Original subtitles

[music]

[Judy] I think of Ronnie every day.

This was him, taken the day his son was born.

He was 24 years old.

I see things that remind me of him.

I see his picture.

I find pennies on the road

and I say, "Oh, Ronnie was here"

because he used to give me all his pennies.

So I will dive under a table for a penny if I think it's...

She really will. She would get hit by a car

trying to get a damn penny, trust me.

And because it's a penny from heaven.

And I know that sounds crazy

and people might look at me like it's crazy,

but it's my healing.

He's with me all the time.

I know I lost my son,

but never once would anyone come forward and tell the truth.

It had to be drug out of them.

We had to connect the dots.

[music]

[music]

Are those koi still alive or are they...

Yeah, well, I don't know about the alive part,

but this summer, I'm gonna build a cover for this

that is raccoon-proof.

[Judy] My name is Judy Weaver.

I'm from Orlando, Florida.

Nowadays, it's amusement parks,

but we were here before Disney,

when it was really nice.

And it was very quaint, quiet.

Neighbors helped neighbors.

We took walks and fed the ducks.

And I like cars,

so I taught the kids how to change a tire,

how to change the oil,

and just everything.

[Deborah] My mom Judy is tenacious, that's for sure.

She is like a dog with a bone at times.

And I think I got that straight from her.

I'm Deborah Murray.

I'm the oldest,

and then Ronnie was under me about five and a half years.

And then our sister was about 11 years younger than me.

They were total opposite

as far as the energy went.

Tammy was very loving and affectionate.

Debbie could get a book, and sit,

and read for hours,

and Ronnie had to tear up things.

[Deborah] You walk in a room

and he'd have a fan pulled completely apart.

He was always curious about how things worked.

So I didn't want him using my things.

So I ran him off a lot.

[Judy] He was a handful.

But he was a joy.

He always wanted to be the peacemaker.

He never wanted to disappoint.

He always wanted me to be proud of him.

Back in 2005,

Ronnie ended up coming to live with me.

He started having trouble with his personal life.

He became an addict.

And he was ashamed of what he was doing.

[Deborah] He was battling drugs.

Ronnie had interactions with people

living in that community

that were dealing in drugs.

A not so great situation.

[Judy] And on June 27th,

Ronnie wanted to go to the store to get a pack of cigarettes.

His car was in front of my car.

So he used his bicycle to go down to the store.

It had started raining.

I didn't want him to leave.

I could feel something wasn't gonna go right.

And he's so, "Mom, don't get paranoid."

He says, "I'll be back in 10 minutes."

He kissed me on my left cheek and told me he loved me,

and I'll always remember that

that's what I heard out of his mouth.

I think most people aren't blessed to have that

when they lose their loved ones.

Ten, fifteen minutes later,

I was in the shower and I heard

my daughter, Tammy, come home from work.

She came and said there's sirens pretty close to the house.

And I jumped out of the shower and called Ronnie.

He didn't answer the phone.

Got in the van and went looking for him.

[Deborah] I was home, getting ready for bed,

and my mom called and said

there had been an accident.

And she was on the scene.

I found all the commotion where the police department was

and where the fire department was.

And you see the paramedics all out

and the people standing around.

They were some of the shady people

in the neighborhood.

I could see them whispering things.

It was like a nightmare.

I pulled in and an old man says

it's a young man down the road.

And he looked at me and he says,

"Oh, it's your son.

It's Ronnie."

The paramedics were trying to hook him up

on the stretcher and everything.

And that's when I found him.

[Deborah] When my mom came upon the scene,

it was just like something you wish you could unsee.

There was blood all over the place

and Ronnie was in an unconscious state.

We were being fed a little bit of information here and there

from some of the people watching.

What they said happened that night

was that Ronnie just simply fell off a bike

and hit his head on a curb.

[Judy] This is where Ronnie was supposed to have been hurt.

As you can see, still, there are no curbs.

[Deborah] There's still no curbs.

So there's still no curbs here.

[Deborah] No curbs up there. They don't exist.

[Judy] Everything was telling me, "This isn't right.

Something's not right."

I'd started observing everything.

Well, he fell on a bike that's not there.

"Where's the bike? Where did he fall?"

"He hit a curb."

"There's no curb.

Where'd he hit the curb?"

When they're getting Ronnie on the stretcher,

I'm seeing him, now, his pockets are inside out.

And they said there was nothing else.

He had nothing else on him.

I know he had a wallet when he left.

I know he had money when he left.

I wanted to know how, if he hit a curb,

fell off his bike,

how did the pockets come inside out of his pants?

Nobody had an answer for that.

I saw one police officer in a car.

He did not come out and take names,

didn't bring a clipboard out and ask any questions.

He was just sitting there.

It was raining. He didn't wanna get wet.

EMTs told me his name was Spike.

I said, "My God, who on Earth would name their name Spike?"

I never got to talk to him because he left.

But my concern was then, was to be with my son.

We will find out the answers later.

[Deborah] When we arrived to the hospital,

I asked that we'd be able to see Ronnie.

We went back into trauma to see him.

That was awful,

and I wish I could take that away.

There was severe brain trauma.

There was brain swelling.

And the doctor that was going to be doing his brain surgery

was explaining the two areas of injury to his head,

a temporal lobe injury

and an injury to the back of the head.

Made you wonder how in the world he hit his head twice,

falling off the bicycle one time.

So it's still not making any sense.

[Judy] I called the police.

I asked them, "Why has no one come to check on my son?

I have questions that I want answers for

and nobody's willing to come."

"Well, the officer said he took the report.

"He seen it only as an accident.

"There was no foul play.

Just a bicycle accident." And that was it.

No investigating needed.

Even though the story was he had fallen on his bike,

the bike had disappeared.

I threatened to call and have it reported as stolen.

Shortly after that, the bike did appear.

At some point, someone had brought the bike up

to her front porch.

Somebody rolled up in the middle of the night

when we were asleep.

As you can see, there are no scratches on the bike.

I've never washed it or anything,

just put air in the tire.

There was no damage to the bicycle at all.

[Judy] Nothing had happened on that bicycle.

Everything was like it was when Ronnie rode off on it.

That was my first evidence that something else had happened.

He was not on this bike when he got hurt.

It was not the cause of his death.

"Oh, well, sorry it happened, but it was just an accident."

That's what I was getting.

No one was going to help us.

I couldn't buy into that.

It was up to us to go and investigate it.

You're not gonna take me out of the equation.

[music] [birds chirping]

[Deborah] It doesn't appear there was

any type of investigation done at the scene.

There were no police sent or dispatched to the hospital.

It was just determined very quickly

it was a bicycle fall.

And that may have been misconstrued

because the sheet I actually got a copy of

shows "motorcycle accident."

When the police arrived, there was no motorcycle

and there was no bike.

Whatever it was, it was minutes that it was looked into.

Ronnie was laid up at the hospital in a coma.

I think it was immediate to investigate

because it didn't make sense.

We tried to research who was who,

what their criminal record looked like,

what the activity was going on down there

at the duplex.

I didn't know what I was doing.

My mom didn't know what she was doing.

We just were going with the flow.

[motor vehicle roaring]

Now, if I had my Firebird, we'd be sounding like that

'cause it's got a Formula 5.0 in it.

It's getting a paint job.

Yeah, this is a little six-banger,

but, hey, it does the job. What can I say?

[music]

[Deborah] We didn't have to go far to investigate.

The duplex was right up from my mom's house.

We could just drive by there.

I started going that way then

because I wanted to see who was around

and who wasn't.

This is the main house here where my son was hurt.

[Deborah] We spoke to many people.

We found out the place was a drug house

that sold everything.

[Deborah] Then we were realizing some of the people

that were witnesses that evening lived there,

and the police took the word

for what they said happened that night

and left it alone.

And I file a complaint

with the Orange County Sheriff's Department

at that point

and received phone calls regarding my complaint letter.

It was a detective, and he said Ronnie was at a house

that was well known for drugs,

so he might not have been an innocent victim in this,

and there were far more imperative cases than Ronnie's

to check into.

[Judy] There shouldn't be a line drawn

because you're this or you're that.

That's not acceptable.

There is loved ones that care for those people.

Anyone that gets hurt, there's somebody that loves them.

And they want the right thing done for them

just like they would for anyone else.

[music]

I knew Ronnie was unconscious and he may not make it.

So I need to find out from the streets

what's been told.

When the police brush you off,

they brush you off at the scene

and they brush you off on the phone,

then, yeah, you take it to the streets,

because the streets are the ones that have the answers.

[Deborah] She would talk to everybody,

but it was never different

than the falling-off-the-bike story.

You have an entire duplex community

that potentially saw what happened,

but they weren't open to sharing that information.

Felt like they were hiding from something that happened.

Just didn't make a lot of sense.

[Judy] They said that Ronnie was horsing around with the bike,

and he popped a wheelie and hit the curb,

and he curb threw him down on the ground.

He did used to do that when he was a teenager,

but not as a grown man.

And the only reason he rode the bike

was to get to the store and back.

He didn't go in the rainstorm

with a bike to pop a wheelie.

During the time that Ronnie was on life support,

we would visit the hospital daily.

It was primarily just spent

talking to doctors, trying to find out

the prognosis.

There was discussions on what they could expect

would happen with Ronnie.

[Judy] He wasn't getting better.

The fever wasn't going away in the brain

and it kept killing cells.

I said, "Well, will he ever recognize me?"

"No." "Will he know who he is?" "No."

Everything was no, no, no.

[Deborah] He was never gonna move again.

He was never gonna have a thought.

There was no brain left.

So at this point, you have to make a decision.

Move him to long-term care or take his life support away.

[monitor beeping]

How do you end someone's life that you love so much?

[music]

But how do you look at somebody

that you know was so full of life,

just lay there and they're at everyone's mercy?

How do you do that?

It's not easy.

I could feel Ronnie begging me to let him go.

I could feel him.

And I know that I don't want that for myself,

and I did not want that for my child.

They did all the preparation they needed to do.

And when he passed,

he died the minute that he was born.

It was 8:00, same time in the same hospital.

[Deborah] When the death certificate was issued,

it was listed as an accidental death.

I really felt disappointed that this was it,

that this was all we were gonna get.

The ball was dropped the night it happened.

The ball was dropped when it went to the detective.

And it just kept on bouncing a few more times after that.

It needs to be made right.

[Judy] I needed to know what happened to my child.

I needed to know for myself.

I needed to get as much information as I could.

And so, Debbie and I decided to go just tell the neighbors

that Ronnie is alive and he's talking.

He's going to a rehab, and then they're gonna send him home.

The people living in that duplex community

did not know that he'd never woke up.

They thought Ronnie was talking

and Ronnie was telling a story,

and it's not the story y'all are telling.

It's a different story.

She was stirring the pot, pressing them for the truth.

The next day, there was a girl riding down the road

and she was asking me, "How is your son doing?"

And I recognized her from that night.

I said, "Well, he's got a big headache."

I said, "But he's sitting up, telling a different story.

"He said it didn't go down like that.

He never fell on his bike."

She said, "Oh," and that was it.

Next thing I know,

I seen somebody walking toward my house.

You can tell from his eyes,

this guy wasn't right.

[Judy] at my doorstepowed up

introduced himself.

He said he goes by Jay.

I didn't believe what his name was

because it seemed like he was fishing for what I knew.

He thought Ronnie was up and telling his story.

We didn't really know how he fit into this.

We didn't know his angle.

It just seemed like

he was feeding information to distance himself

from his involvement in what happened.

[Judy] He said that Ronnie had a disagreement

with another person

over some money he owed him.

And so he punched him.

[Deborah] Jay introduced the whole he got hit part,

which was different than the falling off the bike story.

It went from popping wheelies to being hit.

So it had already changed.

[Judy] No, I didn't believe anything he said.

I just told him, "Well, there was an investigation going."

And he got real quiet.

And then he was wanting us to see

that he had his concealed weapn permit.

He pulled it out of his wallet

and he addressed me with it.

[Deborah] We didn't know why.

We didn't know to take it as a threat.

Is it intimidation?

We didn't know.

[Judy] I stood there and I said,

"Well, I'm not gonna shut up

until I found out what happened to my son."

And then he left.

[Deborah] We were just very confused.

Now there's an extra layer.

This man we don't know came to the house

possibly carrying a weapon.

You have to be a little careful

because we don't know his role.

We don't know him.

[birds chirping]

We didn't know his legal name.

But we knew his nickname was Jay.

So I did a search on

the Orange County Clerk of the Courts.

You could look for evictions,

a criminal record.

Even so much as a traffic citation,

you would find record.

You could see where their address was

at the time that happened.

I found an eviction that was issued

to that address where Ronnie was hurt.

I looked up a couple of the names on social media.

And I found pictures of Jay.

Then I found his girlfriend's details from that.

I managed to get his first name.

It ended up being that his name was Jason.

Debbie discovered that his girlfriend's daughter

went to the school down the street.

I asked around.

One of the people told me

that it was Jason Gailey

and he lived in that neighborhood

where Ronnie got hurt.

That's probably the difference in our dynamics.

Let's see.

I was more the computer and paper trail gal,

and my mom, she would talk more

and be able to glean more information

from talking to people.

I ended up talking to the guy that was Jason's mailman,

trying to find out what information I could.

Apparently, Jason's the drug boss in the duplex.

He has a license to carry a concealed weapon.

And he has a little bit of attitude.

He was known for it, plain and simple.

[music] [birds chirping]

[Judy] These are Debbie's notes.

She's more organized than me.

[chuckling]

This is his medical examiner.

This is the original death certificate,

and at this point, it said

the manner of death was accident.

I finally got ahold of someone at the coroner's department.

And I asked could they please go back through

the report and go back through his injuries

that they found on him,

and see if there was anything

that could say he fell off a bike and hit his head.

And they said there was no way humanly possible

that the injuries that he had sustained to his head

could come from falling off a 24-inch bike

when you were 5'10".

And it was something that had been inflicted on him.

At about six months after all this,

there is in here another death certificate

for a homicide

where it was changed to homicide

because of their findings and their autopsy.

Uh, let's see what else is in here.

Mm, someone drew a picture of Uncle Ronnie.

[chuckling] One of Deb's kids, I'm sure. [chuckling]

And drew a halo over the top of his head.

[Deborah] We worked really hard

to change Ronnie's death certificate.

Every day, you're faced with things you've never dealt with

and didn't think you would ever have to deal with.

But this was validation for Ronnie.

He was a victim of a homicide

and he had the right to have that known.

This point, they needed to hand this back

to the detective in charge.

And they needed to do their job.

Well, nothing really happened.

So I requested a copy of the 911 tape

from the night of Ronnie's accident.

We didn't know who made the call,

but we knew, at that time, that it was somebody

in the duplex community.

And whoever it was, that call to 911,

actually saw what happened.

We needed to meet that person.

I was coming home, so I figured,

"Let me go down there and look around."

There used to be a big dumpster light

between all of these buildings when they were apartments.

And I saw the supervisor

that takes care of the land here.

And I recognized him.

So I started asking him questions.

He was telling me that there was eyes and ears,

and that I needed to stay home where I was safer,

and that he didn't know how safe I would be,

asking the wrong people the wrong questions.

That maintenance man, he knew a lot of the inside scoop

on the drug dealer, Jason, aka Jay,

because he had to go into the apartments

and repair things.

He saw that Jason had cameras

right there between the alley and the duplex.

Jason used to video everybody.

That's how he did his drug dealing.

He would know who pulled in that driveway.

Didn't stop us still.

We still came and got pictures.

When it cool off some,

they'd all be sitting on the walls

of these two houses.

[Deborah] There would be a lot of activity

outside of the duplex.

And I think once or twice, they even yelled at her

'cause she was driving by,

snapping pictures out of her car window.

Did I do things that put my life in danger? Yes.

But I wanted to find out the truth.

And how are you gonna find out if they don't come to you?

You gotta go to them.

Eventually, the maintenance guy

connected me with the name of the 911 caller,

a guy named Mike.

Mike had told him about the phone call.

His story was that Jason hit Ronnie

during a fight.

When Ronnie got hurt,

Jason took him inside the apartment

and they laid him in the living room on the floor.

And they were cleaning him up.

They weren't gonna even call the police.

They weren't gonna call anybody.

Jason threatened them, all of them.

They were forbidden to call 911.

But after Mike realized

the seriousness of Ronnie's injuries,

he felt bad.

Mike went to a payphone

that was on the backside of the duplexes,

away from the cameras,

and made the phone call from a payphone.

[Deborah] Mike did ride the bike to the payphone

to make the call.

That's why there was no bike when the police showed up.

So, that, we could finally understand.

[birds chirping]

[Deborah] Mike said that

the emergency response team actually found Ronnie

inside the duplex.

He had been moved to a sofa.

When the paramedics came,

he was moved back out.

They never asked why Ronnie was inside the duplex.

When the police arrived,

if someone had actually investigated that night,

that whole bicycle story

would've been blown out of the water.

But no one did.

I called the state attorney's office

and told him we had witness statements

that could link Jason to what happened to my son.

And they're saying, "Oh, oh, wrong line."

And they tried to bluff it out.

So I was telling Debbie, "I can't get anywhere

"because I'm considered a distraught mom,

I'm crazy, I don't know what I'm talking about."

Debbie kept all the information together.

She figured, "Well, one day,

we'll get someone that'll hear us."

[Deborah] I had faxed information

to the detective

so that he could go further.

Just mapped out the evidence we had

and documented it into letter form.

My mom and I provided him with a picture of Jason.

And we told him that this was the person

that we thought hit Ronnie.

We gave him names and contact information

for the witnesses my mom spoke to.

We would see what information he would be able to get.

Being a law enforcement official,

I figured he'd be better at it than us.

Six months later,

I asked had they spoke to the individual

that we believed hit Ronnie.

There had never been any contact made with him at all.

No, still, no one had ever spoke to him.

Still.

We reached a dead end.

We don't know how to...

What's the expression? Can't fight City Hall?

We didn't know what else to do.

[Judy] It had been seven years

since my son's death.

The police weren't doing anything.

It was a closed deal and that was it.

I was working in a restaurant.

And this police officer came in.

And, of course, I didn't know who he was.

[Paul] The night I met Judy Weaver,

I decided to grab some food real quick.

When I was there, eating my dinner,

one of the employees who turned out to be Judy walked by

and we struck up a conversation.

He says, "Oh," he says, "How are you tonight?"

And I said, "I'm good." And I said, "How are you?"

And he says, "Oh, it's quiet."

Says, "Never anything happening on a Monday night."

Well, I said, "A lot of things happen on a Monday night.

My son was killed on a Monday night

in the pouring-down rain."

I said, "So don't tell me nothing happens

in Orlando on a Monday night."

She started speaking about the case to me,

and while I was talking to her,

she explained to me about the displeasure

of a sergeant by the name of Spike Hopkins

who did nothing about the case.

[Judy] I was telling him the investigating officer

was somebody with a dog's name,

and his name was Spike,

and who on Earth would name their kid Spike?

I was going on, cutting down the police officer

and how sorry he was,

and how I wished he could have lived

through the years I had lived

and know what I felt.

It wasn't nice.

But I was honest.

[Paul] When you told me your story,

and how bad this Sergeant Spike was,

my heart dropped.

I remember sitting there, thinking,

"Oh, she obviously hasn't seen my name tag."

Could I have walked out of there and said I am sorry

to hear about your circumstances

and you'd never known it was me?

I didn't know who you were.

- You could've been anybody. - Right.

I could've, but after hearing

you're a mother who lost her son,

there is no way I could walk out on you

after that.

[Judy] I went off on the guy.

And he said to me,

"Well, as you were talking to me,

things started ringing a bell."

And he pushed his chair back, and he says,

"Let me formally introduce myself.

I was the investigating officer, aka Spike."

I was shocked, number one.

Well, you know, I talked very badly of you.

- Right. Rightly so. - Um.

I never had a kind word to say about you, at all.

[Paul] Right.

I hated what you represented, so...

And I can't blame you one bit.

I can't blame you one bit.

I just felt so bad for the woman,

especially because I dropped the ball

the night of the event.

And then law enforcement and nobody else

would do anything to help her.

I wanted to get to the bottom of this.

I went into the parking lot

where my police vehicle was parked,

and I was gonna do everything I could

within my power to make sure

that this mom got justice for her son.

I got on the computer and wrote an email

to our cold case detectives

to have them reopen the case

so we truly could do the right thing.

After that, out of guilt or compassion,

Spike became my friend.

He started coming over and checking on me,

did I need anything?

And he handpicked these two detectives

to do the cold case.

They were both remarkable.

Couldn't have picked any two better detectives

to have done that.

[Deborah] They really beat it into the ground.

They went back and talked to everybody.

These guys even collected some things

that I had, that they could not find

in their original case file.

They worked this hard.

[Paul] Based on the research and the investigation

that Judy and her daughter were able to do,

the cold case detectives

got the witnesses identified, the suspect identified.

And they actually flew out and tracked down

some of the witnesses from that night

in other states around the country.

Going out and speaking to the eyewitnesses of this,

they were actually able to get the motive

and how the crime occurred.

And their information corroborated

what Judy found out.

Ronnie was actually struck on the head

and did not fall off of a bicycle.

The witnesses were very upfront with the cold case detectives.

I think some of them truly wanted my mom to have

some form of closure.

There were details that came out we didn't know about.

[Judy] The night that my son was killed,

Jason was pistol-whipping an older man

in that driveway over something,

over $10 or something, they said.

Ronnie was riding his bike, and he intervened.

Ronnie said to Jason,

"Why don't you pick on someone closer to your age?"

And he went after my son with the butt of a gun.

[Deborah] That's what hit the side of Ronnie's head,

was that gun,

which was impact one.

Impact two was when he lost consciousness,

was immediately paralyzed on his left side,

and fell backwards and smacked his head on the concrete.

After they got all the information

and everything together, and all the witnesses,

I figured they had enough cause

to arrest Jason.

But the detectives wanted to get someone on tape.

[Deborah] I think, at that point,

they were worried Jason would claim

it was an accidental hitting of

because of the dispute between he and the other man.

So they asked how I would feel about wearing a recording device

and go down and speak with the witness

to see if he would say anything incriminating.

So I agreed to that,

and they head across the street in a car

so they could watch,

and I approached and chatted with him.

It's a silly lead into, but I had to ask him,

"What happened that night?

What really happened that night?"

And I was just... I was a bundle of nerves.

You never know if you're dealing with people that are shady.

I was scared for her.

I don't want anything to happen to her too.

[music] [birds chirping]

[Judy] Debbie, when I was speaking with Spike yesterday,

he did not know you wore the wire.

[Deborah] Well, why would he?

They would have no reason to keep him totally...

Well, because they were keeping him updated,

but he thought that was fascinating

that you were brave enough to wear a wire.

I wasn't afraid. I could've taken him.

[laughs]

[music]

I'm not sure what he said

because I was a wreck,

but I asked the detectives to tell me what he said.

It had came out that Jason had a gun in his hand.

He had taken it back to his apartment.

He had asked his girlfriend to hide the gun.

And he threatened all of them

if they told them what happened.

I think that was why the cold case detectives

decide to proceed with charges.

You have a weapon in your hand

that you took the time to hide.

I don't think there was a lot of accident

involved in that.

[Reporter] Jason Brian Gailey

is charged with second-degree murder

because Judy Weaver just wouldn't let it go.

[Paul] It's not normal for family members

to conduct their own investigation,

but they were instrumental

in giving us enough probable cause

to arrest the suspect.

If they weren't beating the streets

and talking to the people,

we would never be here today,

and the person who was arrested

would've never been arrested.

[Reporter] Based on the new information,

Jason Gailey is picked up and charged with murder.

And a mother's intuition made it happen.

[Judy] By the next day, it went on the news.

It was on every channel.

There was people lined up

out there with cameras and facing my house.

I opened my front door and shut it in a hurry.

And I called Debbie and I said,

"My God, that's what we should've done first

"was gone to the media,

"and we wouldn't have had to wait seven years

for them to start an investigation."

[Deborah] After Jason was arrested,

he was charged with second-degree murder.

And then there was a timeframe

in which the state attorney has to decide

to proceed with charges.

I was able to talk to the detectives

several times, and they kept me up to date.

I was excited that we could provide

Judy and her daughter and Ronnie some justice,

only to have the state attorney drop the charges.

This person was gonna walk free.

The state attorneys were not confident

that the jury would see these witnesses

having clear mind and being able

to remember details all that well

because so much time had went by.

[Judy] On the TV, it actually showed Jason.

And he just had a smirk on his face.

He never said anything.

I don't know what their intention was

when they led him out,

but it didn't matter.

He was done anyway.

He overdosed and died.

Was at about a week after he got out of jail.

[Deborah] Breakfast is ready!

[Man] Katie, do you want some bacon?

You guys wanna come grab a plate?

Get some breakfast?

Have chicken?

[Man] Take that, go sit down.

He might be enjoying my plate if he can lean forward.

[Woman] Careful, he's quick.

[Judy] That's funny.

The job had been done-- late, belated,

but it had been done.

And we knew what had happened.

I knew Ronnie had done a good thing in the end.

He had tried to help somebody.

And Ronnie's buried, he's gone.

He did not die for no reason,

but we have to continue to live.

[music]

[Judy] It still bothers me some, you know?

And I'm sorry if I get teary eyed.

It's still... It's just an emotion for a minute

and you're gonna cut it, right?

[laughs]

But he was always doing for someone else,

which is what happened to him the night he was hurt.

And, but that was just how he was.

He was always that way.

[music]

[Deborah] There's no way. You can't close it.

[Judy] There's never gonna be a closure.

[Deborah] No, he's at peace, he's been at peace since...

I believe he's been at peace since the day he died.

When you let him go, he can go in peace.

I'm just grateful that you were there with me

during that time.

I think you gave me some strength.

I think Ronnie's proud of what we've done

on his behalf.

Looking at it, I think it made us stronger.

Yeah, I know.

[Judy] I believe it made us closer.

We were fighting for the same thing.

We were fighting for justice, for the truth.

That's a bond that will never break.

And you're gonna get justice where justice is deserved.

Just have to have faith.

[music]

[ducks quacking] [birds cawing]

[music]

Violent death of undetermined means.

On the next episode of

"True Crime Story: Citizen Detective"...

Why didn't they fully investigate my sister's case?

I just wanted to know, whatever the truth was.

We all knew something was horribly wrong.

This was murder.

"True Crime Story: Citizen Detective."

♪