here's keith morrison. >> reporter: the game is called "mousetrap." a little ball on its track. the tiny taunting mice which, unless every lever works in unison, will not be caught. and how often things go wrong to allow the mice to get away. so odd that what really happened could so eerily mimic a children's game. >> oh how nice! >> reporter: these are the people it happened to, the jessee clan of orange county, california. they vacation together -- >> i'm tired, i'm ready to go home. >> reporter: share birthdays -- >> this one's for bev. >> happy new year! >> reporter: even got together for a monthly game of 10-pins. what these grainy home videos don't show is what is yet to come. which is murder, conspiracy. one branch of the family against the other. a game so twisted, mice so clever that crafting a trap to catch the plotters just might be impossible. to begin with, it was 1998. "shakespeare in love" won the oscar. monica lewinsky was freshly famous. it was a sweltering august night, hottest of the year, when cheryl deedham got a strange call from her dad, jack jessee. >> i

keith morrison (voiceover): who ever heard of such a thing? >>> who ever heard of such a thing?ers from a purported killer, plus a diagram of what certainly looked like the actual bomb that killed roberto ayala. was it real? a ruse? a lucky guess? if it was for real, who sent it? was it from the lead suspect, peter moore? or a hit man as the letter claimed, or was it from somebody who wasn't even on detective salm's radar? whoever it was, five weeks into the case it was about the only lead investigators had. so they played along with the guy, placed an ad as requested in the sacramento bee. and, sure enough. somebody responded. cops rushed to see him. perhaps arrest him. >> he was pretty surprised when he got a visit. >> false alarm. it was just an unlucky guy looking for a job. the killer though? the killer never called. so the whole ms 13 thing, the mexico deal gone wrong was just some sort of game. the real bomber was playing it. the trouble was, nobody knew the rules or the purpose or where the game might end. more than one way to find a guy brazen enough to sent that materi

here again is keith morrison. h morrison a >> there is a purity to confession, a real cleansing of the soul. now after months on the lam, elisa mcnabney, aka laren sims, was offloading the secrets of a lifetime. didn't hold back yes, she killed larry. her husband of nearly seven years, she said. but it wasn't her idea. >> i said, i don't know what i'm going to do. and she said, we have to kill him. and i said, i can't kill him. >> she said? who was this other woman who pushed elisa to commit murder? turned out detectives had already talked with her. remember sarah dutra, the young secretary, elisa's friend, who came back with her little dog who had been so helpful after elisa disappeared? now, elisa was saying that killing larry was sarah's idea. ellis saw told the story this way. larry was a heavy drinker and drug user. he was abusive, she claimed and feared for her life. one day she said she confided in her young friend, sarah. and sarah said, there was just one thing to do, kill larry mcnabney. now in this three

here's keith morrison. >> it was september 11th, 2001, just everyone knows where they were that awful day. like the glamorous trio that was traveling north through california's yosemite national park, even as the rest of the world's attention was focused on new york city, they were intent on their own urgent need, their desires, their fears, their deadly love triangle. so they probably didn't appreciate the passing wonders, the astonishing cliffs, the water falls, the giant sequoias. here is one of them. his name was larry mcnabney, and he was a tall, handsome man, a well-known and respected attorney from nevada, a personal injury specialist, made buckets of money, loved the big life, loved being in control. >> there was never a hair out of place. there wasn't dust on his desk. his pen was always in the same spot. >> larry's daughter was crazy about him in awe of his type a personality, his joy of life, his courtroom presence. >> i loved to go to the courtroom and watch my dad. it was mesmerizing to me. >> he commanded the place. >> he was completely confident, not an ounce of shyness

here is keith morrison with deadly trust. >> there's a place, call it a pot of gold at the end of ambition, of the american dream, a place the few and the lucky build their mansions by the sea. new port beach, orange county, california. where the most unexpected event would be murder. >> things like this rarely happen in newport beach, let alone in an area that is as secure as this area. >> let alone involving people like this, attractive charismatic, living large, like nanette johnston packard mcneil. >> she had a beautiful home. she drove an expensive car. and sort of living that dream california lifestyle. you talk about housewives of orange county, she could have been on the show. >> yes, in fact, she told friends she turned down an offer to be on that show, about over the top excess in orange county. no, she did end up on a tv show called american thunder, about motorcycles. showing off her own excess, including a bike she bought for 50 grand. >> what's your favorite part of the bike? >> i love the way it looks. >> there was eric naposki ex football player, personal trainer wannabe ac

here's keith morrison with "the women & dirty john." ♪ >> reporter: in the beginning was desire, naturaluman desire for connection, for love. and so she aimed her arrow at that online ocean of intimate strangers and found -- him. >> newport beach 911. do you need police fire or paramedics? >> hi. i need an ambulance right away and the police. >> reporter: it was summertime when the awful climax came. a late afternoon, a marmalade sun beating down on the parking lot of a rental apartment complex in newport beach, california. that's when they heard it. >> and she says this woman's just screaming. >> all right. >> whole complex must have heard it, terrified, howling, desperate. >> is she ok? >> reporter: there was a man down there, they could see him. he had a knife. he was stabbing the screaming woman and nobody was helping her. >> it's really bad -- >> all right. i understand. we have officers on the way. >> too late. too late. >> oh, the ambulance is here. they're doing cpr on somebody. >> the bloody ending. but the story, the whole terrible tale, is much deeper than that one thing, drea

here's keith morrison with "good and evil." >> reporter: how do you measure a mother's love or gauge the veracity of her impulse to protect? >> i loved her as much as i could. >> reporter: how to measure love as visceral as the beating heart in her own body? >> she was my first born. she was my best friend. >> reporter: how to understand the four mothers you will meet tonight and their connection, one that not one of them would ever have thought possible, not in a million years. anymore they would have expected to meet her, their guardian angel. >> if i don't bring her home, who will? >> reporter: it's a rare mystery that's truly a confrontation of good and evil. >> you have to go to the dark places in order to find answers. >> reporter: a rare mystery that needed an urgent answer before the evil struck again. it was march 14th, 2014, early morning. an army of garbage trucks made their growling clanking way in a anaheim, california. their destination a landfill that is also a literal found u mountain of garbage, 3500 feet high. then mid-morning, an attendant separating debris on a co

here's keith morrison with the as i remember of manson. >> all the remains are ruins. the ram shackled barker ranch is long gone. only the fitful baking death valley wind left now to stir the faded bits, the rusted junk. the artifacts from another time when this was ground zero for one of the most infamous crimes in history. the hideout of a living personification of evil. >> you got it stuck in your brain that i murdered somebody. >> charles manson. one hot, dry weekend in los angeles, august, 1969, a pregnant movie star slaughtered, along with four others in her home, across town a couple butchered in theirs. >> these were brutal crime scenes. things that the police had never seen before. >> reporter: murder so bloody, so ugly, they rewrote history. they became a kind of bookmark as an optimism i michigan ended. >> the '60 came to a close, 1969, that was the curtain the final curtain. >> who could make sense of it? >> are you sane? >> sane? >> yes. >> that's relative. >> two, even now. >> how do our kids end up doing this kind of incredibly violent crime? how did tha

here's keith morrison with "robert durst: the lost years." >> reporter: there is a letter written more than 60 years ago. a prophecy? perhaps. a warning, certainly. a doctor writing about a very troubled 10-year-old boy, suffering from hostility issues sufficient to produce a personality decomposition and possibly even schizophrenia. the troubled little boy? his name is well known. robert durst. by now you've heard the bizarre saga. the multi-millionaire scion of a new york real estate empire. the disappeared wife, the dead friend, the dismembered neighbor. he's been the subject of several dateline episodes and the star, though not in the way he intended, of hbo's "the jinx." >> did not tell the whole truth. >> reporter: but do you -- does anyone, know the truth about robert durst? tonight, the story behind the story. the trail we followed, the revelations we encountered, the personal account he wrote and we were given, which have led us into a very weird place, the lost years of the infamous robert durst. the tale is like quicksand. it sucks you in. >> bob is endlessly fascinating and

here's keith morrison with "secrets on the emerald coast." >> reporter: how do you catch a dancing sprite? do you put her in a bottle? can you package the joy she brings? can you keep it when she goes? >> she was like a gravitational pull. >> reporter: her name was marie. marie carlson. >> she was magnetic. >> reporter: when she was happy she could make the whole world sing. >> live life to the fullest, is what marie would tell me. you know, you might not have tomorrow. >> reporter: and so she offered herself, her goodness. gave her vulnerable heart, and stored her secrets. until, well, what happened. but she was always that way -- was marie. from the time of the very first secret in her life. she was born in the philippines to a single mother, then taken in by the family of an american serviceman. and it was years later when she learned that kind serviceman was actually her father. which meant that esta bridges, the best friend she grew up with, was also her sister. >> what was that like to find that out that she was actually your sister. >> i was happy. i was really happy 'cause i alway

here's keith morrison. >> reporter: down below the surface of the pacific ocean, on the far side of california's catalina island, is a silent current. strange, how it flows up to the swelling coastline of santa barbara. then, just before the open sea, turns back to glide again past this storied island. with, one sunny day in may 2006, someone in it. >> i have a saying that i'd rather be lucky than good. >> reporter: ken clark is a detective with the l.a. sheriff's department. been at it a long time. as has robert martindale. more than 50 years between them. but nothing like the case that literally floated to them on a lonely reach of ocean out by catalina. would never have had the case at all, except -- >> we were lucky that we had some boaters leaving newport beach going to catalina island and they came upon a body floating in the water. >> just happened to see it? >> just happened to see it. >> that's a big ocean out there. >> absolutely. >> so the chances of it being seen are, what, needle in the haystack? >> very slim. >> reporter: the sailors had spotted a flock of shrieking seagulls perche