Page 9 - Dave Mcmannis News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

>> reporter: meaning detectives spoke with other people who'd also heard the men talk about the murder, but they were not the type a jury would likely believe. much of what they'd say sounded like drug and booze soaked gossip. there wasn't enough certainly to support charging peewee. but, thought the prosecutor, maybe he could find a way to go after barr and mcmannis. and he had an idea. bring some of the key witnesses before a grand jury just to see who passed the credibility test and who didn't. >> i've prosecuted over 100 homicide cases and the complexity, and the amount of information that...

Involved if not in the murder, but definitely in the complicity to cover it up. >> reporter: the only thing that dave mcmannis was guilty of, said bross was being a sarcastic guy. >> the majority of the statements that were made were sarcasm at best. so if he's guilty -- >> it's a claim. yeah. and that's kind of an easy out for saying terrible things, isn't it? >> well, it was inappropriate statements, if said at all. david is known to be a jokester and sarcastic. even during the course of the trial, he would say things that were sarcastic. >> reporter: the trials, two of them, dragged on for ...

Up. we're all gonna end up in prison." >> and it was somebody with credibility. >> be -- better than what we had before, yeah. >> reporter: but overall, a key problem remained. >> terrible witnesses. >> reporter: meaning detectives spoke with other people who'd also heard the men talk about the murder, but they were not the type a jury would likely believe. much of what they'd say sounded like drug and booze soaked gossip. there wasn't enough certainly to support charging peewee. but, thought the prosecutor, maybe he could find a way to go after barr and mcmannis. and he had an idea. bring som...

>> what requests did you make of them? >> we wanted to know more about every piece of evidence, every -- we have to rule out every piece of dna in that house. so it was closing doors, it was excluding other people. >> reporter: so, that's what these three did, as a large photo of tara kept watch. but, again, there was no dna to help them. all they had really were lingering suspicions about the workmen who went to tara's house the day she vanished. phil barr, the guy who owned the septic tank business, his helper that day, dave mcmannis, and their buddy "peewee" st. john, but nothing in this hu...

Tara's murder. they were arrested in late 2012, 11 years after tara vanished from her home. dave mcmannis was arrested in maryland, where he grew up, while u.s. marshals mounted a manhunt for phil barr. >> kinda lost track of him. we were actually then able to -- to locate phil in the vermont area, very close to the canadian border, where we think he had fled with the intent possibly of -- of leaving the country. >> reporter: but the case against the men needed more, and so the cold case team kept investigating. and in 2014, one of them came across a name buried deep in an old file. right afte...