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>> the sad thing about it, later on that day her body was found at mchugh creek. >> whoa, whoa, whoa. what are you trying to say? >> well, like i said, i'm just down and your name has come up, like hundreds of names. >> why would my name come up? >> that's what i'm trying to figure out. >> reporter: what did you think? >> i thought we had our man. >> reporter: troopers looked up his new hampshire girlfriends. one said he casually mentioned that he could kill someone and get away with it. >> she thought he was blowing smoke. then he also told her i can't go back to alaska because of something i...

Kept getting disconnected. >> reporter: but finally they had a conversation long enough for karen to learn one thing, one amazing fact. a dna match. after 12 years they had the man they believed murdered her daughter bonnie. and there on that island, karen felt afraid. >> you would expect that i would be thrilled. no. i'm immediately so fearful that, oh, my gosh, now we know who's done it. are we going to get him convicted? >> reporter: a few months later in 2007 kenneth dion was indicted and extradited to alaska. karen's anxiety only grew. >> i didn't trust the investigation. is the evidence ...

In prison for rape and murder. >> was bonnie murdered? no. she died accidentally. >> reporter: but not if defense attorney andrew lambert could help it. >> bonnie accidentally fell off the cliff and died. >> reporter: after having consensual sex with your client. >> not necessarily that day. >> reporter: it could have been a couple of days before. >> it could have been. >> reporter: and that was the essence of it, the defense of kenneth dion, that he and bonnie had consensual sex and a few days later she just happened to die in a hiking accident, no provable connection between the two events s...

Protestations are sincere in that he had an episode in his life that he's either blocked out or for some reason can't recall based on what was happening in his life at that time. >> reporter: cocaine puts holes in your brain, they say. >> it does. >> reporter: amazing, this is a man who got away with murder for a long time and would have completely, scot free if it hadn't been somebody put the dna into codis. >> that's really remarkable. >> reporter: which is, it turns out, the subject of karen's new campaign. she is now on the side of the alaska state troopers and other law enforcement agenci...

Painful. everything's like the day that she was murdered. it's like having everything ripped open again. >> reporter: the trial finally started in may 2011. >> she has 11 lacerations on the back of the skull. >> reporter: it was paul miovas' first trial as district attorney in cold case homicide, and he was worried. >> i went into it with a heavy heart. i knew it would be a task. >> reporter: because the dna from kenneth dion did not prove he raped and killed bonnie, only that sex took place between them. and beyond the dna, the prosecutor had little to connect dion to the murder. there was no...