Transcripts for MSNBC Dateline Extra 20200803 04:13:15 archive.org - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from archive.org Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
hear. yeah, well and also, how do you say no when the entire thing is about you? so you were still the princess? right. reporter: emily was 17, but sara was nearly 24 and edging away from the smothering nest. i moved out. how d you do that? that s a huge step. they were leaving to go to tennessee and i didn t wanna go. and i had just lost my mom and i couldn t stand the thought of losing my dad. i never have been able to stand that thought. my daddy is so important to me. and did you tell lou to his face, i m not going. i m not gettin in the car ? yes. how d that go down? he was very angry with me. scary angry. and i just said, i m i can t. i m not doin that. i don t wanna be that far away from my dad. i don t.
he missed his wife. brian was sad. reporter: as they coped with the loss themselves, emily and sara had a flashback, and pieced together another incident when tragedy struck the family about two years before. i wasn t there, and i m glad i wasn t there. that would be more that i had lost. reporter: not long before trish s death, the sisters met 15-year-old cody griffith from texas, who d also once been on the fringes of the family commune. he d been close to trish and lou thanks to his mom, mona. my mom and trish were really great friends. they would do a lot together. reporter: cody s mom mona was something of a flower child. she was extremely loving very free-spirited. everything was spontaneous. there was really no planning. she could say, hey, let s get in the car and drive somewhere. reporter: could ve been a hippie in an earlier day, huh? maybe. just someone who is extremely loving, very accepting. reporter: when cody was growing up in corpus christi in the mi
reporter: every two and a half years a mysterious death, deemed each time to be an accident. while the officers suspected lou castro was somehow involved they had no hard evidence on which to arrest him. they had to wait. it s not that easy. we did not want to tip off what we were looking at and if he knew we were looking at him, he could move or change the way he does business. reporter: and you still did not know who he was. we still did not know who he was. reporter: and a year later in 2009, castro did what they feared, he took off but just as the investigators thought lou castro might have slipped away they got their first big break. a troubling encounter shakes sara. he was very angry with me, scary angry. reporter: and someone new gives a first look in the angels landing world. authorities were interested in what you had to say? yeah.
my sister and i used to play together when we were younger. my mom, it seemed like she was always home with us. and my dad was always there for dinner and things like that it seemed like. reporter: their dad built houses. mom, jennifer, a realtor, sold them. and the girls were close, despite a 7-year age gap. we would go fishing together. she would take me to the pool every day during the summer. things like that. so, i mean, we were close, but we fought like siblings. reporter: sara was 16. emily just 9 and a star student. i was a teacher s pet. and i was usually one of the top of my class. you were always prepared. yeah, i was a suck up. you said that. i didn t, emily. totally was. i didn t know it then. but i was. reporter: everything was easy sailing for the girls until their parents lives went in different directions. i knew that my parents were getting divorced. i didn t know why.