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With a texas twist. day by day, inch by inch, kristene chapa walked a steady, if uneven, road to recovery. i couldn t move my left side. i couldn t move my hand or my arm, my legs. i had to relearn to swallow. you don t give up, do you? i don t. i try to stay motivated. so did detective roland chavez. he, too, was making progress. the cigarette butts and drink can collected from the crime scene had just given him his first major break in the case. what did the dna show? the dna showed that it returned to dylan spellman. who was dylan spellman? police learned he lived just three blocks from the crime scene, and chavez also noticed a striking resemblance to that sketch kristene had helped police draw of the gunman. we start trying to get background on dylan spellman. ....
Then, just days after her brain surgery, kristene again defied the odds and began to stir. that s an incredible little girl here. i m telling you, she is something else. we asked her questions, she would squeeze our hand. that must have been a wonderful thing to see. it was. for police, the pressure to find the shooter was intense. detective roland chavez hoped kristene, now conscious, would be playing a big part in that, but kristene still could not speak. it was either a squeeze of the hand and then the blinking of the eyes. so chavez kept his questions simple. the first thing we asked her, of course, is did you know the person that did this, and she said no. how tall was he? she described him as about 5 8 , 5 9 . within the first two weeks of her recovery, kristene helped police draw this sketch of the man who shot her. she said he smelled of cigarettes, which made chavez think about those cigarette ....
i was in shock. i remember crying really hard, and i was throwing stuff in my room because it just didn t seem real to me. how were your parents? really emotional. i had never seen my dad cry. they took it really hard. reporter: so did mollie s friends, stephanie and brooke. i just remember like, she s dead, she s dead. and everyone s like, who s dead? and i said, mollie. reporter: over the next few days, neighbors here began asking the same question, who had pulled the trigger and why? finding those answers fell to portland, texas, police detective roland chavez. mollie can t give us any information, and kristene s in the hospital and she can t give us any information. at that point, not even clear whether kristene s gonna survive. right? yeah. reporter: tips were coming in. someone said they saw a white car speeding from the park the night of the shootings. ....
reporter: larry and grace chapa kept a sleepless vigil over their daughter kristene as she lay in the icu, hovering somewhere between life and death. the 18-year-old had been shot in the head and left outside for more than eight hours. somehow, she d survived. then, just days after her brain surgery, kristene again defied the odds and began to stir. that s an incredible little girl here. i m i m telling you, she is something else. we asked her questions. she would squeeze our hand. reporter: that must ve been a wonderful thing to see. it was. reporter: for police, the pressure to find the shooter was intense. detective roland chavez hoped kristene, now conscious, would be playing a big part in that. but kristene still could not speak. it was either a squeeze of ....
Spellman police found his dna just 30 feet from where the girls were shot. that s when he says spellman s demeanor changed. he asked me, you know, what what what are the consequences? and i said, well, in texas, i said, you know this is a death penalty kind of case. reporter: and then dylan spellman asked about a deal. normally any person that s innocent isn t gonna ask for a deal. you re gonna profess your innocence. and he wasn t. now i m thinking, this is my guy. reporter: so chavez asked spellman to take a polygraph and spellman agreed. and how does he do? he fails. reporter: time for handcuffs, you re thinking? not quite yet. chavez could put dylan spellman at the crime scene, but still had no way of tying him directly to the shootings. we have no gun. we have no usable prints. the only thing we have are cigarette butts, monster can, and suspicion. ....