>> a young mother is missing and a case gone cold. >> it was so important to me to know the truth behind that evening. >> then, detectives had an aha moment to solve the case, they return to something you probably use every day. facebook. >> why don't you establish a facebook account? i thought that could accomplish a great deal. >> and that's when everything started to change. >> something happened to her. >> in court, you'll see it all come pouring out. a hidden crime and a son's heart pounding moment. >> this is a horrible crime. >> i'm glad we know the truth. ♪ ♪ ♪ >> carol lubahn was a restless young mom with two kids when she vanished from her southern california home. heartbroken, her loved ones assumed she had left at to start a new life. but as the years past, with no word from carol, a nagging suspicion took hold. was her disappearance the result of something more sinister? before investigators could solve the mystery, her son would have to face a dark family secret. but would it lead them to carol? here's keith morrison with "secrets in the mist". >> january, 2013. point vicente, a california. the wet, gray, morning cold. at noon, a police boat sets off in the fog. a hail mary pass apparently. a slim chance to find the truth at last. but hawaii out there? why after all those lost 30 years? maybe some cases are destined to stay cold. easier that way. for came along, with their wild ideas about murder and facebook of all things. and now this. they're doomed errand into the fog. her name was me carol jeanne meyer, though she was carol lubahn, when all this happened back in march, 1981. the night of this slamming doors, the harsh words. a car roaring away. it's an old story anyway. pretty girl gets pregnant at 15. mary's the guy pretty soon she's at 20 something with two kids and a hankering to live. really live, for a change. and this particular pretty girl? >> she was fun. she was outgoing. she had a lot of friends. >> she had these two sisters,. terri, was the younger one, gail the older. >> we were very close and made each other laugh all the time. >> but carol lubahn was it laughing at the end of march, 1980. one for one thing, she wanted to be somebody. her own somebody. >> i know that carole wanted to complete school and further her career, and that's what she went back to study architecture. >> sure, her husband was a nice kid. and she loved him once with all the intensity of first love. the handsome high school football player who would hang around on her front porch. there mike. stepped up and married her after the baby was born. >> he was a good father. he just seemed to really enjoy his kids. >> enjoyed carol's family, to. especially her dad, milt. milt brought young mike into the family house painting business. >> just stuck to him immediately. he was always a very likable person. >> friendly, loyal. but not exactly ambitious. he did it seem to mind at all settling down to a modest existence. them and the two kids all cramped up in a two bedroom, one bathroom house in torrance. but carol did mind it. very much. she'd had a secret a fair by then. maybe more than one. she got herself a cute little red car, audi fox. ordered personalized plates, cjsfox. the car is long gone, now. so, we did this one to look just like it. quite often she would get in her little car alone and go roaring off to school or to meat markets like the local red onion was back then. >> i know she was going to the red onion. i never went there with her, so i don't know what she was like. >> and then that night in march, kids off to bed. their son mike junior was just a boy, ten years old. >> i was in bed. i had just got a new stereo for my tenth birthday and i was listening through headphones. ♪ ♪ ♪ >> from his bed, he could see something happening out in the hallway. >> i remember them getting into an argument which was unusual. >> because they just didn't? >> not that i knew of. i remember her marching passed and going out the front door and slamming the door. >> you heard this? >> i heard the slam of the front door. i know that. >> and the next morning -- >> we got up and and she wasn't there. >> mike sr. told's dad that carol had demanded that he signed papers to sell their house. he didn't want to. she got mad. they argued. he went to bed and when he woke up in the morning she was just gone. >> so we just assumed she needed to get away for a few days. but as the days went on, we got extremely worried. >> nearly a week after carol departed, her red audi fox foot showed up in the parking lot of the red onion. dusty, as if it had been there a while. >> i remember being upset about it. she was gone and i didn't know where she went. >> they drove around looking for her. went to bars. carol's picture in hand. the torrance police department opened a file but they couldn't answer any questions. like had she finally just gotten fed up with mike and gone off to start a new life somewhere else? or has should be been in an accident or something worse? more than a week after carol disappeared, there is still absolutely no sign of her. and then something strange happened here at the house, something very strange. could it be that carol, unbeknownst to anyone, sneaks back in here? and nobody when nobody else was around? imagine what it was like back then in that little house? mike, thinking things over. on a hunch he said he placed tape on carol's dresser drawers. a little trap. one day he took the kids to universal studios and sure enough, when they returned, he noticed the tape was broken. and some mail on the counter was moved as well. a few weeks later, a happened again. some of his clothes went missing. along with somebody from a place no burglar would know to look. under the butter dish in the refrigerator. were mike said he and carol kept $100 of emergency cash. and now $60 was missing. just like carol, said her sister gail. >> she would not have taken all of it. that was in carol's personality, to just be very fair. >> made since then? >> yes. >> and then, there was those mysterious phone calls. >> we would get the calls on special days. like her birthday, my birthday, my grandmother, we would get calls. >> and just silence on the other end? >> yes. >> what did you do? >> we would see carol, we love you. we hope you come back. we felt like she was finding a happier life somewhere. >> and understood that to make that successful, she might have to make a complete break? >> yes. >> almost three months after carol vanished, the detective handling her case put it in the inactive file. in his report he wrote, no foul play involved. >> i remember thinking about her all the time. and i used to play records over and over that she liked and just think, where is she? when is she coming back? >> eventually mike started dating a 19-year-old named carrie. brought her into the fold. >> we were happy that mike was going on with life. >> and so they did all go on with life. and many years went by. until the morning in a whole new millennium, when a torrance detective happened on the case of the missing young mother. and somewhere in the back of his brain, a little light turned on. >> i just had a hunch that this just didn't sound right to me. >> as doubts about carol's disappearance grew, detectives turned to a surprising source to help solve the mystery. coming up -- >> why don't you establish a facebook account for carol? >> when "dateline" continues. 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[sneeze] dude you coming? ♪ alka-seltzer plus powermax gels cold & flu relief with more concentrated power because the only thing dripping should be your style. plop plop fizz fizz winter warriors with alka-seltzer plus. new nature's bounty hair growth. clinically shown to help grow thicker, fuller hair with just one capsule a day of advanced hair complex. conquer hair thinning... ...and fall in love with your hair all over again. only from nature's bounty. >> in march of 1981, carol keith morrison (voiceover): with yin march of 1981, again. lubahn, a lovely young mother of two, known to be unhappy in her marriage, suddenly vanished. departed for parts unknown. leaving behind not just her husband mike, that her son, my could junior. then just ten years old. >> i never felt that my mother abandoned me. i was never upset with her, ever. >> really? >> i never thought she did. i don't know why. i just was upset she wasn't there. i thought she would be there. show up at a graduation or something. >> but she didn't. and at family gatherings, as the years went by, thanksgiving, christmas is, that awful question, why would she leave them? remained the unmentionable elephant in the room. >> when it came to my family, i think the didn't talk about it because they figured it would upset me or my sister. >> my family is pretty close to talking about heavy things. so, something like that really talked about. >> it was an ultimate everything? >> yes. >> could you see it in your mother's eyes? or your father's? >> in my father's, for sure. >> what would you see there? >> a lot of emotion. a lot of sadness. i'm going to cry thinking about it. >> in 1987, almost six years after carol vanished, the torrance police department revisited the case. and time seemed to have altered mics memory a little. a few more details had come back to him. remember soon after carol vanish, mike said they argued. he went to sleep alone. woke up in the morning, early. she was gone. but in 1987, he remembered they argued, went to bed together, she got up at 5:30 in the morning to go to the bathroom. he woke up, then drifted back to sleep. and will cup to the sound of a car engine starting and driving a week. odd. but memories do play tricks. anyway, it didn't seem entirely significant, so the case went back into the file and got colder. >> mike took over the house painting business from carol's dad and went on to marry carrie and have two more sons. gail and terri raise their own families and it was having babies that started to change terri's way of looking at her sister's disappearance. >> as unhappy as you might be in your life, you might leave your husband. you would take your kids with you. >> and so, when you began to suspect it she wouldn't leave her children, what did that mean to you? >> that something happened to her. >> in 1996, 15 years since they had heard from carol, the police came around again. this time, they scanned the lubahn's backyard with ground penetrating radar radar. even dug up the ground. didn't find anything. funny thing though, about four months later the local paper, the "the daily breeze" did a story. interviewed mike and this time his memory was slightly >> for eight years, torrance police detective -- away at the carroll lubahn file, drawn by an irresistible hunch that this young mother did not disappear voluntarily. but actual evidence of a crime? just wasn't any. so finally, in 2010, 29 years after carol supposedly walked out on her family never came back, he decided it was a surprise time for a surprise visit to michael lubahn. >> he invited us in, we did catch him unexpectedly, but that was the plan. >> but was mike upset or thrown off? not at all. >> very nice like i anticipated he would be because i've now heard from everyone in the family how mics a good guy. >> so, together, they went over again over the details of that last night back in march 1981. and right away, mike remembered a little more about the night carroll presented him with a real estate contract and the demand that they sell their tiny house. >> she came in and gave you the papers. did she just say, turn around and walk away with? >> she said, you make my skin crawl. >> you make my skin crawl? >> yeah. >> and i thought, i bet you she did say that. >> so i pushed in some more for more details. >> and the details were, once again, a little different. about when and where he last saw her, for example, it wasn't when he went to bed around 10 pm, as he said on one occasion. or 5:30 the next morning, as he also said. no, this time mike said he last saw carol about 10:30 or 11 pm in the bathtub. >> how did you see her in the tub? >> i use the bathroom. >> and then he said, around midnight or 1 to 2, he heard the garage door open and went to the door and actually saw carol's car driving away. >> what you see taillights? >> yeah. >> and you're sure it was her car? >> yeah. >> also, remember that story about putting tape on the dresser drawers after cavill came and later founded broken? he did remember that now. >> so you didn't do the tape thing? >> i don't know -- >> you don't know what that is? >> no. >> but as he said in 2010, he did remember some other traps heat set, even more elaborate. >> i would take like, baby powder and put it on -- right inside the door. so when if somebody stepped in -- >> baby powder? >> i think i did that james bond thing with the paper on the door. >> when you open the door the paper falls. >> okay. >> by, now detective delsigne was working with his weak partner wallace and lewin. what lewin specializes in the most difficult of court cases. >> do you remember seeing the results of that interview what you thought? >> i thought that his memory had grown in areas where it shouldn't and in areas where he should be saying the same story it was different. and that's the hallmark of deception. >> but the mind plays tricks, the mind invents things and insert some into your memory and you believe them a strenuously as if they were memory. >> that's an interesting theory but it's never supported. memories can be lost but they do not increase in details over the years and they do not increase indifferent details. and that is a sign of what we call a lie. his version of what happened from the start made no sense to any of us. >> so what makes the case? >> so why would mike lie? to the cold case team it seemed obvious. >> he killed her on the night that you stop living there. everything going on that's not making sense it's because it's a lie. >> remarkably, mike continue to talk to them. three more times out of his own free will. very friendly without an attorney. he even let a prosecutor take a crack at it. >> if you or me if you are in my position, tell me what you would think. >> probably what you're thinking. >> which is? >> that i did it. >> will make a can tell you. you know, sometimes, you get a -- you know the kind of murder cases we get. we get cases where the husband finds out that his wife is cheating on him and he kills her. so -- >> i had nothing to do with that. >> will you catch when he? said it had nothing to do with that. we lewin did. >> when you look at sentenced rupture and people communicating, it was not about. that was the it? >> you gave it great significant stint you? >> absolutely. >> so they kept at mike. and at one point it seemed to them he was on the verge of confessing. >> listen, why don't you give me a -- few minutes or few days or something to think about all of it. i'll cooperate when i come back. >> but when he came back, he did not give them anything and they were right back where they started. suspicion, sure, but no evidence of a crime. no way to even prove carroll was dead. jim wallace was a detective who finally hit on the idea, to use a tool that did not exist when carroll left her husband on march 1981. >> coming up, a dramatic turning case and fresh heartbreak for carroll's family. >> another night mount up of the first nightmare. >> when dateline continues. the psoriasis treatment she's been looking for. sotyktu is the first-of-its-kind, once-daily pill for moderate-to-severe plaque psoriasis... for the chance at clear or almost clear skin. it's like the feeling of finding that outfit psoriasis tried to hide from you. or finding your swimsuit is ready for primetime. dad! once-daily sotyktu is proven to get more people clearer skin than the leading pill. don't take if you're allergic to sotyktu; serious reactions can occur. sotyktu can lower your ability to fight infections including tb. serious infections, cancers including lymphoma, muscle problems, and changes in certain labs have occurred. tell your doctor if you have an infection, liver or kidney problems, high triglycerides, or had a vaccine or plan to. sotyktu is a tyk2 inhibitor. tyk2 is part of the jak family. it's not known if sotyktu has the same risks as jak inhibitors. find what plaque psoriasis has been hiding. ask your dermatologist about sotyktu for clearer skin. so clearly you. sotyktu. your best defense against erosion and cavities is strong enamel- nothing beats it. new pronamel active shield actively shields the enamel to defend against erosion and cavities. i think that this product is a gamechanger for my patients- it really works. is it possible my network could take my business gamechanger for my patients- to the next level? it is with comcast business. powering all your devices with gig-speed wifi. and you get fast downloads and uploads. pick it up! pick it up! oh we got this! because it's powered by the next generation 10g network. more speed for your business? it's not just possible. it's happening. get started for $59.99 a month for 12 months. plus, ask how to get an $800 prepaid card with a qualifying internet bundle. i'm richard louis with their comcast business, powering possibilities. hours top stories. the screen actors guild confirms it received what studios call their quote last best and final offer. union leaders say they need more time to review and respond to that offer, should they accept that it would end a 114-day strike in hollywood. india's capital is undergoing the worst air quality of any city in the world. the air quality index hit 500 in new delhi, the highest in measurement can go. that is 100 times a limit at the world health organization says is healthy. now, back to dateline. ateline. >> welcome back to "dateline", welcome back to "dateline." i'm craig melvin. detectives believed mike lubahn was on the verge of confessing to the murder of his wife, carol. but