Original subtitles

Friday, February 13th

started out, for me, like any other day.

I got up, it was kind of drizzling outside,

about 6:37.

I Went into my daughter, Amber's room

and I told her that I would try to get off work early

and we could go see a movie.

And she said, "OK." Told her I loved her,

and told me she loved me back.

I never worried about... Amber walking to school.

It as never an issue.

But, as it turns out,

that was the day that my daughter walked

to school and never came home.

My daughter, Amber, was 14 years old.

Her favorite subject in school was agriculture.

She told me about this program that they had

at Escondido High School.

She was going to raise a lamb.

And that morning was the day that her check was due

for her lamb.

Amber was ecstatic about this day.

But, at 4:30 pm,

my boyfriend, Dave, called me and said that there was

a message from her friend, Jade, saying,

"Hey, Amber, where are you?

"I thought we were going to meet up at break.

I'm looking everywhere for you."

And then there was a message from the high school

that Amber wasn't at school that day.

Dave was like a stepfather to Amber.

So he said, "I'll go ahead and go over there

and look for her."

And then I drove over to the high school,

drove around looking for her,

called some of my friends...

and told them that Amber was gone

and I couldn't find her anywhere.

It's a horrible, helpless feeling.

I Knew instantly that something had happened to her.

She would not miss this day of school.

She'd been waiting a year for this day of school.

That's when the panic set in.

The Escondido Police Department

received a call from Dave Cave,

Amber Dubois' stepfather.

The officer and the other officers,

and the K-9 officer

immediately went to the school

and started searching for Amber Dubois.

Escondido High School is a large campus

located within a mile of Amber's house.

As a parent myself, I found this very concerning.

Children are top priority

when it comes to them being missing

or victims of crimes.

Escondido is eastern part of San Diego County.

Nestled in a valley surrounded by mountains

on almost all sides, except for the south,

which is bordered by Lake Hodges

and then the City of San Diego.

In 2009, it was about 120,000 population.

Escondido was called Rancho Rincon del Diablo--

the Devil's Corner.

It was called the Devil's Corner

because the missionaries back then

did not like the fact that it wasn't held by the church.

And also, visually, you had these foothills

that cast long shadows across the land.

I was a reporter at NBC San Diego

when the media found out

she really was missing on Friday the 13th.

It's like an omen.

That's the night you need to make sure you lock your doors

and keep your children safe because...

the devil's out there.

In this community that is so safe,

so many families love living there,

she vanished.

And that's scary.

That sends a shockwave through an entire community.

If you're a parent, that is the worst case scenario.

"Where is my kid?"

"Where's Amber? Where's Amber?

Have you seen Amber? We have to find Amber."

When we have these kinds of cases--

missing teens--

typically we'll start with the person who last saw

the missing teen and get every detail

of what they did that day,

anything that might be of concern.

Even the smallest detail might crack a case open.

In this case, it was Dave Cave.

Dave's day started with going to the gym.

He last saw Amber at the house at 7 in the morning.

Well, by the time he was coming back home,

which would be the time

that Amber would be walking to school.

There's only two ways to get to our house,

and he couldn't remember which way he took.

We thought that was very unusual.

Why wouldn't he be able to remember which way

he drove home?

Dave came to my work that day,

Friday, February 13th,

and he brought me chocolate-covered strawberries

and some other stuff for Valentine's Day.

Dave and I didn't celebrate Valentine's Day

because that was his anniversary of his ex-wife,

so it was kind of a sore subject.

So for him to come to my work and bring this

was really not normal.

And he stayed at my work for over an hour.

I had to tell him to leave.

From there, he went to see a movie,

which is completely out of character for Dave.

I'm questioning everything he did because, like,

'cause his whole day was just weird.

So once we started to interview the family,

we realized that there was quite a bit of friction

between Amber and Dave Cave, the stepfather.

A lot of that friction stemmed from her wanting to be

in her room most of the time reading.

Dave didn't appreciate that.

He thought she should be more part of the family.

We found that they had continual verbal disagreements.

At one point, Dave took the door off of Amber's room

so she couldn't hide in her room to read.

One of the things that we found while interviewing Carrie

was that Dave and Amber had just called a truce,

and Dave took her to a bookstore to buy some more books.

And less than 12 hours later, Amber went missing.

Statistics show with missing person cases,

it's likely that somebody close to the family

or a family member has something to do with it.

When we confronted Dave Cave about Amber's disappearance,

he denied knowing anything about it

or being responsible for it.

He said, despite the friction and their verbal arguments,

he would never hurt her.

Dave was holding his innocence,

telling police he had nothing to do with it.

And then I was up in my room.

I had thought Amber was wearing a necklace that morning.

And then all of a sudden I found the necklace

in the headboard of my bed.

Which completely threw me over the edge.

And I went down to the police,

and I was crying, freaking out.

I asked them, "Please come to the house.

"You don't need a search warrant.

Just come to the house and search."

Maybe they had an argument

and she fell down the stairs...

...or something happened.

Carrie had actually mentioned that to us--

"Just arrest him."

However, in order to arrest Dave,

we would need probable cause, which would include evidence.

And so one of the things that we do have is a polygraph test.

Dave Cave took three polygraph tests.

He was very nervous.

And as the polygraph test came back and we started

to review the results,

the polygrapher came to me

and said that he had some concerns about Dave.

There was inconsistencies in his statement,

and his nervousness seemed unreasonable.

And we continued to focus more on Dave.

This was the first time that I didn't feel like I knew

the person that I decided to spend my life with.

It must have been absolutely frightening for Carrie

to, A, have a missing child,

but then sleep next to the person

who is considered by police, a prime suspect.

We realized how troubling it must be for Carrie

to be under the same roof...

with somebody that may be responsible

for her daughter's disappearance.

And of course, if he was capable of that,

what else could he be capable of?

Time is of the essence

in all missing person cases.

The more that this case continued,

we realized the potential

of finding Amber Dubois alive diminished.

I probably called Amber every 15 to 20 minutes,

all night long, trying to get a hold of her.

I sat up that night after I made my rounds

through the neighborhood trying to find her.

I was on the computer, just looking at how I could get

search dogs or anything really.

I remember being like 3:30, 4:00 in the morning

and I'm still on the computer

just bawling and trying to figure out what I do next.

We set up a search center right near the house.

The community came out a lot

and was searching for my daughter.

I wanted to be out there searching for her and myself.

And every night I would go out looking for her.

At one of these search briefings,

Dave Cave had introduced himself to the searchers.

Because Dave was a potential suspect in this case,

we told him not to be one of the searchers

because if he were to find something,

we didn't want him to contaminate the location.

It gets harder every day.

The only thing that keeps me going is...

knowing I'll find her.

As the investigation continued,

one of the things we had to do was either focus on Dave

or completely eliminate him.

And what we had to do was recreate his day,

Friday, February 13th,

and verify his whereabouts at every part of that day.

We went to the gym. We pulled up video.

We pulled up video from the school

to verify which way he did drive home.

We talked to the dealership.

We did confirm he was there.

We also talked to and pulled video

from the movie theater.

We did confirm he was by himself.

We were able to verify everything that he had said

he did that day.

Based on that, we were able to rule Dave out.

He had nothing to do with her disappearance.

That's when the fear really set in.

Is there a monster among us?

A lot of parents, especially at Escondido High School,

were thinking, "Well, if somebody took Amber,

who's next?"

Everybody was on guard.

Parents were driving their kids to school.

There was certainly a lot of fear

because they didn't want their child

to go missing like Amber.

So February 13th, 2010 came around

and we had decided to do a jog-a-thon

at the high school to raise money

to continue searching for Amber.

And the police came to the school that day

and told me that they were no further along on the case

than they were a year before.

Kind of sets in the whole heartbreak and let down.

They really had no idea what had happened to her.

I remember doing a story with Carrie

because it was a year later.

And the hope was never lost with Carrie.

I'm trying to keep things positive,

but it's really hard.

It takes a toll on you.

I mean, I tried to go back to work,

and I couldn't work.

I couldn't be in an enclosed office

without getting anxiety.

Come home, please.

We just want her home.

That one-year mark

was excruciating for Carrie.

365 days,

no sign of your daughter. How would that affect you?

What we knew is if this predator was still

on the loose, we were on borrowed time,

and we didn't want to have another victim.

We had to get a break in this case.

We just didn't know how or what that would be.

So here we are,

about 10 miles south of Escondido.

17-year-old Chelsea King just getting ready to go on her run.

She was on the cross-country team.

But then she was also training for a half-marathon

because she wanted to accomplish that

before she left for college.

Chelsea used running to settle herself.

A kid in high school, especially a kid in high school

that wants to achieve big things,

has lots of pressure on them.

And Chelsea found ways to relieve that pressure.

We normally would have heard from her

by about 3 in the afternoon,

and we hadn't heard from her at all,

so we became concerned.

You almost think it's overreactionary,

but knowing Chelsea, it wasn't overreactionary--

something's wrong.

Well, my daughter, Chelsea,

she used to leave for school very early in the morning,

about 6:30-ish.

She had finished her breakfast and she said,

"Bye, Daddy, off to school."

I said, "OK, I love you, bye."

That was it.

I knew about Amber's story.

We knew that she was missing,

but it didn't resonate

because it hadn't happened to us.

But that morning that she went missing,

we spread a very broad net

in the first 30 minutes of trying to find Chelsea.

Chelsea's mom called one of Chelsea's friends,

and that friend suggested

that we use the AT&T reverse technology at the time,

that we could look at where her phone was

and we could ping it.

We did that, and we saw that it pinged

right at the Rancho Bernardo Community Park,

and that's when I said,

"I'm gonna drive over there and try and find her."

I need to find my little girl.

It started becoming dusk, and I pulled up.

I found her car.

I looked inside of her car,

and I saw that her school clothes had all been folded,

sitting on the passenger seat with her phone.

I called Chelsea's mom and said,

"Call the police right now.

I'm gonna go try and find her."

And I took off running down the trails,

calling her name. - Chelsea!

I received a phone call from our supervisor to assist

with a missing persons investigation.

When I got there, I couldn't believe what I was seeing.

There were agents and agencies that were already present.

Search and rescue teams, K-9 units,

agents from the FBI, agents from the DOJ.

There was just combined effort of resources

all poured into this investigation.

We had to find Chelsea King.

The Kings were obviously worried.

They explained that their daughter was

a model daughter,

very intelligent, very active, very social,

and it is out of the ordinary

for her not to be in contact with them,

to not carry her cell phone

even when she was jogging at the park.

As a dad, as a parent,

the worst nightmare is for your child to be missing,

especially under suspicious circumstances.

You start, sort of, taking it personal.

I thought about Chelsea's parents,

and I felt like I, we-- we had to find her

for the sake of Chelsea, for the sake of parents,

for the sake of the entire San Diego community.

Our hearts sunk when we saw another missing girl

so close to our city.

This was another girl that had gone missing

in broad daylight, in a public place.

Very concerning.

I was in bed, and my roommate came in and said,

"Another girl's gone missing."

I turned on the news to see

that there was a 17-year-old girl

missing in Poway,

which is only about a 20-minute drive on the freeway

from where we were.

When you have two girls within a year go missing

within 30 miles of each other,

it's kind of hard to ignore that.

And instantly,

because I had such a great group of people,

I wanted to reach out and help them.

My phone was ringing off the hook,

and everyone was saying,

"We've got to help this family find this girl."

The morning that they started the first search center,

I was told that there were 3,000 people lined up

to go out and search for my daughter.

I had not slept all night.

I went over there and walked to the line,

thanking every single person.

Thank you so much for coming out.

I saw Carrie at the search center,

and I recognized who she was.

And I walked over to her, and I gave her a big hug.

And he said, "I don't know you,

"but I want to tell you that I love you

"and that thank you so much for helping

"with-- with my daughter

"when you're going through the same stuff

with your daughter."

That's what bonds us together.

Rancho Bernardo Park is very large,

and a lot of it is left in its natural state.

The search-and-rescue team, fantastic people, volunteers.

You give them a mission,

and they will find the proverbial needle in a haystack.

You don't want to miss anything

that may have been tossed into the area.

So you're not just on the trail searching,

but you're also fanning out and you're moving,

looking for anything that could be considered evidence.

Our first real break

came from a citizen locating clothing objects on the trail.

We determined those articles of clothing included

a pair of women's underwear.

We wanted to know if there was any evidence

in the underwear

that would link us to the suspect.

We showed the photographs to the Kings,

and they stated that those items that were recovered

were consistent with what Chelsea would wear.

And, at that point,

Mrs. King became extremely distraught

and she left.

When they shared with me the evidence,

I still believed my daughter was able to be found.

I received a phone call from our crime lab,

they stated, from the blood found

in the underwear at the crime scene,

they found the victim Chelsea King's DNA on it.

And they also found a second DNA profile

from bodily fluid recovered from the underwear also.

That team was tasked with finding,

and contacting, and interviewing anybody within that area

that were registered sex offenders.

Investigators asked me to look through a book

of registered sex offenders in San Diego County

that were within a 50-mile geographic area.

And there were over 40 pictures in the book.

These were all extremely high-risk predators.

I had no idea that many of them

in our community, that close.

I was terrified.

Yes, we had somebody

in our community that was hunting young girls.

And so there was fear, fear all through.

Every kid that you asked that was between the ages of 13

and 17 was very afraid.

We started looking for any reports

of any assaults

that may have or did take place within that area.

We came across an incident that took place

on December 27th, 2009.

So it's a beautiful, sunny San Diego day.

22-year-old Candace Moncayo goes on a run

in Rancho Bernardo Park.

I noticed a man who was walking towards me.

He waited until we were next to each other.

I thought that he was trying to rape me.

And then I said, "Well, you're gonna have to kill me first."

And he said,

"That can be arranged."

22-year-old Candace Moncayo

goes on a run in Rancho Bernardo Park,

something she's done many, many times.

She felt the presence of another person.

She kept running,

but that presence didn't go away.

Suddenly, she was knocked to the ground.

She's kicking, she's screaming.

She senses what's coming.

Candace Montayo is fighting for her life.

At one point, I managed to get one hand on the ground,

and I took my right elbow and I bashed him in the nose.

And I got up and I ran faster

than I think I've ever run in my life.

She told police her attacker was a white male,

possibly in his 20s, stocky, muscular,

and he had a military-style haircut.

This is when police were able to start putting

the pieces together.

You had Chelsea King,

who went missing on February 25th.

Just a few months earlier, 22-year-old Candace Moncayo

attacked in basically the same area.

And then on the morning of Friday the 13th,

it was February,

Amber Dubois goes only a few miles away.

That's when they really understood

there could be a serial rapist,

possibly a serial killer out there.

With this information, it becomes even more imperative

that we locate this suspect.

I was still hoping beyond hope

that somehow she had found shelter

or was being held against her will

and they might find her.

All I wanted to do as a dad was get a blanket to her.

She was outside, it was cold, it was rainy.

I just wanted to comfort her.

I wanted that for five days.

I was still under the thought of,

oh, God, a mountain lion,

a snake bite, uh-- fell into a canyon.

I couldn't think about a sexual predator taking my daughter.

Our supervisor received a phone call.

They had recovered the remains of a young female

in a shallow grave just outside of Lake Hodges.

That was-- that's something that I'll never forget.

We literally used paintbrushes

to remove the sand and the dirt from her body.

It was tough to deal with.

I'm thinking about the parents,

I'm thinking about what Chelsea went through.

How she must have been thinking,

"Dad, Mom..." you know,

"...please, come get me."

You know, "Somebody find me. Get me away from here.

Bring me home."

When you get told that your child is dead

and, um...

every part of you empties,

you're outside of yourself. You don't feel.

You just go, I hope there's no deeper pain

than you can experience than that.

I don't want to experience anything worse.

I got the phone call

that they had a positive match on a suspect.

The DNA hit came back

to a 30-year-old sexual registrant

named John Gardner.

John Gardner's bodily fluid was found

on victim Chelsea King's underwear.

I actually heard the name John Gardner for the first time

from a law enforcement source.

In 2000, he attacked and raped a 13-year-old girl.

He actually spent time in prison.

He got 10 years, but he only served about five.

And he was out there,

and he had violated his probation many, many times,

but seemed to always find a way to get out of jail...

and just wander the streets.

Once we knew he was a sexual predator,

it's a different ballgame now.

When I found out his history,

I had no doubt in my mind

he was the man who's been committing these crimes.

He was the monster.

Once we had positively identified John Gardner,

we did what we called, you know, make him famous.

We put his picture out for the media,

and a call was received

that someone had identified who they believed

was John Gardner.

The Fugitive Task Force tracked his cell phone

in the area of a restaurant called Hernandez Hide-a-way,

which is actually on the north end of Lake Hodges,

just outside Rancho Bernardo Community Park.

They surrounded him,

they took John Gardner down at gunpoint,

handcuffed him, and arrested him.

Gardner is wet.

He's intoxicated.

You could smell the alcohol on him.

We immediately went towards,

"Hey, we know you have something to do

with the disappearance of Chelsea King."

In the state of mind he was in,

being intoxicated and belligerent,

he basically said, "Hey,

"I don't know what you're talking about.

I want an attorney."

Part of the processing

was to take his clothing as evidence.

Once he was disrobed,

we could see obvious abrasions on his arms, on his legs.

You know, he had some abrasions or bruise on his face.

It was incredibly important for detectives

to have Candace Moncayo identify John Gardner.

There was no doubt whatsoever,

no hesitation.

She was able to positively identify John Gardner

as the person that attacked her.

March 5th, we're in our office,

and we get a call from the sheriff, Sheriff Gore,

and we are to meet him in his office, like, right now.

To our surprise,

we were to pick up John Gardner,

and he would be taking us to a location.

We had no idea what was going on.

It was really odd, the way he was acting.

To our surprise, he said something

that was kind of red-flagged.

John Gardner said something quite unusual,

quite unexpected--

he's going to show us where he deposited

the body of another victim.

The district attorney asked us to come down to their office

to let us know that they got a confession

out of John Gardner about Chelsea,

and they think

he's also responsible for another girl.

Part of John Gardner's deal would be

they would take the death penalty off the table for him

if he agreed to take us to where Amber Dubois' remains

could be found.

For me, it was a very hard decision,

personally, to say, "I'm OK with him

not having the death penalty on him,"

but emotionally,

there's no way I couldn't give that to Amber's family.

They've been through so much,

and her and I share that bond, so...

there's no way I couldn't agree to the terms.

I couldn't live with myself.

So March 5th,

we went down to the San Diego County Jail

where John Gardner was being held...

and we picked him up.

He's between Palmer and I

in the back seat of a sedan

being followed by heavily armed swat officers

in front and back of us.

We had been briefed

that we should be uber conscious

of any movement or any attempts by John Gardner

to escape or to do anything.

And that if we got the sense

that something was gonna go amiss,

that we should neutralize any threat that he may present.

I'm sitting next to a murderer.

So we're trying not to be so hard,

perhaps make him less amenable

to showing us where the body was.

But then again, in my mind, I'm thinking,

"You son of a bitch, you-- you murderer."

It was a difficult ride.

It lasted over an hour.

We finally got to a location, a remote area

up in North County known as Pala.

We opened up the back doors, got Mr. Gardner out.

He had waist chains on.

He liked being the center of attention,

you know, he is very arrogant.

You know, he's out of custody temporarily.

You know, he's the king for the day out there.

Pointing out all this stuff,

telling us where to check.

It's a very steep hillside.

As he shuffled over to the edge of the cliff,

he pointed down the cliff a short distance.

We were able to sift through that area,

ultimately found a human bone.

And then, you know, some minutes later,

we discovered a skull.

By this time, it's getting dark,

it's getting foggy,

and we spent the night with lights

and flashlights, exhuming Amber

from the side of the mountain.

We had been searching for Amber for over a year.

I was on the one side so elated that we finally found Amber.

We were going to be able to provide closure,

but then obviously, how tragic that was.

She was only 14 years old.

And I could not imagine what that poor girl

had to go through.

It was devastating to hear that her remains were found,

but it was also a relief.

We went to court and he pled guilty to killing Amber.

- What is your plea? - Guilty.

But then, in a final calculated move,

he refused to give any details about Amber's murder.

I reached out to his attorneys,

telling them that I just want answers,

that I wanted to know what happened to Amber.

He said, "If you want to know anything

"about Amber or Chelsea,

I'm only gonna tell her parents."

And at that point, that's all I had to hear,

and I was going to get the answers I wanted.

I was allowed to go to the San Diego County Jail

and meet with Gardner

about what he did to my daughter.

I Was on a mission to find out what happened.

I wanted closure.

It's something out of "Silence of the Lambs,"

like he's Hannibal Lecter.

This big, strong monster wanted to control the situation,

to dominate women.

That was his pattern.

Because he's a psychopath.

He's sitting there with Carrie.

They have a glass partition between them.

And he basically tells her

everything that she had dreaded...

but needed to know...

about her daughter.

I passed her driving down the street,

and that's the first time that I saw her.

I pulled up next to her.

With the windows down in the car.

I had the knife out and visible

and told her that I also had a gun

and to get in the car

or it was gonna be a lot worse.

She actually looked at me

in kind of shock and disbelief.

She asked me why I was doing it, what was wrong.

When we got up to the Paula area,

it's a little plateau, dirt area

that was just off of that road.

And that's where everything, the rest of it took place.

This remote area,

he raped her,

and that's when he stabbed her.

He didn't have remorse.

After telling me the horrific way

that he killed my daughter, he said,

"I'm ready for you to tell me how you feel about me."

I just hung up the phone and walked out.

And I have to tell you,

it was the best thing I ever did.

And I left with closure.

On April 16, 2010,

I attended the sentencing of John Gardner in San Diego.

For the crime of murder in the first degree,

Chelsea King under special circumstances--

life without the possibility of parole.

For the crime of murder in the first degree

of Amber Dubois under special circumstances--

life in prison without the possibility of parole.

One of the most satisfying things

about being in law enforcement

is to take evil off the streets

and being able to take John Gardner off the streets

was one of our greatest accomplishments.

John Gardner was obviously

someone that had no respect for women,

and he definitely had an anger issue.

If he wasn't caught, he would definitely continue

preying on young girls.

I'm on meds right now.

You can see the anger in my eyes

just of trying to talk.

I get angry, I blow up, I explode.

I will kill. I know I will.

I'm the most dangerous type of sexual predator.

I am the type that needs to be locked up...

forever.

Putting people in the ground is one thing,

but digging them back up is a lot different.

The fingernails, they'd been ripped off.

That's torture.

Whoever did do this... they're still out there.

On this Friday the 13th the past refused to stay buried.