> well, i found them on a summer day, a rare day they weren't boating, next to where brian and kathryn lairda story they told. as teling would reveal eventually. it provided, he believed, the final piece in the puzzle about what happened to kathryn. after two years of investigation, teling believed he had a case. albeit a very old, very circumstantial case. could he sell it? >> somebody in your position could work like crazy trying to solve a case like this, and then prosecutor says, sorry. i'm not going to take a chance. were you worried about that? >> absolutely. >> although it had been a federal investigation, the state of montana had jurisdiction. so they turned to brad light who runs the montana attorney general's cold case office. >> when i looked at it and i read it, i thought this was a very very good case. and it clearly to me showed that brian laird had killed his wife. >> the assistant attorney general met with teling. >> he says, yes, we're going to do this. state of montana will charge him with deliberate homicide. >> they weren't quite there yet, mind you. more than a year pass

>> it looks like it. >> remember, brian laird claimed kathryn drove away in the white truck after their argument. gave lie to that story. >> i just saw that it was a male driving the vehicle. >> and who did you understand that to be? >> mr. laird. >> at that moment the state contended kathryn lay near death, out of sight, inside the truck. the story, the anderson's story, was the backbone of the state's case. if the jury doubted them their case was lost. >> was there a worry or possibility that the story had become amplified? >> they had no motive to amplify the story. people whatsoever. >> the state had to prove this was even a homicide. cause of death was still officially undetermined. one of the original medical examiners had died. what he found was related by the original fbi agent. >> dr. mueller pointed to multiple areas of hemorrhaged blood in the muscles of kathryn's neck. >> bruises, suspicious bruises, darkening her wrist, arm and thigh on a young woman making plans to leave her husband. according to her mother, mary knew little. >> she had called to let me know that she was c