Take me back to that day. The cars been found, but the girls are nowhere to be found. We just needed to find them. Deborah what are you most father fearing at this moment . I know somethings wrong. It was at that Convenience Store the last those girls were ever seen. He came in and he said, carol, we found them. He said, theyre both dead. Deborah carol, what went through your heart . We didnt know what to do. Both of them were shot execution style. Their hands were trying to cover their face. The only homicide that i ever turned around and had to walk off. Deborah what did you make of that . You saw them here, lost, then you hear that theyve been gunned down . It was devastating. People were scared that this happened to anyone elses teenager. Do we have a serial killer . We dont know. Deborah 16 years after the girls murders, theres an explosive new tip. And pretty much all hell breaks loose from that point on. They were just normal girls, and they left the house for an hour and a half, and they were murdered. Deborah it was a hazy morning back on all 1st, 1999, here in ozark, alabama. A paperboy out on his route says he recalls a black mazda parked here along the side of the road. Little does he know that this street, that car, and the two teen girls riding in it would make front page news for years to come. Ozark, alabama, is a small, sleepy town. Its population is about 14,000 to 15,000. Its located in what is known as the wiregrass region. The wiregrass is composed of western georgia, eastern alabama, and northwestern florida. We call it the wiregrass because of the particular grass that grows here. It looks like wire. Its very briary, it sprouts. Deborah its through this little southern town that two 17yearold girls Tracie Hawlett and j. B. Beasley, just days away from beginning their senior year of high school are driving late one night. J. B. Was funny, charismatic, incredibly talented dancer and performer. Tracie was a majorette. She had a 4. 0 gpa. She was a sunday school teacher. Tracie i hate to use the terminology like your allamerican girl, but she just was. Tracie was very inquisitive, happy, never met a stranger. Deborah you were a widow when she was young, it was just the two of you . Her dad was killed when she was 4 years old. Almost three years later, i got remarried, and she and mike just hit it off from day one. Deborah you go on to have two other children, two boys. How did everybody get along . Wonderful. Shed do anything for them. Deborah and then theres 17yearold j. B. Beasley. J. B. Was just busy. I mean busy. Just always in a dance class or cheerleading, practicing, a game. J. B. Started dancing with me at the age of 13. It was so clear that she belonged on the stage in the professional world of dance. Deborah after a fallingout with her mother in the fall of 1998, j. B. Moves in with her dance teacher, who eventually becomes her guardian. Having her was a dream come true, because i didnt think i would ever have children. We cooked together, went shopping together. Any time j. B. Could be at the mall, she was at the mall. Saturday night, tracie was working at jcpenney. She had her shift till 9 00 p. M. J. B. Was off that day, it was her 17th birthday. J. B. Wanted to know if tracie could go with her to a Birthday Party, and i said, tracies curfew is 11 30, and i dont bend on her curfew. And she said, oh, well be back by then. This was a monumental birthday. 17, thats your last year of the real teen teen years, you know, before college and all of those things. She was celebrating. J. B. Decides she wants to spend her birthday at tracies. Theyre going to have a sleepover, and theyre going to go the next day to church together. J. B. Did have her own car. It was a gift from her father. It was a black mazda 929 that she loved. And j. B. Kept that car spotless. J. B. Picked up tracie around 9 00 p. M. They went back to her house to change, and they were going to go to a field party. A field party is a bunch of teens, their cars, and a bonfire. It was a place for teens to hang out and laugh and have fun. They dont make it to that party. They get a bit lost. They turn off into the wrong field. Those country roads are not well lit. So its not surprising that they were lost. Deborah the girls eventually pull over to a gas station in ozark, and they speak to a woman in the parking lot who gives them directions back home. They ask for directions back to the u. S. 231. You take a right out of the parking lot, and then you take a left onto u. S. 231. The directions couldnt have been simpler, gps or no. Its a little bit past 11 30, tracies cure fews 11 30. She calls her mother. I had just got home about 11 30, and the phone rang at 11 35, and it was tracie. And she said, mom, were in ozark. And i said, tracie, ozark . She said, yeah, mom, we took a wrong turn. We never found the party. Were on our way home now. Deborah so that was in, and the night was a bust. And as far as you knew, they were on their way back home . She said, we got directions. She didnt talk like anything was wrong. There wasnt any fear or anything in her voice. We said we love you to each other. And i went on to bed about 12 30. That phone call with tracies mom was the last anybody was able to talk to either of those girls. I woke up about between 4 30 and 5 00 and the kitchen light over the stove was still on. So i got up, and tracie and j. B. Wasnt there. Deborah was that unusual for her . Oh, gosh. And the phone hadnt rang anymore. You know. She hadnt called to say we were going to be later. Its a mothers worst nightmare. Tracie and j. B. Should be sleeping in the living room, theyre not there. She wakes up her husband, mike. Mike immediately gets in his car. He drives to ozark because thats the last place she was when they heard from her. Doesnt see them. He was looking in the ditches to see if maybe theyd had an accident. Deborah and youre here . I was still at the house and i called both hospitals, called the state trooper office. Deborah dracies mom calls the police, who put out an alert to be on the lookout for j. B. s car. I was awakened with a phone call from carol, asking if i knew where the girls were. I knew in my gut that if they were supposed to be home at a certain time, they wouldve been there. Deborah what are you most fearing at this moment . I know somethings wrong. This had never happened. Maybe mothers intuition or whatever, i knew Something Else was keeping tracie from getting in touch with me. Deborah nobody in this alabama town, not even the paperboy who passed what appeared to be an abandoned car on a quiet street, could imagine whats about to come. I would watch lifetime movies, and i would see things like this. Then all of a sudden, its me. Deborah and then an eyewitness comes forward, somebody who actually saw the girls that night at the gas station. How much do you think about that how much do you think about that night . Detect this living with hiv, robert learned he can stay undetectable with fewer medicines. Thats why he switched to dovato. Dovato is a complete hiv treatment for some adults. No other complete hiv pill uses fewer medicines to help keep you undetectable than dovato. Detect this marnina learned that most hiv pills contain 3 or 4 medicines. Dovato is as effective with just 2. If you have hepatitis b, dont stop dovato without talking to your doctor. Dont take dovato if youre allergic to its ingredients or taking dofetilide. This can cause serious or lifethreatening side effects. If you have a rash or allergic reaction symptoms, stop dovato and get medical help right away. Serious or lifethreatening lactic acid buildup and liver problems can occur. 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Then you are the one and only mccrispy. Dothan is a busy, bustling hub in southeast alabama. Deborah the city of dothan, alabama, is just 30 minutes down the road from its much smaller rural neighbor, ozark, where Tracie Hawlett made that phone call to her mom. Dothan is a contemporary southern highway city. Its about 70,000 people. Were very proud to be the peanut capital of the world, and that is celebrated every october with the dothan peanut festival. In dothan, the peanut is a big deal. It is the big cash crop of the area. If you drive around town, youll see they have a lot of peanut statues. Dothan, for being a big city, has a smalltown feel. Everyone gossips. Everybody goes to church together, Everybody Knows your grandmothers banana pudding recipe. Deborah and its here where Tracie Hawlett and j. B. Beasley meet. By junior year, theyre fast friends. They had a beautiful friendship. They loved just driving around and listening to britney spears. J. B. Loved to fix people up. You can hear tracie saying, thats too much lipstick. And j. B. Would say, no, no, its perfect. Be still, im trying to put your eyeliner on. I would be in the living room dying laughing. Deborah like so many of the local kids in the 1990s, j. B. Beasley and Tracie Hawlett hung out here at the Wiregrass Commons mall. Tracie worked at the jcpenney and j. B. Was a freak shopper. Until just one summer night just miles from this familiar place when the girls story would take an unthinkable turn. Early that morning, Dothan Police department put out the bolo for the car and the two girls. Within a couple of hours, one of the patrol officers in ozark actually spots the car, runs the tag, and shows that it is, in fact, the vehicle that they were looking for. They said, well, the car has been found. The car is not locked. In fact, the drivers side window was down. And they said, but the girls are nowhere to be found. Deborah you must have been frantic. It was very tough. Their purses are there. Their wallets are there, tracies keys are there. The moneys in the wallet. Theres no sign of theft. Very odd. There didnt appear to be any struggle. There was nothing out of the ordinary, in other words. Its like they just walked away from the car. J. B. s car was found on herring avenue, not far from the last place where tracie had called her mother. There were a lot of houses around there. But right where they parked, it was a short street. There were no houses right there. There was all woods. Deborah are there theories as when they first find the car . Do they know anybody around here . Number one. Is there a store around here that they may have walked to . Theres a hospital down the road, could they have walked down there . Maybe the car broke down, and they just didnt think about it. They got a ride. Thats really all we could do was speculate. We just needed to find them. The chain of command made the decision to do what they call close patrol. You keep a vehicle in the area until further notice. Close patrol continues for two, three hours, and the girls dont show back up. Theres no sign of them. Nothing really happens until alton miller, Dothan Police, comes to the scene himself. He gets frustrated that theres no news yet. Alton was real Close Friends with tracies dad. He says, carol, ive heard all about this, and im going up there. So he went to ozark and got a cop to take him to where it was. He said, i just had a feeling when i hit the scene. You know, and alton, i think, had been an investigator for a number of years, and he said he just had a gut feeling something was off. He decided to pop the trunk after learning that it had not been popped yet. He just went a step further in thinking, okay, im going to pull the trunk and see if i can find anything that would link us to where they mightve gone. He said his wife had a mazda. And he said, theres a trunk release in here. It was on the drivers side door. I think it was to his surprise as well as the other officers that they were laying there in the trunk, both shot. Both of them were shot execution style. You could tell their hands were trying to cover their face as if they knew that they were about to be shot to death. That crime scene, that trunk, those two girls is the only homicide that i ever turned around and had to walk off. When you see that, the innocence and a life thats just been snatched away, thats hard to swallow. Deborah how did you get the word . Alton, he was the one that told me. He came in and he said, carol, we found them. He said, theyre both dead. I thought it was a dream. You know, i i thought, well, surely ill this is a dream, and ill wake up in a minute. But then mike got back, and he and i just held each other and cried. We didnt know what to do. We have two victims that are in the trunk of a car, killed in a horrific style. We know that we need to find answers. Deborah investigators head to that gas station where tracie made the phone call to her mother, and its there where they find Surveillance Video and a tantalizing lead in this case. The white truck pulled up at the pumps. We knew the girls were here at that time that white truck was there. The search was on for this white truck. [ em beiholds good day begins] meet the new target circle threesixty, with unlimited sameday delivery, so you can get what you need when you need it. Better in every way. Thats the new target circle threesixty. [ good day ends ] open your eyes bigger. New panorama by loreal paris. A multilevel bristle brush, to catch every single lash, corner to corner. Bigger, wider. See life in panorama. Because youre worth it. Dad, i got a huge barbeque wing stain. This bottle says i need to pretreat. That stuff has way more water. A little bit of tide goes a long way, so you can save your shirt and maybe even a little money. Nice more money for nights at the. Library. Right. For a better clean with less. Its got to be tide. All right, we are rolling. My name is deborah pearson. I am the news director here at woof fm. Woof fm news, with deborah pearson. Good morning, woof news. Time is 11 50. In the news this hour ive been telling the stories of the people of the wiregrass for the last 31 years. I was paged by my news director that there was a story brewing in the ozark area. So, i went up that morning for the press conference. Everyone was there, all local tv and radio stations. From evidence that was gathered in the preliminary investigation, both victims were shot after they were placed in the trunk. Youre just blown away. Its not a big crime city or a big crime area. So for something of this magnitude to happen, it was just unbelievable. Deborah take me back to that day, august 1st, 1999. Theres a black car parked here. What condition are the girls in . Both were faced up. One head was on one end of the car, the other head was on the other end of the car. They were laying side by side. We found one shell casing laying on top of one of the girls, which really gave me the idea that they were shot while they were in the trunk, at first glance. Their clothes from about midthigh down was wet and muddy. There was mud on the back side of the car, like they had the mud on them and got into the trunk. J. B. s jeans in particular are muddy, her socks are wet. Which told us that at some point during this encounter, that they were kneeling or down on the ground. To get mud in some of the areas of the leg. One of the things that was really fascinating was, there was no mud around the area where the car was found, right . It was solid ground. We completely combed this area for the second shell casing to see if the shooting took place here. I noticed there was blood dripping out from under the car, so when i looked up under, you could see where the blood had blown back up under the car, which meant the vehicle was in motion after the girls were dead. Deborah so they were shot someplace else . Shot somewhere else and brought to this location. Deborah did you find a murder weapon . No, maam, we did not. Investigators believed that there was a secondary crime scene where the crime actually took place. They looked everywhere. Theyre looking at a baseball field close by. Theyre looking under a water tower where it was muddy. There was no evidence to be found. So you have to start then running down leads upon leads upon leads upon leads, and to officers credit, i mean, they did that. They were able to locate the big and little store, where they discover tracie had made the phone call to her mother that night at 11 38 p. M. Right here where the ice box is, is where the phone was. Deborah back then, did they have a surveillance camera . Inside the store, there was a camera, but the camera was not a rolling camera. You got still shots, like, every three seconds. You can see a clip of a car that matches their car, and its right in front of the door. Deborah so you see evidence of them leaving. At the same time the girls car is captured on camera, theres another vehicle that catches the attention of investigators. There was a white, appeared to be a Toyota Pickup truck, sitting at the gas pumps. You never see anybody get out of the truck. Which is, you know, kind of odd. The police want to figure out whos driving this white pickup. In rural alabama, its like asking whos wearing a yankee cap in new york. I mean, everyones driving a white pickup truck. Deborah did you suspect that could be somebody significant . Well, we didnt know. It looked promising in that they were there the same time the girls were there. Through different channels, they ended up finding the person that was there at the store. He had pulled up to the pumps with intentions of maybe getting some gas, but eventually drove off, but didnt remember seeing the girls. Deborah so the white truck turns out to be a dead end, but investigators do catch a break when eyewitnesss from the night the girls disappeared come forward. News 4 did talk with two women who last saw the girls while they were making their phone call home and trying to find their way back to dothan. We stopped there for a soft drink. They started asking my daughter for directions. Deborah we tracked down that woman, marilyn merritt. They explained that they were trying to find a birthday celebration, they never made it there, and then they needed directions to go back home. Deborah when you heard that these two girls were murdered, did you know right away those were the two girls that you had met . Ye