-[suspenseful instrumental music plays]
-[flames crackling]
[woman] This is just a couple of days
before Lena went missing.
Just...
[chuckles softly]
She was like, "Oh, I look so horrible."
I'm like, "No, you don't."
"But thanks for taking the picture
with me."
She looks beautiful.
I mean, she had no makeup on.
She was just, you know, Lena.
Obviously, if I would've known
what my mom was capable of doing...
I miss her.
I miss her so much it kills me.
[theme music plays]
[suspenseful instrumental music playing]
[animal calling in distance]
[woman]
My sister Lena went missing in 2006.
She was living in an apartment
with her boyfriend Jason.
I showed up randomly one day,
but Lena wasn't there.
And Jason, he said,
"Oh, your sister took off with a boyfriend
to Florida,"
and I'm like, "I don't...
I mean, how?"
And he's like,
"Well, that's what your mom said.
That's what Sandy said happened.
She said she ran off with, uh,
some guy to Florida."
It just seemed crazy.
She didn't take any of her clothes.
Lena didn't take any of her photo albums,
and she had a lot of pictures.
That was her thing,
she'd take pictures of everything.
And she would not have left her son,
Colter.
She loved her son.
She loved him very much.
She wanted to give him the best.
Lena wouldn't have left without him.
As soon as I heard that my mom had Colter,
I knew something was wrong.
I knew my mom had done something.
[man] Lena was reported missing.
And when I interviewed
other family members,
they told me that Lena's stuff
just sat out on the back porch
of the house,
uh, till it got basically ruined.
She had a son here that she loved.
So, to me, that's not a story
of someone moving to Florida
and leaving most of your possessions
here in Missouri.
And so I reached out to Brandi,
Lena's sister,
to learn what happened, uh,
the day she disappeared.
And she told me in great detail
about her childhood growing up,
about what that was like.
And she told me her theory
of what she believed happened to Lena.
[suspenseful instrumental music continues]
[bugs chirring]
[Brandi] We were poor all our lives.
We really had to struggle.
And mom was always the one that worked.
She never let us go without food.
I mean, our whole childhood,
you know, she's like,
"We gotta stick together
and we'll get through it."
My mom was a good mom growing up.
She was very straightlaced.
Never done a drug,
smoked a cigarette, alcohol, nothing.
My whole life. She just wasn't like that.
And she would always tell us
every single night,
"God bless you and love you."
[voice wavers] Every night.
That's the mom I remember,
and I miss that mom, so much.
But... what can you do?
There were six of us:
me and Lena,
Robin, Jeanne, Rachel, and Rosey.
I'm the oldest, so...
Lena was the second oldest.
I was the good one.
Lena was the more ornery.
[Robin] Lena was more of the take charge,
kinda, tell us what to do.
Try to boss us around.
She was a mouthy little thing.
A scrapper, sometimes.
I mean, we always got in each other's way
and each other's faces,
but everybody liked her.
[man] She was really, like,
a bubbly, fun person.
She had a really positive attitude and--
and she talked really fast.
She was very outspoken.
You didn't have to think
about what was on her mind,
it just came out.
Lena was more the one that...
always got in trouble.
Man, we fought so much growing up.
My mom would be like, "Take it outside."
But we'd never touch each other's face.
That was the rule. [chuckles]
We never hit each other in the face.
[Robin] There was a lot of hard days.
There was a lot more hard days
than there was easy days.
I think the hardest part
of growing up for me is...
not knowing what's gonna happen next.
Where we're gonna be living.
We moved around a lot.
I remember when I was young,
my mom would meet different people
wanting--
She'd be with one man,
and then she'd start a job or something,
and she'd meet someone else
and then they'd sneak around,
and she'd leave that one
and hook up with this one and...
And then...
we'd all be loading up and moving in
somewhere else, with someone new.
She used her sex appeal...
a lot.
And that's a lot of the reason why men...
gravitate towards her.
And she never did stay
with one particular man
for more than two years.
And she always went after
the married ones.
Or...
ones that had brothers.
[man] I'd been divorced and single
for quite some time
and Sandy and I,
we went on a date or two, and...
and, uh, that's how we got acquainted.
But anyway, I'll describe Sandy,
she's damn good at having people around,
and saying the right thing, uh...
Good talker, she really was.
She was very good, um...
at telling people what they want to hear
and whatnot.
[Brandi] I was ten
when her and Albert got together.
Albert's a good dude.
Albert was a really good stepfather to us.
Mom was going to school to be a nurse.
So she was never home.
And Albert raised us.
Albert was more of the--
more the fun, laid-back type.
He put us in gymnastics and aerobics
and, like, we got to play sports.
And I do remember going to the river
and stuff with Albert
and doing fun things like that.
I was pretty close to them kids,
but, you know, like I say...
I was married to...
Sandy there and...
first two or three years wasn't too bad,
but, uh,
then she got to fooling around
and I didn't know quite who it was and...
it ended up being Gary.
My brother.
Yup.
Me and him had a little fist fight
down there, on the ridge and...
he b*at the tar out of me
and I b*at the tar out of him and...
I had him pinned down there,
at one point and...
Sandy walked up behind me
and hit me in the back with a damn stick.
Knocked the breath out of me.
But I finally talked to Gary
and I told him, I said,
"Man, I'm-- I'm done." I said...
"That girl ain't nothing but trouble,
you'd better leave it alone."
[cow moos]
[mooing]
[Brandi]
We all left Albert's home in Arkansas,
and we moved back to Missouri
with his brother, Gary.
Our lives completely changed
when Gary come into our lives.
We had to work our butts off.
I mean, we cut wood,
-had chickens, cows, horses.
-[chickens clucking]
They weren't gonna feed themselves,
so, we were taught to take care of them.
He made sure the girls were involved.
Each one of them
had their own little chore.
And when they were done, he'd take
all them into town for ice cream.
He just enjoyed kids, you know,
and kids enjoyed him.
The kids always loved to see him coming.
[Brandi]
We lived with him for three years.
And he taught us things
that I'll never forget it.
-I'm disciplined.
-[cow moos]
I don't depend on any man
to do anything for me.
And, um, I value that.
Gary's a good guy. He's a good guy.
Just got mixed up with the wrong person.
And that's it.
[man] Sandy has a pattern of behavior
of jumping from one man to another.
And then once she's got him,
she gets bored with that guy
and she moves on to the next guy.
So, Gary and Sandy are living a life,
and then after a few years,
this cycle begins again,
where she's married to Gary,
and then she notices
somebody named Kris Klemp,
who's much younger,
some would say more handsome.
And he comes from a family
that's got quite a bit of money
and they own quite a bit of property.
And it becomes clear that
Sandy is no longer interested in Gary,
and she begins having an affair with Kris.
[Robin] I met my mom's boyfriend, Kris,
and I'm thinking,
"Oh! Gary's gonna whip his little butt."
You know? [laughing]
[chuckles]
Kris was like a little bitty twig.
I mean, Gary was the whole tree.
[Jeff] Gary was country.
He was a homebody.
But at the same time, I mean,
he wasn't stupid.
And Gary didn't wanna deal with Sandy
running around there on him.
I could tell he was hurt more than...
than mad.
He called me one day to tell me that
Sandy had been running around on him,
but moreover he had been arrested
for passing bad checks.
And he had figured out
that Sandy had passed those checks,
and he was very upset about that.
He said,
"I'm gonna have to file for a divorce."
And then, the next thing I knew of
was that Gary went missing.
[Albert]
He was a hard worker, he really was.
And Gary never missed work
'cause he couldn't afford to miss work.
So when he didn't show up to work,
you know there, a couple days,
we knew something was bad... bad wrong.
Immediately to--
to everybody that knew him,
we wasn't looking
for Gary being gone somewhere,
we were looking for-- for Gary's body.
And I had to talk to the sheriff
because Gary brought a g*n
over to the house one day.
He said,
"Take this g*n, put it somewhere."
He said, "She let on like she was gonna
k*ll me with that." You know, and...
He told me, he said,
"She actually stuck that in my belly
and pulled the trigger."
But I broke it open...
and it had a shell in it.
I said, "You said this wasn't loaded."
I said, "It's got a shell in it."
And he said,
"I always unload my g*n after I sh**t it."
And I said, "Well, you didn't this time,
because it's still in there."
So I took my pliers out of my pocket,
and I went to pulling it out.
The powder started spilling out of it,
and I said, "Gary, this is a live round."
When I showed it to him,
the look on his face,
I ain't never forgot it.
It dawned on him
that she stuck that in his belly
and pulled the trigger.
He said, "If that had been a good shell,
I wouldn't be standing here right now."
That's the last time that I seen him,
was that day.
[man]
I was contacted by Robert McCullough,
who told me that he was concerned
that his cousin Gary was missing
and something bad had happened to him,
and said that he had not been seen
by anybody in the family
for a couple of days.
[whinnying]
I went to Gary McCullough's house
to see if somebody was at home.
Noticed that one of Gary's cows was out.
And we were in the process
of putting the cow up,
when Sandy McCullough
and her daughter, Lena, pulled up,
wanting to know what we were doing.
When I asked her if there was anything
that I needed to know about
that might be happening in her life,
she said, "Well, yeah,
I've been meaning to call you.
Um, my husband has gone off
and he's not been home for two days."
[calf mooing]
She told me
he was going to Diamond, Missouri
to buy some fighting roosters.
I asked her if she wanted to make
a missing person's report.
And she said that
she probably needed to do that.
We left and I had Gary McCullough entered
as a missing person.
The following week,
I obtained a search warrant,
and we went back
to Gary McCullough's house.
Sandy wasn't happy that we were there,
but we spent quite a bit of time
at the house,
and made some pretty startling
discoveries.
I don't believe we found any clothes
that belonged to Gary McCullough
in that house.
I don't think we found anything
that would indicate
Gary was even ever living there
or was planning to come back.
[man] But there was a checkbook
belonging to Kristopher Klemp.
And...
we find out
that Kristopher is a boyfriend of Sandy.
I believe after two days
of the investigation,
Kristopher Klemp moves into the house
with Sandy.
Which was strange.
Immediately after this thing started,
I asked Sandy to take a polygraph.
She looks me straight in the eye,
and says, "You find a body,
and I'll take a polygraph."
I knew at that point,
we're gonna have to go through
a needle in a haystack
to try to find a body.
[Brian] I wanted to interview the kids,
just to see what they thought
had happened to Gary.
Lena, who was 13 or 14 years old,
was very hostile.
It was obvious that she was very close
with Sandy,
and she was very defensive of her mother,
and very antagonistic towards us.
It was just very obvious
that mom ruled the house,
and Lena was the number two person.
And when Lena told the younger kids
to do something, they did it.
[Robin]
I remember going into a room with--
I mean there was a whole table
full of... people.
They were asking me questions.
I remember my sister Lena was telling me
and my sisters
to be quiet
and mind your own business and...
we weren't supposed to talk about
what happened when Gary went missing.
[Brandi] My mom had us lie for her
our entire lives.
Always, always. Didn't matter what it was.
So we never talked about it.
Never.
I remember that day.
It's like it happened yesterday.
I'll never forget it.
Never, for the rest of my life.
When got home from school,
my mom, she met us at the door.
And she's like,
"Girls, a cat had kittens in the field.
Go, look for 'em."
Every one of my sisters went,
except me, I had to milk cows.
After a minute passed by,
I was sitting on the porch, and I'm like,
"Mom, I've got to get inside the house.
I've got to.
I gotta get my supplies to milk cows."
Finally, I'm like,
you know what, I'm going in.
And I see her on her hands and knees.
She was scrubbing the floor
with what appeared to be bleach water.
She had shorts on
and her hair back in a ponytail.
She never wore her hair in a ponytail.
It was strange.
And then, that night,
my mom sat us all at the kitchen table
and said, "Hey, listen, girls,
if you are asked from anybody,
Gary went to go buy a fighting rooster
and you guys had spaghetti that night
for dinner,
and you haven't seen him since.
It's what it is, what the story is.
If you say exactly what I'm telling you,
everything will be fine."
[hinges squeaking]
[Robin] That night, Sandy told Lena
to make sure none of us
come out of the bedroom.
And Lena had fallen asleep
in front of the door,
and, even as young as I was,
I still remember something wasn't right.
And in our room there was a window,
and I seen Mom and Kris struggling,
trying to carry,
trying to pull something big.
I mean...
It was Gary, no doubt, but...
you know, he was wrapped up in something.
You could see his--
the boots that he had had on, but...
It scared me, bad.
I didn't even talk about it
until I got much older and...
I was able to talk to Detective, uh,
Epperly and Martin about it.
But at the time, Lena was telling us,
"You can't say nothing about what happened
to Gary 'cause, you know,
if so,
they're gonna take you guys from me,
and they're gonna put you guys
in a bunch of different foster homes
and, you know."
Lena's biggest thing was
she didn't want us to be separated,
'cause she figured if we were separated
then we'd never see each other again.
And she couldn't let that happen.
I had to keep what I knew quiet.
Gary went missing in May
and we moved to St. Louis, all of us.
We only stayed in St. Louis for a year,
then moved to Sligo, um, the next August.
Sandy and Kris, they got married
while we were in St. Louis.
[cows mooing]
When we first moved to Sligo,
Lena was working a couple different jobs,
and still living down in Sligo
with my mom.
She became more, I don't know...
on edge.
She became more distant.
[Josh] There was two sides to Lena.
For the most part,
she wanted, like,
the little house out in the country,
and-- and the family and stuff.
But on the other side of it,
like when I met her, we'd go to parties.
She wasn't into the dr*gs and stuff.
She wouldn't even drink.
But later on, she got into that stuff.
You could tell there was something...
that pulled her that way,
you know what I mean?
But back then,
I didn't really realize what it was.
She just lost herself for a while.
You'd catch her staring off to space,
and you'd ask her what's wrong,
and then, you know,
you could tell
she was really thinking about something,
because, you know,
she'd be tearied and she'd...
dry her eyes and...
brush it off like nothing had happened.
She was really lonely.
And you can tell that.
I think she had come
to the point in her life
to where she needed to talk about
what she was holding inside.
[Richard]
Ultimately, Lena confided in a boyfriend
and he was persuading her, saying,
"Lena, you know, you've got family
over there that need to know something.
If Gary's never gonna be coming home,
if he's gone and you know it,
and you know what happened,
you're gonna have to tell them."
She said, "Okay," you know,
that she would, she would tell Albert.
She liked Albert.
He had been her stepdad,
you know, before Gary was,
and she thought a lot of Albert.
[Albert] Something wasn't right with Lena.
Something...
was eating at that girl so bad,
she just had to get it off her mind.
When Lena come talk to me there,
she was 17 years old at the time.
I had a brand-new recorder, and, uh...
I asked, uh, Lena there,
after we'd talked a little while, I said,
"I wanna know
who in the hell k*lled my brother, Gary."
She was telling me the truth.
At a young age like that,
she wanted me to know,
she wanted to just get it off of her mind.
I mean, that girl,
she sat there and talked to me that night,
and she was trembling, just shaking.
And, uh...
she wanted me to know
what happened to Gary.
'Cause she known.
[Albert] Sandy just trusted her more
than she did them other girls,
thinking, maybe,
wouldn't nark her out because,
you know, that was her mom.
She didn't wanna get her in trouble,
but she...
knew it wasn't right,
what her mom had done.
[Richard] When Albert recorded that tape,
I thought, here was proof,
direct proof from somebody
who knew what happened to Gary.
It was a good feeling to know,
you know, we had this.
There wouldn't be any denying it.
And we called the sheriff,
and he came and picked it up.
[Albert] Who k*lled Gary?
[Lena] Mom.
[Mick] Steve McCullough, attorney,
contacted me about the recording.
And I think, "Okay, we got the case now."
I mean, there's as about
as good a confession, you know.
The next day, Sandy's lawyered her up.
[Albert] Lena was supposed to come back
in a day or two, and come to find out,
her mom had found out
she'd come down and talked to me.
They both lawyered up.
I wonder what-- what the hell
you'd need a lawyer for?
Guilty, guilty, guilty.
[Andrew] A lawyer that was hired by Sandy
convinces Lena
to walk her confession back.
And so,
what does the confession really mean?
I mean, you've got it taped.
But if the subject themselves
is walking it back,
ultimately, it's just another claim.
It's a he-said, she-said situation.
[bugs chirring]
[Brian] This is the kind of case
that will just keep you up at night
and will drive you crazy,
because I honestly think I know
exactly what happened to Gary McCullough.
I think I know exactly who did it.
I think I know
how Gary McCullough was disposed of.
And... there's nothing I can do,
because knowing and proving
are two different things.
[Albert] When Lena come forward,
you know, put a little hope in it.
But it just went cold as cold, you know?
It-- It was hard, real hard.
Because, um...
I know who k*lled my brother.
Ain't a doubt in my mind.
[Brandi] It's just weird.
Your whole life, you're believing that
your mom could never hurt a single soul.
So, I had questions for many years.
Is she really capable of m*rder?
And then one day, I was with Lena,
she just opened up to me.
She told me the story about...
how mom k*lled Gary.
-[g*nsh*t]
-[fork clatters]
[body thuds]
And I'm like, "Are you kidding me?"
I didn't know what to say, but nothing.
Next day,
I got in a fight with my mom.
I got so mad at her.
I mean, I was calling her names.
I was-- And then I threatened her,
"I'm gonna call the police
and tell them every single thing you did.
I know."
And she just looked at me, and she said,
"Get in the truck."
[engine starts]
So I got in the back of the truck,
up against the truck bed,
and we took a drive.
It was the middle of the night,
it was really dark.
All of a sudden,
we stop in the middle of the road,
and Kris gets out.
[door opens]
I look over to my right-hand side and...
there's a g*n facing at my head.
It was the scariest moment
I've ever had in my life.
And I jump over the bed.
All of a sudden,
I find myself looking at my mom.
She can see me screaming,
and she never even looked at me.
She looked straight ahead
like she was dead to the world.
[breath trembling]
[voice breaking] It was so hard,
because I didn't know what to do.
If I ran, she would have--
they would have k*lled me.
I didn't know where I was.
So...
I did what I thought was the best idea,
and it was.
I said, "Well, maybe her door's unlocked.
If her door's unlocked,
I can just get in with her
and hold her,
'cause he can't sh**t both of us."
And I did, and it was unlocked,
and I just grabbed her so tightly.
And I said,
"Please don't let him hurt me."
She, for like, I feel like forever, but--
probably about ten seconds or 20 seconds,
she's like, "Don't hurt my baby."
[breath trembling]
When she said that, he put the g*n down,
got in, and we drove back to her house.
[suspenseful instrumental music playing]
Before that night,
I never would have thought
she could've hurt anybody.
[bugs chirring]
After that moment,
I didn't wanna say nothing
'cause I didn't wanna risk my life.
And that's what Lena did.
After she made the confession,
she never said anything again.
[Robin] A little later on,
Lena had her son, Colter.
And that was it. That was her priority.
I mean, she wanted to give him the best.
And after that, she didn't want
to talk about what happened to Gary.
She just wanted to work
and provide for him,
and so she got more jobs
than she could probably handle.
And so,
Sandy would take care of Colter
while Lena would work.
[Brandi]
Lena was done being a child or a teen,
and time to grow up.
She was gonna settle down, raise her kid.
She was doing really well for a few years.
[reporter]
A lot has changed at the Barry County Farm
where Gary McCullough once lived.
In 1999, his wife said,
"He went out to buy chickens in Diamond,
and never returned."
His stepdaughter, Lena,
was 13 at the time.
A few years later,
she visited one of Gary's brothers.
He taped the conversation
where Lena allegedly said Gary,
her stepfather, was m*rder*d.
Great evidence, but that has not produced
a criminal charge today.
[Andrew] By the point we get to 2006,
Lena had plans of getting married.
She's finding a man
that could be a role model for her son,
and she wants to become
financially independent of Sandy.
But, ultimately, Lena being independent
was the greatest thr*at to Sandy.
Because if Lena
is fully independent of Sandy,
then Lena can say what she knows.
So, there's this rising tension
between Sandy and Lena
that really hits a peak
when the lawsuit is filed.
It was becoming clear
there wasn't a criminal case, uh, filed,
and maybe never gonna be filed,
for Gary's death.
So, we decided to file a civil case
for the McCullough family.
It was the only thing we could do,
you know,
for somebody to say they're responsible.
We were alleging wrongful death
and that Sandy and Kris Klemp
k*lled Gary McCullough,
and that Lena was,
in effect, an accessory.
She conspired
and helped get rid of the body.
Uh, and, by reason of that,
I thought, uh, there was a good chance
Lena would get immunity
for her own actions
in exchange for providing testimony
against the people
who were truly responsible.
That was the hope.
As it turns out,
it didn't work out that way.
[Andrew] When Gary's daughters
filed their civil lawsuit,
and Dent County deputies deliver
the court summons,
they find Kris and they find Sandy,
but Lena's nowhere to be found.
And so they ask Sandy,
"Well, where's Lena at?
We need to deliver these court summons."
And so Sandy tells this story
that Lena had run off to Florida
and she was down there with some guy.
[bugs chirring]
[Brandi] When Lena went missing,
mom had told me
Lena went to Florida with another guy.
I was hanging out with Lena at the time.
I knew who she was seeing
and who she wasn't.
And there was no guy from Florida.
My mom was telling us
that Lena said bad things about us.
And didn't want nothing
to do with us anymore.
So, we're just waiting
to see if she came back.
Then, after time had passed,
there was no sign at all of Lena, nothing.
And then, it's like,
"Okay, now we have a problem."
[Albert]
They called and told me Lena was missing.
First thing that popped in my mind...
was Sandy.
'Cause Lena-- Lena knew enough, could--
buddy, she coulda had the keys.
I mean, locked up.
And Sandy wasn't gonna have that.
Lena could've...
busted the whole thing wide open.
[Robin] I was able to talk to, um,
the cops and I told them that...
I knew my mom had done it again.
I knew she had done something.
I posted missing person flyers of Lena
around Salem.
But I found out my mom was paying
my little sister five dollars a piece
to take 'em down.
Why would someone pay
to have their daughter's
missing person posters taken down?
And so, later on, I called her.
I called her on the phone, and I told her,
I said, "You know, I know...
I know you're the reason Lena's not here.
You know, you messed up this time.
Now it's one of my sisters." You know.
Um, "I'm gonna be the one that finds out,
one way or another,
whether it's Gary or Lena,
I'm gonna be the one that finds out
and makes sure you rot."
And she...
put her little fake voice on
like she always did,
and she was like, you know,
"How could you say that?" You know.
"I'm your mother,
don't talk to me that way."
And I told her she wasn't nothing and...
then I hung up.
[Brandi] I've told both detectives
from Barry County,
the reason why Lena went missing
was because Lena made a confession tape.
And because of the trial that was coming,
my mom was scared.
Even though Mom had drove her
to recant her confession,
what would make her think
that she wouldn't...
just follow through with it
now that she's of age and able to?
Mom knew if Lena was gone,
Mom would get what she wanted
by not being exposed
for the m*rder of her ex-husband,
and she would also get her son.
[Rick] Based off of my interviews
with Brandi and Robin,
I believe Sandy had two motives
for making Lena disappear.
Lena helped make Gary disappear.
She had first-hand knowledge
of what happened.
And if Lena talked,
what that could potentially do.
Also, she had a son, Colter,
that Sandy desperately wanted.
So much that Sandy would, by accounts,
make him call her "Mom."
[Robin]
When my mom found out Colter was a boy,
like, everything changed.
She started becoming more obsessive
and possessive.
She tried taking over control of Colter,
because she's always wanted a boy.
She had six girls.
She wanted Colter to be hers,
and she had it in her mind
that she was Colter's mom.
[Brandi] My mom,
she knew that if Lena was gone,
she would finally get the rights
to her son.
So when Lena went missing,
my mom filed abandonment charges.
Lena wasn't there to defend herself,
so, the court was like,
"Well, she ain't here, so...
I guess she is abandoning her child."
My mom knew that she wasn't gonna
show up for court.
She just knew, so...
she got it, she got what she wanted.
[suspenseful instrumental music playing]
[Andrew] At trial, the jury saw
Sandy's own children take the stand
and implicate her in a m*rder plot.
Brandi's testimony at the trial
was particularly powerful,
because by the time
that this trial is held,
she is fully independent of Sandy.
[Brandi] And I stood in court
for two hours, you know,
and I'm like, "Listen, I can tell you
every single thing that happened.
Like, my mom and Kris pulled a g*n on me."
That was a big step.
I didn't think I would ever
be able to go against my mom like I did.
And I did, and I felt good about it.
'Cause I think those family--
the family of Gary...
um, it's important for them
to have some sort of peace.
And I think-- I thought
I was the only person to give them that.
[Albert] When Brandi got up there,
a friend of mine was in there
the whole time,
and he said he seen several of them jurors
wiping tears out of their eyes.
Ultimately, the verdict in the civil trial
was that Kris and Sandy were found liable
of knowingly taking the life
of Gary McCullough.
[Brandi] I haven't seen Colter
since he was in kindergarten.
Colter's living with my mom.
He was homeschooled for a long time,
'cause mom didn't want him
going to school and finding out...
that-- what the truth is.
But when he's old enough,
my sisters are definitely
gonna tell him the truth.
I can't stand
that she wakes up every single day
smiling and raising my nephew
like her own.
And my sister is not able to do that.
And that breaks my heart.
Now that my sister is gone,
I will spend every single day of my life
trying to put my mom away.
I'm not afraid.
I can't be afraid.
'Cause if I was afraid,
there'd be nothing done.
I will spend every single day of my life
trying to find Lena.
We know that Kris and Sandy
had access to two properties.
We have a Sligo property
and then we've got an 80-acre ranch
north of Salem.
[Brandi] This is where my mom and Kris
lived when Lena disappeared.
She's not stupid. She's not stupid.
Wherever Lena's at, it's gonna be hard,
very, very hard to get to.
-[bugs chirring]
-Laundry room door was there.
The mudroom.
And...
this... it was just...
it was right here.
I know it was.
[sighs]
It was a well, it was a hand-dug well...
that had stones lining up on the sides.
It would've been right here.
[sighs]
And it just, it's not here no more.
And I don't...
I don't understand why it's not.
I think it's been filled in.
She filled it in before she moved.
[Robin]
A couple of months after Lena disappeared,
Sandy had moved to this property.
She was showing me this property.
We were walking up
from the pond to the house,
and she had pointed out the four trees
in front of the house,
saying that she had buried her dog,
Toby, there,
which was weird,
because she had told me
that she had buried the dog
at the old house,
on top of the hill, under a tree,
before they moved.
I automatically thought that, I mean,
there was something not right about it.
It didn't make sense.
My first thought was, "Why is she
changing her story now? Like...
Could Lena be there?"
I don't know.
[Brandi] So if my sister's in there,
are you gonna be able to tell me today,
or not?
[man] Unfortunately, no.
What I would hope to accomplish here
is to narrow down for Detective Letchworth
a focus-in area
of where he would need to investigate.
[Brandi]
But it's worth checking out though, right?
Absolutely. It's, you know,
it's always worth investigating.
Sure.
Okay, thank you.
[Robin] After all these years
of Lena being missing,
they finally decided
to take a ground scan tool
over the area that didn't quite
sit right with me before.
I hope...
we can find some answers.
[Rick] Robin, uh, her theory
is that's where Lena is buried,
is on the new farm, here in Dent County.
And so, if what I'm told by Robin is true,
we should be able to see a disturbance
there in the ground.
And the ground-penetrating radar
should give us a good indicator of whether
we need to dig there, or not dig.
-[Brandi] Is he getting something?
-[Robin] I don't know.
[Robin] It's hard.
It's hard not having a mom,
or my sister, Lena.
But, you know,
I just really want Lena to know...
[voice breaks] ...that I love her.
[breath trembling]
That I'm proud of her
for keeping us all together.
I know if it wasn't for her,
we wouldn't be.
[sniffles]
[Brandi] There's not a time that goes by
I don't think about Lena.
I miss her so much.
If my sister could hear me right now,
I'd tell her I love her.
"And just know I will always
try to find you, you know?
I will never let anybody just forget you."
And that's what I'm trying to do
with Lena.
[bugs chirring]
[theme music playing]
01x06 - Missing Witness
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Documentary format to profile real-life mysteries and featured re-enactments of unsolved crimes, missing persons cases, conspiracy theories and unexplained paranormal phenomena (alien abductions, ghosts, UFOs, and "secret history" theories).
Documentary format to profile real-life mysteries and featured re-enactments of unsolved crimes, missing persons cases, conspiracy theories and unexplained paranormal phenomena (alien abductions, ghosts, UFOs, and "secret history" theories).