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journalism. >> 'cause i always weave my own story through the reportage. >> lawson's godson, ronnie neal, revisits the neighborhood where alex played football. this is where i first seen alex play the real game with equipment. as always, he was the smallest one on the field, the one making the biggest plays. >> he wishes alex could be remembered as the vibrant, young athlete he once was, his family cheering him on. >> he excelled. i get that vivid feeling that i still can hear, you know, his mom and his dad yelling his name, "alex, alex" -- taisha, everybody going crazy when he runs for a touchdown. >> taisha is stunned that lennon is even allowed to write about killing her brother. >> it angered me, 'cause i feel like he's becoming a celebrity.
diane's body were badly damaged, but the bottom part was relatively intact. >> i didn't have the whole bullet, but at least had the entire circumference of the base i could examine. >> they could discern the lands and grooves on the bottom of the fatal bullets. the bullets test fired from diane's gun were the same as those that killed her. >> you're looking for these matching scratches. they have to have the same type of character, in other words, depth or the width of them and the spacing between them. >> despite the amount of decomposition, scientists recovered a biological sample from diane's body which matched ronnie neal's dna profile, proof of sexual assault. eventually, pearl told investigators the entire story of what happened to diane tilly.
so you reach for something better. fewer calories. fewer carbs. more to experience. michelob ultra. the superior light beer. after finding diane tilly's body, police arrested 33-year-old ronnie neal and his
>> something's not right. >> the prime suspects in diane tilly's disappearance were the middle aged man and young girl last seen driving a white pickup truck. every plam in the area was on the look out. it wasn't long before they stopped two people who fit that description. they were identified as 15-year-old pearl cruz and her 33-year-old father ronnie neal. both denied any involvement in diane tilly's disappearance, but they admitted stealing her car. >> you said, i was at a car wash and i found diane tilly's car. he said, you're not going to believe this, but the car was running and the door was open and there was all this stuff in it and i just couldn't resist it.
15-year-old daughter pearl cruz and charged them both with kidnapping and murder. investigators discovered that ronnie neal had done some landscaping work for diane and she even gave him a swing set she se no longer needed. >> diane took a little bit of care to engage pearl. she mentioned something to pearl about, you know, i like your nail polish. it's pretty. and i think she asked pearl where she went to school. >> pearl cruz told investigators that she and her father planned almost from the start to rob diane. >> well, it's a very disturbing story. it's disturbing on many levels. it's not an easy story to digest at all. >> on the night of the murder, pearl knocked on diane's door
despite this evidence, ronnie neal refused to cooperate. so police focused on his father pearl. she too refused to cooperate, at least initially. >> i recall being very angry with pearl over what happened. with diane tilly and telling her that there wasn't a day that was going to go by that she wasn't going to think about this. >> and after ten days in custody, pearl led police to diane's body. it was the area where ronnie neal made his cell phone call. a deserted field under a pile of brush 15 miles from diane's home. although the body was badly decomposed, it was clear that she'd been shot several times. her hands were bound with a dark blue polyester shoe lace that looked like the missing shoe
>> the last thing pearl said she heard diane say was bless this child. >> according to cell phone records, neal stood over diane's body and called pearl's mother telling her he had recently come into some money and suggested they all go shopping. later, neal ditched diane's car and set it on fire thinking they had destroyed all the forensic evidence. but they still left plenty behind. >> neal was not executed by the state, then it would really be a travesty. >> we the jury find the defendant guilty -- >> in april of 2006, ronnie neal was tried and convicted of capital murder and sentenced to death by lethal injection. pearl's life was spared in