- I'm craig melvin,
And this is "dateline: Secrets uncovered."
- There was a party.
There was a uk football player that'd been shot.
- He's killed on his birthday.
- I was like, it's who?
That can't happen.
Why him?
- No one saw a thing.
- It's at night. It's dark.
Nobody knows where the bullet comes from.
- Nothing is making it any easier.
- If you don't have a motive,
It's hard to know which direction to go.
- We were just never gonna know.
- But someone knew.
- She called me and said,
"I think I know something about a murder."
- We never could find out why trent was killed
Because it was something this weird.
She became the key.
- Would she also become the next victim?
- She was scared to death to confront him.
She knew what he was capable of.
- And thus, she was terrified.
♪♪
- Hello, and welcome to "dateline: Secrets uncovered."
Football player trent digiuro
Was known for his fierce play on the field
And his ability to forge friendships
When the pads came off.
Then, the popular athlete was shot dead
In the middle of the night.
Someone knew who the gunman was,
But exposing the secret could endanger her life.
How much would she risk to right a wrong?
Here's keith morrison with "the motive."
- Her heart was on fire.
Lost to her, the canned music,
The hum of other voices in the bar.
There was only him.
They were in the deep end now,
And as lovers in the flush of new commitment
Sometimes do,
They confessed their sins of the abandoned past,
The worst things they'd ever done,
Words, just words...
Best forgotten...
Until they could no longer be ignored.
♪♪
Lexington, kentucky,
One year before that night in the bar,
A house where students lived,
And the music, and laughter,
And chatter of a birthday party swelled,
And ebbed, and drifted in and out of the evening air.
- It wasn't a huge party.
It was a-- just a low-key party
With some good friends.
- They were about to be seniors,
The young men who'd rented the place,
Who'd hosted the party.
- We had a-a group of guys, four guys,
That got along extremely well.
- Yeah, yeah, yeah!
- They were big men on campus.
[cheering, shouting]
They played football,
The university of kentucky's beloved wildcats.
Antonio o'ferral was a quarterback.
- In lexington, kentucky, if-if you play for the 'cats,
You're pretty much a well-known entity.
- The birthday boy, 21 years old,
Was a true rarity, a wildcats walk on.
He had no scholarship, no invitation.
He just showed up-- tried out for the team.
- Let's go!
- And over three years of hard work,
He had earned a starting position.
- Here we go! Let's go, offense!
- Trent digiuro, gentle giant.
- You know, everybody called him a big teddy bear.
He was the great protector of all of our friends.
- The party was sweet, informal.
Friends snapped pictures
And evening dawdled into night.
It was after midnight when the party wound down.
- I think we turned in somewhere
Between 12:30, 1 o'clock.
- Antonio and his girlfriend went to bed.
Outside, trent and some of the others
Settled under the light on the front porch.
Out there, beyond the streetlights,
Was impenetrable dark. Inside...
- We were already in a faint sleep,
And we heard a loud bang.
- One of them must have slammed the screen door,
But no.
- Well, within ten seconds,
You started to hear the chaos outside,
The screamin', the yellin', the cryin'.
- And there was trent slumped to one side in his chair
Under the light.
- Trent was bleeding out of his ears, and his eyes,
And his nose, and his mouth,
And it was-- it was a horrific scene.
- Horrific and confusing.
That loud bang had been a gunshot, but from where?
Somewhere out there in the dark?
Had someone intentionally fired a gun
At their gentle giant, their teddy bear?
Is it possible to describe what it feels like
To go through that, to have that sorta shock?
- It's almost an out-of-body experience.
Everything's moving.
It's almost like the-the world's spinning.
- Yeah.
- And you're sittin' there and trying to figure out.
You're lookin' to see
If you can see anything in the dark.
- In their panic and distress,
They did not understand, how could they,
The nature of the mystery launched here,
Or who, in a haze of love,
May have learned the answer?
- It was just so senseless.
Once you found out why, it was even worse.
- Just who was trent digiuro, the target?
- We all started hanging out from first grade,
Six years old.
It's pretty neat. - Yeah.
- Peyton turner and sharalea bollinger
Were his lifelong friends.
- If you were his friend, you were his friend,
And that's all that mattered.
- It wasn't a group for him.
- Yeah, there was no group. - Uh-uh.
- Everybody got treated just the same.
- Trent was in fourth grade
When he started playing football
In his hometown of goshen, kentucky,
Just outside louisville.
By high school, he was captain of the team,
Had lots of friends.
So popular, trent was homecoming king
With sharalea his queen.
- It was pretty special. - Oh, my gosh, yeah.
- I mean, just to-to be part of that
And-and to be voted as that,
And then it was-- especially with trent.
- When it came time for college,
Trent set his sights high.
He turned down football scholarships
To smaller schools.
- At one point, he says, "you know what?
"I just gotta know if I can play in the big time
"in a division 1 school."
- Mike digiuro is trent's dad.
- So, he walked onto the university of kentucky,
Which is in the southeast conference,
Which is about as big as they come.
- Sure.
- And he worked real hard to get to where he was.
- And trent's teammates saw that hard work.
- Trent had the ability to perform.
So, while he might have been a walk on,
His performance allowed him
To endure himself to others very quickly.
- That July, as trent practiced football
And prepared for his senior year,
His parents went to lexington to see him
And to talk about his future.
- He was trying to decide what he wanted to do
With his life.
He was, uh, talkin' about maybe goin' to law school
Or business school.
- Did he talk about his birthday celebration?
- We knew he was gonna have some kind of a thing
And that he was supposed to come home that next day
To celebrate birthday with us,
And, uh, never made it.
- No, and a creeping fear
Washed over the university of kentucky football team.
Was a killer targeting them?
And if so, who would be next?
- Coming up...
- I couldn't even believe it.
I didn't understand it.
Who would murder somebody so wonderful?
- The investigation begins.
- Everyone talked,
Uh, but they didn't see anything.
- And was there more terror to come?
- We were so nervous driving down the street,
At practice,
Thinking that there might be someone in the woods
Who wanted to take you out.
- When "dateline: Secrets uncovered" continues.
♪♪
- Chaos is what there was
On trent digiuro's front porch.
His friends stood over the body
And stared out into the dark
With a kind of anticipating horror.
- You're concerned that there's more to come.
You know, there was-- that was one shot.
Is there someone who's gonna shoot again?
- Trent was officially pronounced dead at 3 a.M.,
Just about the time don evans arrived.
Evans has retired now
But was a rookie detective back then.
This was his first homicide case.
What'd you find when you got here?
- There were three young men, uh, in this very yard,
And they just looked distraught,
And they were consoling each other.
- On the porch,
Trent's chair was turned over,
And evans could see blood and debris
Left by the ambulance crew.
What was your first idea
Of what appeared to have happened here?
- You know, when I first walked up, it--
I went with what appeared to be the obvious,
That someone had simply walked
From the side of the house-- - uh-huh.
- Fired the shot and then exited
Back toward the rear of the house.
This is like-- almost like an alley here,
So it's, like, well, it would provide concealment.
- Take advantage of surprise. - Yeah.
If someone was gonna take a shot,
That made the most sense.
- Believing the shot came from a handgun,
Police looked for shell casings.
And yet, for all they looked there were none,
Nor any other evidence.
Still, detective evans figured there was a party that night,
So there are bound to be people who saw something.
- My thought was, as soon as I get 'em to headquarters
And get 'em separated,
Someone's gonna tell me what happened.
- Did they talk? - Everyone talked,
But with each and every person that I talked to,
They didn't see anything.
- Eighty miles away, at 5 a.M.,
The digiuros' phone rang.
[phone ringing] - it's numbing.
It's hard to imagine the feeling.
- And suddenly, your life doesn't make sense anymore.
- Yeah, it absolutely stops
And pivots in an instant,
And, uh, then it was kinda, you know,
Now what?
- And soon, everybody knew.
- I couldn't even believe it.
I didn't understand it.
Who would murder somebody so wonderful?
- It was about then
That the first really useful evidence
Came back from the medical examiner.
Bullet fragments were recovered in the autopsy,
And the ballistics showed it wasn't a handgun at all
That killed trent. It was a rifle,
Which turned detective evans' first theory upside down.
- Well, the theory about walking up the side of the house
And firing a shot-- - that goes out the window.
- That's probably out the window.
A rifle is not designed for a close range shot.
- Officers canvassed the neighborhood.
A woman who lived across the street said
She awoke to a loud noise,
And it sounded like it was right outside her house.
- So, based on that,
We actually took one of our marksman
From the police department and asked him,
"could the shot be made from here,
"from this angle?"
And we literally reenacted that possibility.
- Did it make sense, the-the location you found?
- It did make sense.
We didn't eliminate the possibility
That somethin' else could occur,
But this-this looked pretty strong to us.
- So, a working theory
That trent was shot from across the street.
Ballistics suggested it was a rifle
With a particular and uncommon type of barrel,
But who owned it,
And why did he or she shoot trent?
No idea.
The football team entered a world of dread.
Was some hater targeting the team?
Was one of them next?
- We were so nervous.
We were so uncertain of what happened that night
That it affected our daily lives,
Driving down the street, at practice thinking
That there might be someone in the woods
Who want to take you out.
- But days, and weeks, and months went by.
Nothing happened.
And over time, the fear eroded,
But the investigation went nowhere.
Did you ever get to the place where you thought,
"we'll just have to live with this uncertainty
"for the rest of our lives?"
- I would say four years into it,
It's like it's doesn't make any difference.
- Yeah, not gonna bring him back.
- Yeah, it's not gonna bring trent back,
But still it's, why did this happen.
- You're four years in, five years in,
And really no closer to solving it than from-from--
- Your first case, and it won't--
- Day one--
That will make you doubt yourself.
- And then, one day, a particular woman
Happened to see an anniversary story
About the unsolved murder of the football player
Back in kentucky,
A woman who'd once sat in a bar
In a fog of love...
And who now was quite terrified.
- Coming up.
A break in the case from out of the blue,
An ex-lover reveals all,
Including a motive for murder
Almost too absurd to believe.
- This could be the reason
That we never could find out why trent was killed,
Is because it was something this weird.
- But, will the crucial lead
Make the tipster a target?
- And what's gonna keep him from then going up
And eliminating her like he did trent digiuro?
- When "dateline: Secrets uncovered" continues.
♪♪
- It wasn't as if a successful investigation
Could somehow undo what happened to trent digiuro.
And yet, the lack of any answer,
Year after year,
Seemed somehow to be an insult to all that was good,
And they just had to accept it.
- I think we'd all kinda resigned ourselves
As every year passed.
Um, we were just never gonna know.
- Then it was about five years after the shooting.
A local attorney named tom bullock
Heard from an old friend, a woman.
She was nervous, tentative, asked him on the phone--
Could she reveal what she knew about a crime
Without saying who she was?
- She was extremely evasive.
She didn't really wanna tell me really anything.
- But she kept calling.
Finally, she revealed it.
She was calling about a murder.
Did she tell you what murder?
- She eventually came around to say
It was a very high profile murder.
- Where'd you mind go when you heard that?
- I knew which one it was.
- And then she told him a very strange story.
Happened in a bar, she said,
Almost a year after trent digiuro was killed.
She was falling hard for a guy.
- They talked about how much they loved each other.
Towards the end of the evening,
They decided to say,
"okay, what is the worst thing that you've done?"
- Like, let's get this out of the way.
- Just-- let's just get to it, you know,
That-that sort of point in the relationship
Where you say...
[sighs] let me hear the worst.
- And her boyfriend said,
"I killed trent digiuro."
- And at first, she sorta sluffed it off.
You know, uh, sure ya did.
- Didn't believe him. - Nah, of course not.
But then he started describing it,
You know, exactly how he did it.
- But she still didn't wanna believe it.
After all, she'd fallen in love with the guy,
So she said she kind of buried it,
Stayed with him for another year,
But now, years later and single again,
She had seen a story in the newspaper
About the fifth anniversary of trent's murder
In which trent's dad was quoted,
"somebody knows what happened."
- She started really thinking about it,
And-and it touched her.
- But she was so frightened of him, she said,
She was determined to remain anonymous.
- They know each other intimately.
She knows how he would react to certain situations.
- Yep.
- And she was terrified.
- He certainly would've remembered
His conversations with her.
- If you told someone that you committed a murder--
- Mm-hmm.
- You would certainly remember having told them that.
- Yes, yes.
So, tom bullock went to detective evans.
- We agreed that whatever information I would give him
Would be anonymous
Because, for all we know,
The whole thing could have been hogwash.
- Well, that's sorta tricky, isn't it?
I mean, when you got somebody making an accusation,
You have to be able to talk to that person.
- Well, yeah, but, at that point,
Beggars can't be choosers.
- So, he gave you a name. - So, he gave me a name.
He gave me the name of shane ragland.
- Shane ragland, the woman's ex-boyfriend,
But who was he?
Didn't take long to find out.
Shane was the son of a wealthy businessman.
Just so happened
Shane attended the university of kentucky
At the very same time as trent digiuro,
But, after college, he didn't do so well.
He ran up at least a dozen convictions--
Drug charges, multiple duis, and so on.
So, detective evans went back to attorney bullock.
- Is there anymore?
Um, can you get me anymore?
And-and ultimately,
He started talking about a motive.
- And that's when the whole story took a turn
Into the twilight zone.
- He told me that it was concerning shane ragland
Being blackballed from a fraternity.
- What'd you think when you heard that?
- That's a stupid reason to kill somebody.
- The fraternity in question was sigma alpha epsilon, sae.
Detective evans looked through sae's records,
And there it was, a pledge list
With shane's name crossed off.
- And then it-it hit.
This could be the reason
That we never could find out why trent was killed,
Is because it was something this weird.
- Evans went to one of trent's closest friends
And asked had he heard of this guy, shane ragland.
- And he said, "shane ragland?"
And then I can just sort of see it,
At that point, on his face, you know,
And I let him tell the story.
- A story about an unpleasant little incident.
Shane was among the freshman pledging the sae fraternity,
And one day, as they were getting to know the campus...
- They went into trent's dorm,
And trent was there,
And on the wall was a calendar
Of some sorority girls.
- When shane saw that calendar,
Right away, he pointed to one of the girls' pictures,
And he bragged that he'd had sex with her.
- What shane didn't know,
Is that girl was the girlfriend
Of the president of the fraternity.
- Trent did not like that one bit,
Got word to the sae president,
And that's when shane was blackballed.
- So, at that point, shane's opportunity
To be in that fraternity is pretty much over.
- The motives for murder are many and varied,
But this seemed absurd.
It was three years after that slight
When trent was murdered in cold blood.
Could it really have festered so long?
And if it had, if that was true,
They had another problem.
- The more that we dug specifically
Into shane ragland,
The more the likelihood that he would get word
That he was becoming a suspect in this case,
And if that happened,
This anonymous witness was in real danger.
- Evans had no doubt that shane would remember
He told an ex-girlfriend about the murder.
- And what's gonna keep him from then going up
And eliminating her like he did trent digiuro?
- So, now evans understood
His mystery witness was trying to be brave
But was quite reasonably frightened.
How would he ever convince her
To take the ultimate risk?
- She was very hesitant to do it,
And she was scared to death to confront him.
- What detectives had in mind was a huge ask.
Could the jittery informant summon the courage
To help investigators get the evidence they needed?
Coming up.
Setting a trap.
But who's going to get caught?
When "dateline: Secrets uncovered" continues.
♪♪
- Welcome back to "dateline: Secrets uncovered."
I'm craig melvin.
A nervous tipster had breathed new life
Into the trent digiuro cold case.
The woman claimed her ex-boyfriend,
Shane ragland, killed trent
As revenge for being blackballed from a fraternity.
She shared her chilling secret with a lawyer,
Who went to police.
Now, investigators had to convince her
To come out of the shadows
And help them crack the case.
Once again, here's keith morrison
With "the motive."
- Detective evans knew he had to meet this mystery woman,
A woman who was claiming she knew what happened
To trent digiuro
But was too frightened to talk about it.
Then finally, with attorney tom bullock
Playing gatekeeper, they made a deal
To at least meet face-to-face,
But anymore than that, maybe not.
- It was like, listen,
Don't get me involved in this.
- Yeah. - This guy is dangerous.
So, until you get handcuffs on him,
You can't involve me.
- But evans knew even if he did arrest the guy,
A mystery woman testifying about something
An ex-boyfriend told her...
[scoffs] ...Wouldn't be enough.
And I can imagine a prosecutor saying,
"well, I can't just put her on the stand.
Someone-- his attorney will come along and say
"she's full of it, you know?"
- Yeah, and in this particular case,
It's, yeah, you know what?
That in itself is not gonna do it nor should it.
We're still in a situation
Where this has to come from him.
- Him meaning shane ragland.
Evans told her they had to find a way
To get shane to admit on tape what he did.
Otherwise, what jury would buy
Such a ludicrous motive for murder?
There was only one way, he told her.
She'd have to wear a wire.
- She wasn't very happy with that, obviously.
- I should think not.
- Yeah, she asked me if I could spell anonymous.
- But, he said, she came around.
- She wanted to do what's right all along.
She just would like to do that
Without gettin' herself killed doin' it.
- But she would only proceed one condition.
- I had to prove why she was gonna be safe.
I had to prove how we were gonna do this.
It wasn't enough for me to say, "oh, don't worry.
"he won't have a gun. We'll look for bulges."
- So, they came up with a plan.
Gave her a cover story to protect her,
A fictitious job, a phony address,
And then, casually,
She resumed contact with shane,
A few emails, a little flirty at times on both ends.
- People sometimes hear from their exes, right?
I mean, that-that happens.
- And finally, the sting.
She told shane she'd be passing through
The lexington airport on business,
And he agreed to meet her.
It was in this airport lounge,
Surrounded by undercover cops and fbi
And behind security to be sure shane wasn't armed.
They reminisced for an hour or so.
And then, she went for it.
- At that point, he paused,
And it's like he knew exactly what she was talking about.
Saying trent's name was deliberate.
- We talked to her about that.
Let's make sure we know what you're talking about
When we play this for a jury later.
- And she brought up what appeared to be the motive,
That fraternity blackballing.
Was he sensing something?
The cops, knowing they didn't quite have what they needed,
Not yet, held their breath and listened.
- He said, "are you setting me up?"
And that's when things got really scary.
- But she kept her cool.
And they did.
And then, about ten minutes later,
Shane came back
With just what the detectives needed to hear.
- She made him so confident and comfortable
That he came back to the subject
And left us with what we really needed,
Uh, at that point.
It came out of his own mouth.
- They picked him up the next day,
Took him downtown,
Asked him was it true
What an old girlfriend was telling them.
Shane denied it all, denied knowing trent,
Didn't even know where he lived,
Denied talking about trent with her.
So, then his inquisitors fetched the airport recording.
But his denials were to no avail.
Shane ragland was charged with murder.
Bail was set,
And shane's wealthy father paid it,
A million dollars cash,
So shane was free pending trial,
Which was a very big problem for the ex-girlfriend
Who'd turned him in.
Police moved her to a secure location,
Kept an eye on her,
And then strange things started happening.
- We got information from our, uh,
State police intelligence section
That there was a hit out on this girl.
There were phone calls to her friends
That would ask, "have you seen her?
"do you know where she is these-these days?"
Obviously, trying to locate her.
- And with all that going on,
She had to do precisely what she didn't want to do,
Go public, show herself,
And testify,
And the world would know
That her name was aimee lloyd
And that she was truly terrified.
- Coming up.
Aimee goes public for the first time,
Facing her fears and shane.
And the defense hits back hard.
- If, in fact, someone had actually told you
They had engaged in a-a killing of another person,
And you continue a romantic relationship with them,
That seems a bit-- a-a bit odd.
- When "dateline: Secrets uncovered" continues.
♪♪
- Welcome back.
Aimee lloyd had agreed to testify
Against her ex-boyfriend, shane ragland,
At his murder trial.
Fearing her life might be in danger,
Police moved her to a secure location.
Now, it was time for aimee to face shane in court
Where his legal team was waiting to pounce
With some x-rated secrets.
Returning to our story,
Here's keith morrison with "the motive."
- If there was any doubt how seriously
Police took perceived threats to aimee lloyd's security,
This put it to rest--
Aimee rushed into court by a swat team.
But trent digiuro's dad, mike, knew
That if she braved the danger
And told her story...
- I don't know how a jury could sorta not convict him.
- But when it came time for trial,
Then prosecutor lou anna red corn
Was all too aware she was alleging
A very hard to believe motive.
- I think I was like everybody else,
A little incredulous
That somebody would let the fact
That they've been blackballed from a fraternity
Fester for years
And culminate in killing the person they blamed
On blackballing them.
- Mind you, they had a bit more than just aimee.
They'd found what they believed
Was the murder weapon, a .243 weatherby rifle,
At shane's mother's house,
And at his father's place,
They found .243 caliber bullets like these.
An fbi expert said testing had linked those bullets
To the fragments from the fatal bullet.
The defense argued
The tests were not reliable science.
- Call your next witness. - Aimee lloyd.
- And now, nearly eight years after trent was killed,
Here was the one person who could tell the story.
Aimee lloyd finally revealed herself publicly.
Though because she remains frightened even now,
We've obscured her image in this video
Recorded by the court.
The prosecution's star witness
Talked about that night in a bar,
And shane, according to her,
Straight out confessing to murder.
- But prosecutor red corn knew aimee's story had a weakness,
And so, no choice but to confront it.
- You did not break off the relationship
After he said this to you.
You didn't go to the police or anything.
Just ignored what he had said to you?
- Right. I forgot about it.
- Why?
Because she was in love with him, she said.
During aimee's testimony,
The prosecutor played the tape,
The sting meeting at the airport.
That, said the prosecutor,
Clear as day was an admission
That he did indeed commit the murder.
How to defend against that?
Shane's father hired a formidable defense team.
Guthrie true was one of shane's lawyers.
- If, in fact, someone had actually told you
They had engaged in a-a killing of another person,
And you continue a romantic relationship with them,
That seems a bit-- a-a bit odd.
- When the defense cross-examined aimee,
She knew it was coming, had to,
An attack on her credibility,
But could she have suspected how personal
It would be?
This from true's co-counsel when aimee said
She went home with shane that night
After he talked about killing someone.
- Weren't you concerned about spending the night
With somebody who had admitted to you
That he had killed someone else?
- And then, a kind of nervous embarrassment
Filled the courtroom.
The defense had gotten access to aimee's very personal,
Very explicit diary
And confronted her with her entries,
One by x-rated one.
- We are trying to challenge the credibility
Of the prosecution's, uh, case,
And sometimes that gets uncomfortable.
- This is what aimee wrote
The day after
She said shane confessed to her to murder.
- April the 30th, the very next day,
You-you make a notation, "made love in afternoon.
"great day."
- We have, for the sake of decency,
Left out the most explicit entries
Made public by the defense that day.
- And then may the 3rd was the date
That you recorded you took a bath together
And made love.
[sighs]
Right? - Yes.
- And then it was on may the 7th, you notated--
You-you noted, "great love.
"decided I would move in with him in July.
"perfect." - yes.
- So, this man who had told you
That he had killed someone--
You made the decision
That you were going to move in with him come July.
- Yes.
- So, was her credibility harmed?
There was still, after all,
That incriminating airport recording,
Or was it incriminating?
- You never did ask him, though,
If he had shot and killed trent, did you?
- To set him up?
Hadn't you rehearsed that?
With, uh, detective evans and others,
Don't give him an opportunity to deny
That he had, uh, shot trent?
- Had the defense planted a seed
Of reasonable doubt? Maybe.
The jury adjourned to think about it,
And trent's friends waited.
- I've never been so terrified
And so scared in my life.
- Uh-huh. Uh-huh. - It was-- it was--
- Your heart is goin' 100 miles an hour, and you--
- A hundred miles an hour.
- And five hours later...
- We, the jury, find the defendant guilty
Of intentional murder.
- Guilty of intentional murder.
The sentence? Thirty years.
- To know that he was guilty,
Know that this guy who is sittin' there smug
And non-remorseful is-is guilty
And found guilty and, boom,
You feel good about that.
- Mike digiuro thought it was done.
- Okay, this is it. He's going to jail.
It's over.
- And aimee,
She had vanished.
- Aimee was afraid of shane ragland,
And we told her that if she testified,
We would do what we could
To let her have a new identity,
And law enforcement helped her get a new identity.
- And that new identity would be a problem.
- You talk about something that-that just blows you away.
I mean, I can't even-- couldn't even grasp that.
- Because this case wasn't over,
Not even close.
- A stunning reversal no one saw coming
Is about to send both sides back to court.
Coming up...
- I know I'm innocent.
- It was a blow.
I mean, it was a real blow.
- Will there ever be justice for trent?
- It's... Oh, wow, here we go all over again.
- When "dateline: Secrets uncovered" continues.
♪♪
- Welcome back.
Aimee lloyd felt she had risked her life
To help send shane ragland to prison
For the murder of trent digiuro.
In return, law enforcement
Gave aimee the protection they had promised,
A new identity.
She moved on with her life,
But there was a twist ahead
Just when trent's loved ones thought their ordeal was over.
Here's keith morrison with the conclusion
Of "the motive."
- It was early spring in kentucky
When justice was done
For the murder of trent digiuro.
Thanks, his friends knew,
To a woman who faced up to fear
And told her story.
- We've never met aimee,
And I am eternally grateful to aimee.
- Absolutely.
- For everything that she's done for not only,
Um, trent and his family but for us.
- Except there was an appeal.
Of course, there was, standard procedure,
But what happened was not standard at all.
A court reversed the jury's decision.
- Any comments, shane?
- And shane ragland went home on a million dollar bail
Paid by his dad to wait for a whole new trial.
- It's been a long time, shane.
- How does it feel to be outside,
To be goin' home with your father, right now?
- I don't really look at it like that.
I look at the long-term goal
Of fightin' a case against me that's fake,
That's false, and they know I'm innocent.
So, I don't worry about my feelings
Or creature comforts.
- Why was the verdict thrown out?
It had nothing to do with aimee lloyd,
Or her explosive testimony,
Or the sting tape recorded at the airport.
All that was fine.
So, what was the issue?
The bullet that killed trent.
An fbi expert had linked the fragments of that bullet
Found during the autopsy to bullets like these
That were found in shane's father's house,
But, after shane's conviction,
The fbi realized the test it used
Was, in fact, bad science,
And stopped using it.
- These are things that we had been arguing for years.
Frankly, uh, shouldn't have been admitted.
- And the court agreed with the defense.
When this reversal happened,
What was that like?
- Well, it was a blow.
I mean, it was a real blow.
- Kind of an irony, isn't it?
- Mm-hmm.
- It was one of the smaller pieces of evidence.
- In my mind, yes.
- When what you thought was done gets undone,
What does it do to you?
- It's... Oh, wow, here we go all over again.
We gotta go through this yet another time,
And the yet another time we realized pretty quickly
Was gonna be without some key evidence.
- Yeah.
- Aimee lloyd wasn't comin' back.
- No, aimee lloyd was not going to testify
A second time.
That was the deal she made.
Testify once then disappear.
- There was no way to bring her back
Because once someone has that level of cover,
You can't undo it, bring 'em back.
- And then do it again. - And then do it again.
- Remain seated. Come to order.
- No option but to make a deal.
Shane got to plead guilty to second degree manslaughter.
- And did you, in fact, commit the crime
That you are pleading guilty to?
- Yes, I did.
- Which meant that at least he now admitted
To firing that fatal shot.
- And I thought, well, a plea bargain.
If he, you know, spends another ten years in jail,
I'm not too bad with that.
- Oh, but it wasn't ten more years.
Wasn't any more years.
He got the time he'd already served,
Five years,
Plus just three days of house arrest.
Three more days? - Three more days.
He walked out of the courtroom, went home,
And that really chapped my ass.
- It did help a little, said mike digiuro,
When he successfully sued shane in civil court
For wrongful death.
The jury awarded him $63 million,
Later reduced to $33 million.
"no matter," said mike.
He hasn't received a penny.
Doesn't expect to,
But money was never the point.
- He's never really accepted responsibility
For what he did.
- Shane went on with his life,
And then, a few years later,
He was involved in a serious car accident.
He's in a wheelchair now
And was back in court on an unrelated case.
And what about aimee, if that's even her name now?
How is she doing now?
- She's living a new life.
- What'd she do?
You wanna tell me anything-anything at all?
- I'm sorry, but I'm not going to be able
To tell you anything about her current life.
- At all. - At all.
- As for mike,
He had a choice. He knew.
He could sink into bitterness, or...
So, where do you put your frustrations over this?
- Well, what has come from all this
Is, uh, we consider a very positive thing.
- When we last spoke to mike, the trent digiuro foundation
Had awarded nearly 100 scholarships
To walk on football players and others
At the university of kentucky
And at local high schools,
Young people with determination
And personal courage just like trent.
You'll never make any sense of his death,
But you can make sense of his life.
- We can make sense of what we've done
To commemorate trent, to remember trent,
And giving these young folks an opportunity
That trent won't have.
- That's a whole 'nother story but-- [laughing]
- And remarkably, trent's friends
Remain trent's friends,
Remained exceedingly close
Even 25 years after that shot in the dark.
You feel like family, now.
- Oh, they- they are family.
I think it says so much about what trent meant
To these kids, young adults now,
And what they mean to us.
It's been a blessing to us.
- They all get together, and laugh,
And tell stories, and imagine.
- Who would he have become as an adult?
You know, gosh, I'm sure it would've been magnificent
Just as he was as a teenager.
- I'm kinda pissed that I don't get to meet his wife
Or meet his kids. - Oh, gosh, I know.
- Or share all the-- all the adult things
That we've had the opportunity to share with each other.
But I think, you know, when I get rid of those,
Like, base feelings,
You know, the underlying feeling is just of gratitude
That he was in my life
Even for a brief moment in time.
- That's all for this edition
Of "dateline: Secrets uncovered."
I'm craig melvin. Thank you for watching.