Original subtitles

@[news] This time, into the caseú of a convicted murderer

with multiple prior escapes from prison.

Sometimes for people,ú being in the outside world

is too much.

I was honestly concerned that

he was going to come after one of us in the family.

Then all of a sudden it was, oh my God, he's gone.

We don't know where he is.

He could be at my doorstep any day.

I was so scared that he was gonna come seek revenge.

[chilling music]

[narrator] December 3, 1979.

19-year-old Margaret Amestoy receives a call at work.

[Margaret] I was going to Arizona State University,

and I was working at a company nearby.

And I went to work,

and the phone rang nearby me,

and someone said, Margaret, the phone is for you.

And I was very surprised.

Well, it was the police department.

@And what they told me was ourú home had been burglarized,

and my mom was hurt.

and they wanted me to go to the hospital.

On the way to the hospital, I stopped at the house,

and I thought, "Oh, if it's burglarized,

maybe I better go and lock the doors

or make sure everything's okay."

And I saw yellow tape all around the house

and probably three TV stations

with reporters talking outside the house.

And at least eight police officers surrounding the house.

And when I walked up, one of the officers said, who are you?

What are you doing?

And I said, that's my house.

I want to go inside.

I want to check it out.

And he said, have you been to the hospital yet?

And I said, no.

And he said, you need to go to the hospital,

and then you can come back.

When I got to the hospital, I went up to the receptionist,

and I said, I'm here to see Mary Yates.

And they said, you need to go over and sit in this room.

And then a doctor came into the room, and he sat down,

and he said, there was a burglary at your house,

and your mom passed away.

And I

was so shocked and in disbelief

that I said to him,

where did she go?

Because I thought she went away.

I didn't think she died.

And then he said, "No, your mom died."

And a lot of that now I've blacked out.

[narrator] Margaret is the second eldest

of the now deceasedMary-Rita Yates' three children.

My younger brother, unbeknownst to me,

was in another room there at the hospital

with my grandmother.

And after the doctor talked to me,

they said, would you like to join the rest of your family?

I said, yes, of course.

I went into this other waiting room,

and I remember my little brother was just staring at the TV.

[Greg] I do remember being at the hospital.

@ I was sitting in a chair, kind of like this,

@ and then my grandmotherú was standing behind me,

and she had her hands on my shoulders.

And the doctor came in and said, you know,

your mom has passed away.

And my grandmother broke down, and she was like,

I'll take care of you.

You know, like, I'm going to take care of you.

And then I just remember, like, being in shock.

That's--I mean, I think I was in, like, total shock.

[Margaret] I looked at my grandmother,

and she just kept saying, it's going to be OK.

I'm going to help take care of you.

And I was just in--

I still didn't believe it was true.

I still didn't believe it was real.

But I remember we were in that room for not very long

before we were allowed to leave and go back to the house.

And we needed to get a hold of my older brother.

@ I was like a sophomore inú college, going to ASU,

living in Tempe,ú less than two miles away,

@ and in close touch withú the family on a daily basis.

And that afternoon, my sister called and simply said,

we had a burglary here, and you need to come over.

And I said, I'm really sorry there was a burglary,

but I'm not sure why I need to come over.

And she said, Rich, just come over.

So I came to the house with my girlfriend,

and we pulled up, parked on the street.

And Margaret, my sister, walked down the driveway towards us.

And boy, was it heavy.

She was just shaking her head and saying,

"Oh, Rich. Oh, Rich."

And she said, "Mom's dead."

And that's how I found out.

It felt as if a giant wind, an enormous wind, incalculable,

swept through, swept through the neighbourhood,

swept through my life, my heart.

And among other things, this giant wind

sort of picked her up, my mom, and took her away.

That was the feeling, that was the sense I had.

He collapsed to his knees.

He's 20 years old, you know?

We had just seen her the day before.

You know, we all hung out.

It just didn't make any sense.

It was just so horrendous.

@ [narrator] A s Mary-Rita's family reels in shock,

@ investigators soon establishedúthat just a few hours earlier,

@ 39-year-old Mary-Rita Yates had left work early.

She leaves work early one day

@because she's not feeling well, so she goes home.

She's in her house.

[Rich] There were the two neighbours,

the two young men.

They lived a couple houses down from us

and heard a scream and were able to distinguish between,

you know, kids playing in the neighbourhood

and yelling of various sorts and the kind of scream that says,

something really bad happened.

They then, looking at the direction from which came

the scream, they saw a man coming out of our house,

running out of our house, obviously in a big hurry.

And that prompted them to,

with the one, follow that man,

who was running, and the other young man, the neighbour,

went inside and called the police.

After receiving a 911 call,

officers were dispatched to Mary-Rita's home in Tempe.

It was around 12:30 in the afternoon.

Officers arrive at the home,

and they find her with multiple stab wounds.

She's rushed to the local community hospital,

where she's pronounced dead.

It was just a really brutal attack.

@ There was blood everywhere.

Her carotid artery and trachea had been severed,

and so there was just a tremendous amount of blood

on the scene.

[narrator] Mary-Rita's family can think of no one

who would want her dead.

Born in 1940 in Philadelphia,

she is the youngest of two children.

She was always a very happy child.

She always was kind of in a good mood and very friendly.

She had a winning personality.

Not only was she extremely attractive to other people,

she was a regular person.

You know, she was extremely popular,

but she never took advantage of that.

When she was in high school, she was a good student.

She was intellectual.

She was always class president.

I was a small guy, but I think guys didn't pick on me

'cause they didn't want to get on her bad side.

And we shared a lot of the same friends,

mostly male friends that we shared.

In fact, I was thinking about a friend of mine

on the drive over here,

who I didn't tell him coming here

because he's still affected by her death.

He was madly in love with her and still is.

[Olivia] She really loved nature.

She was very athletic.

She loved to follow sports.

She liked the Lakers and the Suns.

She had a great taste in music.

@ And we know that she andú my mom both really loved

James Taylor and R&B.

And so I think Mary-Rita just overall

was an incredibly dynamic person.

[narrator] When Mary-Rita marries,

the couple go on to have three children.

I think my dad, from whom she divorced

after about a decade together,

was a very challenging spouse,

and it was very freeing to my mom

when ultimately she and my dad divorced.

[narrator] Mary-Rita remarries and she and her new husband

decide to move to Tempe, Arizona.

But a few years later, that marriage also ends.

[Greg] It took my mom too long to get out of that relationship.

You know, sometimes you're in a bad relationship

and you stay too long.

[narrator] Investigators know

Mary-Rita has been stabbed to death in her home

and that witnesses chased a man seen fleeing the scene.

There's somebody who's been seen running off,

but that doesn't necessarily mean that this is the person

who has killed Mary-Rita.

We didn't get any information

about who killed our mom from the police.

They're going to have to look at everybody else

in Mary-Rita's life.

Are there people who work at her house or around her house

who might have some motive to hurt her or to burglarize her.

So I'm sure that her family was wondering

and all these things were going through their mind.

[narrator]ú Tempe, Arizona in 1979,

@ isn't the kind of place

@ you'd expect a lone woman toú be murdered by a stranger

@ in the middle of the day.

@ I like to say that I grew upú in the golden age of Tempe.

We were still kind of like a big, small town.

One of the sayings for the city was,

"Do things the Tempe way."

It was a wonderful place to grow up.

[Richard] Tempe was a much smaller town.

The population was not what it is now.

@ There was a real small-town feel in the '70s.

[narrator] Despite her second marriage ending in divorce,

Mary-Rita loses neither her optimism

nor her passion for life.

[Margaret] My mother

was such an effervescent, beautiful woman.

She was strong, she was articulate,

she loved music.

[Greg] She was something special.

I mean, you know, this will cast aspersions on me.

@ But part of my feeling was, if she had lived,

my life would haveú been a hell of a lot better

@ just being connected to her,ú as it had been earlier.

I only really knew the stories about her.

But it's so strange, because I really feel

@ almost like I do know her,

because of the loveú that has been passed down

through her children.

I just feel like she was a powerhouse of a woman.

She was amazing.

She's everything that I inspired to be.

My mom was an account executive for KTAR Radio,

and she was very successful at it.

She sold advertising time for the radio station.

So she found people to advertise while they were playing music

or while they were doing the news.

She would go to various, the bigger companies in town

and the people like car dealerships,

speak with them and give them all the facts

and tell them why they should advertise with her, with KTAR.

[Margaret] It was very unusual for a woman

to be an account executive.

She was definitely a trailblazer.

She was number one in the Valley,

in the entire Phoenix metro area,

for selling time on the radio for commercials.

[narrator] On Monday, December 3rd, 1979,

Mary-Rita leaves work early due to a headache.

Margaret said, you know, she was driving to school

when Mary was driving home and they waved to each other.

[narrator] What Mary-Rita doesn't know

is that a convicted offender is on the run that same day.

@We have to remember it's 1979,ú so there's no social media.

@ There's no way for police to get a message

to anybody in the area

@ that this inmate has escaped

this work release program in California.

@ The fact that they had anú escaped convict or prisoner,

@I think really not only affected

Mary-Rita's chances of survival,

@but I think it really threatened the entire community.

[narrator] In the hours before Mary-Rita arrives home,

houses in the neighbourhood are already being broken into.

This is a lovely little neighbourhood,

and little do these neighbours know

that this troubled man is lurking around here,

breaking into houses.

[Joni] Who wants to think that there's somebody roaming around

who's willing to do whatever it takes to keep himself free?

He had hit up six houses to that point,

and it wasn't till Mary's house,

the seventh house,

that he finally found somebody.

[narrator] It's at approximately 12:25 p.m.

on December 3rd.

Two young men hear Mary-Rita screams

and one gives chase.

As the one young man followed on his bicycle,

the assailant ran down the street towards Rural Road,

a busy street

and the neighbour followed him.

He was riding his bike down the street

and the guy was running down an alley.

And so between houses, he could see the guy running

and he just stayed like in pursuit.

Then the guy crossed a major intersection

and went into, it was called Payless Cashways,

which was kind of the equivalent of a Home Depot these days.

And he confronted the guy in the store and was like,

"Hey, what are you doing in that house?"

And so the guy took off running.

[narrator] As the young student continues the chase,

the intruder runs into the local lumberyard

where Mike Wonyetye is working.

One of the lumberyard workers, Mike,

he's a power lifter and a wrestler.

He's working and all of a sudden,

he sees a man running through the lumber yard.

And so he starts chasing after this man.

He was trying to catch him and wasn't catching him.

And so he used the old trick in the book

where he's like, stop, police.

And that he actually stopped.

And that when the guy got up to him,

he said, you're not the police.

But by then, it was too late.

They each took swings at the other.

Mike punched him, and the other fellow got up, ran,

and Mike chased him down again, and at that point

was able to grab him and put him in a choke hold

and subdue him until police arrived.

I mean, the guy's a real hero, a real hero.

You know, I'm eternally grateful to him.

[narrator] The man seen fleeing Mary-Rita's home

is held until police arrive.

He insists he didn't do it,

but he's lying.

[Kristen] Police arrest the man

who is later identified as 22-year-old Daniel Cahill.

And they realize that he is wanted in California

for escaping a work release program in San Diego.

As they start digging into Daniel's past,

they realize how troubled he has been for many years.

[narrator Daniel Christopher Cahill

is born in Hartford, Connecticut

on November 1st, 1957.

[Joni] Daniel Cahill from an early age

exhibited some really troubling behaviours for his family.

He just was a kid who was not gonna obey by the rules.

He was always running away.

He was getting in trouble.

And that started at a very early age.

His parents were at a loss.

It got to the point where the family decided

that he just could not remain in the home

because it wasn't working

and nothing they were doing was helping.

And it was a huge disruption to the family.

And so he ended up being placed in foster homes.

He was placed in various institutions.

[Kristen] During his early teen years,

Daniel also becomes addicted to drugs.

It starts out with pot,

and then he starts getting into hallucinogenic drugs

like LSD.

He is taking LSD nearly every day.

He also gets into cocaine and heroin.

So now, not only is he running away from home,

he's breaking into homes,

now he needs money for his drug habit.

So he's gotta steal enough things

that he can afford to buy drugs.

He was arrested at least 15 times,

charged with burglary, theft.

And as Cahill continues to get older and bigger,

he starts to get more violent.

At 17, he attacked two people with a knife,

and he was sentenced to two years in prison

in Maine for that.

[Olivia] He beat up his sister,

which is what his dad shared in the original court hearing.

[Kristen] In June of 1979,

he's convicted on burglary charges,

and he's sentenced to like a program.

And part of this program, it's a work release,

meaning during the day, people go out in the community

and then at night, they go back to the jail.

Well, in November of 1979,

they were out in San Diego performing their service,

and Daniel Cahill,

the man who you do not tell what to do,

walks away from his work release.

He decides he needs to leave California,

and he's gonna go to Texas,

'cause he has some relatives there.

So he starts hitchhiking, and in the 1970s,

this is a common thing that people do.

So he starts making his way hitchhiking,

and he ends up in Tempe, Arizona.

And by this point, he's got no money at all.

So he starts breaking into homes in this neighbourhood

in Tempe, Arizona,

and he breaks into six houses,

steals various items,

and then ends up at Mary-Rita's house.

[narrator] Arrested on suspicion of murder

after fleeing Mary-Rita Yates' home,

police retracedú Daniel Cahill's movements.

Because one of theú neighbours followed Cahill

as he fled the house,

@the neighbour was able to tellúpolice the path that he went.

So police go on the path and they end up finding

a discarded pair of gloves and a buck knife.

A buck knife is sort of a small little knife

that still had blood stains on it.

Police are pretty sure that this knife

is the murder weapon,

so they take it into evidence.

But remember, this is 1979, there's no DNA testing,

but there is testing for blood type.

And they end up finding that the blood on the knife

matches Mary-Rita Yates' blood type.

[narrator] Cahill is taken to the police station

for questioning.

Detectives read him his rights,

including his right to remain silent

and not speak without an attorney present.

But Cahill tells officers he's fine talking.

He admits to breaking into Mary-Rita Yates's home

and being there when she came home.

He also admits to stabbing her,

that he was trying to flee the house.

And Mary, little petite Mary, got in front of him

and prevented him from leaving.

And there was a tussle that ensued, and he stabbed her.

I mean, the fact that he's trying to blame Mary for this

is absolutely ludicrous.

They had a carport,

@ and the carport was right next to the door.

And she had to drive up in the carport.

He had to have heard her.

I think what he did is hid behind the door.

And when he came in, that's when he attacked her.

That was a deliberate act, in my opinion.

He could have easily fled,

or even overpowered her, for that matter.

@ He could have easily justú like... pushed her this way.

I mean, you don't have to use a lot of force

to move a petite woman out of your way.

He didn't have to go to that extreme.

I believe that he attacked her

because he didn't want to be identified

@because he was a common thief.

[narrator] Later that afternoon,

Mary-Rita's children returned to their home

with heavy hearts.

When we went into the house, my grandmother was inside

and my younger brother was packing some clothes

'cause he was going to go stay with my older brother.

As I walked in, I saw to the left

that a main window was broken, completely broken out.

That's where the murderer came through.

And there was blood on the counters and on the phone

and on the cabinets.

And then there was a large puddle of blood,

like the size of half a body, erm,

just on the carpet where she had bled out

after she tried to call 911.

When we were told about how she had died,

we were told that she had been stabbed.

She'd been stabbed in the throat.

And I think it cut the carotid artery,

which made it much worse,

and she bled a great deal.

And very quickly, that one wound was quite extreme and deadly.

[Kristen] These crimes are so horrific for families.

And something that really saddens me about this case

is that this was an incredibly bloody scene in the house.

The injuries that Mary had suffered,

especially to the neck,

there is an incredible amount of blood.

And in 1979, there weren't companies

that cleaned up these sorts of things.

Now, people may not know this, there are companies

that specialize in cleaning up crime scenes.

This is what they do day in and day out.

Back then, that wasn't the case.

We were left to clean up the blood that was on the counters

and the cabinets and the rug.

My grandmother was so strong.

She was cleaning the blood up on the counters

before I came in,

and that was her daughter's blood.

And she wasn't crying.

She was just doing what needed to be done.

We had to call a company to come in and clean the carpet.

And the first company that I called said,

we're not going to clean up blood from the floor.

That'll ruin our machines.

That's hazardous material.

we're not going to do it.

And then the second company,

I didn't tell them what it was

they were going to be cleaning up.

I just said, we need an emergency rug cleaner.

And it was a young guy that came out

and he looked at it and he said, I don't think I can do that.

And it took about 10 or 15 minutes

to finally convince him to use his machine

to clean up the blood.

But there was always a stain on the carpet

of where she bled out

the whole time I lived there.

[Greg] After losing my mom,

I was like, definitely devastated.

And I feel like maybe at first I was rebelling a little bit

because I was upset.

Like, she had been taken from me,

and I felt like it wasn't fair.

But I also believe that it brought my family together.

It brought my siblings.

We became closer.

And it also made me think about my life like,

hey, no more goofing around.

You know what I mean, like,

it's time to step up, you know what I mean?

You don't have this person to fall back on.

[Margaret] Our family was on our own.

We had to clean up all of the mess.

We had to deal with the window.

We had to deal with the TV stations that were there

for days outside of our house.

[Julia] My poor mom, she was 18, 19.

That's a baby.

When I turned 18, 19, I was like,

@ I can't fathom truly feeling as much of an adult

as my mom had to feel.

[Joni] Margaret's role completely changes.

@She goes from figuring out herú life to parent, essentially,

who's trying to helpú her brother now grow up

and navigate that.

And then you have this environmental trauma.

I mean, it's hard to even imagine, you know,

coming into a house and seeing blood in your house,

that's from your mother.

You have these stains of your mother's blood

that are never really completely erased.

You get this constant reminder all the time

of what happened in your home.

And I think that's just incredibly traumatic.

[narrator] While the family focuses on their grief,

police continue to question Cahill.

[Kristen] Cahill had already burglarized

six other houses that day.

So he's now on his seventh house.

Cahill always said that, look,

he's coming armed, he has a knife.

And he was not shy about saying

that if he had to kill somebody,

he would do it if he felt that he needed to

in order to get away or to steal what he wanted to steal.

And so prosecutors felt that

a first degree murder charge was appropriate

because he knew going into these houses,

If he had to kill somebody, he would do it.

He wasn't gonna shy away from that.

My mother was, she'd cry on the phone,

which would drive me crazy, and tell me

she was having nightmares that he was coming back

and attacking other family members.

And that's when I felt death penalty may not be bad.

Maybe the death penalty would help the dreams,

maybe it wouldn't, but it'd be worth the chance.

[narrator] Daniel Cahill agrees to plead guilty to murder.

Mary-Rita's children attend the sentencing hearing

and see their mother's killer in person for the first time.

[Richard] The judge was very upset about the crime.

He was disgusted with this murder,

with Cahill's behaviour, and to an extent, I believe,

his prior criminal behaviour.

And the judge said,

"I regret that I cannot sentence you to death.

I can't impose the death penalty because the laws don't allow it,

but that's what I believe you deserve."

The judge said that because the prosecution

didn't have enough evidence,

they could only give him 25 years to life.

And you know, I only heard life because of his actions

and because of what the judge said.

[Kristen] Daniel Cahill's family is horrified

about what's happened here.

They know that they tried as hard as they could

to get their son into an institution

that he could never get out of,

'cause they knew that he was dangerous

and he's just a bad person.

So when this all happened, Daniel Cahill's family,

even his mother said that she wished that he had died,

her own son had died, instead of Mary-Rita Yates.

And that goes to show you the lengths

that this family has gone to

to try to protect the world from their son.

This man is a menace to society.

And in my humble opinion,

he should stay in prison for the rest of his life.

And let's pray that he never gets out.

When you're 19 years old and someone says

that he's going to be put away for 25 years to life,

you think that's a long time.

You think it's forever.

You just imagine that the person's going to die in prison.

It never occurred to me that he would be coming up for parole.

[narrator] Daniel Cahill's disregard

for the rules of society

don't change when he enters prison.

@ Margaret and I would go

@ to the Arizona Department of Correction's website

from time to time just to check on Cahill.

And we'd see his latest infractions,

and, Lord, were they numerous, and some were very serious.

[Kristen] He has 116 infractions, 39 of those major.

What is an infraction in prison? Well, let me tell you.

It's getting into fights.

It's being disruptive.

@ It's essentially exactly what he was doing,

@ you know, in terms of someúthings when he was in school.

He's just incredibly disruptive.

[narrator] Then in September, 1991,

Cahill escapes from the Arizona penitentiary.

It consistently showed he had zero respect for the law.

He had zero respect for the rules within prison.

His infraction list is almost endless.

So I would have thought that he would have been

under close surveillance

and incarcerated at a high level of security.

So it's hard to understand that escape.

[Kristen] Not surprising.

He's done this his whole life.

And thankfully, he's captured very quickly

in a short period of time, thank goodness.

So he goes back to prison

and they add two years to his sentence for escaping.

And quite-two years?

In my mind, that is nowhere near enough.

I mean, this guy is facing a life sentence at the maximum,

a life sentence.

Two years for escaping prison and after murdering somebody?

I'm not following where the logic was with that.

@We did not have any knowledgeú of his escape in 1991.

As it happened,

we didn't have a victim's advocates

rights person on our side.

And none of us were privy to his escapes

or his parole trials.

When we did find out many years later,

we thought, thank God that mom's mom,

that grandma, was not alive at the time Cahill escaped

or that would have been devastating to our grandma

to learn of his escape.

She never found out about it.

Had she, she would have been extremely upset.

[narrator] In 2013,

Daniel Cahill is once again considered for parole

but Mary-Rita's family are not informed.

We had always assumed that, you know,

we're the children of the victim,

of the murder victim.

Certainly, when anything significant happens

with this criminal, with Cahill, we're gonna be informed.

And when we asked,

"Why were we never informed about anything?

Why didn't we hear about any of this?"

And we were told that we had--

we had failed to put ourselves on this list,

a list of people who would be contacted in certain instances.

And our response was,

we didn't know there was a list.

We didn't know that we had to be proactive in that sense.

@ [Kristen] Daniel Cahill is up for parole.

And for some reason, the parole board decides

that he should be able to serve the rest of his term

on home arrest.

Why they thought this was a good idea, I do not know.

We were given the recordings of the prior parole hearings,

and we heard those, and we couldn't believe

how much he lied.

He just lied, and he even said,

"I have no remorse about this."

And he said, "I will continue when I get out to rob."

That's-- That's what he said.

[narrator] Cahill's freedom is short-lived.

[Kristen] Part of his probation,

Daniel Cahill had to submit to drug tests, right?

He had to stay away from drugs.

Well, within a month of that,

it becomes apparent that he had been doing drugs.

So he gets sent back to prison.

In 2023, 10 years later, Cahill goes up for parole again.

And at this point, Mary's family and friends

are writing letters to the parole board.

Prosecutors are saying, please do not let this guy out.

He is not going to abide by a community release program.

He is not going to do what you want him to do.

He has proven that he's not going to do that.

[Margaret] There were four people on the panel,

one woman and three men.

And we just gave our hearts and souls at that to say,

"Please don't allow him to be out on parole.

That, it just doesn't make sense."

And one man in particular

was just not paying attention to us.

He was not even looking at me.

I held up a picture of my mother

and talked about her

and talked about how important she was to our lives.

And this guy actually voted that he thought

he should be out on parole

and that he didn't even need an ankle monitor.

But the three other people, thank God, said,

"No, he needs to be living in a halfway house

and go to a program and wear an ankle monitor."

He literally wasú maybe a 20-minute drive

down the freeway, his halfway house.

And it's just amazing to think that this guy is so close.

Daniel Cahill had a job that he didn't like.

And he one day went to work, and just outside of the building,

he cut off his ankle monitor.

And he ran.

He took off.

There was a part of me that was concerned.

We fought to have him on that ankle monitor.

And so a part of me thought

he could be upset about this thing, you know?

So I was a little concerned for my family.

I was honestly concerned that he was going to come after us,

one of us in the family.

I found out that he escaped.

@ And this was when I wasú living away from my parents

for the first time.

@And so it was very, very scary.

All of a sudden it was,

oh my God, this man's still alive

and he's still capable of hurting us.

And he's gone.

We don't know where he is.

He could be at my doorstep any day.

I was so scared that he was gonna come seek revenge

on her grandchildren, on her.

I was so nervous for my mom.

I was really afraid of our safety.

We had just spoken,

@we just shared our full names in front of him.

And so I called the local news in Arizona

and let them know that he had escaped

so that we could give the public a chance

to be aware of what was happening

and maybe prevent another person from being killed.

I mean, it was the same conditions

that he killed my grandmother in,

where he was an escapee.

@ [news] Time now for another legal deep dive,

@ this time into the caseú of a convicted murderer

with multiple prior escapes from prison.

@[anchor] You have to feel for the victim's family.

@That almost being re-victimizedú again that this guy just,

you know, walks away from a house arrest.

No kidding.

@[Margaret] He went to the store and he got alcohol

@ and he went somewhere else and he got some drugs

@and the police couldn't find him for three days.

That was torture.

[Olivia] He was desperate. He didn't know what to do,

and that could have easily led to him

making the exact same choice of killing somebody else

in order to get his needs met.

[Kristen] Daniel Cahill ended up staying one night

in a Best Western hotel.

And when police found Daniel Cahill,

he was arrested without incident. He always is.

I mean, there's never-

Daniel Cahill never fights police.

He never fights going back to prison.

They ask him, you know, why did you-why did you

take off your ankle monitor?

And he tells them that he had smoked some pot

and he was worried, because this has happened before,

that if his parole officer found out that he had done drugs,

he would go back to prison.

So his idea was he didn't want to do that,

so he was just going to take off his ankle monitor and run.

He had acquired cannabis.

He knew he was going to test positive on his UA,

his urine analysis, he became overwhelmed,

and he cut off his ankle monitor,

and he fled for three days.

@ And if there were a listú of factors in a law book

when you are not to give house arrest,

Cahill would be pictured right there.

@I mean, it's just incredible.

@ You know, this is somebody who absolutely has

thumbed his nose at the legal system,

@ and I mean, there are a lot of questions here

for the Arizona Board of Clemency.

He's been given many chances to have more responsibility,

more freedom, and every time he's abused that,

and not been able to cope with what that means.

Cahill is as unsympathetic a character as you can find,

and if I had to take a wild guess

as to why he's had some support at parole hearings,

I would guess perhaps he's a con artist.

He's able to manipulate people.

Cahill is in custody again, but every few years,

he comes back up for parole.

So every few years,

Mary's family has to go to the parole board,

speak to them, write them letters,

make sure that they know that Daniel Cahill

should never be allowed to step foot out of that prison.

There's no way for Daniel Cahill to be out in this country,

in our society at all,

because he doesn't abide by our rules.

He does what he wants.

And mark my words,

if Daniel Cahill is allowed to be let out of prison,

he will, will hurt somebody.

[narrator] Almost 50 years later,

the loss of Mary-Rita still ripples through her family.

I don't know about the rest of my family,

but for me, I feel like I'm never going to find peace.

I think there was a point where I thought maybe

I had gotten over it,

but I'll never get over it.

And the fact that this person took my mom away from me

and from my family,

how do you get over that?

How do you find peace?

The fact that someone like me who never even met her

feels so much grief and so much anger

just shows how much this is happening today.

I mean, grief is not a linear process.

Grief does not go away.

And that also just shows how much love we all have for her,

that 40 years later,

we are all still thinking and talking about her.

Her legacy is one of happiness and joy,

@ bringing joy to others.

@ But it's a legacy of howúthings can go terribly wrong.

And that's a message, to live life fully,

to honour her life by living life fully.