not let this happen to anyone else. >> for that reason, bridgette set up the justice foundation that would require nevada law to take a dna sample for anyone arrested to add to police databases. known as brianna's law, is passed in 2013. >> it's not like it brings brianna back to me. i guess i can just move on and do other things. >> it did not bring her back but it kind of brought you back. >> yes, kind of. kind of. >> that is all for this edition of dateline. i am andrea canning.

>> i knew this was pretty serious. >> works hard, served his country. >> if he's telling the truth and that's a man who does not know what happened to his girlfriend. >> it's a big puzzle. you have to go put all the pieces together. >> his first wife, marta, disappeared off the face of the earth rate >> we have life number one missing and now pam butler

missing. >> a double mystery. could solving one untangle the other? >> his cell phone pinged, so, is pam alive? or, is this the day we find her body? of a successful woman, a person who simply vanished without a trace from her home. >> these grainy nighttime images are some of the last known moments in the life of a successful woman. about another missing woman. it's a big puzzle. dennis murphy (voiceover): it took decades to unsnarled the stories of the two women, who didn't know one another, but who both ended up years apart in the same place. it's idiosyncratic. that's a signature. dennis murphy (voiceover): without a few individuals stricken with a bad case of justice fever, we might never know their stories at all. they found out that i wasn't going to give up. dennis murphy (voiceover): not the twists. two women, two children. neither knows about the other. yes. dennis murphy (voiceover): the setbacks. the cause of death was undetermined. dennis murphy (voiceover): the stark fear of it all.

he says, oh, my god, he's going to kill her, and he's going to kill me. dennis murphy (voiceover): the fates of pam and marta united in horror on one of the busiest stretches of interstate in the country. mitch credle: when all that stuff started coming out, i was like, oh, my god, this guy is a monster. [soft music] dennis murphy (voiceover): in early february 2009, pamela butler, a manager for the federal government, was on a cheer up mission to douse the winter blues. that was typical pam, says her brother, derrick. she was always the one that would say, let's do something. we're going to do this. personality, who would you be talking about when you think of pam? just a lovely person. i mean, somebody that would go out of her way to help you. dennis murphy (voiceover): pam told best friend rita moss she'd planned a busy week out on the town with her boyfriend of five months, jose. pam and i were texting each other, as we normally do. the last text she sent is that she and jose were going to three or four different restaurants over the next few days. dennis murphy (voiceover): pam would wrap up her busy social week with an early saturday evening dinner

at ben's chili bowl, a fixture of downtown dc. her guests, jose and her mom, thelma. but two days before they were due to go out, thelma realized something a little awkward. i said, pam, we made a date to go out to dinner for saturday. do y'all know saturday's valentine's day? dennis murphy: yeah. she said, mommy, that's ok. she said, we can still go out. dennis murphy (voiceover): the plan was to meet that valentine's day at 3:00 pm at thelma's home and drive to the restaurant. but when 3:00 pm came that saturday, pam was a no-show. calls to her phone went unanswered. so thelma called her son, derrick, who didn't see any need to worry. new boyfriend-- they just out having a good time. dennis murphy (voiceover): the next day, sunday now, thelma tried again and yet again on monday, which happened to be the president's day holiday. i say, pam still not answering her phone. something ain't right. she wouldn't disappoint me like that. dennis murphy (voiceover): so after the long holiday weekend

and still no sign of pam, her mom, thelma, and her nephew, brandon, who had recently moved out of pam's home, went to pam's house to see if she was ok. go to her place. mail-- old pile on the porch. very unlike her, huh? her mail would not be piled up like that. dennis murphy (voiceover): inside the home, there were more not like pam signs, troubling. papers and things thrown all over the table. everything's in disarray, huh? disarray. uh-uh, this is not right. this is not right. dennis murphy (voiceover): thelma called pam's workplace, only to learn her daughter hadn't shown up there either. dennis murphy: are you getting nervous at that point? yes. dennis murphy (voiceover): thelma called derrick. and my mother says, derrick, you need to see this house. something isn't right here. dennis murphy (voiceover): he drove to pam's home, which was equipped with security cameras and an alarm system. it was an out-of-position window blind that caught his mom's attention. it was the kind that could be raised from the bottom or lowered from the top. and she said, this blind is lifted up from the bottom.

she said pam never lifts it up from the bottom. dennis murphy (voiceover): pam usually lowered the blind from the top so people on the street couldn't look into her home. because your sister was very security conscious, wasn't she? - correct. it didn't look right. dennis murphy (voiceover): they checked pam's phone answering machine. it turned out jose had been calling pam, too. "hey, pam, where are you at?" his message went. and on the desk in pam's office, he'd left a note for her. pam, where are you? i've been here looking for you. dennis murphy (voiceover): but pam was gone. we called the police. dennis murphy (voiceover): and derrick says he called jose. i said, um, jose, this is derrick. have you heard from pam? and he says, i haven't heard from pam. he said, me and pam broke up. broke up? yeah. dennis murphy (voiceover): derrick says he wanted to know more, so he began his own personal investigation. i said, give me your address. i'm coming to your house. i need to talk to you. and he said? he said, ok. dennis murphy (voiceover): he says they met in the lobby of jose's apartment building

in nearby virginia. i said, pam was missing. can we go up to your apartment? he said, yeah. i mean, very cordial, nice conversation. dennis murphy (voiceover): jose, he says, expressed concern and compassion. he was telling me how much he cared about pam, how much he loved her. he said we broke up on friday, and i haven't seen or heard from her since. i wish i could help you, but i just don't know. dennis murphy (voiceover): the reason for the breakup, according to jose, was jealousy. he said, you know how pam is. and he said, i was staying in touch with one of my ex-girlfriend's daughter. she was young, and she just kind of looked at me like a father. and he said i was staying in touch with her, and pam didn't like it. because he was close to this girl from a previous girlfriend. right, uh-huh. so he said, so we decided to break up. and he said, you know-- he said, i thought we would still be friends. and we sat there and we talked for well over two hours. so i said to him, i said, you know, i just don't understand what happened, how she could just get up and just walk away. he said, i don't understand it either. dennis murphy (voiceover): then derrick says

he made an aggressive demand. i said, jose, i said, i need you to take your clothes off. i said, i just need to make sure that i don't see any scratches or anything on you. that's kind of a police question, huh? well, he says, ok. - he's good with that? - yeah. so he did. he took his shirt off. he took his pants off. and i looked at him, and i didn't see anything. dennis murphy (voiceover): there were no fresh scratches on jose's skin. but derrick says he wasn't done playing cop. i stood up, and i just started walking around this apartment, looking. my sister's missing. is she in here in the closet somewhere? and i opened up his drawers, and i'm looking in there. he didn't object to that? like-- no, i was trying to get a reaction out of him and couldn't get it. so when you left jose's place that day, what did you think of him and where things stood? i thought he was a pretty nice guy. dennis murphy (voiceover): derrick reassured his family. i said, jose's fine. he didn't do anything to her. he's fine. dennis murphy (voiceover): when derrick got back to pam's home, police were already on the scene, looking for leads into what had become of pam butler in what would

be a grueling investigation. coming up. where was pam? her family was worried. derrick says at first, police were not. they're telling us it still doesn't look like to us that she's in any danger. dennis murphy (voiceover): but pam butler was a neat freak. so why was her house a mess? everything was just totally out of character for pam. the papers on the floor led me to believe that something made her stop doing what she was doing with those papers. dennis murphy (voiceover): when "dateline" continues. [tense music] (♪♪) from celebration moments... ...to joyride moments. your moments are worth protecting against rsv. rsv is a highly contagious virus if you're 60 or older with certain chronic conditions, you're at higher risk of being hospitalized from rsv. and there are no prescription rsv treatments. you know how to protect against covid and flu. so ask your pharmacist or doctor about scheduling pfizer's rsv vaccine, too.

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craig here pays too much for verizon wireless. so he sublet half his real estate office... [ bird squawks loudly ] to a pet shop. meg's moving company uses t-mobile. so she scaled down her fleet to save money. and don's paying so much for at&t, he's been waiting to update his equipment! there's a smarter way to save. comcast business mobile. you could save up to an incredible 70% on your wireless bill. so you don't have to compromise. powering smarter savings. powering possibilities. pam butler's valentine's day no-show in 2009 was completely out of character. and in the days after her family reported her missing, washington, dc's metropolitan police looked for clues inside pam's home. they scoured the house for physical evidence. dennis murphy (voiceover): peter newsham, dc's former chief of police, was running investigations

when detectives began probing pam butler's disappearance. it was a hard case. this was a young woman. by all accounts, she was beloved by her family. she was-- she kind of kept to herself in her neighborhood. her employee, her described her as being one of these folks that was always came to work, very reliable. she would always let her family know where she was going to be at any given time. dennis murphy (voiceover): his investigators found no sign of forced entry, no sign that pam had been in a struggle, and no sign at all of what might have happened to her. if we had information to suggest that pam was in a particular location, we could go and search that area and maybe find something. that didn't happen in this case. dennis murphy (voiceover): so a missing person's file was opened, even as police tried to reassure pam's brother, derrick, a former high school auto mechanics teacher. so pam is now an official missing person, huh? correct. they're telling us, you know, we're

gonna find out what happened. it still doesn't look like to us that, you know-- that she's in any danger. dennis murphy (voiceover): and dc's police wanted to find out from family and friends more biographical detail about who pam was. a person who will make you laugh, a person who will have your back if she's your friend. just a joyful, easy, vibrant person. dennis murphy (voiceover): rita moss had met pam in washington, dc, at a conference for rising stars in government leadership. i was the person that said, i'll be at the bar afterwards. and pam showed up at the bar, and we immediately clicked. why did you guys hit it off so quickly? we had a lot in common, just even on appearance. and we probably talked on the phone every other day or so. so, yes, she was my closest friend. people think of washington. maybe they know the mall and the washington monument and the nice houses in georgetown. that's where pam ended up, but not where we came from. dennis murphy (voiceover): derrick remembers growing up with his sister in a small house in a rough and tumble neighborhood--

not an easy life. she was the one that really held our family together. how did you two get along, you and your sister, pam? you know, we were brothers and sisters. we had our spats like any other brother and sister. she was very orderly, right? she would drive you crazy with that. [chuckles] her house was extremely neat all the time. dennis murphy (voiceover): from an early age, pam was driven. a summer job at the commerce department led to pam hopscotching through government agencies. pam was just always a go-getter. before i started working for the school system, she tried to get me to work for the fbi. so that's a very pam thing. yeah, she always wanted to see us just do better, you know. dennis murphy (voiceover): pam's mom, thelma, says her daughter was happy to share her hard-earned success. she would pay my way to go to the casino. and you'd have mom and daughter day at the casino, huh? she didn't like gambling, but she never denied me. you're talking about an ideal daughter. yes, very much. and even after she moved out, she still had call and share how are you doing. just about every other day, we would talk.

and she was gonna come past sometimes, not even letting me know. she'd just drive past just to see how everything was going. dennis murphy (voiceover): in her mid-forties, pam was supervising computer analyst at the environmental protection agency. how well she'd done was reflected in her lifestyle-- the owner of a single-family house in a good downtown neighborhood, the one she'd equipped with security cameras, and a mercedes and a jaguar in the driveway. she had a lot of nice things, beautiful place to live. yes. dennis murphy (voiceover): but work wasn't pam's entire life. for a few years, she took in her nephew brandon, raising him as her own son with his bundle of typical late teenage issues. still, that nice house felt empty. a good man, she told her friend, would go a long way to filling the void. she really was not looking to casually date. she was looking for someone to spend her life with. dennis murphy (voiceover): that's when, in september 2008, petite and fit from jogging, 47-year-old pam started dating jose rodriguez-cruz,

a good-looking former military police officer in virginia who worked at a medical clinic. they met on a dating website. she told me that she met jose on the metro. eharmony. yeah, so that's what i'm told. but she told me she met him on the metro, which i immediately knew was not the truth. and i told her i knew it wasn't the truth because pam would drive everywhere. she had two nice cars and never knew her to take metro. so i teased her about it, but she never revealed to me where she had truly met him. dennis murphy (voiceover): within a few days, jose was showing pam around town, a full-on courtship. he bought her flowers regularly and had bought a ring for her birthday. dennis murphy (voiceover): as happy as rita was for her best friend, pam's new relationship was a gal pal buzzkill. pam immediately started canceling plans with me. so i knew that this was pretty serious. so happy hour was off now? happy hour was off. dennis murphy (voiceover): at thanksgiving, pam decided the next step had arrived, and it was time for jose to meet the family. seemed like an extremely nice guy.

i mean, very attentive to pam, attentive to us. he was a pleasure to meet. he really was. he was such a gentleman. she seemed happy? she did. she did. she seemed very happy. what did you think jose meant to her? the fact that she was seeing him regularly, i knew that she was intending for this to be a long-term relationship. dennis murphy (voiceover): and that made pam's disappearance all the more sad. when i got the case and once i looked at all the things that were done, i wanted to start over. dennis murphy (voiceover): former homicide detective mitch credle, who worked on dc's sexual assault unit, ended up being assigned to the missing persons case after other detectives had worked it. what did you think you could bring to the plate that they didn't know yet? a different set of eyes. i'm experienced, and i'm very familiar with this community. i have two informants that live in this particular area. so you thought you might be able to scratch and get something, huh? yes, i was hoping i could get something. but as you see, even right now, this is how the neighborhood is all the time. it's quiet.

dennis murphy (voiceover): detective credle analyzed the evidence in the growing case file, the uncharacteristic messiness in pam butler's home. the bed linens are in the washing machine. exactly, not on the bed. that's not the way she runs her household, right? everything was just totally out of character for pam. so that's what made me think that a lot of this was done by someone who's there. the papers on the floor led me to believe that something was going on in that particular room that made her stop doing what she was doing with those papers, because she's just not going to leave them lying on the floor. dennis murphy (voiceover): and next to all those files strewn about was something else that had caught investigators eyes. dennis murphy: latex glove on the floor, i guess, huh? yeah, there was a latex glove there. dennis murphy (voiceover): had the latex glove been dropped by someone not in pam's circle, her abductor, possibly her killer? this is the unknown intruder. exactly. dennis murphy (voiceover): but who? the surveillance cameras around pam butler's home would give important clues. they were activated by motion sensors

and had recorded comings and goings in the days before and after pam went missing, images that told some but not all of the story. coming up. it's presumed, when we see this hand come out of the door to pick up mail, that that is pam. dennis murphy (voiceover): a camera never blinks. so why did it never see pam leave her house? she always had those cameras on. dennis murphy (voiceover): and a possible break-- pam's cell phone pinged. so is pam alive, or is this the day we find her body? dennis murphy (voiceover): --when "dateline" continues. it's black friday at pandora jewelry. save 30% in store and online on sparkling styles for you - and gifts for them! including charms, rings, necklaces, and more - all at 30% off. happening november 16th through december 3rd. only at pandora jewelry.

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♪♪ with cabenuva, you're good to go. without daily hiv pills. talk to your doctor about switching. all aboard! without daily hiv pills. come with me to meet the wizard. why couldn't possibly. this is your moment. i'm coming. if you think that's something to see, wait til you see this. ♪ ♪ you're good. -very good. [tense music] dennis murphy (voiceover): pam butler had vanished without a trace, and her family and friends were confounded, suspended between hope and grief. there was a very big void when pam went missing. were you waiting for the phone to ring

and there'd be her on the line or what? exactly, hoping that it would be the call to say, i'm ok. phone never rang. no, it kept me in tears. dennis murphy (voiceover): by now, reporters were getting tips from police about the mystery of pam butler's disappearance. i had a number of sources throughout the department, and a source said, this is a case you need to take a look at. reporter: 47-year-old pamela butler of northwest-- dennis murphy (voiceover): jennifer donelan, then a local tv crime reporter, broke the story. there were questions, really strange things about her disappearance. yes, she was an adult. maybe she chose to leave. but she didn't, like, seem to be the kind of person would take up and go to las vegas and start a new life. or to miss dinner with her mother on valentine's day. and a neatnik. and the mail's piling up outside. correct, mail's not-- little things, huh? little things that were just really strange. both cars were there. her purse was in the house. always a bad sign. the purse remains behind. right, what woman leaves their purse behind in the house? something just wasn't right. but there wasn't any sign of foul play. but there was this family that was so desperate to find her.

dennis murphy (voiceover): pam's family had given detectives a heads up to what they believed was important evidence-- the cameras pam had installed covering nearly the entire exterior of her home. what i had was a great deal of video footage. when detective mitch cradle was eventually assigned to the case, he analyzed images from the cameras that other detectives had screened. you're talking about the missing woman surveillance system. exactly. pretty sophisticated. it was not only that, it was an alarm system. so we're talking someone who's only coming into the house who she's familiar with. so she's very fussy about who gets in that house. that's it. and she always had those cameras on. that was the funny thing. even when i came over, i texted her two minutes before i arrived. you know, i'll be there in two minutes. and even when i knocked on the door, she would look at the camera to make sure it was me. i'm like, i just texted you. why are you checking the camera? just open the door. dennis murphy (voiceover): in the days before and after the valentine's day weekend pam went missing, her cameras captured what was going on around her house. on thursday, she's seen arriving home,

walking across her patio, then showing up in her front doorway. jennifer donelan: she's at the door, and she's collecting her mail, just like a normal day. the next day, friday, much the same. it's presumed, when we see this hand come out of the door to pick up mail, that that is pam. dennis murphy (voiceover): later, the same day, the day before valentine's day, jose showed up carrying gifts. dennis murphy: he's the boyfriend arriving. exactly, so-- got any flowers present? that was on friday. dennis murphy (voiceover): and jose is seen leaving the following day, but the cameras never showed pam leaving her house. and that became the central mystery of the case. in the worst possible theory, if pam had been killed inside her house, how was her body taken out undetected? jennifer donelan: what happened inside that house? it is such an extreme mystery. we just have no idea what happened to pam. dennis murphy (voiceover): the video showed jose going in and out of pam's home after friday night. so it was an easy call for detectives to pull him in for some "what's up"

questions, but not much more. so with missing persons, there are incidents, not offenses. and no real persuasive evidence it was even a crime? right. dennis murphy (voiceover): what's more, jose had an explanation for what had happened, the same explanation he'd given pam's brother, derrick. he said he and pam had broken up before she went missing. and he was upset and that he had made efforts to her after she had gone missing. if he's telling the truth, then that's a man who doesn't know what happened to his girlfriend. dennis murphy (voiceover): the reporter wanted to hear the boyfriend's account for herself. so jose invited jennifer into his home for an exclusive interview. we're in his living room, and he didn't want us to tell his name on television, and he didn't want us to show his face. but he did want to clearly state his innocence. jose rodriguez-cruz: i did not have anything to do with her disappearance. i loved her. our relationship ended in a way that i didn't expect. dennis murphy (voiceover): jose told the reporter, pam's security camera video

told the story, proof that he'd had nothing to do with pam going missing. now and like i told the police, you seen the video. she did not leave with me. he was right. we never see pam leave with him on video. that is for sure. jose rodriguez-cruz: i don't know where pam is at. i don't know what happened to her. dennis murphy (voiceover): and jose gave the reporter a very simple explanation for why he was in and out of pam's home after she went missing. he'd used his key and was simply removing bags of his own things from her home. i was just taking my stuff out of the house. i was going back and getting my stuff. just break up? yeah, this is all breakup stuff. and the last thing i seen was him coming out the door with a big bag, which is not big enough to carry a body. dennis murphy (voiceover): in the days after pam disappeared, crime scene techs turning pam's house inside out for evidence were baffled. no blood. there were pulling up floorboards. there was just nothing in the house that indicated that there was a crime there. dennis murphy (voiceover): beyond jose, the boyfriend, the investigators wondered if there was anyone in pam's life who would want to make her disappear.

they looked at those closest to her, including her nephew, brandon, the teen she'd taken in. jennifer donelan: there were some reports from the family that pam might have been experiencing some financial difficulties at the time brandon was living there and that perhaps pam didn't feel like brandon was stepping up like he should in terms of helping out financially, and that at some point, she had reportedly asked him to leave. dennis murphy (voiceover): the situation apparently got heated. jennifer donelan: there had been an argument he did have access to the house. so was it him? dennis murphy (voiceover): as the investigation deepened, the detectives took a close look at technology-- pam's cell phone. in a lot of investigations, a lot of people don't realize that phone towers be pinging and telling you where people are. if they've been watching "dateline" for the last 20 years, they do now. dennis murphy (voiceover): investigators searched in virginia and in a park in maryland. why? because pam's cell phone pinged there. pam's cell phone pinged. so is pam alive, or is this the day we find her body? then all of a sudden, it stops. yeah.

and that's the thing about it. and once it stops, you have no clue, no idea where to go. it stops. and that's what happened in this situation. and they searched and searched and searched, and they never found pam. dennis murphy (voiceover): in the following weeks and months, hopes rose and fell. there were a number of sightings after all of the published media reports saying that i saw pam butler. turned out not to be her. dennis murphy (voiceover): but five months into the investigation, a fresh lead suddenly opened, and with that lead came a new reason to take a closer look at pam butler's family. coming up. they actually raised derrick as a possible suspect to me. like, how? this is her brother. he's spearheading these massive search efforts for her. dennis murphy: did a disagreement between siblings end in murder? they would say things to be like, you're the only one that we see that had anything to gain from her going missing. dennis murphy (voiceover): when "dateline" continues.

hi, i am richard lui with a news update. post-thanksgiving travel could get dicey for some as millions of americans find themselves under winter weather alerts. in the great lakes region heavy snow is expected to last through the weekend. and 9 million are under freeze warnings in the south. cucumbers have been recalled across the country after an arizona produce company warned of a potential salmonella contamination. the recalled cucumbers were sold in 26 states and parts of canada up to november 26th. for now, back to dateline. dennis murphy (voiceover): in the months after pamela butler's disappearance, new leads dried up, and the police investigation seems stuck at a hopeless dead end. it was still considered a missing persons. it wasn't even ruled a homicide. dennis murphy (voiceover): a frustrated detective credle says he couldn't devote the time he wanted

to pam butler and her family. fresh cases were piling up, demanding his attention. i'm investigating 20, sometimes 25 cases a month. so it's hard for me to give this family the attention the case needs, and that's unfair to them. dennis murphy (voiceover): and he felt something else, something ugly. it seemed to him the department just didn't care enough about the victim. i felt as though, that this case wasn't getting the attention that it was if she would have been a white victim from an affluent neighborhood. it would have been, in my opinion, totally different. it would have been resources thrown at it, put some heat on it? throw the whole house at the case. but that didn't happen with pam butler? no, it did not. and it used to bother me sometimes at night because i knew for a fact, if pam butler was white, man, they would have-- they would have did it. dennis murphy (voiceover): pam's family felt the same way. there would have been a hue and cry, you think, if she'd been a white woman missing? oh, for sure. when we go missing, you hear nothing about it. dennis murphy (voiceover): dc police told us its officers try to use every resource

available to investigate all cases, regardless of a victim's race. in 2009, as pam's brother derrick led search efforts, he stayed in the cops' faces. sometimes we would just have, i mean, real fights. were you making a nuisance of yourself down at the police station there? i was trying to, yes. did you need to do that, though? i felt like i did. i just know my sister. dennis murphy (voiceover): and derrick made appearances on tv-- a strategy intended to keep pam's story in the public eye. the goal was to keep it going. and i felt like if i kept it going, the police would say we got to get this off the news. we have to solve this case. dennis murphy (voiceover): but five months after pam butler went missing, there was a head snapping development. tv reporter jennifer donelan was getting the inside scoop. my sources told me that they had to take a look at derrick. they actually raised derrick as a possible suspect to me. like, how? this is-- this is her brother. he's spearheading these massive search efforts for her.

dennis murphy (voiceover): derrick-- how could that be? it turned out investigators had received anonymous text message tips about him. early on in the investigation, a couple of text messages came in that we need to look at the brother derrick. dennis murphy (voiceover): the first message read, "please look into the fact that pam and the brother were not as close as he tried to make it appear." another message also put derrick in the frame. "pam butler still missing. the brother has all y'all fooled." these strange text messages came out, saying you should take a look at pam butler's brother. he did it, dennis murphy (voiceover): jennifer, the reporter, learned derrick had a property business with his sister. they owned a building together, so they had financial interests. they shared financial interests. there were the wills. he was named as a beneficiary in her will. dennis murphy (voiceover): then a family member told police that pam had been planning to end some of her business dealings with derrick because she didn't think he was a good manager. is there a reason there? is a possible motive there? dennis murphy (voiceover): it was hard for the reporter

to believe the brother, who seemed so caring and determined to crack the case, was actually under suspicion for his sister's disappearance. but-- thou doth protest too much. is that what's happening here? is the brother pushing so much that it's because he actually is the one who did something? dennis murphy (voiceover): police questioned derrick numerous times during their investigation, sessions that turned sour. they would say things to me like, you know, it's not looking really good for you. you're the only one that we see that had anything to gain from her going missing. dennis murphy: you're going to inherit her money. correct. and this, derrick, is, what, just months after your sister was reported missing? - correct. the brother did it. dennis murphy: and they're going through your credit card transactions and your phone calls? everything. giving the full-blown investigation into you. correct, uh-huh. dennis murphy (voiceover): but nothing came of all the questioning. and derrick insisted he had done nothing to pam. and that's pretty much where the whole mysterious story of pamela butler stayed-- in limbo.

pam butler, for me, was a name that haunted me for years. that picture of her in the the purple dress is emblazoned in my mind. you knew something was wrong. you knew something bad had happened. your daughter will be remembered every day. dennis murphy (voiceover): on the first anniversary of pam's disappearance, derrick held a vigil, attended by family and pam's closest friends. and as the years passed, there were more vigils. i will tell you, they were very, very painful because you're standing in front of her house. you're reliving the whole scenario. dennis murphy (voiceover): detective credle attended the vigils, too, and he kept searching for clues, sometimes spending hours late at night outside pam's home. mitch credle: a long time ago, when i first joined homicide, my sergeant said, you spend enough time on a crime scene to start talking to you. what was this one telling you? here you are in the dark, years later. mitch credle: at night, watching the house, there is no late dog walkers. there is no one jogging.

so it was very difficult. and you were striking out with that? oh, my god, i was-- whew, lord have a mercy. it's like i went-- man, it's like i went a whole baseball season without a hit. did you lose faith in the investigation? oh, i did lose faith in the investigation. i really, in my mind, thought that they would never charge anyone. why did this case stick with you, mitch? you're a veteran. you've had unsolveds along the way yeah, i've had plenty of unsolved cases. this case stuck with me because of derrick and his mother. when i met his mother, i was just-- oh, wow. i couldn't even hold myself together because, here, as i'm sitting here talking to her, and i can't even give her any information. there's nothing i can tell her, nothing i could do. it's nothing. dennis murphy (voiceover): seven whole years went by, and still there was no trace of pamela butler. no calls to her beloved family and friends, no birthdays or holiday celebrated. no financial activity on her accounts. nothing. finally, in 2016, a judge declared pam officially dead. now, her missing persons case could be officially classified as an unsolved homicide.

and mitch credle, soon to retire, made a last ditch plea to his boss. i say, commander, look, this family needs more than what we're giving them. this case needs to be handled by someone in the cold case unit. give one of them dudes this case. and he looked at me and said, ok, mitch, i will. and when he said that, i was like, thank god. dennis murphy (voiceover): a new detective was promptly assigned, and he plunged deep into the pam butler case file. it wasn't long before he turned up new evidence, and the investigation took a dramatic twist. coming up, another look at that surveillance video. mike fulton: when you watch the video frame by frame by frame, you start to see little things that don't make sense. dennis murphy (voiceover): and a closer look at pam's brother, derrick. it's awkward to have to ask somebody, did you kill your sister? but you did? i did, yes. dennis murphy (voiceover): when "dateline" continues.

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and fo[tense music]ndruff, dennis murphy (voiceover): in late 2016, seven years after pam butler went missing, a 28-year veteran dc cold case detective named mike fulton was assigned the case. dennis murphy: the story goes that you really wanted that one. i did. you want the tough ones. and this was a big case. dennis murphy (voiceover): unlike detectives before him, fulton had the luxury of working pam's case full-time. he believed he was likely dealing with her murder, even though pam's body had not been found. she was declared legally dead. and why was that important for you as an investigator? ultimately, if we figure out who did it, a defense attorney can't say, look, pam butler's alive. she's going to walk through this door and have everybody sort of turn and look. no body, no crime, right? that's the bumper sticker, right? exactly. the judge isn't saying she was a victim of a homicide. the judge is saying she's dead. so once we get the facts to show that she's a victim of a homicide,

it just makes it that much easier. dennis murphy (voiceover): easier to make an arrest and secure a conviction. what's your approach, detective? do you put the clock back to day one hour one on this thing? absolutely. dennis murphy: so, detective, this is pamela's place. dennis murphy (voiceover): like the detectives before him, detective fulton immediately drove out to pam's house. the house looks different now than it did-- yeah. --back in 2009. but this is it. dennis murphy (voiceover): he began to excavate the foundations of pam's case. you start dissecting the life. you know, who were her friends? did she have any other boyfriends? ex-husbands, you know, her job, financials. you start going through everything. dennis murphy (voiceover): everything, but first off, pam butler's family. the detective reviewed the original persons of interest and became convinced for one, that pam's nephew, brandon, just a teenager at the time, had nothing to do with pam's death. but he didn't dismiss the suspicions about pam's brother, derrick. you have to investigate every angle. dennis murphy: following the money, right? absolutely, absolutely. you follow the investigation where it goes. dennis murphy (voiceover): and just

as previous investigators had learned, the money trail led to derrick. there was questions i had to ask him that were hard, that he needed to answer. dennis murphy (voiceover): top metropolitan police officials call derrick in to meet with the new detective assigned to his sister's case-- a new face. derrick saw only more of the same. you went through some detectives, right? oh, yes. at least five detectives, yes. so here's yet another detective. you're introduced to us. here's your guy now. wasn't impressed at all. i think there was a part of him that said, ok, here we go again. another detective, somebody else just telling me, you know, what i want to hear. he just didn't seem to me like he had it, and the way that he was talking. he just didn't seem like he was. he was the one. dennis murphy (voiceover): then, quite suddenly, ominously, the atmosphere in this introductory meeting changed. fulton confronted derrick, cutting right to the chase. it's awkward to have to ask somebody, did you kill your sister? but you did? i did, yes. and he asked me, he said, did you do something to your sister? this new cop is thinking maybe i'm talking

to the killer right here? the brother who benefited from her death? i said, no, i didn't do it. dennis murphy (voiceover): but derrick had a growing sense of foreboding. this new detective wasn't letting go and drilled down again. dennis murphy: you're still on his list. mm-hmm. he said. i need you to come down and give some dna. oh, this again. so you're hitting another gear here in this whole "derrick did it" theory. dennis murphy (voiceover): but fulton was heading down multiple paths in his investigation. he wasn't ready to discount pam's boyfriend, jose, even though he had no felonies to his name. he retrieved pam butler's security camera footage from the case file. are these surveillance videos your main bit of evidence in this case? they're a very crucial part of the investigation. when you watch the video frame by frame by frame by frame, you start to see little things that don't make sense. dennis murphy (voiceover): for instance-- the motion sensor lights, you know? why aren't they working? it's nighttime. so any time anything came, a cat, anything, these lights would pop on. pop on, illuminate around the house.

so sometime in the late hours, you can see jose come outside, but the lights don't come on. dennis murphy (voiceover): it was true. the video that first showed jose in the glare of a motion-activated security light around the time pam went missing later seemed as though it had been turned off. dennis murphy: what did that tell you? well, that tells me that-- i mean, what's going on. dennis murphy (voiceover): and something else caught the detective's eye, something seen in jose's hand. it appeared to be pam butler's keychain. how might jose explain why he had it? you told us that pam gave you one key, but now it looks like you have a key with stuff hanging from it. and we know that pam had a keychain. and we're like, well, wait a second. where is this coming from? dennis murphy (voiceover): the detective's suspicions took him on a deep dive into jose's past, going back some 30 years. he discovered some troubling stories about jose and women. coming up. on a first take, how does jose come across? a normal guy, you know, served his country,

works hard. dennis murphy (voiceover): a seemingly normal guy with a stunning secret-- two lives, two wives. how do you pull that off? you learn how to lie to one wife, to the other wife. dennis murphy (voiceover): when "dateline" continues. finish ultimate, engineered for the toughest conditions. dry, burnt-on stains, old dishwashers, very hard water. finish ultimate with cyclesync technology helps deliver the ultimate clean. (♪♪) sometimes jonah wrestles with falling asleep... ...so he takes zzzquil. the world's #1 sleep aid brand. and wakes up feeling like himself. get the rest to be your best with non-habit forming zzzquil. ♪ ♪

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penseful music] dennis murphy (voiceover): the comings and goings of pamela butler's boyfriend, jose, captured on pam's home security cameras, were more than perplexing to detective mike fulton of washington, dc's metropolitan police department. so in early 2017, even as pam's brother derrick remained a person of interest in her disappearance, the detective took a hard look at jose's background. on a first take, how does jose come across? a normal guy, served his country, works hard. dennis murphy (voiceover): the dc detective needed to know more about jose's personal life.

so to get the scoop, he reached across the potomac river to law enforcement colleagues in arlington, virginia, where jose was living. i remember vividly. it was march of 2017. he says he needed my help. dennis murphy (voiceover): arlington pd cold case detective rosa ortiz got the call. as she began to investigate, she learned that long before the pam butler case, jose had been married in puerto rico to a woman named marta. they meet in puerto rico. they go to the same school. marta is a bit older than jose. did you want to know who marta was? i wanted to, absolutely. dennis murphy (voiceover): detective ortiz, who speaks fluent spanish, was able to fill in some blanks about marta from her sister nayda in puerto rico. interpreter: she was slim and tall. she had green eyes. very pretty. she was very intelligent. she was always laughing. dennis murphy (voiceover): she has a recording of her sister singing cheerfully

all those years ago. [singing in spanish] dennis murphy (voiceover): and she says marta was even happier after she and jose had a baby boy they named hansel and settled in arlington, virginia. interpreter: she was completely dedicated to her boy, nothing but the best for him. the picture was that of a happy american family, but when the detective dug down a little, she discovered stories about jose that shattered the heartwarming image. it turned out that while he was serving with the us army in central america, he'd met another woman. he meets her, and he marries her in panama. a woman named guadalupe. rosa ortiz: guadalupe, and then eventually, he brings her over to the us. and that's the end of '88, beginning of '89. he's got two wives in the greater dc area. is that the picture? that is. somebody stashed over here in an apartment, living a life, and somebody else is somewhere else, and he's shuttling between the two lives? that's correct. dennis murphy (voiceover): and all in secret. dennis murphy: did she know at the time

that he was married to this other woman named marta? she did not. she had no idea who marta was. she was totally in the dark on that. she was. dennis murphy (voiceover): what's more, jose had a son with guadalupe, too. what's that tell us about the guy, jose? he lived two different lives. so how do you pull that off? you learn how to lie to one wife, lie to the other wife. two women, two children. neither knows about the other, at least for a while. for a while, yes. dennis murphy (voiceover): marta's sister says eventually, marta got wise to jose and guadalupe. she knew. she told her sister that she knew they were married. interpreter: that's when the problem started, and she decided to separate from him. dennis murphy (voiceover): the deeper ortiz dug into marta's story, the more she felt an affinity with her. i couldn't help but sympathize with her. dennis murphy (voiceover): the detective herself had also moved from puerto rico to virginia in the 1980s, just before marta. dennis murphy: it's a funny kind of symmetry. it is.

here, you've come from puerto rico, and your first major, major case is finding out what's happened to this woman. and she has some of the same pathways that you have. absolutely. there was a connection. i knew that-- you knew the people that she knew. yeah, absolutely. so it was easier for me to reach out and find people. dennis murphy (voiceover): people who could tell her what happened to marta. when marta finally separated from jose, their son, hansel, was in puerto rico with family. marta, meanwhile, got an apartment with roommates, and she got a job, too, another echo of the detective's own past before her career in law enforcement. as she learned, marta started working in a psychiatric hospital. dennis murphy: you'd work there, too. i did. she was doing the same job. i did when i was there. wow. dennis murphy (voiceover): the detective learned when marta walked out and started building her new life, she also got a boyfriend. she liked him. he treated her so different. she just didn't know that that kind of love existed. and she talked to her sister a lot about how nice he was with her.

so it was a big deal to her. interpreter: they're already establishing a relationship and were planning to come and introduce themselves to my parents. dennis murphy (voiceover): but apparently, jose had other ideas about marta and new men. even though he had a second family, he didn't want to give up marta. interpreter: he was following her when she left him. when she went to work, he followed her. when she went to catch the bus, he was following her. dennis murphy (voiceover): she says marta was terrified of what was happening to her. coming up. on the fear scale, mike, here and here, how scared was she? this woman was off the scale. dennis murphy (voiceover): marta had a very good reason to be frightened of jose. he basically said, you don't understand. this is my wife. if i can't have her, then nobody's going to have her. dennis murphy (voiceover): when "dateline" continues.