Original subtitles

♪

she said she had a break to get into law enforcement.

I kept pressing her and she was really secretive.

I remember begging her not to go.

I just had a bad feeling.

They really didn't know where she went

or why she would leave,

so they though maybe she got fed up with her life

and left it behind.

There were so many potential suspects,

from the time that she disappears.

What was going through your mind?

All the bad things.

What did this area say to you?

Body dump.

As you know, as a prosecutor,

you only get one shot at these things.

If you don't get it right the first time...

You're done.

Nicolazzi: My name is anna-sigga nicolazzi.

In my two decades

as a new york city homicide prosecutor,

I saw how murder affects lives far beyond the crime scene.

Let me take you inside the fight for justice,

for victims and their loved ones.

This is "true conviction."

-- captions by vitac -- www.Vitac.Com

captions paid for by discovery communications

california's inland empire lies in the shadow

of the san bernardino mountains,

an hour and a half east of hollywood.

In 1984, 28-year-old, nancy klinger,

came here to get a fresh start.

But in running away from a bad marriage back east,

she ran to something much worse.

And for three decades

her brutal murder remained unsolved.

♪

I've come here to see how dedicated detectives

and a prosecutor who wouldn't take no for an answer

finally found justice for nancy

and for a family devastated by her loss.

Kathy brown was one of the first friends

nancy made in california.

Kathy, tell me a little bit about nancy.

She was very personable.

If you walked in to talk to her,

she would just acted like she knew you forever.

You know, she was very, very friendly.

She didn't talk about herself at all.

What did you know about her life back in ohio?

There was nothing good back there for her.

That's pretty much all she really would say.

She really didn't delve into her past.

She talked about her kids

about how she wanted to make a better life for them,

that she moved from ohio to california

to give her a better start.

Nicolazzi: But she struggled to make ends meet.

Nancy worked as a bartender

so that she could see her kids during the day.

She had three children under 8.

Denise, her oldest, was 7 in 1986.

I do remember she loved us.

♪

and she was trying to support us,

and I -- as a single mom myself for eight years,

I know how that goes.

Did she like to joke around?

Yes, she joked around.

She'd tickle my belly, kiss me.

I mean, just normal kid stuff, you know?

Like I do to my girls.

It sounds like a happy moment to remember.

It was.

♪

nicolazzi: Nancy had big dreams for her future.

One of them was pursuing a career in law enforcement.

Late in the summer of 1986,

she was excited to tell her friends

that she'd found a way to make her dream come true.

What did she tell you?

She said she had a break to actually

get into law enfcement, and if she did this well,

that it would get her foot in the door.

And I kept pressing her, what?

And she was really secretive,

and I said, "what are you talking about?"

and she said, "I met somebody that's gonna use me

"for undercover operation, and they can't put it off

or it'll blow the whole operation," she said.

♪

nicolazzi: The person she'd met was a customer at her bar.

A man with a badge who told nancy he needed help.

♪

she said, "this person thinks I'm gonna be the best at this."

because it was something to do with child abductions

or child something.

He told her she fit the part.

And I said, "they just don't do that.

"they don't come and look for somebody off the street

to do this kinda work."

I said, "no, who is this?"

and she was really secretive, wouldn't tell me nothing.

She wouldn't give me a name.

I kept asking, "where do you know this person from?"

"well, it's a friend of a friend."

♪

nicolazzi: To san bernardino county

deputy district attorney, denise yoakum,

it's understandable

why nancy might have ignored those red flags.

She thought this was her big chance.

So what exactly was she supposed to do?

She was supposed to pose as this officer's wife,

and they were going to go in

and pretend they wanted to adopt a baby,

and then they were going to take down this adoption ring.

♪

nicolazzi: Today, there's just an empty lot

at the spot nancy was to meet with the mysterious

undercover officer back on August 29, 1986.

It was a bar called the vagabond,

about 20 minutes from her home.

Kathy reluctantly agreed to babysit nancy's kids.

What do you remember about that night?

Um, I remember begging her not to go.

I just had a bad feeling.

I don't know why, I was young.

And I remember just, you know,

doing what every kid does, grabbing their leg, don't go.

You know, crying and she's like,

"it's all right, baby, I'll be right back."

♪

nicolazzi: But nancy did not come home that night as planned.

And the next morning there was still no sign of her.

Worried, her friend tommy thomas went out looking for her.

What did you do when you sensed that something wasn't right?

Me and a couple other guys went to the vagabond bar

and when we got there we found her car,

but she was nowhere around.

♪

there's her car.

But not nancy.

No nancy.

What about inside her car?

What did you see?

Inside her car was her purse

and I think shampoo.

What did it say to you when you found nancy's car

and her purse inside?

And it was unlocked.

Uh, something's wrong.

Nicolazzi: Tommy and his friends

searched the neighborhood around the bar but found nothing.

So they staked out her car for the night.

They were hoping she'd come back to it,

and then they could find out what happened

and why she had left her kids longer than a night.

As the night went on, any trace of nancy?

None.

Nicolazzi: After giving up hope

that she would return for her car,

nancy's friends filed a missing persons report.

♪

tell me some of the work that was done

to try to get an answer about where nancy was.

Well, you know, all the usual steps that cops go through.

The investigators contacted morgues in various cities

to see if it ran in unidentified female bodies.

They contacted jails to see if anybody had been arrested

who fit her description.

They even contacted the fbi to see if there was

an actual investigation going into a black market baby ring.

And what'd they learn when they looked into that?

Nothing.

Nicolazzi: There was no undercover operation.

It was becoming more and more clear

that the man that nancy'd met was not who he claimed to be.

♪

you didn't have the luxury of surveillance cameras,

and cellphones that can track our every move,

so really it came down to what, in many ways,

you still have to rely most on,

good old fashioned detective work.

Yeah, it's called being a gumshoe.

And, you know, we didn't have electronic footprints,

so it was difficult to track people

unless you were knocking on doors,

and that's exactly what the investigators did.

♪

there was no information other than the bartender

at the vagabond bar had said she saw a woman

who appeared to be in trouble.

♪

but that's all she could say,

she didn't say what the trouble was.

What she said was, by the time she went

to check on the woman again she was gone.

So while that may have been nancy,

even that couldn't be confirmed.

That's correct, yeah.

And if it was nancy, they had no idea why

she may have seemed upset.

That's right, there was no conversation.

Nicolazzi: But there was also reason to think

nancy's disappearance may not have been

the result of foul play.

When the police arrived at the vagabond,

nancy's car was gone.

No one could tell investigators if nancy returned for it

or if something more sinister was in play.

Adding to the mystery was nancy's

last minute request to kathy brown.

She left me a permission slip

in case something happened to the children,

you know, in case they got hurt,

gave me a permission slip to take them to the hospital,

and she gave me their medical cards and their clothes.

I think there was an assumption that

maybe she was planning to go missing for a little while

for some reason.

So nancy disappeared because nancy'd wanted to disappear.

♪

they really didn't know where she went

or why she would leave,

so they thought maybe she got fed up with her life

and left it behind.

They thought maybe she would come back in a few days,

they just didn't know what to do.

They also looked at it that here's this young woman

who may have just been overwhelmed with life

and taken off.

That's kind of the mind-set.

Nicolazzi: As police looked for answers,

nancy's three young children

were still with her friend, kathy.

What did kathy tell you? Where was your mom?

She tried to play it, well,

she'll be fine or she'll be back.

I thought maybe she abandoned us.

I mean, what are you gonna say, you know?

Tell me, what that was like,

trying to protect them from what you felt,

but trying to answer their questions.

Well, it was hard.

They'd cry for their mommy and ask where their mommy was.

And as a parent, I wouldn't want anybody telling

my small children, you know, my worst fears.

What was going through your mind?

You know, everything was going through my mind, everything.

All the bad things.

♪

♪

nicolazzi: Nancy klinger, a single mother of three,

disappeared after telling friends

she'd been recruited by an undercover officer

to help with a sting operation.

Police thought she might have run away,

but her friends didn't believe that,

especially when they spotted her car abandoned

with her purse still inside.

By the time police got there, the car was gone.

No one saw who took it, but it finally turned up

three weeks later at a nearby apartment complex.

Officers had hoped it might contain some clues,

but that hope was quickly dashed.

So what was the condition of her car

when police now found it somewhere else?

Yoakum: Some of it had been dismantled,

and things were missing.

Did that seemingly have anything to do

with nancy's disappearance,

or was the car being taken apart

for people to either sell parts,

someone tried to steal it and then put it someplace else?

What did that say to you in this investigation?

They were taking the car apart to make money.

So as an experienced prosecutor,

what did that say to you about the car?

There was no forenc evidence to collect at that point.

It'd been handled by unknown people,

things were missing, it was no longer in the condition

that nancy had left it in.

So for relevant purposes of nancy's disappearance,

the last time that her car could be linked to her

was outside the vagabond bar? -Yes.

Nicolazzi: The investigation hit a dead end.

So they're just left with the missing young mother

with no idea where she'd gone?

Just vanished.

Nicolazzi: For nancy's young children who already feared

they'd been abandoned by their mother,

things were about to get worse.

Her friend kathy, who'd been watching them

since the night nancy disappeared,

was told to bring the children to court.

What'd you think was gonna happen

when you went to court that day?

I thought they were gonna issue me temporary custody.

We thought we'd get them in school, get them settled,

you know, then we'll figure out we'll go from there, day by day.

What happened?

Next thing I know, here comes social workers

and two officers.

The ficers stepped in and pushed us back and said,

"step back, the court's taking custody."

nancy's kids are screaming, I'm crying.

It was horrible.

And they just told me they had to,

because they didn't know what happened to nancy

and they didn't know if we were involved

in any way, shape, or form.

[ sniffling ]

I remember just feeling lost and lonely and...

I had nobody to talk to.

Nicolazzi: 2-year-old bobby was sent to live with his father,

but denise and her brother douglas

were handed over to foster care.

What was it like thinking that she had chosen to leave you?

It was horrible.

Nicolazzi: The investigation stalled

for almost a year and a half.

It wasn't originally part of sergeant mike howell's caseload.

But when he heard about it, his intuition kicked in.

He was sure there had to be something more

to nancy's disappearance,

so he asked if he could look into it.

When you looked at this case folder,

what stood out to you about it?

Women don't abandon their children.

It's really out of the ordinary.

And I felt that law enforcement owed her

to go to bat for her children,

to do what we could do.

Nicolazzi: So sergeant howell began digging

and found a possible lead to the mystery man with the badge.

Customers at the bar where nancy worked

described seeing nancy talking to a man

who apparently was flashing a badge.

They helped police identify him as larry hite.

Was he a police officer?

No, he was not associated with any law enforcement agency.

He was a security guard.

Nicolazzi: The bar customers told detectives

they thought he was just showing off his badge

in an attempt to impress nancy.

Police quickly tracked him down.

Hite admitted that he did know nancy,

but he said he didn't see her the night she disappeared.

Was he able to give them any information

that helped the investigation move along?

He told them that the last time he saw nancy

was with his roommate, william, in his apartment.

Nicolazzi: Larry's roommate, bill anes,

worked at the same security company.

When questioned, he also said that he knew nancy.

Bill said he'd only met nancy one time,

and hadn't seen her that night either.

What were police impressions of bill?

They were concerned.

Bill's behavior when the police were interviewing him

was suspect, he wasn't forthcoming.

Nicolazzi: Prosecutors and investigators

develop a good sense

when someone is trying to hide something.

It seemed like bill anes was.

Especially when detectives discovered a key clue

that nancy left behind the night she vanished.

When nancy left, she gave some information

to one of her coworkers.

She gave two phone numbers.

One of them came back to bill anes.

The other one, we never could identify,

nobody ever answered.

Called it multiple times.

Nicolazzi: Detectives had two men with badges,

two men who knew nancy well enough

that she had the phone number for one of them.

Two potential suspects, but suspects in what?

Detectives still didn't know if nancy had left

the vagabond bar by choice,

and they could not connect either man

to nancy's disappearance.

Both had alibis, they were at work at the security company

the night she vanished.

So if it's not bill, if it's not larry, who was it?

Where did nancy go?

Nobody knew, nobody could find her.

She works at a bar, I mean,

there were so many potential suspects

from the time that she disappears.

That's true.

And the investigation days, weeks passed,

it went to months.

It did, and then it turned into years.

Was there any more movement or forward progress

about what happened to nancy klinger?

Absolutely not, it just was, uh,

she disappeared off the face of the earth,

it was just nowhere else to go.

Nicolazzi: Nowhere else to go.

Five words every investigator fears.

Nancy hadn't been heard from for nearly two years.

And still no answers for her family, now split apart.

I've worked on many cases where the investigations

seem to stall, and there's nothing more frustrating.

Even more so when every ounce of your intuition tells you

you're looking at a murder.

♪

♪

nicolazzi: Nancy klinger had been missing

for nearly two years.

The investigation into her disappearance had gone cold.

That would change on March 4, 1988,

when san bernardino county detective, jim de lapp,

was dispatched to a remote desert area

to help with a different case.

He had never heard of nancy klinger,

but he soon would.

A search and rescue team had been looking for

a suicidal missing person.

And in the process they came across human remains.

So my sergeant directed us to go out there.

How would you describe the area that you were sent out to?

Quite rural, orange groves, vacant lots,

not a lot of housing or any businesses.

There was a lot of tall brush that actually screened

the area from the road so it wasn't --

the site wasn't readily available to a casual observer.

♪

♪

certainly is very desolate.

Yes, it is, this is very remote.

So when you walked in here off the road,

what do you remember about what you observed?

Well, you had these dirt paths, these roadways,

they were a little less weeded,

and then the brush that was alongside the road

was a little higher and lusher, it was March of that year.

So it was fairly green at that time.

And what was it exactly that was discovered?

The first thing that was obvious was the skull.

It was out in the open and from there

we did a spiral search out from that

and were able to locate several other bones.

Now beyond the remains,

there were other things found out here.

Yes, there was.

There were some articles of clothing

and a left white sandal.

So walking into this and seeing a skull

and some of the bones and some personal items,

what did this area say to you, what did it speak to you?

A body dump.

Was the first thing I surmised.

Nicolazzi: Along with the bones,

the detective found a crucial clue

that he hoped would help him identify the remains,

scattered on the side of the highway.

De lapp: There was a wallet, the driver's license in it

belonged to a georgia kittle.

Nicolazzi: The driver's license had an old address,

but investigators eventually found georgia alive and well

living in chicago.

She had no idea how her wallet ended up

on a remote california roadway alongside a dead body.

♪

so if the remains and women's clothing

aren't georgia kittle, who was she?

Well, that's what we did not know at the time.

It was just the bones there, obviously there's no way

to do fingerprints and dna was not established

at that point,

so we had no point of reference.

-Talking 1988? -Yes.

Nicolazzi: Dna could not give investigators an answer,

but old fashioned police work would.

One of the homicide detectives was telling me

about these bones, I said,

"hey, I have these dental records

"of a girl that's missing.

"maybe we should get somebody

to look at these dental records and see if that's her."

when the remains that were found were compared

to the dental records of your missing nancy klinger,

what was the conclusion?

It was her.

♪

nicolazzi: Nancy's daughter, denise,

was 9 years old at the time living in an orphanage.

I didn't know the details of her death, nobody knew.

I just knew that they'd found her.

What did that do for you, getting that news?

I don't know if it gave me the closure

that I wanted or hoped for.

Because there's always some hope that she would come back.

♪

it was good in a way I guess,

'cause she didn't abandon us.

Now as a prosecutor over the years,

I've had to have many conversations

with family and friends of loved ones lost,

and parts of those conversations can be very difficult.

Have you ever thought to yourself,

could I have done something that may have changed

what happened in the end?

Maybe I could've held her, not let her go.

Maybe I could've went and flattened her tires,

who knows.

It's just so sad that somebody that wanted something good

for her family could come to such a tragic end,

and we still didn't know what happened to her.

And we had no answers.

♪

nicolazzi: The investigators working on the case realized

any more answers would be hard to come by.

Yoakum: There had been animal activity,

and the natural elements had taken a toll on the bones.

I mean, as we know, those first hours,

maybe a day or two are so crucial

when they have the crime scene about potential fingerprints,

any property that may have been left behind.

You had so long of a time that went by here.

Were investigators able to move forward

in their investigation at all, based on what was left?

They knew it was nancy, but they still didn't know

what happened to her or who had done this.

♪

♪

nicolazzi: Two years after nancy klinger vanished,

her remains were found by a remote california highway.

It was now a murder case.

A new set of detectives began digging in,

going back to the very start, the night nancy vanished.

That included taking another look at two security guards,

bill anes and larry hite, who had been seen with nancy

around the time she went missing.

The men had provided alibis for each other.

Where did larry say that he was that night?

Larry said that he had been at work that night,

and he had relieved bill anes on the graveyard shift.

So just because someone says they have an alibi,

police aren't going to stop there,

they're going to check it out.

Oh, absolutely.

And bill confirmed the story

that larry had actually relieved him.

Nicolazzi: But as detectives spoke with anes,

something seemed off.

My partner who had interviewed bill

described in his report how sketchy bill was

during the interview, he's acting very nervous,

and it made all the indications to my partner,

that he was lying about the alibi.

Nicolazzi: A detailed check of the security company's records

proved that intuition was correct.

Bill anes had lied for his friend.

Larry hite did not work

the night nancy klinger disappeared.

His alibi fell apart.

Detective de lapp had some serious questions for hite,

but there was just one problem.

In 1986, when nancy went missing,

police spoke to many people, larry hite being one of them.

Now you go back in 1988, but he was nowhere to be found.

He's not in the state.

-He was gone. -Right.

Nicolazzi: It turned out larry hite

wasn't too hard to locate.

He was in prison.

We ran his name and date of birth

through national records and we come up at that point

that he had been convicted of a rape.

And he was currently incarcerated in arizona.

Nicolazzi: Hite was serving

a two-year sentence for sexual assault.

Detective de lapp went to arizona to question him.

Hite insisted he knew nothing

about any undercover investigation

into baby adoption rings

and he insisted he had nothing to do with nancy's death.

Your law enforcement radar, what's it saying to you

when you're hearing this?

Well, obviously he's lying.

But a lie doesn't make someone guilty of anything.

Unfortunately, no.

Knowing that someone's lying is still a far way off

from proving why they're lying.

Correct.

At this point of our investigation,

we have our interviews with

friends and acquaintances,

we have her unexplained disappearance

after meeting larry.

The fact that she was never seen again.

All very circumstantial,

and it just wasn't enough to take to court.

You know, as you know as a prosecutor,

you only get one shot at these things,

'cause if you develop information later,

now you can't use it.

If you don't get it right the first time...

-You're done. -You're done.

Nicolazzi: Detective de lapp and the other investigators

were sure they were on the right track.

Even more so when they found larry hite's former girlfriend,

gayla mathews.

The original investigators weren't able to track her down,

but now detectives learn of another connection

between hite and nancy.

That second phone number nancy had left behind

in case of an emergency was gayla's.

Perhaps she'd been too frightened to answer

when police tried calling her years earlier.

But now, she was ready to tell them a story

that would finally break this case wide open.

Larry told her he was a police officer,

and even showed her a police badge.

Nicolazzi: On the day nancy disappeared,

gayla told detectives hite told her he was going undercover.

She said that larry had told her

he was going to work with a woman named nancy

and infiltrate a black market baby adoption ring.

He told gayla he'd be home at 11:00 that night.

Did he come home at 11:00?

He didn't.

Gayla told the police that he came home

at 7:00 the next morning.

♪

she said he had blood all over his clothes

and that he'd been in an shootout.

He had told her that, well, things went wrong

and shooting began to start and it was either me or her

and I had to leave her behind, referring to nancy.

What about these clothes that he was wearing?

They got washed.

So our physical evidence, of course,

went right down the drain.

I mean, even just hearing it,

I can only imagine how frustrating

this is, I mean, bells must be going off it's larry,

it's larry, it's larry.

And as you know, as a prosecutor,

we can't take that to a jury,

we have nothing to tie him to it.

Nicolazzi: At least hite wasn't going anywhere

while prosecutors and detectives kept looking for

the connection they needed.

After his release from prison, he was re-arrested for

anothesexual assault and sentenced to 19 years.

But he was still refusing to talk about nancy klinger.

With no definitive connection between him and her murder,

the case stalled again,

this time for nine more years.

In 2009, larry hite was released after almost two decades

in prison, still keeping to himself whatever secrets he knew

about nancy klinger's murder.

It was my 38th year in law enforcement and this case

still bothered me.

I went to the assistant sheriff and asked for a favor,

please have the cold case team work through this case,

it's solvable and I've never asked for anything.

I ask you to get this done.

♪

nicolazzi: Another new team of detectives,

another new interview with larry hite,

perhaps the years had taken their toll on him,

because this time his story began to change.

He said that nancy was involved in drugs

and he was helping her sell drugs to a man named arnold

and that nancy had gotten mouthy with arnold.

♪

nicolazzi: For the first time, larry hite admitted that

nancy was murdered, but he still insisted

he was not the killer.

As detectives pressed him harder hite's story changed yet again.

Years of denials evaporated as he made a stunning admission,

that it was self-defense.

He said he just left her there

didn't know if she was alive or dead.

Did police in any way believe him when he claimed that

this was all an act of self-defense?

No.

He said that she had pulled a knife from her purse.

♪

her purse was abandoned in her car.

The prosecutor in me just kicks in, hearing you say that,

because one of the things that the prosecutor had to prove

was disproving his self-defense claims,

and you had gotten the information that there's

no way that could be true.

That's right.

Nicolazzi: Detectives were finally getting the answers

they and nancy's family had been looking for, for so long.

♪

you had this man who had started by saying

I didn't even see her the night that she went missing,

to now, admitting that he was the one who was

with her that night. -Yes.

And he was the one that drove her out into that remote area

that you found her bones almost two years later,

and that he was the man who did it.

Correct.

He has excluded anyone else.

♪

nicolazzi: 25 years after nancy went missing,

larry hite was charged with her murder.

On the official day of my retire,

larry hite was arrested for her murder.

Tell me what you remember when you got that call.

I was actually giving my retirement speech,

and I was thanking people that had helped me throughout

my career when that information came,

and it was probably the best retirement present

I could have ever gotten.

Nicolazzi: It was also a moment prosecutor denise yoakum

had eagerly awaited.

I really wanted to get justice for these kids.

We have a saying in cold case, for every unsolved murder

there is a victim without justice,

a family without answers,

and a killer amongst us, and I wanted to make sure that

we could take care of all three

of those things during this trial.

♪

nicolazzi: But this case was far from wrapped up.

Having the probable cause needed for an arrest warrant

doesn't necessarily give you the proof

beyond a reasonable doubt you need for a conviction.

With no physical evidence connecting hite to nancy,

or to the murder scene,

prosecutor denise yoakum had a tough road ahead of her.

♪

♪

nicolazzi: More than 25 years after nancy klinger was killed

in the california desert,

investigators charged larry hite with murder.

They believed they finally had answers

about what happened after hite convinced nancy

that he was a police officer who needed help with

an undercover operation.

She wanted to get a job in law enforcement,

and she saw it as a way to not only

make some extra money for her kids,

but to get her foot in the door.

Nicolazzi: Nancy never realized that the man she thought

was a detective was a predator until it was too late.

She's thinking she's going on an investigation.

He drives her off this remote area

and he's going to rape her,

and she resists,

and she's killed

because she resisted.

Nicolazzi: Although hite confessed that he stabbed nancy

to death, prosecutor denise yoakum

knew she still faced an uphill battle

when she walked into court.

So this is the actual courtroom where you tried

larry hite for nancy's murder. -It is.

All the hours that you put in,

and the late nights and weekends,

what was your motivation?

To make sure that the kids got the answers

that they needed, and that they knew their mom's life

meant something, that they knew that they meant something

to their mom.

Now larry hite, tell me about his demeanor,

as he sat here all those years later,

as the trial was going on.

Larry was laughing, joking, snickering,

he didn't have a filter,

he would talk during the trial,

it was all appeared to be a joke to him.

Now one of the things that you learned about larry hite

during your investigation was that this was not

the first case where he had committed an assault.

It wasn't.

How were you able to, if at all,

use that during your actual trial?

We looked at what he had done to two other women

in arizona and I looked for similarities,

in the other two cases he had the same weapon,

a knife, just like he said he used on nancy.

I showed that when women don't do what larry hite wants,

he resorts to a knife.

And that would help rebuff his defense

that it was nancy attacking him

and this was all in self-defense.

Nancy's children were grown-ups by the time

this trial happened almost 30 years later.

Tell me what you remember about them

as you presented this evidence in court.

After every witness testified, they were gracious enough

to stay after and tell the kids how loved they were

by their mom, how she would have never abandoned them,

how kind she was, how outgoing and fun she was,

and they got to hear the truth about

who their mom really was.

It's its own brand of justice, right there.

It is, it was the best gift that these

children could have received.

♪

what was that time like for you, while you were waiting

for the jury's verdict?

I was anxious, that waiting is tough,

a few hours seems like days.

What was the jury's verdict in this case?

Guilty. First-degree murder.

I heard a cry from her daughter, denise,

and it was a cry I'll never forget,

it was all the pain that she had

inside of her all these years, finally came out,

at that moment.

I got up and I went and I give her a hug and I told her

I'm sorry it took this long to get justice for your mother.

I talked to the foreman after the trial,

I walked with him outside, and he's like I'm glad you

came up to talk to me, I wanted to talk to you,

I wanted to see how your life was, and he says,

I want to let you know here right now, he had no chance.

He wasn't walking out of that courtroom.

Knowing that this stranger, this foreman of this jury,

wanted to see how your life had been,

how did that make you feel?

Good.

It made me feel good that he wanted justice,

that he felt my pain.

Nicolazzi: At sentencing, nancy's daughter denise,

couldn't bring herself to read her victim's impact

statement in court, so she made a video recording.

I waited 30 years for this moment

because you took my mom's life in one violent act,

like the coward that you are

we went into the system where me and my brothers suffered

every kind of abuse there was.

You threw my mother's body out there like she was garbage

like she didn't matter.

She mattered.

These are my mom's grandchildren

that will never get to meet her,

because you took her away from me.

♪

nicolazzi: On July 21, 2015, larry hite was sentenced

to 25 years to life in prison, the maximum,

but he received an even harsher punishment four months later.

He was murdered by his cellmate.

Hearing that larry hite would never be able to

hurt anyone again, and had been taken from this earth

how did that affect you?

I was...Kinda mad.

Honestly, because I wanted my day to face him,

I wanted to talk to him.

What would you say?

Why? I just wanna know why.

The prosecutor, denise yoakum, she talked about

the thing that she could not get past,

beyond your mom's horrible end, was how that left you

and your brothers and how when she would work those nights

and all those hours that it was trying to give you

some sense of peace, knowing what had happened

to all of you.

Yes.

Hearing that that was her motivation,

how does that affect you?

Denise has been great.

She's been loving, she's been sweet

and sympathetic and I think she even got angry

considering what we've been through,

after my mom was taken from us, so all the emotions

that I feel, I think she felt them with me.

So she not only went into that courtroom

as strong as she did for your mom,

but she did it for you.

She did it for us, too, because she wanted to see

justice done.

♪