Original subtitles

[suspenseful music plays]

When you count cases that you work on,

You've helped investigate...

-So, she falls just like this? -...You prosecuted...

Where were most of the wounds concentrated

On the body of jeffrey wright?

We've seen some horrible things.

But all those cases, what was done to tynesha,

I don't think I've ever seen another one like that.

This case revealed the depths of human darkness,

Pure evil on earth.

And the worst part about it was that it wasn't random.

It was someone she knew.

And her family, we watched them go through it

'cause they thought nobody cared.

Awful.

[somber music plays]

Even if she is dead,

Let me know so I can go and get her and bring her home.

To tell a mom...

Their baby was dead...

I can still see her face.

♪♪♪

["cyan" by praers plays]

♪ half-light, half me ♪

♪ on the other side ♪

Oh, this is my favorite.

- 4 part harmony. - Kennisha: 4 part harmony.

- 4 part for life. - Yes.

I met tynesha in the fifth grade.

We were just instant friends.

We were in the varsity choir in high school.

Kennisha: She was mighty woman.

She was small but her voice had some power.

You knew not to play with her.

And this was like the time when destiny's child was coming up.

So we're from houston, they're singing.

We're like, okay, it's four-- we can do what they're doing.

So, like, we were ready to be the next group.

[kendria laughs] it was really fun.

Tynesha had a lot of things to look forward to in life

Because of all the different talents that she had.

She was very smart.

She loved school, loved to sing,

And she loved to smile and make others smile.

Tynesha was very driven.

Academics were number one.

In our junior year,

She won a $40,000 scholarship

And she was able to go to texas a&m.

We were sad we were gonna leave each other,

But we knew we'll be back.

It's time to go change the world.

- Yeah. - [laughs]

Tynesha did the top 3% of her class

Cum laude and that's how she was getting into college.

She was so looking forward to go to a&m.

She had a bright future

And I just looked forward to seeing it.

Kendria: It's spring break 2007,

We were planning to do something on the weekend together.

The last time I talked to her was on Wednesday...

But we didn't get a response on Thursday.

On Friday, tynesha's still not answering her phone.

Like, that just didn't make sense.

She's an over communicator.

She would not go off on her own

Without letting somebody know where she went.

Clearly, something was wrong.

My mom was like, "I think I should call the cops."

I was like, "let's call the cops."

What they did was told my mom call back in a few days.

She's probably just on spring break

And she just wants some time away from her family.

And we kept telling them, no, that's not tynesha.

She's the opposite of that.

I was bothered that the police didn't take it seriously.

She's not a troubled teen.

Kendria: We felt like there needed to be

Some kind of sense of urgency.

We're like, we need to find her now.

Something needs to be done now.

Something is up.

[ominous music plays]

Jeff: Houston, the city, is huge.

Covering crime, I was fascinated with missing people

Because there were just so many

But not all of them were newsworthy.

A lot of 'em were runaways.

And so the police do say, wait a couple of days.

I think that's an old rule

When you hear that wait 48 to 72 hours,

It's because you don't have the resources

To throw at it right away.

And a lot of times that does solve the problem

'cause they do come home.

But you can appreciate how a family feels

Because to them it's the most important thing in the world.

So, I'm sure families are always frustrated

The way they think no one is responding properly.

Kennisha: On Friday, we were still calling her phone.

Saturday came, nothing.

Sunday came and said, "okay, we need people

"out there searching."

We were just trying to figure out the next steps.

The cops weren't doing anything

And we know time is of the essence.

My mom, my entire family, we're all into crime shows.

So we know after the first 24, 48 hours,

There's a problem, something's wrong.

Kendria: Hospitals are getting called,

Even the jail getting called.

Any friends or family members, any college mates.

And then Monday morning,

Tynesha doesn't show up to her college classes.

She's not in texas a&m,

The alarms are really firing out.

Tynesha's family held a vigil on that Monday

After she went missing and they held it at the church.

Thankfully the community came out,

But now it's on the police.

So, now it's their job to find her.

Working in missing persons at any one time on my desk,

There'd be between 60 and a hundred cases open.

That particular morning I was contacted by my supervisor

Who said, "we got a missing persons on the northwest side

"of harris county and there's a lot of people

"at a lutheran church passing out flyers.

"I need you to go out there and see what's what."

When I pulled up to the parking lot,

Several people approached me.

They had a lot of things

That they wanted the law enforcement to do

Because they have over the three or four days

Prior to me getting there, doing their own investigation.

I'm out talking to tynesha's cousin.

She said she'd been trying to call timothy shepherd,

Tynesha's ex-boyfriend.

According to them, tynesha was last seen

On Thursday at his apartment

That's actually down the street from the church.

First thing I do is I go to the apartment complex.

I knock, nobody was home.

I'd speak to the manager. She goes, "oh, my goodness.

"there was a fire there two days ago."

Not only was there a fire, talked to another neighbor,

They tell me that they heard shots,

Gunshots a couple nights ago in the woods

Close to that apartment.

So, talking to the fireman about the fire

Is put on the back burner

Until I can figure out what's in the woods.

I call a couple of canine deputies.

When they get there, we walk across the street

From the apartment complex in a woody area.

Deputies were saying,

"yeah, there's something dead out there."

♪♪♪

They use cadaver dogs and they could smell that scent.

So we get into the wood line about 20 feet

And we smell...

Death.

[brooding music plays]

Jeff: He told me that he was talking to the suspect.

The suspect? That's interesting.

My two main goals were one,

Find what happened to tynesha stewart.

Two, help protect timothy shepherd from cops

Who may be intimidating this brother

To give them something he does not have.

[tense music building]

Deputy jd: Tynesha's family said she was last seen

With her ex-boyfriend timothy shepherd.

The neighbors at his apartment tell me

That they heard gunshots a couple nights ago

Across the street from the apartment complex.

As a missing persons investigator,

My goal is to always find them alive,

But the canine just alerted on the smell.

And about 150 yards into the woods...

They found...

A dead animal.

♪♪♪

It's relief that it's not her.

So, now I need to keep searching.

♪♪♪

Tynesha met timothy shepherd

Working at a pizza restaurant.

We found out later on that there was an eight-year

Age difference between the two of them.

I didn't like that part, but tynesha was so drawn to him,

And not just tynesha,

My younger siblings and my mom as well.

My mom accepted him as another son into the family.

Tynesha and tim were still together

As tynesha was going to texas a&m.

They were trying to make the long-distance

Relationship work, but she was like,

"I'm not letting nothing stop me.

"especially after the scholarship."

That's when they just kinda like took the break.

In college, tynesha met a new guy.

She really liked him. He was a breath of fresh air.

He made her laugh. He was her age.

She was still in love with tim,

But she just knew she wanted better.

Like, she was learning, "okay, I just wanna have fun

"and do what I wanna do."

And that's what she was really enjoying.

Maybe she was having a romantic weekend,

But she still would respond to your phone call

Or message at some point.

[brooding music plays]

You have a young lady who's gone missing

And you wanna figure out where she is.

You've already talked to her girlfriends.

The most important people to talk to next

Are gonna be any men she's involved with.

And talk to them about what they know

When they saw her last.

You wanna pick their brains about everything

There is to know about tynesha

To try and figure out where she is.

Deputy jd: The smell in the woods

Turned out to be nothing.

So, I go back to the church.

I go to my car and I start making phone calls to ponderosa,

The volunteer fire department here in harris county.

Talk to one of the firemen that made the scene,

At timothy shepherd's apartment.

Firemen and policemen, we have this relationship

Where we help each other all the time

So he was just telling me what happened.

He said, "when we get there,

"it was bad smoke all around the complex,

"but timothy shepherd wouldn't open the door."

But I mean, if something's on fire,

You know, you're gonna open the door.

[fire crackling]

So they beat and beat and beat

And he said that there was a deputy

Who showed up in case they need,

You know, scene security while they're fighting the fire.

And he said deputy finally told him

To open the door and he opened the door.

They went to the patio, put the fires out.

And I said, "so what was cooking?"

He goes, "just meat."

The fireman tells me they searched the apartment.

He goes, "when they got into the bathroom,

"he noticed in the bathtub,

"that there was a lot of meat that he was barbecuing,

"covered in ice."

And I was like, "what kind of meat are you talking about?

"I mean, that's unusual for somebody

"to fill the bathtub, up with meat.

"was it ribs? Chicken?"

He goes, "it's hard to say, but it wasn't sausage,

"maybe ribs."

"did you ask him what kind of meat it was

"or what he's doing?"

He goes, "no, we just put the fire out and left it."

It didn't leave me with a final answer

That it was just a fire.

It left me with more questions than I had when I got there.

But at that point,

Tynesha's cousin comes up to me in a panic.

She's got a phone, she's holding up and she goes,

"it's him. It's tim on the phone."

So, I took the phone and talked to him.

I said, "where are you at right now?"

He goes, "I'll tell you what, I'll come to where you are."

"you're gonna come to the church where I'm at right now?"

He goes, "yeah." "well, I'm waiting."

So, how he gets outta the car calmly walks up to me like,

"I'm timothy."

I said, "there's too many people out here, man.

"just hop in the backseat of my car."

I just wanted to get him secured in my car.

It wasn't short, maybe five, ten minutes

Before homicide got there.

Off they went to homicide division to interview him.

[dramatic rousing music]

My name is sidney miller.

I'm a harris county sheriff's office

Homicide investigator.

I've been with the sheriff's office for 32 years.

I've been in homicide for 22 years.

In homicide, it's a dedicated job.

It's a calling for a lot of people.

In my 22-year career,

Robberies and things like that,

Those are things that can be replaced.

Can't replace a life.

This was a 19-year-old kid that had been missing

And I ended up interviewing timothy shepherd.

He was very cooperative.

He did see tynesha on March 15th.

He did admit to picking her up

About 4:00 or 5:00 in the morning.

As they're driving back to his apartment,

She gets a phone call from the new guy

That she had met from college.

Timothy asked her, "well, why is he calling you

"this time in the morning?"

And she just kinda shrugged him off.

He claimed that he confronted tynesha again.

She got upset

And she just left the apartment on her own

And that was the last time he saw her.

We had nothing to say this was a lie,

But so when we found out she had left on foot,

That just opened up another possibility

Of could she have been abducted.

Kelly: We live in houston, harris county.

Horrible crimes happen there

And they happen sometimes randomly

And they are committed by strangers.

So, it could be a stranger, it could be random,

But the odds of that are a lot less

Than it being somebody that she knew.

I talked to her before she was gonna meet tim

And I was like,

"okay, what about tim? He's supposed to be done."

She's like, "I wanna make peace with it and be through."

And I'm thinking tynesha doesn't walk anywhere.

Maybe tim drove her somewhere and left her

And she's without a phone

And she can't get in touch with anybody.

While shepherd is at our offices to give us a statement,

He had given written consent for us

To go and look into his apartment.

Tynesha had been missing for five days.

When I first opened the door,

There was this smell of fresh paint.

I noticed that the carpeting looked like bleach stains.

I've been doing this long enough to know that

That's an indication that someone is probably

Trying to hide something.

As you walk further into the apartment,

There was a bathroom,

Looked like it had just been recently cleaned.

Ammonia bottles, bleach, and things like that.

And then next to the tub,

It looked like it had been mopped.

This was really strange

And to me, it was obviously a clue.

♪♪♪ got to timots apartment,

We found a lot of things that looked suspicious.

A crime scene csu person did some swabbing for dna

That we submitted for analysis,

But there wasn't enough to hold him on

Or accuse him of anything.

We didn't wanna jump the gun.

This was early on in the investigation

And we knew we had a lot of people to talk to

And some more investigating to do

So shepherd was free to leave.

I started canvassing the shepherd's apartment complex

Old-fashioned police work.

You're knocking on doors and talking to people.

One of shepherd's neighbors talked about

Hearing some type of pounding

And he heard the garbage disposal

Just constantly running.

A friend of shepherd's who lived downstairs

Had confronted shepherd about him barbecuing

And had asked for some barbecue

And then shepherd wouldn't give him any barbecue

And he just thought that that was strange.

We speak to several neighbors about the smell.

One talked about how it smelled like a dead possum.

Something wasn't quite right about it,

But at this point, I can't talk to tynesha's family

And explain to 'em things that we found inside the apartment.

We still had an investigation going.

I think what people don't realize is that

There's a lot going on behind the scenes...

And law enforcement doesn't always go out

Talking about all of it for lots of different reasons.

So, you have a family that doesn't know everything yet

And the lack of communication sometimes for a good reason.

You don't ever wanna put your whole case out there.

There's nothing to be gained by that.

Gayla: Nobody have seen or heard from her.

Something's going on, something is wrong.

We're so many days out, how could I get

More people involved to look for my sister?

And then I thought quanell x is always on the news.

We've seen him on tv representing families,

Any type of social injustice.

To be a voice for those who aren't always heard.

Something's happened to a family member,

Whatever it is,

I know he loves the publicity, he gets camera time.

Quanell x typically has his ear to the community,

Whether it's police brutality,

Whether it's police are looking for somebody.

A lot of people don't trust investigations

And they need someone to reach out to.

♪♪♪

I got a phone call from tynesha stewart's sister

Saying, "quanell, law enforcement

Is not telling us nothing.

If anybody can find my sister, it's you."

But timothy shepherd's cousin called me too...

Saying, "my cousin needs your help."

He put him on the phone, said, "brother, where are you?"

He told me at the apartment.

My two main goals were one,

Find what happened to tynesha stewart.

Two, help protect timothy shepherd from cops

Who may be overzealous, may be racist,

And may be intimidating this brother

To give them something he does not have.

Quanell x wasn't a fan of law enforcement.

And every time I saw him on the news,

He was always slamming us and criticizing us.

And from all that I heard him say,

We could never do anything right.

I've never been seen as a friend of law enforcement.

At times it could be cordial,

But it's always tension there because there's no trust.

Kelly: Quanell was walking two paths.

On one hand, wanted to make sure

Timothy shepherd was getting all of his rights.

And on the other hand,

He appreciated this was a wonderful black female

That had a family that needed his help too.

I remember thinking,

How are you gonna walk this plank here?

Quanell showed up the next day

And we both went over to timothy's apartment.

I was gonna go up there with him, he was like,

"no, stay here. Let me talk to him one-on-one,

"let me do my thing."

Quanell: I walked up to him, "how you doing, brother?"

Embraced him, I said, "brother, you all right?"

And he said, "no, not really."

"brother, did they harm you?"

I said, "I know law enforcement

"had you in their custody for a while."

He said, "no. They just kept trying

"to get me to confess."

We go into the apartment.

I could see fingerprint dust residue on the walls

And looked like law enforcement had been in there

Dusting and investigating the apartment.

And I could see the luminol

That they had been using in the bathroom.

There was luminol stains everywhere in the bathroom.

He started sweating.

And I said, "brother, tell me the truth."

[dramatic music plays]

Quanell x: There was [omluminol stainsays]

Everywhere in the bathroom.

And I said, "brother, tell me the truth.

"do you know what happened to this girl?"

And he went...

[clears throat]

And that's when I knew.

[tense music plays]

Gayla: Quanell came back down.

I mean, it looked like he had saw a ghost.

And I'm like, "okay. Timothy said something."

And he was like, "he did confess.

"your sister is gone."

[somber music plays]

[sniffling, voice breaks]

It's not supposed to be this way.

[sobs] we had come so far.

It's not supposed to end like this.

We worked too hard

To overcome for it to end like this.

What was all that work for?

We let evil in and this is what happens.

She deserved more.

♪♪♪

And I took my cell phone

And I started blowing up

A reporter named jeff mcshan.

I didn't trust calling law enforcement first,

'cause we had had such a volatile relationship.

Jeff: And he told me to meet him at a certain intersection

And he told me that he was talking to the suspect.

Suspect. That's interesting.

Quanell: I said, "jeff, who's the lead investigator?

"get them to the apartment complex immediately.

"get them here."

Quanell's talking to shepherd.

And he indicated he wanted to show us

Where tynesha's body was.

I just felt dejected,

Because when you're talking about bodies

That don't mean that they're alive.

We end up going over to an apartment complex

On ella boulevard called the polo club.

It's three to four miles from where shepherd lives.

We followed behind quanell x and timothy shepherd

Because I knew he killed her

And he's gonna take us where he put her body.

Jeff: Eventually, we pull over,

There was a dumpster and the suspect got out.

Quanell put his arm around the suspect.

He was very, very emotional.

I kept saying, "brother, it's gonna be all right.

"she can't rest, brother, 'til you bring closure to this."

He said, "that's where I put her."

He's pointing towards the dumpster.

Jeff: And I thought, "oh, my gosh,

"this is where he dumped her body."

We all walk over towards the dumpster

At the same time.

We look inside...

It's empty.

She's not in there.

At that point, I instantly mirandized him,

Put him in handcuffs.

Jeff: The trash had already been picked up.

Her body most likely was at the landfill.

Yes, she's gone. Yes, we're hurting about that.

But there's a different pain that you feel

When your loved one is killed

And you don't have a body to bury.

It's still an open wound.

After shepherd was mirandized,

We had made arrangements to have him transported

To our homicide office.

Quanell had arranged for him

To have a lawyer present.

I had my own lawyers meet me there for a reason.

I wanted to make sure that he would be protected.

And I just didn't trust the cops.

Quanell wasn't just an activist anymore.

He's now a witness.

It was a conflict of interest there at that point.

I got a call at night,

Asking me to come down to lockwood,

Where homicide was,

To mediate between timothy shepherd,

Quanell x, homicide,

And the two lawyers that were coming down

To lockwood to represent timothy shepherd

When we all realized that

They were also quanell x's lawyers,

So they can't be both.

Quanell x became a fact witness to the specifics

Of what timothy shepherd had to say about what happened.

He became a witness for the prosecution,

Which I'm pretty sure he never anticipated happening.

Sgt. Miller: Kelly siegler felt there was enough probable cause

To charge timothy shepherd.

In the interview room, he says, "I wanna give you my statement."

I said, "well, you've asked for a lawyer,

"and at this point, I can't talk to you."

He said, "I wanna talk to you without a lawyer present."

I just told him, "man, you just tell the truth.

"clear your conscience."

And I left.

'shepherd tells me, 'bout four in the morning,

Tynesha, she gets a phone call from this new guy

That she had been dating from college.

He tries to address this new guy that she had met again.

And that's when the argument ensued.

And then he took his right hand and he put it around her throat

And he said he just started squeezing.

Next thing he knows, she's on the floor,

He's leaning over and she's not breathing.

When I was talking to him,

It was just this look that he had.

He was reliving this whole thing all over again.

He said he thought about how the police could track him.

So, now he wants to cover his tracks.

Being totally true,

I still had my doubts about everything.

Something just didn't feel quite right about it.

You don't get 100% confessions from people.

We got this 80-20 rule.

80% of it's true, and the other 20 is not.

Something that could potentially be worse.

[brooding music plays]

We found out that there was a landfill

In the southern part of harris county,

That that dumpster would've been dumped there.

The dump is over 500 acres.

They could search for months and might not find anything.

What do you mean that you're not gonna search

For my sister's body in the landfill?

That it costs too much money?

Would it cost too much if that was your daughter out there?

What most african american women feel,

We're the least respected and the least protected.

Jeff: There's always that comparison.

You know, "what if she were white?

"what if she came from a more affluent neighborhood?

"would the police

"or the harris county investigators

"act differently?"

If it was my son or daughter that was missing,

You know, I wouldn't care what law enforcement was doing.

It still wouldn't be fast enough for me.

But as an investigator, you have to learn

To tune that stuff out and do your job.

But we still hadn't found tynesha.

We still hadn't found her body.

So, we still had to do some more investigating

To proof up our case.

♪♪♪

We go back out to shepherd's apartment...

And one of the investigators sees

What looks like charred bone

On the ground of the apartment below shepherd's.

Also, we see what looks like burnt hair.

And then we check the garbage disposal.

[ominous music plays]

We found charred items, bones, teeth.

And the enamel that was found

Inside the garbage disposal...

Was consistent with the dna from tynesha.

We have evidence to believe that she was cut up,

Dismembered and burned.

♪♪♪

Had to go tell tynesha's mom [pensive music plays]one t

Why there didn't need to be a landfill search.

And I was in that apartment that day

With 20 people and quanell x.

A room full of very angry people.

And I'll never forget her mom sitting on the couch that day

With a bunch of strong men standing around her.

And I explained to her

That we knew she wasn't in the landfill,

Because we knew that she was...

Dismembered and cut up

Inside timothy's apartment.

And her mom looked up at me and said,

"ms. Kelly, are you telling me my baby's never coming home?"

And I said, "yes, ma'am. I am."

To tell a mom...

Their baby was dead...

I mean, I walked out by myself

And got in the car and drove away crying...

Just thinking, "how do they survive this?"

[somber music plays]

Gayla: Not only are we grieving,

It was the way that she was killed.

How could you date somebody

And all of a sudden you're cutting her up

In the bathtub like it's nothing?

It's not a human. That's so demonic.

That's like an evil spirit.

No.

No, you're not gonna get away with this.

[tense music plays]

Kelly: Timothy shepherd was charged with murder.

So, you're looking at a life sentence

For your maximum punishment.

When we filed the charges,

The case could land in one

Of 22 different district courts.

And it landed in the court

Where marie primm was the chief prosecutor

Assigned to the court.

So, it technically became her case.

Marie primm was one of the best chiefs that we had.

She was very, very experienced.

She was a nerd like me.

I knew she was gonna be prepared.

I knew the family was gonna love her.

Timothy was represented by chip lewis,

A very successful,

Well-known defense lawyer.

As a prosecutor, you better have

All your I's dotted and all your t's crossed

If he's gonna be the defense lawyer

That you're looking at across the courtroom.

I view myself solely as a mercenary.

I am hired to provide

The best defense that money could buy.

Chip isn't cheap.

Later I found out that timothy shepherd's sister

Paid for chip.

Chip lewis had just been involved

In the robert durst case in galveston.

Judge: The jury find the defendant,

Robert durst, not guilty.

Somehow they had made the jury believe

That the dismembering of the body did not matter.

Chip: I do not need to like these criminals,

But I will do the best job anybody can

If my financial requirements are met.

To throw out that confession with all the brouhaha,

There was a natural foundation there

From which to draw

That this was an involuntary statement.

He was denied counsel, et cetera.

There was a pretrial hearing and chip fought just as hard

To try and get the statement thrown out,

'cause in his mind,

If he could get that statement thrown out,

What a huge win for him as a defense lawyer.

The only way to get it thrown out

Was to legally make the judge believe

That it was coerced

Or he didn't get all of his rights read to him.

The impact of getting the statement excluded

Could have led to the suppression of more evidence

Such as a search warrant for the house

And the discovery of the remains.

Making the state's task of convicting him

Of the murder at all quite difficult.

Because it may have impacted

The search warrant to go back inside the apartment,

I could not let that happen.

I fought and the law was on our side.

The judge denied their motion to suppress.

The judge followed the law.

But, as I said, you gotta do what you gotta do

To preserve the client's rights

And give them the best defense money can buy.

So forward went the trial.

Marie: We began the trial by setting up the relationship

Between timothy shepherd and tynesha stewart.

He had been physically violent with her.

She had shared that with her roommates at texas a&m.

The roommate gave us a bigger picture

Of what was going on.

She said that tynesha was having

A very difficult time with tim,

That they were supposed to have been broken up,

But that tim would not leave her alone.

He would even come up to a&m.

He would try to get in her dorm room.

He would find her

And basically make her life miserable.

She would keep a lot of things from me,

'cause I'm the older sister, I'm gonna call for backup...

[laughs] ...And it's gonna be a problem.

I understand the situation that she was in.

Having his hands around your throat,

That's not a normal relationship.

That's considered domestic violence

And it doesn't get better, it gets worse.

She really thought that, you know,

"I can break it off with him, we could just be friends

"and I could go away to college and live my life."

No.

Marie: Building up their past history

Was important for the jury to recognize

And it certainly showed me who timothy shepherd was.

He was a cold, callous person.

There was absolutely no evidence

That tynesha stewart had been anything

But a remarkable young lady

And had no blemishes in her past

That we could anyway exploit

To create impression of the jury that she was aggressive

And/or that is likely she attacked tim shepherd.

It was tricky.

I believe mr. Lewis,

Although he fought the motion to suppress,

He wanted mr. Shepherd's statement and evidence.

I did not want to use that confession.

Although timothy says

She ended up dead in his apartment,

He says it's self-defense.

It was all a bunch of bs.

It was timothy's way of making himself look better

Than the reality was.

Chip: As the state did not put

His confession on at that point in time,

We had no way of really injecting

The self-defense into the trial.

The defendant and his lawyer

Can't offer the statement themselves

Without taking the witness stand.

If you're chip lewis,

Why in the world would you ever put

Timothy shepherd on the stand?

How is he gonna explain any of it?

Marie: We start calling neighbors.

Some of them testified to the burning,

The smoking of a barbecue pit

That seemed just abnormal and to go on and on and on.

Some people said the smoke didn't smell quite right.

The firefighter gave testimony that in the bathtub

He saw what appeared to be a rack of ribs.

And at no time did he ever conceive

That that was a body of a young woman.

The dna analyst testified to it,

Finding tynesha's dna in the bone fragments, hair,

And teeth that they found

Inside the apartment of timothy shepherd.

The forensic anthropologist said

That there was a tool mark in the bone.

It wasn't a natural phenomenon.

Somebody had tried to cut that bone.

As a mother, it was horrifying.

Sadly, as a prosecutor,

It gave me another piece of evidence.

At this point in the trial,

Marie primm has offered tynesha's girlfriends

To talk about her, how she went missing,

The literal pieces of evidence

Of tynesha's body.

What still remains

Is what's gonna happen with quanell x.

The defense was saying he won't take the stand

And tell what he know,

Because in the streets, there's a no-snitch policy.

So, we don't think he'll speak up

About what he knows.

Everybody's waiting to hear what happens.

[somto the standays] quanx

Was kind of a hold-your-breath moment.

"is he even gonna cooperate with us?"

Marie primm was praying that I'll keep my word

And that I would not take the fifth,

That I would testify.

But I gave my word.

That I would fight for justice for tynesha stewart.

It was extremely powerful in the room with him.

His ability to make you feel what he observed,

It was a very powerful testimony.

The jury was out for just four hours,

Which, in my lifetime, is not very long.

And the jury came back with a guilty verdict.

Gayla: I felt in my heart that they were gonna convict him.

But don't get your hopes up yet. Let's see what the jury says.

See how much time they get him

And how much time he really has to serve.

Is my sister gonna get her justice that she deserve?

[brooding music plays]

During the guilt phase of the trial,

We didn't really get to talk about the self-defense claim.

But in punishment, timothy shepherd

Wanted to try to demonstrate how this happened.

It was pretty apparent chip was trying

To talk him out of it,

But when it comes down to it,

The defendant gets to make the call

And he wanted to testify.

And chip was stuck having to put him on the stand.

If timothy shepherd was gonna testify,

I wanted him to show the jurors

What he did to tynesha.

So, he was able to get from behind the witness stand

And actually show marie primm

How he grabbed tynesha that night.

Marie: You could feel it in the courtroom

When he put his hands around my neck.

I think was powerful.

It is a product of excellent lawyering

On the prosecution to get a defendant

To show in front of the jury exactly what happened.

Marie: Timothy shepherd gave a confession.

I was very surprised at the details that he gave me.

He left to go get a saw to come dismember her body.

He talked about how he had taken some pliers

To remove her teeth from her skull.

He went through great lengths of trying to cover his tracks.

This is like some jeffrey dahmer-type stuff.

When I said, "and then you put her on the barbecue pit,"

He corrected me to tell me it was a smoker.

That just showed how callous

And cold of a human being he was.

Why did he get rid of her body that way?

So no one would ever find it

And he would never face the consequences

For what he did.

[brooding music plays]

Chip: They did not give him life,

Which was the maximum punishment.

They gave him 99 years and a maximum fine.

Is it justice? No.

She's still gone.

[somber music plays]

Quanell: We who come

From economically disadvantaged communities

Dream of a tynesha stewart

Because she could have been a light...

And a symbol to say

To young african american girls,

"in spite of, you still rise."

We had lost someone of great significance.

There was a time when I thought

I would never, ever have a conversation with quanell x.

That we would never be on the same side of the game.

I opened my eyes, my heart and my mind.

It made me a better prosecutor.

It gave me hope

That the relationship with my community,

The black community, and law enforcement

Could change for the common good of our community and our city.

I'm just sad...

That she didn't get to go...

Be who she should be.

Show us all.

She don't have anything.

She's not here. She doesn't have any kids.

She doesn't have any cds out, music, no husband.

She was right there.

It was just beginning to take off

And it was snatched away...

'cause we didn't see the evil that lurked around us.

[sobbing]

Kelly: We want to think that we can see evil

And spot it and thus avoid it.

What I've learned in this job is that you can't ever see

All the evil that there is in this world.

If a man puts his hands on you one time,

He's gonna do it again.

If you're dating someone like that, run.

When you have a victim like tynesha,

Everybody understands what's most important here.

You come together and you unite

To get justice for her.

That's what happened.