Transcripts For KICU Dateline NBC 20130706 : vimarsana.com

KICU Dateline NBC July 6, 2013

Or was there more to justine . Shes an accomplished teacher and then she has a separate life. Clues they missed. Youre seeing your daughter come unglued right before your eyes. Absolutely. Premonitions theyd felt. I just knew with every fiber of my being he had killed her. Secrets she kept. She never told us that. But maybe only a complete stranger could reveal what really happened on that lonely road. It was a crazy night. Dennis murphy with shattered. Thanks for joining us. Im lester holt. As a dad of grown kids, out on their own, i felt the agony of the parents in this story. The call, the dreaded call in the middle of the night n. This case, its about their beautiful young daughter dead, killed by a hit and run driver. They were told. But to find out what really happened, they soon found themselves on a road of their own, one full of twists and turns that led to a place much darker than they could have ever imagined. Heres dennis murphy. The yellow buses pulled up. As the grade schoolers headed for their classroom the principal inside was calling an unexpected meeting of the teachers inside their office. It was about the pretty young kindergartner teacher. Theres no easy way to tell you this. And then he said, justine was killed last night. She was hit by a hit and run. And there was a silence. Fellow teacher pat em mondays could not believe what she was hearing about her friend, the newly wed who taught one door away. Kathleen wittily, another fellow teacher, was devastated. I was just shocked. Just in disbelief that she was gone. She was my best friend. I mean, she was my kindred spirit. We were the same person. 27yearold justine had married her long time boyfriend eric just that spring. She loved being a teacher and by all accounts the little kids in her classroom loved her back. She was a very darling teacher. Shes the kind of teacher that you would want for your own child. But on that november morning, the stunned teachers had few details. It seemed justine had been out driving after mid night and her car had broken down. She was apparently struck by a vehicle as she walked down a dark country road in the county where she and her husband lived north of charlottesville. I hear a kick at the door. Amber lamb was up late at her grandmothers. A stranger, a man was asking her to call 911. Orange county 911. Where is your emergency . This man came up to the door and said his wife was hit by a car. Amber followed the man, eric, in to the chill night. She watched as he fell to the black top and embraced the body of the young woman sprawled there. He was laying over top of her. The fivemonth marriage of eric and justine ended with that embrace. The husband weeping, his bride clearly gone. They barely had time to make a scratch on a life together. They had a modest little house. He was working on getting a Construction Business going while she taught at the grade school. They told friends they were looking forward to taking a delayed honeymoon over the upcoming holidays but the cruise like Everything Else for them was now ever going to happen. It was just after 2 00 in the morning when Virginia State trooper ben hobbs was awakened at his home. I telephone call saying we have a motorvehicle crash. He raced to the scene. Im talking to the deputy. Wheres my vehicle at that struck the person thats laying in the road . The deputy looks at me and says, well, i guess your dispatch didnt tell you. This is probably going to be a hit and run. We dont have a vehicle. For you as the investigator, this is a long night ahead of you . A. Very long night. A victim and no vehicle. Exactly. I look at the scene, what i have, what i dont have. One of the first things he saw was the devastated husband. He was knelt down beside justine crying. He was very, very distraught, up set. Seemed very concerned about his wife laying in the road. It was up to trooper hobbs to gather what he could at the scene to help identify the driver who struck and killed this young woman and kept on going. It wasnt going to be easy. Nobody tried to stop. You know, if they saw this lady at the last minute, why didnt they slam on the brakes . As the troopers emergency flashers stabbed at the darkness, a phone was ringing at a home in chattanooga, tennessee. Its just like your whole world just caves in on you. Its like a black hole. Justines dad Steven Schwartz and mom heidi were getting one of those awful calls in the middle of the night. A voice telling them their daughter was lying dead on a back country road in virginia. Its completely devastating. Worst thing that you can imagine. Its kind of thing parents dread. I remember him putting the phone down and saying its justine, shes dead. Just you know, theres no way to describe that feeling. Steven and heidi called their daughter lauren living in philadelphia. She was younger than justine by two years. Cyst earls whod always been inseparable. I remember saying no, no, no over and over. I turned in to a puddle on the floor. You cant stand. You get these pangs in your gut. And you cant you cant breathe. In the predawn hours, the family made a plan to meet at the airport in charlottesville. The fact that she is dead, of course, seems impossible but at that moment, you think this cant make sense. Back at what was now a crime scene in virginia trooper hobbs was trying to figure out the sequence of events of how this woman came to be dead in the road. The husband told the trooper that after his wife called him to tell him she was broken down, he hopped on the motorcycle to come help her. Coming down the road, comes up on her, stops, got out. Cradled her in his arms. Justines car, a mustang, discovered parked by the side of the road about a distance of two football fields from where her body was found. A wooded area. Unlit highway. Back road in the middle of nowhere. The investigators wondered why shed leave the safety of the car when help was on the way. She left behind her purse . Purse. Nice, warm coat. Nice, warm coat. Flashlight . Flash flight was in the glove box. Had fresh batteries still in it. Had a routine auto malfunction turned suddenly crazy . Was justine in her last moments being pursued, fleeing an attacker . Trooper hobbs gut told him things were not adding up. The scene was telling me somethings not right. A scene, a set of lies it would take years to untangle. The mystery of the puzzling death had only just begun. We Co Investigators troubled by what they didnt find. No tire marks on the road. No broken glass. No broken plastic from headlights. You almost always find that kind of debris . Yes, sir. The cuddlers and the keepers. At petsmart, we know that your pet is unique. 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[ male announcer ] applebees new take two menu. Two seasonal favorites, one amazing plate. See you tomorrow. Two seasonal favorites, one amazing plate. We dont have a ten step filtering process for our water. We dont need it. Because Crystal Geyser is made by nature, not by man. Crystal geyser is always bottled at the mountain source. Justine abshire was found dead on a rural virginia road after midnight five miles from her home. An apparent victim of a hit and run but little about the accident scene made sense. Trooper hobbs scoured the road looking for any of the telltale signs he usually sees from a car accident. Im looking for vehicle debris, any kind of skid marks, things like that. Ive got none of that. You know . No paint chips on her clothing, no tire marks on the road, no broken glass, no broken plastic from headlights. And you almost always find that kind of debris . Yes, sir. So youre curious about things you werent seeing, huh . Correct. Not only was there no debris there was relatively little blood in the road. She had huge lacerations on her head, should have been blood everywhere. And basically there were just two little small puddles of blood. Not a lot of blood for what should have been there. And that didnt make sense either. Right, correct. The victims husband eric told the trooper that he and his wife had had a minor spat that night and she was driving around to blow off some steam when her car broke down. Okay. But when trooper hobbs checked out the mustang he found nothing apparently wrong with it. I have the keys to the car. Well, lets see if the car is, you know, broken down. I put the keys in the ignition. It starts right up. We think, well, maybe it wont go in to gear. I put it in to gear, it rolls forward. Cars working fine. Cars working fine. And already strange hit and run case was now looking even more complicated. The husband meanwhile eric had been out in the road for hours. He wanted it hurried up. It was you need to hurry up and get her out of the road. But an emotionally exhausted husband who wanted to get his wifes body off the road and in to a funeral home was perhaps understandable. The troopers work out here on the scene was wrapping up. Hed turn his notes over to senior investigator special agent mike jones of the Virginia State police. Jones would run the case from here out. What did i think i had here . Thought i had a lot of work to do. One of joness first tasks to accompany the body to the medical examiners office. With little forensic value of the scene itself, the m. E. Science would start to explain what had happened to this young woman, an accident, foul play. When the trooper spoke with eric at his house just hours after hed come upon justines body he talked about a grim scenario that occurred to him. Maybe someone unknown had happened upon his wife, a woman in distress. He offers a theory that justine was out on the side of the road and that some unknown individual was attracted to her, her beauty and pulled up and tried to abduct her. Maybe she was running off. You have any suspicions of what might have happened . I like to see she got hit and she wasnt scared to land. I think that, you know, these people and somebody out there driving, i think they drove by, saw a beautiful woman on the side of the road and turned around and tried to get her in the car and i think she got scared and started running. She saw their face and they hit her. At this stage of the investigation, it could be anything. The range is wide open. And we had to start tracking in a direction that made sense. The medical examiner, dr. Todd lucasevic performed lots of autopsies but this victim appeared to be different. Youre unzipping the bag. Is there a moment you Say Something like, i dont like what im saying here . Almost instantly with the lack of blood on her clothing. What do i have here . I said to the technician, this doesnt appear to be a typical hit and run. Those tips of lacerations bleed profusely and she had no blood on her clothing new york city blood on her skin and really no blood within the body bag. So theres an absence of blood that catches your interest right away. Correct. And equally troubling, while more than 113 external injuries her body, they werent he thought consistent with someone standing and being struck by a vehicle. Was it possible justine hadnt been a hit and run victim at all . How could that be . You typically see a bumper bruise where the bumper hits the calf, the knee and its also going to cause a fracture underneath that bruise. You say i know what that is . Correct. Did you see it on justine . No, i didnt. There was more he wasnt finding. Usually tire tread on the skin or the clothing. There was no evidence of glass, no evidence of transfer of paint chips or metal. There was no evidence whatsoever. There was actually no evidence of debris from the road, no pebbles, no asphalt, anything like that. Yet with injuries this severe, he wasnt rules out that a vehicle was smau involved in justines death. Your best guess is a vehicle involved causing the injuries . Correct. But it didnt appear that person was standing . That is correct. But if a vehicle had been involved in the teachers death, how . The m. E. Needed more tests. I was prepared to fill out the cause of death as Blunt Force Trauma to the head, trunk and extremities but we needed further investigation. He turned to agent jones taking notes throughout the autopsy. I said, you have to treat this as a homicide. This is homicide until proven otherwise. A homicide . A murder case. But where to start . If she had been killed and by what reason . So little to go on, agent jones called in all the troopers from the scene for a brainstorming session. After we finished the autopsy, get Division Headquarters and we had a roundtable. Everybody was parted out to run in different directions. What had happened to Justine Abshire . The crime scene and autopsy could only tell the investigators so much. I didnt by any means have enough to make any conclusions that day. I walked away with, well, i need to come back and inquire further. Coming up justines husband says he blames himself. He said, well, you know, we had an argument. I wouldnt have argued with her then this wouldnt have happened. Grill master brett gal. Hes serving his guests walmart choice premium steaks. But they dont know it yet. They will. Its a steakover. Steak was excellent. Very tender. Melts in your mouth. It was delicious. Tonight you are eating walmart steak. What . . . good steak. Two thumbs up . Look, i ate all of mine. It matches any good steakhouse if not better. Walmart choice premium steak in the black package. Its 100 money back guaranteed. Try it for your next backyard barbecue. [ roars ] [ roars ] [ roars ] [ male announcer ] Universal Studios summer of survival. The death of beloved teacher Justine Abshire on this dark country road in Central Virginia was becoming a mystery for investigators. What started out as an apparent hit and run accident was turning in to a potential murder investigation. But for her family, trying to grapple with the news of her sudden death it was all threatening to become a personal tsunami, sweeping away everything in its path. Were both in shock and i remember standing in our bedroom and steve and i just holding on to each other and just saying, you know, we have to take care of each other. We cant let this destroy us. The four head always been so close. Now, the sudden death shattered them like so much broken glass. Pretty little justine, a golden child, had been raised to be happy. In the years the girls were growing up, steve was an executive in the tell telecom industry. Heidi worked for the airlines. Here we are in the house. In steves field, frequent corporate relocations came with the territory. New states, new houses, new schools for the girls. Lauren remembers thinking how easily justine handled all that uprooting of their lives. Shed arrive at a new school and immediately become the center of attention. It was impossible to not notice her. She was pretty in a barbie doll type of quality. The long blond air and blue eyes and porcelain skin that drew a lot of attention. So embarrassing. Not that justine welcomed the looks she was getting. Hardly. She was shy by nature and had no interest in becoming the cool girl at school. She was content to hang out with a few Close Friends and to dote on her pets. She was always passionate about animals and little kids and she was a natural born nurturer. And it seemed just yesterday they were sending her off to a Womens College in virginia. Holly boardman was assigned to be her freshman roommate and the two became instant friends. We would actually walk arm in arm everywhere. We would do everything at the same time. Dressed alike . Swap clothes, shoes . When we buy clothes, we buy them in two so i can have one and she could have one. If justine wanted to learn martial arts, shed sign up holly, too. When holly had a hankering fly a plane, justine went along for the ride. They were best friends forever. The best friend sister combined. We really could nt get any closer. Eric was also a member of an extended family. Tracy is his extended cousin. A caring, sweet, nice kid. Just always good. It made it all so hard, such a cute couple everyone thought. And now eric a widower after only five months of marriage. Tracy was utterly heart broken by justines death, almost too much to comprehend how an awful accident like that could happen. Horrible news. Horrible news. This is a loved woman in your family. Yes. Erics family began gathering at the couples home to comfort him the morning of the accident. Cousin tracy remembers looking in on him in the bedroom so forelorn. Hes standing up against the wall. Left arm propped up looking out the window and just crying. Uncontrollably. By the afternoon, justines family arrived at couples home to comfort their soninlaw. I remember, you know, all of us hugging. I remember steve putting his arm around him and saying, eric, you know, we want you to understand that we know that accidents happen. And were not blaming you for what happened to justine. And he said, well, you know, we had an argument and if, you know, if i wouldnt have argued with her she wouldnt have left and this wouldnt have happened. We tried to make it clear it was an accident and we didnt hold him responsible. There were arrangements to be made. Flowers, music to be selected. The two families gathered at the packed funeral home where so many turned out for the beloved teacher taken away from them too soon. Pat hammond spoke at the service. I wanted people to understand this was a terrible thing that happened but she was a wonderful gift. And sometimes people dont value the gifts that were given. Justines sister lauren recalls looking at eric and thinking how crushed he was by the sudden turn of fate. His two young daughters, children from a previous relationship by his side. Eric was crying. He was really emotional. Holding on to his two children. And among the mourners that day there was a stranger. Special agent mike jones. The investigator was the son of a grade schoolteacher himself and went to justines funeral to pay his respects to the family and to s

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