Original subtitles

At an age of pushing boundaries...

I'm fine, mom, really.

She thought she knew everything,

not really understanding how naive she is to the world.

It's hard to know when you've stepped too far over the line.

She was deciding if she needed to listen to mom and dad

and willing to pay the consequences.

What do you want from me?

At that time, it was a very remote area.

It's not a road that a lot of people drove.

Until suddenly, there's no turning back.

I heard her scream...

...and I knew something had happened.

He was very, very paranoid.

He felt that she needed to die.

Santa Cruz, California, is surrounded

by some of the most stunning natural vistas on earth.

But beneath the breathtaking beauty

and the city's vibe of peace and free love

lies a violent, ugly underbelly.

The Santa Cruz mountains are a heavily wooded

and a very steep affair.

Some of the more remote parts of it, which are still,

to this day, very hard to get to,

are areas that attract people

who don't want to be around other people,

who don't want to be around law enforcement.

Still, inside the city limits,

Santa Cruz remains a close-knit community.

And for 19-year-old Linda jozovich

this is a wonderful place to call home.

Linda was the middle child of five girls.

All my sisters played Bobby sox softball,

but she, I think, is the one that carried the athletic gene,

if you will, in our family.

Hey, dad.

Linda was very athletic.

How was the game?

It was good.

I hit a triple.

Down the right field line?

You should have seen it.

My father was working,

so he wasn't able to attend a lot of the games,

but he supported US.

All of my sisters were very close to my family.

How about we celebrate?

You and me, 49ers, redskins tonight.

Dad, I would love to, but I have to work,

and then afterwards, Sandy and I were going to catch a movie,

but how about a game this weekend?

It's a date.

Love you.

I love you, too.

It was so comfortable.

With five girls in the family,

the jozovich house is always buzzing --

most recently, over the wedding of the eldest daughter, Cathy.

! Hello! -There she is!

Goodness.

Doesn't she look beautiful?

My wedding was a big deal.

I was the first one of five girls to get married.

It was such an honor for all my sisters to be part of that.

Cath, my gosh.

I love it!

I want a dress like this when I get married.

You should just wear this one.

You should just go to school and finish school first,

don't you think?

-Yes, mom. -Yeah...

At that stage in her life,

Linda was looking to find out who she was,

discovering what she wanted out of life,

who she wanted to be when she grew up.

May I have this dance?

But of course. Anything on your day.

She was just getting over that hump of crappy teenagehood,

deciding if she needed to listen to mom and dad

or not listen to mom and dad,

having the chutzpah to not listen to them

and willing to pay the consequences.

Though she still lives at home with her parents,

Linda finds independence in going to work each day.

I had just left mervin's department store

to have a grown-up job.

I got her a job to take my place,

essentially, at the mervin's in Santa Clara.

-Hey. -Hey.

How's it going?

Good.

But I swear, every time we have a sale here,

it's like a tornado hit the place.

I know, right?

I'm gonna go get more hangers. I'll be right back.

Can I help you?

Um...I'm looking for something for a friend of mine.

What did you have in mind?

Good question.

This is cute.

Um...

I'm having trouble imagining...

Imagining it.

Would you mind trying it on for me?

Excuse me?

You're the... Same size and...Weight.

Um...

Unfortunately, I have to go put away some merchandise.

But I hope you find what you're looking for.

The day ticks by, and Linda stays busy at the store.

Around 7:00 P.M., it's time for her meal break.

Hey, have you had your break?

Not yet.

You should go, then.

Alright. I'll be back in a few.

Okay.

Watch where you're going!

Sorry.

She went out to her car to get change that night

so that she could get something out of the soda machine at work.

You just don't expect anything to happen.

15...

An hour later, Linda's 30-minute dinner break is long over.

Her co-workers are wondering where she is.

Back at the jozovich house,

Linda's mother, sue, is about to learn

that her daughter has gone awol.

Hello?

What do you mean?

She would never have just left work.

She would have been reamed, but she would have come home.

She left early?

Did she mention --

okay.

Yes, no. Thank you.

Alright, bye-bye.

The next morning, I got a phone call from my father,

who said, "have you seen Linda?"

And I said, "no. Why?"

He said, "well, she didn't come home last night,

so we're just trying to figure out where she might have been."

I said, "nope. I haven't heard anything."

As another day passes with still no word from her,

Linda's family knows it's time to bring in the police.

Your daughter's 19. She's not a minor anymore.

There's basically nothing I can do at this point.

I think the hardest thing in the first few days was

not having police help.

Please. You have to do something.

Trust me. I know. A mother knows.

Ma'am, I'm sure your daughter is absolutely fine.

It's okay. It's okay.

We were just simply told that we couldn't put

in a missing-persons report for 72 hours.

We didn't know where to turn, who to talk to,

how to move forward to try to find her.

Linda's family has no idea

of the horrors the 19-year-old is experiencing.

Held captive in her own vehicle,

Linda has been taken miles away from everyone she holds dear.

Who are you?

On a seemingly normal night at work,

19-year-old Linda jozovich is brutally abducted by a stranger.

Now, miles away from anyone who could help her,

she's at the mercy of a mysterious man.

Who are you?

What do you want from me?

He drove her up into the Santa Cruz mountains

in an area that's right off of highway 17 and black road.

At that time, it was a very remote area.

It was not a road that a lot of people drove.

My family is going to miss me, you know?

They'll get worried.

They'll come looking for me.

Let them try.

Back in Santa Cruz,

there's been no sign of Linda for 72 hours.

And her parents, once again, turn to police for help.

The first few days were really hard,

and it's mostly because you feel lost.

You don't know what to do or where to go or how to proceed.

Does she have a boyfriend?

-No. -Yeah.

I mean, nobody serious.

I'll need a list of her friends and anybody she may have been

in contact with before she disappeared.

Of course. We'll get everything we can to you.

Just... Just find out daughter.

We're going to do our best.

With Linda missing for three days,

Santa Clara county sheriff's officers

know she could be anywhere by now.

So they start by interviewing any known customers

in the days leading up to her disappearance...

I was with my friends the night that she disappeared.

You can call them.

Why don't you walk US through the last time

you were with Linda.

Well, I saw Linda by the store

when I was hanging out with a group of friends

...and those who have returned to the store in the days since.

The rumor is that you like

lurking around shopping malls.

Is that true? -Is that what you heard?

I was lurking?

I don't know. You tell me.

I was shopping.

Linda never complained about anybody stalking her

or creeping her out,

but I know that she did have a lot of...Suitors.

As detectives hit a dead end with interviews,

Linda's family does all they can to keep up the search.

We had a printing company make fliers for US

and spent time going out and searching,

looking at places where she would go to regularly,

talking to people, whether we knew them or not.

You're just looking.

You're just doing what you know to do.

Soon, it's more than just family looking for Linda.

Once the police got involved, the search changed

in that we felt supported.

We had people volunteering to do search parties,

people we didn't even know, greater numbers of people.

But the Santa Cruz mountains go on for miles and miles,

and Linda's abductor has already taken her well out of reach.

He pulled off the side of the road

that goes to a little, tiny reservoir.

No! Stop!

Take your hands off me!

And it's a remote area.

It's a lot of poison oak -- a tremendous amount of poison oak.

No!

Stop!

Please!

He pulled her out of the car and just beat her --

just absolutely beat her mercilessly.

As days turn into weeks, Linda's family clings

to the hope that she's still out there somewhere.

I understand that, detective,

but there's got to be something more you can do.

I just...

Okay.

Alright. Um, thanks anyway.

I-I appreciate it.

Thank you.

Dad?

Anything?

For about 2 weeks, we spent a great deal of time

gathering people and being very formal

about creating search parties and crossing places off the map,

and then my mom decided it was time for US

to all get back to the real world.

With no leads in the case, Santa Cruz county officers

have no choice but to move on.

In this case, we had zero physical evidence.

I want to assume it's murder, but I figured,

I don't have a lot of time left to prove

that this is worth doing 'cause we were pretty busy.

Days, weeks, and then years plod on

without any updates on the whereabouts of Linda jozovich.

It's been almost 6 years since the bright-eyed 19-year-old

first disappeared.

I think the longer it went on,

the more literal confirmation there is

to the fact that she's not going to be coming home,

and so then you just want to know what happened.

You just want to be able to have some resolution.

Just a few miles away from the jozovich home,

in a beachy Santa Cruz neighborhood...

Hey, mom, it's me.

How's it going?

...17-year-old Lois sigala is settling into her summer home

with friends.

How are you?

I'm fine, mom, really.

We were pretty close.

Lois was 16 months older than I was,

and then Monica, the baby.

Lois was rambunctious. Lois was free-spirited.

She loved art, painting.

She loved to draw.

Did you get the postcard I sent you?

We did. I absolutely love it.

That summer, she was staying with her father in Nevada city.

Isolated -- a teenager -- and she couldn't handle that,

so she wanted to be with the Santa Cruz crew

that lived out there and to be free.

I just...I worry about you, that's all.

I'm fine, mom, really.

Look mom, I got to go. I'll call you tomorrow, okay?

Okay. Alright. Well, I love you.

At that age, she thought she knew everything

and knew how to survive,

not really understanding how naive she is to the world.

Hey!

This is my friend Terry.

Hi, Terry. Nice to meet you.

I'm jeanine.

Lois went by the name jeanine.

It was just kind of a nickname that she had gotten somehow.

She just thought it sounded like a cool, beach girl name.

It's nice to meet you, jeanine.

Hey, let me introduce you to the rest of the gang.

Yeah, sure, that sounds like a good idea.

She met Terry just through the beach crowd.

He was a big guy, a tough guy that appealed to the girls --

especially the young girls.

"Here's this big, strong, bad dude

that'll be the one that takes care of US."

As the night wears on, a house party quickly gets underway.

But Lois isn't into it.

She was pretty conservative as far as activity

because we did grow up in a good, balanced home.

That's what we grew up with, and that's what she was used to.

So she didn't stray far into the activity

of that crowd in Santa Cruz.

Lois, being introverted, makes some people uncomfortable,

including Terry Childs.

Something wrong?

No.

I'm just thinking about home.

Yeah, I think I, need to get some air.

Do you want to go for a ride?

Sure.

We'll see you later.

Claire thought Lois had been messing around

with her boyfriend.

So her revenge to Lois was to tell people her name was Lois,

not jeanine.

Because of the name -- with going by jeanine over Lois --

Terry thought that Lois was a police informant,

and the rumor on the street

was that he just committed a big cocaine rip-off.

It's a hot summer night in Santa Cruz, California,

and 17-year-old Lois sigala,

who sometimes goes by the name jeanine,

is eager to learn more about the alluring young man she just met,

Terry Childs.

Hey.

So where are we going?

I know the perfect place.

Problem is, Terry's convinced

he already knows too much about her.

He found out that her name was not jeanine, but it was Lois.

He thought that she was undercover,

and that's when he decided to take Lois up into the mountains.

Santa Cruz is beautiful -- the redwoods and the mountains.

That's probably what really attracted Lois to being there.

What Lois doesn't realize

is that this isn't a romantic getaway.

Who'd you tell about me?

Excuse me?

Look, I know you're a cop, Lois.

He truly believed that she had spoken to the police

about a crime that he had committed in the past

and was very, very paranoid about this.

Let's go.

You're kidding, right?

I said, "go."

You're going to wish you never met me.

But I-I didn't.

I'm not...

I wonder where jeanine is.

She's already got a mom, you know?

Don't sweat it.

Probably out having a good time somewhere.

You're probably right.

Deep in the Santa Cruz mountains,

Lois is in a fight for her life.

She just kept telling him, over and over again,

that, you know, she would never hurt them,

that she loved them,

and he was high on drugs and did not believe her.

And that's when he decided to kill her.

Back home in sunnyvale, Lois' mom, Pamela,

is eager to hear how her daughter is settling in.

But two weeks after Lois left,

she is surprised to learn that her daughter is missing.

What?

What -- what do you mean she never came home last night?

That's -- that's not like Lois at all.

When Lois didn't come home,

I tried to make myself believe that maybe she got arrested

or was just with friends, maybe.

We all piled up into our vw bus

and went looking for her in Santa Cruz.

Lois' family checks in with her roommates.

I don't know.

Well, then, is there anyone else that might have seen her?

Not that I know.

They stop anyone on the beach and all around Santa Cruz

who's willing to talk.

She's about 5 foot 6.

She has hair, it's about my length,

kind of blond-ish brown.

Darkness falls without finding a soul who has insight

into where the quiet 17-year-old girl may be.

Meanwhile, in another Santa Cruz neighborhood,

the parents of 19-year-old Linda jozovich

are still grieving for their own daughter,

who disappeared nearly six years ago.

In all the years that followed, each one of US sisters, I think,

and my mom and dad as well, handled it differently.

They looked at what may have happened

and held on to it in different ways

and processed it differently.

I've heard people say,

"you just want to close the chapter in that book."

And it's like, "I don't want to close that chapter."

I just want there to be an end to the story.

That's all I want.

Then, two weeks after

17-year-old Lois sigala disappeared,

her family makes a shocking discovery.

A newspaper had come out that there was a body

found in the Santa Cruz mountains

and there was a description of the female,

the woman that was found.

The description sounds an awful lot like Lois,

but it's not until police reveal an item found on the victim

that Lois' mom knows for sure.

The young woman we found was carrying this photograph

in her pocket.

Those are my girls.

Yes, ma'am.

Can you excuse me just a minute, please?

Just take your time.

No.

No!

No!!

I heard her scream, and at that time...

...i knew something had happened.

Until Lois' killer is brought to justice,

her family will never have closure.

It all hinges on how well

Terry Childs' secret can be kept.

They knew. They all knew.

They knew on the street.

When you're in that community, word goes fast.

Even law enforcement knew.

After 17-year-old Lois sigala is found shot to death

in the Santa Cruz mountains...

...investigators are counting on her roommates

to provide information about the night she disappeared.

Can anybody tell me where -- where Lois went?

Last person you seen her with?

Anything?

And sure enough, they can.

Young woman: The last I saw, she went off with Terry.

That was the word on the street.

"I hope Terry Childs didn't get his hand on her.

He's a cancer of the earth."

As detectives probe further,

it's not long before they get a bead on Childs' location.

There's a park where a lot of the guys hung out,

Terry and his crew, and they knew.

They knew where he was.

That night, Childs is brought in for a formal interview.

I try and learn everything I can

about the person I'm interviewing.

And in this case, it was a lot.

Terry Childs has been in prison

or in some kind of custodial environment

since he was, I believe, 11 years old.

He was a known nuestra familia gang member,

though he was completely and totally white,

which says something about him as a character in prison.

He is, what I would describe, as an apex predator.

So, um, what time did you drop Lois off that night?

I don't know.

Like, 1:30 in the morning.

I took her to the beach house.

Well, how come her friends didn't hear your car?

Didn't see her?

I guess they were sleeping.

But they weren't.

With no alibi and a violent criminal record,

detectives dig deeper into their person of interest.

Soon, evidence against Terry Childs towers over him.

Investigators find traces of Lois sigala's skin

under his fingernails

and Lois' blood inside his vehicle.

In march 1987, Terry Childs is convicted

of the first-degree murder of Lois sigala

and sentenced to 41 years in prison.

I feel like justice was served.

They wanted to know what we wanted for him --

if we wanted life in prison or the death penalty.

And, for me personally, I feel like the death penalty

would have just given him an easy way out.

As Lois' family tries their best

to put this tragic chapter behind them,

another Santa Cruz family,

that of Linda jozovich still aches for closure.

Where are you, baby?

Through all those years that we were waiting,

I had just sort of left it up to god.

And so I just continued to pray about it.

My mom went to see a psychic,

hoping that that would give some revelation

as to where we should be looking.

Eight more years pass without any sign of Linda.

Then, just when it seems that this secret will stay buried

in the Santa Cruz mountains forever,

a mushroom hunter, walking along the Lexington reservoir,

stumbles across something disturbing.

He found a lower jawbone and some ribs

that he believed were human.

Hold on.

Hello, this is sue.

After DNA tests confirm

the remains belong to Linda jozovich

her parents can hardly believe it.

What? What?

What, what, what?

My baby...

No.

S-S-Sue...

At least they understood

that she was dead and wasn't out there,

so it put a period on that particular chapter.

It's not a chapter that is forgotten,

but it definitely gave them a piece of the puzzle

they didn't have before.

No, no.

Still, Linda's parents have no idea

how her body ended up so far out in the woods

or who to blame for her untimely death.

Meantime, inside a salinas valley state prison cell,

guilt is weighing heavily

on a convicted killer, Terry Childs.

Terry was very upset by Linda.

He thought that she would come back to his cell

and just stand there and look at him.

He absolutely felt a sense of remorse.

He knew that poor girl should have never died.

As Childs continues to fight his demons, the years keep passing.

More of Linda's remains are found,

but the mystery of who killed her and why lives on.

They recovered the skull, or part of the skull,

and maybe some more bones, but her entire skeletal remains

were never completely recovered.

Then, 28 years after Linda jozovich's murder,

detectives are made aware of some jailhouse gossip.

I was working in the detective division

as a jail crimes investigator,

and there had been rumors

that Terry Childs had mentioned that,

at some point in time in the past,

he had killed this girl.

We only had the rumor that Terry Childs had done this.

So we'd gone down there specifically to talk to him.

How's it going, Terry?

How do you think it's going?

I need to ask you some questions about a murder

that took place years ago.

Her name's Linda jozovich.

Never heard of her.

Would you mind if I showed you a photograph?

Pretty girl, right?

He was a career criminal,

so I spoke to him like a career criminal --

in words that he understood, in ways that he understood.

Her mother has cancer.

She would love to know what happened to her daughter

before she dies.

If you know something about Linda, Terry, let me know.

Not for me -- for her poor, sick mom.

I basically told him, I said, "I have no evidence.

I have nothing.

I have a mom who wants to know how her daughter died --

and why she died, more importantly."

And I said, "you're the guy who can tell her."

Shouldn't have happened.

What shouldn't have happened?

28 years after 19-year-old Linda jozovich

was brutally murdered way out in the California wilderness,

police suspect an inmate at salinas valley state prison

could be her killer.

Shouldn't have happened.

What shouldn't have happened?

We had zero physical evidence --

nothing that ties Terry to the crime or the crime scene at all.

This is our only chance at this man.

We're not coming back.

We're not going to get to come back.

Just tell me what happened.

I didn't stalk her or nothing.

She was just there.

Where was she?

Outside the store.

He was walking past the car that Linda jozovich

who had just come out of the store,

was getting into -- her car.

Terry had just visited his mother

and had gotten into an argument with her over who knows what --

I can't remember --

and left her house in an absolute black rage.

He was so angry.

Linda jozovich happened to be in the wrong place

at exactly the right time for Terry Childs.

And he goes, "I hit her so hard,

she didn't even know what happened."

It's then that Terry says he pushes Linda

into the passenger seat of her own vehicle

and drives her high into the Santa Cruz mountains.

There, along an isolated stretch of highway 17,

Terry gives in to his darkest desires.

No! Stop!

Take your hands off me!

He goes, "I took my belt off, and I strangled her.

And then I stabbed her until I got tired --

until my rage was gone,

I basically beat her, stabbed her, and hurt her.

Just hurt her a lot."

Linda never had a chance.

And as she takes her final breath,

Terry comes up with a plan to keep his secret safe.

He pulled her off the side of the road

down into the bushes and left.

And he took her car into downtown San Jose,

where he abandoned it.

Detective breuss can't believe his luck.

Suddenly, he's got a full confession

in the 28-year-old murder of Linda jozovich.

But can it be true?

It wasn't her fault.

She was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

It could have been anyone.

He gave US, in great detail, how he committed that crime.

There was nothing on the table for him.

This was genuine emotion.

This was genuine remorse from him.

On October 12, 2007,

Terry Childs confesses to first-degree murder

and is sentenced to life in prison without parole.

At long last, Linda's family

gets the call they've been waiting for.

It's over.

There was a sense of relief

that he wasn't going to be able to do anything else,

but it just was such a foreign concept to me

that somebody could take someone's life,

particularly in the way that I knew

that he had taken my sister's life.

I don't know how to categorize his anger or his actions.

He's just a sick man.

What's more, Linda jozovich and Lois sigala

aren't the only victims of Terry Childs.

In April 2017,

Childs pleads guilty to murdering two more young women,

one of them also in the Santa Cruz mountains.

There are certain people in this world that only know one hammer,

and that's how to kill people.

Terry Childs is one of those.

I can't go back and fix Terry Childs.

There is not enough of the king's horses

or enough of the king's men to fix Terry.

He is who he is and will die who he is in prison.

And he is that scary, but my role in society

is to protect society from people like Terry Childs.

Even behind bars,

Terry's connection to Linda jozovich endures.

When we took him to court, he asked if the family was there,

and I thought he was going to throw up, he was so nervous.

He was so afraid.

He was so affected by what he had done to that family

that he was embarrassed to actually stand before them.

And inasmuch, he had written a letter to the family,

specifically, and gave it to Cathy silva.

He actually wrote a letter to my mom

and apologized to her in that letter

and talked about

if he could change places with my sister

that he would, to make it better.

But he hoped that by letting her know how sorry he was,

it would help her to heal.

For years, Cathy lived with the knowledge

that her sister's killer was still out there,

unaccountable for his crime.

Finally, in 2017,

10 years after Childs confessed to Linda's murder,

she decides it's time to reach out.

After my dad passed away, this February, this last February,

and it seemed like it was a good time to enable myself

to walk what I've been wanting to do for a long time.

I told him that I needed to forgive him

and wanted to offer that to him,

that it wasn't my place to judge,

that I wanted him to find peace

knowing that this family, at least,

was not bearing...

...hard feelings.

I have closure.

I know...

...the beginning, and I know the end,

and that's what's important.

And yet, it doesn't make it any easier for Cathy

and the rest of the jozovich family

to move on in a life without Linda.

She missed out on my kids and my sisters' kids...

...graduating from high school and college.

She just missed a lot of things.

I wish more that my mom would have been able to...

...just be able to say goodbye to her.