i'm craig melvin. >> and i'm natalie morales. >> and this is "dateline." >> she was a married mother of two. she was a kindergarten teacher. there was nothing about her life that would raise any red flags. >> she amazed them all. her whole group of girlfriends at the gym. >> she was totally dedicated. >> so, heather, turn around. you've gotten smaller. >> a stunning 200-pound weight loss and a whole new life came with t. >> you could see that transformation. you could see the confidence in her. >> then she was gone. missing at school. >> i called all the girlfriends. >> we're going to find you one way or the other. >> the clues.

an email to her husband and a secret she was reluctant to share. >> kind of a bombshell. heather was possibly seeing another man. >> what was really behind her sudden disappearance? that would be the most mind-blowing twist of all. >> do you think that heather would still be alive if she hadn't gone through this transformation? >> gosh. >> welcome to "dateline." heather jones, a motivational teacher, had shed pounds and her past. she was starting to live the life of which she dreamed. then suddenly she vanished. here's andrea canning with, "the last dance." >> there's a place in downtown memphis, tennessee, a hot spot not far from nearby beale street. they don't play the memphis

blues in this club. in this sultry darkness of the rumba room, bodies sway to the beat of latin sounds. in april, 2013, a woman named heather jones came in with her friend to dance the night away, wearing a brand-new dress. how did she look that night? >> she had her head up so high, her shoulders back and just beaming. she felt absolutely beautiful. >> there was a time not too long ago when heather didn't feel very beautiful at all. but on this evening she had the night of her life. >> she really didn't sit down very much. she was, um, being spun around and danced. >> just two nights later, everything spun out of control. >> breaking news about a missing germantown teacher. >> heather jones suddenly and inexplicably disappeared from her home. >> her car is in her driveway. her purse, keys and cell phone are missing. >> thinking of her being scared

and hurt made you sick. >> what happened? the answer was sickening. >> you think, oh, my god, is that her? >> the why, more twisted and surprising than anyone could fathom. >> that's not normal. it's not natural. it's not right. >> how could all this darkness fall on a woman so sunny? >> i loved her. i loved her energy. she was -- if you can think of like a color that is a person, like she would be bright yellow. >> friends say heather could always light up a room. her cousin, diane perry, says that upbeat attitude is what drew them together from the time they were young. you two are more like sisters. >> definitely very, very close. >> a bond that only grew as teenagers when heather moved from florida to tennessee, closer to diane. they became an inseparable pair and even went to college timo e together in memphis.

it's only fitting diane was there heather fell instantly in love with a guy named chris jones. >> heather went to a new year's eve party in 1999. she came home and we sat down and talked and giggled about this new guy she had met, chris. >> diane recalls that heather found chris fascinating. >> she dazzled over his knowledge of wine, just his knowledge of the world. >> she liked that? >> she loved that. she absolutely loved that. >> diane was surprised to see how fast the new couple was moving. within weeks heather and chris were living together. and not long after, diane noticed a change in her cousin, a big one. >> they got very involved in a lot of online gaming and some things like that. and so they had a very, very sedentary life-style so that's when she gained, i would say, about 250 pounds. >> 250 pounds over how much time are we talking about? >> maybe a year and a half. i mean, it was a very short amount of time. >> it's life changing. >> it was tough. >> did she seem depressed about the weight gain?

>> absolutely, yes. >> her cousin recalls chris said he didn't mind what size heather was a few years into their relationship. he asked heather to marry him and it seemed his love didn't wave eras the numbers on the scale continued to rise after a the birth of their two children. did he make her feel good? >> yes, she felt beautiful, she felt loved, she felt taken care of. >> chris also took on the role as stay-at-home dad while heather worked and attended college part time. >> it took her ten years to get her degree from college. and it was almost to the day that she graduated from college that everything changed. >> at one point before graduation, heather tipped the scales at 400 pounds, but diane says that hard-won diploma now became a road map to heather pointing her to a brighter and lighter future. >> she had so much more confidence. she saw a different life for

herself. she immediately started working on her weight. >> step up. here we go. >> that's when she found a special group of new friends. women like her who joined this high-powered dance exercise class each week to improve their physiques and their lives. keri cooper was heather's dance instructor. >> you leave your job, leave that stress behind, you come here it's luke happy hour. >> everyone noticed that happy hours was doing wonders for her. >> heather, turn around. i said, you've gotten smaller. she's like, yeah. >> were the pounds melting off of her? >> melting. >> in front of your -- >> melting off. >> it was nothing short of a total transformation. in 18 short months, she went from this to this. >> i remember that she brought a picture of a before and then where she was now and was so proud. she was like, look what i've done. she was so proud of herself. >> no one was surprised when heather soon landed her dream job teaching at an elementary

school in memphis. fellow teacher jessica moxley was in awe in the amount of energy miss jones poured into her classroom. >> heather loved being a kindergarten teacher. from the moment they step foot into the door to the moment they "lost," they were dancetion, they were singing, they were playing. >> by april 2013, it was all coming together for heather jones. on a saturday night, she hit that rumba room dance floor to pickup some moves she learned at the gym and show the world what she'd become. >> it was so much fun. we were there for probably a good three hours of just dancing. >> three days later, on tuesday morning, teacher jessica moxley headed to school expecting to see her energetic coworker heather already there. >> our school day didn't start till 8:00 or 8:30 that year. when she was here every morning by 6:30, 6:45. >> heather usually couldn't wait for the school day to begin, so

jessica was surprised by what she didn't see that morning. >> i pulled into the parking lot and i didn't see her car. i'm like, oh, what is going on? >> thinking maybe she caught a ride to school, jessica made a b-line for heather's classroom. >> and i remember her door was closed, her lights were off and i remember thinking, her lights are off. and then saying again, her lights are off. she's gone. >> gone? what could that mean? as the search began to find the missing teacher, investigators would soon uncover a disturbing connection between heather's dramatic weight loss and her mysterious disappearance. >> coming up, a closely guarded secret. >> i didn't even know his name. >> when "dateline" continues. ess pain gel. the first full prescription strength non-steroidal anti-inflammatory gel... available over the counter. voltaren is powerful arthritis pain relief in a gel.

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when heather jones, the newly svelte newbie teacher didn't show up for her kindergarten class that morning back in april 2013, alarm bells went off among her fellow teachers and friends. >> heather would never miss a day of school. she was totally dedicated. >> home sick? didn't seem likely. best friend knew heather wasn't about to be sidelined by a sniffle. >> there was no excuse for her not to be there. >> school officials couldn't

reach her on the phone. when her cousin heard she was a no-show, she went to her home. >> i felt relief because the car was there. i thought, oh, she's sick. >> diane thought heather was probably sleeping. >> knocking, knocking, knocking, please answer the door. >> alarmed, she called heather's mother to bring over a key. soon germantown police went in first. >> they say she's not in there, nothing is disturbed. >> is that a relief anyway that she's not there? >> no, it's terrifying, something is very much wrong. >> it was now a missing persons case. detective tony kemp took the lead and did his own walk-through of the house. did you find any signs of something that might have happened in that house? >> no, i did not see any weapons. i did not see any blood or anything in that house. >> but heather's war still in

the driveway stuck in detective kemp's mind. >> obviously if she left, she had to be on foot or she had made contact with somebody for them to pick her up. >> the grapevine was now working overtime. friends from heather's dance class soon heard that she was missing. one of them was keri cooper, the class instructor. she also went over to the house. turns out keri knew as much about crime scenes as she did about dance moves. that's because keri's a cop in nearby memphis. >> well, i kind of took on that police officer role at that moment and i combed like every inch of her property. >> was there anything? >> i found nothing. and i looked through her storage sheds and i looked all along the railroad tracks behind her house and there was nothing. >> the afternoon heather disappeared, chris came to the police station wanting to help. >> you've been up all night. >> okay. >> i mean, i can't miss an opportunity -- i didn't want to mace a call, i didn't miss a

chance. i thought she was going to come by. i didn't want to miss a knock on the door. >> sure. >> i'm worried. >> chris told detectives something that could be vital to the investigation. he said heather had written him an email the night before. the subject read, i'm sorry. in it she mentions their little girl ava. it read, come get ava. i cannot face everyone with this. please forgive me. it is too much. please raise them to remember me as their loveding mommy. as their loving mommy. how concerned were you when chris told you about this email that his wife had sent, heather had sent? >> i was concerned. it did not sound good to me. >> kept of thought the email was open to all kinds of interpretations. all bad it seemed. >> it basically sounded like, i'm throwing in the towel. >> throwing in the towel? detective kemp asked chris if heather might be suicidal. >> has she ever talked about

wanting to harm herself or anybody else? since you've known her? >> not that i recall. >> friends and family police spoke to were adamant, heather would never take her own life. not after striving so hard to transform it for the better. but there was another possible explanation for what might have happened to this woman who'd built such a promising future. police were about to uncover a secret she'd kept hidden from almost everyone. >> i didn't even know his name. >> just as heather was headed off into that bright new future, her past came calling. >> coming up, the search heats up and the secret is out. >> kind of a bombshell that heather was possibly seeing another man. >> this was definitely, you know, a person of interest that we needed to speak with. >> when "dateline" continues. businesses today are looking to tomorrow. adapting. innovating.

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heather jones had been missing for 24 hours. her loved ones prayed for the best and launched into action. the memphis mother had recently lost 200 pounds with the help of a dance aerobics class. and now her friends posted the after photo she was proud of all over town. >> you put up fliers? >> we put up fliers at

restaurants in germantown. >> keri's dance instructor who also happened to be a cop organized a search party. >> we had snacks and towels and water. >> along parks and railroad tracks, keri and the other women searched methodically not knowing what they might find. >> i told all the girls, y'all be prepared because we might find her, okay. >> your foot hit something hard. oh, my god, is that her? but it's a branch. and you just never know with each step. >> to put together the puzzle of what happened to heather and what she meant by that disturbing good-bye email, detective kemp wanted to know more about heather, starting with her relationship with chris. >> i wanted to know more about their marriage and what's been going on between them the past year. >> he knew the major event in

their marriage in the past year was heather's dramatic physical change. but friends and family said it was about so much more than just dropping pants sizes as heather lost the weight, she gained a whole new outlook on life. >> she was kind of quiet and reserved back then when i very first met her. and to see that contrast from then until where she decided, i'm going to make some help i decisions in my life. the butterfly description with her is a great description. i mean, just her just coming out of her shell and becoming who she was created to be, you know. and that just -- you could see that transformation. >> in all different areas of her life? >> yes. >> her cousin diane explained that once heather the butterfly started spreading her wings, she felt that just like her old clothes, her husband chris wasn't fitting any more. he was not really part of it. >> exactly. >> the new life. >> exactly. >> the future. >> exactly. i think he saw the writing on

the wall. >> she saw that, i'm young, i'm healthier now than i've ever been, i'm prettier now than i've ever been. i'm feeling good. i'm feeling confident and i'm feeling independent. she didn't have just one choice any more. the world was hers. >> detectives learned that in january 2013, healther movther on chris without telling him. >> she had a name for it? >> she did. >> almost operation ninja style she was going to move out on her own? >> it it was, it was. >> heather moved into this rental house with the help of family and friends. >> she was backed by a lot of awesome girls, so she was ready. >> she would say, i don't have anything in my house but my crockpot and my matches and my brown boots, but that's okay because i'm happy. >> in his interview with police, chris said that after nine years of marriage, he and heather began to have some differences. but, he said, he had no clue she was going to move out on him and was even more shocked when he

found out she had filed for divorce. >> i was totally side swiped. did not see it coming. >> chris told detective kemp he'd been trying to patch things up with heather ever since. >> i want my wife. i want the family dynamic that we had. i want us to be together. i want to work things out. >> okay. >> kemp questioned what heather had been up to while chris was trying to win her back. >> it's common a lot of times when a couple's going through a divorce, that maybe somebody was seeing somebody. and i asked him that. >> that's when chris confided in the detective that he feared heather had, in fact, moved on. >> is she seeing anybody else? did she have a boyfriend now? >> yes. >> could you tell me what you know about that? >> the only thing i know is they were friends from a younger age, and it's been going on for sometime.

>> when you're talking to chris, he brings up kind of a bombshell that heather was possibly seeing another man. >> yes, he did. he did tell me that he believed that she was seeing somebody. and i tried to get information from him about that person. >> i really don't know anything about the guy other than they've been corresponding heavily. >> did she talk about him much? >> she doesn't talk about him at all. she doesn't want me or anybody else talk about him. >> kemp discovered heather had been talking about this new guy. just not with her husband. >> they had started texting i think initially and kind of facebooking and, hey, how are you? i think slowly those text messages and those facebook messages became flirtatious. >> i didn't know his name. all i knew she was talking to somebody. >> that was making her lhappy? >> that was making her happy and she felt special and very

beautiful. >> police needed a name fast. chris was able to provide part of the crucial detail. >> can you tell me about him? can you start me off with a name? what's his name? >> edward, something like that. >> edward? >> yeah. >> did you think this other man could be a game changer in this investigation? >> to me this was definitely, you know, a person of interest that we needed to speak with. >> detectives now launched a hunt for a man named edward. they wanted to know, did heather the butterfly leave behind her old life to build a new one with another man? >> coming up, the other man revealed. >> if that's what she wanted. >> when "dateline" continues. one of the worst things about a cold sore

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hello. i'm dara brown. here's what's happening. vice-president pence plans to attend the inauguration of president-elect joe biden. however, president trump will not attend. he is the first president in over 150 years to skip his successor's inauguration.

and apple has removed parlor from its app store. posts on the social network called for violence ahead of wednesday's march on the capitol. apple said parler had not taken actions to address people's safety. now back to "dateline." time, an investigator's worst enemy in a missing persons case, was ticking away. days past and heather jones hadn't returned to her rented house. the place where she hoped to start a new life without her husband. sounds cliche, but she really vanished without a trace. >> yes, and that's what was making this so difficult. >> and she still wasn't answering her cell phone. the one police learned she had used to exchange flirtatious texts with a mystery man. >> she is in the process of having an affair with her,

local, long distance, i don't know. >> chris jones couldn't tell detectives much else about this other man who he knew by the name of edward. >> i just saw correspondence, sweetie, i love you. >> how do you know, were you able to see texting yourself? >> yes, on her phone. >> you must have had concerns about this other man. >> yes, i did, because he was one of the first names that we had come up with. >> detective kemp knew if heather had split town as her good-bye email suggested, she hadn't driven away in her car. it was still parked in her driveway. >> you know what kind of car edward drives? >> i don't know anything about him. i really don't. >> does he live here locally? obviously in germantown? >> no. >> memphis? do you know? >> not that i know of. i don't think he lives in memphis. >> detectives had to find edward another way. so they accessed heather's facebook account and mined it for clues, and there it was, a

profile with a last name attached. >> what was that name? >> edward rollerson. >> police dialed a phone number they found for ed. he told them he lived 5 00 miles in eastern tennessee and agreed to make the drive to germantown to be interviewed. detectives wondered whether he made the trip once already that week to take heather away. more importantly, could he tell them where she was now. >> just because you have somebody live 5g00 miles away does not mean that they didn't have anything to do with this disappearance. >> police recorded ed roller son's interview during questioning ed made a potentially important admission. >> i love her to death. i would do anything for her, you know, one of the detectives asked me who would she call if she wanted to disappear. i said me. i'd be here in however many hours it took me to get here today. >> but he insisted heather never made that call. and there was more. ed told detectives he was

surprised by the first question he was asked when initially contacted by the police. >> detective kemp called me. he said, is your girlfriend there. and i said, yeah, she's in the backyard. he said, okay. so heather's okay? i said, heather's not my girlfriend. she's a friend of mine. we've been friends for 20 years. >> so if ed and heather weren't an item and he was dating someone else, what exactly was going on? the detective wanted to hear from you immediately. once they learned the name -- >> yeah, oh, yeah. once they knew who i was. >> detectives learned from ed that his relationship with heather went back decades, long before heather married chris. ed said he and heather met in 1993 when they were both teens living in florida. ed remembers they fell fast for each other. >> it was young love. they say you don't know what love is, but i do.

>> ed said they dated for two years before he moved away, but that puppy love was something he never got over. even after heather married. >> were you still carrying that torch? >> yeah, but i didn't really let it show. i respected heather too much. >> around heather's birthday in the spring of 2013, after she had lost all that weight, ed told detectives he reached out to wish her well and got more than a thank you. heather had big news. she and chris had separated. >> at that moment in her life she needed a friend, and that was what i was there for. i was there right when she needed me the most. >> but ed said that shoulder to lean on soon turned into something more. >> talking, you know, just listening to her problems. and then it just, you know, progressed from there. >> progressed in what way? >> oh, you know, i'm a

flirtatious person and, uh, you know, just became flirtatious. >> detective kemp scanned the recent texts between the two from heather's cell phone and it appeared that things had heated up even more a few days before she went missing. >> there was some sexual content that i had noticed. >> ed says it was heather who first turned the texting into sexting. what did you think? >> it was partly that, you know, she was in a highly flirtatious mood that day. um, i wasn't really quite sure. >> did you bite? >> i bit. >> detectives wanted to know how much and whether ed was truly willing to drop everything to help heather start a new life in secret. >> no matter what it took, i would protect her. >> ed knew it probably didn't look good to police. >> i guess me admitting that i would hide her if that's what

she wanted, you know. i can understand them saying that, you know, maybe he has hidden her. >> did you hide her? >> i wish. >> did you drive to see heather that night? >> no. >> were you with heather that night? >> no. >> did you have anything to do with her disappearance? >> no. >> ed told police he was at home, far away in eastern tennessee, and revealed that despite those steamy texts, he and heather hadn't actually seen each other in person in years. >> we had discussed seeing each other. i guess it would have been another month. >> ed insisted to police he had no idea where heather was, but he did give them a big clue. he told investigators that, in fact, he spoke to heather on the phone the very night she disappeared, and he heard something on that call that was alarming then and even more alarming now. >> i called her. she answered.

and immediately i could hear kind of arguing. >> ed said he heard a man's voice in the background during that call, but whose voice was it? >> the pieces of the case are about to fall into place, and those flirtatious texts? turns out they aren't at all what you may think. coming up. >> i didn't put that out of my mind. >> are you thinking, this could potentially be our last chance to solve this. >> this was our shot. >> when "dateline" continues. els ah, a package! you know what this human ordered? a backache. consider pain, delivered. pain says you can't. advil says you can. who invented we're car vending machines and buying a car 100% online. now we've created a brand-new way for you to sell your car. whether it's a year old or a few years old. we wanna buy your car. so go to carvana and enter your license plate

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as one day slid into the next, and the next, with still no sign of heather jones, her gym friends got back to exercise class with the hope heather would dance with them once again. >> i kept the back door open to the gym. i said, heather, if you can hear us, we're dancing, we're looking for you, okay f. you'. if you're out there, you dance with us. um, we're going to find you one way or the other. >> detective tony kemp also vowed to find her. he was convinced heather did not run off with her old boyfriend ed. so he asked her friends, what else would cause heather to leave her husband and children? that's when kemp began to flush out what really happened when heather moved out on chris. >> it was very scary and it only

continued to deteriorate. >> friends and family told him how at first chris tried to woo her with flowers and chocolates. but those loving gestures soon turned ugly. >> he would text her and call her, but this time they were just like violent, you know, you're not taking my kids from me. i'm not going to let you leave. you won't get away with this. i will come after you. >> then friends said chris started acting more desperate and heather started getting really scared. >> he would show up at her work. he would show up at the gym. he started showing up at the house in the middle of the night. and i just remember thinking like, this is insane. you're literally stalking her. >> i got a lot of information on chris on what these people thought of him. and it was not good. >> detectives decided they'd do more than just keep an eye on chris. they secretly attached a gps device to his car to track his movements.

>> we wanted to know possibly, could he take us to where heather was at? >> they also asked chris to come in for a second interview. detective brian wallace would lead the interrogation. are you thinking, this could potentially be our last chance to solve this. >> certainly. this was our shot. >> detectives watched as chris's car made his way toward the police station, but then it stopped a quarter mile away at a nearby mall. police thought he might be running an errand. but moments later he popped up at the station. why had he parked so far away? chris was escorted in. >> thank you for coming up. >> my pleasure. anything i can do. >> chris told detectives he went to theheather's house the night before she disappeared. he said her phone rang. >> she said this is the call i've been waiting for. i said, i've got kind of a

pertinent matter to discuss with you. if there's anyway you could possibly, you know, have them call you back. >> what was it, the pertinent matter? >> it was letting her know that i discovered she'd been having an affair this entire time. >> was that who was calling her, the person you suspected? a i kind >> i got that feeling it was that person. >> in fact, it was ed rollerson. >> i called. immediately i could hear her and chris kind of arguing. she's telling him to get out and he's constantly saying, i need to talk to you, i need to talk to you, i just need two minutes. >> and ed said he heard something else come out of chris's mouth. >> he needs to talk to her. it's a matter of life and death. she said, what do you mean a matter of life and death? >> in his interview, chris admitted they continued arguing. but he insisted she was alive when he went home.

she said he sent that disturbing good-bye email only after he left. >> i'm freaking out. you know, because i still -- i don't know that this isn't a game. >> detectives had been analyzing that strange email and they asked forensic experts to comb through chris's computers seized at his apartment. a theory began to emerge. investigators now believed chris had written the email himself. did you suspect that chris was posing as heather, sending that email? >> yes, i did. because chris was an expert when it came to computers. >> and what's more, they suspected it was chris who actually sent those sexy texts to ed, not heather. they believed he'd stolen her phone and was pretending to be her. that is really weird. >> oh, yeah. >> messages. >> sexting from her husband. >> yeah, kind of one of those things, i need to put that out of my mind. >> chris's plan, detectives thought, was to throw them off

the trail to make it look like heather ran off and was having an affair. but they didn't believe a word of his story or that his concern for heather was genuine. >> the reason you were freaking out is because she was dead. your actions after that make no sense. everything else after that was alibi. >> okay. so what did i do with her? >> that's what we're asking, chris. >> chris was sticking to his story, but the biggest break in the case was about to happen. what chris didn't know is that while detectives were turning up the heat inside the interrogation room, outside they sent some cadaver dogs over to the mall to sniff around his car. and now the team at the mall wanted to speak with detectives immediately. >> they said the dogs just hammered his car. they said they're all over it. >> they found the scent of human remains. >> i don't know why cadaver dogs hit on my car. >> i do. they don't just hit -- they don't pick cars out of the blue.

>> what is it they're trained to detect? i mean -- >> the odor of decomposition. >> wallace had chris against the ropes. and he was finally going to get some answers, not just about what happened, but why. the startling revelation. heather's radical make over of her body and life had put her life in imminent danger. >> coming up, a whole new story from chris. was this an awful accident or could it be murder with a mind-blown motive? when "dateline" continues. rheumatoid arthritis. and take. it. on... ...with rinvoq. rinvoq a once-daily pill can dramatically improve symptoms... rinvoq helps tame pain, stiffness, swelling. and for some rinvoq can even significantly reduce ra fatigue. that's rinvoq relief. with ra, your overactive immune system

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welcome back to "dateline." heather jones' estranged husband maintained he knew nothing about what happened to her. but police were hot on his trail. would it lead them to heather? here's andrea canning with the conclusion of "the last dance." >> i loved her, i really would. >> for hours chris jones had been going over his story with detectives about what happened the night his wife heather disappeared. but after the cadaver dogs found the scent of remains on chris's car, detective wallace wasn't buying his story. >> your story about the night she disappeared was total [ bleep ]. >> wallace pushed him for the truth.

>> how did it happen? did she fall? >> she did. >> was she drunk as [ bleep ]? what happened? >> exactly that. we were struggling over the phone. and, uh, only this time we were outside on the steps. and, uh -- she, she lost her footing. she fell and hit the step. and i heard the -- heard the crack. >> he said they were struggling over a cell phone. she slipped, fell backwards and hit her head and died. >> did you believe this story? >> no, no, no way. >> finally, chris admitted heather was dead, but insisted

it was only an accident. still, the most important evidence was missing, heather's body. chris told detectives he'd dumped her at a gas station. police went there, found nothing, and checked the security cameras. >> they have videos from 15 days. they looked at everything from 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 a.m. your car never pulled on the lot. >> chris then changed his story and says he paid someone to get rid of the body. >> i jokingly asked, hey, you want to make a couple hundred bucks? >> stop, stop. chris, stop. >> what did i do? >> this isn't working. that's crazier than the first one. >> four hours into the interview, wallace sensed chris was out of stories and out of options, so the detective gave him one last chance. >> i said, let's cut it out, chris. your time is running out. you need to tell us where she is and you tell us now. >> the room went quiet and chris

motioned for a pen and paper. then he drew a map. >> i said, this is where she is? that's where she is. >> detectives raced to the area and followed chris's directions down a path into the woods that led to a clearing. >> once we could see an area on the ground where a fire had -- what had looked like a fire taken place, once we got closer we could tell there was still a human form there. >> seven days after she disappeared, detectives had found heather. her body had been badly burned. >> we were broken hearted. and we had lost her. and she was a big, smiling beautiful part of our group. >> chris jones was arrested and charged with first degree murder. now the women who had helped heather find the courage to leave her husband supported their friend in death, staring

down chris jones at every court appearance. >> there's a monster inside that hurt our friend, and that we want justice. >> prosecutors rejected chris's story that heather had died from an accidental fall. they believed he argued with her at the house that night, strangled her and then burned her body in the woods. but the question remained, why? heather's friends provided a surprising answer. they were convinced heather's dramatic weight loss got her killed. do you think that heather would still be alive if she hadn't gone through this transformation and bettered herself? >> gosh. >> yes. >> heather's friends and family said over the course of their e relationship, chris used heather's weight as a tool to control her. >> i believe he wanted her to be bigger. he felt like that would be more attractive to him. as she got bigger she would say

to her, nobody else would want her because she was so obese. >> and when heather finally achieved her unbelievable transformation, she confided to her friends chris didn't have the reaction she expected. >> she told me, chris wants me to gain the weight back. i said, heather, that's a control technique, okay. he wants you to stay at home. he doesn't want you to get out there. he doesn't want anyone else looking at you. >> according to her best friend melissa, chris even brought fatty foods to her hoping she would pack the pounds back on. >> he would come up to the school with food and she would not want any part of it. >> with the sole purpose of trying to get her to gain weight? >> is what she had told me, yes. >> friends said the new and improved heather never took the bait. and after enduring years of increasing unhappiness in her marriage, they said heather found out something that for her was the last straw. >> she discovered that chris was having an affair with another woman. >> that's when she finally

spread her wings and found the courage to leave her marriage, and she never looked back. >> you could see just her spirit just lighting up and her sense of security and, and what all the future was going to hold for her. >> in february of 2015, chris jones went on trial. >> at this time -- >> heather's friends took the stand to help prove the prosecution's theory. when chris realized he'd lost control of heather, he took control in another way. >> find that man guilty of first degree murder. >> prosecutors laid out their case to the jury. >> it wasn't an accident. >> assistant district attorney danielle mccullum. >> she didn't fall down. there was a struggle. he did strangle her either with his hands or however he did it. he was up close and personal to her and he was there watching that breath go out of her. >> but the defense stuck to the story chris told on tape, that

heather fell and died after they struggled over a cell phone. >> he never admits to killing her. >> the judge asked chris if he wanted to tell his story to the jury. >> i think that i will choose to not testify. >> it was now up to the jury to decide his fate. friends and family filled the courthouse, waiting for word, but there would not be a quick verdict. finally, after deliberating for a day -- >> we the jury find the defendant guilty of murder of first degree. count two reads we the jury find the defendant guilty of the abuse of a corpse. >> tears for heather, a woman who worked so hard to shape her life free of chris jones who will now likely spend the rest of his life behind bars. >> heather is at peace. heather is at peace. he will never hurt anybody again. >> even after his conviction, chris jones insisted that he didn't kill heather. he told "dateline" in a phone call from jail that he never tried to control heather, that he is absolutely innocent of

murder of any type. and that his taped statements to police were coerced. the detectives said chris jones talked to them voluntarily and could have ended the interview at any time. as for cousin diane, she has obtained legal custody of heather and chris's two children, and heather's gym friends, they find comfort in knowing that before her death, heather achieved that remarkable journey, becoming the person she was always meant to be. >> she got to experience that before she left this earth. she got to experience what it was like to be as beautiful as she wanted to be inside and out. i'm glad she did. >> that dance class where heather spread her wings still keeps a place for her. a heart with heather's name on it. a reminder of a woman whose transformation continues to inspire all who knew and loved heather jones. >> is she dancing? >> absolutely. and we believe that. if you believe in angels, there

is one dancing up there. i promise you. and every time we have class, she's dancing. >> that's all for this edition of "dateline." i'm craig melvin. thank you for watching. >> i'm craig melvin. ra >> and i'm natalie morales. >> and this is "dateline". i felt guilty. i couldn't live with that.lt i said, "i know something and it's terrible.""i i'm the only other person who knows the truth. i had to do something. >> he swept her right of her feet.ep >> i was drawn to him right away. d >> a dreamy single dad. wealthy. charming. smitten. >> i'd never been spoiled like that. i remember thinking i was like julia roberts in "pretty woman."