Cold Case Files: Murder in the Bayou (2024) s01e05 Episode Script

(melancholy music)
- [Ina] Courtney loved
family get togethers
and she loved having friends.
Happy birthday to you
- They all loved Courtney
because she had that
bubbling personality.
(cheerleaders chanting)
- And I got the phone call
that changed my life forever.
- She was nude from
the waist down.
It was evident that
the body was posed.
(radio muttering)
- She let the person
into the house.
It's somebody she knew.
- You think of all
these horrible things
that go through your mind.
- Why haul her so
far away from home?
Especially with all
the bayous and canals
and stuff in Louisiana where
you could throw a body.
- I said, I'm gonna solve this
case or I'm gonna die trying.
- We never stopped.
We never stopped looking.
We never stopped
asking questions.
In all those years,
we never stopped.
(somber music)
(film reel clicking)
(helicopter whirring)
(flies buzzing)
(boat rumbling)
(birds shrieking)
(gators growling)
(film reel clicking)
(cows lowing)
- Winnie, Texas.
Small farming community.
It's all Texas Bayou country.
Rice, hay, cows, horses.
People go into swamps
and they hunt alligators
and they duck hunt.
Everybody knows everybody,
so you better not
do nothing wrong.
Our crime rate is low.
Most of it is a burglary
or farm equipment stolen.
You get a murder
once in a while.
(somber music continues)
- [Narrator] It's a
hot morning in Winnie.
Just north of town,
a farmer on his tractor
passes an abandoned building.
He spies a body in the
shadows and calls the police.
- I knew exactly where it was.
It was about 150 yards down
the street from my house.
The first thing that
went through my mind is,
whose child is it?
Is it one of my neighbor's kids?
I had no idea it
could be somebody
from outta state or outta town.
- It was very clear
that this was a body
of a petite young white female.
It was also very clear
that she had been dead
for some period of time
because there was significant
decomposition to the body.
- She was lying on her back
and her heels pulled
up to her body
so that her knees were up.
She was nude from
the waist down.
It was evident that
the body was posed.
- Who would wanna hurt
somebody to this point,
degrade 'em to this point?
That has to be a sick
individual who did this.
- [Glenn] There were some
tire tracks that led up
to where a car would
logically be positioned
to remove a body from the trunk.
- You're a quarter of a
mile from Interstate 10.
I figured it had to be somebody
who traveled that road
pretty frequently,
who knew that place was there.
If she was sexually assaulted,
wherever it happened, or
wherever she was murdered,
she wasn't killed there.
(somber music continues)
We were looking for any
other kind of identifiers,
any other way to
identify the victim.
And I noticed a class ring
from Alexandria High School
in Alexandria, Louisiana.
About 3 1/2 hours away.
There was a name printed
on the inside of it.
Courtney Coco.
I stepped outside the building
and I called Alexandria Police
Department in Louisiana.
(somber music continues)
- [Narrator] Courtney Coco is
a 19-year-old receptionist,
born and raised in Alexandria.
- It's a little small town.
It's a mix of a lot
of country folks,
but a little bit of
Cajun from down South.
It was an awesome place
to raise my girls.
- [Narrator] Courtney has
a house near the Red River,
a short drive from her mother's.
(birds chirping)
(somber music)
- My mom and dad had a
camp at Saline Bayou.
It was on a Friday,
3:30 in the afternoon.
Courtney came to my house,
and I asked Courtney
if she wanted to go
with us to the camp.
She said, "No, Mom, I'm
not the country girl."
And I gave Courtney $10 for gas.
She was gonna come
back and forth
and feed my two little dogs.
So we got home from the
camp late Sunday night,
and I noticed that my
little dogs didn't have
like their food,
but I really wasn't
concerned too much about it
'cause I just thought
maybe Courtney
had come earlier that day.
And Monday around lunchtime,
October 4th, 2004, the detective
from the Alexandria Police
Department called me
and asked me if
Courtney was there.
I said, "Courtney doesn't live
here, but this is her mom.
Is something wrong?"
And he said, "Possibly."
That's when I got the news
of them finding a body in Texas
with my daughter's
ring on the finger.
(ominous music)
- [Narrator] Alexandria
Police ask the family
for a way to identify
the victim as Courtney.
- I had told them that Courtney
had braces on her teeth
and that she had just got
a new butterfly tattoo
on her low back.
I didn't want it to be
someone else's child,
but I surely didn't
want it to be Courtney.
And I just remember
the phone ringing
and my sister saying it is.
And my mom said that I
passed out on the floor.
And that's all I
remember about that.
(somber music)
Courtney was the baby.
Her older sisters,
Lace and Heather,
would haul her around like
a little sack of potatoes
and, you know,
play house with her
and play doctor with
her or whatever.
- Courtney was a lovable child.
She had a curious
little nature too.
- [Stephanie] She
loved birthdays.
- She had wit.
- [Stephanie] I love it.
(bright music)
- Courtney was
very into baseball.
Then she got into cheerleading.
- [Cheerleaders] Team up!
- [Ina] Every time
we'd have get togethers
for holidays and stuff,
there was so much
laughter, so much fun.
- Courtney had already
taken some college classes
in her high school
because she wanted to go
into criminal justice.
Her sister, Lace, was working
at a dentist's office,
and Lace got Courtney a job
as the front receptionist.
(bright music continues)
Once Courtney got
out on her own,
now she's got friends
and boyfriend,
and she was dating
a guy named Jitty.
So we didn't get to
see each other as much.
- It was not long after that
where this all
happened with Courtney.
(tense music)
- On October 5th, 2004,
the Jefferson County
morgue did a autopsy
on Courtney Coco's body.
Dr. Brown had reported
that he thought the cause
of death was asphyxiation,
that she had been smothered.
- He immediately realized
that the advanced state
of decomposition was not normal
for the time from which
she had gone missing
to the time she was found.
- He said, well, she
had to be someplace
that was hotter than
the ambient temperature,
like in a car.
- There was no
drugs in her system.
There was no alcohol
in her system.
So we know she didn't OD.
Then there was no evidence
of sexual assault.
The way they posed the body
and disgraced her
and everything else,
it surprised me.
- [Narrator] Hoping
for more leads,
Alexandria PD searches
Courtney's house.
(tense music)
- There had been
a party recently,
I believe dominoes
were on the table.
There was some
things in disarray.
Her bedroom, the
bed was in disarray.
There was no
comforter on the bed.
- [Narrator] Under the bed,
police find an empty
Brinks security box.
- Investigators learned early on
that Courtney had
received a settlement
from the untimely
death of her father.
- The first thing
that law enforcement
tends to focus on is,
was this part of a a robbery
or a burglary gone bad?
- [Narrator] Missing
from the house
is any sign of
Courtney's cell phone
or her Pontiac Bonneville.
Detectives notice
something else is missing.
- What we did not find was
evidence of forced entry.
What that means is that she
let the person into the house.
It's somebody she knew.
The names that were written
on the dominoes scorecard
were Courtney,
Jackie, and Lewis.
- [Narrator] Police discover
Lewis is Jackie's boyfriend.
Jackie is a good
friend of Courtney's
and the sister of
Courtney's boyfriend, Jitty.
(tense music continues)
- According to Jackie,
Courtney had driven Jackie
and her kids around town
to run errands.
They went to get
something to eat.
They came back to her
house to play dominoes.
Courtney dropped Jackie off
at Jackie's house around
four o'clock in the morning.
Courtney received a phone
call from Jackie's brother,
Courtney's boyfriend,
Jitty, around 4:30.
- Jitty was Courtney's
off-and-on boyfriend,
and Jitty was known
in the neighborhood
as a possible dealer.
Money is a big
motive for murder.
That the Brinks box was open
and empty could indicate
that it was a potential robbery.
I mean, if he's an
on-and-off boyfriend
and he knows about the money,
he knows when her door's locked.
I felt at that point that he
may be involved in the murder.
(tense music continues)
- [Ina] They are big crawfish!
- [Stephanie] I know!
- [Ina] God!
- [Father] My baby
loves crawfish.
(child whoops)
- Anytime a female is killed,
one of the main ones
you wanna look at is,
who do you suppose,
husband or boyfriend.
- When I was finally
able to interview Jitty,
he answered one
or two questions,
but he answered 'em far
off into left field.
He kinda tapped
around any answers,
and then he just kinda
quit answering anything.
- [Narrator] Detectives
check into the stories
of Courtney's friends,
Jackie and Lewis.
They confirm the two were
dropped off at 4:00 AM.
(tense music)
- They also went
to a gas station
where we see Courtney
on video surveillance
with the clothes
on that were
found later in
her apartment.
She seemed like
everything was fine
in the video
surveillance.
- As far as Alexandria
Police were concerned,
the last person to see Courtney
alive was Jackie and Lewis
and their story checked out.
So in that regard, they're
excluded as suspects.
(tense music continues)
Alexandria Police
looked at Jitty
and he alibied out as well.
At that point, they're outta
people that they know were
with Courtney the day
she was last seen.
And they don't have any motive
that they know of for
Courtney to have been killed.
(bells clanging)
(tense music continues)
- I remember my sister saying,
"We need to plan her funeral."
And it was just terrible.
I mean, I was still in shock.
I was still in denial.
(tense music continues)
- The church, which is the
largest church in Alexandria,
the cathedral, was so packed.
There was standing room only
and people standing outside.
So many people talked
about how horrible the fact
that Courtney had been murdered.
- I chose most of
the pallbearers.
Anthony, Lace's
boyfriend at the time,
Courtney's daddy's
little nephew,
and a few of my friends.
I sat next to my dad and I said,
"Daddy, you're my rock.
You're my rock and I need you."
(somber music)
I don't remember what
happened exactly,
I just remember my mom and
dad had to leave straight
from there and go
to the hospital.
(siren wails)
- My husband, Nelson, had
a stroke at the graveyard
when we were burying Courtney.
He did get better,
but he never ever got to be
that Nelson Laborde
that he used to be.
He could not take the loss
of one of his grandchildren.
- [Narrator] While the family
mourns Courtney's loss,
that very same day,
detectives get a
break in the case.
(tense music)
More than 200 miles
away from Bayou Country,
someone is using
Courtney's cell phone
in a place where she has
no known connections.
Houston, Texas.
- At that time, pinging cell
phones was still fairly new.
Your cell phone
carrier can tell me
what tower is
servicing your phone,
so that tower can
track your location
and where you're
using that phone at.
It was traced to an
apartment in Allen Parkway.
Allen Parkway Drive was in
the Fourth Ward of Houston,
which is a pretty low-income
government housing neighborhood.
High crime.
And when we knocked on the
door, a lady answered the door
and we told her who we
were, why we were there.
And a 15-year-old male tried
to dart out the back door,
but the door was locked.
He couldn't get it open.
And we were able to get through
the front door and get him
and grab ahold of him
before he got out.
He had the phone
in his possession.
(tense music)
When we told him who
the phone belonged to
and what happened,
his jaw dropped and
his pupils dilated.
He told us, "I had no idea."
- The young man that purchased
Courtney's cell phone
described that
there were two men,
two Black males in
this green Bonneville,
that sold him the phone for $10.
- He said that he
had just bought it
from somebody off the street,
somebody named Tree and Red.
- [Narrator] Investigators
realized the green Bonneville
could be Courtney's missing car.
They put out an alert
through Crime Stoppers.
A tip leads them to a couple
living in the Fourth Ward.
(tense music continues)
(horns honking)
- Courtney's car was located
there in Houston early night
on October 13th, 2004,
which was almost two weeks
after her body was discovered.
- Two suspects were later found
in possession of Courtney's car
and in what law enforcement
sometimes term a
rent-a-rock deal,
which basically is you
have a stolen vehicle
and you rent that out for
drugs and other things.
- The Houston Police
and the Texas Rangers
drug the couple
into the police department and
they sweated 'em pretty good.
I mean, they sweated
'em really good.
And they both told
a consistent story.
They had traded some
drugs to Red for the car,
and they're just
gonna use the car
until Red shows
back up to get it,
which, of course,
Red never does.
- It got to the point real quick
to where I thought in my mind,
I need to speak
with Tree and Red.
I need to find out
how they got the cell
phone, how they got the car.
(tense music continues)
These two guys are key
players in this case,
and they need to be found.
(thunderous crash)
(somber music)
- Red's obviously
an important link
because Red got the
phone and the the car
from whoever's responsible
for killing Courtney.
- You've heard of a
needle in a haystack.
This would be like the eye
of the needle in a haystack.
I mean, you're
looking for two guys
and that's all you
know is Tree and Red.
- But the vehicle, of course,
could contain forensic evidence,
could contain all
sorts of things
that could lead us to
the killer or killers
in this case.
- The Texas State Police,
when their crime lab
processed the vehicle,
there wasn't any fingerprints
on the door handle
or the steering wheel.
It had been wiped clean.
And there was
bloodstains in the trunk.
When we got to the crime lab,
we sprayed it with luminol
and several spots glowed
in the carpet in the trunk.
- [Narrator] Technicians
compare Courtney's DNA
to the bloodstains.
One is a match.
(somber music continues)
- Finding Courtney's
DNA in the trunk
of her own car is significant.
It confirms that her body
was back there at some point.
- [Narrator] But the car
doesn't contain any clues
to who drove it to Houston
or who are Tree and Red.
- We never did ID Tree or Red.
It was a dead end.
It was just another
tip that went nowhere.
(somber music continues)
- I put my complete trust in
everything into the police
because they were all I
had to get me answers.
- The last time I
went to Alexandria
and I came back and
I told my sheriff,
"I'm getting absolutely nothing.
Alexandria was not helpful."
And my sheriff finally said,
"We've sent you
there three times.
We can't keep doing this."
- When Mr. David Rabalais
came into town to meet us,
and every time he
would talk to somebody,
he felt like they didn't
wanna cooperate with him.
It was kind of like a turf thing
and that bothered that
man and it bothered us.
- [Narrator] The pace of
the investigation slows
like the winding
waters of a bayou,
and the case goes cold.
(melancholy music)
- It was All Saints Day.
I took Stephanie
to the graveyard
to put some flowers
for Courtney.
- I kneeled on her grave
and I said, "Momma promises you
that I'm gonna find
out who put you here."
- That's what she needed to do
because she had to refocus
and she had to get back into
that mode, that fighting mode.
So Stephanie and I, along
with Lace and Heather,
we would get out in the
streets and hand out flyers.
We started hunting
and getting as many tips
as we could from people.
We put up signs.
We did everything we could do.
(somber music)
- I still have dreams and
nightmares of this case.
When I pull outta my
driveway, I can see the house.
It pops back in my mind.
Me and my girlfriend
have put flowers
on Courtney's cross
a couple of times.
The next day I leave, I may
remember the whole crime scene.
I keep asking myself, what
could you have done different?
(somber music continues)
- [Narrator] Determined to
solve Courtney's murder,
Stephanie looks for an
expert in cold cases.
- Hello everybody and
welcome to this episode
of Real Life Real
Crime the podcast.
And as always, I'm your
host Woody Overton.
I served over 20 years
in law enforcement.
I kinda made my bones off
of solving cold cases,
and that morphed into
investigative consultant.
The podcast got started
totally by accident.
My wife, she said, "Hey,
everybody loves your voice
and everybody
loves your stories.
You need to start a podcast."
I'm like, "What's a podcast?"
I said, "They
wanna hear a story?
I'll tell 'em a story."
- And I pretty much called Woody
and I begged him
to please help me.
- When I sat down with her
and listened to her pain,
it just broke my heart.
I said, "I'm gonna solve this
case or I'm gonna die trying."
(somber music)
This case is 15 years old now,
and I do not think
it can be solved.
I know it can't be solved
without the help of the public.
And we're going to
establish a hotline
where people can call in tips.
(phone rings)
It was approximately
September of 2019,
three weeks into the podcast,
when I received a telephone
call from a listener.
Tiffany said she knew
beyond a shadow of a doubt
who murdered Courtney Coco.
(tense music)
(tense music)
- Tiffany listens to
Woody, calls Woody's show
and says, "I know
something about
Courtney Coco's death."
- And so I was able
to contact her,
and she told me
that her ex-husband
was the killer's best
friend back in that day.
Her ex-husband's
name was Shamus.
- [Shamus] Hey, Mom.
- When this phone call came
in, it changed everything.
It was a great piece of
the puzzle to start with.
I asked Tiffany to do
the recording of Shamus.
I said, what if it
was one of your kids?
What would you do?
I didn't know if she
would do it or not,
but she wanted to
help and she did it.
(tense music continues)
- David Anthony Burns was
Courtney's sister's fiance.
When I first heard
the recording,
I was like, holy smokes.
It wasn't necessarily
the smoking gun.
Shamus coulda had
a beef with Burns.
You know, I had to work it.
But it was fire.
Then I was able to find out
that David Anthony
Burns was missing
that weekend Courtney
had been murdered.
A witness had called and was
asked to clock him into work
on that Saturday,
October 2nd, 2004
even though he wasn't at work.
And Burns said that he was
at the Dunes that weekend
which is a place where
they ride four-wheelers.
He was telling all
these different things
and none of 'em added up.
He was later picked up
in Lake Charles on Monday
by his mother, 50 miles
from Winnie, Texas
where Courtney's
body was dumped.
So this is a fluid act of
things that I'm stacking up,
stacking up for the
next three weeks.
(tense music continues)
- [Narrator] Woody sits
down with Stephanie
and the family and
breaks the news.
- I said, "Listen, what
I'm about to tell you
is gonna be so hard
for you to hear.
David Anthony Burns
murdered Courtney Coco."
- We were all kind of in shock.
Lace was literally
just traumatized,
like uncontrollable crying.
- It was very hard for
us to grasp the fact
that Anthony could
have done this.
Anthony and Lace lived together.
And he prayed with us,
cried with us, every time we met
and discussed Courtney's case.
- And even when we went
and erected the cross
in Winnie, Texas, he helped
us dig the hole to put it in.
- I couldn't believe
that he was a pallbearer
at Courtney's funeral.
That was really hard to take.
I guess that's why
it hurts so deep.
- The questions start coming.
So I then had to explain to them
that I couldn't go any further.
I had to turn this over
to law enforcement.
- [Narrator] Woody
turns over the recording
to the Alexandria Police.
A new set of detectives
take on the case.
(tense music)
- When they showed up to pick
Shamus up for questioning,
he said, "I've been waiting
15 years for this moment."
During the interview,
Shamus said
that David Anthony Burns
had told him he
killed Courtney Coco.
- [Narrator] Investigators
comb through the list
of tips reported over
the past 15 years.
They find several that
mentioned Anthony.
- The Alexandria
Police Department
did talk to two people
that said Anthony Burns
told me he killed Courtney.
They thought this is the time
to go talk to Anthony Burns.
- Lace damn sure remembers
what was going on the weekend
that Courtney disappeared,
and the story that she
gave was not the story
that Anthony Burns
provided the police.
According to Lace, she and
Anthony had been arguing
and fighting on Friday.
And Anthony gets mad
at her and leaves,
and takes the only car
they have between them.
(tense music)
- And she vividly remembers
that she saw Burns
for the first time after the
whole family was gathered
at Stephanie's house
after they learned
that Courtney's
body was in Texas.
- You got not one, not
two, but three people
that have said Anthony Burns
said he murdered Courtney Coco.
He has a connection
to Courtney Coco
and he's lied about where he
was the weekend she's murdered.
Not looking too good for
Anthony at this point, is it?
(tense music continues)
- There's no other possibility
in my professional opinion
than David Anthony Burns
murdering Courtney Coco.
(gentle music)
- Anthony Burns' alibi was,
he was at home with
Lace that weekend.
That's not the story she gave.
It was something
totally different.
- [Narrator] Police
bring Anthony Burns
back to the station
for a CVSA, computer
voice stress analyzer.
It detects tiny modulations
in a person's voice
when they lie.
- [Policeman] Okay.
(tense music)
- Anthony failed the voice
stress analysis test.
At that point, he decided
he didn't wanna talk anymore
until he conferred with counsel.
- [Narrator] The evidence is
mounting against Anthony Burns,
but police want more
to secure a conviction.
(tense music continues)
- Detective Tanner
Dryden went back
and combed meticulously
through all
of the leads that came in.
He found a witness by
the name of Jude Wilson.
- The night before the
body was discovered,
Jude's on the road
which has the abandoned house
where Courtney's body was found.
And there's a dark
four-door sedan
that backs out of that house
at 10:00 something at night.
He almost gets in
a wreck with it.
- He went to report this at
Chambers County Sheriff's Office
like the next day, and it
got lost in an investigation.
- Jude is contacted by Tanner,
what, 16 years
after this occurs.
And Jude said,
"Oh yeah, I remember it
like it was yesterday."
- [Narrator] Investigators
realize the description
of the car and the license plate
matches Courtney's
Pontiac Bonneville.
- Jude Wilson.
He's an artist,
and he's like, I could draw
you a sketch of his profile.
And he did it and sent it over.
And it looked just like
David Anthony Burns.
- When they put the lineup
in front of Jude Wilson,
he immediately picked
one picture out.
And that was the picture
of David Anthony Burns.
(tense music continues)
It really was a turning
point in the case.
Now we have something
that ties a suspect
to the body dump location.
There's a special
prosecutor in our area
that actually travels
throughout the state
named Hugo Holland.
And he is a hired gun
for district attorney's offices
in places that have
difficult cases.
- I set the case
up for grand jury.
It took the grand
jury, I don't know,
about three minutes to decide
to indict Anthony Burns
for second-degree murder.
And I walked out and said,
"Hey, here's the indictment.
Let's go get a warrant
and pick this guy up."
(tense music)
- Detective Dryden and his
partner went to Burns' workplace
and they took him into custody.
He just grinned.
He thought he was smarter
than everybody else,
and he thought he
was untouchable.
- I was at a red light
and my phone rang.
And Tanner Dryden said,
"Guess who I have in
the backseat of my car?
David Anthony Burns."
And I think I ran
through that red light.
I had to pull over, I was
shaking and crying so bad.
(somber music)
- Anthony Burns pled not guilty
to the murder of Courtney Coco.
- [Narrator] Prosecutor
Hugo Holland prepares
for a trial based
on witness testimony
without any physical
evidence connecting Burns
to Courtney's murder.
(tense music)
- I fully realized the
problems with the case.
I wasn't sure how strong
Jude was gonna come off
and I didn't know if the
jury was gonna believe
the three confessions.
I warned Stephanie
and Courtney's family,
we've got a 50-50 chance
of winning this at trial.
Let me go and explore a
possible manslaughter plea.
When I approached the
defense lawyer with that,
he laughed at me.
He said, "We're
trying the case."
And I said, "Well, okay
bitches, let's do it."
(somber music)
- Anytime you take a case
of this magnitude to a jury,
you never know the outcome.
- We finally got
our day in court.
Anthony would not
look us in the eye.
(somber music continues)
- [Narrator] Prosecutor
Holland brings
in his three witnesses
to testify that Burns admitted
he killed Courtney Coco.
- There was a skittish witness.
Did not wanna be there.
- When Shamus gets on
the stand at trial,
he doesn't exactly say
what was on the recording.
He tried to color
it a little bit.
- And then the third
one was a homeless guy
who I had to send Glenn
Younger with the state police
to arrest at a
shelter in Missouri.
And the witness looked
right at Anthony
and said something like,
"Anthony, you know
what you told me.
Why don't you get
up here like a man
and tell 'em what you told me?"
That got a reaction
from Anthony.
You could tell he wanted
to beat the guy up.
- Mr. Holland put
up on the screen
this silhouette drawing
that Jude Wilson
had drawn of Anthony Burns.
And then he does a
still frame of a video
of Anthony Burns driving
down the road in a car.
It really got the
jury's attention.
The defense attorney came
at it very aggressively.
How could you pick
someone from a silhouette
and pick 'em from a line up?
- The family,
they didn't know.
Here I guess they had a
certain amount of fear
that he was gonna get off.
(tense music)
- [Narrator] The jury
leaves for deliberations.
In a surprising move,
the 12 members return
in just over an hour.
- And I knew, just 'cause
I've done this more than once,
that a jury is not acquitting
somebody in 75 minutes.
- The jury came back with a
unanimous verdict of guilty
for David Anthony Burns
for second-degree murder
and the death of Courtney Coco.
- Anthony Burns was
dutifully convicted
and tossed into Angola
for the rest of his life.
(door buzzing)
- The trial, it was bittersweet.
Still to this day, I still
don't know how Courtney died.
I don't know where
Courtney died.
(somber music)
- I believe the motive was
Anthony Burns attempted
to have sexual relations
with Courtney that night,
and she spurned him
and he killed her.
(somber music continues)
- So what does he do?
Well, he uses the comforter
that was on her bed,
wraps her up, and puts her
in the trunk of her car.
As soon as the body
gets dropped off,
Anthony does what
Anthony's gotta do.
He's gonna show her, so he
poses the body like he does,
and then get on over to
Houston to get rid of the car.
(somber music continues)
- I will one day get
Anthony to tell me
what he really did to Courtney.
(somber music continues)
- The next day was
All Saints Day,
exactly 18 years to the day
that I kneeled on
Courtney's grave
and promised her I'd find
out who put her there.
I was on my knees
thanking the Lord
for bringing
somebody into my life
that actually helped me.
- Hey.
And that was Woody.
- It's so good to see you.
- My hero.
- Mua.
Still got your bracelet.
- Remember the first
day in your kitchen
when we took it on, right?
And you gave it to me
and haven't taken it all since.
You can still read it.
- [Stephanie] It says,
"Justice for Courtney"
and, "The Lord is close
to the broken hearted."
- Right.
It just means a lot to me.
And then at some point I know
I gotta take it off, right?
But I can't make
myself do it yet.
(somber music continues)
- Oh, this is so precious.
- [Stephanie] I know.
- She had
I think about Courtney
every moment of my day.
- [Ina] That is my
absolute favorite.
- Courtney brought lots
of joy to our lives.
She's teaching him how to dance.
- [Ina] Oh, that's just Lace.
- Even though she was only here
for 19 short years,
she did a lot.
She touched a lotta
people's lives.
- [Ina] 'Cause that was
the last time I saw her.
- Hmm.
- And you know
- I felt a calling to
be a victim's advocate
for people that didn't have
nobody in their corner.
I do it because Courtney pushes
me forward to keep going.
And I feel like with
me helping others
that her death wasn't in vain
because that's what she
wanted to do was help others.
(somber music continues)