instant panic, instant, instant panic. i still get chills. it just can t be. the investigation into who murdered meghan landowski, a sweet 16-year-old who loved to dance, had shifted to her circle of friends and acquaintances. a few weeks in, investigators had a good lead. they were trying to connect that sneaker print found at the crime scene to neighbors of meghan s. you took these two people seriously, to have marshals come in. we took everybody that potentially could ve done this, we took everybody seriously. the man in question had left town not long after the murder. so you brought it back, did you interrogate them? we brought them in, talk to them, we found that they did not know meghan. i did not know anything about her murder. their fingerprints, their dna, did not match what was left at
but megan s family said she wasn t reassured. she was scared. that s a heavy burden for a 16 year old. absolutely. very heavy. every car that came down the street, she would call and say, i think i saw his truck. and they would say, no i didn t worry about it. he knows better. they re getting more trouble when he comes by the house. but in the back of her, mine it was always there that he was going to come after her. her family and police told him not to worry. but now, it seems so obvious to them. have hicke plenty to gain from her death. it meant the end of an investigation into those sexual allegations. so, robert hicke s case kind vanish is, right? his case vanishes because it has a right to confront his accuser. so, he can no longer do that
And then she had basically, she was friends with everybody. more than that, they heard that meghan lived to make people happy. their parents say, she was happiest when she danced. she was really good at it and she was so small, she was so tiny. and she just would float across that stage. and she was beautiful. just beautiful. i remember her parents coming in with this wild child. [laughs] you could kind of tell when they first walk in what they are like. and she just had tons of energy. her after school dance coach, kelly, derek says her favorite kind of dance was also the most rigorous. as soon as she started ballet, it just it just it looked good on her. it looked right on her. she had really, really great ballet feet.
Loss of his friend. five months into the investigation, still no call to the family to report an arrest. after dozens of interviews, dna test and tips, every lead had dried up. it exhausted a lot of the investigative skills, a lot of time. and, every direction we turn was always a disappointment. a new kind of fear gripped portsmouth as the case went unsolved. reporter, mike ma, they re remembered how folks were worried that the killer might never be caught. one by one, the people who were the most obvious suspects, the most obvious potential suspects have been ruled out. and, that also means that they were willing nobody else in. there was definitely severe on the community. megan s parents lived in a nightmarish limbo. you never lived in that house again. no. after that too painful? i could see her after she was gone. that image of your daughter must onto.
It was that fall that when even heather noticed the change. i hadn t seen her in probably about a month and a half. so, i was excited to see. and she did not seem like herself. she just seemed i don t know, not her bubbly personality. it was almost like she didn t even want to say hello. like a light had gone out. kind of. yeah. her parents also wondered about some of the kids she was hanging out with. they suspected one of them was involved with drugs. we noticed that she came home a couple of times and all she wanted to do was sleep. which threw up red flags with us. they had her take a drug test. it was positive for marijuana. we confronted her about it. and she finally admitted it. that she had tried it. and i was like, okay, let s try not to do that anymore. so, she agreed. but meghan continued to have problems.