Original subtitles

Now, to new developments today,

in the disappearance of a woman from Spring.

All of the activity in her life just stopped.

A statement that she had run off with two strangers

didn't make sense to anybody.

Sadly, there's not going to be a happy ending,

probably to this story.

Predators will oftentimes select people who are vulnerable.

[reporter] Right now,

Harris County Sheriff's Office Homicide Investigators

believe Taylor disappeared

under very suspicious circumstances.

[eerie music]

What happened toú 29-year-old Taylor Pomaski,

the young woman from Springú has been missing for weeks.

[narrator] May the ninth is usually a special day

for the Pomaski family.

I talked to Taylorú every week, every week,

and probably the last time I talked to her

was about the 20th of April.

Mother's Day came rolling Mother's Day and Father's Day,

which was May 9th.

[Sam] Family was really important to her.

They would take trips together.

They would do family gameúnights together, go out to eat,

and she was great and a great person.

[Leslie] She would come home for Sunday night dinners.

You know, ú if the kids had an event,

she was always there, ú something with school or...

She was very close with the kids.

[news] Taylor's parents didn't want to go on camera,

but they're frantic looking for answers

as to what happened to their daughter.

We all have routines, we allúhave patterns of communicating

with people that we care about.

And this was so far from Taylor's routine,

that it was like an exclamation point

in terms of their worry.

Taylor was by all accounts, just the best.

She was a daughter that was so beloved by her family.

She was the oldest of five siblings,

and she was older by quite a few years.

And so she has this little pack of younger siblings

who really did look up to her.

[Leslie] Taylor was definitely good

at her role at being big sister.

She... She didn't want to change diapers,

but she wanted to play with them every chance that she had.

She was somebody who was amazing in her ability

to juggle her professional life.

She had had some pretty high-powered positions.

She had worked for a law firm,

and she's young.

She really loved research.

Anything to do with research, she couldn't get enough.

And that kind of came through with the law firm.

[Joni] She seems to be doing very well.

And then her parents start noticing some changes with her.

[narrator] By the time Taylor's parents grow concerned

that they haven't heard from her,

she has been living with her boyfriend,

former NFL player, Kevin Ware,

for almost a year.

The couple met during the COVID pandemic.

Taylor met Kevin through one of her friends

from years prior.

I think it was difficult because of the isolation.

She still had her apartment at that point.

But she was not living there. She was...

Like as of November, she was fully living at Kevin's.

[narrator] Taylor moves in with Kevin in Spring, Texas.

Just an hour away from Mom and Dad.

A lot of families choose to live in Spring

because it's convenient to downtown Houston,

but you have a neighbourhood feel.

And so the neighbourhood that Kevin Ware was living in,

was just like any other neighbourhood in that area,

just a lot of families,

a lot of hardworking people

that are just going about their day.

[narrator] Leslie has tried to meet Kevin Ware previously,

but it never works out.

Kevin had talked about meeting, so we had set up a lunch.

I'd looked up the restaurant to get the address,

and it said that they were closed.

So I called Taylor and she didn't answer,

um, text it her and then I, message Kevin.

And he let me know that he was very busy at work

and that Taylor was exhausted from doing yoga.

Um, and that they wouldn't be able to,

to reschedule or go to a different place that day.

[narrator] Missing lunch dates and failing to call

just isn't how Taylor normally behaves.

Initially Taylor's family and friends

did what they could do to try to find her.

I messaged Kevin and his parents lived somewhat local,

so I thought, "Okay, they're at his parents' house

for Mother's Day, made sense.

[narrator] Then unexpectedly,

someone else reaches out about Taylor,

an ex-boyfriend.

Taylor reached out to me many times

throughout the month of April.

I got a text from Eric asking, hey, have you heard from Taylor?

I haven't heard from her a little.

Basically, the same thing I had texted him.

We went... did some back and forth at that time.

That's when it was like, okay,

well now we both were worried.

Taylor's parents go to police

and they report their daughter missing.

[news] Investigators have not named

any persons of interestú in Taylor's disappearance.

They're asking anyone with any information

on her whereabouts to come forward.

Her family and friends just want to bring her home.

[Leslie] I received a text from Kevin.

So they told me to go to his street

and file a missing person's report.

So that's what I did.

I went out to the Stallion Brook Lane road

and I filed from there.

The first time that Leslie met Kevin was that day,

which was I think May 12th, May 11th,

something like that, at his house.

[narrator] From the moment Taylor was born,

her parents have held a quiet fear

about what Taylor's future might hold.

Taylor was actually her and Nikki, her brother,

were my brother's erm... children.

Long story short, Taylor was born,

She had drugs in her system.

And with that, they took her away immediately.

She was taken away at birth, raised by my parents.

And when my mom passed away,

my dad is 66 years old at the time.

Or something like that.

He won't be able to take care of them on their own.

Me and Leslie were married.

And the immediately started looking for houses.

And by March of the following year,

Taylor and Nikki were adopted officially.

We had our life and we were starting our family together.

[narrator] For Stephen, raising Taylor

means protecting her from a legacy of addiction.

I was trying to express it and trying to push the fact

and tell her always stay away from it

because it's not even a slippery slope for you,

it's a cliff.

You know, addiction runs in our family

as far as I was concerned.

There's not even in any alcohol in our house.

We've never kept alcohol in our house.

We've been a dry house.

So it wasn't until after she moved out.

Little things like constant sniffing.

It's sniffling, [he sniffs] you know?

It's little things that would kind of red flag.

[Leslie] Taylor didn't admit to using drugs.

It was... it would always be much later

that we would find out.

[Stephen] And it kind of was an ebb and flow.

I think she would start.

It would start hitting her.

She would battle it on her own and get a little bit better.

Unfortunately, she got involved in drugs

and because of that, it changed her personality a little bit

and made her make some decisions that weren't always the best.

[narrator] Addiction shapes Taylor's choices.

Looking for a way to support herself,

she works as an exotic dancer.

[Stephen] She was starting to

look for jobs again, to find jobs.

I'm working with that, but

I think it came into the play of

she's being given a place to stay.

Phone, being given everything she needs.

She could still go do the stripping.

That was easier.

Not saying stripping is easy money.

So that's the money she was used to at the time,

I'll say.

And so it was when she was having

a hard time finding jobs

and whatnot, I think that that's where she ended up.

It's hard to think of my daughter

doing that as her living, but she accepted it

and she ensured me that she was being safe,

that they take precautions.

[narrator] It was against this backdrop of addiction

and difficult life choices

that Taylor began a relationship with Kevin Ware.

[Stephen] We didn't really know anything about him.

It was just, "he's my boyfriend."

I don't remember when it was

that Leslie found out that he was in the NFL even.

Kevin Ware grew up in Texas.

He was a gifted athlete from a very early age.

He was recognized for that.

[Kristin] He went to the University of Washington.

He played football there,

and then later he joined the NFL as a tight end.

[Joni] He was big guy, 6'3", you know, 250, 60 pounds.

He's played professional football,

so he's got some skills in terms of, you know,

potentially hurting somebody.

[narrator] From outside Kevin Ware's house,

Taylor's mom notices something.

She called me at the time saying,

"I'm sitting here, I'm watching Molly running around the road."

She's just running around without a care in the world.

[narrator] Molly is Taylor's dog.

Taylor was obsessed with Molly,

and wherever Taylor went, Molly was with her.

There was never time, other than work,

but otherwise Molly was right next to her.

[Sam] Taylor's mom is just down the street.

She's parked down the street trying to talk to investigators

and let them know the house that's involved

and where Kevin lives.

And when Taylor's mom sees Molly,

she immediately... her heart sinks.

She knows that something bad has happened.

She would never leave that dog,

since the day that dog came into her life.

[narrator] Taylor's mom approaches Kevin Ware's house.

From when I understand, ú she went to the house.

She had to go into the house, úhe made her go into the house,

he locked the door behind her.

So... she was talking to Kevin and Kevin said... erm...

That Taylor had left with three guys,

three or four guys.

He said fine, whatever, he let them leave.

Where is she? Why can't we see her?

You know, "well, she left."

She's just missing.

She's... she left with three other guys.

[narrator] Police also speak to Kevin

for any clue as to where Taylor might be.

The day that police came out on May 11th,

Kevin texts Taylor and Taylorú responds from her iPad.

He texts her something to effect of,

"Hey, can you call me? I need to make sure you're okay."

And her response is something to the effect of like,

"Oh, I'm fine. Just out here doing me."

[narrator] Ware tells police

the last time he actually saw Taylor

was about two weeks prior.

There was a house party

that was hosted byú Taylor and by Kevin Ware

they were living together.

And so they had a lot of friends were over.

He said howú she left with some friends,

didn't know their names, ú didn't where they went,

and didn't know when she'd be coming back.

The thing that Kevin tells police pretty quickly is that,

you know, she's a drug user, she's unstable,

and that that might be why she went off

and he can't find her.

I would never think that Taylorú would run off on her own,

but Kevin said she did, that she just left.

[Sam] We kept our minds open

and we wanted to explore any possibility.

Houston is a big metropolitan area,

so we definitely have our fair share

of human trafficking going on

and it's something that we even have our own division

at the district attorney's office here

to try and address that

because it is a big problem here in Houston.

We definitely wanted to not close any doors at that point.

[narrator] While detectives run down every lead,

family searched, too.

We had amazing people reach out and just

talk to us about locations that exploited women might be.

And this person walked me through the area

that she could be in.

I went down with flyers, handed them out.

[Stephen] Leslie was the rock of the family.

Without her, I don't know what we would have done.

We printed out flyers.

She went out into these seedy neighbourhoods

and put up the flyers, asked people questions.

Because of that, they were calling her.

All these quote-unquote friends of Taylor's

we're calling Leslie and giving her information.

Some of the people that called

were just people that went to the house occasionally,

but I did receive phone calls from people

who were there a lot.

And that's when they let me know

that Taylor and Kevin fought all the time.

We were helping out,

initially with just a missing person case,

but at the time we did think

that there was something more involved.

[news] Right now,

Harris County Sheriff's OfficenHomicide Investigators believe

Taylor disappeared under veryú suspicious circumstances

and may be the victim of foul play.

We looked into a lot of things in her personal life

to see if we could see any signs of life.

So we looked at her phone.

When's the last time she texted anyone?

Or called anyone?

We looked at any bank accounts that she had.

To see when was the last activity on her bank accounts?

And it was very clear that there was a time in April

that all of the activity in her life just stopped.

There was no social media footprint.

There was nothing in her bank.

Well, there are so many peopleúout there looking in the fields,

looking everywhere they can, ú meeting on the weekends,

looking for her, but not Kevin.

[narrator] Detectives zero in on Kevin Ware

as the prime suspect in Taylor's disappearance.

Taylor is introduced to Kevin through friends

and they start dating.

Taylor's family reports that Taylor changed.

She became more isolated from her family.

So the family quickly realized,

well, what has changed in her life?

There was something that changed

and what changed was Kevin Ware.

The relationship seemed to be somewhat challenging

from the very beginning,

at least from looking at some of the Facebook posts

that Taylor made.

[notification dings]

She posts on Facebook a meme of Cinderella.

And in it, you see the prince asking,

"Cinderella, what do you do for a living?"

And she responds "suffer."

As law enforcement begins,

to talk to someone for friends,

it really becomes clear how much she is suffering.

Between Kevin and Taylor, there were verbal threads,

and then that escalated into maybe a hit or slap.

And then he got a lot more aggressive,

and he would choke her,

he would punch her in the face,

he would leave bruises, openly.

He had no problem giving her black eye,

letting her walk out into public with that.

She did not have a car at that time,

she was completely dependent on him.

In addition to financially being relying on him,

she was reliant on the drugsú that he was providing her

to honestly keep her hooked and keep her there.

[Sam] I think that the problem was

that she was very heavy in her addiction

during this time period.

And Kevin was her supplier.

And Kevin liked to keep her that way.

One of the people that she had kept in contact with

was her former boyfriend of six years.

They had maintained contact.

She had told him on more than one occasion

that she was afraid in that relationship.

Maybe there's a witness that we don't know about

that Kevin's talk to or told what has happened to Taylor.

[reporter] Taylor's ex-boyfriendú and friend Eric Zuleger

says the 29-year-old had been living in a home

in the 4,500 block of Stallion Brook Lane,

in Spring, for the last year.

Taylor reached out to me many times

throughout the month of April

and various emails needing help.

[reporter] Zuleger says he thinks Taylor was involved

in a toxic and abusive relationship.

[ Zuleger] We were talking about her getting out of there,

getting back on her feet,

getting herself set and stabilized.

One of the last communications she's known to have,

was an email she sent to me on April 26th,

asking to talk at 6:55 in the morning.

When I asked her at nine o'clock, I said, OK,

and never heard back from her again.

Looking into Kevin Ware's background,

we were able to see that as far back

as when he was a student at the University of Washington,

he was consistently being arrested

for having fights or altercations with individuals.

Fights at frat parties, fights at bars.

[Kristin] In the early 2000s,

he played tight-end for the Washington Redskins

as they were called at the time,

and the San Francisco 49ers.

By 2004, his career had started to fade out.

He left the NFL

and according to Kevin's friends and family,

that's when things started to go south.

Shortly after leaving the NFL,

Kevin Ware went into a life of crime, of drugs, of weapons.

So by the time he gets to 2018

and he's now charged with intent to distribute drugs,

that's gonna land you some prison time.

So he served two years in prison for that.

[narrator] Kevin Ware begins dating Taylor

after being released in 2020.

But it isn't his last run-in with the law.

[Kristin] On April 19th of 2021,

Kevin Ware is pulled over by local police for speeding.

They find in his car, cocaine, meth, pot,

and two loaded firearms.

So they take him in a custody.

He was given $23,000 in bail and was out the next day.

He was still, though, facing some very serious charges

in his future.

And so the firearm part peaked our interest

because we thought...

We didn't know if she was missing,

if she'd been killed at that point,

how she'd been killed.

And so that was important to us.

[narrator] Detectives get a warrant

to search Kevin Ware's home.

So when they execute the search warrant,

at Kevin Ware's residence, Kevin is not actually home,

But they do recover in the house,

multiple electronics including Taylor's iPad.

[narrator] It's the same iPad

Taylor had allegedly used to message Kevin

while she was missing.

So we know that...

obviously Kevin manufactured all that

to make it look like she still is alive,

even though ultimately we recover her iPad

at his residence.

They recover her makeup, her clothes.

They recover their surveillance video.

Obviously, drugs.

Believe some weapons.

We have videos surveillance that we collected

from Kevin Ware's home.

And there's a video on his back patio that shows Taylor.

She's hanging out with a friend.

They're hanging out on the back patio.

And then at some point that afternoon,

she goes back inside.

And that's the last time

that anyone ever sees Taylor alive.

[narrator] On security footage recovered from Ware's home,

investigators spot something suspicious.

We actually see him on surveillance video,

coming home with detergent and cleaning supplies.

[narrator] Eight days after Taylor is reported missing,

police escalate the case and take a difficult step.

By May 19th of 2021, investigators have determined

that they believed Taylor was murdered,

so it turns into a homicide investigation.

They want to find her body.

They need to find her body.

[Stephen] I had gotten into my head that,

"Yes, she's probably dead somewhere."

The more I heardú the stories in the house,

the more I heard of his past, úof beating women in the past,

of the guns, the drugs,

the violence, just all the violence.

And they're bringing in as many resources as possible,

including a group called EquuSearch.

These are volunteers that go out,

give up their own time to walk through fields

when it's 100 degrees outside or raining.

The weather could be terrible and they don't care.

They have one mission and that's to help

someone find their loved one.

And they're so helpful on our cases

and they'll do anything

to try and bring someone home to their family.

They searched and they searched with really no success.

A couple of months after Taylor has disappeared

and nobody has seen her since then.

Kevin Ware Jr. Is arrested.

It has nothing to do with Taylor.

It has to do with these weapons and drug charges,

that he had been charged with on April the 19th.

[Kristin] You must show up to your bond hearings.

In fact, this is something they warn you about

when they release you on bond.

If you don't show up, we're going to

put out a warrant for your arrest,

and that's exactly what happened here.

So Marshalls track him down.

They bring him back in.

And this time, the judgeú is not letting him out.

He is going to stay in jail

because he violated the terms of his bond.

[Sam] He was arrested at that point.

It appeared to us on the outside

that the wheels were kind of coming off at that point for him

and that things were spiralling very quickly for him.

[Joni] Law enforcement realized that some people had not talked

because they were afraid.

They were afraid of repercussions

from Kevin Ware Jr., who's out.

And so, now that he's behind bars,

they feel safer to come forward

and start telling all the things that they know.

[Stephen] They would contact Leslie

and they would give her all the information.

They would tell her about what was going on.

Once I spoke to the people in the house

that explained the dynamic,

I... I knew that he had done something.

Some of Kevin's friends that were interviewed

gave us a lot of information about Kevin's mindset,

the last night that we know Taylor was alive.

Another gentleman was there later in the evening,

and he heard screaming, and he came out into the living room.

And he saw Taylor on the ground.

Kevin was yelling at her.

Kevin was threatening her with a firearm,

and then Kevin locked her in the bathroom.

We thought it was really important to get phone records

for Taylor and for Kevin and some of the other individuals

that we knew were hanging out at the house.

And so we obtained search warrants for those

and were able to get electronic data back,

which also helped us because it showed us Kevin's movements

around the time we believe she went missing.

[narrator] One person that stands out

in Kevin Ware's call log is his ex-girlfriend.

We met with his ex-girlfriend at her residence,

and she was amazing, but she was absolutely terrified of Kevin.

She was willing to help us, and she felt so sorry for Taylor,

and so she wanted to help us,

but she was also really scared too.

Kevin had been abusive to his ex-girlfriend.

She confided in us

that initially it had started out verbally

and then that escalated.

Kind of like it did with Taylor.

[narrator] According to Kevin's ex,

he visits her the day after the party.

So he goes to stay with this ex-girlfriend

and they're laying in bed the next morning

and she notices that he has some cuts on his hand.

And she asks him, "Hey, how did you get those cuts?"

And he says, "Well, do you really want to know?"

And she says, "No."

And he says, "Well, I'm gonna tell you anyways."

And he says, "I killed Taylor.

I slit her throat in the shower."

[narrator] Kevin Ware's ex-girlfriend

makes a shocking admission to police.

Kevin Ware had confessed to his ex-girlfriend

that he had in fact killed Taylor,

that he had stabbed her in the bathroom

of his parents' house.

He specifically described the hall bathroom,

which is the bathroom

another witness had told us Kevin had locked Taylor in,

and then he had further told the ex-girlfriend

that he had burned the body.

He pulls out his phone andú he shows his ex-girlfriend

a picture of a burn pile withúa flame really high in the air.

And immediately, she's terrified.

I think he was letting his ex-girlfriend know,

hey, I can do this to you too, without saying it.

We took a look at what she said

and immediately looked at phone records.

And we were able to corroborate that he was with her

when she said he was,

that they were communicating via text and phone

when she said they were.

Her testimony was obviously critical given the fact

that he had confessed to her

the day after Taylor had been killed,

when no one else knew that she was dead.

We eventually got Kevin Ware's phone

and we did a search of it,

but we were never able to locate that photo

of the burn pit.

It's not surprising to us that

by the time we caught up with him a month or so later,

he would have deleted that photo.

[narrator] Without proof of where it happened,

there's nowhere to begin looking.

The body is the most important part

of a homicide investigation.

It's very hard to prosecute a homicide case

without a body.

Investigators received a tip

that Taylor's body was located on a piece of land

about 10 minutes from Kevin's house.

We were able to go back

and look at Kevin Ware's phone records.

And his phone actually travelled over on the day,

we believe that he burned the body.

And so that corroborated

what that independent witness was telling us

and what all the evidence at the scene was showing us.

We actually did a flyover, over the piece of land

and were able to get images from the sky

showing that there was a burn pile on this land

that we had been tuned into.

And so we got a search warrant

and they immediately found the burn pile.

In this particular case,

what we learned from the anthropologist

is that they were able to find some bones

that they believe were in fact human.

They're very skilled in this.

They can look at the smallest piece of a bone

and tell you that that is in fact a human bone.

And that's what they did in this case.

They found less than 5% of her body out there.

But from that, they collected

what they believe were a piece of her skull,

a piece of her leg,

and they were able to take that back to the lab,

and start trying to determine did this belong to Taylor.

Was this Taylor?

Taylor's mom flew to Florida

to get Taylor's biological dad's DNA,

so that we could confirm

that the bones recovered from the burn pit

were in fact, Taylor's.

When they finally came out andú said they found her remains,

it was...

Well, we knew it.

No joke. You know, no surprise there.

Um... I'd gotten into my head

that they were going to find remains.

After her remains were found,

you know, we stopped.

The medical examiner has finally confirmed

remains found in December areú those of Taylor Pomaski.

Her family reported her missing in April of last year.

We feel very fortunate

that not only were we able to locate

such a small percentage of her bones,

but that from one skull piece

we were actually able to get her DNA

to confirm that it was her.

[news] Also new at 6 o'clock, aúformer NFL player from Spring

is now a murder suspect.

Montgomery County District Attorney's Office

has charged former Redskins player Kevin Ware

in connection to the disappearance

of his girlfriend Taylor Pomaski,

Ware played for the Redskin's and San Francisco 49ers

in the early 2000s.

Remember Kevin Ware is already in custody.

He was in custody for skipping out on his bond hearing.

So he's already in jail.

[news] If convicted, Ware could face

between 15 years to life in prison.

[Leslie] I wanted every person in that house

to have to sit up there and say what he had done.

I wanted an eye for an eye.

The fear of a jury not convicting him was terrifying.

It completely took over my life.

[narrator] Prosecutors are building the case

against Kevin Ware for murdering his girlfriend,

Taylor Pomaski.

Based on the facts and the circumstances,

the statements that Kevin gave,

that this is consistent with it being a homicide.

If we didn't believe that Kevin murdered her,

we wouldn't have charged him.

Today, former NFL player Kevin Ware Jr.

Took a plea deal involving two charges

in Montgomery County.

He is the man accused of killing a missing Spring woman.

This is Ware being escorted by deputies, a few hours ago

after pleading guilty

to possession of cocaine with the intent to deliver

and possession of a gun as a felon.

Ware was named a suspect

in the disappearance of his girlfriend,

29-year-old Taylor Pomaski in Spring last year.

This was definitely a circumstantial case,

but circumstantial cases aren't bad

because they're the detailsú that cannot be made up,

they can't be manufactured.

They're things that can be tracked down and corroborated.

And it's when you bring all the pieces together

that you see the full picture.

I think one of the biggest things that we had to do

in preparing for trial honestly

was going through hours and hours of surveillance video

at Kevin Ware's Residence.

From those hours and hours of footage,

were able to confirm that it was the four individuals

in the house with Taylor at the end of her life.

And then we were able to track Kevin's movements

after we believe he had killed her.

We were able to corroborate that Kevin's phone

was actually on the burn pile.

And so that was a big clue to us that Kevin was involved,

Using phone records as well,

we're also able to eliminate the other three individuals

that had been in his house at the time Taylor was killed,

coupled with the fact that Kevin Ware is

the one that would have had the motive to kill Taylor.

That's what really helped us confirm that it was Kevin

and Kevin alone.

Kevin Ware was jealous.

He was controlling of Taylor.

It seemed from witness interviews

that it was no problem for him to cheat on her

or sleep with other people,

but she was not allowed to do the same.

He was very violent with Taylor.

Nobody else in the situation, did it ever come up

that anybody else had laid hands on Taylor

or had a reason to hands on her.

He was the only one physically abusive with Taylor.

A lot of Kevin's problems

honestly surrounded him using drugs.

He was a big methamphetamine user.

He would stay up days at a time.

He was severely paranoid.

So that caused a lot of problems and distrust with Taylor.

Several weeks before Taylor went missing,

Kevin talks about how he's sick of her.

He wishes they weren't together anymore.

And he makes some comments to one of his friends

that he'd like to get rid of her.

There was also an incident that took place

those couple days before Taylor went missing,

and some allegation of whether or not

Taylor may have cheated on him,

and that seemed to have sent him into some spiral.

Investigators believeúthat this arrest of Kevin Ware,

just days before he murdered Taylor.

Kind of added to this. He was under a lot of stress.

He'd been caught again.

I mean, his rap sheet is just getting longer and longer.

He had to have know,

that he was not going toúwalk away from those charges.

He was going to do some prison time.

And I think that likely made him less concerned

about the possible consequences for him.

So in some respects, I think it was a perfect storm.

[narrator] Everything comes to a head at the party.

We've always believed the motive was a combination of jealousy,

just rage, and his drug addiction.

Things between Taylor and Kevin were volatile,

and they had gotten into this argument.

There was potentially jealousy that was driving this,

not that the jealousy was founded,

just that that was his belief of what had happened.

Some people that said they'd actually see him hit her

and seemed like things were kind of getting out of control.

[Leslie] The abuse was really bad.

The abuse was choking her outútill she was about to pass out.

It was physically hitting.

The one thing that they all said to me was,

"I almost called the police."

And it kind of opened my eyes to

what was going on in that house,

that that was acceptable.

When Kevin and Taylor were dating,

she did not tell us about the abuse.

We knew that they were arguing,

but we didn't know about the abuse.

[Kristin] Because this was physical, this was violent.

This was in front of everybody.

And I'm sure what happened is because these are strangers

and people are drunk and high,

they just left.

Like they didn't want to deal with it.

They didn't want any part of it.

They felt like, okay, they're fighting.

This is his house.

This is his girlfriend.

And we're just going to leave.

And unfortunately, that left Taylor

in a really precarious and dangerous position.

[narrator] One party goer later tells police

that Ware becomes so increasingly

threatening towards Taylor and others

that they take the firstopportunity to leave the house.

Kevin Ware had stabbed her in the hall bathroom,

and that's how she was killed.

Taylor had been beaten, strangled,

stabbed, and then Kevin Ware lit her body on fire

to try to hide what he did.

[narrator] Just before trial,

Kevin Ware's attorney wants to make a plea deal.

[Sam] The defence came to us and wanted to try and work it out.

So we were open to that because

we felt like it was really important for the family

for him to stand up and admit what he had done

and take responsibility for it.

[Lisa] Every plea deal that we make at our office is unique.

It's relative to the law.

What we've charged the person with,

what evidence we have,

how good our witnesses are, it's all kind of put together

and thought of as a whole.

So no two cases are ever the same.

[Sam] When we met with Taylor's family,

we were very honest with them

about our concerns with the case.

So what the problems were,

but what the good things were for us too.

And what the likely outcome could be

if we proceeded to trial.

And we discussed all that with them

very openly and honestly,

talked to them about what we thought was appropriate

and they were on board with it.

I mean, obviously, they want to see this guy

do as much time as possible

because he just stole their daughter from them.

But they trusted us and they ultimately supported us.

[Stephen] I wanted a trial.

I really... I wanted a trial.

But as it got closer to the trial,

is when I startedú getting a little scared,

because I want it to happen,

but what if it doesn't goú the way I want it to go?

The idea of a plea...

I wasn't happy about it

because it wasn't a trial, but ultimately,

the only way the plea can happen

is if he sat there and he said, he did it.

[Kristin] Kevin Ware initially pled not guilty

to murder charges.

And then in 2025, he changed his mind

and he pled guilty to murder.

[reporter] New at four, a former NFL player

will spend 30 years in prison

for murdering his girlfriendú and tampering with her body.

Kevin Ware pled guilty today in Harris County

to the 2021 murder of Taylor Pomaski.

He does plead guilty in open court

and he does agree to say that he's guilty,

that he committed the offence

and that he's willing to take the time that we gave him.

But as far as getting up there

and admitting everything he did and detailing it out,

I don't think we'll ever get that from him.

[news] Court documents say thatnhe hit her with a blunt object,

strangled her, then dumped herú body in North Harris County.

Her remains were found seven months later.

[exhales]

I don't know how, how, as a man,

I don't know how you can do that.

How you can...

take something so fragile.

She was 100 pounds, 5'1 inches, 100 pounds.

She's a child.

And he just brutalized her.

She never stood a chance.

But you know what?

She, she, hopefully, has the last laugh.

[Leslie] The community is safe.

The community, you know, we're safe.

We're safe from what was happening at a house,

what was happening to the people that we love.

Taylor stopped him.

She lost her life, but she stopped him.

She is a hero in this.

[Sam] What I'll remember the most about this case

is Taylor's family.

Meeting with them and getting to know them

was one of the hardest parts

because I just felt this sense of responsibility

to bring justice for Taylor for them.

And also it just broke my heart because I saw two parents

that were totally broken sitting across for me.

And it wasn't their fault.

[Leslie] One of the things that's very hard is

Taylor was an adult.

And I had to respect her boundaries.

I think that if I did it again,

I would listen better

and try to read between the lines

and understand

and the adult that I knew before

to where they are now.