♪
- I saw a "Justice for Natalie Bollinger" group,
and I joined it.
And there was only probably, like, I'd say,
like, 500 members at the time.
But at the end of the day,
there was 2,000 people in there.
And everyone's speculating,
putting their theories out there,
pointing fingers.
When you start looking at it, I mean, it just--
there's something that's weird there.
♪
- I'm so freaked out because, like,
she's never done anything like this before.
And I think something's wrong here.
♪
- My gut says that this whole situation is off.
Her boyfriend called me,
and he goes, "Well, I can't find her.
"She's missing.
So is my gun."
♪
narrator: In the 21st century, we leave behind
the digital story of our lives,
a chronicle of our greatest triumphs,
but also our darkest nightmares.
♪
- Hi.
[somber music]
♪
- So can you tell me a bit about Natalie?
Can you, like, describe her?
What does she look like?
Like, what kind of girl is she?
[both laughing]
- Um...she was fantastic.
♪
[soft music]
- [grunts] Ow.
- Gonna go back to sleep then?
- She's very beautiful.
Gorgeous child.
She was a twin.
Natalie and Alycia, they are identical twins,
but completely different people.
Natalie, she was definitely the anchor of the two.
She would always, "I'm the big sister.
I'm the oldest."
- [laughs] - Three whole minutes.
But those three minutes, she didn't let you forget it.
♪
It was like a married couple.
- Sorry. - [laughs]
When they were babies,
they had, you know, separate cribs.
But they wouldn't sleep unless they were together.
And it was like that throughout their lives.
- Hi. - Hi.
- They used to call each other "womb-mates"
because they shared an apartment
from the very beginning, you know?
♪
They both are very talented artists.
♪
It's like, as soon as Natalie picked up a crayon
and started drawing, it just never stopped.
[soft upbeat music]
♪
She loved people.
She was very empathetic.
- Very bright. - Yes.
- Very, very bright. - Very intelligent.
She wanted to be involved
with helping disenfranchised people here in our country,
people who don't get a second look.
And then she had gotten into a really bad car accident,
and she wanted to be a nurse after that
because of the care that they give people.
And so that's what she was gonna be
going to college for.
♪
- Natalie Marie Bollinger.
[cheers and applause]
- She graduated a year early.
It was the year before her sister,
'cause she was really just trying to start her life.
[bird squawking]
[somber music]
She ended up helping her grandfather
in the last few months of his life.
She loved that man so much.
- That was her father figure. - Yeah.
- But I do you love you very much.
- [sniffling]
- And I hope to take care of you from heaven.
♪
- As anyone can imagine,
someone who is terminal,
the person who's there taking care of them...
it's a lot.
I mean, she's a 19-year-old girl,
you know?
♪
She struggled with her mental health,
probably since she was about 11 or 12 years old.
And as much as she would stand up for somebody else,
she would be depressed and stuff.
She'd been through counseling.
♪
[camera shutter clicks]
They got engaged.
And I was concerned.
Things that moms, you know, worry about and stuff.
But she said that she was having an extremely hard time
and that he really was there for her
and helped her through a lot of stuff
that she struggled with, trying to find her way.
♪
Natalie FaceTimed me,
and she pops the camera over to Joey,
and he's like, "Hey, Mom."
And I was like, "Hey." - [laughs]
- And she's like, "Guess what he surprised me with."
And I was like, "What?"
And it was a little apartment.
I knew what she had been dealing with
with her grandfather.
So making these moves for her life,
she was very excited.
[tense music]
♪
She saw this man that was sitting on the street,
and people were just passing him.
She asked him if he was okay,
and he just talked to her, and she just listened to him.
She was like, "You can add me on Facebook."
You know, like, treated him like he was a human being.
And that's--she carried on.
♪
[dramatic music]
It became where he was inundating her.
♪
- Yeah. - It was like a--
nonstop with the messaging.
♪
- I tried hard to make that work.
I tried hard to be a good person.
And you know what?
[bleep] happened.
And I wasn't even worth listening to.
- He drove to Virginia.
A few days go by,
and I hear this, like, honk.
And it's not just, like, a beep.
It's like somebody's laid on the horn, just...
[imitates horn blaring]
So I go, and I look out my front door,
and he's just laying on the horn
because Natalie had blocked him and wasn't talking to him.
[tense music]
♪
- I didn't know what I had done wrong to her.
I didn't.
Moral of the story is,
just 'cause it's not your fault,
doesn't mean it's not your fault.
- I go out the front,
and I'm like, "I'm calling the police."
And he just kind of tips his hat to me
and is like, "Go ahead."
♪
They took him to Virginia Beach Psych,
and that was the last that I had heard of him.
And then she went back to Colorado,
and he started again.
♪
- You know, I mean, it was bad enough
that I left Virginia with my hero hating me.
♪
I'm not even worth listening to.
♪
Yeah, no, at this point in my life,
there is not gonna be good [bleep] coming.
♪
- She had even posted on Facebook.
[tense music]
♪
- She called me, and after she got the restraining order,
she was super excited about it because it was, like,
giving her back some power.
♪
[tense music]
- I got a call from Joey saying that she was missing.
And he said, "I just came home, and she was gone.
She wasn't here."
I called Alycia and asked her
if she had seen her sister or heard from her,
and she hadn't.
♪
- Her boyfriend called me up.
Her phone is at the house.
He goes, "And it's not like Natalie
to just leave her phone somewhere."
He asked if Natalie was with me,
and I told him no.
I said we were supposed to go on a ride,
but I never heard back from her.
And he goes, "Well, I can't find her.
She's missing, and so is my gun."
♪
[siren wailing]
- Mm-hmm.
[line ringing]
- Hello? - Hi.
Is this Alycia?
- Yeah. - Hi. My name is David Hyde.
I'm a detective with the Broomfield Police Department.
I know it hasn't been that long a time,
but have you heard from your sister at all?
- No, not at all. - Okay.
Any thoughts on where she is?
- Honestly, I'm really concerned
about the person--Shawn.
I'm so freaked out, because, like,
she's never done anything like this before.
And I think something's wrong here.
So I'm gonna go look for her.
I don't want to just sit at home and wait.
♪
- I live 1,800 miles away from where she was.
And I put it on Facebook that she was missing.
I was terrified of being so far away.
I remember calling the detective
that had been assigned the case.
I just said to him,
"You need to take this seriously."
I flew across the country on a red-eye.
I didn't get a wink of sleep that night.
♪
- Did you leave the house at all for the rest of Wednesday?
- Sure.
- Okay.
So then you go to sleep
at the apartment that night?
Wake up Thursday morning at the apartment?
Okay.
Let's talk about Thursday.
What goes on Thursday?
- The same thing.
I really didn't go anywhere.
- Stayed at the apartment all day?
- I was there all day.
- Okay. So--
- And I haven't left there
except to go to the corner store
to get stuff.
- On Wednesday?
- Like--I don't know what days.
But everything pretty--
there might have been a purchase or two
I made with cash.
But I'm pretty sure all my purchases
were made on my-- on my debit card.
- Okay.
And then today--
tell me about your day today.
- I've been trying to call Natalie all day.
[tense music]
- Do you talk to Natalie on a regular basis?
Or has she talked to you in the last couple days?
- No, sir. Um...I wish.
Dude, if she talked to me the last couple of days,
she'd be with her family already.
♪
I--I thought she was in Virginia.
I didn't even know she was here.
I just wish you didn't have to waste your time on me.
- And we're--we're only looking to you for help.
That's why you're here.
So we don't think you're a waste,
'cause you know her.
- Thank--thank goodness.
♪
- The Adams County Sheriff's Office is working
a homicide investigation after someone found
a dead body off Riverdale Road.
The agency first labeled this as a death investigation,
but switched it over to a homicide.
[tense music]
- I saw it on TV that they found a female.
I called and spoke with the detectives
that were at the scene,
and they asked me for some...identifiers.
- Coroner confirms the body found last Friday
is that of 19-year-old Natalie Bollinger.
- Natalie Bollinger's autopsy report says
she was shot in the head.
[somber music]
- I--I...[sighs]
I--I crumbled.
♪
- Hi. - Hi.
♪
- We are still trying to follow up
on any leads that may be out there
that's going to lead us to--to Natalie's killer.
- The last 26 hours of 19-year-old
Natalie Bollinger's life are a mystery.
♪
- We don't have anybody
who was either talking with her
through social media or through text
or in person or on the telephone.
- My gut says that this whole situation is off.
Days after she gets a protection order,
she's killed.
And he is, as far as I know of,
the only person who actually threatened Natalie.
- We have talked to him.
And again, not ready to call anybody a suspect,
but certainly a piece of our investigation--
a piece of our timeline.
- Social media is swirling with theories
about who killed Natalie.
Some people believe Schwartz did.
He replied on his own Facebook page,
"Stop picking on me. Stop blaming me."
- I should omit the truth and take the punishment.
Is that what you want?
You want to pretend like I'm some monster.
Live or die, this stuff needs to stop.
[tense music]
♪
- Shawn Schwartz, 37 years old.
Here's what we know according to the court documents.
I want to be real clear about him.
He'd been making some posts on Facebook that led the police
to conduct that welfare check.
Police ultimately took him to the hospital.
And that's where they allege
that he became combative and violent.
♪
And now Shawn Schwartz is facing
assault and resisting arrest.
♪
- I've been instructed not to speak to y'all.
But I got a few more fingers for you.
- Well, do you know what happened to her?
- No. Do you know who does?
- Tell me.
- How would I know? What happened to Natalie?
What do you guys know?
All I know is from Facebook Messenger.
And I hate Facebook.
- What did Facebook Messenger say?
- It doesn't matter.
You need to get ahold of the police
and talk to them.
♪
So they took me to the hospital.
They were telling me that I was on a 72-hour hold
because I was suicidal.
Who the [bleep] wouldn't be?
You guys have been harassing me for a week straight.
My best friend is dead.
I've been blamed for everything from stalking
to rape to child molestation to murder over this.
So when I got out of Boulder County Jail,
they had painted me as some sort of violent animal
on the [bleep] damn news.
♪
- God.
- With Shawn Schwartz, we were 98% sure
he had nothing to do with this.
- The time frames weren't adding up
once we got into his cell phone and computer.
There was, like, nothing physical evidence-wise
that was indicating he had any involvement.
♪
However, thanks to social media,
that just continued to hamper the case.
♪
Their web pages and their groups
and their thoughts and beliefs
and just their constant tips coming in.
♪
[tense music]
- I saw a "Justice for Natalie Bollinger" group,
and I joined it.
And there was only probably, like, I'd say,
like, 500 members at the time.
But at the end of the day,
there was 2,000 people in there.
And everyone's speculating,
putting their theories out there,
pointing fingers.
When you start looking at it, I mean, it just--
there's something that's weird there, you know?
You see this post, and you're like,
"This guy did it. We know he did it."
- Back on the day that Natalie went missing,
within three hours, the family was calling in
and reporting her missing.
She was a 19-year-old teenager.
You wouldn't think someone would be surprised
that they're gone for three hours during the day.
♪
- But if you look at it from the flip side,
if you wanted to do harm to Natalie Bollinger
and you found out she had a protective order
against someone else, isn't that a good opportunity?
Or am I reaching?
♪
- That is a great point.
- We're gonna look at everybody
that has those immediate close ties.
- He was cooperative with us the whole time.
Luckily for us that his business had video cameras,
so we were able to actually see him working
when he said he was working.
- His phone's pinging over there.
We were able to clear him pretty quick.
♪
- You could see that, like, emotionally,
he had just lost everything.
You know, his significant other.
His soon-to-be wife, so to speak,
is now dead and been murdered.
- He was a victim in this too.
♪
[tense music]
♪
- There was a vehicle
with a group of people known to one another.
One of them ended up feeling disrespected,
ended up shooting someone in the back of that vehicle,
dumping them out as the vehicle drove away.
It was very clear from some of the witnesses
that a very caring person in a vehicle in this shooting
had stuck their head out and was looking back
to see if this person was okay,
and the description fit Natalie to a T.
- Yeah.
- So we had shown pictures of Natalie
to a witness to it,
and they were like, "Oh, yeah, that was her.
She was there."
♪
- Have a seat there for me.
I want to hear from Markell what happened.
♪
- You don't know who that is?
- No. Do you guys have a picture?
Yeah, I don't know her.
I don't know her.
Yeah, no, I don't know.
- She goes down.
You're getting out of there.
- Hit Riverdale. - You hit Riverdale.
What happens then, bro?
- I probably flipped it, then came back,
'cause I remember driving right by here.
- Well, that road goes down to the dairy,
the McIntosh Dairy.
So we know more happened down there.
- We thought they were trying to cover it up,
that maybe they had killed her as a witness to this thing.
- There is another woman
that was shot off of Riverdale.
I want you to finally come clean with what you saw.
- I don't know what you think you know,
but I'd put that on my daughter's heartbeat.
I don't know any girl that got shot.
I don't know about any girl that got shot.
- You were there Thursday night, Friday morning?
- Mm-hmm.
- Midday Friday, we find the body.
- No.
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
I don't know who that is.
- Then why is her body
where you said you turned around,
and she's been positively ID'd as being in your car?
- Sir, I'm not lying to you.
- I just want to figure this out,
because this girl's got a family...
- I'm not getting--
- Who's trying to figure out
what happened to their family member.
♪
- We were kind of, like, on the brink of solving it.
We were like, okay, we've got this thing
with Arvada solved, this shooting,
and possibly, Natalie's there.
♪
And it just completely fell apart.
♪
- Ms. Esquivel was able to tell me
who this other person was.
- We looked into it more
and found Ms. Chavez looked just like Natalie.
♪
Very, very similar features.
Very similar height.
- Ultimately, Ms. Chavez,
she was the one that had stuck her head out
and was looking at this person
and had nothing whatsoever to do with this case.
- It's almost like a mistaken identity kind of
led them to think that they were helping us out.
Ultimately, it had nothing to do with our case.
But we ended up helping them with theirs.
In the end, we're like, "Here you go, Arvada.
We just solved your case for you."
And they're like, "Cool, thanks. We're out."
- "Thanks. We're out of here." Yeah.
- And then we were back to square one again.
- It was devastating.
♪
In this entire time, the phone company
still was not giving us the records.
They have, I think-- what is it, 30 days to comply?
- Yeah. Very frustrating.
[tense music]
♪
- Immediately, we saw that she was communicating
with a phone number that was not listed
on any of her contacts.
There was 111 text messages back and forth between them
that started up about 5:00 in the morning
on the day she went missing until right around noon.
And then there's just absolutely
zero communication after that.
♪
- The first time I ever saw him,
I parked down the street from his house
just to kind of do some surveillance
and see what he was doing.
He was just such a meek, kind of nerdy person.
- No criminal history.
He had a seat belt ticket...
- [laughs] Yeah. - Was all he had.
- He worked at Domino's Pizza,
and he had called in sick for, like,
two or three straight days after Natalie's death.
- Which his manager said
was very, like, unusual for him.
♪
- I got my glasses,
so I can see what I'm saying here.
- [laughs]
♪
- All right, thank you for coming here, all right?
You know, we're just going down the list here, though.
You know what I mean?
So--and unfortunately, your number was there.
So yeah, that's why we had to come in and talk to you.
You're free to leave at any time.
You know that, right? - Yes.
So what I'm thinking this is all about
is someone I was talking to over on Craigslist.
I was just on there, you know, looking for, like, pen pals.
- And who would that be?
- I don't know her name. I never asked.
But what drew me to what she had posted
was--it was very, uh, weird.
- Do you recall kind of what that said
that got your attention?
- Well, the title itself just said,
"I'm thinking about putting a hit on myself."
[ominous music]
- Really?
"I'm thinking about putting a hit on myself"?
- I believe that's what it said.
- Damn.
♪
- So my first thought was, okay, well,
someone obviously needs help
and hasn't been getting the help that they need.
- Sure.
- I suffer from depression,
and I've tried to kill myself a few times.
And I ended up in a mental hospital because of it, and...
- Wow. - You know,
being the type of person that I am, you know,
I will do anything to help someone
at least stay alive. - Absolutely.
- You know, my first thought was,
I really want to help this girl.
So after a little bit, I was like,
you know, I'm not getting anywhere.
You know, let's see if I can convince her
to meet up with me and see what happens.
So I acted as though I was responding to her ad.
- What was she asking you in those texts?
- She was asking me, like,
you know, how do you want to do it?
Where do you want to go and stuff?
And I didn't really give her an answer, you know.
It was just real general 'cause, you know,
I wasn't really thinking about it, you know.
I convinced her to, you know, meet up with me.
So I went to her place, and I picked her up,
and we went for a drive.
And during that drive, I--you know,
I wanted to learn what was going on
and what was going on with her life
and why she was so depressed and sad,
and she's just real quiet and timid, you know?
And I don't want to, you know, force her to talk too much
because, you know, then it kind of gives away
what I'm actually trying to do, you know?
- What did she think you were there for?
- She thought I was replying to the ad.
- In what--in what way?
- Like, she thought I was going to be the one to do it.
- To take her out?
[dramatic music]
- We drove around for a little bit--
you know, like, two or three hours.
I can't remember exactly.
And we just talked.
Eventually, I think
she either got fed up with me, you know,
'cause I guess she was pretty serious
about what was going on.
And, you know, there was nothing much more
we could talk about.
And we went back in the direction
where she was living.
♪
- You said you're a smoker.
Do you want to take a quick break,
go out and smoke?
- I would love one.
♪
- Because we didn't have enough
to say he was a suspect,
we actually didn't read him his rights.
And it wasn't until we started speaking to him
and he starts admitting that he was at her house
and he picked her up
and then he was driving her around--
it was kind of at that point where we're like,
hey, we need to take a break, Mirandize this guy.
♪
- Did you get your cigarette?
- Yes, I did.
- So you should understand your rights.
You have the right to remain silent.
Anything you say
can be used against you in court.
You have the right to talk to an attorney for advice
before I ask you any questions.
If you cannot afford an attorney,
one will be provided for you before any questioning.
- Okay. - And do you understand
each of your rights? - Yes.
♪
- How long were you guys communicating on Craigslist?
- I know it was really early in the morning.
- That same day?
- Yeah.
- So you have no contact with her before?
This was just--[claps] And it just kind of went?
- Yeah. - Wow. Okay.
- So during that whole time talking,
did she ever tell you her name or anything?
- I never asked. - Okay.
- I initially went in you know, thinking, you know,
I just want to talk to her, you know, see what's going on,
find out what exactly is happening.
But I knew if the way I worded it,
she wouldn't talk to me at all.
- Talk about how, what you're talking to her about,
because she thinks you're legit because you're probably--
you're feeding into it. - Mm-hmm.
- Talk about how you're feeding into it.
- So I mainly ask her what, like, her plan would be
and how she wanted it to go.
- And what is she saying when you say,
"How do you want to do it?"
- That's when she tells me that she was thinking about
just doing it execution style, you know.
She doesn't want to see it.
♪
- Do you own any guns? - No.
- Okay. So then you let her know that.
And then she says, "I have a gun"?
Was that--
- Well, I told her that I wouldn't be able
to get one anytime soon.
And that's when she brought it up.
- She said she had one? - Mm-hmm.
She starts asking about, like,
how much it would cost, you know?
And I'm like, "Well, usually,
"it's, like, hundreds to thousands of dollars
or things that can be sold for, you know, value."
- Yeah.
- And she says, "You know, the gun's worth money."
♪
So, you know, I went along with the role,
because I'm a very--
- What does that mean, you went along with the role?
- I'm a very avid role player online.
- How do you go about
taking the persona of a hit man, though?
How do you take that role on?
- It really fascinates me as a writer.
I have a character that's for the horror genre.
His name is Aki.
He's also just a psycho.
You know, like, he'll lure you in, and that's--
- Bam. - Yeah
- All right.
- My last year in high school,
I was, you know, writing down a rough draft for something
I wanted to experiment on. - Yeah.
- And I left it in class,
and it ended up getting me in trouble
'cause they thought that I was actually
going to hurt someone.
- Oh, that's interesting, man.
What would make you get in trouble?
- Well, it was basically like a journal entry,
like "dear diary."
♪
"I've been stalking this person for this long,
and these are what my plans for that person is."
It was, like, kidnapping and then, eventually,
you know, murder after torture, just because this person
was supposed to be extremely psychotic.
♪
- He had all these alter egos
that he went into great detail telling me about
that were killing and raping and torturing women.
And it was at the point where we continued on
just confronting him with new stuff.
- How long do you think she's in your car?
- Maybe 2 1/2, 3 hours-ish.
- Okay, so you guys are cruising around
for a good bit-- amount of time, right?
- Good bit amount of time.
♪
- Did you take the highway
the same way to get her back home?
- No.
I used my GPS to take side roads back up.
And then I just went to work.
- So you had your phone with you the whole time, right?
- Yes.
- Nobody ever used your phone? - No.
- Just you, right? - Just me.
- Okay.
We have mapped out, basically, right here
what he's holding right there.
He'll show you.
- The GPS coordinates show him leaving his house.
It pings right up to Natalie's apartment.
It drives around.
And then eventually,
within, I believe, 5 yards of accuracy,
he's at the murder scene.
- So your phone's going and pinging off these towers.
It shows us that you went to 116th and Riverdale.
- I want to tell you, she was found at 116th and Riverdale,
in that area.
- We were just starting to catch him
in lie after lie after lie.
- We're here to try to figure out
what happened to her, all right?
- Mm-hmm. - And I think that you know.
There's some things I think you're leaving out, bro, okay?
And I just ask right now that you just come forward, bro,
and you get everything off your chest, okay?
Get everything--get it all out right now, buddy.
- [clears throat]
- Take your time, man.
- At some point, she just got really frustrated.
She told me to pull over and...
[sniffling]
- What happened?
[tense music]
♪
And I freaked out.
- So obviously, we're gonna want to talk now
about how it really went, okay?
♪
- Now, what's truth and what was not truth?
Okay? Let's start there.
♪
- So we did drive around for a little bit.
You know, she was looking for places to do it--
you know, for me to--to kill her.
She just gets out of my car.
And I get out, and I start talking to her.
But she's over by the tree.
- I want you to get down and actually show me, bro,
because I was not there.
You were the only one that was there.
- So she's like this for a little bit
while I'm trying to talk to her.
I'm not too far from her, and I'm maybe like this,
pretty close to her, you know.
I was just trying to talk her out of it.
And she shoots herself
before I can try to reach and grab the gun.
[gunshot echoing]
♪
- You say the gun was like this?
Or how?
- She just sat down,
and she put it like this, and then she fired.
- The coroners told us that it wasn't a contact wound.
She couldn't have shot herself.
And we were like, "You said you watch
'The First 48 Hours' all the time."
I said, "So you know if we're asking questions,
we already know the answer."
- The autopsy shows that
the gun was at least 3 feet away.
So we know that didn't happen.
She didn't shoot herself.
Did she give you the gun
when you guys were kneeling down?
♪
- Let it out, bro.
- You got to get it off your chest, man.
- Get it out.
Get it out.
- Did she ask you to do it?
Or what did she say, man?
- She was begging.
- For you to do it?
- [crying]
[somber music]
- Where's the gun?
- It's outside.
- Is it in your car?
- It's in my trunk.
♪
- Her purse and everything there too?
- Her bag's still there, yeah. - Okay.
- Eventually, I just, you know--
I didn't want it to affect me anymore.
So I decided just to forget about it.
♪
[tense music]
- Well, nobody saw this coming.
Police did not arrest Shawn Schwartz,
that man who had the restraining order
taken out on him.
But they did arrest somebody else,
and now they have charged that somebody else
with the murder of Natalie Bollinger.
- The sheriff says they developed Lopez as a suspect
as a result of "mining Natalie's social media
and phone records."
- Lopez says he contacted Natalie
after seeing a Craigslist ad titled
something to the effect of,
"I want to put a hit on myself."
It states he used a fake hit man persona,
and he agreed to meet her and kill her with her own gun
execution style.
♪
- Detective Peterson let me know
that they had caught the person responsible for this.
And he got real, real serious,
and he said, "Do you think that she
would have...
Posted an ad or something along those lines?
And so I just was kind of like...
"Maybe."
♪
You replay life while you're grieving.
Conversations
and should have, could have, would have.
She struggled a lot, you know?
She took a lot on.
But she was definitely taken advantage of.
♪
- It was posted.
He answered it two minutes later.
And then, like, two minutes after he answered it,
somebody had saw it and reported it,
and it was taken down.
So literally, like, within that two-minute time frame
made the whole difference in this entire thing.
There was no questioning of why do you want to do this
or what's going on.
Instantly, it was, "Oh, yeah, I'm a hit man.
"I do this. This is my price.
This is what I normally charge."
And it was eerily kind of a fantasy in that journal
that he had ever since he was in high school.
- This was a desire of his to do for a long time.
♪
- We'll never know-- wouldn't be able to prove it--
but I definitely think Natalie
would have accepted help if somebody would have
pushed her to it that day.
♪
- She had her entire life ahead of her
until that December day.
Natalie was my daughter,
my first-born child,
a twin, a sister,
a granddaughter,
a niece, and a friend.
She was loved beyond measure.
As her mother, I loved her first,
before anyone saw her face,
before Natalie was her name.
Before she was her own "she," we were three.
Where's my toes?
Mr. Lopez fulfilled a fantasy he had cultivated for years
when he carried out the murder of my daughter.
The wounded, grieving hearts of this family
will be carried for the rest of our lives.
Even worse, I think, than my own sorrow
is that of Natalie's twin sister, Alycia.
♪
They equate twin loss
the same as a mother losing her child.
♪
It was a devastating jolt for her.
- After several emotional statements
from Natalie's family,
the judge gave Lopez the maximum sentence
under his plea deal,
48 years in prison with 5 years parole.
Natalie's maternal side of the family
says they're at peace with the sentence.
[somber music]
- She's not a character from some show
that somebody somewhere scripts and writes.
♪
This is a real human being who was taken from us,
and we'll never be the same without her.
♪
- She was young, beautiful,
and had her future ahead of her.
- Hey, Grandma. It's Nat-bug.
I just wanted to call and say have a merry Christmas Eve,
and I love you a bunch,
and if you still want us to come over tomorrow, just--
I love you.
I hope you have a great day.
Bye.
♪