[footsteps falling]
[police officer speaking]
[Mark Lunsford speaking]
[alarm beeping]
[Ruth Lunsford speaking]
[siren wailing]
We've got the picture nationwide now.
This investigation is wide open.
I know she's out there. I hope she can hear us.
Jessica was surrounded by bad guys.
Your first lesson is your name's on top of the list.
[detective speaking]
[John Couey speaking]
[Emily] The clock has been ticking this whole time.
Jessie might actually be alive.
-[Jeffrey] You have 48 hours. -[timer ticking]
We got to find out where Jessie is.
Wake up, America. The next child could be yours.
[suspenseful theme music playing]
[theme music continues]
[theme music fades]
This is Jessie's room.
This is her artwork.
This may be the scene of a crime, but it has become
peaceful.
The evilness will never go away.
The pain, the hurt,
the details in your head going over and over and over again
about what happened to your child.
Life will never be normal again.
Everything between the grass being green, and the sky being
blue will change when something like this happens in your life,
but, for some unknown reason, I find peace in here.
[birds chirping]
[Melody] In 2005, Mark Lunsford and his nine-year-old daughter,
Jessie Lunsford, are living in the seaside hamlet of
Homosassa, Florida.
Living in Homosassa is very laid back.
Seemed like a great rural place to live.
Me and Jessie used to -- we used to go to the beach a lot.
We'd go to Four Iron Trail, which is also known as
Radiation Beach because there's a nuclear plant right there.
It's really cool.
[chuckling]
[seagulls cackling]
Mark is separated from Jessie's mother, Angie Bryant,
who lives in Ohio, and Mark's raising Jessie
on his own.
Mark Lunsford and Angie Bryant divorced when Jessie was
a year old -- Mark gains custody of Jessie.
I got no problem being a single father.
I was raised by good Christian people to be close to
your children, and that's what I did.
Mark really wanted to create a stable home life for
his daughter, Jessie.
And so he moves back home with his parents, Archie and Ruth.
Jessie's grandmother, Ruth, takes a huge maternal
role in Jessie's life.
[Mark] My mom was the most important woman in Jessie's life.
That was her grandma.
[Ruth] Jessica was a miracle.
Even though I had a lot of other grandchildren,
she was special.
She was neat, and she was clean.
You didn't go in her room and find it a mess.
If she had dirty clothes on,
it was coming off and she was gonna go find something else
to wear. She took that after Grandma.
We were always together.
[man speaking]
When you walked with her, you didn't hold hands.
You'd hold little fingers.
See, that made her feel more grown up, holding just
the little finger.
Just hooking your fingers together like that.
[chortling]
You never had to worry about Jessie.
She'd go out here and ride her bicycle, but she went three
or four doors down and that's as far as she would go.
She never would go out of sight.
I think no matter where we live, we all think
we're safe.
I guess in reality,
we probably shouldn't be so ignorant.
[TV broadcasting indistinctly]
[Mark] That night, I was going to my girlfriend's.
We had rules.
You had to have a hug and a kiss before you left.
Always.
So I get ready to leave, and Jessie comes running out,
telling me I can't leave until I kiss and hug her goodbye.
I always tucked her in.
I always made sure she was, you know, tucked in at night.
She had her dolphin.
[Mark] Jessie had a stuffed animal.
It was a purple dolphin that I had won her at the fair.
Jessie liked the color purple.
That seemed to be one of her favorite colors.
And that night was the last time that I kissed her
and hugged her goodbye.
-[door creaking] -[door thudding shut]
[radio broadcasting indistinctly]
[Mark] I got up the next morning to go to work.
I had to come home first.
This was 5:30 in the morning, somewhere around there.
When I come home and I come in the door, I could hear Jessie's
alarm going off.
[beeping]
I go in her room to shut the alarm off.
And, uh... Jessie wasn't there.
[beeping]
I didn't think nothing about it.
I just walk over to my mom and dad's bedroom, asking them
if Jessie was in there with them, and they said no.
It wasn't like her, but I thought at first maybe
she was hiding, you know, in the house.
The panic set in when I seen she was gone.
Where is she at?
And then it got really scary.
Just all of a sudden, fear took over.
You just feel it inside you. It's not a good feeling.
[phone ringing]
We have a 9-year-old child, missing.
We immediately started activating additional staff,
and we get to work. -[siren wailing]
I ran the multi-agency task force
in the Jessica Lunsford case. I walk into the house.
You've got Mark Lunsford in there.
He's upset. He's frantic.
You got his dad in there trying to calm him down, and you got
Mark's mother, and she's trying to keep everybody
calmed down also.
I go into Jessica's bedroom.
I see no sign of foul play.
I see no disturbance that occurred in there at all.
We have to figure out, is this a real abduction, or is this
just a runaway?
Jessica Lunsford did not put on her school clothes because
they're laid out on a chair.
Jessie's jacket was still there, and Jessie's shoes
were still there.
It was a pretty cold day for Florida weather.
It was probably in the low 40s, maybe high 30s.
Bells and whistles go off, because if she was a runaway,
those things would have gone with her.
[Emily] Ruth tells the sheriff that one of
Jessie's prized possessions is missing.
[David] There was a purple dolphin that Mark had won at the county fair
and given to Jessica.
And that was missing out of the bedroom.
Her shoes are still there. Her clothes are still there.
But she takes her dolphin with her.
And what does this mean?
Nothing seems to look right here.
It looked like a child abduction.
The clock is ticking if there's any hope of finding
Jessica alive.
It's unfolding that you had an abduction,
and anybody that's in law enforcement will tell you,
you have 48 hours. -[alarm beeping]
We got to find out where Jessie is.
We were starting to really ramp up the investigation.
We had pretty well ruled out that Jessica Lunsford
walked away.
Something bad had happened here.
[Mark] I was an emotional wreck.
You've come to realize that your daughter is gone.
The sheriff's deputy said he needed us all just to stay
at the house until the other detectives get here.
I'm like, you guys have lost your minds.
This is my child. And I said, "Screw you.
I'm looking for my daughter." And out the door I went.
I walked outside, hollering for Jessie.
I walked up to the street and was hollering for her.
-[dog barking] -Mark is just frantic.
He wants to be out there looking for Jessie,
and as he goes in search of his daughter, police continue
their investigation inside the Lunsford home.
When you go into Jessie's room, you see a pristine room.
When we had Ruth in there, we asked, "Is there anything
out of place?"
It didn't take Ruth a nanosecond.
She says, "There's dirt on that pillow, that wouldn't be there."
The dirt mark was the catalyst to really kick off
this investigation.
Police focus in on that smudge of dirt on the pillow as a clue
showing that someone came into
the house, an intruder, and snatched her up.
All my training was within a half a mile.
That's where the bad person is and possibly where Jessie is.
I wasn't leaving until I found this little girl.
[Emily] So police start canvassing the neighborhood.
They don't have search warrants.
They don't have really even a list of suspects.
They just are trying to figure out what happened.
Part of the investigation is a neighborhood check --
the Child Abduction Response Team.
30 investigators from throughout the state of Florida
arrived in our community.
We had them do the neighborhood check, go to each house,
verify who lives there, verify who lives in the next
house, ask an assortment of questions.
Have you seen anything out of the ordinary?
One door that the police knock on in the neighborhood belongs
to 49-year-old Dorothy Dixon.
Dorothy Dixon's residence was close to
the Lunsford residence.
You had to cross the street and go down another street,
but you can look directly into Jessica's house from there.
Dorothy Dixon lets us into the house, and we were looking
for Jessica, and she says, "Well, she's not here.
I don't know what I can tell you."
[Melody] Dorothy explains that she lives there with three other people,
but her roommates aren't home.
As a result, police can only search communal areas
of the house.
Because they don't have a warrant, they can't require
anybody to let them search, and so police can only look
around where they're given permission to do so.
You can give somebody permission to search an area
that you have access to, but you can't give permission
to search a room that belongs to somebody else.
So you would think, Dorothy could say,
"Search the whole trailer, do what you want to do,"
but you can't if it's somebody else's room.
So we expanded our search to the neighbor's house,
to the neighbor's house, and we keep expanding,
expanding, expanding.
The search of Dorothy Dixon's residence comes up empty,
but back at the Lunsford home, police notice something that
catches their attention.
[Jeffrey] The Lunsfords had a very little dog, and when I knocked on
the door, was given permission to come in, that dog was
barking and barking and barking and barking.
That little dog barked at everything in that house.
We asked Archie and Ruth, did you hear anything
that night? Did the dog bark?
Archie and Ruth said, "The dog did not bark at all
through the evening." -[David] The dog never barked.
That points towards the two men in the house,
Mark and his father,
because who else would the dog be familiar with?
Who else would be in there and Jessica wouldn't say a word
if they got her up to walk her out of the house?
This was all very suspicious to us.
It made us really zero in on Mark and his dad.
A quick background check of Mark and his father,
Archie, also raises some alarm bells.
[David] We take a good look at Archie's criminal history.
He does have a criminal history.
We look at Mark's.
Mark does have a criminal history.
[Melody] Mark has been arrested several times for minor offenses.
And in the 1950s, Archie faced charges for several crimes,
including a kidnapping, an assault,
and even an attempted rape.
All charges against Mark and Archie were eventually
dropped, but they definitely catch the attention of police.
Now we have a totally different picture of what this family may
be, and we have got to confront that.
[David] I asked Mark and Archie to come down to the Sheriff's Office.
I need to get them separated, get them on videotape,
and start asking them some pointed questions.
[indistinct radio chatter]
There is nothing that can prepare you for what you have
to go through in an investigation.
Your first lesson is your name's on top of the list.
So Mark Lunsford says that he's with his girlfriend
most of the night.
[David] We speak to her.
The stories line up.
[David] Mark showed true emotion.
There was no acting going on on his part.
His child's missing, and he wants to find out what
happened to her.
At the same time police are questioning Mark,
another detective is turning up the heat on Archie.
Archie was a big guy. He was kind of a rough guy.
He wasn't taking a lot of guff from anybody.
He was just a great man. He protected his family.
For someone to come up with this crazy idea that my dad did
this, that's just so obscene and so far from anything
I've ever known.
And it continued to get worse from there.
[David] I said, look, your dad's acting a little strange.
Why don't we put you in the room alone with your dad
and you talk to him? Mark went along with that.
It just seems like they were really focused on our family
and not so much on anyone on the outside.
[Emily] For two days, Mark and Archie are questioned for hours
and hours and hours.
Police are really focused on Archie.
They are convinced that it is an inside job.
The family know what happened to Jessie.
[Mark] You want to interrogate the family until they feel like
they're in hell? Go ahead.
But while you're doing that, go find my daughter.
Police think they will find Jessie if we can get one of
these men to break down.
And eventually, both men agreed to do a polygraph test.
I gave Mark and Archie a lie detection examination,
and they both passed.
I have to report back to the sheriff that Mark
and Archie have nothing to do with this.
[Mark] It took them a little while, but they finally got
the truth out.
And the truth was that our family had nothing
to do with it.
But you got to keep in mind, though, man, they walked
into a scene. There was no forced entry.
There was no screaming, no barking dog.
It's just like she was just lifted out of here quietly.
So I get it, but it still makes you angry.
With both men cleared, police turned their attention
to the mother, Angie.
[Jeffrey] There was a divorce in this family.
The mom was in Ohio. The dad was here.
So we have to figure out the dynamics of the family.
I always felt bad because Angie got a phone call from
the police asking her if she knew the whereabouts of
her daughter, that she'd been abducted.
Investigators are able to confirm the whereabouts of
Jessie's mom the night her daughter disappeared. -[phone ringing]
The mother was up in Ohio, so we could take her out of
the picture of this abduction.
[news broadcast] Mark Lunsford came home to make a shocking discovery.
Jessica was reported missing Thursday morning.
The story of Jessie's disappearance is picked up by
local TV stations and quickly becomes national news.
[news broadcast] Mark says when he arrived home, the front door was unlocked
and Jessie was gone.
I was in about 7th grade when Jessie disappeared,
and I remember seeing it on the news.
We were both from the South, we were a few years apart,
I remember being scared.
We've got the picture nationwide now, we've got
the information nationwide.
Wake up America, the next child could be yours.
I know how effective the media can be.
This young lady, Jessica Lunsford,
captured the world's heart.
I just ask you to please help me find my daughter
and bring her home.
I just want to know where she's at, know she's safe.
She needs to be with her family.
Leads are coming in, hundreds and hundreds of
leads an hour.
[news broadcast] There is a strong will to keep the search going.
As time passes, many are starting to think the worst.
Your natural instincts is telling you time is
of the essence. I talk to God every day.
And, uh, I've just begged him to bring her home.
[creaking]
[Emily] Police now think Jessie was snatched by a stranger.
And this comes with
another really difficult component attached,
because statistically speaking, if you're snatched by
a stranger as a child, most likely there is a sexual
component involved.
And so now police are fearing not only an abduction,
but also sexual abuse.
They go through the registry of sex predators in the area.
[David] We had 208 sex offenders in Citrus County.
Out of the 208 registered sex offenders in Citrus County,
50 of them lived close by to Jessica.
So she was surrounded by bad guys, and potential bad guys.
We started out with the 50 sex offenders in that neighborhood,
checking where they were, getting an alibi, -[knocking]
authenticating the alibi, and then extended it out to all
208 in Citrus County.
They went one by one, door by door, looking for each of these
sex predators.
[Melody] When detectives arrive at one of the addresses
on their list, something is off.
It's clear no one has lived at the residence
in quite some time.
It's this mobile home, had trash everywhere,
looked like a wreck on the outside.
From what I understand, it was a wreck on the inside.
[indistinct radio chatter]
Police are there to check 46-year-old registered
sex offender John Couey off their list.
[David] John Couey had about 24 arrests, everything from
carrying a concealed weapon and narcotics to lewd
and lascivious act on children.
He had a pretty long rap sheet, and he's no longer at
the residence he's supposed to be at.
Police can't find John Couey. He's not where he said he is.
The desire to find John Couey and figure out where he is
and what he knows is of prime importance to investigators.
[Jeffrey] John Couey had an extensive criminal record of misdemeanors
and felonies, but I will tell you the one that stands out.
Couey broke into a house and was caught by the dad in
his little girl's bedroom.
So days into the investigation, as police are looking
for John Couey, everything stops when they get a call from
a neighboring county about 70 miles away.
Sheriff from Hillsborough County called me earlier
this afternoon, advising that they had located a body down
there and it may match our girl here.
[siren wailing]
[Mark] The sheriff came by.
He didn't want to alarm us, but he wanted us to know that
while searching for Jessie, they had found a body
in a pond. -Tensions are high.
You're hearing, "a body in water."
They have a young girl's body in Lake Thonotosassa, which is
about 75 miles from here.
They tell us this is her, it's Jessie.
But then they started describing the body.
She was much older, and there's a tattoo on her.
Of course, Jessica didn't have a tattoo.
We have confirmed that it is not our girl.
I repeat, it is not our girl.
[David] We were notified that she was a prostitute.
That's not uncommon.
Bodies get dumped all over the place around here.
It's sad.
You know, you look for one, and you find somebody else's.
Over a week has passed since Jessie disappeared.
The nation is captivated by her story.
Jessie's name is all over the news.
Day in, day out, the media are covering the story from
every angle. People want to help find her.
[news broadcast] Desperate for clues, volunteers began searching
nearby wooded areas again this morning.
[Jeffrey] We had 3,000 leads come in.
One of the leads came from Madie Secord, Couey's niece.
Madie Secord came in because she knew John Couey's history
of sexually assaulting people.
She told us Couey was living at the house across the street
from Jessica Lunsford, but nobody knew it.
[Melody] The home belongs to Dorothy Dixon, who it turns out is
John Couey's sister.
This is significant, because Dorothy Dixon is one of
the people that police interviewed when they first
were canvassing the neighborhood.
They spoke with her, they went into her home,
they looked around,
but there had been these limitations.
They hadn't been allowed in certain rooms.
They'd only been able to look at common spaces.
So now things are starting to fit together,
and they're concerned, did we actually go into
this home, and maybe the kid was there,
and we missed her.
[door handle rattles]
Investigators race back to the residence, this time with
a search warrant.
[indistinct radio chatter]
[banging]
Once detectives got inside, they go into John Couey's room.
They found a bloody mattress.
They also found some speaker wire.
They turned it into evidence for examination.
[Emily] Police find evidence that Jessie has been there,
but she's not anywhere to be found now.
[Melody] But when detectives ask Dorothy Dixon where her brother is,
they get a frustrating answer.
Dorothy said that she had provided John Couey with money
for a bus ticket to leave town, and that bus ticket was to
Savannah, Georgia.
Without a doubt in my mind, Dorothy Dixon bought that
ticket to get him out of the house because John Couey
definitely compromised that whole family simply by being
there without being registered.
[Emily] Dorothy Dixon says she never knew that Jessie was
in the house.
She knew nothing of what was going on in the bedroom.
Although Dorothy's actions are suspicious, police focus on
finding John Couey.
[news broadcast] There is also another man detectives are
desperately seeking.
They say some 3,000 clues into their office led them to
this individual.
Law enforcement blasts John Couey's name and picture
everywhere, and a homeless shelter worker
in Augusta, Georgia, recognizes Couey and calls police.
I have a meeting with the sheriff, and we decide to
send detectives up there to interview John Couey.
John adamantly denies, he has nothing to do with it.
He doesn't even know who Jessica Lunsford is.
So they said, well, we'll go ahead and give you
a polygraph up here.
And if it all comes good, you know, we'll move on.
[Emily] So they subject John Couey to a polygraph test.
And early in, he breaks down.
That's where the detectives came back in
and got the confession.
In the midst of this, John Couey asked for a lawyer.
But police don't want to wait, so they proceed anyway.
We didn't know where Jessie was.
We got to find out where Jessie is.
[David] The sheriff made a tactical decision.
He said, if this girl is still alive someplace,
we need to find her.
If his statement gets thrown out, it gets thrown out.
John Couey entered the Lunsfords' house through
a door that was unlocked, woke her up.
That's where the dirt smudge came.
From his hand.
[Emily] From what John Couey says, it was simply
a crime of opportunity.
And it was just by chance the dog didn't wake up
and start barking.
Dog never barked.
She never yelled, never screamed.
[Melody] Detectives continue to press John Couey for answers,
and they're devastated to learn the truth.
[David] Jessica was tied up in that closet with speaker wire,
alive, with the door cracked open, with the TV on so
she could watch everybody searching for her.
I know she's out there. I hope she can hear us.
And whoever's got her, she needs to be
with her family.
He's having her watch the search, looking for her,
and she can probably see out the window and hear
the helicopters, and the dogs, and the commotion out there.
Probably one of the most heinous mind games I've ever
seen in my life.
I need your help.
[Emily] It's now been more than two weeks since they first
searched the house.
For an investigator, I think it would be, you know,
incredibly difficult to know that you were so close.
Jessie was there in the closet, but you couldn't search that
bedroom because you're not allowed.
Detectives are shocked to realize how close Jessie was
the whole time, and they missed it.
But John Couey still hasn't answered the most
important question -- where is Jessie now?
On day three, Couey's just, "I don't know what
"I'm gonna do. The police have been here.
"I don't want to get caught, and I need to get rid
of Jessica."
[John sobbing]
When you hear a confession like that and you receive
a confession like that, everybody suffers with that.
The problem is we were responsible
[voice breaking] to bring her home.
So you take that responsibility to heart.
I'm standing out here in the yard, Sheriff's Department,
two deputies come flying down the road.
They stop right here in front of this house,
and they start taping it off.
And my sister came outside, and I told her to go back
inside and turn the TV off.
And she goes, "What's going on?" I said, "They found her."
I didn't need them to tell me that.
Time went by,
all the bigwigs in the Sheriff's Department
showed up, they get out, they walk in my direction.
I told them they didn't need to come [bleep] near me.
You go in there and you tell that woman what happened
to her granddaughter.
The officers came here to the house, and we sat right in
here in the front room, and he got right down on his knees in
front of me, but I already knew.
We took Jessie out of that hole and started the process of
bringing her home.
Jessie died of asphyxiation from being under three or four
feet of dirt in a plastic bag with her hands tied
behind her back.
I can't even describe how angry a man could be to find out that
she's 150 yards from her own bedroom,
that every day I opened that door and looked out in
this yard, and asked God where she was at.
He told me. I just didn't hear him.
She was right in front of me.
I asked God to just bring her home.
I won't ask you to bring her home in a certain way.
I just want you to bring her home.
So she came home.
[Melody] John Couey is charged with first-degree murder,
sexual battery, kidnapping, and burglary.
He faces the death penalty.
[Emily] Eventually, police do charge Dorothy Dixon with obstruction
of justice.
These charges had all been dropped.
We felt that Dorothy Dixon and Madie Secord were
complicit in this case.
We arrested them, we charged them, but I couldn't
make it stick.
The state attorney's office wouldn't charge them.
[news broadcast] Prosecutors started to lay out their case
against John Evander Couey,
accused of murdering nine-year-old Jessica Lunsford in 2005.
The evidence will show that the one man responsible for all
of these acts is sitting right there.
But the case hits a huge roadblock.
As the Sheriff anticipated, the judge does throw out
John Couey's confession because the interview continued after
he had asked for a lawyer.
But we had the mattress, and we had blood on it,
and we had DNA on it.
So we had enough, even without his confession.
The defendant took her, raped her, buried her alive,
and murdered her, put her in two garbage bags.
[judge] State of Florida versus John Evander Couey.
It is hereby ordered and adjudged,
and for the murder of Jessica Marie Lunsford, this court
sentences you, John Evander Couey, to death.
My daughter got justice, and he's gonna die.
-And that felt good. -[judge] Adjourned.
[Ruth] You harmed a child, one of God's children,
and you are to die.
You don't deserve to be on this earth.
[Mark] That's not something that should make anybody happy,
but when someone hurts a child, there isn't anyone more worthy
of dying than someone who hurts a child.
A dead pedophile cannot re-offend.
Ultimately, John Couey dies from natural causes in 2009,
before his execution could take place.
After Jessie's horrific death, Mark becomes this great child
advocate, making huge moves within legislation.
After they found Jessie, that's when my advocacy began.
And that's how I pushed Jessie's Law.
My job now is to declare war on child sex offenders
and predators, to get you to join me.
Instead of them stalking our kids, we will stalk them.
Predators forewarned.
Jessie's Law was based on sentencing guidelines,
registration guidelines, where sex offenders were
allowed to go.
It increased a lot of different penalties for sex offenders
and people who harbor sex offenders.
[Melody] The law includes a mandatory minimum sentence of 25 years in
prison for certain sexual offenses, and lifetime
electronic monitoring for convicted sex offenders.
With great pride, I will sign the Jessica Lunsford Act
into law.
Thanks to Mark's advocacy, Jessie's Law is approved in
Florida in 2005, and goes into effect in more than
40 other states.
Jessie's Law is her legacy, but her legacy extends
past that law.
They came up with an idea for child advocacy centers,
and I got behind them and supported those.
[Melissa] We weren't able to save Jessie, but we were able to give
her a legacy.
This is the child advocacy center that we created
and named after Jessica Lunsford.
The intention is to make every child who has experienced
violence and abuse have a safe and comfortable place to come
and tell their story and begin their journey to recovery.
When you have a Child Advocacy Center in your community,
cases are stronger and criminal outcomes are more successful,
prosecution rates go up.
I hope she is proud of what we have built.
I hope she is proud of the Child Advocacy Center.
[Mark] This is the memorial that was put up for Jessie.
I can tell you in time, whatever happened to your child it won't
go away, but it will be replaced, and you will be
overwhelmed with memories
of the good times, and less about what happened.
She changed our lives forever.
She's always been with us. She's not in the graveyard.
Her body's there, but she's not there.
She's with us.
We used to argue over who loved each other the most.
I told her one time, I love you more, I love you more,
just back and forth like that.
I said, "I love you this much, and that's all the way around."
And she said,
she said, "I love you this much and nothing will come
between us."
She stole everybody's heart.
She was, she was a thief of hearts, and if you met her,
you loved her.