Gone (2017) s01e01 Episode Script
Field of Broken Dreams
1 [Door opens.]
We have his baseball jersey in here from little league when he played.
Texas, 2, Daigle.
The experience of not knowing where your child is and if he's okay, it's really hard.
You can't sleep at night.
You're constantly looking.
I want to be very careful with what I say.
He started to turn into somebody else.
Samantha: Your mind goes to the most horrible places.
This was a repeated thing for 10 years.
Tracie: I'd see somebody that could possibly look like him.
I would follow him.
And then I would have to explain myself to them, "I'm not crazy.
I'm just trying to find my son.
" Tracie: The last day that we remember seeing Chris was November the 7th.
He went to school that morning.
My mom took him.
My mom said Chris was depressed and he was tired of going to school every day and being told what to do.
Are you okay, Chris? Yeah.
I'm all right, Grandma.
I'll see you after school, honey.
He just wasn't happy, and that wasn't like him.
Narrator: A junior at high tower high school, 17-year-old Christopher daigle was one of the popular kids.
Chris was tall, handsome.
I mean, always dressed nice and cute and definitely a head-turner, always could make you laugh.
All the guys wanted to hang out with him and the girls most definitely, they wanted a chance to be with him.
I'm trying to keep from using "smart-ass," because that's the best term to describe him.
He had this way about him to where he could, um, suggest something with a smile and then that was it, everybody was like, "Yeah, yeah, that's a good idea.
" Narrator: And no one knows Chris better than his grandma Wanda, who he has been living with since he was three.
Tracie: She could take better care of him than I could as far as financially.
She spoiled him rotten.
She got him motorcycles, four-wheelers, three-wheelers.
Anything he wanted, he got.
She ended up getting him the K5 Blazer, which he loved that.
She really took care of him.
Samantha: He loved his grandma.
He could be mad as the devil at her, but he'd have never left her.
Never.
Narrator: The night after Wanda dropped Chris off at school, dinnertime comes and goes, but Chris never shows up.
We thought he was just spending the night with some of his friends and that he would just come home the next day, and usually, if he didn't come home, we didn't worry.
He was always with his friends.
The following morning, there's still no word from Chris, and calls to his cell phone go unanswered.
His family reaches out to his friends, starting with Brittany Parker.
Brittany: Chris went to school that day and then he had come by my house for a little bit.
His state of mind wasn't anything out of the normal for him.
He left.
He went over to our friend Ashley's house.
He got a phone call that, "Hey, you want to go do this or that?" And he said yeah and he was picked up by his friend, Ricky.
Hey, hit my house first.
Got you.
Samantha: And everyone saw a truck pull up, and he got a duffel bag, threw it in the back of the truck, and they took off, and that was the last time anybody saw him here other than his friends.
Narrator: His good friend Ricky says he and Chris drove to the nearby mall to hang out.
Hey, man.
Take a look.
Jen: Ricky had just said that they'd seen some girls there.
Want to go talk to them for a little bit? - You going to hang out? - No, I've got to go.
You sure? They wanted to leave and go some place, but Ricky's mom called him, told him he had to come home, so Chris left with the girls.
I'll see you later, okay? All right, have fun.
Narrator: But no one knows anything about these girls, not even their names.
Tracie: Nobody seemed to know where he had gone.
I'd hear of other people missing.
I never thought it would happen to me.
Chris was always so much fun, always playing and running around, and he was a daredevil.
When he was like three years old, he would try anything.
He didn't like the word "No.
" If you'd tell him no, he couldn't do something, he was going to do it just to show you he could do it.
Definitely 100-percent all-boy.
[Thwack.]
Tracie: He started playing baseball when he was five years old, and he was on select teams and then he went to high school and he played on high tower high school baseball.
Chris was very talented.
I was very, you know, happy and just always bragged about how good he was.
Heads up.
You know you only get three strikes, right? One, two, three, and that's it.
Yeah, sure.
Bring it.
He would have got scholarships.
I mean, he was he was really good.
Tracie: Chris would dream about it, running and telling people, "No, he's out at first base," and just I couldn't believe that he could have a baseball game in his sleep.
Narrator: But in the summer before his senior year, Chris' major league dreams are shattered.
Tracie: There was an incident where somebody threw a bottle and it hit Chris, so Chris got mad and threw it back and it hit the coach.
That was it.
Threw him off the team.
Brittany: When he got kicked off the baseball team, that was that was devastating for him.
That was, like, world-crushing.
Are you okay, Chris? Yeah.
I'm all right, Grandma.
Okay, honey.
You kind of saw this light in him kind of start to dim a little bit, and he changed.
He started to turn into somebody else.
Tracie: He really didn't associate with his friends as much as he did after that happened.
He was hurting.
Narrator: The following day, Chris doesn't show up to school at all.
Brittany: It wasn't, like, concerning.
It wasn't a big deal.
Okay, so he skipped school, or, you know, he's doing something else.
When I go home, I call him, he doesn't answer.
Call him a couple of more times, he doesn't answer.
Started talking to some other friends.
"Okay, well, where is Chris? Has anybody seen him? No? Nobody's spoken with him? That's not right.
" Jen: I remember my grandma calling me and I was just like, "What do you mean, missing? Like, he ran away?" That's what I figured it was.
Narrator: Some of Chris' friends think the duffel bag suggests he was leaving for good.
Jen: When he lost baseball, he was sad and he was mad and angry and he was like, "I'm moving.
I'm going to leave, I'm going to run away.
" Zavala: You know, you have to think about the mind in adolescents, in 16 and 17.
Something minor in their world is huge and they feel like they can't handle it anymore.
Samantha: I thought he just took off.
Just him and his friends were going to go to the beach for a few days.
He was just going to haul ass for a few days and then he would be back.
Narrator: But according to Chris' friends, in the months after getting kicked off the team, his behavior changed.
I want to be very careful with what I say.
He started to to make some decisions that I know that he wasn't super proud of.
He started to party a lot more.
He didn't care so much, because the one thing that he really was passionate about was kind of stripped from him.
Narrator: But if Chris is running away from his problems, he has no idea the trouble he is heading into.
Samantha: People are crazy.
They are crazy.
You just don't know.
Tracie: It was Saturday morning when Chris didn't come home, so my mom called the police department, and they were telling her to wait and he would probably be home.
Well, he didn't come home, so then she went to the police department and got them to take a police report and they were telling her that he probably just ran away.
Robb: The police department thought he ran away because he liked to go with his friends.
He would sometimes check in with his mom or grandmother, but sometimes he didn't.
You think he's just going off blowing off some steam and he's going to come back home.
Narrator: Other friends think something more complicated had been going on with Chris ever since he got kicked off the baseball team four months earlier.
He didn't really know how to deal with it.
He didn't have the best coping skills.
He said he was going to run away just because so many things were going on.
Narrator: But Chris' family refuses to believe he would leave without a word.
They just truly acted like he just ran away.
And like I said, he would never run away, never.
He might get mad and leave for a couple of days, but he'd be back.
I went looking for Chris everywhere because when he didn't come home, I thought something happened to him.
He could have been hit in the head and was laying in a ditch, and it was cold.
I went around to the creeks and ponds and ditches.
I had poison Ivy on me.
I made posters and put them up at the different stores.
Jen: I remember meeting up with her and us going all over the place hanging posters, for missing person posters.
"Have you seen him? If so, please call us and let us know.
" A part of me just felt like it was kind of kind of a waste of time, you know? I didn't feel like anything bad had happened to him, you know what I mean? I felt like, um In my mind, I was still having a lot of hope.
Narrator: But there is one family member who may have spurred Chris to leave town.
Jen: I'd have to say Chris and my dad were probably the closest.
Out of all his kids, Chris probably loved him the most.
Narrator: Chris' parents separate soon after he's born.
Jen: Chris wanted that perfect story the house life, the home life you see on TV, you know, where you have a mom and dad that love you.
No matter how much he would say it didn't bother him, he didn't care, he's happy where he's at, he'd done it killed him inside.
Brittany: Chris' dad was in prison for an extended period of time, so that brought a lot of anxieties for him.
Inmate 46895.
Jen: Drugs.
It was always drugs.
He would go to prison, he would be there for years.
When he would come home from prison, he was just, "Oh, Daddy loves y'all.
I miss y'all so much," You know? "I'm going to do this, I'm going to do that.
" Empty promises.
As soon as my dad got out and got back into the life, my dad was ripped out of Christopher's life again.
It was just a neverending cycle.
There's a thin line between love and hate.
Narrator: Just a few weeks before Chris disappeared, his father is scheduled for release from a Texas state penitentiary.
When he was supposed to be getting out of jail, that's when Chris was telling me, "Dad's coming home, I don't want to see him.
You know, I'm just tired of everything.
" Narrator: Maybe Chris ran away to avoid seeing his father, but according to Chris' family, after his release, his dad moves to another town in Texas.
As the days morph into weeks, the urgency to find Chris mounts.
Robb: Detectives did everything they could.
They put flyers out, they got dental records, they obviously talked to the family a lot.
The kids at school, they had to go talk to and interview.
How long have you known him? He was in high school, so you could imagine how many friends he had and who he hung out with.
I mean, I'd probably say he's Brittany: Some of the rumors were that he went to Missouri, that he met somebody online.
Tracie: One of them was that he ran away with some of his friends to go to Oklahoma.
Another one was that there was another friend that moved north somewhere and that he was with him.
Brittany: One person told me that, no, that he had gotten into it with some bad group of people or whatever in our area and they had gotten into it and so they had taken him.
Samantha: Everything grew and changed and this little bit would get thrown in here and that little bit would be thrown in there, and it makes you crazy.
It it makes you crazy.
They followed up with leads and they talked to everybody, but it seemed like it was going down a lot of different rabbit holes.
Narrator: As weeks pass with no sign of the teenager, Chris' family believes there's only one explanation left.
Samantha: Just that somebody did kill him.
That's the only thing why he wouldn't have come home, and that was always in my mind, that somebody did kill him.
That's what we couldn't figure out.
Who was his enemy? Who would have wanted him dead? Tracie: We kept his Christmas presents.
We put them in a box and put them up in the attic, just thinking, you know, if he ever came home, we could give them to him.
It was rough.
I mean, gosh.
Grandma kept Chris' room just the way it was.
I mean, for the longest, no one was allowed to go in there.
"You better not walk in that room, don't touch his door.
Just stay out of there.
I want it just like he left it when he comes home.
" Tracie: It was really hard for my mom because she was so close to Chris, and it took a toll on her as far as her health, too.
She deteriorated, you know, from the worry and constantly looking for him and just everything she that's all she did.
Narrator: While Wanda never stops hoping her grandson will walk through the door, Chris' mom and aunt are convinced he's been murdered.
That's what we couldn't figure out.
Who was his enemy? He didn't have too many enemies.
Like, who would want him dead, or who would not want him around? Maybe my dad owed somebody money.
Somebody could have taken it out on him, you know, through the drugs, through that lifestyle.
Maybe he was trying to do something for my dad and pay off a debt to save my dad's life.
Zavala: You have to remember, Missouri City is very close to Houston.
Even though it's small-town, has that feel, Missouri City is not void of gangs, not void of drugs, just like any other big city.
Look who's coming.
Tracie: When police were going through the computer, they found something about a gang in the area by the school.
I talked to some of his friends.
His friends said that, well, he had said something to, like, the leader of it.
Samantha: He said what was on his mind and had a temper.
He would definitely let you know when he was mad.
Narrator: So far, there's no evidence to support any theories about potential enemies, but Chris' state of mind on the morning he went missing suggests another tragic explanation.
There were a couple of conversations where Chris had talked about, you know, the idea of not waking up again or, um, just disappearing, not wanting to be here anymore.
Because he lost such a large part of his identity when he got kicked off the baseball team, you know, there were some really intense times where he was suicidal.
Zavala: On paper, it made sense that he had it in him to hurt himself.
Didn't make sense to mom, because as a parent, you don't want to think that, right? You want to find your kid.
You don't want that as your final answer.
I would sit at work, and in the downtime, I would go on the missing persons web sites and I would look for the unidentified bodies and see if any of them could be him.
Were they in the right age range? Were they male? What date did they go missing? Until you actually have that body and actually know, you never lose hope.
You never lose hope.
Missouri city finally said that there was too much too many different stories.
They couldn't confirm anything.
So they basically turned it into a cold case file and they just stopped trying to do anything with it.
You work it for so long and there's nothing else you can do.
If you have nothing, you have nothing.
Where do you go? What do you do? His favorite color was blue, and my mom collected blue vases and things and put it around his picture.
I like the angels, like guardian angels watching over Chris.
I felt bad for my sister with all this, because, I mean, that's her son.
That was her firstborn.
It's unreal, the roller coaster of emotions that we had to endure during this.
Tracie: In his work gloves and not baseball gloves.
Always wanted to be different, setting trends.
He said he could get a better grip on the bat.
Samantha: Mentally and physically, it took a toll on her, and she changed.
Honestly, I think it changed us all.
Tracie: We even went to psychics.
I really didn't believe in psychics, but I would try anything to find my son.
She told us some really interesting things, where Chris was with three guys.
They went down a long dirt road.
There were no lights.
There was a tree line.
There was an altercation.
Chris was shot in the head.
I asked the lady, I said, "Where is he?" And she actually drew us a map.
She drew a picture of a fence, and the tree was there and how the tree and fence grew, you know, into it, and it had been there for a long time and it was a low area and it was like water would run through, and she drew pictures of wheels and rims on the vehicle.
Samantha: I took off work one day with tracie and we were going down fence lines and whatever.
We found some bones, called the police.
It wasn't his.
They were animal bones.
And Mom kept going to the police station and saying, "Please, find out what happened to my grandson before I die.
I need to know before I die.
" Narrator: But Chris' mom is about to uncover a new lead from someone who was too afraid to speak up before.
She said that she had heard something and that she knew something.
Robb: This is it.
We've we've done it.
This is something big.
Tracie: I looked at the cars when they drove by.
I did.
We'd sit with the front door open and watch outside, too.
You're constantly looking for him and it's like your life stands still.
All you think about day and night is, "Where is he? Is he okay? Where do I look now?" I made a promise that I didn't care how long it took or whatever I had to do, that I was going to find him.
Narrator: Living with the constant fear of what may have happened to her son, Tracie opens her home to other teenagers in distress.
Tracie: A lot of the kids would run away, and I was scared that something would happen to them on the streets, so I would let them come and live with me and I would take care of them and help them.
Narrator: In the fall of 2007, five years after her son's disappearance, Tracie takes in Josh Fretz, a troubled teen a few years behind Chris in school.
I really didn't know him that well.
He stayed maybe a week and a half.
And then one day he saw a picture of Chris.
And I think that's when he took off.
Tracie: And I went and spoke to Josh's mother because I was worried about him, and she told me that something happened to him when he was 13 years old and he won't talk about it.
Narrator: Tracie senses Josh knows something about Chris, but she never sees him again.
More years pass, but Chris' mom refuses to give up searching for her son.
I took a job at a bar.
It was close by the house because the kids were old enough to drink, and I thought, "Well, somebody might get drunk, slip up, say something.
" - How are you two doing? - Good.
Samantha: She would mingle with the kids and try to make friends with those kids to see anything and everything that she could find out.
Where are you guys from? From around here.
Both of us, born and raised.
Tracie: Every time someone would come in from the school, I'd say, "Oh, do you remember Chris Daigle?" And one day one of the girls from school came in and she said that she had heard something, but she didn't want to tell me anything about it, just that she knew something.
I'm going to give you a phone number.
So I gave her the detective's information and she said that she would talk to the detective, and I felt that maybe something could come of it.
Narrator: The young woman goes down to the police station and tells detectives what she knows, starting with the conversation she had with one of Chris' good friends, Ricky Mendoza, two months after Chris disappeared.
She said that she was in the car with Ricky Mendoza.
And they got on the subject about Chris.
And he said that he killed Chris, and she's like, "No, you didn't.
There's no way.
" He's like, "Yeah, I'll show you where his body is.
I'll show you.
" So he drove down to this field and he pointed.
He said, "It's right over there.
" Narrator: According to the woman, the field that Ricky had taken her to is in nearby Fort Bend county, but after an exhaustive search, police come up empty-handed.
Tracie: Nothing really came out of it after that.
We felt like it was another rabbit hole.
They didn't have any proof of anything.
Narrator: With no evidence or testimony to support the woman's strange story about Chris' friend Ricky, the case continues to languish.
Narrator: A year later, in the summer of 2010, a new detective is assigned to look at the department's cold cases.
What I liked about cold cases, number one, is bringing closure to family.
I couldn't imagine the wondering, "What happened to my loved one?" This one intrigued me because there were some leads in it where it just seemed like it just dropped off and it wasn't followed up.
There was a statement from a female.
She said that she was with Ricky Mendoza and he was bragging that he did something to Chris.
Narrator: Detective Robb decides the field the woman identified in Fort Bend county deserves a second look.
Robb: So we called the Texas Department of Corrections and they brought some cadaver dogs down and we ran two dogs, and they had hits.
I thought we had something.
I thought, "Oh, my gosh.
Chris is buried here.
" We cleared out this huge area, start digging up the ground.
Everybody was exhausted.
And then all the hopes started to deteriorate because we weren't finding anything.
You know, your hopes go on a roller coaster from, "This is it, we're going to find Chris," to, "What are we going to do now?" When we went to the field and we didn't find anything, we knew we had to start going to talk to some people.
I figured after time expired, that somebody would be eventually willing to talk.
So we tracked down one of his buddies, Joshua.
Narrator: Now in his early 20s, Josh Fretz was one of Chris' many friends questioned during the initial investigation.
Robb: We found out where he worked and we went down to his job in Houston and I talked to his boss.
Man: Hey, Josh.
There are a couple of guys out here that need to talk to you.
Okay.
Narrator: Josh Fretz is also the troubled kid who briefly stayed with Chris' mother.
Robb: So Joshua comes in and I introduce myself and my partner to him.
We sit down at this conference table, and I'm starting already to get a little vibe that something's going on.
Josh was nervous, Josh was scared.
Deer in the headlights look.
A little flushed.
Antsy a little bit.
We explained why we were there.
I said, "Years have gone by, and how would your family feel if they had no idea what happened to you?" His eyes started watering a little bit.
Joshua asked me, he goes, "Am I going to get in trouble?" I said, "It depends.
Did you kill Chris?" Robb: Joshua asked me, he goes, "Am I going to get in trouble?" I said, "It depends.
Did you kill Chris?" And he said, "No.
" And I said, "Okay, then you're not going to get in trouble.
" So Joshua tells me the story about Ricky Mendoza and the jealousy that he had towards Chris.
Narrator: This is the first time in all these years that police learn Ricky had a problem with Chris.
Brittany: Ricky and Chris played baseball together.
They were friends Ready for this, Ricky? Two very different people.
Chris was very loud, could talk to anybody, was goofy, you know, laughed a lot, and Ricky was very stoic.
Just throw the ball.
Jen: Ricky always stood in his shadow.
He wasn't the all-star player that Chris was, you know? Chris had all the friends, Chris was Mr.
popular.
Ricky didn't get so many invites.
You know, he was kind of the chubby kid with bad acne, you know? Only thing he had was a cute girlfriend.
Robb: Josh said that Ricky saw Chris in school, and Chris was in a classroom, and he was messing around or flirting with Ricky's girlfriend at the time.
Brittany: It made sense because Chris was a big flirt, but at the same time, it would have been a joke or it would have been silly.
Jen: From the stories, Ricky was very overprotective, you know, "I'm your boyfriend.
You're not going to talk to other guys.
" Brittany: I think that Chris had the personality that Ricky wanted to have.
I think it ran on a much deeper level than just fighting over a girl.
Narrator: According to Josh, on the afternoon of November 7, 2002, Ricky decides to get his revenge.
Robb: Ricky went to a house that Chris was at, got him in the truck, got Josh and another individual, and said, "Let's go pick some mushrooms.
" Let's go.
And they went out to this field and parked the truck.
They hopped the fence, he said.
He said they walked around this pasture.
[Thunder.]
Josh said they were all looking on the ground for 'shrooms and Ricky had his shotgun with him.
And he said he looked up and he saw Ricky point it at the back of Chris' head.
[Gunshot.]
Ricky pulled the trigger.
He said he saw Chris' eyes roll in the back of his head And he saw blood, and then Chris was just motionless on the ground.
He said, "We were freaking out.
We just started running back to the truck.
" And when he said that so descriptive back then, I knew he was telling the truth.
Narrator: Josh's story is uncannily similar to the account of Chris' death given to his family by a psychic eight years earlier.
Police track down the other teenager in the car that day, David Garcia.
We just need to hear it from you now.
He's nervous.
I was like, "What happened to Chris?" And I was like, "You need to tell me the truth, because I already know.
" Okay.
So he tells the same story.
Narrator: At the end of the interview, David gives detectives directions to a wooded area near the field where Ricky had forced them to help hide Chris' body.
The field is just 1,500 feet from where the girl had taken them two years earlier.
Robb: So we're walking around and Sergeant McKinnon looks down on the ground and he sees what appears to be a bone sticking out of the ground.
He was like, "That looks human to me.
" Narrator: DNA analysis confirms the bone belongs to Christopher Daigle.
We found bones, a few bones.
We didn't find all of Chris.
Narrator: After all these years, detectives assume animals spread the rest of his remains.
Samantha: I think it was in early to mid-August, my sister called me and said, "Samantha, they found Chris.
" And I, "What?" It's giving me chills now.
She said, "They're arresting Ricky Mendoza today.
" We just both broke down and cried.
Finally, we're getting there.
It felt like, "Okay, finally, something has happened.
" Samantha: It was finally over, and we could finally quit waiting for him to knock on the door, we could finally bury him, and that'd be And just thank God that we were finally going to have Justice, something for Chris.
Narrator: As the trial approaches, the family now knows why it took almost 10 years for the truth to come out.
[Gunshot.]
Jen: We heard that Ricky told the boys, "Y'all better not say a word of this.
Do you understand me? Or you'll be next.
" Tracie: When Chris first went missing, I know that they questioned Ricky, but nothing really came out of it after that.
I was friends with Ricky's parents, so our families have known each other for a long time.
It's just something you didn't expect.
Narrator: In February of 2013, Ricky Mendoza stands trial for the murder of Christopher Daigle.
Sitting through that whole trial, it was like a living hell.
Jen: Ricky came in with a smiling face and, you know, like, "Huh.
It's 10 years already, dude.
Nothing's going to happen.
If it hasn't happened by now, y'all ain't going to get me now," you know? And I guess he recognized me, because when he looked at me, he smiled, winked, and blew a kiss at me.
Right then is when I realized he's cold-blooded.
Samantha: It's unbelievable that somebody could just take it upon themselves and say, "Okay, you looked at my girl.
I'm going to kill you.
I'm going to take you out to this field and kill you.
" Narrator: After almost two weeks of testimony, a jury finds Ricky Mendoza guilty of murder.
When they gave that verdict, it was like I could breathe again.
Tracie: It was finally over.
Narrator: Before Ricky is sentenced, the family walks through the field where Chris' partial remains were discovered.
Samantha: We were all going to pray and kind of have a little memorial service for Chris.
And we're walking along and trucks had driven through there and whatever, so there were ruts.
And I guess it had pushed up, or erosion, and you could see pieces of bone there.
What are the odds of that happening? [Crying.]
Jen: So we started digging, and the more we dug, the more bones we started to find.
Tracie: It still hurts that all that time, he was so close, right there, just maybe four miles from my house, and I had no idea.
That was hard.
And when I made him the promise I wouldn't stop till I found him, I didn't realize that I was going to be the one to actually dig him up.
Jen: My grandma Wanda, she passed away a little bit after the trial.
She got peace before she passed.
She knew, finally.
It was a little peaceful knowing that they were going to be together finally, you know? Brittany: There is still a lot of days where I wish that he was still around to be able to call or, you know, go have a beer with.
I forgot the sound of his voice.
I just miss him.
Tracie: I wish I knew where Chris would be today and what he would be doing.
A lot of things were taken away from me.
You don't ever get those back.
But he's in a better place now and I'll see him again one day.
We have his baseball jersey in here from little league when he played.
Texas, 2, Daigle.
The experience of not knowing where your child is and if he's okay, it's really hard.
You can't sleep at night.
You're constantly looking.
I want to be very careful with what I say.
He started to turn into somebody else.
Samantha: Your mind goes to the most horrible places.
This was a repeated thing for 10 years.
Tracie: I'd see somebody that could possibly look like him.
I would follow him.
And then I would have to explain myself to them, "I'm not crazy.
I'm just trying to find my son.
" Tracie: The last day that we remember seeing Chris was November the 7th.
He went to school that morning.
My mom took him.
My mom said Chris was depressed and he was tired of going to school every day and being told what to do.
Are you okay, Chris? Yeah.
I'm all right, Grandma.
I'll see you after school, honey.
He just wasn't happy, and that wasn't like him.
Narrator: A junior at high tower high school, 17-year-old Christopher daigle was one of the popular kids.
Chris was tall, handsome.
I mean, always dressed nice and cute and definitely a head-turner, always could make you laugh.
All the guys wanted to hang out with him and the girls most definitely, they wanted a chance to be with him.
I'm trying to keep from using "smart-ass," because that's the best term to describe him.
He had this way about him to where he could, um, suggest something with a smile and then that was it, everybody was like, "Yeah, yeah, that's a good idea.
" Narrator: And no one knows Chris better than his grandma Wanda, who he has been living with since he was three.
Tracie: She could take better care of him than I could as far as financially.
She spoiled him rotten.
She got him motorcycles, four-wheelers, three-wheelers.
Anything he wanted, he got.
She ended up getting him the K5 Blazer, which he loved that.
She really took care of him.
Samantha: He loved his grandma.
He could be mad as the devil at her, but he'd have never left her.
Never.
Narrator: The night after Wanda dropped Chris off at school, dinnertime comes and goes, but Chris never shows up.
We thought he was just spending the night with some of his friends and that he would just come home the next day, and usually, if he didn't come home, we didn't worry.
He was always with his friends.
The following morning, there's still no word from Chris, and calls to his cell phone go unanswered.
His family reaches out to his friends, starting with Brittany Parker.
Brittany: Chris went to school that day and then he had come by my house for a little bit.
His state of mind wasn't anything out of the normal for him.
He left.
He went over to our friend Ashley's house.
He got a phone call that, "Hey, you want to go do this or that?" And he said yeah and he was picked up by his friend, Ricky.
Hey, hit my house first.
Got you.
Samantha: And everyone saw a truck pull up, and he got a duffel bag, threw it in the back of the truck, and they took off, and that was the last time anybody saw him here other than his friends.
Narrator: His good friend Ricky says he and Chris drove to the nearby mall to hang out.
Hey, man.
Take a look.
Jen: Ricky had just said that they'd seen some girls there.
Want to go talk to them for a little bit? - You going to hang out? - No, I've got to go.
You sure? They wanted to leave and go some place, but Ricky's mom called him, told him he had to come home, so Chris left with the girls.
I'll see you later, okay? All right, have fun.
Narrator: But no one knows anything about these girls, not even their names.
Tracie: Nobody seemed to know where he had gone.
I'd hear of other people missing.
I never thought it would happen to me.
Chris was always so much fun, always playing and running around, and he was a daredevil.
When he was like three years old, he would try anything.
He didn't like the word "No.
" If you'd tell him no, he couldn't do something, he was going to do it just to show you he could do it.
Definitely 100-percent all-boy.
[Thwack.]
Tracie: He started playing baseball when he was five years old, and he was on select teams and then he went to high school and he played on high tower high school baseball.
Chris was very talented.
I was very, you know, happy and just always bragged about how good he was.
Heads up.
You know you only get three strikes, right? One, two, three, and that's it.
Yeah, sure.
Bring it.
He would have got scholarships.
I mean, he was he was really good.
Tracie: Chris would dream about it, running and telling people, "No, he's out at first base," and just I couldn't believe that he could have a baseball game in his sleep.
Narrator: But in the summer before his senior year, Chris' major league dreams are shattered.
Tracie: There was an incident where somebody threw a bottle and it hit Chris, so Chris got mad and threw it back and it hit the coach.
That was it.
Threw him off the team.
Brittany: When he got kicked off the baseball team, that was that was devastating for him.
That was, like, world-crushing.
Are you okay, Chris? Yeah.
I'm all right, Grandma.
Okay, honey.
You kind of saw this light in him kind of start to dim a little bit, and he changed.
He started to turn into somebody else.
Tracie: He really didn't associate with his friends as much as he did after that happened.
He was hurting.
Narrator: The following day, Chris doesn't show up to school at all.
Brittany: It wasn't, like, concerning.
It wasn't a big deal.
Okay, so he skipped school, or, you know, he's doing something else.
When I go home, I call him, he doesn't answer.
Call him a couple of more times, he doesn't answer.
Started talking to some other friends.
"Okay, well, where is Chris? Has anybody seen him? No? Nobody's spoken with him? That's not right.
" Jen: I remember my grandma calling me and I was just like, "What do you mean, missing? Like, he ran away?" That's what I figured it was.
Narrator: Some of Chris' friends think the duffel bag suggests he was leaving for good.
Jen: When he lost baseball, he was sad and he was mad and angry and he was like, "I'm moving.
I'm going to leave, I'm going to run away.
" Zavala: You know, you have to think about the mind in adolescents, in 16 and 17.
Something minor in their world is huge and they feel like they can't handle it anymore.
Samantha: I thought he just took off.
Just him and his friends were going to go to the beach for a few days.
He was just going to haul ass for a few days and then he would be back.
Narrator: But according to Chris' friends, in the months after getting kicked off the team, his behavior changed.
I want to be very careful with what I say.
He started to to make some decisions that I know that he wasn't super proud of.
He started to party a lot more.
He didn't care so much, because the one thing that he really was passionate about was kind of stripped from him.
Narrator: But if Chris is running away from his problems, he has no idea the trouble he is heading into.
Samantha: People are crazy.
They are crazy.
You just don't know.
Tracie: It was Saturday morning when Chris didn't come home, so my mom called the police department, and they were telling her to wait and he would probably be home.
Well, he didn't come home, so then she went to the police department and got them to take a police report and they were telling her that he probably just ran away.
Robb: The police department thought he ran away because he liked to go with his friends.
He would sometimes check in with his mom or grandmother, but sometimes he didn't.
You think he's just going off blowing off some steam and he's going to come back home.
Narrator: Other friends think something more complicated had been going on with Chris ever since he got kicked off the baseball team four months earlier.
He didn't really know how to deal with it.
He didn't have the best coping skills.
He said he was going to run away just because so many things were going on.
Narrator: But Chris' family refuses to believe he would leave without a word.
They just truly acted like he just ran away.
And like I said, he would never run away, never.
He might get mad and leave for a couple of days, but he'd be back.
I went looking for Chris everywhere because when he didn't come home, I thought something happened to him.
He could have been hit in the head and was laying in a ditch, and it was cold.
I went around to the creeks and ponds and ditches.
I had poison Ivy on me.
I made posters and put them up at the different stores.
Jen: I remember meeting up with her and us going all over the place hanging posters, for missing person posters.
"Have you seen him? If so, please call us and let us know.
" A part of me just felt like it was kind of kind of a waste of time, you know? I didn't feel like anything bad had happened to him, you know what I mean? I felt like, um In my mind, I was still having a lot of hope.
Narrator: But there is one family member who may have spurred Chris to leave town.
Jen: I'd have to say Chris and my dad were probably the closest.
Out of all his kids, Chris probably loved him the most.
Narrator: Chris' parents separate soon after he's born.
Jen: Chris wanted that perfect story the house life, the home life you see on TV, you know, where you have a mom and dad that love you.
No matter how much he would say it didn't bother him, he didn't care, he's happy where he's at, he'd done it killed him inside.
Brittany: Chris' dad was in prison for an extended period of time, so that brought a lot of anxieties for him.
Inmate 46895.
Jen: Drugs.
It was always drugs.
He would go to prison, he would be there for years.
When he would come home from prison, he was just, "Oh, Daddy loves y'all.
I miss y'all so much," You know? "I'm going to do this, I'm going to do that.
" Empty promises.
As soon as my dad got out and got back into the life, my dad was ripped out of Christopher's life again.
It was just a neverending cycle.
There's a thin line between love and hate.
Narrator: Just a few weeks before Chris disappeared, his father is scheduled for release from a Texas state penitentiary.
When he was supposed to be getting out of jail, that's when Chris was telling me, "Dad's coming home, I don't want to see him.
You know, I'm just tired of everything.
" Narrator: Maybe Chris ran away to avoid seeing his father, but according to Chris' family, after his release, his dad moves to another town in Texas.
As the days morph into weeks, the urgency to find Chris mounts.
Robb: Detectives did everything they could.
They put flyers out, they got dental records, they obviously talked to the family a lot.
The kids at school, they had to go talk to and interview.
How long have you known him? He was in high school, so you could imagine how many friends he had and who he hung out with.
I mean, I'd probably say he's Brittany: Some of the rumors were that he went to Missouri, that he met somebody online.
Tracie: One of them was that he ran away with some of his friends to go to Oklahoma.
Another one was that there was another friend that moved north somewhere and that he was with him.
Brittany: One person told me that, no, that he had gotten into it with some bad group of people or whatever in our area and they had gotten into it and so they had taken him.
Samantha: Everything grew and changed and this little bit would get thrown in here and that little bit would be thrown in there, and it makes you crazy.
It it makes you crazy.
They followed up with leads and they talked to everybody, but it seemed like it was going down a lot of different rabbit holes.
Narrator: As weeks pass with no sign of the teenager, Chris' family believes there's only one explanation left.
Samantha: Just that somebody did kill him.
That's the only thing why he wouldn't have come home, and that was always in my mind, that somebody did kill him.
That's what we couldn't figure out.
Who was his enemy? Who would have wanted him dead? Tracie: We kept his Christmas presents.
We put them in a box and put them up in the attic, just thinking, you know, if he ever came home, we could give them to him.
It was rough.
I mean, gosh.
Grandma kept Chris' room just the way it was.
I mean, for the longest, no one was allowed to go in there.
"You better not walk in that room, don't touch his door.
Just stay out of there.
I want it just like he left it when he comes home.
" Tracie: It was really hard for my mom because she was so close to Chris, and it took a toll on her as far as her health, too.
She deteriorated, you know, from the worry and constantly looking for him and just everything she that's all she did.
Narrator: While Wanda never stops hoping her grandson will walk through the door, Chris' mom and aunt are convinced he's been murdered.
That's what we couldn't figure out.
Who was his enemy? He didn't have too many enemies.
Like, who would want him dead, or who would not want him around? Maybe my dad owed somebody money.
Somebody could have taken it out on him, you know, through the drugs, through that lifestyle.
Maybe he was trying to do something for my dad and pay off a debt to save my dad's life.
Zavala: You have to remember, Missouri City is very close to Houston.
Even though it's small-town, has that feel, Missouri City is not void of gangs, not void of drugs, just like any other big city.
Look who's coming.
Tracie: When police were going through the computer, they found something about a gang in the area by the school.
I talked to some of his friends.
His friends said that, well, he had said something to, like, the leader of it.
Samantha: He said what was on his mind and had a temper.
He would definitely let you know when he was mad.
Narrator: So far, there's no evidence to support any theories about potential enemies, but Chris' state of mind on the morning he went missing suggests another tragic explanation.
There were a couple of conversations where Chris had talked about, you know, the idea of not waking up again or, um, just disappearing, not wanting to be here anymore.
Because he lost such a large part of his identity when he got kicked off the baseball team, you know, there were some really intense times where he was suicidal.
Zavala: On paper, it made sense that he had it in him to hurt himself.
Didn't make sense to mom, because as a parent, you don't want to think that, right? You want to find your kid.
You don't want that as your final answer.
I would sit at work, and in the downtime, I would go on the missing persons web sites and I would look for the unidentified bodies and see if any of them could be him.
Were they in the right age range? Were they male? What date did they go missing? Until you actually have that body and actually know, you never lose hope.
You never lose hope.
Missouri city finally said that there was too much too many different stories.
They couldn't confirm anything.
So they basically turned it into a cold case file and they just stopped trying to do anything with it.
You work it for so long and there's nothing else you can do.
If you have nothing, you have nothing.
Where do you go? What do you do? His favorite color was blue, and my mom collected blue vases and things and put it around his picture.
I like the angels, like guardian angels watching over Chris.
I felt bad for my sister with all this, because, I mean, that's her son.
That was her firstborn.
It's unreal, the roller coaster of emotions that we had to endure during this.
Tracie: In his work gloves and not baseball gloves.
Always wanted to be different, setting trends.
He said he could get a better grip on the bat.
Samantha: Mentally and physically, it took a toll on her, and she changed.
Honestly, I think it changed us all.
Tracie: We even went to psychics.
I really didn't believe in psychics, but I would try anything to find my son.
She told us some really interesting things, where Chris was with three guys.
They went down a long dirt road.
There were no lights.
There was a tree line.
There was an altercation.
Chris was shot in the head.
I asked the lady, I said, "Where is he?" And she actually drew us a map.
She drew a picture of a fence, and the tree was there and how the tree and fence grew, you know, into it, and it had been there for a long time and it was a low area and it was like water would run through, and she drew pictures of wheels and rims on the vehicle.
Samantha: I took off work one day with tracie and we were going down fence lines and whatever.
We found some bones, called the police.
It wasn't his.
They were animal bones.
And Mom kept going to the police station and saying, "Please, find out what happened to my grandson before I die.
I need to know before I die.
" Narrator: But Chris' mom is about to uncover a new lead from someone who was too afraid to speak up before.
She said that she had heard something and that she knew something.
Robb: This is it.
We've we've done it.
This is something big.
Tracie: I looked at the cars when they drove by.
I did.
We'd sit with the front door open and watch outside, too.
You're constantly looking for him and it's like your life stands still.
All you think about day and night is, "Where is he? Is he okay? Where do I look now?" I made a promise that I didn't care how long it took or whatever I had to do, that I was going to find him.
Narrator: Living with the constant fear of what may have happened to her son, Tracie opens her home to other teenagers in distress.
Tracie: A lot of the kids would run away, and I was scared that something would happen to them on the streets, so I would let them come and live with me and I would take care of them and help them.
Narrator: In the fall of 2007, five years after her son's disappearance, Tracie takes in Josh Fretz, a troubled teen a few years behind Chris in school.
I really didn't know him that well.
He stayed maybe a week and a half.
And then one day he saw a picture of Chris.
And I think that's when he took off.
Tracie: And I went and spoke to Josh's mother because I was worried about him, and she told me that something happened to him when he was 13 years old and he won't talk about it.
Narrator: Tracie senses Josh knows something about Chris, but she never sees him again.
More years pass, but Chris' mom refuses to give up searching for her son.
I took a job at a bar.
It was close by the house because the kids were old enough to drink, and I thought, "Well, somebody might get drunk, slip up, say something.
" - How are you two doing? - Good.
Samantha: She would mingle with the kids and try to make friends with those kids to see anything and everything that she could find out.
Where are you guys from? From around here.
Both of us, born and raised.
Tracie: Every time someone would come in from the school, I'd say, "Oh, do you remember Chris Daigle?" And one day one of the girls from school came in and she said that she had heard something, but she didn't want to tell me anything about it, just that she knew something.
I'm going to give you a phone number.
So I gave her the detective's information and she said that she would talk to the detective, and I felt that maybe something could come of it.
Narrator: The young woman goes down to the police station and tells detectives what she knows, starting with the conversation she had with one of Chris' good friends, Ricky Mendoza, two months after Chris disappeared.
She said that she was in the car with Ricky Mendoza.
And they got on the subject about Chris.
And he said that he killed Chris, and she's like, "No, you didn't.
There's no way.
" He's like, "Yeah, I'll show you where his body is.
I'll show you.
" So he drove down to this field and he pointed.
He said, "It's right over there.
" Narrator: According to the woman, the field that Ricky had taken her to is in nearby Fort Bend county, but after an exhaustive search, police come up empty-handed.
Tracie: Nothing really came out of it after that.
We felt like it was another rabbit hole.
They didn't have any proof of anything.
Narrator: With no evidence or testimony to support the woman's strange story about Chris' friend Ricky, the case continues to languish.
Narrator: A year later, in the summer of 2010, a new detective is assigned to look at the department's cold cases.
What I liked about cold cases, number one, is bringing closure to family.
I couldn't imagine the wondering, "What happened to my loved one?" This one intrigued me because there were some leads in it where it just seemed like it just dropped off and it wasn't followed up.
There was a statement from a female.
She said that she was with Ricky Mendoza and he was bragging that he did something to Chris.
Narrator: Detective Robb decides the field the woman identified in Fort Bend county deserves a second look.
Robb: So we called the Texas Department of Corrections and they brought some cadaver dogs down and we ran two dogs, and they had hits.
I thought we had something.
I thought, "Oh, my gosh.
Chris is buried here.
" We cleared out this huge area, start digging up the ground.
Everybody was exhausted.
And then all the hopes started to deteriorate because we weren't finding anything.
You know, your hopes go on a roller coaster from, "This is it, we're going to find Chris," to, "What are we going to do now?" When we went to the field and we didn't find anything, we knew we had to start going to talk to some people.
I figured after time expired, that somebody would be eventually willing to talk.
So we tracked down one of his buddies, Joshua.
Narrator: Now in his early 20s, Josh Fretz was one of Chris' many friends questioned during the initial investigation.
Robb: We found out where he worked and we went down to his job in Houston and I talked to his boss.
Man: Hey, Josh.
There are a couple of guys out here that need to talk to you.
Okay.
Narrator: Josh Fretz is also the troubled kid who briefly stayed with Chris' mother.
Robb: So Joshua comes in and I introduce myself and my partner to him.
We sit down at this conference table, and I'm starting already to get a little vibe that something's going on.
Josh was nervous, Josh was scared.
Deer in the headlights look.
A little flushed.
Antsy a little bit.
We explained why we were there.
I said, "Years have gone by, and how would your family feel if they had no idea what happened to you?" His eyes started watering a little bit.
Joshua asked me, he goes, "Am I going to get in trouble?" I said, "It depends.
Did you kill Chris?" Robb: Joshua asked me, he goes, "Am I going to get in trouble?" I said, "It depends.
Did you kill Chris?" And he said, "No.
" And I said, "Okay, then you're not going to get in trouble.
" So Joshua tells me the story about Ricky Mendoza and the jealousy that he had towards Chris.
Narrator: This is the first time in all these years that police learn Ricky had a problem with Chris.
Brittany: Ricky and Chris played baseball together.
They were friends Ready for this, Ricky? Two very different people.
Chris was very loud, could talk to anybody, was goofy, you know, laughed a lot, and Ricky was very stoic.
Just throw the ball.
Jen: Ricky always stood in his shadow.
He wasn't the all-star player that Chris was, you know? Chris had all the friends, Chris was Mr.
popular.
Ricky didn't get so many invites.
You know, he was kind of the chubby kid with bad acne, you know? Only thing he had was a cute girlfriend.
Robb: Josh said that Ricky saw Chris in school, and Chris was in a classroom, and he was messing around or flirting with Ricky's girlfriend at the time.
Brittany: It made sense because Chris was a big flirt, but at the same time, it would have been a joke or it would have been silly.
Jen: From the stories, Ricky was very overprotective, you know, "I'm your boyfriend.
You're not going to talk to other guys.
" Brittany: I think that Chris had the personality that Ricky wanted to have.
I think it ran on a much deeper level than just fighting over a girl.
Narrator: According to Josh, on the afternoon of November 7, 2002, Ricky decides to get his revenge.
Robb: Ricky went to a house that Chris was at, got him in the truck, got Josh and another individual, and said, "Let's go pick some mushrooms.
" Let's go.
And they went out to this field and parked the truck.
They hopped the fence, he said.
He said they walked around this pasture.
[Thunder.]
Josh said they were all looking on the ground for 'shrooms and Ricky had his shotgun with him.
And he said he looked up and he saw Ricky point it at the back of Chris' head.
[Gunshot.]
Ricky pulled the trigger.
He said he saw Chris' eyes roll in the back of his head And he saw blood, and then Chris was just motionless on the ground.
He said, "We were freaking out.
We just started running back to the truck.
" And when he said that so descriptive back then, I knew he was telling the truth.
Narrator: Josh's story is uncannily similar to the account of Chris' death given to his family by a psychic eight years earlier.
Police track down the other teenager in the car that day, David Garcia.
We just need to hear it from you now.
He's nervous.
I was like, "What happened to Chris?" And I was like, "You need to tell me the truth, because I already know.
" Okay.
So he tells the same story.
Narrator: At the end of the interview, David gives detectives directions to a wooded area near the field where Ricky had forced them to help hide Chris' body.
The field is just 1,500 feet from where the girl had taken them two years earlier.
Robb: So we're walking around and Sergeant McKinnon looks down on the ground and he sees what appears to be a bone sticking out of the ground.
He was like, "That looks human to me.
" Narrator: DNA analysis confirms the bone belongs to Christopher Daigle.
We found bones, a few bones.
We didn't find all of Chris.
Narrator: After all these years, detectives assume animals spread the rest of his remains.
Samantha: I think it was in early to mid-August, my sister called me and said, "Samantha, they found Chris.
" And I, "What?" It's giving me chills now.
She said, "They're arresting Ricky Mendoza today.
" We just both broke down and cried.
Finally, we're getting there.
It felt like, "Okay, finally, something has happened.
" Samantha: It was finally over, and we could finally quit waiting for him to knock on the door, we could finally bury him, and that'd be And just thank God that we were finally going to have Justice, something for Chris.
Narrator: As the trial approaches, the family now knows why it took almost 10 years for the truth to come out.
[Gunshot.]
Jen: We heard that Ricky told the boys, "Y'all better not say a word of this.
Do you understand me? Or you'll be next.
" Tracie: When Chris first went missing, I know that they questioned Ricky, but nothing really came out of it after that.
I was friends with Ricky's parents, so our families have known each other for a long time.
It's just something you didn't expect.
Narrator: In February of 2013, Ricky Mendoza stands trial for the murder of Christopher Daigle.
Sitting through that whole trial, it was like a living hell.
Jen: Ricky came in with a smiling face and, you know, like, "Huh.
It's 10 years already, dude.
Nothing's going to happen.
If it hasn't happened by now, y'all ain't going to get me now," you know? And I guess he recognized me, because when he looked at me, he smiled, winked, and blew a kiss at me.
Right then is when I realized he's cold-blooded.
Samantha: It's unbelievable that somebody could just take it upon themselves and say, "Okay, you looked at my girl.
I'm going to kill you.
I'm going to take you out to this field and kill you.
" Narrator: After almost two weeks of testimony, a jury finds Ricky Mendoza guilty of murder.
When they gave that verdict, it was like I could breathe again.
Tracie: It was finally over.
Narrator: Before Ricky is sentenced, the family walks through the field where Chris' partial remains were discovered.
Samantha: We were all going to pray and kind of have a little memorial service for Chris.
And we're walking along and trucks had driven through there and whatever, so there were ruts.
And I guess it had pushed up, or erosion, and you could see pieces of bone there.
What are the odds of that happening? [Crying.]
Jen: So we started digging, and the more we dug, the more bones we started to find.
Tracie: It still hurts that all that time, he was so close, right there, just maybe four miles from my house, and I had no idea.
That was hard.
And when I made him the promise I wouldn't stop till I found him, I didn't realize that I was going to be the one to actually dig him up.
Jen: My grandma Wanda, she passed away a little bit after the trial.
She got peace before she passed.
She knew, finally.
It was a little peaceful knowing that they were going to be together finally, you know? Brittany: There is still a lot of days where I wish that he was still around to be able to call or, you know, go have a beer with.
I forgot the sound of his voice.
I just miss him.
Tracie: I wish I knew where Chris would be today and what he would be doing.
A lot of things were taken away from me.
You don't ever get those back.
But he's in a better place now and I'll see him again one day.