All language subtitles for WEB.Of.Death.S01E06.WEBRip.x264-ION10

Leach: I feel that
nobody helps these souls

that are lost out there,

and somebody´s got to do it.

Why can´t that somebody be me?

Schroeder: Shocking.

In 30 plus years, never come
across something like this.

And I hope the good Lord
never lets me do that again.

His entire life went missing --

everything he owned
down to his toothbrush.

There was a stain
found on the cup.

May:
And that´s when we immediately

knew something
was terribly wrong.

Leach: I was obsessed
with finding this person.

There are just so many places
to hide a body.

Where do you begin to look?

Leach: This was one
that I had to solve.

♫♫

♫♫

♫♫

I´m Ellen Leach.
I live in Gulfport, Mississippi.

Been here since 2001.

I met Chip online,
so he kind of made me move.

She was living in
Lake Jackson or Clute,

if you will, south of Houston,
and I was living here.

We´d talk on the Internet.

Internet relationship,
if you will.

Days turned into weeks,
turned into months,

turned into [indistinct]

It´s just the two of us.

We have a dog named Loki
and two cats.

Glass: She was a girl
to ride the river with.

She´s just got a good heart.

I...
I couldn´t want anything else.

♫♫

In 1994, I got a phone call
from my mom,

and she said my cousin´s boys
were missing.

My cousin -- his name is David.

His wife, Susan,
and they had two boys --

Michael and Alex.

In South Carolina, the evening
drive that turned

into a mother´s nightmare.

Federal authorities
have launched

a nationwide search
for a carjacker.

According to his victim,
he not only stole her car,

he stole her children, too.

Leach: I couldn´t be there
to help with the search,

so the only thing I could do
was go online

and try to look around,

trying to find
some kind of clue.

The mother, Susan, told
the police that a Black man

had kidnapped her kids
and hijacked the car.

I would like to say
to whoever has my children...

...that they please,

I mean, please bring them home.

Leach:
Something wasn´t right.

And the police
caught on to that.

They knew she was lying.

Susan Smith has been arrested
and will be charged

with two counts of murder

in connection with the deaths
of her children --

Michael, 3,
and Alexander. 14 months.

Barbara Walters:
The jury voted

for Susan Smith
to face life imprisonment.

In South Carolina,
that means 30 years.

That devastated my cousin David
and -- and my uncle Dave, too,

as he lost his grandbabies.

And that´s how
I started sleuthing.

When I was looking
for my cousin´s boys,

I stumbled across the site
called Doe Network.

It had missing persons.

It had unidentified bodies.

We were the people that took
the information, put it online,

processed it
for law enforcement,

and then brought tips back.

Leach: I got to see
how many people were missing

and how many unidentified
were out there.

It had a personal effect on me.

I saw all these missing persons
on this website

and I thought, "Somebody
has got to help them.

I know what they´re
going through.

Somebody has got to help them.

They need to find
their loved ones."

And that´s when I started
looking more and more into it.

I prefer to work
on the harder cases,

the ones that not
many people look at.

I´m sitting in front
of my computer.

I´m scrolling through,
looking at missing persons,

and I came across a skull
in a bucket of cement

in Kearney, Missouri.

It said it was a male,
Caucasian, 50s to 60s,

and there wasn´t
much else there.

That was all
the information they gave.

Reporter: Police who searched
this area around the truck stop

when the skull was discovered

theorize that the cement
cylinder was dropped off

at this truck stop
and the actual crime scene

where the murder took place
is elsewhere.

It could have happened
anywhere

with 535 running through here.

You know, we´re looking anywhere
from Canada to Mexico.

Reporter: Kearney Police Chief
Tom Carey wants to find out

the man´s identity
to help bring closure

to a family somewhere
who is missing him.

Matthews: In August of 2001
in Kearney, Missouri,

somebody at a truck stop

finds a plastic bucket
full of concrete,

and eventually it contains
a human skull.

Imagine the surprise of that.

It´s a John Doe.

You´re looking
at the possibility

this is somebody that
was murdered on purpose.

You´re not looking
at just somebody

that just walked off
and went missing.

Leach: Who´s gonna put a skull
in a bucket of cement

and leave it at a truck stop?

This was one
that I had to solve.

It was a puzzle
that had to be worked.

♫♫

My name is Shannon May.

I live in Lake Geneva,
Wisconsin.

This is the town
I grew up as a child.

It´s a small,
little Midwestern town.

People are very friendly.
It´s a tourist town.

It´s just about an hour
and a half north of Chicago

and about 45 minutes
south of Milwaukee.

This is a beautiful
spring-fed lake.

There´s lots of activity
going on here.

It´s a quaint, little, very
friendly, neighborhood town.

Growing up here
was a magical time.

Every day was a new adventure.

We had the lake
to go fishing on, sailing,

which we often did
with our father.

So many things to do.
We flew kites.

My dad loved to do that.

There were a lot of things
for kids to do here

that just makes for a very
Norman Rockwell happy childhood.

I´m the daughter of Greg May.

I was just 2 years old

when my father set up
his first tattoo shop.

My father was a very good
artist,

and he was just drawn
to tattoos for some reason.

It really appealed to him.

He could really master it.

His work was
very well recognized,

so he really made a name
for himself over the years.

My father, you know,
his business was his business

and on his off time,
it was his business

and he kept trying to keep
his family separated from that.

He didn´t even let anybody
in town know where he lived.

So we were never allowed
to tell anybody

exactly where we lived
because at that time,

tattooing was still
kind of the --

the little bit darker side
of life, I would say.

A lot of people, they thought,
"Oh, this tattoo artist,"

they expected somebody
covered in tattoos,

scruffy, probably, you know,
stained T-shirt.

You would never find him
wearing tennis shoes, say.

So he was always either
in cowboy boots.

And he really liked
his cowboy hat.

I think, because it was
appealing to him --

the Old Wild West, you know,

the Jesse James stories,
things like that.

He actually went so far
as to iron his jeans,

which I always
thought was funny.

He would go
to the library every day

and read
"The Wall Street Journal."

You´d hear the buzzing of the
needles in the tattoo shop,

and he would have
the stock market on the radio.

He sort of looked like
Buddy Holly when he was younger.

And then as a little bit older,

he kind of looked like
the Marlboro Man.

And being a tattoo artist

afforded him to what
he really liked to do,

which was an avid
antique collector.

Not just any antiques.

He really honed in
on the Civil War.

His collection was estimated,
we thought about $250,000.

He really loved
American history.

♫♫

So I started searching
for who this skull could be.

And I searched and I searched.

I was obsessed
with finding this person.

Back then, there wasn´t
any Twitter or Facebook

or anything like that.

You had to type in
"State of Iowa missing persons"

or "State of Texas
missing persons."

Once I see a listing,
I look at it and you think,

"Who is this person?
What did they do for a living?

What did they like to do?

What´s their family like?"

You want to find out
more about this person,

and it takes a lot of work.

There are, at any given time,

around 80,000
missing-persons reports

that are active
in the United States.

We know through a lot of surveys

that we´ve conducted
over the years

that there´s possibly up
to 40,000 unidentified bodies.

That´s the silent mass disaster.

Leach: I´ve learned that
the remains usually aren´t far

from where
the person went missing.

So everything is gonna be
closer than you think.

First, I look within
a 20-mile radius

to find any missing persons
that might be attached to that.

If the characteristics
don´t match, like age,

hair color, height, weight,

I eliminate them from that list

and then I move on
to a bigger radius --

30 miles, 40, 50 miles,
up to 500 miles.

When I´m doing this,

the possibilities are endless.

You just have to put out
the initiative to do it,

to say, "I´m gonna do it
and get it done."

You´ve got to have the willpower

to keep going
at something like this.

May: My parents separated
and divorced in 1977,

but they always
remained friends.

When I was a teenager,
we moved to California.

My father came out
every holiday.

We would talk
on the phone very often.

Met her dad,
and I had

gotten tattoos from him
when I was younger.

So then when I came to him,
he was like,

"Yeah, I´ll show you."
He ended up taking me in

and then I worked for him
for a few years

and then
he wanted to retire.

So then we had
worked out a deal

where I was gonna
buy the shop.

My dad was gonna lend me
the money,

and he passed away.

So I remember --
I´ll never forget the day

I called Greg from the hospital,
and I said,

"Hey, I ain´t got the money
to buy the shop."

And he said,
"Don´t worry about it."

You know, he was really,
like, caring.

And he said, "Just do
what you have to do.

Take care of your family.

When you´re done,
we´ll sit, we´ll talk."

And I said, "Okay."
And I´ll never forget it.

In essence, you know,
he gave me the shop

and for him to do that
was pretty epic.

He was like
a second father to me.

After working hard
all his life,

he finally afforded himself
to retire at a young age.

He was 54 years old
when he was retired.

He had ended up across
the Mississippi River

in a little town
called Bellevue, Iowa.

♫♫

Bellevue´s population
is about 2,360 people.

We´ve actually grown.

I call it a bedroom community,

where people come here
to actually live,

but they work outside,
maybe up to an hour or so away.

They drive back and forth.

Oh, the Mississippi
is a great draw.

I´ve been here for 31 years
on this job here.

I worked up the ranks from
patrolman to assistant chief,

and now I am
the chief of police.

May: Seventh, eighth grade,

that´s when I first met
Douglas DeBruin,

and he went
by the name of "Moose,"

so I only ever knew him
as Moose.

He was a big guy.

He was -- I think
he was about 6´3".

And he was just
very broad shoulders,

you know,
short, kind of curly hair.

He was just always a guy
that was at the shop

or my dad would go
and have maybe a beer

with him afterwards.

Eventually, after Moose
hanging around

the tattoo shop for a while,

my father, you know, actually
took him under his wing.

He offered to show him
how to tattoo

so that he could have a trade.

So as time went on,

they did develop
some sort of a friendship.

My father had moved to Bellevue.

Moose didn´t have a place to go,
I guess,

so my dad told him he could
stay in his basement

until he could get on his feet.

When new people come to town,
they just get your -- your eye.

They kind of say,
"Ooh, who´s that?"

So you tried to make contact
with them on a nice way

because that´s what --
We´re a friendly town. We are.

I did meet Greg and Doug
down on Front Street.

Probably a block away
from where they lived.

Didn´t talk shop or nothing.
Just little small talk.

I think Doug and Greg
were good buddies.

I mean, I would compare them
to a couple of my friends

when we go out walking
or going to eat or whatever.

You know, they seem
like they were buds.

♫♫

Buman: I was out one night
and Greg come in

and he sat down next to me
and was sitting there talking

and he bought me a drink.

The first impression
I got of Greg,

is when I --

I looked at him
and I thought,

"Oh, God, he ain´t
too bad-looking."

And then next thing you know,
he says,

"You want to go to another bar?"
I said, "Sure."

And then maybe the next day,
he got ahold of me

and he called me

and seemed like we just started
going out together.

Greg told me he was divorced

and he had two kids --
Don and Shannon.

The reason he come to Bellevue
as because

he said he liked
the Mississippi River.

It was right next
to the Mississippi River.

Yeah, Greg loved it here,
but he hated the wintertime.

He hated being cold and he
wanted to move down to Florida.

And he asked me if I wanted
to go, and I said, "Sure."

Me and Greg was gonna
start our life together.

I was happy.

I was happy that Greg asked me.

I was ready to go.

I was ready to get out
of this winter, too.

Leach: I do my calculations
and I´ll write down,

"This one looks good
or this one looks good,"

and then I narrow it down by
age, timing, things like that.

And when I narrow it down,
I´ll have two or three left.

Glass: She spends a massive
amount of time at it.

If she´s -- if she´s awake and
not at work, she´s doing that.

She´s got a big heart.
She worries about people.

She´ll fret about it at night.

In the middle of the night,

she´ll say something
that maybe she had forgotten

that evening or something
or something she want to look at

or a different resource
that she needed to try.

Leach:
I found a man in Chicago.

His age was about right --
50 to 60.

I then looked at the mileage.

It was 451 miles.

It was a little
on the higher range,

but it was still
under 500 miles.

So I said, "Well, maybe.
Let´s give it a shot."

And the timing was right.

He went missing right
before the skull was found.

I thought it was a mob hit.

It reminded me of something
a mob would do.

The Doe Network, they´ve got
administrators for each state

that get their cases.

If you have a possible match
you want to turn in,

you have to go through them.

They don´t want
to send bad matches.

They send only the cases
they think will work out.

Matthews: And there´s hundreds,

maybe thousands of cyber sleuths
out there

that have theories
and that can become deafening,

that can actually
become overwhelming

for law enforcement.

And Ellen was not
100% happy with this

because she felt like

she should have more direct
contact with law enforcement.

Leach:
So I have this match in Chicago,

and I think it´s a good match.

And I had narrowed it down.

So I e-mail it
to the Doe Network.

I had a long shot.

♫♫

May: My father would normally
come out

and visit us every Christmas.

So when I asked him, "Are you
still planning to come out?"

He said, "You know, I´m getting
so close to moving.

I think it´s better
if we just wait.

Why don´t we wait until I get
settled down in Florida?"

Buman:
And I come back to Bellevue,

and I tried the door.

♫♫

And the door was locked.

♫♫

This shade was up a little bit,
so I looked in.

I seen Greg sitting there
on the chair.

So I went down to the bar
and I called up here and...

[ Telephone rings ]

...and I got
the answering machine.

So I come back up here,
and I look back in the shade

and nobody answered the door
and -- and I didn´t see anybody.

And so it was so cold
out that night, about 20 below,

so I just got in my car
and I left.

I was really hurt.

I just couldn´t figure out
why he´d do that to me.

I knew something was wrong,
you know,

but I didn´t know what to do.

♫♫

[ Telephone rings ]

May: I believe it was a Sunday
that I called him

and a woman I didn´t know
answered the phone

and I immediately said,
"Hi, who´s this?"

I thought maybe I had
the wrong number,

but I mean, I knew his number.
I wouldn´t dial it wrong.

She said, "This is Julie."

And I said, "This is
Greg´s daughter, Shannon.

Is he there?"
And she said, "No."

Oh, this is Julie,
Moose´s girlfriend."

I said, "Well, he´s called me
a couple of times.

I don´t want him to think
I´m not calling him back.

Will you please let him know
I called?"

She said, "Well, he´s gone
to Chicago for the day.

Yeah, yeah, yeah,
I´ll let him know."

After about two or three days,
I alerted my brother.

I said,
"Hey, something is wrong.

I´m trying to call Dad,
and he´s not answering.

It´s been a couple of days now,"
so my brother kept trying

and we both -- just alarm bells
going off with both of us.

If my father decided to change
his number,

he would have told us.

I mean, as it was,
he kept records of everything.

He was very precise,
extremely organized.

But the next day,
his phone was disconnected.

And that´s when
the alarm bells went off.

So my brother knew that
my father´s friend Gary Germaine

lived a short distance
from his house.

My brother was able to get
ahold of Gary and asked him,

"Can you please go
over to the house

and see what´s
going on over there?"

So Gary says, "Sure."
He went over there.

He called us back and he said,
"You know, the house is empty."

My father´s car wasn´t there.

And that´s when we immediately
knew something

was terribly wrong.

I received a call
from Greg´s son, Don,

about his father
possibly being missing.

We went over
to the neighborhood,

to his house to knock
to see if he was there.

You have to find out,
is he still in the area?

Did he leave?
What the case may be.

My brother and I decided to book
a trip to the Midwest

and come see for ourselves
what was going on.

This is the house in Bellevue

where Gregory May lived
since last May.

His children believe
that some items

from his antique collection
are missing from the home.

Authorities continue
to investigate this

as a missing-persons case

and say they´re exploring
every avenue.

While investigating, a neighbor
eventually did come forward

to tell us some information
about what he´s seen

that Doug DeBruin
and his girlfriend, Julie,

were moving items
that he thought were antiques

out of the house
into a cargo-type moving van.

And he thought that was
kind of suspicious.

May: When my father first
went missing,

we knew Moose
was living with him.

But in the very beginning,
I thought,

"Did they take off somewhere?"

And we all questioned
each other,

between my brother
and my mom and I,

"Would Moose hurt my father?

Would he be capable of that?"

And we thought, "No, he liked
him. Why would he do that?"

Schroeder:
When we do an investigation,

we have to ask
a lot of questions.

We have to figure out
where he went,

who he went with, why he went.

And we have to talk to a lot
of people to get these answers.

An ordinary person does not just
fall off the face of the earth

when he has a past history
of being organized,

making contact
with family members.

His banks,
the ones we talked to,

were -- there was nothing,
no activity.

That´s just another one
of the pieces we put together.

May: We stayed in town
for a little bit.

We tried to drive around, tried
to find people that he knew,

went and talked to Gary.

We just were kind of at a loss.

After a few days,

the chief of police in Bellevue,
Iowa, called in the DCI.

Our small town of five officers
are not gonna be able

to handle a missing-person case.

So we have, within the state,
it´s called the DCI,

which stands for Division
of Criminal Investigation.

Their main job is to assist
other agencies with big cases.

So what they do is they have
a special agent assigned.

We told them
that Douglas DeBruin

had been staying with him

and I explained the phone call
about Julie Miller.

I didn´t know who she was.

♫♫

The beginning, you´re a mess.
You don´t know what to do.

You´re running
in all different directions.

You´re talking to many people
as you can.

And so we just had
to let the story unfold.

It was very hard to leave Iowa
and let the police do their job

and take over the investigation

because you want to feel
like you´re doing something.

May: After the DCI were involved
and we´re waiting for answers,

everything was very surreal.

I remember driving down the road
and thinking to myself,

"How can the world
keep moving right now

when my life is completely
and totally still?"

And then it was months
after that

that one of my father´s
really good friends

called up my brother
and he said,

"You know, I got a flier
in the mail

for a place called
the Rock Island Auction House."

Schroeder: And he come across
this catalogue

that had a bunch of antiques

that was getting sold
in Rock Island, Illinois.

And he told Greg´s kids that
these got to be Greg´s stuff.

There´s no way there´s
two separate items like this,

collections that Greg has.

Somebody else
has the same collection.

May: The DCI and
the chief of police drove over

to the Rock Island Auction House

to inquire about
how they got this auction.

So the investigation took us up
to a woman called Mary Klar

that put these items
on the auction.

Well, turns out Mary Klar was
actually Julie Miller´s mother.

So what a coincidence
that was.

Julie is the girlfriend
of Douglas DeBruin.

While interviewing Mary Klar,
we found out that Julie and Doug

were in some type of a trailer
down in Flagstaff, Arizona.

♫♫

♫♫

When the investigators
went inside the trailer,

we found a lot
of Greg May´s possessions.

So the question is,
"What are they doing here?

How did they get here?

What are they gonna do
with them?

And where is Greg at?"

There were photos of them
found on the truck

having the time of their lives.

Laughing, carrying on,

little fugitives on the run.

God knows what was going
through their head.

Every time I looked at him,

he always had
that mean look on him.

You know, I -- I was kind of
half scared of him,

you know,
mean-looking, you know.

But then Greg told me one time
that he never trusted Julie.

And I told him, I said, "I never
trusted Moose either."

And he said, "Why?"

And I said, "I don´t know.
I just don´t trust him."

My name is John Kies,

and I was the county attorney
in Jackson County.

The chief of police in Bellevue
at the time

called me up early one morning

and he said, "John,
it´s probably nothing, but..."

And then he began to tell me
about a missing person --

Gregory May.

He wasn´t the kind of person
to call me about nothing.

So I knew something
was going on.

♫♫

Douglas DeBruin
and Julie Miller denied

they had anything to do
with the theft

of the Civil War collection
or the murder of Gregory May.

They simply denied it all.

They just tried
to basically play dumb.

Kies: When investigators began
to go through the van

and separate out
the different items of evidence,

one of the things they located
was a large jacket,

and it was believed
that that jacket

belonged to Douglas DeBruin.

So the jacket was taken to
the DCI Laboratory for analysis.

There was a stain
found on the cup.

May: There was a green jacket
that belonged to Moose

and there was a spot
of blood on there.

So they did a reverse DNA
search with my brother and I,

where they swabbed our cheeks

and they sort of do the DNA
in reverse from the children

to the parent to see
if it belonged to him.

And through DNA analysis,

the blood was determined
to be Gregory May´s.

May: Once, you know,
when you´re waiting for somebody

who´s been missing
for a long time,

you live on hope.
You live on hope and fear.

And then once you finally
get that confirmation

that all hope is lost,

then that´s when you really
start the steps of the grief.

I couldn´t even say the word
"murder" for months at a time.

I literally could not say
the word "murder."

We believe that
they´ve murdered Gregory May.

But there are just so many
places to hide a body.

Where do you begin to look?

Leach: I had sent it
into the Doe Network --

the man in Chicago

I thought the skull
in the bucket belonged to.

Ellen´s original match was
to a missing mobster in Chicago.

So it seemed like
a good opportunity.

All the hallmarks of a mob
hit -- a dismembered head

in concrete in a bucket.

You know, it looked like
that was gonna be

a real possibility,
but it wasn´t.

Leach:
So they come back and say,

"We don´t like that match.
It´s not a good match."

It´s disheartening.

It makes you want to back away
from it for a while.

But then you think,

"No, I´m gonna beat this" and
you jump in it with two feet.

She´s precise to the point
you don´t want to be wrong.

You don´t want to cause anyone
unnecessary emotion

or stress or whatever,
and she´ll research it to death.

She´ll archive newspapers
for hours

hunting stories or hunting clues

or something to tie
cases together.

Leach: On weekends,
we go to the casino.

We have a little fun.

It just reminds you
that things are alive.

With all the sadness
going on,

there´s still life out there.

There´s still happiness
out there.

Being at the casino reminds me
that you never know

when your luck
is going to come in.

A few months had passed on.

I´m still working the case,

so I go to Doe Network
and they have an update.

They have a reconstruction
of the head.

About a year after Kearney
police actually submitted

the case to Doe Network,
they didn´t have any leads.

So they commissioned
Frank Bender, a forensic artist,

to actually re-create the skull

so that we´d have
a face of the victim.

So it wasn´t just a description,
it was a face.

And that´s really important in
those John and Jane Doe cases.

You have to have a visual.

Reporter: Today, they unveiled

this reconstruction of the
victim created by Frank Bender,

the same artist who sculpted
a bust of Precious Doe

for Kansas City,
Missouri, police.

Bender says it took him
two and a half months

to complete the reconstruction.

The only features that I had
was the skull itself,

and there was plenty
of information there.

It was a very good skull.

There is often so little
opportunity to create evidence.

It´s the only opportunity
to actually show

what a person
might have looked like.

Kies: So when Julie Miller and
Douglas DeBruin are arrested,

we knew that their story
was gonna be that Gregory May

had given them
the Civil War collection.

That was gonna be
their defense, essentially.

They were gonna argue, one,
Gregory May´s still alive.

And how can you prove
that he´s dead?

And, two, that he gave us
his Civil War collection

for whatever reason.

And the third argument
we were anticipating was,

even if you can convince the
jury that Gregory May´s dead,

how in the world are you
convince them he was murdered?

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And we had Gregory May´s
Civil War collection.

So we have a motive
and we have Douglas DeBruin,

a man on federal release
with a criminal record.

We weren´t pressured to file
murder charges against him.

He was out of the public.
He was in a safe place.

Julie Miller´s case for
first-degree theft was coming up

as the investigation into
the disappearance of Gregory May

was still going on.

Prosecuting a murder case
without a body sets you back

two places from
where you normally start.

Normally, you start being able
to show the jury

there was a death

and the circumstances indicate
there was a murder.

Here, we had to start
by convincing the jury

that there was a death in the
first place without a body

and that the death was wrongful.

And then we had to begin with
where you normally start --

trying to prove that Douglas
DeBruin was the murderer.

One of our strategies

other than just hoping
that remains show up,

was to work on Douglas DeBruin
and Julie Miller.

May: Before the trial,
we talked to the prosecutor.

They said, "Well,
they´re both gonna deny it.

So we´re gonna give her
immunity for her testimony."

They had to make a deal
with the devil.

So they make a deal with her,
which is a good and bad thing.

The good news is it made
our case stronger

because it´s very difficult
to prosecute a murder case

without a body.

But the bad news is now Julie,

who was actually part
of this crime,

is not gonna get
a severe punishment.

Kies: She admitted
that Douglas DeBruin

had killed Gregory May.

She said it was strangulation.

She admitted being present
when it happened.

And she admitted
going with DeBruin

to dispose of the remains.

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She told us that Gregory May´s
remains had been dumped

off a bridge
into the Mississippi River.

We never believed that was true.

The records of the ice thickness
in that year

were easy to obtain,
and we knew that was impossible.

Of course, nothing was found.

And we made the decision
to issue the arrest warrant

for the murder
to get the case ready for trial.

We just didn´t think
it was gonna get any better.

Buman:
Now that I think back on it,

I think that night
when I was over there,

that´s the night
that they killed Greg.

You know, having a friend
that many years, you know,

why would you kill
somebody like that?

May: My father was
such a generous man.

For somebody who he took
under his wing,

he gave him a friendship

and this is the way
he repays him.

It´s just pure evil.

Kies:
We were absolutely determined

to prosecute
the strongest case we had.

We´re gonna present
what we have in front of a jury.

May: In the state of Iowa,

they had never had a conviction
without remains.

I mean, this was gonna be
unprecedented for that area.

But there´s always
that greatest fear.

We don´t have
everything we need.

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Leach:
I was looking at the face

and I had seen it before,
but I couldn´t remember where.

So I had to go through
all the sights again,

probably 150 sites
to try to find out

where I had seen
this man before.

So in the world today,
we are familiar

with human facial recognition.

The airports do it, everything.

Ellen is a human representative
of that.

She had to use memory

to go back through things
that she had searched.

There was no way of indexing it.

She was literally just going
back through databases

that she had looked at before

to try to find the image
that she recalled.

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Leach: I came across the Iowa
Missing Person Clearinghouse,

and that´s where I found
the picture of Greg May.

My gut feeling told me
that this was the man.

This was the John Doe.

I went through and I looked
at the photos

and compared different features,

and I was sure
this had to be the skull.

The picture of Greg May --

they had his age.

They showed him
with a full head of hair.

Good-looking man.

They had his height
and his weight.

I was positive it was him.

She was asking me to look
at it and see what I thought.

And due to the fact that
Kearney, Missouri,

was Jesse James´ hometown,
Civil War era,

and him being
a Civil War collector,

I -- I couldn´t do anything
but agree with her.

I immediately wrote
the area director

for Iowa for the Doe Network,

and I put in the possible match
with Greg May.

And I pushed send...

and I waited.

Kies: January of 2005.

Douglas DeBruin´s defense team
asked for a delay.

They argued that with the new
evidence that we had,

Julie Miller´s testimony,

they needed time to come up
and process the new information.

At the time, I was so vexed.

It turned out to be
pretty fortunate for us as well.

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Leach:
I was so sure about Greg May.

I had done all the work on him.

And then I just had to lose
control of the case

and hand over to Doe Network.

She was almost feeling helpless
because red tape or whatever

was too long to satisfy her.

Finally, in March 2005,
three months after I had made

the submission,
the area director from Iowa

got back with me.

She told me
it was a positive match,

and I just kind of melted.

That was my first match.

So it was a happy moment
and a sad moment.

And when she got that match,

it vindicated what
she´d been doing.

So she was happy.

Leach: I had finally done it.
I had I.D.´d him.

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We had a skull.

So we could do a dental match
with a local Bellevue dentist

that Gregory May had gone to.

He had all the records.

So we didn´t have
other parts of the body,

but we had the one piece

that absolutely identified
Gregory May beyond a doubt.

Now we have this incredible
new piece of evidence.

We could not only prove
scientifically

that Gregory May was dead,

but the fact that his head
was found in a bucket

means that death was wrongful.

So this was absolutely enormous.
This was absolutely huge.

It was only later that I learned
about how it all came together.

And this screeched in
at the last possible minute.

We had no idea.

So often, cyber sleuths are
running a race against time

that we don´t even know about.

Kies:
The trial of Douglas DeBruin

lasted almost exactly two weeks,

and the jury came back
with a verdict of guilty

to first-degree murder
as charged

on April 20th of 2005.

He showed absolutely no remorse.

Julie Miller -- she´d been lying
to the police for so long.

And she first told them that,

"Oh, maybe he´s in the river.´
My father´s the river.

"Maybe he´s here,
maybe he´s there."

The judge threw the book
at her for perjury

and gave her the maximum
of five years,

which honestly,
really wasn´t enough

for a cold-blooded murder.

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You know, now the trial is over,
you know, all we can do

is live the life
that he didn´t get to.

And so I try not to think
about them.

I try not to give them any
of my thoughts or day or time.

What Ellen did was everything.

Without her, I don´t know
where we would have been.

I didn´t even know people
did that at the time.

Leach: I was happy because
he finally had his name back,

but I was sad for the family.

They had to know
what happened to their daddy.

That was a horrific crime.

But I provided them
with a sense of closure.

That was a big weight
lifted off my chest.

Some people never get
those answers,

and those are the people
I really feel sorry for.

I can´t imagine going years
without ever knowing.

Buman: One thing I miss
about Greg is,

you know, the good times
we used to have,

you know, go out -- go out
and have a few drinks

and talk and laugh

and, you know,
just have a good time.

I always thought
we got along really good.

I was looking forward

to spending the rest
of my life with Greg.

Schroeder:
Little Bellevue, Iowa.

Shocking.

Why is it happening here?

I´ve never,
in 30 plus years,

never come across
something like this.

And I hope the good Lord
never lets me do that again.

May: Here comes along an amateur
sleuth on her time off,

not getting paid for it,
just wanting to help.

She pieces together the key
that held this case --

the key that made this case.

And got justice for mine
and my family.

Ellen Leach is one of
the heroines of the case,

one of the unsung heroines,
really,

working behind the scenes.

This is a letter
I got from John Kies.

It´s the Jackson County
attorney.

It starts out, "Dear Ellen,
I want to personally thank you

for your efforts to match
the remains of Gregory May

in the murder investigation
of Douglas DeBruin."

It thanked me
and the other volunteers

that have tried
to solve these cases.

That means a lot.

She´s blossomed
right into what she is.

Her success has bred confidence.

But I can´t say
I´ve got a hand in any of it.

I just try to keep her happy.

Leach:
It could be anybody out there.

Anybody could do this
if they put their time

and energy and heart into it.

Anybody could find somebody.

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