- I'm craig melvin,
And this is dateline: Secrets uncovered.
♪
- Introducing elvis music, that's what we do.
Mr. Scott sessions right here,
Ladies and gentlemen. [applause]
It was really an honor to have him in the band.
♪
One of my backup vocalists said,
"hey, there's been some news about the finding of a body."
You know, we're all thinkin', "well, it can't be scott.
"it's not scott."
- It broke my heart that he laid up there in the cold
To think of that, it hurts.
Who would murder scott?
♪
- Somebody in a rage. - Yeah.
An immediate, "we wanna kill you.
"we want you dead."
- The day that he went missing, he had contacted a person,
Heather frank, via facebook.
- Did you think it remotely possible
That heather could have committed murder?
- No, not even for a second.
- She was fearin' for her life.
♪
- None of us knew that that was going to happen.
It was like I got hit by a wrecking ball.
[sniffling]
- I said, "please tell me she's still alive."
♪
- Hello, and welcome,
To dateline: Secrets uncovered.
Scott sessions captivated audiences
With the sounds of his cherished trumpet.
Music was his life,
Until the day his body was discovered
On a rocky mountain roadside.
Investigators suspected the secret to this crime
Was trapped somewhere in a love triangle,
But they did not see the twisted shape
Their case was about to take.
Here's keith morrison with "the last weekend."
- Greeley radio, 104.7, the pirate.
♪ but I know that there's a brighter-- ♪
- It was a glorious winter Monday
In greeley, colorado.
A clean, thick quilt of new fallen snow
Was gleaming in the sun,
And morning man george gray of 104.7 fm,
Was in a fine mood indeed.
- Good morning!
It is going to be a beautiful day
Here in northern colorado.
And of course, you're listening to...
- George had been waking greeley up
For more than 20 years
By the time February 10th, 2020 came along.
No preparing for that day.
Happy talk would not suffice after that Monday morning.
Do you remember what you did that morning?
- Yeah. Yep. I try not to live it.
Sometimes you, um,
You don't wanna think things are real.
- For many in the greeley area,
Mornings revolve around breakfast at doug's diner.
On that Monday,
Bacon and eggs perfumed the air.
But a young woman named shelby kabong hardly noticed.
She worried about her friend and fellow waitress,
The usually coiffed and manicured heather frank.
- That was the first time I think I'd ever seen her
Without makeup, or with her hair all done up.
She didn't seem herself that day, at all.
- Two hours north,
And thousands of feet up poudre canyon,
A county snowplow driver,
Had already been up for hours that day,
Busy clearing some remote roads
In the rocky mountain national park.
He saw some smoke off road, up a small hill,
So he decided to pull over to see what it was.
Of course, it was much later
When bill mein took us up there
To show us where he found...
What he found.
- As I was comin' up this way,
I could see that this log was burning,
And I wondered why--
Why is the log on fire?
As I took a few more steps,
I could see what looked like branches.
And then I realized
The branches had shoes on, or boots.
And, at that point,
I knew that this was a crime scene.
So I backtracked and ran to my truck.
I said, "oh, my god," probably 100 times
While I was waiting.
- Waited way up there in that remote place,
Through 45 minutes that seemed an eternity.
And then the first responders were there,
And they moved the log and found a male body.
His legs, torso, arms, badly burned.
No I.D. To say who it was.
None.
- I've never seen a body as damaged...
And hurt... And destroyed.
This was murder, no question,
Said investigator justin atwood
Of the larimer county sheriff's office.
And the fire was clearly meant to destroy
All evidence of it.
Had he been wrapped up in anything,
Or-or had they made an effort to conceal the body?
- They had wrapped him in, uh,
A light blue blanket and plastic,
And then used duct tape to secure the plastic
And the blanket around his body.
- And if bill mein, the snowplow guy,
Hadn't been up there,
The charred remains might never have been found,
Let alone a cause of death.
Instead, investigators could clearly see
The victim's neck had been slashed deep,
Almost clear through.
Somebody in a rage had taken a knife to him.
- Yeah. My initial thoughts was that this was not a fight.
This was an immediate...
We want-- we wanna kill you.
We want you dead.
- But who was the victim?
And who killed him?
And why? No idea. Not a clue.
[audience cheering, music playing]
Later, the same Monday, back in a town near greeley.
♪
An eager crowd was about to enjoy a concert.
♪
Elvis was in the house.
[cheers and applause]
Or at least an impersonator was.
And he's someone you've already met.
George gray.
Morning dj, nighttime elvis.
- I tell people, "I'm not elvis.
"I'm just here to keep the music and spirit alive."
- Which he did-- does...
With the help of his 11-piece backup band.
We're all supposed to meet there
At a certain time for a sound check.
- Mm-hmm. - So when it got to-
To where it's about 30 minutes before showtime,
Everybody's there except for scott.
- Scott.
That would be scott sessions, the band's ace trumpet player.
- And then it got to about 15 minutes till.
And now everybody's trying to call him,
Trying to text him and he's not responding.
- Which was extra weird
Because scott was entirely dependable,
Always on time,
Always smiling his infectious smile.
And at 53, had earned a reputation
As one of the best trumpeters around.
Here he was in a concert the year before.
- He was, I think, last year, uh...
Voted northern colorado's best trumpet player.
How'd you do this year?
- Washed out this year? - Oh, okay.
- No, actually, they didn't hold it this year, george.
- Very good.
Mr. Scott sessions, right here, ladies and gentlemen.
[applause]
But that Monday, no choice.
They went on without scott.
Still,
George gray couldn't help but be distracted.
- Thinking in the back of my mind,
You know, I wonder what's- what's goin' on with scott.
- Two mysteries now, equal and opposing,
And strange events to come.
♪
- On Tuesday morning,
George gray was a worried man.
Now, he woke up greeley, just like he always did.
But the unexplained absence of ace trumpeter scott sessions
Was all he could think about.
So right after his radio show,
George called scott's dad.
- I said, "hey, stan.
"scott didn't show up for the gig last night."
He goes, "well, that's unusual.
"he loves that band."
And I said, uh,
"I think I'm gonna run over to his house
"and make sure he's okay."
- I was becoming a little worried.
It wasn't like him.
♪
- So stanley sessions drove over to his son's house,
Where he met george,
And used the key he had to get inside.
So stan walks through the living room
To the back bedroom, and I hear him say,
"hey. Hey, buddy."
And then my heart sunk.
He was actually talkin' to the cat.
- Oh, my lord.
- So, stan comes back,
And he goes, "he's not here.
"I don't think he made it home."
So I said, "well, george,
"I'm going over to the police department.
"I'm gonna report that he's missing."
- Stan told the police
His son performed in multiple bands
And painted houses on the side.
He last heard from him on Saturday night,
Three days earlier,
When scott called from his car.
"dad, I'm on my way to fort collins
"to visit with some friends."
Then he said, "oh, there's the address."
He said, "I'm here now."
He said, um, "I'll see you in the morning."
- But stan said he had no idea who his son went to visit.
And so, that was that.
All he could do then was go home and wait
And try to keep the awful thoughts at bay.
♪
He tried instead to think about good things.
Stan and his wife tried for many years to have a child.
And finally, they adopted scott,
But they weren't totally ready for his last minute arrival.
- We were nervous because now we had some--
We had a little person we had to take care of,
And we didn't have anything.
So we used a laundry basket for a while
Until we got some baby stuff for him.
- Soon, another son made it a family of four,
And when scott turned 25,
He tracked down his biological mother,
And that's when he discovered he had a sister.
- I got a call from scott and he said,
"hey, sis, I guess I'm your brother."
[laughing]
And, um, we just automatically clicked.
- Allison weldon lives in kansas,
But distance didn't seem to matter.
The bond was pretty much instant.
- We're in tune with each other.
We- we liked the same things.
We acted the same way.
Even down to our cat.
♪
- And she quickly learned what his world revolved around.
[trumpet playing upbeat tune]
- His trumpet was his life.
♪
- How do you describe passion?
♪
He says, "dad, the only time I'm really, really happy
"is when I'm on that stage playing my trumpet."
♪
- He loved music. He loved people.
He loved his family.
- Now his family was desperately worried.
A few hours after he reported his son missing,
Scott's dad got a call
To come back to the police station.
Inside was investigator justin atwood,
Waiting to tell stanley about a body
They identified by fingerprints,
The body of his son.
- He said, "stan, we found your son."
They believed that he had been murdered.
- I thought who would murder scott?
Who would murder him?
Everybody loves scott.
- Except, obviously, not everybody.
At least one person, maybe more, wanted him dead.
And now, his family had to listen
To the gruesome details.
- It broke my heart that he laid up there
In the cold. Um...
And to burn him afterwards,
You know, like it wasn't good enough
That they did what they did.
So, to think that... It hurts.
But, I know that he's not hurting anymore.
- Who would do such a thing?
Investigator atwood assessed what was known.
We didn't have a lot of information at that point
About who had done this to him.
We just had scott's cell phone information.
- Which was not nothing,
Because the cell phone data told a story of sorts,
Just not one that made a whole lot of sense.
On the Saturday before the missed Monday concert,
As they could clearly see,
Scott's phone did not go to fort collins,
Where he told his dad he was going.
Instead the phone, and presumably scott,
Spent the entire night in greeley,
Somewhere near this king soopers grocery store.
Armed with that information,
Police swarmed the area, and...
- We ended up locating his vehicle
Parked in the parking lot of the king soopers.
And so, when we found his vehicle in that area,
One of the things that we wanted to do
Is start immediately pulling video security footage
From the area businesses that were around there.
- And, well, it was winter,
And the quality wasn't too good,
But they scanned at all.
Hours and hours of video...
Until they saw this.
The curious thing that happened
Tuesday morning, 6:48 a.M.
This was the day after scott's body was found,
And here was somebody driving his car
Into the king soopers parking lot.
Did you see who brought that car there?
- Yeah, someone actually got out of the car,
And then the person walked south
Away from the vehicle.
- Not walking to another car, just walking away.
- Just walkin' away. - Hmm.
- And we could see from the video
That it looked like a stature of a man.
It was not a woman.
- But that's about the best you could tell, just a guy.
- That's the best you could-- it was very grainy.
- Who was that man?
Maybe scott's ex-girlfriend
Would have some answers for the police.
Uh... Maybe.
- I called in sick for two days,
Tuesday and Wednesday-- I can't tell you why.
♪
- It goes without saying, of course,
In greeley, colorado, or anywhere else.
Nobody is perfect. Not a single one of us.
And not scott sessions.
Probe those imperfections, figured the investigators,
And they just might find a clue or two.
They pulled the file and found trouble.
Two years earlier, they discovered
Scott's temper had gotten the better of him,
And a then girlfriend
Was given that order of protection.
Her name, loretta bullock.
- We knew that she had a very up and down relationship
With scott sessions.
At one point, they had got into an argument
At, uh, her apartment.
- Loretta said, scott threw a coffee cup toward her.
She asked him to leave, and he did.
- He ended up getting arrested for a domestic violence charge.
- Really? - Involving loretta bullock.
- Was she injured? - No, she was not.
- Still, that was certainly worth following up,
Especially when they looked up loretta's address.
It was right near
The king soopers shopping center
Where scott's car was found,
And his phone last pinged that Saturday night.
- Loretta's house was approximately
200 to 300 feet north of where that tower was.
- What did you think when you saw that?
- I was extremely concerned.
I started thinking that loretta was involved in this.
Was this some sort of retaliation against scott,
Or did scott make a mistake with loretta?
Whatever it was,
We started, um, conducting surveillance.
- Well, I appreciate you coming down and-
And meeting with us. [sighs] - of course.
- So they asked her to come in.
- How long did you guys date for?
- Well, we dated, um, consistently until,
Um, he got arrested on July 15th, 2018.
- And this was the odd thing,
Even though they broke up then and there,
They remained friends.
Good friends.
In fact, she had a voicemail from that Friday night,
Less than 24 hours before scott vanished.
- So, you didn't talk to him at all on Saturday.
- Nuh-uh. - And then on Sunday,
Did you hear anything from anybody?
So you didn't hear anything until Monday?
- Until Wednesday.
- Oh, until Wednesday. - Till Wednesday.
- Why didn't she learn about scott's death
Until that Wednesday?
Because, she said, she was offline.
- I called in sick for two days, Tuesday and Wednesday.
I can't tell you why, but I was emotional.
I couldn't get out of bed, and I had no idea why.
- What to make of loretta.
Well... Never returning scott's call,
Being out from work for no specific reason,
It seemed a little suspicious.
But at the same time, as she answered their questions,
They could see she was genuinely upset.
- There's a lot of people looking
To try to figure this out, okay.
Um...
[sobbing] - I loved him very much.
Even though it was a ----ed up relationship,
I loved him so much.
- And then as they sat there talking,
Investigator atwood's phone pinged.
Urgent message. Important. New information.
So he quickly ended the interview.
- All right, well, let's, uh,
Let's get outta here.
- What happened?
The sheriff's office got a search warrant
For scott's home, and inside,
They found a list of his passwords.
He'd written them all down,
Left the paper on a countertop,
So that let them log into his facebook account,
Where they found some very private messages.
Not to ex-girlfriend loretta.
Here, they realized, they could clear.
No, this was someone new.
- And we were able to see that scott had a, uh, conversation
With a, young woman identified as heather frank.
- Heather frank, a mom of three adult sons,
Who was a waitress over at doug's diner.
Investigators could see that heather and scott
Had been sending messages to each other
That Saturday night.
So then they looked up heather's address.
And what do ya know?
- She had also lived
Right near where the king soopers was.
- It sounds like maybe you want to go
And talk to that woman, heather frank.
- There was a lot more work that we needed to do
Before we had that conversation.
- As in, good research makes for a good interview.
Who was heather frank,
Besides a warm and bubbly waitress
Who seemed quite beside herself
After that strange last weekend
Of scott sessions life?
♪
- Welcome back to dateline: Secrets uncovered.
I'm craig melvin.
Police were questioning loretta bullock
About the murder of ex-boyfriend scott sessions
When another woman caught their attention.
Detectives discovered scott exchanged secret messages
With waitress heather frank the night he was killed.
So, they pivoted from loretta to heather
And now wondered
If she might have lured scott to his death.
Back to keith morrison with "the last weekend."
♪
Remember the classic tv series "cheers?"
The bar was a gathering place
Where everybody knows your name.
Doug's diner was like that.
Would this be like the iconic diner of the movies
And the kind of americana? - It kind of is.
Half of our customers, we know their orders,
We know their drinks.
- Shelby kabong is a waitress at doug's,
And she was at work the day police stopped by
To ask about her coworker, heather frank.
Well, that was easy, said shelby.
Heather was her mentor, her friend,
And she was friendly, and sweet, and kind,
And a very good person.
- She just looked beautiful, all the time,
And she was just as beautiful inside,
As she was outside.
- Shelby also knew heather had recently broken up
With a long-term boyfriend.
- Did she branch out,
Start seeing other people, or...
- She started going out to, um, concerts in greeley?
She had met somebody,
And it was kind of exciting to hear that.
- Yeah. - Definitely was,
That she was moving on.
- That somebody, though shelby didn't know it,
Was scott sessions.
Heather had gone to one of his concerts.
They got to talking.
And then dating a couple of times.
It was scott's own social media traffic
That picked up the story from there.
- It looked as if it was a budding relationship
Until it got to a point on February 8th.
- February 8th was that Saturday,
The last day anyone heard from scott.
And here was the chain of messages.
At 5:13 p.M., a message from heather to scott.
"wanna come over?"
Then scott to heather, "sure!
"I just need to hop in the shower.
"sound groovy?"
Heather to scott, "hurry."
There's a pause while scott showers.
Then this, scott to heather.
"I'm on my way over," three smiley faces.
"warning, I smell pretty amazing."
And finally, at 7:59 p.M.,
This last message from heather's phone.
"hey, where are you at?"
Investigator atwood compared those messages
With ones heather and scott had previously sent,
And noticed a difference.
- It was very cold. It was very dry.
It was not a man and woman that had been engaged
In the throes of romance with each other.
- Early the next morning, Sunday, 3:21 a.M.,
Heather texted her boss,
Said she was ill, wouldn't make her shift.
- I think she had said she had the flu,
And so we didn't think much of it.
- And then Monday, the day scott's body
Was found up in the mountains,
A very un-heather-like heather
Showed up at the diner
On time, but...
- She wasn't as quirky that day as she usually is.
There was no joking.
And I don't remember her talking much that day either.
- Something was wrong, something was off.
Did you-- - yeah.
- Did you talk to her or ask her about that?
- No, because she had said she had the flu.
- Maybe, maybe not.
Investigator atwood drove over to heather's place
And parked where he could keep an eye on things.
He got more than he bargained for.
- I remember very vividly,
We pulled into the cul de sac
Where heather frank's apartment is,
And I immediately looked at
A subaru crossover station wagon-type vehicle,
And it had red dirt caked on the sides of it.
- Why did the red dirt matter?
Well, it looked a lot like the dirt they'd seen
On the mountain roads up near scott's body.
Anything else about that car seem unusual?
- There was some damage to the front of the vehicle.
- So they called in the plate number.
The car, they were told,
Belonged to a guy named kevin eastman.
And who was he?
Heather frank's ex-boyfriend
Who'd worked in colorado's oil fields for years.
So five days after scott's body was found,
Police got hold of the cell data
For both heather and kevin eastman's phones.
- And we were able to see that heather frank's cell phone,
Kevin eastman's cell phone,
And scott sessions's cell phone were all
Within very close proximity of each other
For about 12 hours.
- To begin with, in or near heather's place
That Saturday night when scott went to see her.
- And then very early in the morning
On Sunday morning, after scott had disappeared,
We saw kevin eastman's cell phone
And heather frank's cell phone traveling
Along roadways in greeley.
- The signals traveled for nearly two hours
Before losing reception as the phones approached
Poudre canyon, where scott's body was found.
Investigators fanned out along the same route,
And that's when they found surveillance footage
From a local business.
Early Sunday morning,
A subaru crossover station wagon traveled
The very same route as kevin and heather's cell phones
Toward poudre canyon.
Then they noticed something else.
- And we saw the damage to the front bumper.
The same damage that was on the vehicle
At heather's apartment.
- Could you see who was in the car?
- No.
- But three hours later, there was a very same car
Going back the other way.
They couldn't make out the plates,
But they were convinced that was kevin eastman's car.
So they both have to be involved in this somehow.
- Based on the cell phone data records, yes.
We were starting to believe that
Both heather frank and kevin eastman
Were responsible for scott's murder.
- So the sheriff's office decided to put
Heather and kevin under hidden video surveillance.
Would they have done that had they known
That it wasn't over?
It certainly, certainly wasn't.
♪
- In those first few days after scott sessions was killed,
His father stan carried an extra burden of grief.
Stan's wife of 58 years, scott's mom,
Was in a nursing home,
And now, with a heavy heart, he sat with her
And gave her the news.
- I told her what had happened
And she just kind of gazed into space
And she said,
"who would want to murder my son?
"who would want to kill my son?"
- Police suspected they knew the answer.
Heather frank and her ex-boyfriend kevin eastman,
He, they discovered, had a rap sheet
Including assault, weapon possession
And driving while impaired.
Investigators, though, felt they needed more evidence
Before they called them in for interviews.
So they installed hidden cameras
Across the street from heather's house
And secretly placed gps trackers
On their cars, his and hers.
Could you have put somebody outside her place
Or a rotating batch of detectives?
- We could have.
The problem with that is that we were using
All of our detectives... - Yeah.
- ...To work the case.
- Late the next day, lieutenant donnie robbins
Was watching a live stream from that hidden camera.
And there they were, kevin eastman and heather.
- We had seen them leave her residence,
Get in his vehicle,
And travel to a, uh, farm, uh, in weld county.
- Did you know who the farm belonged to
Or what might have been there?
- Not immediately, and we didn't know
What the connection was.
- Using the gps coordinates from the hidden car tracker,
Lieutenant robbins drove out to that farm
About 45 minutes into the country.
- When I drove by, it was dark enough.
All I could see is, uh, lights on in a-in a house
And an exterior garage.
But I couldn't see eastman's car.
I couldn't see anything. It was too dark.
- No kevin. No heather, either.
Discouraged and tired, he went home.
The investigators had been full tilt for five days.
They were all exhausted.
And so while gps kept track of the suspect's cars,
The investigators went home to bed.
All of them.
- We're going to go get some sleep.
We're going to go take showers.
We're gonna go visit with our family, see our kids.
- The next morning, officers could see
Troubling movement on that gps.
Overnight, kevin eastman's car had left the farm,
Cruised around the countryside,
Stopping here and there along the way.
- There was key points that happened at
3:00, 4:00, 5:00 in the morning.
And that's very unusual behavior.
And the first thing that I thought was,
We're losing evidence in our homicide,
That he is out dumping the knife.
He's out getting rid of evidence that--
That is going to help us prove this homicide.
- That got to be a sinking feeling.
- Leaves a very bad taste in your mouth.
- The knife, the one presumably used to kill scott.
So lieutenant robbins hopped in his unmarked police car
And headed back toward the farm,
Where the gps indicated eastman's car had returned.
- And as I was driving out there,
I saw a column of smoke coming from the property,
And I observed kevin eastman, uh, standing out by
What I would call-- refer to as a burn pile.
- He could see eastman was tending to a fire
At a large outdoor burn pit.
Hadn't scott session's body been found burning?
So what was eastman burning now?
It was impossible to see.
Then a problem.
Kevin eastman's car was on the move again.
- My initial thought was, "crap."
And I'll be honest with you, because I'm
The only one out here, and I'm going to have
To try to follow him by myself.
- Which he did... To a gas station.
- Pulls into the gas pumps and exits his vehicle,
And, uh, he's got a gas can
That, uh, he's trying to pump gas into.
- When you saw him filling up a gas can,
What did you think?
- My immediate thought was he was getting more gas
To go back and destroy
Whatever remaining evidence there was
At that burn pile. - Uh-huh.
Decision time.
There was no time to consult his bosses.
So lieutenant robbins walked up to kevin eastman
And arrested him.
Probably the last person in the world
He thought he'd see that day.
- He was pretty shocked.
Oh...
- At the station, eastman waived his rights
And agreed to speak with
Investigator atwood and a colleague.
- Eastman seemed timid,
Even gentle,
And it soon became quite apparent
This interview would be like no other.
- Time to find out more about kevin eastman.
- But where was heather
While all this was going on?
Was she hiding? Had she fled?
Oh, there would be an answer soon enough.
♪
- Welcome back.
Kevin eastman was under arrest
For the murder of scott sessions.
Police had followed him and ex-girlfriend heather frank
To a remote farm.
From there, detectives believed kevin
Dumped the murder weapon,
Then burned any remaining evidence.
The lingering question, though, was...
Where was heather?
The answer when it came stunned investigators.
Here's keith morrison with a conclusion
Of the last weekend.
- Kevin eastman wasn't acting like the average suspect,
But he was adamant about one thing.
He had nothing to do with the killing of scott sessions.
- So eastman agreed to talk to the detectives,
Who were then still looking for
Eastman's suspected accomplice
And ex-girlfriend, heather frank.
- The truth?
The truth was, said kevin eastman, that heather,
The woman he dated on and off for years,
Was the love of his life.
- Heather's answer was always no.
But they were together that Saturday night.
And not just them, said the detectives.
Scott was with them.
Had to be, since scott's phone
Was pinging in the very same place.
- So then they showed him the photos of his car
Going up to the mountains,
To the same area where scott's body was found.
- They wanted to show him the messages
Between heather and scott.
Eastman covered his ears.
- After that, kevin eastman said he felt sick.
During a break, he withdrew to a corner
And prayed to god to help...
The police.
- And then in the middle of the interrogation.
- Okay. - Atwood got a message...
About heather.
- It was like I got hit by a-a wrecking ball,
That they had found heather frank's body.
- Heather was dead.
Her body hidden under some lumber on that farm.
Two fatal bullet wounds in her chest.
- We found her body wrapped in the same manner
That scott session's body was found.
- Wrapped in plastic, perhaps waiting to be thrown
On the fire pit at the farm,
To be burned like scott was burned.
And so they confronted kevin eastman.
- But kevin eastman was a wall of denial.
- Kevin, because you're under arrest...
- They charged him with two counts
Of first degree murder
For killing both scott and heather.
- To jail clothing. - Okay.
- And we're going to take some photographs of you.
- Word slowly got out to heather's friends,
Including kimberly shearer.
- I didn't understand why she was with him ever.
From the day I met her, I didn't understand it.
- Heather, the sad truth was,
Had been physically and emotionally abused
By kevin eastman for years.
- Here, as recorded by police, about a year before her death
Was heather in a hospital taken there after she said
Eastman punched her.
- Kimberly said heather told her
About other incidents.
- The first episode,
She had some bruises where he, you know,
Was grabbing her.
And you could see handprint bruises on her arms
Because, you know, heather was a--
She was a little, bitty thing.
Then it got to where it was handprint on her neck.
And then the next thing you know, she's
Got a little scar on her throat.
Kevin held a knife to her throat
And threatened to kill her.
And the really bad episodes would come
When she would try to break up with him.
- But she just couldn't shake him off,
Said her fellow waitress, shelby kabong,
No matter how bad it got.
- She really opened up to me about
How he was treating her and what he had done to her.
- What had he done to her?
- He had beat her a handful of times.
- Heather, almost everyone agreed was a victim herself.
Chief deputy da steve wren.
Have you had opportunities in the past
To talk to victims of domestic violence,
To kind of untangle the difficult strands
Of what those relationships are like,
And to understand them?
- I've had a lot of opportunities.
And-and the common thread is they themselves
Find it hard to explain to somebody else
Their emotions, and as a result, their actions.
- So what happened that Saturday night?
Police think kevin eastman simply wouldn't allow heather
To move on without him,
So he came up with a plan to eliminate his competition.
- Jealous rage, is that what that was?
- Jealous rage. That-that was my take.
- Investigators believe kevin eastman and heather
Were both at the house that night,
But it was kevin, not heather,
Who sent those messages to scott inviting him over.
Here's a man who is, uh, luring somebody to his death.
- Certainly look that way.
- Police found a large bloodstain
On the carpet inside heather's front door.
They think eastman hid behind that door.
Ambushed scott, slashed his throat,
And scott never saw it coming.
- Would heather have known
What kevin was going to do to scott?
- I think that would have been a very good question
To ask her if she was alive this day.
- Some of heather's last moments alive
Were captured on that surveillance video,
Walking to her death without knowing it,
Under the control of kevin eastman.
- If she was not going to be with me,
She's not going to be with anybody else.
And also, I don't want her telling the cops what I did.
- It seems that heather was most likely killed
During the hours the detectives were taking a rest.
Do you look back on that, and you think, damn,
Why don't we just spend one more night at it?
- Yeah, in hindsight, 2020. - Yeah.
- We didn't make the decision to murder heather frank.
That was a decision that kevin eastman made.
But it sits with me day in and day out.
There is not a day that goes by
That I don't think about that decision.
And what could we have done differently?
- Please rise.
- Kevin eastman pleaded not guilty
And went on trial in June 2022.
His defense?
That heather actually killed scott
And that the man who owned the farm killed heather.
- As it relates to count number one.
- The jury would have none of it.
- We, the jury, find the defendant,
Kevin dean eastman, guilty of murder in the first degree
After deliberation.
- Guilty.
Kevin eastman was given two consecutive life sentences.
He'll spend the rest of his life in prison.
♪
- Recently, george gray's band put on the memorial concert
At greeley's union colony civic center
For scott and for heather.
♪ amazing grace ♪
♪ oh how sweet the sound ♪
- On the stage, scott's trumpet.
In the audience, his dad and sister.
♪ like me ♪
- I just miss him.
- Two months after scott's death,
Stan sessions lost his wife, linda.
His last words to her were about their son.
♪ but now I... ♪
- I said to her, honey, it's okay.
You lived a great life. You raised a good family.
You can go now and go see our scotty.
♪ ...See ♪
[cheers and applause]
- That's all for this edition
Of "dateline: Secrets uncovered".
I'm craig melvin. Thank you for watching.