and by the time she was 20, after so many years of mom and daughter being each other s best friends and confidants, lynsie began to keep some things in her life to herself, like where she was really headed. one night in february, 2001. does it make any sense she would lie to you about what she was going to do to you that night? i have never known her to lie to me. but you don t know what you don t know. reporter: it was a friday night, lynsie was in college part time and working, but still living at home. she told her mom that instead of their usual friday night dinner, she was staying the night with a girlfriend named andrea, someone nancy had never met. and then a young man named chris came to the door to pick lynsie up. the last thing i said to her was remember your seat belt and she looked over her shoulder and
and was thrown when she was a little girl. but very matter of fact, not poor me or not anything like that. reporter: but growing up, she needed so much care. her mother nancy was with lynsie like her shadow. somebody had to be with her 24 hours a day. reporter: that was you? yes. it was her and i alone. she was my only purpose. in my life, it was to make her as normal as she could be. reporter: by the time kim met lynsie, her dad and brothers moved away. kim remembers a tight family unit of just two. how close were they? unbelievably, extremely. reporter: but as lynsie reached adolescence, that started changing. like a lot of teens, she wanted her own identity. she changed the spelling of her name from this to this. by high school, there were girlfriends, even some boyfriends.
she tried to knock me out with my phone, with my own phone on my face. like this to my face. okay. and being drunk, it enraged me. it set me on fire. and i grabbed her, threw her on to my bed, and i got her into a headlock. okay. and she died. and then what did you do? then i tried to figure out what i should do because i couldn t believe how it just happened that way. quickly, huh? i just couldn t believe it. i thought she was just going to pass out and i ended up killing her. reporter: that was it. lynsie ekelund had been killed before anyone realized she was even missing. chris says he then drove up to
this man has made a career of noticing what others do not. what is his reputation? meticulous investigator. just pours over the volumes of evidence and finds things that other investigators do not find. reporter: the evidence whisperer. correct. that night i went out dancing. reporter: does this man act guilty? does he know more than he s saying? i didn t know anything was going on. all right. i just heard lynsie. reporter: what about this man? can you believe the story he s telling? i was supposed to pick her up twice, she was so out of character, she didn t show up on either day. reporter: the evidence whisperer wasn t at either of those interviews. but watching them helped him solve the mystery of what happened to a vivacious young woman, and bring answers to the mother who loved her. i was always proud of her. she was a real fighter.
matthew and chris were not the only men in lynsie s life. there was someone else who both matthew and chris had mentioned to investigators, an older man who drove lynsie around. no one knew his name. they had heard lynsie refer to him as her friend. everybody knows him by her friend. reporter: nancy had no idea lynsie was friends with any older man. she was about to find out. two days after lynsie vanishes, you get a phone call. yes. reporter: you re pretty much at your wit s end at this point. yes. reporter: the phone rings and it is a guy named marty. did you know marty? no. reporter: as far as you know, did lynsie know marty? no. reporter: marty told nancy he had gone to pick up lynsie at school but she wasn t there. he said he had money of lynsie s she needed for tuition. none of that made any sense to nancy. after lynsie goes missing, nancy, her mother gets a phone