this is keith morrison with in the dead of night. >> on the 29th of december 2010, rob fischer kissed his wife goodbye, got into his car here in an upscale neighborhood in california and pointed east into the desert. phoenix bound. >> it was a short trip just to kind of exchange presents. >> narrator: she was once again a lucky man, rob fischer. it didn't seem like it when an injury ended his police career or when cancer claimed the love of lhis life. now his family law practice was thriving and his marriage was as happy as a marriage could be. and across the desert, hiss grandchildren were eager to see their pop pop. >> they throw up their hands and scream papa and come and almost knock you over. >> they were ecstatic to see him, they would run and jump into his a arms. >> he would see his stepdaughter too of course. >> i don't have any biological children, so that was my family. >> narrator: he didn't know the future, of course. heart no little voice telling him, turn around, go home. no. but how life can change, in a moment. >> 911, what's your emergency. >> he shot himself. i don'

tonight, keith morrison with "a killing in cottonwood." >> on the afternoon of may 4th, 2012, casey duenas walked out onto the field for the start of his very favorite thing, high school baseball, a double header. spring was in its full glory here in northern california. his senior year was almost done. this was the place he loved, the game he loved. people sometimes talk about having premonitions of things. did you have anything like that at all? >> it was just another day, it was just another one of my countless baseball games, countless baseball games. >> wasn't of course, though no one knew it as though wiled their way through a golden afternoon. redding, california, with its famous sun dial bridge, its parks, its middle america feel, is a whole different place, a different life than the california whose reputation bla blares technicolor from the narcissism to the south. drive a few minutes from redding and you're on the ball tie lodi at a little place called cott cottonwood, here at the anchor of mt. shasta, just like they knew their mother would be in the stands. they were there? >>

here's keith morrison with "return to poplar river." >> there is a common misconception that momentous events occur in great cities, that justice is handed down true and pure from marble palaces. but what would lady justice say about the story you're going to see now about a nobody in a nowhere town, a story that is -- well, what would they say? >> this is crazy. how can you do this? >> i couldn't believe it. >> this is definitely a shock. >> yes, it's all of those things, shocking, unbelievable, crazy, and tied with an unbreakable chain to a summer's night in a poor forgotten back water more than 30 years ago. the town is poplar, montana, june 15th, 1979, summer was here. school was out. kim nees, 17, school valedictorian, national honor society graduate, was finally about to escape this town for college. around about midnight kim left her house to join the end of school party. it was the next morning when police found the family pickup at a well-known party spot just half a mile outside town. they followed a trail of blood from the truck down a rotted dirt track, 250 feet or so, to t

here's keith morrison with "return to poplar river." >> there is a common misconception that momentous that justice is handed down true and pure from marble palaces. but what would lady justice say about the story you're going to see now about a nobody in a nowhere town, a story that is -- well, what would they say? >> this is crazy. how can you do this? >> i couldn't believe it. >> this is definitely a shock. >> yes, it's all of those things, shocking, unbelievable, crazy, and tied with an unbreakable chain to a summer's