once again, narrator: she was there. crew: that's good. she'd walk into the room and it just kind of brightened. narrator: and then she wasn't. my initial reaction was, oh my god, what has happened? narrator: the mother they adored missing. in her place, a trail of blood.

my biggest fear was that we were going to find her. narrator: what police found instead was a puzzle. man: in my 28 years, i've never seen that before. narrator: a missing woman, a mystery with few clues. did you find any fingerprints? no. hairs, anything? no. narrator: but did one man have a motive? he steals $300,000 and you're about to be exposed for it. narrator: except without proof, how could anyone convince a jury? so you don't think they had any useful evidence against you at all can? anybody name anything? narrator: could anyone solve the mystery? we the jury find the defendant, david martin hawk-- [music playing] hello and welcome to "dateline." when someone goes missing, one of the hardest things for those left behind is not knowing the truth. was it voluntary or foul play?

the three children in this story arrived home one evening to discover their mother was missing. but for them, the truth about what really happened may have been the hardest thing of all. here's keith morrison. keith morrison (voiceover): the key was waiting for them under the mat that evening in june, 2006, outside their mom's house. silence. no one home. where was she? was always on time to pick them up from their dad's place. but tonight he had to drive them. this just wasn't like her. where was she? conrad, the eldest, put the key in the lock, opened the door. chelsa, in the middle, crossed the threshold. stopped. what was this? once we took a few more steps in, then we realized there was something wrong. keith morrison (voiceover): this was the moment, the defining one. nothing the same after this.

and there was a lot of blood everywhere. keith morrison (voiceover): then the adrenaline kicked in, instinct took over. we just dropped our stuff and split throughout the house. keith morrison (voiceover): panic rising now. conrad was 15 then, his little sisters, chelsa, 14, and savannah, 10. three kids trying to make sense of a horribly frightening scene. my mom normally keeps it completely spic and span. there's hardly ever any dust anywhere, let alone anything out of order. keith morrison (voiceover): and now things were anything but. where the desk was you could see that there were papers scattered around, drawers were ripped open. and you went into the bedroom? i think that was the first place my sister ran into. and then-- so she quickly called us in and then we followed her. what did you see there? there was blood on the ground. a lot? yeah. keith morrison (voiceover): her mom's bed, it was made but-- it was kind of haphazardly thrown together, you know,

not quite smoothed out. and she would have done it a different way. right. at that point, you were pretty upset, i imagine. yeah. my biggest fear was that we were going to find her. that's what scared me most is that we would find her somewhere in the house. keith morrison (voiceover): but they did not. no debbie hawk, not anywhere. and there was some drag marks and kind of smear marks leading out to the garage, where they stopped. keith morrison (voiceover): and debbie's van was gone, too. my initial reaction was, oh my god, what has happened? who could have done this? keith morrison (voiceover): the girls ran to a neighbor's house, conrad called 911. after the initial shock of it, i kind of start to be reasonable to think whoa, wait a minute, let's not overreact here. clearly she cut her hand with a knife or something and she was bleeding and she raced out to the car

to go to the emergency room. this is all just a big misunderstanding. but it wasn't, though there were plenty of misunderstandings to come and questions that stubbornly refused to be answered. like, where was debbie hawk? what happened to her? and what happened to the sacred bond that once held three children together? back at the beginning, even the police were confused. daren matteson: this case seemed very unusual from the start. keith morrison (voiceover): assigned to the case of the time, a hanford, california, police investigator, daren matteson, along with the kings county da investigator arend lablue. both had worked other cases here at hanford and out among the suburbs and the almond orchards and the giant odorous dairy farms that splay across the miles of flat valley floor. but this one did not smell right at all, thought matteson. it appeared that she was drug out of the house, obviously against her will.

in my 28 years, i've never seen that before. keith morrison (voiceover): whatever happened here must have been planned, thought out. daren matteson: it looked like a staged crime scene, her jewelry in her bedroom neatly laid out just where she had put it. nothing was missing but her and her van. keith morrison (voiceover): had somebody been trying to make it look like debbie hawk had been kidnapped? or was the intention-- a failed intention, perhaps-- to show that she had just left home? i believe it was designed to look like a missing person's case. the bed was made. yeah. most of your crooks don't do that. keith morrison (voiceover): and had the perpetrator been looking for something? there were paperwork that normally would have been put away, at least stacked up, it wasn't, it was scattered and this financial document was on top. keith morrison (voiceover): significant? maybe. but certainly significant were the sounds neighbors reported hearing in the middle of the night the night before debbie's kids arrived at her doorstep and discovered she was missing.

several neighbors actually heard a loud scream. it was a blood curdling type. why did nobody call 911? that is not the type of neighborhood that bad things happen in. keith morrison (voiceover): no, and not the type of person to whom bad things happen. debbie was an accomplished woman, a sales rep for a pharmaceutical firm and, with a wide circle of friends, was immensely popular. she was very regal and, to us, royalty. she definitely fits the bill as the princess. mm-hum. she should have been a kennedy. keith morrison (voiceover): which is why the ribbons that suddenly bloomed everywhere around hanford were royal purple and the people who put the ribbons on and up also joined a search to find her. they walked the riverbanks, they peered among the trees. not a trace. by then, as you can imagine, the whole town knew about the disappearance of debbie hawk. and they knew something else, too,

two days after she vanished there was a find and it wasn't good. but it wasn't debby. instead, police found her van. it was parked on the street in a high crime district of fresno 40 miles from home. the drug samples debbie had kept in the van, medications for nasal allergies and asthma, were missing. and this was weird. the windows were down, the keys in the ignition, the license plate had been replaced with a stolen one. it appears that whoever left it there wanted somebody to get in and drive off. keith morrison (voiceover): oh and one more thing, the van's back seat was covered with blood. at that point, whoever was driving the van would immediately become a suspect in debbie hawk's disappearance. keith morrison (voiceover): police were pretty sure that was exactly what the killer wanted. it was a ruse, an attempt to plant blame somewhere else. but around town, some people had already begun directing blame at one individual. they thought they knew who did it.

she had said to me, you know, if anything ever happens to me, you know where to look. keith morrison (voiceover): but suspicion runs fast, the truth dawdles along. has it arrived even now? someone seemed to hold a grudge against debbie hawk, but who and why? narrator: coming up. things like, she needs a taste of her own medicine, she's going to get hers, she's going to get what she has coming to her. narrator: when "dateline" continues. still have moderate to severe ulcerative colitis... ...or crohn's disease symptoms after taking... ...a medication like humira or remicade? put them in check with rinvoq, a once-daily pill. when symptoms tried to take control, i got rapid relief with rinvoq. check. when flares tried to slow me down,... ...i got lasting remission with rinvoq. check. and many were in remission... ...even at nearly 2 years. and rinvoq... ...helped visibly reduce damage

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>> with no. >> greasiness irritation or unpleasant odors. made with unique ingredients. >> it's 100%. >> satisfaction guaranteed. >> pentrex the number. >> one online. >> one online. >> rated joint and. keith morrison (voiceover): you couldn't go anywhere that summer of 2006 without seeing those purple ribbons, a vivid reminder of debbie hawk, the mother of three who vanished from her home in hanford, california, leaving only traces of blood. before long, in her absence, debbie was famous, as if everybody in town had known the woman her children so loved. she'd walk into the room and it just kind of brightened. there was never a dull moment. and she was all for her family, her children. these are her parents, angie and bud triantis. hard worker. she was just-- to me, she was perfect. she was the perfect daughter and i dearly love her and miss her. there was a lot of lives that have been shattered

because of her demise. keith morrison (voiceover): demise, yes, no getting around it now. in july of 2006, the case was reclassified from missing person to homicide. a formality, really. they knew from the moment they arrived at the house, said da investigator arend lablue, somebody killed debbie. we kept up hopes, obviously, for the family's sake, but it was clear that she was not alive based on the crime scene. keith morrison (voiceover): investigators poked around debbie's life history looking for clues. she was very talkative, friendly, likable, always was kind of the life of the party. keith morrison (voiceover): this is debbie's sister, diane, who recalled how friends set her up on that blind date years ago. a firecracker. keith morrison (voiceover): he was the date, dave hawk.

she was short and attractive and a lot of fun and pretty good sense of humor, you know? you'd say something and, man, she'd pop back with something that you didn't quite expect. keith morrison (voiceover): they were married within a year. they built a home among his family's almond groves. i think they both wanted to have family and i think that was the impetus for the acceleration, i guess you'd say, of the relationship. keith morrison (voiceover): though debbie's big sister wasn't sure what she saw in him. diane: he seemed very quiet, very opposite of my sister. keith morrison (voiceover): then before long, conrad arrived and chelsa and savannah. i still remember christmases where my brother and i would run around and deliver all the gifts to everybody and everybody was getting along. definitely some happy memories there. keith morrison (voiceover): but sadly, a lot of unhappy ones,

too. i mean, pretty much from when i can remember, fighting and arguing were pretty routine. keith morrison (voiceover): and, after nearly nine years, this marriage, like so many others, fell apart. we might have been a little bit more different than we were willing to admit early on. even at that age, i can definitely see, yeah, the water was about to boil over. keith morrison (voiceover): the kids were nine, eight, and four when the divorce was finalized in 2000. and young conrad, chelsa, and savannah learned how to navigate the choppy waters known all too well by children of divorce. they just couldn't talk to each other, really. so i tried to step in and help resolve that. you were kind of a mediator in a way. yeah. a tough role for a kid to play, isn't it? i think it was easier to be the mediator than to have them yelling at each other on the phone. keith morrison (voiceover): and living apart, said conrad.

conrad: my mom was happier than ever. i think all of our lives improved. keith morrison (voiceover): debbie did well enough as a pharmaceutical representative that she was able to buy her own home. she could finally start living her life the way that she wanted to. keith morrison (voiceover): except there were issues. once after they separated, during the squabbles over divorce, she claimed he tried to choke her. she said, he just looked like a crazed animal and i thought he was going to kill me. and not too long after that, she had said to me, you know, if anything ever happens to me, you know where to look. keith morrison (voiceover): dave said that choking thing just never happened, that he was never violent with her. i've never choked anybody. keith morrison (voiceover): things settled down eventually, though there was always some dispute and the things conrad says he heard his dad say about his mom, awful. things like, she needs a taste of her own medicine, she's going to get hers, she's going to get

what she has coming to her. keith morrison (voiceover): in fact, the very night he discovered debbie had vanished, conrad told police his dad might have done this. i don't see anything that would disqualify him from being able to carry that out. keith morrison (voiceover): which is why, just hours after the kids discovered debbie was missing, it was 2:20 am by then, police called dave, woke him up, asked him to drive down to police headquarters for a talk. and the phone call was curious, thought investigator matteson, because dave didn't ask why. i've received calls in the middle of night. my first thought, for me, is family. what's going on? especially if it is the police department. he didn't. keith morrison (voiceover): and when he arrived in the interview room, dave didn't seem to have much of a reaction at all to learning his ex-wife, the mother of his three kids, was missing.

what did you expect? more surprise. any surprise. i didn't see that at all. keith morrison (voiceover): of course, people do react in different ways to traumatic news. besides, dave told them he was at home asleep in the early morning hours when police believe debbie must have been killed and his kids said they didn't hear him leave the house, they were there too at the time. and there was no evidence that dave was ever at the crime scene. keith morrison: did you find any dna? no. keith morrison: did you find any even fingerprints? - no. - hairs, anything? no. keith morrison (voiceover): but then, they'd just began to uncover the troubling secrets of dave and debbie hawk. narrator: coming up, a family divided. i don't believe that he'd even be capable of doing something like this. my suspicion was growing stronger and stronger. narrator: when "dateline" continues.

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>> calm. >> download the free app now. >> we do have major developments out of washington. have we already sort of crossed a rubicon in terms of who we are as a country and what the rule of law is? america is listening to you right now, thinking about what might have been, people hearing you, talking about the pushback and the fight and not mattering. what does that mean in practical terms? what they're doing to immigrants is something they say they're going to do every day. what's democratic strategy for trying to take that on? we've got a free press, a free people and an organized political opposition that represents fully half the represents fully half the country. so here we go. it's on. keith morrison (voiceover): it was a frustrating summer back in 2006 here in the farmlands of california's central valley. those purple ribbon search teams came up empty, though they looked everywhere for weeks. police named dave hawk a person of interest but he seemed to have an alibi.

all three kids were with him in his house the night debbie vanished. and besides, there wasn't a shred of physical evidence to tie dave to the scene of an apparently violent abduction. his own daughter, who spent the day after the abduction with dave, told the police it couldn't have been him. i don't believe that he'd even be capable of doing something like this. keith morrison (voiceover): but then they started poking around in the relationship between debbie and her ex-husband and there some curious things began to emerge. for example, in the months before debbie disappeared, dave took debbie to court and she was fighting back. kim aguirre was debbie's attorney. the issues that she was dealing with were custody and support. keith morrison (voiceover): dave had asked the court for a reduction in his $553 a month child support payments. why? because he claimed he only earned $6,000 a year. his salary came from his dad, who paid him $500 a month to work on his almond farm.

his only income apparently, though debbie's attorney found that a little hard to believe. kim aguirre: he lived in what i understand to be a very nice home, he drove a late model suburban. that's hard to do on $6,000 a year. keith morrison (voiceover): so debbie asked the court for more time with the children. his response was to ask for half custody. the percentages were something like 65 with debbie and 35 with dave and he wanted to make it an even 50/50. keith morrison (voiceover): and that's when the battle move to these, trust funds set up for the children's futures. the money came from dave's father but dave controlled the funds and debbie was sure dave was stealing from them to support his own lifestyle. why would she think that? well, this was actually the second set of trusts established for the children. several years before, a judge caught dave's hand in the cookie jar of the first trust which listed both dave

and debbie as trustees. dave was removed as trustee of those funds. but during the divorce, dave's father gave him sole control of a second quite generous trust fund. but when investigators ran the numbers on that second fund administered only by dave. basically there was supposed to be several hundred thousand dollars in each account and instead there was just a couple hundred or $1,000 in each of the kids. he'd been living off of it for up to about five years at that point. keith morrison (voiceover): something like $300,000 was missing. though dave cried poverty, he bought his girlfriend, mary royer, a $27,000 lexus, took her on vacation to hawaii, and used $60,000 to pay off divorce costs and the $1,500 he owed to his kids from the first set of trusts. but here, believe the detectives, was the heart of the motive for murder. debbie, if she hadn't disappeared,

was about to expose all that in court. he steal $300,000 and you're about to be exposed for it. it's a pretty good motive. by a woman you despise. exactly. certainly one more piece of the puzzle. and there was yet another strange piece to this puzzle. remember that mess around debbie's desk? documents scattered everywhere. well, sitting right on top of the pile were the records from the children's first set of trusts. the one only debbie controlled. there was $166,000 in those accounts. keith morrison (voiceover): the investigators in hanford now focused hard on dave, searched his home several times, carted off lots of stuff, including a stun gun, which, it turned out, he bought a month before debbie disappeared. he told investigators it was for home protection for his daughters and girlfriend mary. however, he had never discussed it with mary, he had never discussed it with the children at all. they did not know it existed. keith morrison (voiceover): they couldn't

find anything to connect the stun gun to the crime but it was odd. they also took his computers, of course, and since dave did volunteer work at a local church, they seized the church computer, too. even cuffed him outside his house in full view of local television cameras, which were now buzzing around endlessly asking, did you do it? for the last time, no. i'm getting tired of answering that question. no means no. but the fools at the hanford police department don't seem to understand that. they're on a witch hunt, is what's going on. they're on a witch hunt. keith morrison (voiceover): whatever they were on, they couldn't find the evidence to arrest him. they remained a free man, something that made his own son, conrad, very nervous. my suspicion was growing stronger and stronger. keith morrison (voiceover): conrad had already told police about the night after he discovered his mom was missing when he saw his dad sharing a bottle of wine with his girlfriend.

conrad: they opened it and toasted and had wine out on the patio with cheese and crackers. i don't want to jump to conclusions, but at the time i thought my father and his girlfriend had really poor taste. keith morrison (voiceover): conrad and dave spent that summer on the outs. it was after quite some time of not getting along terribly well. and in august 2006, two months after his mother's disappearance, child protective services took 16-year-old conrad to a foster home. there were just a few altercations that we had had, kind of like what my mom had gone through. keith morrison (voiceover): investigators talked many times to dave's girlfriend, mary, and eventually this exchange occurred. to you? to you? >> it's not going an aha moment? well maybe not quite.

so it all seemed quite suspicious. in fact, most people in town seemed to have made up their minds about dave hawk but one of them was not the da. they kept pushing and pushing and we kept sitting back. keith morrison (voiceover): did the cops have it wrong? dave hawk's longtime pastor thought so. narrator: coming up. this person who is portrayed as such a monster just simply isn't. narrator: another side of an accused killer when "dateline" continues. stay ahead of your child's moderate-to-severe eczema with dupixent as they welcome the feeling of touch with clearer skin and less itch. the #1 prescribed biologic by dermatologists and allergists helps heal their skin from within. severe allergic reactions can occur. get help right away for face, mouth, tongue or throat swelling, wheezing or trouble breathing.

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>> something you can sign and. >> make official. >> start your. >> will at trusted. >> wilcom now and make it count. >> hi. >> i'm richard lui with a news update. hamas releasing. three israeli hostages. >> in. >> exchange for 183. palestinian prisoners in the latest swap that temporarily paused 16

months of war in gaza. >> this marks the fifth. >> exchange since the cease fire began in january, and. >> new orleans. >> has boosted security. >> in preparation. >> for tonight's super bowl game, nearly. 3000 officers will be stationed in the french quarter and nearby areas. bourbon street. >> the site of a deadly new year's. >> day attack, will be closed for traffic at night. for now, for traffic at night. for now, back to dateline. welcome back to "dateline," i'm craig melvin. even though investigators looking into the homicide of debbie hawk had no physical evidence tying her husband dave to the crime, they did uncover some information about possible financial wrongdoing on his part. police considered it strong enough to warrant an arrest. but could they get the prosecutor to agree? here with more of our story is keith morrison. they kept pushing and pushing and we kept sitting back. keith morrison (voiceover): the prosecutor at the time, larry crouch, told his investigators he would not

charge dave hawk with the murder of his ex-wife debbie even after it was obvious this popular single mother had been murdered. even after months of searching around hanford, california, turned up no sign of her anywhere and after police had convinced themselves that dave was responsible, prosecutor crouch would not budge. not yet anyway. we're going to wait until we find the body or give the body more time to come up. keith morrison (voiceover): instead, a year after debbie vanished, dave was charged with embezzlement, stealing more than $300,000 from his own children's trust fund. he pleaded not guilty, was released on bail. reporter: dave, how does it feel to be out of jail? keith morrison (voiceover): and waited for the other shoe to drop. now imagine this, the police, not to mention most of the town, believed their father killed their mother, leaving three children caught in the middle.

conrad had no doubt his dad killed his mom, a dad he began referring to as dave. i tried to cut all ties that i had with him as much as i could. he was nothing to me now. but chelsa has been and is her father's staunchest defender. keith morrison: why do you think your siblings have chosen the other path? i think they're very upset by what happened and their relationship wasn't as close to my dad. they were either not home or not awake when i was awake and they were not around him the next day like i was around him. keith morrison (voiceover): chelsa says dave was acting perfectly normal the day after whatever happened, happened. no odd behavior. nothing whatever to suggest he'd been up all night committing a terrible crime. so the things that convinced me about his innocence aren't there to convince them. i think they are defending my mom so much so

that it's like they're going to point to the most obvious suspect. but but she chelsa wasn't the only one in this small town who believed dave hawk was innocent. i believe what he says, that he had nothing to do with her disappearance and presumed death. keith morrison (voiceover): sandy brown is dave's longtime pastor and friend. this person who is portrayed as such a monster just simply isn't. he's a man who has worked hard in the church, he's a good father. keith morrison (voiceover): as their son prepared to face serious financial charges, dave's parents, stan and lois hawk, took over custody of chelsa and savannah, not the way they expected to spend their 80s any more than they expected to have to defend their son. well, he's made some mistakes but nothing of the scope that is generally accepted in the community. stan established those trusts for his grandchildren

and says dave had the right to use the money how he saw fit to benefit the children. were you surprised to discover how it was used? yes. apparently his financial situation was worse than i knew. keith morrison (voiceover): a year passed in this gossipy limbo. now it was may, 2008, nearly two years after debbie's disappearance, her body still hadn't been found. and there was no new evidence tying dave to her murder. but prosecutor larry crouch heard disquieting reports from his investigators. larry crouch: dave starts surveilling our office, the police offices. eventually starts driving by an investigator's home. it was getting pretty concerning out there. keith morrison (voiceover): time to move. on may 29, 2008, dave hawk was arrested and charged with first degree murder and a special circumstance, murder for financial gain. he pleaded not guilty. when the trial finally began more than a year later,

dave faced murder and the earlier embezzlement charges together. prosecutor larry crouch offered the jury this theory, that dave snuck out of his house in the middle of the night without waking his sleeping children, maybe even used a ladder to get out of the window, and got someone to give him a ride to debbie's house and entered her bedroom. larry crouch: i think he tried the stun gun on her and she screamed very loudly. and he struck her with something more than once. and at that point, i assume he suffocated her. keith morrison (voiceover): then, said the prosecutor, he must have dragged debbie's body to the garage, put her into your own van, disposed of her somewhere, then drove the van to fresno and left it in the high crime zone. how did he get back home? that accomplice, said the prosecutor, must have picked him up and driven the 40 miles back to his farm. but really, there was no body, no dna, no forensic evidence to show dave had

even been at the murder scene. everybody in town seemed to have a theory, apparently the prosecutor did, too. but was that proof? so the state tried to build a bridge from dave's alleged financial crimes to the murder, painting him as an evil man who decided to eliminate his ex-wife when he knew his misuse of the trust funds was about to be exposed. enough? well, we shall see. there's a number of other explanations for what could have happened other than dave. dave was a convenient ex-husband. narrator: coming up, one of his children is convinced he's not guilty but could dave hawk convince a jury? i told them that i wanted to testify. narrator: when "dateline" continues. upset stomach iberogast indigestion iberogast bloating iberogast thanks to a unique combination of herbs, iberogast helps relieve

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citizens of the country. >> we are all. >> watching and waiting to see who is going to hold the line. don't miss the weekends. >> saturday and. >> sunday mornings at. >> 8:00 on msnbc. >> what we. >> do is. >> try. >> to cut right to the bone of what we're seeing in washington that day. >> deadline white house, >> deadline white house, weekdays from 4 to 6 on msnbc. the alignment of the stars in this case was just stacked against us, stacked against dave hawk. keith morrison (voiceover): at least in the harsh court of public opinion, it looked bad for dave hawk as his murder trial approached in hanford, california. dennis peterson and mark colvin were dave's attorneys. we had this guy allegedly stealing from this kids, saying bad things about the sympathetic victim, and all of these things being widely played in the press. keith morrison (voiceover): if there ever was a case for change of venue, this must be it, said the defense. after all, almost everybody seems

to have heard the accusations about dave and every time he had a court appearance, purple clad friends of debbie crowded into the public gallery. in fact, during jury selection, said attorney coleman, he actually heard some jurors tell the judge they had already decided dave hawk was guilty. the judge asked them, well, if i order you to set those opinions aside, can you do it? well, i guess so. keith morrison (voiceover): still, the defense application for a change of venue was denied, as was the defense request to separate the financial charges from the murder charge. defense had argued the embezzlement accusations were unfairly prejudicial. they wanted to make him look like a bad person, a person who would take money from his kids would be likely to murder his ex-wife. keith morrison (voiceover): in fact, the prosecution would say dave's fear that debbie was about to reveal in open court his theft of the kids' trust funds was a powerful motive for murder.

but the fact of the matter was that was already exposed. it had already been filed in open declarations in court. you mean, he would have gained nothing by getting rid of her at that stage. no. we also have that great old american saying, if it walks like a duck and it quacks like a duck, it's probably a duck. but you're saying it's a turkey. the burden is on them to prove it's a duck. in this case, they didn't. keith morrison (voiceover): no, the defense argued that the prosecution had absolutely no evidence that dave even left his house the night debbie was abducted and presumably murdered. in fact, his daughter chelsa insisted he could not have left the house without her having heard him. that just doesn't seem at all possible. keith morrison (voiceover): and even though investigators would tell the court that the kids slept so soundly it was hard to wake them up when they went to see them one morning, the defense claimed that the prosecution's theory of what happened just didn't add up. that's just beyond belief that somebody

would take that kind of a risk. that he would sneak down the hallway, open the door, drive the 10 or 12 miles over debbie hawk's house, subdue her, bludgeon her, load her into the van, drive it to fresno, and then get back to his house without getting any blood on him, without being discovered. keith morrison (voiceover): so what did happen to debbie hawk? the defense floated this theory. debbie worked in pharmaceutical sales. perhaps a drug had gone after the samples she kept in the van. all of the pharmaceuticals in her van were missing. somebody took them. keith morrison (voiceover): but that was a ludicrous idea, countered the prosecution. debbie carried very few samples. and anyway, if drug theft was behind it, why didn't the thief take any jewelry or electronics? no, it all seem to come down to dave. his behavior, his character, his own words.

like the conversation with a friend police recorded in which dave speculated on what might have happened to debbie. the defense played it in court as an unguarded indication that dave had no idea what happened. he he basically offered that, you know, i don't think she's ever going to be found. keith morrison (voiceover): did it work? listen to prosecutor larry crouch. you're going, oh no, why are they putting that in? i thought it was harmful. keith morrison (voiceover): though, what the jury thought no one could say. then there was inevitably a conversation about whether or not dave would testify. i told them that i wanted to testify. keith morrison (voiceover): an idea that dave's attorneys did not like one bit. dave is a combative individual, he's very prideful, he's offended easily. he thinks he's smart and he hates for anybody to think he's not smart. i mean, he'd be just perfect fodder

for a trained prosecutor. keith morrison (voiceover): and so dave held his tongue in court. he saved his story for us. so you don't think they had any useful evidence against you at all. can you, can anybody name anything? narrator: coming up, dave hawk speak out and so does the jury. we the jury find the defendant, david martin hawk. narrator: when "dateline" continues. my moderate to severe crohn's symptoms kept me out of the picture. now i have skyrizi. ♪ i've got places to go and i'm feeling free. ♪ ♪ control of my crohn's means everything to me. ♪ ♪ control is everything to me.♪ and now i'm back in the picture. feel significant symptom relief at 4 weeks with skyrizi, including less abdominal pain and fewer bowel movements. skyrizi helped visibly improve damage of the intestinal lining. and with skyrizi, many were in remission

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welcome back to "dateline." with no physical evidence tying dave hawk to the crime scene, his defense attorneys tried to poke holes in what they saw as a purely circumstantial case. would this be enough to sway the jury? here with the conclusion of our story is keith morrison. keith morrison (voiceover): dave hawk, on trial for the murder of his ex-wife debbie, did not testify, didn't tell the members of the jury what he was thinking. but he had a sinking feeling he knew what they were thinking. always blame the ex-husband first. keith morrison (voiceover): it was an awful problem, as he saw it, had been from the day his ex-wife, debbie, disappeared through a trail of her own blood. the number one suspect was him. that's what the police have been saying all along and that's apparently what a great many people thought in hanford, california, even as he sat here as a defendant

in a murder case. even though-- i didn't have the motive and i didn't have the capacity. keith morrison (voiceover): you know how it can be, said dave, once people get it in their heads you did something, they'll tend to misinterpret everything to make you look guilty. i was home with my children in another town all night but i'm being accused of being in another place committing a terrible crime based on financial shenanigans that didn't exist in the first place. keith morrison (voiceover): shenanigans like, for example, that trust fund for his kids. his father made the terms very broad, said dave, so he could spend the money as he saw fit in any way that would benefit the children. the money is to be used for the health, education, support, and maintenance of the children. and that's exactly what it was used for and i acted legally in that respect.

keith morrison (voiceover): and then, since they didn't have any evidence against him, said dave, prosecutors made a case based on misinterpreting things he said. like the time he said to a friend, if i was a bad guy, i'd throw somebody off a bridge. my point was, they haven't looked for her. if someone had thrown her off the bridge it would have floated downstream. they didn't look anywhere. so did you throw her off the bridge? [laughter] no, i didn't throw anybody off a bridge. keith morrison (voiceover): they also made a huge deal about something he supposedly said to his girlfriend about debbie. dave said, you know, we won't be rid of that [bleep] until she's dead. i might have but i don't remember that. and that certainly does not mean that i'm going to go kill somebody. keith morrison (voiceover): and then there was his own son conrad who, after all, believed

he was guilty and told police he saw dave and girlfriend mary share a celebratory toast after debbie's disappearance. conrad, said dave, just didn't get it. whenever we open a bottle of wine, we always raise our glasses and say cheers. it's just a tradition. we were not toasting anybody's anything. why have you never been able to persuade conrad of your innocence? i don't know. he knows that i was at home the whole time, never left, didn't have any involvement in anything illegal. but he's perhaps angry and needs to fill in the blanks with something. maybe he's angry at his dad because his dad killed his mom. his dad didn't kill his mom. he thinks so, though. he could be wrong.

keith morrison (voiceover): so who did kill debbie? dave has an opinion about that, too. who else wanted her dead? maybe the boyfriend that was stalking her? stalking her? this is somebody who was reported to the police and the police swept it under the rug, apparently. it was an ex-boyfriend. keith morrison (voiceover): of course, investigators say they did look into that and other leads, too, but they all came back to dave and one primary motive. so some cross-examination. prosecutors said you killed your ex-wife because she was going to expose your embezzlement of the children's trust funds. they've said, a lot of things-- weren't you, for example, afraid your father was going to find out what you were doing with that money from the trust fund? your father who lovingly put the money into the trust fund before you kind of siphoned it out. i really don't like the way you're characterizing these things. i really don't like the way the prosecutor has accused me of--

whether you like it or not, those are the accusations. yeah. and they're not right. they're wrong. they're false. which part did you not understand? what part-- what part did i not understand? what i understand is you bought a $27,000 car using trust fund money, you took a trip to hawaii with your girlfriend, you paid off your divorce attorney's fees and money you took from the first set of trusts by taking $60,000 out of the kid's second trust fund. the money was used for the children. which child drove the lexus? all three children were driven in the lexus. which child went to hawaii on vacation? perhaps that money was my own money. prosecutor never bothered to figure out what dollar went where, did they? well, you made it kind of hard for them because you were mixing up the trust fund money and your money all the time. and frankly, that's what scam artists do. i'm not a scam artist.

why didn't you go get a job? i had a job. i'm talking about a job that actually paid enough to support your family, which is what a dad does. you're reading from a script that the prosecutor's given you, apparently, because none of these things are true. keith morrison (voiceover): a guilty man or not? the jury did not take very long to decide. we the jury find the defendant, david martin hawk, guilty of the murder of debbie hawk. keith morrison (voiceover): guilty of murder and nine financial crimes. dave hawk was sentenced to spend the rest of his life behind bars. but was that the end of this story? not in the least. his defense attorney appealed the case as high as he could, even trying the supreme court, which declined review. then, in march 2016, 10 years after debbie hawk disappeared, a farm hand found her remains in a field in the neighboring town

where dave grew up. debbie's father, bud triantis, had a dying wish that she be found before he passed away. he left this earth just a week after that discovery. and the children who held opposing views about their father's innocence? it's complicated, isn't it? yep. has this created a rift between the two of you? yes. keith morrison (voiceover): surely not easy going for the children of dave and debbie hawk. well, we do the best we can. that's all for this edition of "dateline." thanks for watching. woman: it was a small new year's eve party. hello, i'm craig melvin, and this is "dateline." we took off and then shortly thereafter we saw the police car. my gut was telling my feet to run back to that house. this can't be happening.