- I'm craig melvin,
And this is "dateline: Secrets uncovered."
- There was no way you could look at this
And say "this is a person who ran away."
The mystery had this sort of sinister side to it.
Oh, my god, oh, my god. This is really happening.
It's happening right now.
- In the dark waters off miami,
Miles out to sea, a fellow agent
Hunting for drug smugglers spots a suspicious boat.
- I noticed the passenger
Roll a large duffel bag off the side of the boat.
- Drugs? The agents never found any.
And back on shore, no one could find
A missing young mother, either.
Was there a connection?
- I was afraid for her.
- Lynn was just months away from her wedding
When she vanished, leaving behind
A young son and a mystery.
- Any sign that someone had broken in
And abducted her? - No.
- The search continued on land and at sea.
No bag, no body, no case?
- I didn't have anything that would show
She was actually dead. - Decades go by,
And the mystery is almost forgotten.
But, not by everyone. - They knew he was the bad guy.
They just couldn't put him in jail.
- All they needed was a miracle,
Or a witness.
- Wasn't April fools, it was a body.
♪♪
- Hello, and welcome to "dateline: Secrets uncovered".
Lynn friend was about to walk down the aisle
For the second time, and into a new life.
Then, one night, the devoted mom vanished.
Police suspected foul play, but the truth
Managed to remain a closely-guarded secret
For decades.
Was this the story of a runaway bride
Or a woman who ran into trouble?
Here's dennis murphy with what lies beneath.
- You don't need a moon over miami
For it to be beautiful by night.
The skyline reflected in biscayne bay will do just fine,
But it's not for everyone.
[beeping] - I am so, so worried about you.
- Some people are scared by the dark water,
Afraid of the creatures that lurk down below,
Afraid of the creatures above,
Who scuttle through the night on secret errands.
- I have no idea where you are.
- You just may share those fears
After you hear the story of a woman named lynn friend.
- None of this makes sense to anyone
Who knows lynn friend.
- Local newscasts told the story of this good neighbor.
- She really was that all-american girl,
You know, blue eyes, beautiful smile
From here to california.
- The good mom. - She adored her son.
They were inseparable.
- Little did anyone suspect that for the next twenty years,
The story of lynn friend would haunt a young boy's life.
And a secret would remain locked away for decades
That would explain everything.
What happened to lynn friend that put her in the crosshairs
Of miami tv news was that she was missing.
Just flat-out gone.
No one could imagine lynn friend,
A responsible hospital administrative aide,
Just snapping and walking out on her life,
Least of all, on her five-year-old son, christian.
- One thing is certain, lynn friend is not--
- Jennifer snell, then a miami reporter,
Covered the disappearance.
- For her to disappear,
Without leaving word for her son,
Was just something that everyone knew would never happen.
- Esther sanchez met lynn when she came to work
At parkway hospital in fort lauderdale.
At the time, lynn was still living with her fiancee,
A business owner named clifford friend.
When the two married in 1989, esther was maid of honor.
- She wanted what every girl dreams of getting married
And having a beautiful wedding
And looking forward to having children,
Of the goal of the white picket fence.
- When baby christian came along,
Lynn, the proud mom, made her boy
One of the most photographed children
In south florida.
Over the moon with being a mom,
Less so at being mrs. Clifford friend.
- I thought they were a poor match.
- Within a year of christian's birth,
The marriage was floundering.
Lynn and her husband parted ways,
And later divorced.
- She was upset that her dreams had fallen apart,
But she was very happy with the fact
That she was a mom.
- So disappointment about it,
But baby christian was not part of it.
He was her number one priority in life.
I mean, she lived for him.
- Consumed with being a mom
Meant men were out of the picture
For the foreseeable future.
But then, along came ed o'dell.
He was a consultant from nashville
Working on a construction project at her hospital.
- He set eyes on her right away.
- He was a southern gentleman, and he would walk in,
And he would say hi, and then he'd leave
And that went on for, I think, a year.
And then, um...
One day, she said "I think I'm gonna go on a--
"out on a date with ed."
- And that one date turned into a whirlwind romance.
Within months, lynn and ed got engaged
And mapped out a future together in nashville.
He was very fond of the boy, and looked forward
To them all being a family together.
- Lynn had been awarded custody of the child,
Although she ensured that christian's father,
Clifford, had generous visitation rights.
- She had agreed to everything that clifford wanted
To try to play nice.
She said "if this is what you want, we'll do that."
- In August 1994,
The clock was counting down to moving day.
Lynn was home packing when ed called from nashville
About 8:00 on a Sunday night.
She told him she'd be running out
For a few minutes, but would call him back
As soon as she returned home.
Two hours went by, and no lynn phone call.
The fiancee left a message on her answering machine.
- Close friend esther lived in the same condo complex as lynn.
When esther noticed her friend's car was gone late at night,
She became concerned. Esther started calling, too.
- Unanswered messages piled up through the night.
- The next day, a neighbor spotted lynn's car,
Abandoned about a half mile from her home.
Her front tire was flat.
Soon, the cops arrived,
And esther let them in lynn's condo.
- What I noticed that was very odd,
She's very meticulous and very neat,
And she's very frugal.
The television was on, the lights were on,
The air conditioning was on.
- Lynn appeared to have closed the door
Of her townhouse north of miami
On a Sunday night,
And vanished into the thick night air.
So this has become very ominous for you.
- So now, it's very, very scary.
- What in the world had happened to nice lynn friend?
Law enforcement officers from all over south florida
Were looking for any trace of her,
Coming up empty.
- If you think maybe she got cold feet,
And was just taking a time out somewhere?
- Without her son? Never.
Lynn would have to be dead
To not have christian.
- When "dateline: Secrets uncovered" continues.
♪♪
- Days passed and clues were few
In the disappearance of lynn friend.
The missing mother of a five-year-old boy,
Seemed to have gotten in her car on a rainy Sunday night
And never come home.
Lynn's friends and fiancee, ed o'dell, pleaded for help.
- All I want is lynn back,
I just want to marry her and take her away
And live happily ever after.
- They handed out flyers and searched the residential area
Where her car was found abandoned.
- Honestly? I was very afraid.
- A townhouse she left with the tv still on.
Ed royal, an investigator assigned by
The florida department of law enforcement
Was, frankly, perplexed by what he didn't find at her condo.
There was no sign of any struggle at lynn's house.
Lynn's house was exactly as you would expected.
She was two days away from moving,
She had boxes, ceiling to floor.
- Any sign that someone had broken in and abducted her?
- No.
- Cops also came up empty
When they searched her abandoned car
With a flat tire.
Inside, they found a waist pouch with her driver's license.
- There was no evidence, no fingerprints, no dn--
Foreign dna in it.
- Forensically, you're not coming up with this "aha,"
Kind of clue. - No, we're not.
- That says, "this explains everything."
- No. - So what did happen
To the 35-year-old single mother?
With all too few forensic clues to examine,
The investigators became biographers,
Learning just who this missing woman was.
When they peeled back the layers of lynn's life,
What they saw right away were big, stressful changes
On her horizon. A new marriage
And a new city, a new life, altogether.
Had it all become too much? Her best friend, esther sanchez.
- Did you think maybe she got cold feet
On moving to tennessee,
And was just taking a time out somewhere?
- Without her son? Never.
Lynn would have to be dead
To not have christian.
- And what about her son, christian?
Could he help fill in any pieces of the puzzle?
Sensitive thing, the child here.
He's five years old.
But maybe he has a story to tell.
No, I don't know how much a five year old child
Could provide at that time.
- In truth, precious little. The night lynn disappeared,
Christian had been with his father for the weekend.
Like lynn, her ex, clifford friend,
Had also met someone since his divorce
Two years before.
He was engaged to a woman named jen miri.
She lived in texas
And learned of lynn's disappearance long-distance.
- Cliff had called me and said that he had rec...
I believe, had received a phone call,
Stating that lynn had disappeared.
They found lynn's car, and they didn't know
Where she was.
- This is a very traumatic thing that's going on.
He's lost his mother. Wondering how much--
Whether you shielded him from it.
- Okay, the news,
We shielded christian as much as possible.
- Who's gonna take this area?
- Meanwhile, the massive investigation into
Lynne friend's disappearance had one goal,
To find her, or at least
Her body if she was in fact dead.
- Are you prepared to deal with the worst?
- No.
No, I cannot think that. I will not think that.
Lynne is-- lynne is the woman that I am going to marry.
She is my life.
- I think he really wanted to hold it together
And to be dignified.
- Jennifer snell was a reporter from miami's nbc station, wtbj.
- I think that, as the words would come out of his mouth,
He would realize what he was actually saying
Was that the love of his life was dead.
- I have to believe for christian's sake,
That she's still alive,
Because he's just a five-year-old child,
And he needs his mother, and he loves his mother so much.
- Ed o'dell was driven.
He would not give up trying to find the love of his life.
He called on everyone, even the president,
To ask for help.
- Ed o'dell started a campaign writing to president clinton,
And lo and behold we get a call from the fbi
That said they would now like to join the investigation.
- But even with the top law enforcement agency
In the country in on the search for lynne friend,
There was still no break in the case.
But then, out of the blue, the deep, dark blue,
A chance encounter produced a lead
From a most unlikely place in the case
Of a missing woman.
- A federal agent on the lookout for drug runner
Runs into something strange.
- I tell one of my crew members, "light 'em up."
As soon as he lights up the boat, the chase is on.
[sirens blaring]
- When "dateline: Secrets uncovered" continues.
- Welcome back.
What happened to lynne friend?
Her frantic fiance had managed to get the fbi
On the case, but with no body, no witnesses,
Not even a crime scene to scour for clues,
The investigation hit a wall.
Now, this mystery was about to take a surprising turn.
A sharp-eyed law enforcement agent
Would connect crucial dots,
Shifting the search for lynne to a chilling location.
Once again, here's dennis murphy with "what lies beneath."
- The waters off miami beach are where the vigilant agents
Of the u.S. Customs and border protection service
Go to work every night.
And here are the cat and mouse game of law enforcement,
Pursuing cocaine cowboys in their go-fast boats
Was the reality back in the 1990s.
Customs agent tim stellhorn remembers it well.
- In 1994, drug smuggling was very prevalent.
- On that long-ago Sunday night lynne friend disappeared,
Agent tim stellhorn and his crew left their dock
On the miami river at dusk.
They knew nothing of the missing woman case.
Their focus was on intercepting drugs and smugglers.
They headed outside,
Into the dark, open ocean waters
That lead to the bahamas, a hotbed of smuggling.
About three miles out,
They idled and doused their running lights.
- It was a beautiful night. The ocean was calm,
We had the engine shut off,
And we were listening for any boats that might be,
Uh, in our area.
So, I hear this boat comin' out
And, through night vision goggles,
I could see that there was two people on board.
The two people on board were in dark clothing, uh, goggles,
Uh, bandanas around their heads.
- It was around 11:00. Stellhorn and his crew,
Running dark, tailed the boat surreptitiously.
But quickly the element of surprise was lost.
- I watched the passenger turn around,
And he spots us, I think.
I tell one of my crew members,
"light 'em up with the spotlight."
As soon as he lights up the boat,
I notice the passenger
Roll a large duffel bag off the side of the boat.
The chase is on. [sirens blaring]
We think we have a narcotics case,
A smuggling case that went bad.
And at some point, they just stopped their boat
And both of 'em put their hands straight up in the air.
- The two were zipped up during the questioning that followed.
Agents returned to the spot where the bag was dumped,
But it had already sunk.
And with no drugs found on the boat,
Agents released the two.
But their boat was seized for a follow-up investigation.
Just another night in the office in the war on drugs,
Or so agent stellhorn thought.
- So, a week goes by, I'm sittin' on the couch
Readin' a newspaper, and on one of the back pages
Is a story about a missing woman.
Her name is lynne friend.
Friend is an unusual last name, and so of course I--
It registered with me that I just stopped a boat
A week prior with a guy named friend on board.
- It was clifford friend, lynne's ex-husband.
With him was a miami beach man named alan gold,
Who turned out to be the co-owner of the boat.
- At the bottom of the article
Was the detective's name and a phone number,
So I called the number.
At first he didn't believe me.
He thought it was a prank call.
- Hardly.
Light bulbs clicked, missing pieces fell into place.
A missing ex-wife, a former husband busted
Dumping something offshore on the very night.
Leslie d'ambrosia is an agent
With the florida department of law enforcement.
That's a fortuitous matchup in this case.
- The customs officers in this case
Did such an amazing job.
- Mr. Friend, is there anything that you wanna say?
- Now, ten days after lynne's disappearance,
Investigators and the media laser focused
On clifford friend.
And then, there was this investigative nugget.
Ed o'dell reported to the cops
That the night lynne disappeared,
She told him that she was going to clifford's house
To pick up a child support payment.
When detectives heard that,
They got a search warrant for clifford's place.
They see some items in his car,
But found no evidence of foul play anywhere.
- I never gave thought that he had anything to do
With lynne's disappearance.
- But investigators weren't so sure,
So they turned their attention to the area
Where customs stopped clifford's boat.
With waters 1,000 feet deep,
Agent ed royal asked the u.S. Navy for help,
But there was a little problem.
- The u.S. Navy is precluded from providing assistance
To law enforcement without reimbursement.
So, they were willing to provide us
Three days of searching for $48,000.
- And you were gonna get a bill at the end of it.
- We had to pay up front, actually.
- Two months later, the fee covered,
The u.S. Navy was ready to join in the search.
Its ship was fitted out with side scan sonar
That could image the ocean floor.
But no gym bag. - No.
- No bag, no body. - Mm-mmm.
- The experts told us that it was beyond
A needle in a haystack. - Yeah.
- The navy said it had to pull the plug
When the money ran out,
But lynne's fiance ed o'dell stepped in.
- And ed o'dell wrote a check to the navy for another $13,000
To extend the search one more day.
- The extra day bought one promising sighting.
- We saw what we thought was a black bag on the--
On the ocean floor.
Grappling hooks were sent down.
Searchers on deck held their breath,
But it wasn't what they were looking for.
- A plastic garbage bag.
- And what was in the garbage bag?
- It turned out to be beer cans. Garbage.
- The navy's search had fizzled out.
Detectives were back at square one,
And they'd already ruled out
One of the people closest to lynne.
What about ed o'dell?
Do you have to suspect the fiance?
- Not at all.
He was in, uh, tennessee at the time all of this occurred.
We have the phone records.
- So, after months, detectives were no closer
To solving the case.
They had no dna, no forensics, no blood spatter,
Nothing to help.
And despite their suspicions about clifford friend,
Law enforcement couldn't say definitively
What happened to his ex-wife, lynne.
- We didn't have the body,
And we didn't have any eye witnesses.
Back in 1994, katherine fernandez rundle
Had been the miami-dade state attorney for two years
When this case came into her office.
She was determined lynne friend's name
Would not end up in some cold case file.
- This was not the easiest case, as you might imagine.
- Couldn't even say definitively if she was dead.
She might have metaphorically taken
The midnight train to georgia.
Nobody knew.
- That's correct.
We didn't really know that she was missing.
We believed it. - Yeah.
- You had a little boy.
We weren't sure what he was gonna say.
We didn't have access to him.
So, really what you had was very little.
And so you had to really build, you had to stay tenacious.
- Tenacious, indeed.
Because clifford friend actually had an alibi.
One he wasn't proud of, perhaps,
But it explained what he was doing that night
And why there were two men in a boat.
- An undercover sting that didn't quite go as planned.
- He said, "oh, I took the recording device
"and I dropped it in her diaper."
- When "dateline: Secrets uncovered" continues.
- Welcome back to "dateline: Secrets uncovered."
I'm craig melvin.
Lynne friend was missing, and investigators suspected
Her ex-husband, clifford, was involved.
The night lynne vanished, authorities caught clifford
And a friend dumping a bag over the side of their boat.
A navy vessel searched the waters and came up empty.
The case was about to go on ice,
Until a new prosecutor turned up the head
And revisited an old clue.
Here's dennis murphy with "what lies beneath."
- Months passed and, with no success
In finding lynne's body,
Police appealed to the public for help.
They put together a crime stopper's reenactment video
That aired on local tv showing two men dumping a bag
In the ocean, then trying to evade customs agents.
A reward was offered,
But the tip line stayed mostly silent.
Neither clifford friend nor alan gold
Would tell police directly what they were doing
On the boat that night.
But customs agent tim stellhorn thought he knew
When he ran a background check and found clifford's priors.
- Through the investigative findings, we learned that,
Uh, clifford friend did have a-a criminal history.
And part of that criminal history was
In drug smuggling.
- And while the other man with him, alan gold,
Had no history of drug arrests, was clifford friend,
A known smuggler, dumping drugs into the ocean that night?
His attorney said clifford friend
Was committing a crime that night,
But it wasn't murder.
- They were running drug deals together.
- Attorney peter heller says that's what was in
The bag clifford dumped: Drugs.
You're saying he was dirty. He had a dirty history.
- He did, he did. And they knew that.
- Clifford also owned a pawn shop
In the miami area.
According to his lawyer,
Clifford's drug running career ended when lynne disappeared.
He wanted to turn his life around.
He had a little boy to take care of.
- I pronounce you husband and wife.
- And he would take care of christian
With his new bride.
A year-and-a-half after lynne disappeared,
Clifford and janet married.
Alan gold, with a waist-length braid,
Was there too.
The investigators never really go away.
You're-you're putting together your new life with this man,
And yet you've gotta deal with all that stuff.
- After the first couple of years,
The first two years, it really disappeared.
- As the case receded from the public eye,
Clifford and janet friend
Focused on raising young christian.
Does he remember his mother?
- I never wanted him to forget who his mother was.
So, I always made sure that he had pictures
Of his mother in his room.
And he was allowed to ask any question
That he ever wanted.
- You become the only mom he really remembers in his life.
You are "mom." - I am mom.
And he calls me mom.
He understands I am not his biological mother.
- What kind of dad was cliff to christian.
- He was a great dad.
They went and played ball together,
They went fishing together,
They went on travels together.
Cliff is a phenomenal father.
- Meanwhile, up in tennessee, lynne's one-time fiance
Ed o'dell had moved on with his life, too,
Married now with children.
The dwindling friends of lynne thought they'd never see
A resolution to the case of the missing woman.
But there was one person in particular
Who didn't like to see the dusty jacket
Of unsolved cases in his files.
- It has to be murder.
- In 2010, one of miami's most experienced prosecutors,
Michael von zamft, took over the case,
Along with assistant state attorney marie mato.
What did you think the biggest problem
With the case was?
- I had no body, I had no witnesses.
And I didn't have anything that would show
She was actually dead.
- Well, I think that, especially now,
Juries have high expectations.
- The csi speech that so many prosecutors give
In jury selection, necessarily. - Absolutely.
Well, they expect, um, physical evidence.
Um, they want to see a body.
- The two reexamined the 16-year-old file
And took a fresh look at a lead from back then
That had never panned out.
An acquaintance of clifford's,
Someone named robert missey, told police about
A disturbing conversation he had with the ex-husband
Not long before lynne went missing.
He said it happened over breakfast at this ihop.
- Clifford told him,
"well, she's never leaving the state with my child.
"she's going for a boat ride and she's never coming back."
- This is dynamite for an investigator.
- It was great.
We managed to convince missey that he should become our ally.
- In other words, a snitch.
Missey, a convicted felon on probation at the time,
Agreed to wear a wire and met clifford again
A few weeks later.
There was something that was worrying the pawnbroker
About their earlier breakfast meeting.
- And that, uh, gave us confirmation
That there had been an-an actual conversation
At the ihop and there was probably a discussion
About the disposing of lynne friend.
- Missey turned out to be a hapless,
Technologically challenged informant.
At another meeting, missey wanted to make sure
Clifford didn't discover his concealed wire,
So he used his own baby as cover.
- When we asked him,
"well, what was wrong with the baby?
"we couldn't hear, the baby was screaming,"
He said, "oh, I took the recording device
"and I dropped it in her diaper."
So... - Oh, you're kidding.
- And the reason she was screaming was
Because those things get kind of hot.
And we were just all appalled that he had done that.
- Investigators did believe the initial ihop story,
But after missey was called out in a lie
On something else, he was quietly retired
From the investigation.
Now, 18 years after lynne friend went missing,
Prosecutor von zamft decided to tell missey's ihop story
To a grand jury, absent missey himself.
- We used that as the part of the basis for the indictment.
- Marginal evidence maybe,
But nonetheless a good prosecutorial strategy.
The grand jury indicted.
- Are you clifford friend?
- Yes, ma'am. - Okay.
- In 2012, prosecutors charged clifford friend
With first degree murder.
His attorney was flabbergasted that prosecutors would dare
To build a circumstantial case, with no body mind you,
On the expected star witness testimony
Of a very shaky informant.
- Our investigators had done a tremendous amount
Of work on robert missey.
We had boxes of files of-of dirt on robert missey.
- But what the defense didn't know
Was that prosecutors were putting up a straw man.
Missey wouldn't be their star witness at all.
- We were never gonna use him in trial.
Uh, our whole intent was to use him
And have the defense running around looking for him
And everything they could find on him.
- And while the defense did just that,
Spinning its wheels,
Prosecutors were quietly working on reeling in another prize,
Another better witness.
One clifford friend could only hope he'd never see again.
- The other person on the boat that night breaks a promise
And 20 years of silence.
- He said, "we have to dump the bag."
- When "dateline: Secrets uncovered" continues.
- Twenty years after lynne friend's disappearance,
Clifford friend, looking more jowly banker than killer,
Was on trial for his ex-wife's murder.
The motive, prosecutors say, was sitting directly behind him.
The son, christian, now 25.
Clifford, the prosecutors theorized,
Killed lynne to stop her from taking the boy
Out of state to nashville, where she was to remarry.
For the last 20 years, christian had always been
In that place right behind his father,
Never questioning his innocence.
In court, it showed the jury his continuing support
Of his father, even as he was about to hear
Until now untold family stories.
- --The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?
- Among the first witnesses was ed o'dell,
Lynne's one-time fiance.
O'dell described his last call with lynne.
Her call waiting beeped, and she put him on hold.
She said it was her ex-husband, clifford, on the other line
Asking her to come over to his house and pick up
Some money he owed.
- So, when you hung up with her,
That was the last time you ever spoke to her.
- That is correct.
- What did you do when you didn't hear from her?
- I tried to call her
And, um, did not get through. And...
- Okay. Did you call her? - Excuse me a minute.
- No, I would like to get finished.
- To prove clifford killed lynne to stop her
From taking their son away,
Prosecutors called her divorce attorney.
He testified that one week before her disappearance,
Clifford went ballistic in a family law court
When a judge approved the boy's move to nashville.
- He was angrily yelling at his lawyer that "no-nobody,
"nobody will take christian away from me."
- But these outbursts
Were at best purely circumstantial evidence.
The prosecution would need a lot more than that.
Remember, lynne's body had never been found.
However, the night his ex disappeared,
Clifford and his pal alan gold were spotted in a speedboat
Dumping a bag overboard.
The state believed lynne's remains were in that bag,
But alan gold had kept his mouth shut all these years.
- The key was finding a way to force alan gold to cooperate.
- Prosecutor michael von zamft made the other man
In the boat an offer he couldn't refuse.
He was subpoenaed to testify,
And given a grant of immunity with it.
If he didn't testify, the hammer would come down hard.
- And then I'll have the judge order you to testify.
And then I'll let you sit in jail until the trial's over.
- At age 68, gold didn't like the prospect of years in jail.
He chose the door marked "cooperation."
Stetson in hand, alan gold limped into court
With a certain bravado.
He passed by his former friend, clifford,
Moments away from telling his version
Of that fateful night 20 years before.
He testified that when he went to clifford's house,
The son, christian, who was supposed to be
Spending the weekend with his father, wasn't there.
It turned out clifford had dropped the boy off
At a babysitter's.
And then gold said he right away noticed
A large canvas bag on the floor.
- And when he pointed to the bag or told you about the bag,
Who did he tell you was in the bag?
- Lynne.
- Gold says clifford told him he and lynne had argued,
And then things got out of control.
- The next thing he knew, it was over.
He had lost it, he knocked her down and choked her out.
- What did you take that to mean?
- It means that she was in the bag,
She wasn't comin' back, and that was the end of lynne.
- Clifford said he'd need the 30-foot go-fast boat
They owned together.
It was docked behind gold's condo on miami beach.
- He wanted to use the boat, take her out,
Pretty deep water, and dump her.
- And when he told you that,
Did you immediately turn and run out the door?
- No.
- Gold said, go figure,
He decided to help his buddy out of a jam
Because of his son, christian.
- I basically didn't wanna see the kid fatherless.
And I figured it was the lesser of the evil.
I figured it was just a tragic accident that happened
And why make it worse?
- First, gold said, they got rid of lynne's car.
Back at the house, the two picked up the bag
With lynne's body.
- Did you, as you tried to lift this bag,
Say anything to clifford about why did it weigh so much?
- I did. - And what did he tell you?
- It's weighted.
- Once on the boat,
Gold says clifford weighted it down even more.
- He disengaged the anchor from the anchor line
And stuffed that in as well.
- Customs agents who stopped them confirmed
The boat anchor was missing.
They also found cement blocks and rope.
Gold recalled the moment out at sea
When he gave clifford a heads up that customs was following.
- He said, "we have to dump the bag."
He jumped in the back,
Grabbed a hold of the side of the bag,
I grabbed the other, and it went over the side.
- After a short chase with armed federal agents,
Gold said they had no choice but to surrender.
- About peed my pants, but other than that,
He basically wanted to know what went overboard.
I told them that a, uh-- a towel blew over.
- So, basically you lied. - Oh, yeah.
I don't really wanna tell anybody I just got done
Dumping a body in the atlantic.
- Gold was asked why now, 20 years later,
Did he finally stop covering for his pal, clifford.
- You had basically told me if I refused to answer
That you would put me in jail.
- Certainly you're not here
Out of the goodness of your heart.
- No.
- Were there any other considerations
That kept you from coming forward?
- I made a commitment to the guy 20 years ago.
I didn't see any reason to break it.
- You broke it.
- Only because you put me in a box,
And I don't have any choice.
- A compelling witness for sure,
But was he credible? - He's a character.
He is despicable, but he's believable.
- Prosecutors had one more witness to go,
A jailhouse snitch named andres garcia florez.
The judge ordered us not to show his face.
Florez testified that one night in jail,
He and clifford were watching
The spanish tv soap opera "el capo."
Ironically, the plot was about a drug dealer
Who killed his wife by throwing her off a boat.
[splashing]
- More damning testimony.
Or was it?
- The defense had done its homework and
Was ready to pounce.
- I've been asked why I never questioned my dad
About any of this...
Many times, by many people.
And never felt the need to.
- A son defends the man accused of killing his mother.
- I know that he loves me too much to hurt me
By taking my mother from me.
- When "dateline: Secrets uncovered" continues.
- Welcome back.
Twenty years after lynne friend vanished,
Her ex-husband clifford was on trial for her murder.
His long-time pal, alan gold,
Testified for the prosecution.
On the witness stand, he spilled a secret
He had kept for decades,
Describing in chilling detail
How he helped clifford cover up the killing.
Gold's testimony was colorful,
But not everyone in the courtroom was convinced.
Here's dennis murphy with the conclusion of
"what lies beneath?"
- The defense was behind on points after alan gold,
The state's star witness, spun a hypnotic story
About helping his buddy clifford friend
Dump his ex-wife's body in the ocean.
But one person wasn't convinced.
Christian friend, the boy who lost his mother
At the age of five listened to two weeks
Of damning evidence that his father killed her.
- Every night he came home feeling more and more
Confident that his father was innocent.
- Was innocent? Not going the other way,
Not getting shaky about it.
- Oh, he wasn't shaky at all.
- Did you have any moments where you waivered, janet?
- Never.
- While his son and wife still believed in him,
How would the defense get the jury to buy its case?
An excellent place to start was the jailhouse snitch.
He told that damaging story about him and clifford
Watching the spanish tv soap opera, "el capo,"
About an ocean-going, wife-murdering drug dealer.
Clifford allegedly blurted out something like,
"that's what I did."
- The prosecutor, when she told me about this,
She says, "you can't-- peter, you can't make this up."
I said, "yes, you can."
And in fact it turned out he did.
- During cross-examination, attorney peter heller
Caught the snitch in a lie
That sent the whole trial reeling.
Private investigators working for the defense
Uncovered evidence the state didn't know about.
It turned out, clifford never did watch
That spanish language tv program with the snitch.
- The problem with his story was
I immediately went and pulled our phone records
And cliff and I were on the telephone
When this episode was aired.
- The snitch's story unraveled,
To the prosecution's great humiliation and unhappiness.
After that whoops,
Judge teresa pooler ripped into the state.
- Seriously?
You put on a jailhouse snitch and you didn't
Check in any further to his credibility?
I don't wanna respond to that.
- You want an answer? I made a mistake.
- Shouldn't have gone with it.
- At one point, I turned to marie and said,
"you know, sometimes when it's too good to be true--"
- It probably is. - "it probably is."
- The judge called in puzzled jurors
And told them to disregard the snitch's testimony.
- He is now under investigation for perjury.
- And here was the big point of
The defense's newly energized argument.
Jurors, if the state would put on a big fat liar
Like the jailhouse snitch, what did that say
About alan gold, the star witness.
Prosecutors were concerned.
- That was their whole key was to try and say,
If they put on one liar, they put on the other.
- The defense would do everything it could to
Prove that, like the snitch, gold was a liar also.
And that the reason he decided to tell prosecutors
What they wanted to hear was that he was afraid
Of being charged with murder too.
- There's no factual indications on
First degree murder, is there?
- I didn't whack the broad, so I didn't care.
- Is that what this is?
You didn't "whack the broad?"
Is that what she is?
- I watch "the sopranos" a lot.
- It didn't take much prodding of the witness
To show the court just how little respect gold had
For the entire proceeding.
- You find this whole thing to be comical?
- Absolutely.
- Why is that, sir? - Took 20 years to get here.
- Oh, so that's why it's funny?
- Your sense of humor is different than mine.
- The judge limited the defense from offering
Its drug smuggling alibi and the suggestion
That it was drugs, not lynne's body,
In the bag clifford dumped.
Still, the defense was able to shoehorn in the thought
That gold and clifford were on a drug run that night.
- Okay, isn't it true, sir, that you needed to
Meet him that night to go run some drugs.
Isn't that true? - Bullsh--.
- With no body ever found, no dna,
And no physical evidence in clifford friend's house
To prove lynne was murdered there,
Gold admitted he couldn't with absolute certainty
Say that lynne's body was in that bag.
- Could you tell from your own senses that there
Was a body in there, yes or no?
- It wasn't April fools. There was a body.
- Okay, but you didn't look in there to confirm it was a body?
- No, no. - Okay.
- With the state and the defense now resting their cases,
Closing arguments boiled down to one thing:
Would jurors believe alan gold?
- You know, alan gold was about as...
Unrepentant a sinner as you're ever gonna see.
The state put him on because he knew things
That only he would know.
- You cannot believe what alan gold said.
He has an agenda.
He fabricated because of his agenda to save his own ass.
- The 20-year-old murder case
Was now in the hands of the jury.
Jurors deliberated late into the evening.
Around 9:30, they announced a verdict.
Christian and I were together,
Holding hands.
I had told him, no matter what happened,
We would hold our heads high.
- We the jury find the defendant,
Clifford brett friend,
Guilty of second degree murder.
- Second degree murder.
The jury apparently believed gold's story,
But not that the crime was premeditated.
At sentencing a few weeks later,
Lynne's long-ago fiance ed o'dell spoke
Directly to christian,
Reminding him of what he missed in life.
- You will not be able to understand lynne's love
For you until you have your own child,
When you know a love that you never knew possible before.
- Christian, who had sat silently
Throughout the trial, finally spoke.
And he was still four-square behind his father.
- I-I'm not gonna go into...
The frustration I feel in hearing that
I missed out on growing up with my mother.
I'm not gonna go into how frustrating it is to hear
How I've become a good person in spite of my father,
Because he is the best person I know.
I've been asked why I never questioned my dad
About any of this...
Many times, by many people.
And I never felt the need to.
He raised me and taught me right from wrong.
You've heard it said many times that
My dad loved me too much to let me go.
But I know that he loves me too much to hurt me
By taking my mother from me.
- In court, judge teresa pooler had the final word.
- You treated lynne friend with unspeakable--
Sir, look at me.
With unspeakable cruelty.
Your actions left your five-year-old child
To grow up without knowing his mother.
The manner in which you disposed of her body,
Sir, was despicable, by so cavalierly
Dumping her in the ocean.
Clifford brett friend, for these reasons,
I am sentencing you to life in prison.
- More than 20 years ago,
State attorney katherine fernandez rundle
Vowed that lynne friend's story would not end up
In some cold case file.
Now, she says there is justice,
Both for the young mother and for her son,
Even though he disagrees with the outcome of the case.
Ultimately, it's all about a boy, isn't it?
- It's all about the boy.
- This tug of love between the two parents.
- That's right.
Except, I would beg to say that I don't think
The fath-- a father
Who would deprive a boy of
The love of a mother really loves the boy.
He loved himself more, it seems to me.
- Markers.
Out west, there's the great open sky.
In south florida, the ocean, always the ocean,
The vast churning tropical waters.
For the aging friends still remembering,
It is lynne's marker too.
After a violent death, the place where they
Prayed she might finally rest in peace.
- That's all for this edition of "dateline:
Secrets uncovered."
I'm craig melvin. Thank you for watching.