Wait until he kills again. But the trail grew cold, the file forgotten until decades later someone dusted it off. The whole goal in these cases is trying to see the thing thats hiding in plain sight. Reporter there were clues a mysterious weapon made of wire. A wedding invitation. A midnight sail to nowhere. But were they enough to catch a killer . I was 100 confident that he was our guy. Reporter now, the showdown the determined prosecutor against the famed defense lawyer who helped set oj simpson free. Robert shapiro, did it give you pause . Im on the right side. Reporter after 35 years, was it finally time for justice . Its been a long journey. Im lester holt and this is dateline. Heres keith morrison. Reporter he was alone in his makeshift workshop. Had to be for what he intended. Carefully, he cut the lengths of a broomhandle, two of them, just a few inches each sanded them down, drilled a hole in each one. Found a piece of wire to string between them. Too thin. He doubled it. For strength. His perfect weapon. For his perfect crime. Reporter outside. In the brilliant sunshine. It was the summer of 1979. Reporter aids hadnt happened to us yet. Nor the internet, nor cell phones, nor a way to read dna all those things were still years away. Everybody worried about three mile island that summer. The iranian hostage crisis was still months away. Reporter and in Southern California, in the summer of 79, in the beach towns that cling to the coast near la 20somethings came from all over. To work, to play, to practice an art as old as humans and as new as last night. Mating. Reporter the area had a ski club snow skiing, water skiing, volleyball, all sorts of outdoor activities. Reporter Richard Frank was 32 that summer. He published an independent Community Newspaper but on weekends. Wed do bus trips and guys are trying to meet girls and hit on people. It was a lotta fun. One woman in particular caught richards eye. We had a thing called snow queen. And she was running for snow queen. And she didnt win but she was a very outgoing, gregarious, almost tomboy kind of person. Attractive. Her name was lynne knight. She was a neonatal nurse. Who, like so many here, came from somewhere else. In her case, a pretty place called stratford, not far from toronto, canada. She was beautiful. Beautiful person. Reporter this is lynnes sister, donna. She was jim carrey before jim carrey was ever around. She did the goofy stuff. And everywhere people would be in stitches. Reporter nurses, whether funny and beautiful or not, were in great demand in the 70s. Lynne could have gone anywhere. Or stayed close to home. Like her sister donna, also a nurse, chose to do. I had such difficulty when she was going to go to california. I did not want her to go. No. Reporter but she did. Moved into a tiny studio apartment tacked onto the back of somebodys garage. Here in suburban torrance. And she signed up at the hospital called Little Company of mary. Where she went to work with the smallest patients of all. The most vulnerable. Premature babies. Those were her babies. She took her job very seriously. She would arrive early. She would do double shifts. Reporter all of lynnes hard work paid off. The hospital considered her one of its top employees. She was a finalist in a nursing contest called miss red rose. How she did it all is a wonder. Worked hard. And played hard. She would work midnight shift, so and then sleep for about three or four hours. And then shed be gone. And scuba diving, marathoning, running, you name it lynne was the most incredible tomboy ever. laugh reporter and. One more thing she loved the company of men. Many of them, perhaps most of them, were just friends some, more than that. A number of them were raquetball players or skiiers or whatever, so she had a lot of male friends because she was competitive in raquetball so. Reporter but they were more friends than they were romantic partners. Yeah, she only went out, really, with laugh professionals and good looking professionals. And then, of course, she met Richard Frank. We hit it off pretty quickly. We dated pretty heavily for a couple of months. Reporter it could be confusing, of course, for richard. Not many young women with as many male friends as the crowd of them that hovered around lynne. Her sweethearts, as she called them. One of the things was trying to find out where i fit in her life. Reporter but with richard . As lynne told her sister, it was romance. Was she perhaps a little too intense . For richards 32 year old single self, yes, she was. It was a little too much in the beginning. Even her sister, donna, said that. And so i kind of cut it off. Reporter so she was just a little going too fast. Yeah. Yeah. Reporter but . Love has a way of circling back. Towards the end of that summer of 79, after theyd been apart for a while, they ran into each other again on a water skiing trip. I saw her and we started talking. And we decided, you know, okay, lets go out. And it was like for me, it was, is this the one that got away . Reporter and then it was august 29. A warm summer evening outside lynns little studio apartment on anza avenue. Quiet. Calm. Not a breath of wind. Lynne was cooking chinese food. She had company a male friend whod come for dinner. A male friend who was not Richard Frank. No. This was an exboyfriend named joe giarusso. Reporter after dinner lynne and joe drank some wine, talked about what we cannot know and then at 11 30 or so, he left. And lynne went to bed. Early shift at the hospital. Outside, the street was silent. Wednesday ticked into thursday. Thats when the neighbors heard it, couldnt help but hear it a high pitched scream. And it came from Lynne Knights little apartment. It was a cream that would echo down through the years and change so many lives. 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I hear, uh, a very weird scream, you know . Who lives there . Lynne knight. Reporter when the Torrance Police arrived minutes later, the little apartment was quiet again, and lynne knight was dead, lying on her bed in a pool of blood. Detective emilio paerells had never seen anything quite like it. Just terrible. Bloody and oh, i cant find other words to describe it other than horrific. Reporter so horrific, said lead detective, gary hilton, that even now, 35 years later, talking about it is difficult. Youll have to excuse me. Yeah. Out of all the ones i worked, it was the toughest. It was real emotional, and the first time that i had actually responded to a scene where the victim was still warm. Thats a scene that lives in your memory pretty much right now, doesnt it . For years, i had problems with that issue. Reporter no wonder. The victim had been stabbed more than a dozen times. And one particular wound was gratuitously savage. Her breast was mutilated, also, by stabbing. Almost like that was a little added extra. Yes, that would appear to be the case. Again, pointing toward what . Rage. The desire to see this particular individual dead. Good and dead. Good and dead. Reporter but there was another set of wounds the detectives couldnt quite figure out at first. Deep cuts on her neck. Which may have explained the horrifying sound that woke up lynnes neighbors. How did they describe that screaming . A squeal. A loud squeal. Reporter after he heard that, said a neighbor, he caught a glimpse of the man who might have been the killer, a slender, young man with dark, curly hair. Not much to go on. He looked at the back of the suspect as he ran down the driveway into the street. Carrying something . A small satchel. Reporter but there couldnt have been much inside that little black bag because very little was taken from lynnes apartment. Only her wallet, her keys and one particular piece of jewelry. She had a necklace on with a pendant, at the scene, we found the the broken clasp and the pendant. But no chain. No chain. Reporter but the killer left something of his own behind. Something the detectives didnt notice until the coroner moved lynnes body. It appeared to be a homemade device used to strangle a victim. It was cut off portions of what appeared to be a broom or mop handle and a piece of wire. Going between the two . Yes. So, there was some planning involved here. Oh, there was a great deal of planning involved. It was a homemade garrote. Reporter a garrote . Detective gary hilton hadnt seen one of those since he served in vietnam and certainly never at a crime scene. But now he understood why lynnes neck was cut so deeply. Did he actually put it around her neck as far as you could tell . Yes. Uhhuh. Reporter overkill. And that would be an understatement and then it was time for perhaps the most difficult part of all of this making the phone call to lynns family here in little stratford, ontario. A family, which until that very moment, had assumed that lynne was perfectly safe saving babies in los angeles. Lynnes sister, donna, was just getting off of her shift at a toronto hospital. Got a call from my brotherinlaw, and he was, like, gulping for air and having you know, practically out of his skin. And he said that, i hate to have to tell you, but lynnes been stabbed to death. And it was like it was such a sad day. Its not something you ever would expect to hear, no matter what. No. No. No. It was like my whole world crashed in. And that was it. It was completely life altering. My life has never, ever been the same since. Reporter donna was 26, only recently out of nursing school. 35 years later, the pain lingers. How do you even take a thing like that in . Oh, you dont. cause you go like its like totally out of body. You go into shock. Its its complete shock. Its like also a great, big hole in your chest. Reporter who would have done such a thing . To lynne, the kind and compassionate nurse . Not an enemy in the world. But then before dawn, a concrete lead. Police saw someone suspicious running in lynnes neighborhood. The same guy the neighbors saw . The suspect was seen running from this location, carrying a black bag. Reporter they picked him up and, by the look of it, with blood literally on his hands. Coming up, a clue found in the strangest place. I saw this wedding invitation. It was crumpled up in the trash. A party lynne would never get a chance to taken. Who threw out the invitation and why. When dateline continues. Its its mr. Monopoly welcome back. You too. Lets play this game started using gain flings,fe their laundry smells more amazing than ever. sniff honey, isnt that the dogs towel . dog noise hey, mi towel, su towel. 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Every channels live just like on tv but its my phone. Its genius. Shh im watching tv. Tiny sharon is mean. Im right here. Watch any channel live on any device around your home. The x1 entertainment operating system only from xfinity. Reporter sometimes cops get lucky. This was recorded in the 1979 just after the brutal murder of lynne knight. 23, a possible suspect dark curly hair, last seen running eastbound across anza. A patrol unit detained and arrested an individual who was acting strangely nearby. It looked like he had blood on him. He did. Reporter his name was gerardo juarez and he appeared to match a description of the man seen running away from lynnes apartment. So they held juarez for questioning. But before they got to that, they had to finish processing the crime scene at lynnes apartment. I found evidence of blood smears in the house that looked like it was caused by gloves. And there was no dna, of course. Back then we didnt have dna. All the blood we found was consistent with the victim. Reporter remember this was 1979, years before the advent of dna. Fingerprints were still the Gold Standard back then. But only lynnes prints were identified in her apartment. The others could not be traced be back to the murder. And that apparent murder weapon, the garrote, was clean of prints. Reporter so, there was planning. A lot of it. And immense brutality. But burglary . No. Only small personal items were taken. Detectives paerels and hilton were pretty sure it could mean only one thing. The suspect knew the victim. She had been targeted. And i say that because the location was quite removed from the street. It was not a place where there were passersby. Someone would have to know how to go back there in order to to reach the door. Reporter so the detectives went back to the torrance pd to talk to their possible suspect, gerardo juarez. He insisted he didnt know lynne. Had never even seen her. Had no reason to kill her. A search of his home turned up nothing. And that blood on his hands and clothes . It proved not to be blood. Reporter what was it . It could have been Something Like paint, dart, mud. We just simply couldnt tie him to the crime scene. Reporter so much for that break. Gerardo juarez was released. And for the moment at least they were nowhere. A few days after the murder, a small funeral was held in stratford, ontario. Theyd been planning to have a wedding then. Donnas wedding. Lynne was supposed to have been here alive as her sisters maid of honor. They dressed her in her maid of honor dress. I remember feeling such anger that to whoever did that to my sister. My parents watching my parents grieve. What have they done to my baby . Reporter the coroners report answered some questions. An autopsy determined the garrote did not kill lynne. She died of stab wounds. And the report revealed Something Else traces of two semen samples. But again dna testing was not available back then. So they could not attach identities to those semen samples. Reporter so you began to talk to everybody who knew her. So thats where we started the circle of friends, acquaintances her job anybody that knew her. Reporter including all her current and former boyfriends. Racquetball partners. Ski buddies, work colleagues. We needed time to develop a little bit of background on all of the various players so that we would have some idea what questions to ask. Reporter yeah. Any one of whom couldve been the one. Any one. Reporter mind you, Richard Frank had already called the police to offer his help and was pretty quickly eliminated. He had an alibi. But what about that old flame joe giarusso . He was, without a doubt, in lynns apartment just hours before she was killed. The neighbors had seen him there eating dinner. Reporter joe told the detectives lynne was fine when he left about midnight. Reporter didnt that make you think that he might be a suspect . Oh, yeah. He was, of course, somebody we had to investigate immediately. Reporter so they took joe in for questioning. He, too, seemed very forthcoming. And if he wasnt deeply upset about what happened to lynne he was putting on a good act. Still, the detectives noticed something strange on his fingers several cuts. He insisted they happened at work, in a lab where he dropped a test tube. He would never hurt lynne, he told them. Had no reason for jealous rage. He was in a relationship with another woman. And was still visiting our victim, and apparently were friends. Reporter by the time lynne was murdered, said joe, he was in bed with his girlfriend. What to make of the story . Until his alibi could be checked out, joe giarusso remained the only possible suspect. By this time, when the investigation had been underway for almost two weeks, the Knight Family flew to la for the grim task of packing lynnes personal belongings. We felt we really, this is not nice to say but we hated america for what happened to lynne. And we didnt want anybody touching her stuff. And so we, as a team, cleaned up her place. And it was a really hard job. Reporter they collected all her keepsakes and mementos. Even her financial records which said a lot about lynne. The sum in her bank was all of 18, cause she paid for scuba diving lessons. And you name it. She just did it. She was packing in every activity she could possibly pack in. So she really lived a lot in those 28 years. Reporter but there was one thing donna didnt find. Something that was quite special to both sisters. The invitation to her upcoming wedding. And then detective hilton remembered, he spotted it in a wastebasket, though he didnt collect it as evidence. I saw this wedding invitation that was crumpled up. Reporter didnt seem like a big deal at the time . No, i