Where Ream News Today

>> bye, little girl. >> it really puts a fire under you to realize, you know, what we can do as investigators. you know, it lets other perpetrators know if you think you committed a perfect crime, you didnt leave dna or fibers or habs behind, theyre still going to get you. >> and yet mac hasnt entirely closed out the case file. he believes art ream may have buried more bodies by that riverbank. hes opened two investigations. >> pandoras box still has a few things in it, so. >> yeah. >> whatever ...

Didnt capture anything useful from ream. he was blithely shooting the breeze with his arresting officers. >> he was actually even joking a lot with us on the way home. yelling at the truckers for not driving well and laughing with us. >> jen may have been the one in the car intrigued most by psychology and the criminal mind, but it was mac who had the idea for the head game they were about to play on art ream. theyd make a stop before the police station at the cemetery where reams son, scott, ha...

Family could remember -- a gold necklace with a charm on it, an anchor. >> found it around her neck area. >> and her family didnt know what to make of that. >> exactly. we asked them if they could i.d. this, and nobody could. >> but linda bronson, one of art reams ex-wives, said she knew what it was. art had worn that anchor chain all the time. >> were thinking after he put cindy in the grave he put his necklace around her neck. >> what do you make of that? >> a possession type of thing. >> just...

>> well, from the time i got this case, i had a daughter that was 13. the same aged daughter that cindy was when she disappeared. >> now it was up to prosecutor smith. >> it was a lot of heated discussions about this. >> and youve got this delicate situation of trying to broker the peoples interests versus the familys passionate desire. >> and you cant say no. theyve lived this for more than 20 years. so with myself and the father and the family came to sort of a middle ground, and i agreed to r...

Eric smith, the elected county prosecutor, to make a deal. >> my first inclination was, hell, no, im going to make sure he goes to prison for the rest of his life. the idea that the defendant thinks he can take control of this process and use this poor 13-year-old girls body as a bargaining chip, may be the lowest thing ive ever seen in a criminal case. >> ream held one trump card, cindys body. and the zarzyckis wanted that above anything else, even a conviction. the family found itself taking a...

Youre happy with the story that is told, right? >> right now? yeah. >> at first, it seemed like ream wasnt taking the bait. the two sparred. >> if it doesnt matter what happened, it doesnt matter. it doesnt. >> it does matter. >> why would it matter? if you dont care, the family dont care? nobody cares -- >> no, we didnt say we didnt care, we just said we have closure. >> mac stuck to the game plan, pretend like its all old history. >> i said im fine with it, im going to move on, and this guy wa...

>> the young investigator alone with a manipulative convict with a monstrous history. yes, she thought the same thing. shed walked into a scene from "silence of the lambs." she was playing clarice starling to arms reams hannibal lecter. >> he even said to me during part of that interview, im not hannibal lecter. and im thinking, hes been our own personal hannibal lecter on this case. thats exactly who he is. >> she played along as the non-threatening young female. hed sexually devoured young wom...

>> it went against macs gut to play nonchalant about what he cared for most, finding cindys body, but he went with his boss suggestion to find a new tactic. be brusque and dismissive. he hoped ream would get flustered and produce a new map. and that would lead to cindy. a few weeks after the trial and conviction, mac had a jailhouse meeting with ream in a visitors room by himself. the detective recorded the interview with a camera concealed inside a plastic bottle. right away, mac laid down the ...

To get justice. >> trial prosecutor steve kaplan had successfully handled every cold case, gaining convictions or plea bargains in all 21 of them, but he knew case number 22, the cindy case, was full of holes. >> we did not have a body, we did not have an eyewitness to her being with anybody, kidnapped or ambushed, we had no physical evidence against anybody. >> and in pre-trial wrangling, this wholly circumstantial case got much dicier. much of art and jens marathon interrogation with art ream ...

Accused killer in court too. because of a dramatic event right before closing arguments. art ream was talking a plea, courtroom top secret. >> they cleared out the courtroom, told us all to leave and i just happened to notice that the judge said to one of the bailiffs, you need to make sure that the entire back room is cleared out, nobody can be in my chambers, nobody can overhear this. and then i put two and two together. >> amber hunt figured it out and would later be the first to report that ...