours. >> when my dad came back, he was the one who told us we can't find your mom. we don't know where your mom is. and that was the first time i've ever seen my dad cry. and i knew the worst had definitely happened. >> that was the first time i saw my dad cry, too, and you know,

he was always this big strong man and when you see that, you -- it's like okay. this is not good. >> that's good to be a terrible thing to tell your kids because they want you to tell them this is going to be okay. >> dad always had all the answers. >> and you can't tell them this is going to be okay? >> no, you don't want fabrication. >> across town that morning, pennsylvania state trooper fred was on the case. his first call was to margaret dolan, kathy's mom. >> i remember asking if she noticed any changes in her or her demeanor, in the last four to six weeks she wasn't herself. >> then the trooper asked one of those probing and indelicate questions cops have to ask. >> i ask her mom if she had any indication that she was seeing anyone and she said she reestablished contact with an

old acquaintance, an old friend from school. >> that man's name was dennis taylor. he and kathy recently reconnected at a wedding. taylor was singing and playing guitar. the trooper jotted down the name dennis taylor with the idea of calling him later. next, he dialled the paper plant where kathy was last seen. one of kathy's co-workers picked up the phone. >> she corroborated what her mom said, she had been different in the last few weeks, personality seemed quieter, maybe. >> then he asked question number two. >> i also asked if she thought she may have been having an affair or seeing anyone and she said she had no evidence but she suspect the she may have been. >> the co-worker wasn't talking about kathy's friend dennis taylor, she was talking about a man at the plant named lloyd groves. >> they played on the same volleyball team and spent sometime after hours together and i think the closeness of the

two suspected they may be. >> the trooper learned groves was the quiet type, married with children. sometimes he led plant tours and gave paper making presentations at local schools. a call to grove's office revealed he wasn't in yet so the trooper left a call back message and not long after the trooper says, mr. groves showed up in person at the state mpolice barracks. >> he was calm. he said he knew her and they worked in the same office areas. he said they were friends. i did ask him if he had any type of physical relationship with her and he said no. >> shortly after lloyd groves left the state police barracks, the other man on trooper caldwell's list walked in. dennis taylor. the guitar man like groves, taylor was a married man with children and right off the bat he told the trooper he had a confession to make. >> he did admit that they had had a physical relationship briefly and it had only been a

few days before she disappeared, as i recall, the first physical contact. >> like a bamusician that knows audience is hanging on every lyric. the guitar man kept singing to the cops. taylor told the trooper kathy called him at work the day she disappeared. her voice had a strange tone. >> she called him just before lunchtime and was upset or anxious and said that she had something she wanted to talk to him about and he was busy and said he can't talk and he'd call back. he tried to call back sometime later but zshe'd gone to lunch. >> taylor played golf that afternoon and planned to meet up with her later that night. >> then he goes to the location they were going to meet. kathy doesn't show up. he was concerned something may have happened. >> it was then the guitar man struck a familiar chord. kathy heckle he said had also been seeing another man, a guy

named lloyd groves. according to taylor, this fellow groves was a bit of a stalker. >> he said he had met kathy at a park, a nearby park. he said that there was a gray van parked near by and recalled seeing the man and the next time he talked to kathy, did you see that van? that was lloyd and he was following her. >> was the guitar man being helpful or was he trying to implicate a rival to save his own skin? the trooper knew this much, if kathy heckle had been juggling simultaneous affairs with married men, there could be a lot of people who might have wanted her to disappear including her husband. >> he was definitely a person of interest. >> exactly how much did john heckle know about what was going on in his wife's life? >> coming up, were police looking for a run away wife or her killer? >> there were no answers and that was the worst part.

>> did you feel like you were ever a suspect? >> never worried about it. i knew they were trying to find where ckathy was and what happened and if that included questioning me, i have no problems with that. >> when "dateline" continues. h >> when "dateline" continues advil targets pain at the source... ...while acetaminophen blocks pain signals. the future of pain relief is here. new advil dual action. this is my body of proof. proof of less joint pain and clearer skin. proof that i can fight psoriatic arthritis... ...with humira. humira targets and blocks a specific source of inflammation that contributes to both joint and skin symptoms. it's proven to help relieve pain, stop further irreversible joint damage and clear skin in many adults. humira is the number one prescribed biologic for psoriatic arthritis. humira can lower your ability to fight infections.

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any investigation in which someone goes missing or turns up dead just about guarantees

family members will be considered suspects. cat thou kathy heckle's husband john was no exception. >> we considered john may have known his wife was having an affair and he may have taken some action on his own. >> did you feel like you were ever a suspect. >> never worried about it. i knew they were trying to find where kathy was and what had happened and if they included questioning me, i have no problems with that. >> at some point you said we believe she was having a relationship with some other people. was that shocking to hear? >> it was surprising because that wasn't the way kathy was. >> in his interview, he noticed a change in his wife's demeanor and wondered if she was having an affair. >> he was emotional. there was times john and i sat together with my arm around him and he would cry and he was concerned about his wife and i felt very bad for the man. >> john heckle's alibi checked

out and police found in evidence he'd paid anyone to hurt his wife. by now, kathy had been missing for two full days. and john heckle feared the worst. >> kathy heckle would never on this earth abandon those two children. >> trooper caldwell still didn't know if she was working the missing person's case, abduction or homicide and on the evening of the third day, investigators got a big break. they found the car parked behind the local hospital. the keys were missing. >> i think they recovered one point but i don't know it was identified. it was from the exterior of the car. >> investigators were pretty sure someone, possibly her killer had moved her car to the hospital parking lot and then the case hit a dead end. days turned to weeks.

those weeks stretched into months. kathy heckle was somewhere in the wind. >> we had cadaver dogs come down often and we had troopers come out and look for retamains or whatever. >> while some investigators focused on finding kathy heckle, others focused on finding evidence of a crime. as far as investigators could tell, the guitar man dennis taylor had been honest confessing his affair and lloyd groves seemed dodging. troopers served lloyd grove's home, office and van and while some items of interest were found, the local prols cal pros didn't think police had enough for an arrest. >> there was a big hole. >> ted mcknight was clinton county district attorney at the time. >> if you can imagine a yardstick and probable cause is probably at the two-inch mark and beyond a reasonable doubt is probably the 34-inch mark, and

everything else in between is the difference between are you going to get a conviction or aren't you? >> which means you don't go forward unless you're reasonably sure you have evidence for a conviction? >> correct. >> he said the fact her body had not been found is a big problem. >> how do we prove beyond a reasonable doubt that she is dead if she was killed? where did the killing occur? county did it occur in? >> maybe it's not your jurisdiction? >> correct. >> the disappearance was a defining event. >> i remember being depressed. i didn't know what that meant when i was 9 years old but just thinking about how low and sad i felt all of the time. >> i think people deal with things differently and i certainly chose, i think, the avoiding method. >> not think about it. >> not think about it. >> there were no answers and that was the worst part. >> in 1998 seven years after

kathy disappeared, john heckle had his wife declared legally dead. that did not make the mystery any easier for him to understand. can you accept the idea there were needs maybe she felt she had to meet with men who were not you, but that she still loved you? >> oh, no, i believe she did love me. >> she had a secret life that she wasn't showing anybody else. >> you don't know how long that secret life was and feeter nei i. i won't hate her for being human. >> do you blame yourself? >> a it wilittle bit. >> 22 summers came and went. john heckle remarried. the kids grew up. they started new lives out west. alisha became a ski pro. john a fishing guide.

but through it all, their mother was never far from their thoughts. >> she missed all those childhood memories. i mean, things like going to the prom and boyfriends and kisses and just everything. >> she missed our weddings. i mean, she missed our graduations. she doesn't know her only grandchild. >> and you probably thought about her each one of those. >> uh-huh. >> auguuh-huh. >> clinton county never forgot her. she'd become a part of history that wouldn't go away and as one generation of law men retired, another rose to take up the unfinished business and discovered enticing details buried in a very old file. coming up.

>> when i obtained this case, it was 22 years old. >> and had passed through a lot of other hands. >> 60 other investigators. >> he was 8 when kathy disappeared. now, he was in charge of her case. >> what i remember growing up is where was she? where was kathy at during all this time? >> and a leading suspect suddenly leaves town. >> about three weeks after the disappearance of kathy, he moved his family back to beaver p.a. >> when "dateline" continues. we with our almond trees in our blue diamond orchard in california. my parents' job is to look after them. and it's my job to test the product. the best almonds make the best almondmilk. blue diamond almond breeze. special guest flo challenges the hand models to show off the ease of comparing rates with progressive's home quote explorer. international hand model jon-jon gets personal. your wayward pinky is grotesque. then a high stakes patty-cake battle royale

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>> good evening, i'm cori coffin. one day after reaching 20 million infections, the united states is closing in on 350,000 deaths from covid-19. a third state, florida has reported a case of the new strain of coronavirus that's thought to be more contagious and the u.s. senate has adjourned until sunday all be insuring they send americans

$2,000 covid relief checks is dead. back to "dateline". welcome back to "dateline." i'm natalie morales. they suspected kathy heckle was murdered but with no body and little evidence, the case went into a deep freeze for decades. cat thou kathy's family had never been able to shake the chill of their inconceivable loss but a new detective was about to turn up the heat. here again is josh with "she didn't come home." >> for more than 20 years, kathy heckle's children lived with a feeling of unfocussed fear. >> it's an unsettling feeling that an unsettling feeling of fear that essentially something great in my life can be taken away at any moment. >> and you think that can all be traced back to your mom? >> absolutely.

>> absolutely. >> for their father john, those were years spent struggling to let go and move on. >> i talked to kathy a lot about it. >> what do you say to her? >> just talk. just ramble on. >> you just start talking to her out loud? >> yeah. something will come up that will remind me of something we did. >> law enforcement had not forgotten kathy heckle. in the summer of 2013, a native son inherited the case, state police investigator curtis confer. >> when i obtained this case it was 22 years old. >> and passed through a lot of hands. >> 60 other investigators. >> you thought i'll close it or be the 61st and in awhile. there will be a 62nd. >> it was 400 pages of reports

and i just read it. >> to this 61st investigators, the reports were riveting. he heard the story as a child and had a connection to lloyd groves. >> he came to my elementary school and did a presentation on making paper. >> you saw a photo of him giving those -- >> i went you know what? ir remember h i remember him doing our school. >> he was convinced at the time this picture was taken, lloyd groves was having an affair with kathy heckle. only two months later, investigators considered groves a suspect in her disappearance. >> what i remember growing up is where was she? where was kathy at during all this time? john heckle was my brother's soccer coach. >> the case files were chalked full of details. a gun found in lloyd grove's desk drawer, ammo found in his van, a curious chunk of carpet missing from the back of the van. >> what was lloyd's explanation

for the carpet? >> in 1991 he said the kids were playing with tar and oil and got tar and oil in that section of the van. >> confirmed by anybody? >> no, it was not. >> that wasn't the only thing to jump off the page. the original investigators had a witness who had reported seeing kathy heckle and lloyd groves together in his parked van many times and there was evidence that on the day kathy heckle never returned from lunch loyal came back so late he missed a 2:00 p.m. meeting. >> something that the original investigators found was that lloyd groves read a letter to his wife announcing to the family that he was going to be aested for the murder of kathy heckle. >> this is right after the disappearance? >> right after the disappearance and wrote detailed notes to his wife how to take care of the tractor, how to take care of the car. >> this is a guy who likes to plan. >> he is planner, yes,

meticulous. >> but he's not arrested. he's wrong. >> yeah, he was not arrested. about three weeks after the disappearance of kathy, he moved his family back to beaver b.a. and eventually sold his home loving a lot of his personal items at his home. >> when he finished reading the case file, confer called the local fbi officer looking for items connected to the case. it was then he connected with mike a veteran state trooper assigned to a joint terrorism task force. after confer explained what he was after, hudson asked to see the file. >> i thought it was a very good case. i felt that there was, you know, a very real suspect. >> when hudson's partner fbi agent and former prosecutor kyle moore read the file, he, too, was hooked. >> this was something that we wanted to do something about. we wanted to see if there is anyway that we could actually bring it to a conclusion. >> so within days of getting the

case, investigator number 61 had a team to help him. >> they had so much knowledge that i didn't have by the grace of god that they helped me with this case. >> time it became clear was not on their side. >> it was basically a now or never situation. i always felt we were a heart beat away from losing a witness to not having a case. >> as they worked the case, the investigators knew they had one ace in the hole. in 1991 specs of blood had been found in lloyd grove's van, advanced dna tests were done in 2004. >> based off the fact there wasn't a dna sample from the victim, they essentially had to construct one from the victim's mother and father and it was essentially building the victim's dna profile. >> that dna test proved the blood was kathy heckle's but trooper confer says it seems that bit of evidence fell through the cracks. because the lead investigator and primary prosecutor at the

time took medical leave. one thing was clear to all three of the new investigators. this case needed more resources and more prosecutor muscle than clinton county possessed. >> the district attorney relinquished the case to the attorney general's office and the d.a. at the time agreed. >> in early 2014 a grand jury was impanelled to review the evidence. hudson, moore and confer hit the road. >> so we did interviews in different states and traveled the country a little bit. >> the new investigators tracked down old witnesses and even found a new one, a man who remembered an argument between kathy heckle and lloyd groves on the day she went missing. the question was did police have enough to make an arrest? coming up.

>> i got to know this family. i was worried a lot about them because i knew this would be an ugly trial. >> will it be kathy who ends up on trial? >> every single indiscretion of hers would be announced in open court. >> she was going to be punished for being murdered. >> when "dateline" continues. g >> when "dateline" continues introducing a revolution in the world of pain relief:

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fields. the past is always present there. but for john, no peace could be found here as long as his wife's killer walked free. >> i would always say where are we? how close are we to getting him arrested? >> and police would say the d.a. won't go forward? >> yeah, it's more like we need more. >> the investigators went looking for more. they tracked down new witnesses and dug deep looking for kathy heckle's body, which they never found. even so, on january 28th, 2015, a grand jury indicted lloyd groves for murder. largely on the strength of the same evidence that had been in the files all along. >> it was literally just like television. we got there early like 5:00 and sat up as he was walking to his car, we rolled up, jumped out and when i put the handcuffs on him, i said you're under arrest

for the murder of kathy heckle. >> did he say anything? >> yeah, he told his son he needed to get a different ride to work. >> so -- >> it really didn't phase him. >> low and behold lloyd groves was arrested. what was that like to hear? >> thankfulness that we were getting somewhere. >> still a long way to go? >> yeah, still a long way to go. >> in many ways, the arrest of 65-year-old lloyd groves was the easy part, legal ma noo mal man delayed the trial and gave time to poke holes in the prosecution's case. >> this case had holes to drive trucks through. >> tom and his wife amy were the defense teams investigators. >> we were in the case for nearly four years. we actually talked about him -- i would guarantee every day. >> every day. >> tom a former cop knew how to look for flaws in the police work. amy a lock haven native had

grown up with the kathy heckle story. >> talk to anyone in town, they would all say lloyd killed her and put her in acid and dissolved her body. that was the working theory for years. >> tom says the files he read didn't prove any of that. in fact, he says he found a silver bullet in those piles of documents. >> we've actually discovered that in the police reports, in medical records that she had cut her finger at work. it was bleeding so badly that she had to get it treated through times and this was at the time that she was allegedly in lloyd's van every day. >> so if the prosecution planned to make a big deal out of a dna test showing kathy heckle's blood in lloyd grove's van, the defense response now would be so what fwl they think it came from kathy because lloyd killed her but here is kathy's blood because she cut herself at work. >> if there isn't reasonable doubt, what is? >> as the case went to trial in

2018, pennsylvania senior deputy attorney general daniel die knew the defense would do more then just attack their evidence. he feared think would attack kei kathy heckle. >> i got to knew the family. i was worried because i knew this would be an ugly trial. >> every indiscretion would be announced. >> she would be punished for being murdered. >> the prosecution's case almost entirely circumstantial began with kathy's children. >> it was a little difficult but felt good to be in front of lloyd groves and have him look at me and listen to my story. >> and how scary it was. >> uh-huh. >> uh-huh. >> according to friends and family, kathy heckle was a devoted daughter, a loving mom, at the same time, she was also restless. tell me what was going on in her

life at that time. >> her life at that time was a lonely life. john heckle is a good guy, but his first love was the military, and kathy was, you know, having affairs and one of them was with lloyd groves. >> another lover, the guitar man dennis taylor said kathy had told him all about that unraveling affair. >> kathy was trying to break off the relationship. we know that. lloyd did not want the relationship to end and he specifically wanted to meet for lunch on that day. >> did lloyd groves know about danny taylor? >> he did. we had evidence in the case that groves was following kathy. >> taylor testified kathy expressed fear about lloyd. >> right. >> raise your right hand. >> in a special hearing two former paper plant employees who had been in poor health had their trial testimony prerecorded. one said he'd over heard kathy heckle and lloyd groves arguing the day kathy went missing. >> just loud. >> the other said she saw lloyd

groves staring daggers at kathy heckle as she left for lunch that day. >> his face was so red, just like he was terribly angry and he was looking at kathy. >> kathy pulls out. lloyd pulls out after. we believe that they did meet. that somehow, someway, kathy was going to one last meet to hear lloyd out and at that point lloyd shot her, shoved her in the van with a head wound. >> according to witnesses, groves was back at the plant sometime between 2:00 and 3:00 that afternoon. >> you think lloyd kills her, disposes of the body and gets back to work that day and act like nothing is wrong and gets away with it? >> i think it because he's smart and a good planner. to him, i think murder is something that can be done over a lunch hour. >> the prosecution wrapped up its case with two witnesses. people who only surfaced shortly before trial. the first was lloyd groves' now

ex-wife. >> there was something she had been holding back on telling for the past roughly 30 years and that was lloyd groves did come home over the work hour on july 15th -- >> something he almost never did. >> and changed out of his clothes and she never saw the condition the clothes were in. >> the next person to testify was this woman, gail taylor. she also had a story to tell that she'd kept to herself for decades. it was the mid-90s. taylor said she and groves worked together in ohio. according to taylor, she went to groves to vent after she discovered drugs in her son's room. >> i'm like i don't know what i'm going to do with this kid. he's going to get into trouble and end up dying if the drugs don't kill him, his mother will. lloyd was sitting at his desk and very calmly said, well, i know how to get rid of a body so it would never ever be found.

>> the defense is argument was he was joking? >> i sure wouldn't joke about being able to dispose a body if i was investigated for killing somebody and they never found the body. >> the prosecution closed the case by asking who but lloyd groves could have killed kathy heckle and in return, theedness stood ready to ask a provocative question of it own. could kathy heckle have simply run away? coming up. >> did you really think she lived past that day? >> i certainly have a reasonable doubt whether she died that day. >> would the jury have the same doubt? >> it was a nervous moment absolutely. >> when "dateline" continues. absolutely. >> when "dateline" continues but, when used at the first sign, abreva can get you back to being you in just 2 and a half days. be kinder to yourself and tougher on your cold sores.

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welcome back. daks after kathy heckel disappeared, loyd groves was on trial for her murder. prosecutors relied largely on circle evidence to make their case, including testimony from a woman who said loyd told her he could get rid of a body permanently. but loyd's attorneys insisted he was innocent and were ready to put kathy's love life in the spotlight to prove it. here's josh mankiewicz with the conclusion of "she didn't come home." >> the loyd groves defense team could hardly wait to make their case to the jury.

>> it was like you're playing cards and you have four aces, and you're waiting to play them. that's what we felt like over the last few years. >> george leply was one of two lawyers defending groves. >> i don't think there was enough evidence, and what evidence they did present had issues questioning whether it was reliable enough to justify taking the rest of a man's life away. >> for a defense team that had spent years reviewing police reports, one thing seemed obvious. >> when the police learned of something that implicated loyd, they were on top of it. whenever there was another avenue to pursue, it just kind of fell by the wayside. >> this was more about the police trying to prove that it was loyd groves that did this crime than it was about them trying to find out who killed kathy heckel if, indeed, she was killed. >> the defense argued the guitar man, dennis taylor, should have gotten a closer look. >> lesyes, she had an affair wi loyd. but she also was having an

affair with dennis taylor. >> reporter: taylor told police he played golf the afternoon kathy heckel went missing. >> they went to check his alibi out 13 months later, not right away. and when they go there, a log that he has to write in to show that he was golfing there, the pages are missing. isn't that convenient? >> and of course the defense argued kathy heckel's affairs could have also provided her husband with a motive for murder. weeks after kathy disappeared, the defense noted, john heckel discarded some of her personal items. >> her husband throws away her purse, her wallet, her photo i.d. it isn't that he throws it in a garbage can in front of his house where somebody might see it. it's in a dumpster in the back of the reserve base. >> you're saying that he wanted to conceal that? >> what more logical conclusion is there? >> did john heckel have something to hide? the defense didn't offer an answer for that, and john heckel says he doesn't remember much about those days. >> i don't recollect throwing anything like that out.

>> the defense even suggested that kathy heckel may not have died on july 15th, 1991. did you really think she lived past that day? >> i certainly have a reasonable doubt as to whether she died that day. >> to support that theory, the defense introduced statements john heckel made more than 20 years ago. in one, heckel said he thought his wife may have siphoned thousands of dollars from a joint bank account. in another, he asked investigators if a woman pictured in a swingers mac zega might be his bief. >> is there any argument that kathy heckel squirrelled away money, vanished, ran out on her husband and family and then posed for pictures in a swingers magazine that anybody could have seen? >> i certainly don't think it has been disproven beyond a reasonable doubt that that could have occurred. >> on the stand, john heckel said those decades-old statements had been the frantic musings of a desperate man.

>> i was grasping anything i could think of to try to find out what happened to my wife. >> the defense conceded groves did go home that day to change his shirt but said that was because he'd gotten dirty at the plant where he had to lead a tour for a group of children at 3:00 that afternoon. and that lunch hour trip home, they argued, simply made the prosecution's version of events even more unlikely. >> if you factored in all of the witnesses when they saw him at the plant, how does he have anywhere near enough time for him to have done what they claimed he did? >> for 27 years the question of what had happened to kathy heckel had hung over lock haven. now it was up to a clinton county jury to finally provide an answer. >> it was contentious. >> sean sanford, a toddler at the time kathy heckel disappeared, was the jury foreman. >> the very first vote we took was 7-5, 8-4 for guilty. i thought it was going to be the

other way for acquittal. >> why did you vote for acquittal on that first vote? >> if you looked at every piece of evidence individually, you could poke holes in all of it piece by piece. >> after breaking for the weekend, the jury returned on monday morning, rested but still deadlocked. >> there was one juror in particular who was voting for acquittal originally who couldn't get over the fact that he thought the prime suspect should be john heckel. >> over and over jurors reviewed and discussed the evidence. then just before 3:00 that afternoon, jurors notified the judge they had reached a verdict. >> it was a nervous moment absolutely. i was nervous, and we were all holding hands. >> on the charge of first degree or premeditated murder, the verdict was not guilty. then in what seemed to be a compromise decision, the jury found groves guilty of third-degree murder, which is legally considered a spontaneous act in the heat of the moment.

you look at groves during that time? >> no. i spent more time looking at kathy's picture and crying. >> in a letter to "dateline," loyd groves once again denied ever having had an affair with kathy heckel and said he'd been wrongly convicted. at the age of 69, groves was formally sentenced to serve 10 to 20 years in prison. >> even with the third-degree sentencing, he'll still spend the rest of his life in prison. >> that's enough for you? >> mm-hmm. >> mm-hmm. >> it's been more than a quarter century since the summer morning when kathy heckel kissed her children good-bye. and although their wait for justice is finally over, they're still no closer to knowing where their mother is than they were on that summer night in 1991 when she didn't come home. so unless your mom's remains are found accidentally, you might

not ever know. are you going to be okay with that? >> we have to live with it. i mean it's sad, and it's disappointing that we will never know or we may never know. but we have to be okay with it. >> that's all for this edition of "dateline." i'm natalie morales. thank you for watching. >> announcer: this is an msnbc special presentation. >> 36-year-old male unconscious. >> i said, tell me. eddie's dead. what did he do? he did an oxy, an oxycontin. what the hell's an oxycontin? >> before covid-19 changed everything, america was grappling with a different kind of epidemic. >> the presidentec