Page 18 - Win Panama News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

Living out the dream of owning her own island. but then last spring, she vanished. >> i imagine you were calling? >> calling. >> leaving messages? >> texting, facebooking. and then i started reading her facebook. and it's, like, "cher, where are you?" people who were in panama, in bocas, "haven't seen you around town, where you at, gimme a call." and we started wondering. >> reporter: when cher's husband keith realized she'd left town, he was surprised. but he thought he might know why. cher had been talking about spending time in panama city. a place where she could blend into the scenery mor...

After bill's back needed a vacation from his vacation. so he stepped on the dr. scholl's kiosk. it recommends our best custom fit orthotic to relieve foot, knee, or lower back pain so you can move more. dr. scholl's. born to move. >> reporter: on the exotic coast of panama, cher hughes had been

>> with contacts in high places, he knows the ins and outs of the panamanian system. he hopped on a flight to bocas and tapped into the coconut telegraph. what is the coconut telegraph? >> that's just the rumor mill. they call it the coconut telegraph. when something happens, word spreads quickly. >> and from what don was hearing, things just weren't adding up. he checked to see if bo and cher might have left the country. >> i knew that bo and cher, both of them, their passports had not gone through the airport. if you look at immigration movements, both of them you can track. could they come ...

Off, leading them on a high speed chase before escaping. it seems it was only after he moved to panama that dathan's scams took a sinister turn. >> the change was he killed people to get the documentation in order to take over the property. >> reporter: and not only was he stealing their property, he would steal everything in the house -- cars, boats, right down to the toothbrush and the underwear and their dogs. he took on their entire lives? >> yeah, right down to the change in their pocket. >> reporter: four years after fleeing from the states, wild bill was finally in police custody, charg...

Not just bo and cher, but three more people who'd died at the hands of wild bill. this time, it was a father, mother and their teenaged son -- the brown family. they were the original owners of bill's property, cher's neighbors. keith remembers when the browns suddenly moved out. he kept his personal things in his own house. we wanted to speak with bill so we reached out to his attorneys and about a month ago our phone rang. it was the lawyer with wild bill himself on the phone calling from his jail cell in panama. he already confessed to the murders. but he said he wanted to explain himself...