- I'm kate snow,
And this is "dateline: Secrets uncovered."
- I see her laying there on the floor,
And I see a person
Who I've never seen before in my house,
And I'm looking at him.
He tells me I'm next
While he's reaching for a butcher knife.
Terrified.
- It was her mom who found her.
- Her daughter is laying there.
A young girl coming home for lunch
Getting brutally attacked.
- Blood on the floor, the shovel,
Duct tape, also a knife.
- I rushed home.
I truly thought brittani would die.
- Somehow she battled back, a fight to live.
- It was a struggle.
It was a-- a huge struggle.
- She is the definition of grit.
- She didn't give up.
- The question that haunted them all--
Who was her attacker?
- Who is in our lives? What strange person?
It could be anybody.
- Is he still out to get us?
- I feared for the other sisters.
We need to get an answer for brittani and her family.
- She would be the key.
- You're not only the victim in this.
You're the witness.
- Mm-hmm. It's almost like a nightmare.
- Could they unlock her memory and solve this mystery?
- The detective wanted you to do hypnosis?
- Mm-hmm.
Your mind is in a completely different place.
- The details that she gave-- just chilling.
It was unbelievable.
- She goes, "you did it." I said, "no, you did."
♪♪
- Hello and welcome to "dateline: Secrets uncovered."
Brittani marcell was a high school senior
When she was brutally beaten.
As she teetered between life and death,
Her attacker's identity remained a mystery.
The secret was buried in the recesses
Of brittani's mind.
Unlocking it would be a year's long quest.
It haunted her tight-knit family's every move
Until a new detective picked up the case
And would not let go.
Here's andrea canning with "the match."
♪♪
- Route 66 once stretched across the southwest
From one horizon to the next
Going from what america was to what it wanted to be.
Cities like albuquerque, new mexico
Were celebrated stops along the journey.
Today, buildings that once lined this part
Of the iconic highway have faded and closed
As the cottonwood mall became the new downtown.
The mall was kind of the big hangout?
- I met my husband at the mall,
So absolutely. Yes. [laughing]
- And so did kathleen. - So did I.
[laughing]
- It's played a pivotal part in our lives.
- For the marcell sisters, all six of them,
Along with their brother, jonathan,
The cottonwood mall in albuquerque
Was the center of their social lives.
- And it was people that we went to school with,
And so everybody kinda knew everybody.
- Sister number five, 17-year-old brittani,
Worked at a sunglasses kiosk in the atrium.
- And she's this beautiful blonde girl
With striking blue eyes and a big smile.
- You were just drawn to her.
- Life was simple, good...
Until Wednesday, September 11, 2008.
Brittani, just starting her senior year of high school,
Made plans to meet her mom, a credit union teller,
At home for lunch.
- I open the door, and I walk in,
And I saw her favorite pair of red sunglasses
Down on the floor.
- Did that mean anything to you?
- And I thought that was really weird.
- A seemingly trivial detail
Now burned into diane's memory
Because of what she saw next.
- I see her laying there on the floor.
- Lying on the floor. - On the floor,
And she's just bleeding profusely.
- Then what do you see?
- I see a person who I've never seen before
In my house, and he's holding a shovel,
And he walks through my living room,
Drops the shovel,
And walks through the dining room
And around to the kitchen,
And I'm looking at him, and he tells me I'm next
While he's reaching for a butcher knife.
- He's going to kill you? - Yes.
- What do you do? - I ran out.
I'm screaming and yelling.
- Diane's screams got the attention of a passerby
Who was brave enough to help.
- He ran into the house, and he yelled back,
And he said, "you need to get those paramedics here
"real quick. She's gonna die."
- Diane called 911 but stayed outside
Certain the attacker was still in her home.
- Police and the paramedics were there in minutes.
[sirens wailing] brittani was taken to the hospital
As diane called her other children.
- Someone was calling me
And saying brittani got stabbed.
Kat had thought she was in a car accident.
- Yeah, I thought she got stabbed.
- Mm-hmm.
- We didn't realize what had happened.
- Yeah. And so, I rushed home to my mom.
She told me what happened,
And I truly thought brittani would die.
- The sisters rushed to the hospital,
But, once there, were met with confused looks.
- They were like,
"we don't have a brittani marcell here."
- Yeah.
- Minutes later, detectives arrived
And told the marcell family, for her safety,
Brittani was admitted under an assumed name.
- We still hadn't understood what happened.
- Right.
- I mean, she's under an alias.
The police officers rush us into this private room
In the hospital.
- Putting brittani under an assumed name
May have been a smart move
Because the family was later told about a mysterious visitor
Who was trying to get in to see brittani.
- While we were in the waiting room,
One of the nurses came out and said,
"do you know that some man just came in to see her?"
- Who was it? - We don't know who it was.
- You never-- - we don't know.
- The man left before he could be identified.
Diane had a terrifying thought.
Maybe it was brittani's attacker.
- I didn't know if this person
Was watching us from afar. Did he follow the ambulance?
I went into the restroom.
I would look in every stall on the back of the doors
To make sure nobody was in there
Or standing on the-- on the actual commode.
- Fear took over. - Fear.
- As brittani teetered on the edge of death,
Her family could only guess as to who attacked her
And why.
- We started looking. Like, who's in our lives?
What strange person? - Mm-hmm.
- Is it any of the boyfriends?
- Everybody in our family is a natural problem solver,
And so everybody is trying to formulate ideas
Of who, how, what, when. - Who it was, right.
- Mm-hmm.
- The marcells were raised to be close
And self-sufficient.
Their dad, a truck driver, was often away.
When he and diane divorced, she had to go to work.
The children looked out for each other.
How do you think it shaped brittani being number five
In this big family?
- She looked up to kathleen, and kristen, and alicia.
- Remind me again who is the oldest.
- I am. I think I was kind of like her mom, too.
I mean, that's the way it goes in a big family, right?
You-- the littlest one has the most moms.
- Like her older sisters,
Brittani was disciplined and hardworking.
- She was an excellent student.
She had a good circle of friends.
- I think she kinda set herself apart from the popular crowd
Rather than was inside it. - Mm-hmm.
- And I think most of that is because she's very genuine,
Um, in everything that she does.
- Brittani was headed for college
And hoped one day to be a local tv reporter
Covering albuquerque.
- Very, very driven, she was, um,
Scheduled to graduate high school early.
She wanted to, um, study journalism.
- But her mom, diane, said brittani hit a rough patch
During her junior year in high school.
How was brittani acting?
- Just rebellious, normal 17-year-old
How they, you know, get confrontational
If you ask them something.
- Things got so tense for a while
Brittani moved in with her dad.
- And he wasn't there all the time,
So it was perfect for her.
- This was her sort of mild way
Of running away from home.
- A little bit, right.
- But by the start of her senior year,
Brittani wanted to come back.
That's why she and her mom were meeting for lunch
To discuss brittani's return.
Instead, brittani was attacked.
What did the doctors tell you
When brittani was brought to the hospital?
- They didn't think she would survive.
- Are you able to see her? - We can see her,
But she doesn't know we're there.
- The moment we all walked into the room,
Everything stopped. - Right.
- Brittani's head was the size of a basketball,
If not bigger. - Huge.
- And I don't think any of us really thought
That's brittani.
- What goes through your mind when you realize
You may never have any moments with your sister again?
Like, this could be it.
- I think-- - all the moments you missed,
You know, like, brittani had, a couple nights before,
Asked me to go to maroon 5 concert,
And I was like, "no, I'm busy."
It's like all those moments.
I should have done all those things.
Like, I didn't tell her I loved her enough.
- Mm-hmm. - I didn't hold her enough.
She didn't know how much she meant to me.
I didn't tell her I appreciated her.
My son is not gonna see her again.
- You're having a dress rehearsal for a death
That hasn't happened. - Mm-hmm.
- Coming up, who was brittani's attacker?
- This just seems so personal.
- This person seemed like were full of rage.
- Who was brittani hangin' around with?
Who might be a suspect?
- And would he return?
- The alarm was set constantly.
- We just never experienced that kind of imminent danger.
- When "dateline: Secrets uncovered" continues.
♪♪
- While the marcells tried to grasp what happened
To brittani, the police were trying to find out
Who did it.
Albuquerque police detective jason morales, since retried,
Was the lead investigator.
You've seen a lot of murders in your career.
- Yes. - How-- how brutal
Was this attack in this house?
- It was very brutal.
- Morales said brittani had been hit repeatedly with a shovel.
So hard it crushed the left part of her skull.
- So, when I got here,
The crime van was already parked out front.
Um, they had been here for a little while.
They're waiting on the condition of the victim,
Brittani, to see if she was going to survive
Or if she's gonna die.
- Morales said the fact that brittani's purse
And sunglasses were found right in the entryway
Led him to believe the attacker
Came up behind her as she entered the house.
Did you get the sense that maybe this was
A burglary in progress,
And brittani just happened to come home,
Or do you-- did you feel like the perpetrator was someone
That brittani knew?
- This just seemed so personal.
It seemed to me, at the time, that we're lookin' at somebody
That either knew, um, brittani
Or knew somebody in family, or there was something--
There was more of a connection to there.
- The brutal nature of the attack,
Did that tell you anything?
I mean, this person seemed like they were full of rage.
- It does.
We started trying to figure out
Who was brittani hangin' around with.
Um, who might be a suspect?
'cause it really, at this point,
We had no suspect at all, so everybody is.
- Morales believed the attack had just started
When brittani's mom arrived.
- I don't think he was anticipating
Diane showing up.
- The pattern of blood at the scene
Indicated the attacker actually chased diane
When she fled the house
But stopped for some reason,
Maybe, morales thought, when diane started screaming.
- And he panicked.
So, instead of going out a sliding glass door,
Whether it was locked or unlocked,
He jumps out of a dining room window.
I mean, not through the screen.
He jumps through the glass to get out.
- Inside the house,
Morales found a room full of evidence.
- So, once we were able to go inside,
Um, you could see it was pretty violent.
There was blood on the floor, the shovel.
There was duct tape,
And then there was also a knife.
- A lot of clues. - Yes, absolutely.
- Enough, morales thought, to solve the case.
That is, until he got the lab results.
The fingerprints found on the shovel, knife,
And tape were incomplete.
Dna from a male was found on the shovel and the knife,
But it was so intermingled with brittani's blood,
It was impossible to develop an individual profile.
But on a shard of broken glass police found a drop of blood
That looked promising because it was pristine.
- When he jumped out of the window,
Um, he cut himself.
- The blood drop was analyzed,
And a complete male dna profile was generated,
Which morales uploaded to the national criminal database
Called codis.
- To see if it would match anybody
That's already in the database.
- Did you get a match? - No.
- No match?
Morales couldn't believe it.
He was convinced brittani's attacker
Had to be a repeat offender.
- You'd have to figure that somebody that's done something
That-- in that extreme
Has done-- done something like that before.
- Brittani's attacker basically vanished
Into thin air. - Yes.
- So, now, morales' investigation
Went from the lab to the street.
He'd heard brittani was seeing someone,
Kind of a boyfriend.
Was he a potential suspect? - Absolutely.
- Did you do a dna test on her sort of boyfriend?
- Yes. He was cleared.
His dna did not match that.
- Police didn't have to rely on just hard evidence, though.
They had an eyewitness to the attack.
- I could see his height and his hair.
- Brittani's mom had actually seen the guy.
- Uh, I saw he had jeans on.
He had a long sleeve shirt on.
- And what does he look like?
- Either a dark caucasian man
Or a light hispanic
With brown hair, kinda spikey.
- Police created a composite sketch
And spread the word across the rio grande valley.
- There was both billboards of rewards,
Crime stoppers rewards.
Names just start pouring in.
So, we were talking to a bunch of people.
- But to no avail.
The billboard campaign didn't produce
Any workable suspects, witnesses, or leads.
Meanwhile, the marcell family was on edge.
In the days following the attack,
Brittani remained on life support,
Close to death.
- We really didn't know what to do, and they said,
"she's probably not gonna make it."
- Their home, once a safe and sacred place,
Was now marred by evil.
- Walking in, it was someone died there.
- Yeah.
- Like, it was just morbid. - It was hard.
- It was just dark, very dark.
Living there, or staying there,
Or having game nights, holidays,
We all can say we have a fond memory of that house.
- Mm-hmm. - And going back there,
It's-- it's a dark feeling you get on the inside.
- Mm-hmm. - Yeah.
- Of this isn't okay and you just wanna get
What you have to get to survive
And leave. - Mm-hmm.
- Brittani's mom soon found a rental house,
But changing addresses didn't help
With the lingering unease.
- When we're ever in the house,
The alarm was set constantly,
No open windows, no open doors until we go out.
Our whole lifestyle changed.
- The marcells were terrified brittani had been attacked
By someone who knew them and their routines,
Someone who might strike again.
- We just never experienced that kind of imminent danger.
- I think it was unsettling for everybody,
And I think they had every reason to be worried.
- They worked out a schedule
Taking turns standing vigil at the hospital with brittani.
They tried to be hopeful,
But they also knew the doctors and the police
All thought brittani was going to die.
- And all the reports at the hospital
Were looking like the trajectory was for brittani to pass.
- But somehow, brittani held on,
And six weeks after the attack,
Against all odds,
She finally opened her eyes.
- When brittani came to, and she woke up,
Her eyes were blue like the ocean before--
- Mm-hmm. - And they, um,
They were gray. - Mm-hmm.
- And I kept thinking he took your light.
- Yep. - Mm-hmm.
- Oh, my god, he took your light.
- And in brittani's new gray eyes,
Her family saw something else, fear.
- Coming up...
- "who was this guy that hurt me?
"why did he hurt me?"
- Brittani and her family still haunted.
- Your friends, your teachers, your boyfriend.
- Mm-hmm.
- Everybody is a possible suspect.
- It sounds crazy, but it could be anybody.
- When "dateline: Secrets uncovered" continues.
♪♪
- Brittani's beating was so horrific
We created sketches of her time in the icu
Rather than show you the actual photos.
Part of her brain was removed.
Then she contracted meningitis,
Which nearly killed her.
One surgery after another but brittani held on.
And by christmas, three months after the attack,
The family was told brittani would survive.
But what would her new life be like?
- We talked to her, and she'd blink her eyes
And smile, but we knew, at that point, her--
There was a lotta paralysis,
And that's when they told us
Her ear canal is crushed. She's going to be deaf.
They also told us that her optic nerve
Is probably atrophied, which it's severed
Just from the-- the hitting of the head,
The jolting of it.
- Despite her extensive injuries,
Brittani's family started taking her on short outings.
- And we put her in the wheelchair,
And she still couldn't hold her head up,
And she's drooling.
I'm just like please don't let this be it.
- The family knew
This might be all they could hope for.
- And there was so much dead tissue
In the front temporal lobe. - Yep.
- They removed pieces of that. - Mm-hmm.
- And they, with the brain, they were saying
It's so unpredictable. They-- that could be any--
That could your speech. - Short-term, emotion.
- That could be short-term. It could regenerate.
- When I hear all the wonderful things about her--
- Mm-hmm. - Yeah.
- And all the things she wanted to accomplish,
And then now you're describing her like this.
Were you angry? - Yeah.
- Oh, yeah. - Mm-hmm. - Absolutely.
- As they tended to brittani,
Her sisters continued to wonder
Who could have done this to her.
- It's violating
Because you start questioning relationships you trust.
- Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. - Exactly.
- Yes. - At school, your friends,
Your teachers. - Mm-hmm.
- Your boyfriend, your circle of influence.
You're like, well, maybe it was you.
- Right. - Yeah.
- So, everybody is a possible suspect.
- Everybody. - Mm-hmm.
- Even going to the gym, going to the grocery store,
You know, standing at the gas station,
Watching people.
- Mm-hmm. - I mean, it--
It sounds crazy,
But when you don't know who it is,
It could be anybody. - Mm-hmm.
- It was all so personal.
The attacker had been in their home,
Possibly stalked them.
Maybe brittani wasn't even his intended target.
Maybe it was one of the other sisters.
No one could say for sure,
But the family had to put their fears aside
When caring for brittani,
Who now needed all of their help.
- It's really taking your baby
And raising her all over again.
- Mm-hmm.
- So, you're raising a child that you already raised.
- And that, I think, was the hardest part,
Watching mom have to go through that again.
- Mm-hmm. - And you just--
You wanted to cry for them.
- Five months after the attack,
Her condition had stabilized
To the point brittani could be released from the hospital,
But she was far from healed.
- She didn't realize why she couldn't walk,
Why she couldn't eat,
Why she had to learn all these things over again.
- As helpless as a child,
Which meant, if the attacker returned,
The marcell family was more vulnerable now than ever.
So, diane fled albuquerque,
Taking brittani, along with the two youngest children,
To neighboring texas.
She found a new home, a new job,
And, most important,
A rehabilitation clinic for brittani.
- Her mom was very, very anxious
Because we didn't know who the assailant was
And that, um,
They were still very concerned for her safety.
- Dr. Laurie wright was one of brittani's therapists.
What was your first impression of brittani when you met her?
- That she just didn't know much beyond where she was,
And she was very, very confused, crying a lot.
She had to have somebody shower her.
She had to have somebody take her to the bathroom.
She had to have all those things done for her
All over again.
- Dr. Wright, a neuropsychologist,
Practices what's known as cognitive behavioral therapy.
- We believe with practice, practice, practice,
The brain can heal.
- Which means teaching a head trauma patient
To do one simple task over and over again
Until it becomes reflexive.
- Because their brain is just not the same brain
That it used to be.
- Is it like rewiring the brain?
- Absolutely. It is rewiring the brain.
And so, what do you do?
You sit down, and you-- you do it with her
Until she is able to do it herself.
- Brittani's brain injury was so severe,
Much of her therapy was almost like a preschool class.
- She would read her dr. Seuss books to me.
That was a rehab, and she would have to read,
And I'd read, and she'd read.
It's like reading to a toddler all over
And teaching a child to read.
- But the attack on brittani was so brutal
Dr. Wright wasn't sure how far she'd get in her recovery.
- There was 25% of the brain she wasn't able to access
That she used to be able to access.
- Did you think she'd ever get her memory back?
- Getting that memory back, most people don't ever,
Especially if it's a traumatic brain injury, if you're--
You don't usually remember.
- If brittani's memory did return,
Her account of the attack
Could later be used as evidence.
So, dr. Wright didn't give brittani any of the details
Out of concern it could create false memories.
- When people come out of this kind of trauma,
They're not sure if this is a memory
That they're remembering,
Or this is something that somebody has told them.
If her memory, um, were to come back,
We wanted it to just be her memory.
- As she slowly learned to talk again,
Brittani seemed stuck in a loop of fear.
- She would just, on repeat, you know,
"I'm afraid. I'm afraid.
"who is this guy that hurt me?
"why did he hurt me?
"and, you know, what am I gonna do
"if he comes to get me?"
- After months of constant repetitive therapy,
Brittani's brain did start to rewire itself
And in such a dramatic way
It still brings tears to dr. Wright's eyes.
- It took a year, a year of intense therapy,
And she didn't give up,
And it's really hard to explain.
Brittani is special.
She is definitely special.
- She is indeed,
As you're about to see for yourself.
- Coming up...
Brittani speaks out at last.
- You wake up from your coma.
What's the first thing that happens?
- I'm just, like, trying to communicate.
- And she speaks to investigators, too.
- I put that big x through that one picture.
I thought it was this guy.
I really did.
- When "dateline: Secrets uncovered" continues.
- Welcome back to "dateline: Secrets uncovered."
I'm kate snow.
Brittani marcell was viciously beaten.
Investigators recovered her attacker's dna
At the crime scene
But were unable to match it to a person
In the national database.
They believed brittani was targeted
By someone she knew,
But her memory had been wiped clean,
Or so they thought.
A face from the past was about to come into focus.
Here's andrea canning with "the match."
- There was a time when doctors
Gave brittani marcell just hours to live,
But somehow she held on,
Almost rising from the dead.
Through hours upon hours of hard work,
Brittani's mind and body began to heal.
She's permanently deaf in her left ear
And blind in her left eye,
But, these days, she no longer struggles to talk.
Here, at last, is brittani in her own words.
You wake up from your coma.
- Mm-hmm.
- What's the first thing that happens
That you can tell us about?
- I'm just, like, trying to communicate,
But you can't at that age.
I was at that, as you say, newborn stage per se
'cause I couldn't walk.
Talking was the hard thing, speech in general.
I mean, after everything happened,
You're kinda like a toddler.
You don't understand the language that
You and I are speaking today.
And then when I went to rehab,
I was more of, like, a teenager,
Like, a young teenager, and as time went on,
I start becoming more like a--
A better, uh, like a stronger teenager,
Like, knowing what to do.
- So, you were rapidly going through all the--
- Mm-hmm.
- The phases you'd already done once before.
- Right, right.
- And by her side the entire time, her mom.
- She's been there with me
On every medical appointment, every surgery.
It's, like, she's somebody who I look up to very much so.
She's like my best friend now.
- How well do you remember your high school years?
- Like, nothing.
Like, I don't remember that,
But I remember my childhood very well.
- Oh, that's interesting that you remember childhood
But not high school.
- Or middle school, very little middle school.
I-I remember going to new york in middle school,
But when I was in high school,
Not very much.
- Brittani's nerve damage is so extensive,
She's unable to shed a tear
Or control many of her facial muscles
And is no longer able to smile.
How many surgeries have you had, so far?
- Gosh, I've had, I wanna say, up to 20.
My mom says, "I think you're done with surgeries."
I'm like, "no, I'm not, mom.
Like, I want my smile.
That's what I want, my smile, and she's like,
"well, most people don't notice that."
I'm like, "no, but I do every day."
- The brittani you see today
Is not the same person she was
Before the attack.
As her brain rewired itself, her speech patterns
And even aspects of her personality changed.
She became more reserved, more cautious,
Not as bubbly and outgoing as she once was.
Did you still have fears even though you had moved
To a new state?
- I did.
- Did you still feel like he could come find you?
- Mm-hmm.
That's why on my, like, social media,
I don't put a location as to where I live.
I mean, you can put where you live on facebook now.
I don't put that.
- Despite her fears,
Brittani was improving dramatically,
And police hoped she'd eventually help them
Find her attacker.
- We asked her to look at the composite sketch,
And she said it looks like somebody that she knows,
But she just couldn't put all the information together.
But I was hopin' that she could at least
Give some information
That would lead us in a direction,
Whether it be, you know,
Somebody that she remembered bein' with at a party
Or somebody that showed up to work.
You know, just give us another clue or a lead
That we could follow up, and it didn't.
- Another dead end?
- Yes, very frustrating.
- Meanwhile, the marcell sisters,
Still working with brittani,
Did what they could to help with the investigation
By going over facebook and old yearbook photos.
- And just flip through to see if she recognized anybody
Or had any idea who it could be.
- Mm-hmm. - And anything?
Were you getting anywhere?
- She, I mean, she would point to some pictures,
But I think she was still processing
What we were having her do.
- But there was one picture in what would have been
Her senior yearbook that got their attention.
- This guy just looks so sketchy.
Like, it's kinda like you-you get that-that vibe,
Like this guy doesn't-- he looks kinda guilty almost,
Like a criminal,
Like somebody that's gonna go out there
And do something or harm somebody.
So, that's why I put that big x through
That one picture.
- She did more than draw an x through it.
She drew an inverted pentagram,
The mark of the beast, the devil.
- I thought it was this guy.
I really did.
- But it wasn't the guy.
Police investigated him and found out
He was just a random classmate
Who did nothing worse than take a bad picture.
So, the family kept up their armchair sleuthing.
Were you passing along names?
- I was. - Of friends, co-workers,
Anybody that would be in brittani's world.
- Right, even people in my kids' world and my world.
I mean, I didn't-- at that point,
I didn't trust anybody not to have done this.
They were all suspects.
I was a teller at a credit union,
And I could see people walk in or walk out.
I'm thinkin', "I wonder if it's that person."
- They were always callin' in.
You know, they would see, like I said,
They would see somebody at the bank,
And it would look like him,
And they didn't know who it was,
But they'd give me a license plate,
And we would follow up that information.
But still, it didn't lead to the identity
Of the suspect.
- Did you feel like you had started to exhaust
Everyone kind of in brittani's world?
- Yes. - And how many names
Of-of potential suspects or people of interest
Did the family give you?
- I would say somewhere in the area of about 30.
The frustrating part is the fact that
We have the key right there.
It's brittani.
- The investigation goes cold,
But the teenager who beat the odds
Is about to get a new ally
Who promises to turn up the heat.
Coming up...
- You're not only the victim in this.
You're the-the key witness.
- That's the scary part.
It's almost like a nightmare.
- Enter a new detective.
Could she find a new lead?
- I thought, wow, maybe this is the guy.
- When "dateline: Secrets uncovered" continues.
- Everything about the brittani marcell case
Was inside out.
Police had the suspect's dna but not his name,
Fingerprints but too smeared to read,
And two eyewitnesses
Who couldn't identify the attacker.
You're not only the victim in this.
You're the-the key witness.
- Mm-hmm, right.
- I mean, you know who did this to you.
You may not know his name, but you-you saw him.
- Mm-hmm, it's like that--
That's, like-- that's kinda the scary part.
It's almost like a nightmare.
- Ironically for investigators,
The fact that brittani didn't die posed a problem.
There is no statute of limitations for murder,
But attempted murder is a different story.
And two years into the case,
Morales worried he was running out of time.
- I wouldn't want something like that
To be the technicality that gets this individual off
In the future, is the fact that
The statute of limitations ran.
- For help, morales turned to cold case prosecutor,
David waymire.
- Even if the defendant was ultimately
Identified through dna,
Even if he admitted the crimes,
Statute of limitations, once it hits,
It's an absolute bar to prosecution.
- But waymire had an idea as to how they could
Get around that hard deadline,
Indict the dna profile as a john doe,
A creative legal maneuver,
But one that had never been tested in state court.
- Although we felt like we were on solid ground to do it,
We didn't know for sure that it would be upheld
By the new mexico courts.
- With no other options, waymire went ahead
With the unusual indictment,
A good thing,
Because the investigation was at a standstill.
Morales was afraid the only way he'd catch
Brittani's attacker was if he struck again.
- I cannot believe that s-somebody that would
Commit a crime of this nature
Would not mess up again.
- Didn't know who he was.
- Brittani's sisters were afraid they might be
The next victims.
- I mean, over the years,
We will all sit around a table,
And we will go into hours of the night.
- Mm-hmm.
- Trying to come up with possibilities
Of why and who. - Yep.
- But the marcell family, like detective morales,
Had no workable leads.
By the fifth anniversary of the attack,
The case was no closer to being solved.
- I really hate calling cases cold.
It's just that you just haven't found
That right person.
- Liz thompson, then a sergeant
Heading up the homicide unit
And detective morales' boss,
Was optimistic something would break.
- You know, that one person hadn't talked,
Or that one piece of evidence hadn't matched up,
And it just took persistence.
That's what it needed.
- But that optimism was lost on the marcell family.
They were still living in constant fear
Brittani's attacker would one day return,
Possibly for them.
- It was a scary thought 'cause we don't know
If we're being followed still, and we're all scared.
- And that's when, in 2012, brittani's mom placed
An uncomfortable call to sergeant thompson.
- I finally said, "you know what?
"I think we need new eyes on the case."
- And so, we had to have some hard discussions
About what are the next steps.
How can we move this case forward?
- Sergeant thompson decided the best way
To accomplish that was to reassign the case
To veteran homicide detective jodi gonterman.
- I read through their case.
I briefed with detective morales.
I spoke with the family.
Brittani didn't remember what happened at all.
- Describe her for us, your first impression,
What you thought of her.
- Um, she's a go-getter.
She's stubborn. She doesn't give up.
She's just fascinating.
She's cute, vivacious.
She's a mom. She has kids.
- Do-do you feel like this was a match made in heaven?
- I did, uh-uh.
- What did she tell you that she was gonna do?
- She's gonna review everything,
And then she had a good relationship
With the forensic, uh, team there,
And she had her review all the fingerprints,
All the dna.
- When she got, like, her hands on the case,
She would call my mom almost every day.
- You finally had hope?
- I did, I did.
- That they would find your attacker.
- Mm-hmm, I did.
She goes out, and she goes after,
Like, the evidence she's got.
She goes after every tip.
- Brittani said that you would always show her
That her case was at the top of the pile.
- I told her, every time she called me,
"I'm-I'm looking at your case.
It's right here. I'm not filing it away.
I will never put it away."
- Did you have an instant connection with brittani?
- I-I believe so, absolutely.
- Gonterman immersed herself in brittani's world
Prior to the attack.
- Who she was friends with, what those relationships were,
Who was in her phone, who the photos were,
Who she hung around with, what did she like to do?
She was a very social girl.
She was a very good girl.
- Now, five years after the attack,
Gonterman worked the case like it happened yesterday,
Searching for new leads, new witnesses.
- Talked to neighbors.
I would look at every house to see
Is there anybody at this house
Who has a-a criminal history
That would fit this type of crime?
- Because the case had been
Out of the public eye for so long,
Gonterman and thompson began drumming up
Local press coverage,
Hoping it would shake loose a new lead.
- So, I did a piece on local media.
We reissued the sketch,
And then detective gonterman started taking in tips.
- And right off the bat, they got a good one.
- I thought, wow, maybe this is the guy.
- Coming up...
One name, then two, then three, then four.
- A suspect was developed,
And then another suspect would be developed,
And over and over they were excluded.
- What is it that we're missing?
- I didn't give up.
We need to get an answer for brittani and her family
To give them closure.
- When "dateline: Secrets uncovered" continues.
- Yeah.
- In just a couple of weeks,
Detective gonterman and sergeant thompson
Had already scared up a hot lead
On a potential suspect who had somehow
Slipped through the cracks years earlier.
What was his criminal history?
- Stalking his girlfriend, there was duct tape.
He lived across the street behind brittani.
- Also suspicious, the suspect left new mexico
After the attack.
Where was he?
- I think he was in colorado, if I'm not mistaken.
- So, gonterman called local police,
Who tracked him down and, surprisingly,
Convinced the suspect to give them a dna swab.
Albuquerque police department forensic scientist
Alanna williams took over from there.
How long does it take you to see if there's a match?
Is it instant? - No.
So, it takes several days to look at
The item of evidence, swab the sample,
Extract the dna, see how much you have,
And then once it's placed on the instrument,
You get a dna profile.
- At the end of all that...
Did you think it was him?
- I thought it was a possibility,
Got my hopes up,
And then I was very disappointed when it wasn't.
- The dna didn't match, a big letdown,
One of many to come.
Then another tip-- gonterman took it seriously
Because of who it was from.
- A parent saying,
"I think it's my son who did this."
- Wow.
- "my son would visit the house
Right across from brittani's home,
And he looks like the sketch,"
And this was considering that this would be
Very difficult for a parent.
I thought, wow, okay.
- But when gonterman got the man's dna sample...
- He was excluded.
- Another letdown. - Yes.
- So, gonterman and thompson tried a different strategy
Focusing on cases that bore some similarity
To brittani's attack.
They found one that was eerily similar.
- Oh, my gosh, it's the same part of town.
It was at her own home.
It was a shovel. They knew her.
And I just thought how could it not be.
- But his dna didn't match either.
He wasn't john doe.
The old school approach of working tips,
Leads, and hunches
Just wasn't paying off for gonterman.
So, she went back through the case files again
And came across a report about brittani's cell phone.
Back in 2008, during the initial investigation,
Police didn't have the technology to break into
The phone without erasing the data.
- So, when it first processed,
There were only so many tools to get in it,
And brittani couldn't remember her pin.
So, years later, um, I took it down
To the forensics laboratory for computers.
- You-you tried it, again. - Tried it again.
- 'cause there's new ad--
There's advances in technology.
- New technology. - Yes.
- This time, technicians were able to get
Into brittani's phone, and right off the bat,
Gonterman found an intriguing clue.
- A text message from a-a male
Who texted brittani the day it happened
And wanted to meet her for lunch.
- Wow.
- And I was like, wow, okay.
- That's it. - We didn't know about this guy,
And brittani didn't remember him, so--
- Did it have a name and everything?
It was, like, right there for you who this pers--
- Name, phone number-- I figured out who he was.
So, at the time,
He had gone to high school with brittani.
- So, gonterman did an online search
And easily found brittani's old high school friend.
To her surprise, he was a police officer.
Did that kinda rattle you a little bit?
- Of course, it did.
What a better way to just not get caught
And, you know, cover it up?
- Gonterman contacted the officer.
Broke the news to him that he was
A person of interest in the brittani marcell case.
She also collected a sample of his dna.
Two weeks later, the results came back.
They were negative.
Once again, it wasn't john doe.
Somewhat relieved that it wasn't him?
- Was I relieved that it-- I was.
But if it was him,
And he was a law enforcement officer,
Then, you know, good, we got him.
- About how many men approximately
Would you say that you got your hopes up
For that it--
That this could be the one?
- I think those four were the-were the--
The most significant.
- But many more were tested.
- A suspect was developed,
And then the dna profile did not match,
And then another suspect would be developed,
And no match.
And every time it seemed like,
Over and over, suspect by suspect,
They were excluded.
- We tested, and tested, and tested,
And no matches.
- What's that like, up and down, up and down?
You get your hopes up, and then it's not a match.
- Oh, it's-it's really hard,
And we have to remind each other all the time.
Okay, how we do move forward?
What is it that we're missing?
- It's-it's an emotional roller coaster.
- Roller coaster.
- As the years slip by, and you have
All these false leads, false hope,
Are you starting to wonder
If maybe we're never gonna solve this,
And this is--
You know, maybe it's all for nothing,
What we're doing?
- I didn't give up.
We need to get an answer for brittani
And her family to give them closure.
- Her determination gave the marcells strength.
- She's like, "I will not retire until this case is solved."
- Yeah, she was very adamant on doing it.
- She said that to all of us.
- Like detective morales before her,
Gonterman found herself circling back to brittani,
But each visit was as frustrating as the last.
- She didn't have a lotta memory.
You know, it was like talkin' to a little girl.
Finding a sweet little girl trying to-trying to remember.
- By 2014, six years after the assault
On brittani marcell,
Detective gonterman was out of leads,
Suspects, and witnesses.
The scientific way of working the case
Through fingerprints and dna was a bust,
And so was gonterman's old school
Knocking on doors approach.
- We just hadn't found this person,
Or this person was deceased,
And we just needed to figure out
Who they were and get their dna
And-and solve it that way.
We just had to keep pluggin' away at it.
- There was no doubt brittani was improving dramatically,
But she still had no recollection of the attack.
No one knew if her memory of that day was gone forever
Or would eventually emerge from the haze.
Detective gonterman and sergeant thompson
Now believed if they were ever going to solve this case,
They had to do something radical,
Possibly even traumatic,
To find a way to get brittani to relive
The attack that nearly killed her.
- We didn't know if brittani had brain damage
That was interfering with her ability
To remember the attack
Or if they were repressed memories
That could be recovered from, uh, using hypnosis.
- Putting a witness under hypnosis
Is legally controversial.
Many states won't allow it
Out of concern the recovered memories
Could be nothing more than made up stories.
Putting brittani, a brain damaged crime victim,
Under hypnosis had its own unique set of concerns.
- 'cause then your memories start flowing back,
And I'm afraid if I do be hypnotized,
More is gonna come back than expected.
- If you had the choice to remember the entire incident,
Would you want to remember it?
- I don't wanna remember the beating.
That's something I would not wanna remember.
I just remember the guy's face.
- Just enough to say... - This is him.
- Coming up...
- Okay.
- Brittani marcell under a doctor's spell.
- Can he jog her memory
And help solve this mystery?
- When "dateline: Secrets uncovered" continues.
- Welcome back to "dateline: Secrets uncovered."
I'm kate snow.
Imagine you're the victim of a ferocious attack.
You beat the odds and survive.
One silver lining?
You don't remember the terror.
Then police ask you to try.
That was the dilemma brittani marcell faced.
Now, detectives hoped a psychiatrist
Could help her unlock the secrets
Of her horrific ordeal
And unmask her attacker at last.
Once again, here's andrea canning with "the match."
- Brittani marcell had defied the odds,
Surviving a near fatal beating that left her brain damaged,
Blind in one eye, and partially deaf.
Now, she was about to take an extraordinary step
To catch her attacker.
Despite her fears of reliving the trauma,
On August 14, 2014,
Brittani agreed to go under hypnosis.
Dr. Leon morris was the clinical psychologist
Chosen to work with brittani.
It would be his first criminal case using hypnosis,
And he was confident there were memories to recover.
- Dr. Morris was well aware, though,
That what memories brittani did have of the attack
Could be wrong.
- There's something called confabulation.
Uh, if a person doesn't remember something,
They kinda fill in the blanks with things
That may not be accurate.
- Before starting, dr. Morris made sure
She was still a willing subject.
- At first, the session seemed to be going in slow motion.
Dr. Morris calmly instructs brittani
To slowly bring her hands together.
Brittani will be fully in a trance the moment
Her hands touch her forehead.
Watch the clock in the upper left-hand side
Of the screen.
It takes brittani almost ten minutes
To go under dr. Morris' spell.
A passage which led to another time and place,
Brittani's home on September the 11th, 2008.
Brittani recalls inside.
It's empty.
Then she sees someone.
Her body shakes as she relives the beating.
Eerily, brittani describes this fight for her life
In an almost flat monotone.
Brittani is apparently talking about a possible customer of hers
At the cottonwood mall sunglasses kiosk
Where she worked.
Brittani had been in a trance for just 36 minutes
And had apparently provided more details about the attack
Than had been uncovered over the last six years.
According to brittani, her attacker was tall, muscular,
With brown eyes, a square jaw, big nose,
Light-skinned, and possibly latino.
And this was important--
He may have been a customer of hers
At the cottonwood mall sunglasses kiosk,
Someone she knew,
And whose name she'd hopefully remember.
Once she came out of her trance...
Would she remember the name of her attacker?
- I knew what she told me,
But I didn't know whether it was accurate or not.
- New information from brittani
And cutting edge new technology.
- Oh, wow!
If I was a suspect in a criminal case,
This would give me away. - Uh, yeah, I think so.
- Could it lead to a break in the case?
When "dateline: Secrets uncovered" continues.
- As soon as brittani marcell emerged from hypnosis,
She had a question for dr. Leon morris.
Brittani was hoping she'd blurted out her attacker's name
While in a trance, but that didn't happen.
They identity of her attacker was still a mystery.
- So, I'm just like, hmm.
I was like that wasn't really helpful.
- Did you get upset during the session?
- Very, mm-hmm.
I was just, like, angry.
Like, the reconstruction I've had on my face,
I was like you can't tell when I'm happy or sad,
Unfortunately, but it's like I was,
Like, getting that, like, mad face
When I was being hypnotized
Just 'cause I was like you're feeling the pain
Of what's happening.
- It wasn't totally in vain, though.
- Brittani's mom also said the same thing,
But brittani was able to provide new details
Of her attacker's face and physique.
- With those descriptors, what we did was,
We sent her to our sketch artist
And had another sketch done with what brittani remembered
From those characteristics.
- The two sketches, brittani's and her mom's
Six years earlier,
Had some similarities and some differences.
While both said the attacker had brown eyes and light skin,
The facial structure, nose, and hair didn't match.
Dr. Leon morris had a possible explanation.
- A lot of eyewitness identification is wrong.
At the end of the hypnosis, I-I knew what she told me,
But I didn't know whether it was accurate or not.
- No one knew if what brittani said while under hypnosis
Was accurate or not.
The composite sketch based on her description
Failed to produce any usable leads.
Once again, the job of pushing the case forward
Fell to detective jodi gonterman.
- She is probably the best detective
I could ever ask for.
- Did you find yourself getting emotionally invested
In the case with so many years going by?
- Yeah, I did. - Yeah.
- And your-- your connection to brittani and diane.
- I did.
I-I went in her office crying once before
Just 'cause I was so disappointed.
- Oh, yeah. Yeah. - It's rough.
I mean, you know, you try not to get emotionally involved,
But you do.
- As the investigation languished,
Brittani continued on with her life.
And in may of 2016,
Eight years after being nearly beaten to death,
She graduated from college.
- I didn't think I'd be graduated from college by now.
I didn't think I'd be doing that.
- To go to college and to come this far,
It's just incredible.
I mean, how do you do it?
- You gotta be strong in yourself.
You gotta believe in yourself.
- And it was around the time of brittani's graduation
That gonterman got another one
Of her out of the box ideas.
She heard about a new way to make a sketch,
Not from an eyewitness account,
But from a dna sample.
- They do a different type of-of testing
That gives hair color, eye color,
Skin tone, ancestry.
- This is an incredible too. - It's amazing.
- The company behind this new crime fighting tool
Is parabon,
Where they do something called dna phenotyping.
- It's essentially a genetic witness.
- Dr. Ellen greytak is parabon's director of bioinformatics.
How does it work? In layman's terms,
How can you take dna and make a sketch?
- Well, you focus on those traits that are passed down
From parent to child.
So, if you think about when you say,
"oh, you have your mother's eyes,"
Well, you have your mother's eyes
Because you have your mother's dna,
And we can figure out, well, this piece of dna,
We see in blue-eyed people but not in brown-eyed people.
- So, all your features are connected to your dna.
- Absolutely.
- Parabon started off by helping the u.S. Military
Create dna profiles from the remains
Of insurgent bombmakers during the iraq war.
It wasn't long before cold case detectives were
Sending them emails looking for help, as well.
- The investigations that we're working on,
Sometimes they've been cold for decades.
In these cold cases,
They're cold because there are no leads,
And, in a lot of cases,
That's because there's no witness description,
And we're able to give them that just with the dna.
- From a single dna sample, parabon can make an estimation
Of someone's hair color, eye color, and complexion.
We hired parabon to test a sample of my dna,
But we didn't tell them it was from me until this interview.
I sent in my dna,
As a blind-- - that was yours.
- That was mine, as a blind sample.
- Okay.
- Um, you did not know whose dna we were sending in.
- No, did not.
- Parabon built a profile of me
As if I were a random criminal suspect.
- So, all we received was a dna vial labeled tr19411.
And so, these are the predictions
That we produced just from that dna.
This actually was a pretty interesting eye color prediction,
One that we don't see very often.
It will either come from people
With fairly dark, blueish-green eyes,
Or it will come from people who actually have
Very light eyes but with a dark ring and a gold center.
- Okay. So, I have-- I have the gold center.
- I see it. I see it, now.
The pigment that's in your eyes is a yellowish color,
So that's why as you get more,
It turns green and then brown,
And so you've got that pigment,
But it's only in the middle, which is pretty interesting.
- Wow, that's fascinating.
- Um, your ancestry came out as a mix
Of northern european and southeast european.
- My grandparents on my mother's side
Are from czechoslovakia, and then my, um,
My father's family from london.
- That is perfectly how it came out.
- Well, you nailed that.
[laughing] - good.
So, we predicted that she would have, um,
Wider cheekbones, and wider eyes,
Larger eyes, and then a wider jaw,
And narrower chin, a fairly petite nose
But a little bit wider at the-- at the nostrils.
And so, uh, the next page is going to include your composite.
Uh, okay. - Oh, wow!
The eyes look very much like mine.
- These light eyes but with a golden center,
A dark ring, medium blonde hair.
- If I was a suspect in a criminal case,
This would give me away.
[laughing] - uh, yeah, I think so.
- Putting together a profile like this
Is labor intensive and costly, up to $3,600,
A lot of money for cash strapped homicide units
Like albuquerque's.
But after months of dogged persistence,
Gonterman wrangled up the funds and shipped a sample
Of the john doe dna to parabon
And settled in to wait.
The process would take several months.
Meanwhile, gonterman set brittani's file aside
And focused on other cases, and it was at this time,
In October 2016, when a name suddenly emerged
From brittani's memory.
- She said the name justin kept coming up.
- I asked my mom, "hey, did you know this person?"
And she goes, "no."
I was like, "well, for some reason,
"that name keeps coming back to mind."
She's like, "how often?"
I was like, "like, every day."
I was like, "I don't know why."
- Every day? - Every day.
- This was the first time a name had just popped into her head.
Brittani called her sisters to see if they remembered
A guy named justin.
- I'm like, "oh, that's hansen," and she said,
"yeah, justin hansen. That keeps coming to me."
- All of the sisters remember justin hansen.
He was a fixture at the cottonwood mall.
Where did he work at the mall?
- Hollister.
- I think that was kind of a big deal back then,
Right, to work there? - Yeah.
- It was.
- Yeah. - Was it cute guys?
- Yeah. - Yeah. Mm-hmm.
- Oh, yeah. If you knew you were going into abercrombie
Or hollister, you're like,
There's definitely cute guys there.
- The question was, why was brittani
Suddenly remembering him now?
Were you getting an eerie feeling
When you would think of justin,
Or just his name was popping into your head?
- Just his name was popping up.
- Nothing more? - Nothing more.
- Just-- just like why is-- why does this keep happening?
- Mm-hmm. Right. He worked at hollister,
And he'd come down over to my kiosk and all,
And he'd, you know, sit there and chat, and all,
Or be on the outside kiosk and talk and all,
And-and it was-- I--
To what I thought just a mutual relationship.
- Did he seem interested in you?
- I don't remember that at all.
I was like I'm-- - flirty?
- Flirty.
- Brittani called detective gonterman
With this latest memory.
- And she says, "a name popped into my head.
"I don't know why,
"but this guy's name is justin hansen,
"and I worked at the sunglass kiosk,
"and he would come, and he would visit me."
She's like, "it was nothing bad."
She goes, "but he would just-- I remember him
"hanging out with me for about an hour at a time,
"and it happened maybe about three months
"before the attack.
"um, he would come by and just talk to me."
- Gonterman knew that while under hypnosis,
Brittani said she may have met her attacker
At the sunglasses kiosk.
- Over the previous nine years, the marcells had asked police
To investigate 75 different men,
None of whom turned out to be the attacker.
This was the first time, though,
Brittani had ever come up with a name,
So maybe this new memory was important.
On the other hand, maybe it wasn't.
- Hi. How are you? Are you justin?
- I am justin. - Okay.
- Detectives pay a visit to justin hansen.
He seems helpful, but is his story truthful?
- Can I think about this and then come back and see you?
- When "dateline: Secrets uncovered" continues.
♪♪
- For sergeant liz thompson and detective jodi gonterman,
Calling brittani's case cold was an admission of defeat.
But eight years after the attack,
The investigation had clearly stalled.
So, this new name from brittani, justin hansen,
Didn't look to be any kind of case changer.
- She gave me so many names of-of people,
Um, but nothing was really significant to her,
And all along, justin's name never came up.
- Did she have any reason why his name of all people
Was popping into her head? - She-- she didn't know.
It just popped into her head one day.
- Hansen didn't match the description brittani gave
While under hypnosis.
That person was tall, muscular, and had brown eyes.
Hansen, on the other hand, is average height, thin,
And has green eyes.
Hansen was also a married father of four
With no criminal convictions other than a dui.
Was this immediate for you?
I have to run this down, right now,
Or was it like, okay, I'll get to it?
- Well, I said, "okay, I'm gonna set it aside.
"I'm gonna wait to contact him," because the more I had
When I do an interview, the more information
I have behind me, is gonna be more helpful.
- Justin hansen just didn't seem like a high priority
Until three months later, January 3, 2017,
When detective gonterman and sergeant thompson
Finally got the parabon dna report.
Dr. Ellen greytak of parabon walked us through
Her dna analysis.
This is the dna from the person who attacked brittani.
- Yes. So, this is from blood that was found
At the crime scene,
And so we find that this person, you know,
Has fairly fair skin.
- So, this is a white male.
- It's a fair-skinned male.
Fairly confident in that, um, that this person has
Sort of light brown hair, so we say blonde to brown.
It's fairly equally likely blonde to brown.
- Okay. - So, that's sort of on the--
The lighter brown side
And most likely doesn't have a lot of freckles.
- There was one detail in john doe's profile
That turned out to be crucial information,
The color of his eyes.
Remember brittani's description of john doe?
- Well, it turns out she was wrong.
John doe's eyes weren't brown.
- We found that this person has green to hazel eyes.
- Which is unique. - It's fairly unusual, yes.
- Green eyes, the same color as justin hansen's.
And the sketch itself, here it is.
- When we saw that composite,
I was like, oh, my god.
- It was that close to justin.
- Oh, yeah. - It was.
We think it's-- yeah. - Yeah, yeah.
- But I still didn't wanna get my hopes up
Because I didn't wanna get disappointed again.
- Ready? Let's go.
- Still not convinced this man was the guy
She'd spent years hunting,
Gonterman, along with a fellow detective
Wearing a bodycam, paid justin a visit.
- Yeah, hi, how are you? You're justin?
- I am justin. - Okay, cool. I'm jodi.
- Okay. - We're detectives with apd.
- Okay. - Right from the start,
Justin was calm and cooperative.
- I'm investigating a case.
It's an older case, and I'm just going back
To talk to the friends or people that knew brittani marcell.
- Okay. - Um, it's from '08.
- Okay.
- Hansen invited the detectives into his home
Where gonterman started off with the basics.
- Do you remember hanging out with her
At her sunglass place ever?
Just sitting there and talking?
- No, not hanging out, but I-- I walked by maybe and--
And kinda just, "hey, how ya doin'?
"what's new? How's your family?
"you know, how's your sisters?"
That kinda stuff.
- On a, like, on a regular basis
Or do you just remember, like, one time?
- No, no, no, just when I was-- when--
I think when I was working at the mall,
I just happened to walk by and say hi.
It wasn't like a hangout regular base type scene.
- Okay, 'cause she-- 'cause brittani actually remembers
You coming in, and visiting her,
And hanging out, and talking with her,
Like, twice a week.
- No, no. - No?
- After a few minutes of this,
Gonterman told hansen what she was really after,
A dna sample.
- Um, and then just to compare with the dna at the scene,
So we can exclude everyone
Because then it narrows down the field.
- Expecting or hoping hansen would agree,
Gonterman put on a pair of latex gloves
As she continued to talk.
- Um, not that you're a suspect at all anyway,
'cause you're not. - Okay.
- But hansen hesitated. - And--
- Can I-- can I think about this
And then come back and see you? Just 'cause...
It seems kinda-- - yeah.
- What's your concerns? What your concerns?
- Yeah, what's your concerns? - I don't know.
Me and my wife watch a bunch-- a bunch of shows,
And we hear people, you know, uh, "oh, I've been--
"I've been in trouble, or I got in trouble
"for somethin' that I never did," and then,
Ten, fifteen years later, they come back
And, "oh, it wasn't you," or that kinda thing,
And then they've been in trouble for it, for a long time.
- Yeah. - Can I get your card,
Though, and come back and--
You know, just so I think about everything
And talk to my mom or whatever?
And if they're like, "yeah, this is what they normally do,"
Type thing and then just come and see you guys?
- Absolutely. - Is that okay?
- Yeah.
- What did you make of his demeanor
That first time when you went to--
To go see him?
- Well, I mean, he was-- he was friendly.
He was, you know, he was acting like he was concerned,
But it was almost an act. - And then we--
- Um, but then he wouldn't give his dna.
- And we all thought how odd for a man of that age
To say they wanted to talk to their mom.
His wife is right there.
He's what, in his 30s, and suddenly,
He's wantin' to talk to his mom.
So, we're like, is his mom a lawyer?
And just the whole thing seemed suddenly very odd
And a big red flag. Yeah.
- He seemed like a bad actor.
- Yeah. - When I spoke with him,
It seemed like he was putting on an act.
It wasn't genuine to me.
- Before she left hansen's house,
Gonterman decided to rattle his cage
By telling him brittani's memory was finally starting to return.
- Your statement doesn't match what she remembers.
She remembers very well that you used to visit her.
When she was bored, you would come in
About twice a week and just hang out.
She remembers that you used to wear tight abercrombie shirts
And your pants a little bit saggy, you know,
With your underwear hanging down.
- Yeah, that was me.
- Hansen said he'd come by gonterman's office
After speaking with his mom, but he never showed up.
So, gonterman gave him a call to see what was going on.
- The call started off well enough,
But the tone quickly changed.
Hansen said he felt targeted
And outright refused to give a dna sample.
- Hansen ended the call demanding an apology.
- Detective gonterman had been investigating
Justin hansen for five months now.
Yet there was still a question mark
Next to his name.
So, time again for gonterman to get creative.
- A fast food fix is about to give investigators
A crucial break and send the case
Into overdrive. Coming up...
An undercover mission to mcdonald's?
- They followed him, and they watched him eat.
- A hunt for treasure in the trash.
- I said, "I can't believe this."
- When "dateline: Secrets uncovered" continues.
♪♪
- If justin hansen really was the guy who'd assaulted
Brittani marcell, he'd done a masterful job
Getting away with it.
Over the course of a nine-year investigation,
Not once had police considered him a suspect.
- It's pretty unique that his name had never been
Mentioned, um, by any of the family, the friends.
- And now that he'd come to the attention
Of prosecutor david waymire and detective jodi gonterman
After brittani remembered his name,
Hansen was able to keep them at bay
By simply refusing a dna test.
- So, our district attorney suggested having him followed
And getting his dna.
- And one of the main ways that that can be done is
Through things that a subject throws away.
- On April 3, 2017, six months after
Brittani told police about hansen,
Detective gonterman requested
A couple of undercover officers to tail him.
But by the time the request was approved
Two months later, hansen had both moved
And quit his job.
Police didn't know where he was.
Two more months passed before the surveillance team
Tracked hansen to his new job at this body shop
In north albuquerque.
- And they followed him to a mcdonald's,
And they watched him eat, and he took the lid
Off of his mcdonald's cup, and he drank it
Directly out of the cup. And when he walked out,
The trash was pretty full, like, to the top,
And he wrapped his own meal, his own trash
Nicely in the placemat that comes on your tray,
So it was all separated from everything else.
And so, the undercover detective just walked
Right behind him and picked it up.
- And the detectives took that trash
Straight to albuquerque police criminalist
Alanna williams.
- I really did not have high hopes that
This would be the individual that might match
To our unknown person.
- She'd already processed the dna
Of 17 potential suspects without a match.
No reason to think number 18 would be any different.
What was the result from this suspect,
Justin hansen?
- It was a complete match.
- After a nine-year investigation
And 18 dna tests, john doe had finally been identified.
It was justin hansen.
Did you keep checking it over and over again
Just like a lottery ticket?
- I-I actually checked it twice.
I did it once, and then I went back through,
And I checked it again, and I said,
"I can't believe this."
- Williams wanted to deliver news this big in person.
- And alanna told her-- and I wish I had it on video
Because jodi-- - it might be, I think-- no.
- I think she jumped about four feet off the ground and--
- Threw my keys.
- Yeah, it was very, very exciting.
It was such good news.
- And then I-- yeah, and then I broke down crying.
- And then, yeah, we were all just in tears.
- And then we all started crying, and I said,
"I can't believe it. I can't believe it.
"oh, my god, I gotta call diane."
- I'm at work, and she goes, "diane, hey, how you doing?"
I said, "I'm fine." and I'm thinkin',
"great, more bad news," 'cause every phone call
Had been kinda like, "yeah, it's not him."
She goes, "we've got a match."
I'm, like, just blown over, and I'm overwhelmed,
And I could hear the emotions in her voice,
And-and she says, um, "yeah, we've got a match."
And she said, "this is how it happened."
I'm going, "just like on tv, huh?"
And she goes, "yeah, it does happen."
- Diane then called brittani, who was in boston
With sister, jennifer.
- I said, "jodi called, and she's got a match."
- She's like, "they know who the guy is."
I'm like, "what?"
[chuckles]
- She goes, "it's a dna match, 100%."
I'm like, "who is it?' she goes, "justin hansen,
"who you gave-- you remember giving that tip to her?"
I'm like, "yeah." she says, "it's 100% match."
- Wow. - I'm like, "holy crap."
I was like, "my prayers are answered."
So, I called jodi, and I was like,
"you have no idea how thankful I am
"for-for you solving this, jodi."
She goes, "no, you did it." I said, "no, you did."
She goes, "you gave me the name."
I was all, "but you acted on it."
- Hansen was arrested while out shopping.
For the marcell sisters, it was hard to believe
The monster who'd haunted them for the past nine years
May have been just a guy they knew from the mall.
- And I thought, "this guy, this little, skinny guy?"
Like, he's charming, but how could he have
Done something so horrible?
- This guy looks great. - Mm-hmm.
- It messes with your mind. - Yeah.
- And it's so frustrating. - Because it's not
Black and white. - Right.
- Because we wanna put our criminals
Or our violent offenders in this, and they look
Like this, and he doesn't look like that.
- He's the cute guy who worked at the-the clothing store
In the mall. - Yeah, right.
- Yeah, people liked him and wanted to date him.
Like, you did that? - Mm-hmm.
- The next hurdle would be the trial.
Brittani would have to testify and relive
The emotional trauma of the attack.
Normally, people don't look forward
To trials like this. Are you actually
Looking forward to it, to get it done
And to see justice? - Very much so.
I can finally kind of close that chapter,
Finally, after nine years.
- What brittani didn't know at the time of this interview
Was that there were problems with the case.
Believe it or not, there were serious doubts
Justin hansen would ever go on trial.
- Coming up... A stunning setback.
The case against justin hansen takes another dramatic turn.
- There's a lotta evidence that doesn't make sense.
It's hard to try to prove your innocence
After a certain amount of time.
- When "dateline: Secrets uncovered" continues.
♪♪
- Police found a mountain of evidence
At the marcell house following the attack
On brittani. There was the shovel,
The knife, the duct tape,
Even the clothes brittani was wearing,
All collected and carefully stored away.
And of course, when detective gonterman started
Working brittani's case, she wanted to see it
All firsthand. - So, when I went
To pull evidence and view it myself,
It wasn't there. - Where was it?
- It had been destroyed. - All of it gone
Due to a simple clerical error.
- When anyone retires, you get a list of evidence
On cases. There's a box.
You either check dispose or retain.
And the box was checked dispose for this case.
- I mean, what's that moment like when you're trying
To solve this case, only to find out that
Physical evidence has been destroyed
By your own police department?
- Well, I was pretty upset.
Um, I was pretty mad. Okay.
Um, to be honest, I was really mad.
- The most important piece of evidence, though,
Was that blood drop, which was stored separately.
The defense would want their own experts to test it.
So, if it was missing, too,
The case against hansen might well be over.
Was that kind of a,
"oh, my gosh, what if this has been destroyed, too?"
- Yes. - 'cause then you're kinda done.
- I was stressed. I met with, um,
Alanna williams, the forensic scientist.
She went to look for it, and she found it.
It was in the freezer. So, thank god.
- Still, prosecutor david waymire knew
The case had taken a serious hit.
- Proving a case beyond a reasonable doubt
To, unanimously, to 12 jurors would be
Difficult, uh, when we had evidentiary problems.
- Justin hansen's defense attorney could now
Claim the albuquerque police department had
Mishandled evidence, evidence that may have
Pointed to another suspect.
- A judge and a jury might very well
Hold that against us, and that could make it, uh,
More difficult to get a conviction.
- While awaiting trial, the judge allowed hansen
To be placed under house arrest.
We tried for months to get him to sit down
With "dateline," but he put us off.
He finally agreed to talk when we dropped in
On the farmhouse where he was living
Outside of albuquerque.
Overcome with emotion, justin hansen fought back tears
As his family looked on. This case, I mean,
It's unreal all the twists and turns
That have happened.
What do you make of everything?
I mean, you're at the center of it.
- It's hard.
It's hard to try to take everything in.
Lots of nights of not sleeping.
Lots of nights of trying to figure things out.
- What do you say to people who say that
There is irrefutable evidence in this case
That-that-that you did this?
- I-I've kinda realized who-who counts and who matters,
And those people, they don't matter.
- They're looking at the evidence that
They feel points to you. - Mm-hmm.
- And there's no way to get around that.
- I don't-- I don't have a way to convince 'em otherwise.
That's not for me to try to do.
- Do you think about what brittani has lost?
- Of course. She's lost a lot,
And I'm glad she has a good support system.
You know, her mom, and her sisters,
And everybody standing by her side.
That-- that's-that's great that she has that,
And I'm glad that she has that.
- They see you as a monster. - They do.
They see me as what apd has put me in there to be,
They see me as what the media has put me to be.
- How do you explain the drop of blood
At the scene? - I don't-- I don't.
- That's the one thing I think that
People have a hard time getting around.
- They do, and there's a lotta evidence
That doesn't make sense. - Did you attack
Brittani marcell? - No.
- Besides the missing evidence, hansen's lawyer had
Another plan to get the case tossed out.
Simply put, the statute of limitations had run out.
Sure, prosecutor waymire filed an indictment
In 2010, but the name on that indictment was
John doe, not justin hansen.
- You know, they have a statute of limitations
Set up for a reason. And it's not
To let people get way with things.
It's just because it's-it's hard to try to prove
Your innocence after a certain amount of time.
Like, phone records go back seven years.
Um, bank statements, I think, are six or seven years.
So, like, you can't even try to go back to try to,
You know, prove your innocence or to prove
Things differently, and-and that's hard.
- Hansen's lawyer argued the john doe indictment
Should be dismissed, and the judge ruled
An appellate court could hear that motion
Before the trial even got underway,
A huge victory for justin hansen
And a major setback for prosecutor david waymire,
Who knew the john doe indictment was
Uncharted legal territory.
- Although that had been done once before
In new mexico on a different case,
It had never actually gone up and-and been reviewed
By the appellate courts to ensure that
It was legally allowed. - Waymire had been concerned
About the strength of the case all along.
He'd even offered hansen a plea deal.
But now, apparently emboldened by
The judge's ruling, hansen rejected the plea offer,
Hoping instead to have the entire case against him
Tossed out. Coming up...
- Brittani was robbed of the life that we all have.
We want him to pay dearly. - Would he?
The final scene in this nine-year mystery
Is about to play out in court.
When "dateline: Secrets uncovered" continues.
♪♪
- Welcome back.
Nearly a decade after the attack on brittani marcell,
Dna evidence linked justin hansen
To the crime scene. He was charged with
Attempted murder, but his lawyers asked the court
To toss the case, arguing that
The statute of limitations had run out.
Now, both sides were about to learn
If the trial would go forward
Or if justin would go free.
Here's andrea canning with the conclusion of "the match."
- Justin hansen insisted to us
He was an innocent family man
Accused of a crime he didn't commit.
But the marcell family wasn't buying any of it.
They were certain hansen as the one
Who attacked brittani, and they wanted justice.
- You know, brittani has to deal with this
For her whole entire life. She was robbed
Of the life that it appears that we all have.
She doesn't get that, and everything that
She has today she's worked hard for
With the support of my mom. They've sacrificed daily,
And I think it's kind of the same way.
We want him to pay dearly.
- But there might not be a trial,
Let alone a conviction, if hansen's attorney could
Get the john doe indictment that was filed in 2010
Tossed out. It was a tense time
For both families, the marcells and the hansens,
As they waited weeks on the appellate court's decision.
Just 12 days before the start of the trial,
The court issued its ruling.
Hansen's motion was denied.
The john doe indictment was upheld,
And the case was going to trial.
That's when prosecutor david waymire got
A very unexpected phone call from hansen's attorney.
- They wanted to revisit plea negotiations.
- Wanting to spare brittani the stress and anxiety
Of a trial, the marcell family gave their blessing
To waymire's decision to move ahead
With a plea offer of no contest
To attempted murder in the first degree,
Which hansen accepted.
And just like that, it all came to an end.
The alternate suspects, the john doe indictment,
The hypnosis, the parabon sketch,
The dna tests-- over. A case that took nine years
To get to court was resolved in a matter of hours.
You had a really tough decision to make in this case,
To-to go to trial or to take this deal.
How did you ultimately come up with your decision?
- I mean, I wanted to go to trial, I wanted to
Clear my name, but I just felt like the odds were
Against me, and I-I didn't wanna chance, you know,
50 to 60 years away from my kids, and that was
Kinda what pushed me into the plea.
- So, the plea was not about an admission of guilt
Necessarily, but for you it was more about
Being there someday for your children.
- That's exactly what it was for.
It was like 60 years, or 18 years
With a chance of being out in 9 or less.
My youngest will only be 11, and I can still
Be there for her and try to help
Guide her through stuff. It's like-like I'm dyin',
Like I'm not coming back,
And it's hard, and I know it's a goodbye,
'cause we don't know what-what-what the outcome
Is gonna be, but at the same time,
It still feels like-like I'm not gonna be here anymore,
And you don't know what to say.
- The day after our interview, hansen went to court
For sentencing, and the stakes were high.
Under the terms of the plea agreement,
He could be released on probation
Or sent to prison for up to 18 years.
Prosecutor david waymire argued for
The longest possible sentence, telling the judge
Three other women in the past had
Accused hansen of assault.
- The alleged victim, the girlfriend,
Was 17 at the time and was four months pregnant.
- Next, for two pain-filled hours, the marcells testified
About what the attack did to brittani and their family.
- That her life is a mere flicker
Of what it had the potential to be.
She struggles with friendships, creating social circles,
Reading social cues, and understanding her emotions.
Her life is a shell of what it had
The potential to be. I want my sister back.
I miss her so much, and I'm starting to forget
Who she was before the attack.
- Last to speak was brittani, who,
With her back to justin hansen,
Faced the judge and told her about the severity
Of her wounds, the 22 surgeries she'd endured,
And of the injuries that may never heal.
- On September 11th, my dreams and goals were
Beaten out of me. For ten years,
I've been struggling to rebuild some semblance
Of the life I had once planned.
I'm fearful that I won't get married.
I'm fear-- I'm worried that I won't have children.
I'm worried that I'll never be able to live alone again.
- Afterwards, it was justin hansen's turn to speak.
- First of all, your honor, I wanna apologize
To brittani, and diane, and their family
For everything they've been through.
- But that was all he had to say to the marcells.
He spent the rest of his time
Telling his children how much he loved them.
Then everyone waited for judge cindy leos
To tell hansen just how long he'd be
Away from those children.
- I am going to impose the full 18 years
In the department of corrections.
I think that that is the only sentence that
Makes sense under the circumstances
Of this case. Thank you.
- And with those words, justin hansen was handcuffed
And led away to prison while brittani,
Her mom, and siblings hugged and wept.
Detective gonterman and sergeant thompson
Were there, as well. How did it feel
Hearing justin hansen get the maximum 18 years
As part of his plea deal? - It felt amazing.
I was so happy. I mean, I--
Overwhelmed with emotion, just so relieved,
So happy for the family. - It was truly
One of the highlights of my career.
- Did you get justice today? - Yes, we did.
- Justice, 100% justice. - Yes, he finally got caught.
He played with fire, and he messed with
The wrong ladies. - For the siblings,
There was, more than anything,
An overwhelming sense of relief and gratitude.
- I looked at my sisters before it started, and I said,
"no matter what happens today, it's over."
- Mm-hmm. - "we have to let this
"be over today." - yeah.
- And this was a good way for this to be over.
I feel very grateful for judge leos, and I-I feel
Even more immensely grateful for detective gonterman.
- While thompson, gonterman, and the marcells got justice,
What they didn't get was an explanation.
One of the biggest mysteries in this
Has been the motive. What is your working theory?
- So many people described justin as being
Very friendly and social, and they think
He's good-looking and charming, and he's that older guy,
That I don't think he was ever turned down,
And it's possible that maybe brittani was just
The one person that said, "no," and turned him down.
- Brittani agrees. - I think I was attacked
Because justin hansen had some jealousy,
Because he had probably asked me out to be, like--
Go out on a date and be his girlfriend,
And I had a different boyfriend at the time,
And it wasn't him at all. So, I think it was
Struck out of jealousy, and since he didn't
Have me, nobody else could.
- When we last spoke, brittani was living
In rural texas and spending much of her time
Tending to the animals. She had one college degree
But said she would like to return to campus to get
The degree she's wanted since high school.
However, she had one more big hurdle to get over,
Another surgery, her 23rd, an operation that
Took hours with a recovery period of months.
Brittani could have opted to not go through
Such torment, but, for her, there was no choice.
The surgery was to get her smile back.
- I had the biggest smile you could dream of.
I was like, that's something-- that's what I want back.
I'm gonna go for it.
- That's all for this edition
Of "dateline: Secrets uncovered."
I'm kate snow. Thank you for watching.