like us on facebook and follow us on twitter. that's our program tonight. but "20/20" starts right now. tonight on "20/20" -- >> as a mom, you just know. something is not right. >> all night street party, teeming with young people. but this student goes missing. her body was found back in here? >> 16-year-old annie mccann was found dead. >> we're in shock. >> the police say she was a runaway who committed a bizarre suicide. but who kills themselves with bactine? the family says she was killed. >> holy cow, she was murdered.

>> even assembling a world-class dream team to solve it. >> there's not enough to call it a suicide. >> tonight, "20/20"'s investigation lighting a fire under an eight-year-old cold case. follow along as we retrace annie's final hours, far from home. >> so, annie may have been here. >> no stone left unturned. doing the job they say the police didn't. >> they treated this evidence like trash. >> from a pastry shop. >> she was here. >> to a funeral home. >> the capital to the state p

penitentiary. answers for annie. >> good evening. i'm elizabeth vargas. david is on assignment tonight. at a time when so many of you have your children home for the summer these parents are still trying to figure out how their daughter died, eight years after it happened. we're live on facebook and twitter, as debra roberts tries to find answers for annie. >> reporter: alexandria, virginia, a stone's throw from the nation's capital. an upscale suburb in fairfax county with historic cobblestone streets, pleasant homes and top-notch schools like west potomac high. on vantage drive, it was the picture of tranquility, until

early halloween morning in 2008. >> this is annie's room. >> reporter: is it hard to come in here? >> no, it's joyful because it's annie. >> reporter: it was barely 6:00 a.m. and dan mccann was saying good-bye to his 16-year-old daughter, annie, before heading out to his managerial job with tsa in d.c. his wife, mary jane, a former white house i.t. worker and now stay-at-home mom, was on her way to upstate new york to visit the couple's son, sam, in college. annie, a high school junior, was a passionate artist and good student who played basketball and made her mom laugh. >> annie was funny. quirky, witty. >> she was just a delight. she was just a person that everybody liked, annie. >> reporter: former classmate chyna johnson-owens first met annie in seventh grade. >> annie mccann was an angel on earth, honestly. >> reporter: her parents say annie was young for her age, sheltered and a homebody. there was no snapchat or instagram yet, and the mccanns

heavily monitored their daughter's time online. >> she could barely work a flip phone. she had just got the facebook account. >> i said, "yes, you could have a facebook account, but i get to look at it when i want. i want the passwords, everything." >> reporter: it wasn't an issue since annie preferred drawing and painting anyway. that is really pretty. >> look at the colors. >> reporter: her work decorating the family home. she was talented. >> very, very much so. i always put everything in a frame for her so she knew that it was important. >> reporter: her big obsession was capturing her cherished dog, breezy max. >> she absolutely loved her dog, breezy. >> reporter: that's a painting? i actually thought that was a photo for a second. annie's artistic touch even extended to halloween, with goodie bags she insisted on making. >> she was too old to trick or treat, so she transferred her enthusiasm into giving the gifts out. >> reporter: but just hours before trick-or-treaters would arrive, the first hint of trouble. annie hadn't phoned her mom,

something out of character. >> she always called me like clockwork after school. >> reporter: mary jane knew her daughter's routine. straight home after school, and if neither mom nor dad were home, she'd call. up in ithaca, new york, at sam's college, when mary jane didn't get the usual ring of reassurance, she worried. >> you know, as a mom, you just know. i got this gut, something's not right. and so i called a neighbor, and i said, are there any signs of annie? no. any signs of the car? no. >> reporter: annie used the family's white volvo to get to and from school. >> you're thinking what if she's, oh, my god, what if she's in a car accident? please, god, let her be okay. >> reporter: a panicked mary jane calls dan, who rushes home and finds the house phone ringing. would it be annie? or someone who knows where she is? >> i answer it. it's an automated message from the fairfax county public school

system reporting that your son or daughter was absent today. the whole day. i almost collapsed. >> reporter: so now you realize she was never even at school? >> right. so i call the police. "get over here now." >> reporter: there's little to go on, and the fairfax county officer who arrives isn't overly concerned. maybe this is a typical teen acting out. >> people were saying don't worry, she just ran away. she'll be back. you know, kids do this all the time. it's not uncommon, don't worry about it. >> reporter: but mary jane is worried. her daughter is far from rebellious and only recently had gotten her ears pierced. she is diligent about keeping them clean with a first-aid spray, bactine. keep that in mind. you won't believe how important it will be later. with no sign of annie, her mom is frantic and begins making the achingly long six-hour drive back home to virginia. what state are you in as you're driving? >> i know, i drove right through somebody's farm. finally got on some highway.

we were just stunned in the car, driving fast and not stopping and like, why can't i get this car home faster. we have to find annie. >> we didn't know where the hell to go. we didn't know what to do. we did the best we could. >> reporter: how did you get through that first night? >> i don't know. >> it was torture, wasn't it? >> it was torture, yeah. >> reporter: but the torment is only beginning. >> and the call came in. i was told it was a dead junkie behind a dumpster. >> reporter: not even 48 hours later, homicide detective sean jones responds to a call. >> i really honestly thought it would be a 20-minute type it up and be done, and not so much. >> reporter: but the call isn't in alexandria. it's here, the perkins homes housing project in baltimore, maryland. 50 miles and another world away from the mccanns' bucolic neighborhood. and behind a dumpster, in this section of the so-called "charm city," a man taking out the trash makes a gruesome discovery. and it's no junkie at all. so you find the body of a white

teen girl at a predominantly black housing project. what was your first thought? >> that it was a homicide. it was a homicide. and we treated it as such. >> reporter: jones, a 25-year veteran baltimore cop, realizes right away this is an unusual case. when you first looked at her was there an apparent cause of death? >> no. >> reporter: did she look like she had been beaten up? >> no. >> reporter: the perkins homes covers several square blocks in a high crime area, just minutes from baltimore's famed inner harbor and camden yards. soon enough, detective jones discovers that the dead girl has a backpack nearby and papers that reveal a stunning fact, she's not from baltimore. not even close. >> i find a hall pass for the fairfax county high schools. i find her driver's license. and i have people back at the office call the fairfax pd. >> reporter: a half hour later, the identity is confirmed. it's annie mccann. detective jones drives to

virginia to break the news to the mccanns in person. how as a parent do you even -- >> you can't. you're in shock. >> reporter: do you ask any questions at this point? or are you just collapsed in grief? >> you're collapsed in grief. >> reporter: how did a sheltered girl from the suburbs wind up here? amazingly, annie mccann herself may have left behind the biggest clue. when we come back, the note found in annie's bedroom. is it a road map to what, or who, led to her demise? >> she didn't say, "dear mom and dad." she would never write a note not saying "dear mom and dad." >> reporter: what does it reveal? see what happens next. to be enough of it. people try to beat time. ahhhhh! but time always wins. our greatest fear is running out of time. there's a bomb in the salsa can! we gotta get out of here! my phone is still charging! so if time is the most valuable thing there is, why would you waste more than you have to charging your phone?

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"20/20" continues with answers for annie. >> reporter: nightfall in baltimore, trapped between a dark harbor and sinister sky. a city with a long history of murder and mystery, ever since edgar allen poe wrote and died here. now it's the case of annie mccann that captivates. how does a white 16-year-old girl from the virginia suburbs wind up dead here in the projects? her stunned parents haunted this halloween night by a note left

on their daughter's bed. >> this morning i was going to kill myself, but i realized i can start over instead. if you really love me you'll let me go. >> reporter: what started as a suicide note was beginning to sound more like a runaway note -- good-bye. >> i know i'm only 16, but i'm almost 17. i'll be careful. that's how the note ended -- i'll be careful. >> reporter: why would she run away? was there something brewing that -- >> well, apparently. >> reporter: but was there something possible that you could look back on and think, maybe she was upset about this? >> no. dan called me, and told me. and i'm like dropping the phone like, "what?" >> reporter: what, indeed. equally as confounding is what they will learn later -- that annie had taken $1,000 in cash, money she had stashed away, all her favorite clothes, even a box of cheerios. but nothing in the note hints at where she's going. did baltimore make any sense to you? was there any connection to baltimore?

>> no connection to baltimore, no sense at all. annie could not even find her way to baltimore. >> there were all sorts of unusual angles to this. >> reporter: to "washington post" metro writer tom jackman, the mysterious death of a 16-year-old girl was big news. >> beyond the fact that a suburban girl was found dead in the inner city of baltimore, there's no real explanation for how she died. >> reporter: you don't see this very often? >> no. >> reporter: it wasn't the usual bill of fare for baltimore homicide detective sean jones either. >> 90% to 95% of the cases that we're dealing with are african-american males that are shot on a street corner. i'm obviously going to look at this twice and not just glance over it as your average everyday case. >> reporter: then the case seems to crack like one of those famous maryland crabs. first, police find annie's volvo abandoned at a gas station. then, a tiny clue -- a smudge. it is a fingerprint that matches someone already in their database.

could it be annie's killer? >> we had to get the fingerprint processed and then once we got the name back from the fingerprint, we moved on that. >> reporter: turns out the print belongs to a teen boy who says he and some friends came across the car in the projects. he says annie, face down in the back, is already dead. so, as twisted as it sounds, they dump her body and go joyriding in her car. so these boys just dumped her body? >> yes, ma'am. >> reporter: and took the car? >> yes, ma'am. >> reporter: one young man connected to the group -- darnell kinlaw. remember that name, because you will hear it again. but police don't charge him or anyone with assaulting annie, in part because of the condition of her body. they're certain annie was not beaten, strangled, stabbed or shot. >> when i initially met the mccanns, i made it very clear that i didn't know what we had and that the autopsy, 99.9% of the time, is going to give us more clarity on what we are dealing with. >> reporter: then the autopsy

results are in, and they're a surprise to everyone. annie had a small amount of alcohol in her blood, but a large amount of something else -- lidocaine. >> lidocaine. >> reporter: it's a drug you may have heard on medical shows like "grey's anatomy." it's also a common numbing agent in all kinds of over the counter products, including bactine. bactine, the antiseptic annie had for her newly pierced ears. did you even know what bactine was at that point? >> i did yeah, yeah. i have kids myself. i knew exactly what it was. and i knew what the active ingredients were. >> reporter: but it's there in black and white, annie died of lidocaine poisoning. back at that gas station, crime scene investigators find what in any other case might be an innocuous piece of trash, but now detective jones considers it a smoking gun.

>> we found near the car, a bactine bottle that had the lid removed. it's not a screwtop bottle. it's something that requires a little bit of force to get off. >> reporter: and annie's dna is discovered on the exposed part of the bottle. the medical examiner who did the autopsy won't guess how the lidocaine got into annie's system, calling it "undetermined." but the seasoned detectives have no doubt -- it's suicide. but who kills themselves with bactine? >> people kill themselves. i've been in homicide for 15 years and they get creative and this is just one of those methods. >> to the authorities this was a pretty open and shut case -- she died of a lidocaine overdose. problem is, it's so rare to find that someone died of that kind of overdose. that is going to lead to some questions. >> this doesn't add up. this can't be. this is what you came up with? that she drank a bottle of bactine? >> reporter: but the mccanns are

taking notes on other things that don't add up. >> it was sound of the baltimore police to consider suicide. it was -- is -- reprehensible to conclude suicide. >> reporter: they don't buy it, as they explain in an article they later wrote. if annie was going to kill herself, they ask, why go all the way to baltimore to do it? and if she drank that bactine why did the police not find her fingerprints on the bottle? >> her prints and our prints should be all over that bottle. who wipes fingerprints while killing themselves? >> reporter: and who writes a to do list like annie did on her hand if they're planning to end it all? reminders to do her chores and say her prayers. >> we thought it was a baffling mystery. nobody's heard of anybody overdosing on bactine, much less a kid from the suburbs who didn't seem to be that unhappy with life. and so we continued to press on with the story. >> reporter: and the story was far from over. when we come back -- the mccanns are about to get disturbing new details about their daughter's death.

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"20/20" continues, with answers for annie. >> reporter: it's a ritual no parent should ever endure. dan and mary jane mccann bury their daughter annie a week after her death in this cemetery not far from their home. but no one is resting peacefully. in a curious and cruel blunder, the mccanns say the medical examiner's office failed to restore two of annie's organs after her autopsy. your daughter's heart and brain were not returned to her body? >> no, no. >> reporter: how is that

possible? >> i don't know. you tell me. >> reporter: the mccanns are outraged. they say it's unheard of, and wonder if the medical examiner could somehow lose their daughter's heart and brain, what else was botched? that's where diane downey comes in. we tracked her down at this alexandria funeral home where she's spent 25 years preparing bodies for burial. she says she was unnerved after receiving annie's. what did you think? >> there was absolutely no way this was a suicide with all the trauma on her body. >> reporter: trauma? the mccanns say the police told them there was none. so what about the goose egg like bruise on annie's forehead, so unsightly, the mccanns hesitated over an open casket. >> i kept going back to the detectives, but they kept dismissing it as, no, they were just minor abrasions. >> they were told minor abrasions. no evidence of an assault, and they see this. and so now they're probably

really thinking there's something more here. >> reporter: downey was reluctant to share her suspicions with the grieving family, but the mccanns' heartbreak and bewilderment only grew much later when they would get their daughter's autopsy photos. i know these are hard for you to look at. they're convinced they see a cigarette burn on her forehead, a mysterious letter "j" on her ankle, and worst of all, they think they see signs of a sexual assault. >> i was horrified. it was like, oh, my god, my daughter was tortured. >> reporter: the mccanns suspect that their daughter is a victim of a crime, especially when that funeral director points out what she sees as another bizarre detail, annie's fingers. it looks to her that they are wilted. >> her fingers were shriveled like they were raisins, like her body had been soaked for several hours. >> reporter: did this concern you? >> very much.

>> reporter: was this a result of someone trying to wash away evidence? police may be standing down, but the mccanns are only ramping up their own investigation. and the media is all over the story. and the parents are relentless. >> the police never honestly investigated annie's death. >> reporter: they begin emptying their savings, even annie's college fund, to get at the truth, buying billboards around town and then assembling their own "dream team." starting with perhaps america's most famous medical examiner, dr. michael baden, a fixture on fox news. you looked through the materials. what struck you right away? >> well, what struck me right away was the circumstances, first, that she was found by a dumpster. somebody dumped the body there after death. usually that happens in homicidal situations.

>> reporter: baden says in 50 years of death investigations he's never heard of anyone killing themselves by drinking bactine, and in his opinion there wouldn't be enough lidocaine in one bottle to kill annie anyway. so you were convinced that annie mccann did not commit suicide by drinking bactine? >> that was my opinion, yes. >> that's when it went, for me, personally, i went, "holy cow, she was murdered." >> reporter: still, no change in posture for the baltimore police. >> if you come across being angry, no one is going to help you. you come across -- if you're nice, no one's going to help you. >> reporter: disappointed and desperate, the mccanns march on all the way, in fact, up to capitol hill. to senator charles grassley, one of the country's most powerful members of congress. chairman of the senate judiciary committee. >> if i can help, i want to help. >> reporter: from iowa, he isn't even the mccanns' senator, but they don't call them "hawkeyes" for nothing.

do you think the baltimore pd blew it? >> it looks like, when they don't answer questions, they raise a lot of unnecessary suspicion. and if they want to avoid this suspicion, then it's pretty simple, just come clean. >> reporter: grassley sent off official letters to the baltimore police and the fbi. they wrote back, defending the investigation and stand by the conclusion, "annie most likely died from self-ingestion of bactine." but grassley also wrote to the makers of bactine, the bayer corporation, and got another story entirely. what exactly did you hear from bayer about lidocaine? >> pretty simple. that one bottle of bactine would not cause a suicide. >> reporter: in fact, bayer claims it previously told the baltimore police the same thing. >> back in here. >> reporter: her body was found right in here? which leads to this man, the captain of the mccann dream team.

>> this is not your usual death. this is a mystery that stumped everybody. >> reporter: jim kontsis, a private eye and former baltimore cop himself, now on annie's trail. >> her name's annie, white girl from virginia. >> reporter: he retraced his steps with us, literally walking me through his investigation. >> hey, guys. >> reporter: approaching anyone and everyone he could, like these folks at the perkins homes. >> we're just trying to fill in the blanks. how did the body get behind the dumpster? >> reporter: did you ever hear of anyone talking about the case? no? >> did you hear any scuttlebutt about it when you moved in, what might've happened to her? >> no. >> reporter: then hitting the road. so annie might have been here on halloween night? >> yeah, she could have been. >> reporter: the key for kontsis -- determining where annie was after leaving home and with whom. what would this area be like on halloween?

>> packed, because all the bars are down there. >> reporter: in fact, fell's point is one big party on halloween, with throngs of young people celebrating, and taping the festivities. this footage shot the very night annie disappeared. kontsis says annie may have been among the revellers. then a big moment on this quiet block of abermarle street. >> this is basically little italy. you got all the italian restaurants here. >> reporter: he arrives here, vaccaro's, a baltimore bakery famous for its pastries. when we come back, a very sweet clue. and the trail doesn't end in that bakery. who are the mccanns about to question inside this prison? stay with us. e network. ♪ here's how it feels to get fifty percent off most national carrier rates too. ♪

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"20/20" continues with answers for annie. >> reporter: vaccaro's pastry shop is a landmark in baltimore's little italy. famous for cappuccino and cannoli, it would become the setting for a stunning development in the case of annie mccann. what brought you here?

>> i know she had a sweet tooth and her body was found over there and she loved yogurt, pastries, and i'm thinking why not take a shot? >> reporter: it is three months after annie's death and mccann family private investigator jim kontsis is showing annie's picture to workers here. so you came up to the counter here? >> yeah, i came, i came up to the counter. >> reporter: a clerk takes a look at the picture. >> one guy goes, "oh, yeah, yeah. i think i remember her. yeah, she was -- she was cute." >> reporter: then a server sees the photo and it's as if someone dropped a pile of dishes. >> "oh, my gosh. oh, my gosh. i can't believe it. that's her." >> reporter: she remembered her. alive and well, sipping a cappuccino with extra whipped cream. then a jaw-dropping revelation -- annie was not alone. >> yeah, yeah, yeah. she was with another girl. >> reporter: and then that's when the description came out. a sketch artist is soon giving that description a face. so you got the server here to give you the details to come up with the sketch.

>> right, and then once the sketch was complete, she looked at it and she says, that's her. >> reporter: this is annie's companion, according to a waitress. a haunting image of a tall dark-haired woman, older than annie -- late teens, early 20s. disheveled, tired, looking like trouble. >> she had heavy, heavy makeup. she had the ugliest fingernail polish you would ever see, it's puke yellow. i'll never -- >> reporter: puke yellow? >> puke yellow. she had heavy-duty bags underneath her eyes, like she was tired. >> reporter: as a detective, what's going on in your head at this moment? >> i'm thinking that's good, i got a hit. >> reporter: so, you're thinking this woman could be the key to solving this death. >> right. >> reporter: this is big stuff, isn't it? >> no. it ultimately does not have anything to do with annie's death. >> reporter: sean jones, the lead baltimore homicide detective on the case says they looked into it, and he is not impressed. not by the sighting of annie. not by the mystery woman with her. but if she's sitting and having a coffee or a desert with a

disheveled young woman -- >> sure, it's important. >> reporter: that doesn't set off any bells for you? >> of course it does. it's important, but ultimately we weren't able to verify that it even happened. >> reporter: the mccanns publicize the sketch, hoping someone will recognize the girl with puke colored fingernails. one person who might possibly be able to shed light on their daughter's death. there have been many leads over the years, but they have never been able to track her down. every time they would find a lead, then they hit a dead end and it's like the mystery continues. just when many might have given up, the case of annie mccann takes another strange turn. almost exactly three years after her death, a murder with what seem to be eerie parallels makes the news in baltimore. 26-year-old lakeisha player is murdered and her car is stolen. when police name the killer, the mccanns are flabbergasted.

>> police believe the killer is this man. darnell kinlaw. >> reporter: the same darnell kinlaw previously questioned in annie's case and who the mccanns believe had been involved in tossing their daughter's body and taking her volvo on that joyride. >> that same guy then gets arrested for murdering someone and taking their car. that's a big coincidence. >> reporter: annie's case comes roaring back into the headlines. >> kinlaw was eventually charged with the unlawful taking of the car in 2008. >> reporter: awfully close to the same kind of circumstances. >> i'd argue otherwise. he shot her and stole her car in a domestic incident. has no similarities to annie's case. >> reporter: do you think he knows more than he's told you? >> no. as a matter of fact i think that it tells the opposite. that if he were to murder

someone, he's going to use a gun, he's going to use the standard method. and that he's not going to poison someone with lidocaine. >> reporter: for years, the mccanns have wanted to question kinlaw themselves, convinced they might be able to get something more out of him about annie's death. now, on a gray june day nearly eight years after annie's death, they will get their chance. kinlaw has surprisingly agreed to meet with them. dan and mary jane leave their fairfax county home for the nearly three-hour ride across maryland. >> are you nervous? >> no. >> no, you're not. because i know that it might not -- we might not get anything. >> yeah, that's what i fully expect. he might accidentally tell the truth or do it on purpose. we're going to interview one of what we believe are five thugs, at least four, and we believe five who dumped annie's dead or dying body from her car and took the car for a joyride.

give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those -- >> reporter: praying as they drive and strategize. >> we want to know the circumstances under which he found the car, found annie, had he seen her before, had he seen her with anybody else? and can he please find it in his heart to help us find out who, not him, murdered our beautiful daughter? >> reporter: coming up -- are the mccanns face to face with their daughter's killer? does darnell kinlaw have answers about annie? watch what happens next. i take prilosec otc each morning for my frequent heartburn

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"20/20" continues, with answers for annie. >> reporter: dan and mary jane mccann drive 150 miles across maryland. doing the kind of detective work they say the baltimore police are not. they're going to question darnell kinlaw, a young man they believe was involved in dumping their daughter's body and

joyriding in her car in baltimore nearly eight years ago. kinlaw is doing 30 years for murdering his girlfriend, lakeisha player, and taking her car. >> that takes a lot of guts for these parents to walk into a maximum security prison and sit down and interview the man who they think may have killed their daughter. >> he was on the other side of thick glass. we could hear each other very well. >> reporter: they make small talk with the killer. they even pray together. >> and i said, darnell, i take it from your letter you're christian and he said yes, and i said would you mind if we started with a prayer and he said no, and he joined us. >> reporter: then dan gets down to brass tacks. >> our first question was, this is maybe the hardest question we're going to ask you, or maybe the easiest. did you kill our daughter? no. we had to ask, okay. >> reporter: they say kinlaw

seemed genuinely upset at times. but as he looked into their heartbroken faces, they say he offered nothing that would end their misery. >> nothing, nothing. so we, we've worked a long time to get to see darnell kinlaw. finally got to. and we got pretty much what we expected, which is nothing. we learned that he knows almost nothing about annie's death. >> reporter: weary after struggling nearly eight years now to prove their daughter did not take her own life, the mccanns' anger toward the baltimore police is as raw as ever. we talked to lead detective sean jones about the mccanns' accusations. we also confronted his boss, colonel stanley branford. >> reporter: the mccanns say that the baltimore police department took the easy way. by labeling this a suicide they were able to wash their hands of it and move on to another crime. >> i'm sorry that they feel that way, but that's simply not the way we approached this case. i can tell you that this case has been thoroughly investigated, not only by us, by

the fbi, that we asked to come in and evaluate our investigation. >> reporter: doesn't this family deserve more answers? >> we've given them all we can give. we cannot provide answers that we do not have. we believe that annie mccann committed suicide. >> reporter: suicide. but this is a girl who lived in the suburbs. why would she drive 50 miles to a housing project in baltimore to commit suicide? >> well, that i can't answer, because i don't know the mindset of annie at that time. >> reporter: but police do share stunning evidence with us that the mccanns did not. we already knew about the letter annie wrote saying she was going to kill herself, and changed her mind. but now police reveal their investigation found other notes in which annie talks about suffering with anorexia and depression. she writes to a friend, "my suicide has nothing to do with you." in another note, "pressure has

gotten to me. i can't do it anymore." and, "no one blame themselves for this. this is all on me." >> in all of her writing she had indicated that she was leaving and she expressed to some degree that she was tired of living. >> reporter: in response, the mccanns insist annie did not intend these as suicide notes. one was found crumpled up under her bed, and the other partly crossed out. >> now, my heart goes out to her parents. we have responded to every request that they made. we responded to every piece of information that came in. >> reporter: after 1,200 hours on the case, the baltimore police department stands by its belief that annie took her own life by drinking bactine. it's a critical question at the core of annie mccann's death. is there enough lidocaine in a single five-ounce bottle of bactine to kill a 16-year-old girl? the mccanns' medical experts are

at odds with the baltimore pd. so "20/20" contacted dr. bill manion, a board-certified forensic pathologist. he estimates he's determined cause and manner of death in 2,500 cases over the years. but not one of them involved bactine or lidocaine. >> bactine, i had never heard of that before. i didn't know it was capable of killing you. but it is capable, because it has lidocaine in it. and lidocaine is a toxic drug. >> reporter: he says a bottle of bactine does contain a potentially fatal dose of lidocaine. >> yes, there is enough in a bottle of bactine to kill someone. even in a half bottle, there are roughly two grams, and that would be enough to cause death. >> reporter: even the mccanns' own expert, dr. baden, believes some of their worst fears about what happened to their daughter are unfounded. the funeral director felt convinced that she saw signs that annie may have been sodomized. did you see any indication of that in either the photos or in any of the material you reviewed? >> no, i didn't. i don't see evidence that she was sexually assaulted. >> reporter: as for that distinctive looking letter "j" on annie's ankle, dr. baden says

it may just be an accidental pattern from blood settling. >> it was the way the lividity, the blood settled in the body, after she had died, it was -- >> reporter: so you don't think that was an, a marking, a letter, some kind of a tattoo? >> that's correct. i -- >> reporter: you don't think so? >> i don't, i do not think so. >> reporter: there's also some talk that there may have been a cigarette burn on her head. >> i don't think it was a cigarette burn. >> reporter: you don't think that was -- >> no. >> reporter: another sign of some kind of abuse? >> no. >> reporter: on one of our visits with the mccanns they show us bins of evidence they say the police returned to them. and there, among annie's things, a discovery that seemed to surprise even her parents. >> what is that? >> reporter: a digital camera. her digital camera, still sealed in a police evidence bag. is it possible this has gone untouched and unnoticed for nearly eight years? mary jane plugs the memory card into a laptop.

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answers for annie. >> reporter: nearly eight years after annie mccann's strange death in baltimore, her parents do something they say they'd never done before, search the memory card of her camera, stored among evidence in their garage. this is what they find, 14 photos apparently taken by annie. >> it says may, 2008. >> reporter: but the pictures couldn't be more innocent. >> breezy, just the dog. >> reporter: its annie's old pal, the family dog, breezy max. later, baltimore police tell us they checked that camera years ago. yet another disappointing dead end. but the mccanns are determined to keep fighting. >> her death needs to be changed to homicide. >> reporter: the mccanns feel that the baltimore pd botched this case. >> yes. >> reporter: did you botch it? >> no, ma'am, not at all. >> reporter: what if you're wrong? what if there's a murderer out there and you missed it? >> i'm not. >> reporter: you're convinced that this is a suicide. >> yes, ma'am. >> reporter: no doubt in your mind. >> none whatsoever.

there is absolutely no evidence to indicate that this is a murder. >> reporter: recently, mary jane took another road trip. an emotional journey to baltimore. >> we are going to go meet wanda player, and she is just a really very special lady. >> reporter: that special lady, wanda, is lakeisha player's aunt. the mccanns bonded with her when the two families were attending court appearances for lakeisha's killer, darnell kinlaw. >> we both had two people we love taken away from us by murder. my daughter, annie, and her lakiesha. >> reporter: they haven't seen each other in a long while, but their bond, forged in heartbreak, remains strong. >> oh, my god. >> hey. >> reporter: they hug, they talk. and share a peaceful moment at the inner harbor, so close to

that dumpster at perkins homes. but just for a moment, all their sadness seems to sail away. >> love you. >> love you, thanks. >> reporter: then it's time to say good-bye. and notice as wanda gets into her car. look familiar? it's annie's white volvo. when the mccanns got it back from police, they didn't know what to do with it. >> i wanted to, actually wanted to crush the car. crush it like -- like, take it to a junkyard and watch that thing, watch it be crushed. and just like, i thought, "okay, that would give a good feeling." >> reporter: instead, they thought of wanda. >> i called wanda and asked her if she wanted the car, if she could use it. and so we just arranged it so she could have the car. >> reporter: annie's car, a light in the darkness, a place the mccanns have lived for so long now.

>> the baltimore police tell us this is not a closed case, and they will follow up on any new information. meanwhile, the mccanns believe god will eventually provide answers to them. if you were them, would you keep investigating? let us know on facebook and twitter, use #abc2020. i'm elizabeth vargas. for david and all of us here at abc news, have a good night and a good weekend. coming up the president of turkey is link to go day's coup attempt to a man who lives in the poconos. we will explain the connection

next up on "action news". it has been a tumultuous night in turkey, one of america's most important allies. a facts on in the military staged a coup attempt and it has played out live on television. the it is now 6:00 in the morning in