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She always had a smile for everybody. >> eventually, cher moved to florida where her sister judy says she became a savvy businesswoman, running her own neon sign company. >> she would always make sure she had that income. she made sure she was setting herself up for what exactly what she wanted to do was retire and travel around the world. >> cher did travel but mostly in the u.s. then a friend invited her to visit exotic boca del toro. >> good morning. >> and cher jumped at the chance. >> we decided to live there for seven days and hit us that hard. the people here were phenomenal. children l...

>> the change was he killed people to get the documentation in order to take over the property. and not only did he steal the property, he would steal everything in the house. cars, boats, right down to the toothbrush and their underwear and their dogs. >> he took over 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, charged with heinous crimes -- the murders of bo icelar and cher hughes. >> there are dozens, if not a hundred people in this town, in bocas, that all knew cher, t...

Says, embezzled $25,000 from the gym's accounts. >> he had told me he had thought that was part of his -- his pay, his package. and i said, "no, dathan, it's not part of your package." >> reporter: and that was just the beginning. dathan left the job -- and his wife. he ran off with laura michele reese, who'd later be known as jane cortez in bocas. in 2005, police say dathan started in on his real estate scams. he sold a home that wasn't his for $200,000. police charged him with obtaining property under false pretenses. by the time the owner realized what had happened, dathan was on the run. t...

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. after the bodies were discovered wild bill was seen as a monster in panama, a serial killer who kept his victim's personal things right in his own house. we wanted to speak with bill so we reached out to his attorneys we did get a return call. it was his lawyer with wild bill calling from his jail cell in panama. he'd already confessed to the murders but he said he wanted to explain himself. >> i'm n...

>> the panama prosecutor on the case said he reached out to other countries to see if any of their missing persons may have crossed paths with wild bill. >> once they verify and confirm any persons who had contact with him and disappeared, they will take measures to verify where they are. >> if there are other victims out there, they may be hard to find. wild bill mostly targeted loaners, peoples whoos disappearance might not be noticed. it wasn't until bill killed cher, the woman who had a smile for everyone that he was caught. >> his mistake of targeting cher is what was his down fall. he co...