Nancy Eckland News Today

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. >> lindsey eckland arrived on july 22nd, 1980. she was the youngest of three. maybe that fighting spirit isnt visible in her photos, but her mother, nancy, says it was always there. lindsey had a passion for animals. she helped out in her spare time at a local shelter. kim davidson, who worked at lindseys middle school, remembers young lindsey also had a s...

Suspected me. i didnt know what even a search warrant was. >> the house nancy and lynsie had once shared was torn apart. >> how much of a suspect was nancy? >> i dont know that nancy was on the radar for a long time. she was on the radar long enough to be able to set her aside. >> narrator: after that search they did just that. they believed this anguished mother had nothing to do with the diss appearanappearance of daughter, so they took nancy off the list. they also took off the boyfriend, mat...

Remained convinced her daughter would one day just come home. >> you thought one day she would walk back through the door? >> yes. >> narrator: she believed it because she wanted to, and because over the years several people had told her they had seen lynsie. >> they never saw the front of her face. they always saw the back of her, and i held on to every word they said. >> narrator: it was torture for nancy, no matter what version of veen version of events you believed and police still werent te...

>> either by accident? accidents happen. >> i never touched her. no, never touched her. >> okay. >> this girl is -- >> have you put her someplace where shes left? >> no, no. >> police searched martys home and found nothing. no proof that marty had anything to do with lindsays dis disappearance. so they moved on to a suspect, someone closer to lindsay than anyone else on earth. "dateline" returns after the break. > "dateline" returns aftee break.

♪ >> narrator: her daughter was missing. nancy ekelund began handing out flyers and counting the days without lindsay, ticking them off on little post-it notes. she went to talk with the detective of the plascencia police department. nancy wanted carinne to know about her lindsay, how nancy always knew where she was, how they were best friends. it was a speech she had heard before. >> it is typical with a lot of parents or family members when they report a missing person, sometimes they give y...

Actually proved chris wasnt there. >> it wasnt your truck, but for years it was thought of that it was your truck. it is not. matter of fact, your truck did not go by that night. it wasnt there. >> he told chris about the credit card statement and how he found someone who remembered chris working on the job site. >> all of a sudden big red flags, you know. you are working, you are up there when you said you were not, but he said you guys dont work on saturday. lynsie disappeared on a saturday mo...

Should happen? >> find them. >> find them. then what? >> they go to jail. >> how long should they go to jail. >> long it takes. >> like what? >> i dont know. go to jail for a while. >> thats as strong as you could get out of him? >> thats as strong as we could get out of him. >> not he ought to go to hell or i would personally electro cute him. >> i would personally electrocute him, she was my friend, she didnt deserve that, she wouldnt hurt a fly. there was nothing. >> narrator: his lack of emo...

Many years of mom and daughter being each others best friends and confidantes, lindsay 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 like to you about what she was going to do that night? >> i have never known her to lie to me, but you dont know what you dont know. >> narrator: it was a friday night. lindsay was in college part time and working but still living at home. she told her mom that inst...

And police even found a photo from a bank atm of what looked like chriss truck heading north on the right street at the right time. to the cops chriss story added up. and that was when police learned matthew and chris were not the only men in lindsays life. there was someone else whom both matthew and chris had mentioned to investigators, an older man who drove lindsay around. no one knew his name. they had heard lindsay refer to him as her friend. >> all anybody knows about him, knows him by. >...

Open mind. >> and so larry sat down and read through the entire case file, all of the witness statements, all of the interviews. he did that for two years. >> here we go down this road again. >> all right. >> he watched the february 2001 interview that police did with a very unhappy marty. >> doesnt it strike you as tremendously suspicious that marty would call after lynsie disappears, talk to lynsies mother and give a phony name? >> if you didnt know the background of marty, then absolutely. >>...