- I'm craig melvin,
And this is "dateline: Secrets uncovered".
- They were party girls.
- They were fierce and out for fun.
The beauty queen, the troublemaker,
And the girl next door.
- She was really, really cute, blonde hair.
- One met the guy of her dreams.
Love at first sight.
But at second glance, trouble.
Pregnant at sixteen.
- She wanted to be married; he didn't want to do that.
- Mm-hmm.
- Then one night, an ambush.
Someone shot on the bedroom floor.
- A teenage mom at the center of a murder mystery.
- Fingers were pointed everywhere at everybody.
- Who had a motive to kill?
- Hello, and welcome to "dateline: Secrets uncovered".
When 21-year-old ricky cowles
And his teenage girlfriend amy preasmyer
Moved in together,
Her best friends moved in, too.
At first, it was like an endless sleepover,
But the fun stopped when ricky was found shot
At point blank range.
Who wanted ricky dead?
His killer would let the secret slip,
But turns out he was keeping more than one.
Here's keith morrison with "mean girls".
- Fight! Let's go! Let's fight! Fight!
- An interesting species: Teenage girls.
Some are sweet...
Some are not.
We call them mean girls.
And some in particular, as you're about to see,
Could be very mean indeed.
It was 1997 when their story began
Here in the high desert north of l.A.,
Lancaster, california.
There was sara chapin, then 18,
A cheerleader and local beauty queen.
You were a pretty popular kid in high school.
- I wasn't really popular, but I was a cheerleader.
- Which helps.
- Yes. - Yes.
- Amy preasmyer, 16, sporty, an ap student
Who looked like a girl next door.
- Amy and I were just two goofballs;
We had a lot of fun.
Yeah, we partied, but things didn't get as serious
Until I think jennifer came into the picture,
And jennifer and amy became good friends.
- Jennifer kellogg, 18, a little dangerous,
Catalyst for mischief or worse...
- Jennifer was the wild child.
She was on the dance team in high school,
And she always--
She was the bolder one of any of us,
And she was always there for you if you needed her,
And especially if you got in trouble.
She helped you get in trouble.
- She was the one your parents warn you about.
- Yes.
- Then there was shaelynn cowles, 16,
Perhaps a little less street smart than the others,
But drawn in by it all, too,
Even if some of the others weren't that nice.
- They were fun girls,
But they just always had an agenda on their mind
Of everyone owing them something.
Their parents weren't gonna tell 'em what to do,
And they just wanted to just be free.
- The girls just wanted to have fun, stay up late,
Meet guys, drink, do drugs.
That was the type of freedom they were looking for,
And which they found in the summer of '97,
Along with the rest of what happened.
- 9-1-1, what's your emergency?
- Oh, my god. Help me, please!
- So what did happen?
It began just after christmas the previous winter, 1996.
There was this house party.
- Amy's parents went out of town,
And so amy said,
"let's just invite some people over,
Have a good time."
- Shaelynn came along, of course.
- They were drinking,
Just kind of acting a little bit outrageous.
You know, smoking, drinking, partying.
- Sara was there and amy, jennifer, too.
- They were, um, party girls.
- A little on the wild side? - Yeah.
They wanted to be adults before their time.
They wanted to grow up;
They didn't want anyone telling them what to do.
- But one of the people at that party
Actually was an adult, or close to it.
Shaelynn's brother, ricky, came to the party.
Ricky was almost 21.
He was done with school,
And he was working full time
At his family's electricity business,
High voltage lines, dangerous stuff
Which paid very well.
In fact, ricky was the proud owner of a new bmw.
And though he still lived at home,
He was, if anything, mature for his years,
Which mattered not a bit
To the girls at the house party.
To them, he was tall and good-looking,
And what else mattered besides that?
- Amy and one of our other friends
Were kind of fighting over him
'cause they both had a little thing for him.
- Right away, boom, she wanted him, huh?
- Well, when you're a teenage girl,
And you see a cute guy, of course.
- Yeah?
- Everything falls into place.
- Well, it certainly did.
- Was he crazy about her to begin with?
- Yeah. He met her, and it was like instantly.
- They were together from that very first night.
It didn't seem to matter to ricky that
Amy was still in high school, was just a sophomore.
They were in love.
He took her away on trips, he bought her lots of gifts,
But when he introduced her to his parents,
Debbie and rick sr.,
They were not quite so bowled over by amy.
- She just manipulated him.
She was really, really cute, really petite, blonde hair.
- Wrapped him around her little finger.
- Yup.
- And you saw that happen?
- Yes. - Mm-hmm.
But then we found out how old she was;
That changed it a little bit.
- What were you worried about?
- At that point we were worried she'd get pregnant or something.
She was a minor that, you know,
If he didn't want to be with her or something
Maybe he'd go to jail for rape or whatever.
- Rape? Jail?
What a place for a mind to go.
Looking back,
Debbie cowles says it was just some gut instinct
That told her amy was up to something,
And whatever it was wouldn't be good
For her son, ricky.
So debbie tried to put a wedge between the two young lovers.
Ricky was living in his parents' guesthouse.
His mom made a firm rule: Amy could not stay over.
- And she'd be out there and she'd, like,
Try to hide in the-in the closet and stuff like that.
And that's when it finally got where you can't live here,
We can't have this. - What were you trying to do?
Encourage him-- - I was trying to break him--
I thought he would say, okay, you know, "you are 16,
"and I don't wanna move out,
"because I'm living here with my parents for nothing
In this house of my own."
- It's a story as old as young love.
Ricky's parents thought free rent
Would trump nights with amy.
They were wrong.
Ricky didn't drop amy. He left home instead,
Rented an apartment in the sketchy part of town,
And amy, who had just finished her sophomore year
At high school, moved in with him.
But would it be happily ever after?
No. No, it would not be.
Because now act two, the hard part,
Was about to begin.
- The bffs move in with amy and ricky,
And that's when things turn deadly.
- She turns on the light in the bedroom,
She stands there for a second, and then she looks down
And falls against the door screaming.
- When "dateline: Secrets uncovered" continues.
- It was a love story that spring of '97,
Blooming here in the california desert.
But in lancaster like everywhere else,
The unstoppable desire of young adults
Can bring out polar opposites in parenting styles.
While ricky cowles' parents struggled to prevent
What looked to them like a big mistake,
Amy's parents, georgia and larry preasmyer,
Had a different perspective.
- I didn't think about it very much,
Because I was 17 when I met larry and--
- How old were you, larry? - 24.
- Oh, okay.
- So there was six years difference between--
- And that worked out. - 34 years.
- So, the age difference didn't worry them.
They liked ricky; he was good to their daughter.
And amy's parents knew they didn't have much say
In what amy did anyway.
- She always pushed. - Yeah.
- Amy pushed the envelope. - Yes, always.
- Of course, ricky's mom didn't know that
When she called amy's mom looking for an ally
In her effort to put the brakes on the love affair.
- I called her mother
When I knew ricky was getting the apartment,
And I said, "she's 16, she needs to stay home with you."
- "she needs to stay home with you", you said.
And what response did you get?
- She just says, "we don't have any plans
With her moving in there." and that's how we left it.
And then I know a couple days later she's moved in,
And then it wasn't even a week later or so
She moved her friends in.
- Did the parents have any control at all
Over what she was doing?
- Oh, no. - Nope.
- But did you guess this?
There was something else going on,
Big news about which ricky's parents knew nothing:
Amy was pregnant.
It was her parents, georgia and larry,
Who got the news first.
- I was disappointed, to be honest with you.
My kids know about contraceptives,
Even though they were raised to be abstinent
Until they were married.
- You try to raise your kids to do the right thing;
Sometimes they don't.
Now amy was gonna have to grow up fast.
Pregnant at 16, moving in with her boyfriend.
Was she ready for all this?
Maybe not.
- She was always very outgoing
And liked having her independence.
- And girls just wanna have fun--
- Exactly. - --At that stage.
- In fact, right away amy invited
Her two best friends, wild jennifer and sara,
The local pageant queen, to move in, too.
Neither one of them wanted to be stuck at home
Under parental watch,
And pregnant or no there was fun to be had.
They went to parties,
Jennifer stirring up trouble as usual,
Brought her druggy friends over to visit,
Though amy insisted that because she was pregnant
She wasn't using.
- Did she seem at all resentful about the idea
That she couldn't do the fun things anymore?
- Well, a party girl becoming pregnant,
It's kinda hard 'cause everything stops.
- Yeah.
- Especially when you're 16, you're still in high school.
- Yeah. - You're not grown up yet.
- But ricky by then was 21.
He had different ideas about moving in together.
He wanted amy home when he got back
From his long day at work
On those high voltage electrical lines.
He wanted amy home alone.
- At some point they began to have
Some fairly serious problems
And ricky, for example, complained
That these girls had moved in,
And he didn't want them there.
- Ricky decided to, um, you know, that he was done,
That he needed them gone.
- Which pleased the friends, jennifer especially,
Not one bit.
Amy wasn't happy either.
And so a couple of months into this romance
That started so hot and fast,
It seemed to be burning out.
- They'd been fighting a lot.
She had thought about ending the relationship,
But she was afraid that ricky's parents
Might take the child once it was born.
And there was a point where one night
She just broke down and cried
And said, "I don't know what to do.
"I don't know if I should leave him.
I don't know what to do."
- It was about then when ricky finally told his mom
About his and amy's predicament.
- Well he came home one night from work
And we were in the house,
And he goes, "I have to talk to you and dad."
When he said me and dad, I'm like, "what about?"
"well, I just want you to sit down,
I wanna talk to you."
And he was really serious, so I'm thinking
Some really bad thing, you know?
And he tells me, "well, amy's pregnant."
And I said, "no, no, no." and he said, "yeah."
- Exactly what she'd worried about.
And ricky was talking about breaking up with amy.
- He said, "I want to take care of the baby."
You know, I said, "you will, that's your responsibility."
He goes, "but I just need a way to tell amy
"that we can't be what she wants us to be.
I need a way to tell her--"
- She wanted to be married.
He didn't wanna do that.
Now he had this big problem,
Just the problem you're worried about all along.
- Mm-hmm.
- And then turmoil.
Ricky and amy argued.
He told her she needed to leave,
Go back home to her parents.
And then after they spent a weekend apart
Thinking it over, something changed.
- And I sat on the porch with him,
And we had a beer and a cigarette,
And he said, you know, "I'm so excited for our life now
"and I've just thought about everything,
"and everything's just gonna be fine,
We're gonna make it work."
- Ricky was happy?
- Ricky really was looking forward to being a daddy.
- 'cause, you know, a lot of guys 20-21 years old
Who just met a girl and got her pregnant right away,
Would not be reacting that way.
- No, but ricky was a little different from everybody.
He seemed more grown up.
- By then, amy had had a change of heart, too.
- She said, "I'm gonna make this work.
"it's worth making work,
I want my daughter to grow up with her daddy here."
- Which brings us to August 12, 1997.
Ricky left for work early,
Amy left a note promising to be back by 9:00
To spend time alone with him.
And then that afternoon, she called him
As he worked out in the hot desert,
Just to confirm their plans.
And later when his dad and he went to the county fair
To set up lights, the calls from amy kept coming.
"when are you getting home?" she asked him.
Of course, she had been out all day with friends.
Around 9:00 pm, sara in tow,
She headed home to see if ricky had arrived.
- She goes pounding up the stairs.
Gets up to the top of the stairs,
And I'm looking at her,
She turns on the light in the bedroom,
She stands there for a second, and then she looks down
And falls against the door screaming.
- Someone was lying on the floor, still alive,
A twisted, bloody mess.
It was ricky.
- How was amy? - She was panicked.
- The new father-to-be, helpless on the floor.
What had happened?
When "dateline: Secrets uncovered" continues.
♪♪
- 9-1-1, what's your emergency?
- Oh my god. Help me, please!
- After a night of running around,
Sara and amy finally went to amy's place
And found ricky cowles, just 21,
Lying near death on his and amy's bedroom floor.
- What'd it look like there on the floor?
- He was kind of twisted up on the floor,
And all I saw was blood.
And so I said, "let's get out of here."
- What does it do to you to see something like that?
- It scares the crap out of me.
- And she was such a mess.
- She was hysterical?
- And I grabbed the phone from her,
And I'm like, "hello?"
And she's like, "this is 9-1-1."
So I start freaking out.
- By now, jennifer and another friend
Were there, too.
- Jennifer starts screaming to me,
"ricky! I wanna see ricky! I wanna see ricky!"
- Paramedics and law enforcement showed up.
What happened then was hard to watch, intense.
As sara's video camera recorded a man
Struggling to survive,
Could he tell them what happened?
- Then they came in the house, the next thing you know,
They're shoving all of us into the kitchen.
And they carried him downstairs on his bed sheet
And worked on him in the living room.
- Did you shoot yourself? - No.
- Who did it? - [mumbling]
- Who did it? - My neck.
- "my neck hurts" is what he said.
- Who shot you in the head?
Did you do it?
- As police tried desperately to get information from him,
Ricky became too weak to respond.
- Yeah, get him out of here.
- How was amy at this stage?
- She was panicked.
- Beside herself?
- Yes.
- And sara called ricky's parents,
"come quick, something had happened."
- Well by the time we got there, there was so many people,
I was screaming, "ricky, ricky".
I didn't know what-- I knew he'd been shot,
But we had no idea where or anything.
- Or how bad it was.
- Or how bad it was or anything
Until they brought him downstairs.
And then I knew-I knew, I thought, "oh no, no, no."
- It's like your whole life is disintegrating
Right under your hand.
- It did.
- And then the paramedics
Brought ricky to a waiting helicopter.
Rick sr. Rode to the hospital with his son.
- He was comprehending
What we were talking about a little bit,
But he was hurting pretty hard.
I tried to tell him, "we'll be okay,
We'll get the doctors to try to fix this."
- And they did try.
As the doctors worked on ricky,
His family gathered.
Amy was there too, of course, but whoever attacked him
Had done so much damage to his head, to his brain.
By August 14th, two days in intensive care,
It was clear there was no fixing ricky.
He was comatose now,
Only the machines kept him alive.
His family went to his bedside to say their goodbyes.
Amy was beside herself, hardly made sense.
- And she said, um,
"why did you have to go ahead and die", you know,
"you were supposed to buy me a car for my birthday."
And I'm thinking--
- "you were supposed to buy me a car"?
- --"did I just hear that?"
My mind, I couldn't even fathom.
- Odd, of course,
But the cowles were far too distraught
To try to comprehend what was going on
In the mind of amy, 16 and pregnant.
It was soon after that ricky died.
His heart, kidneys, and liver were donated
To people in need.
Amy moved back in with her parents
To get ready to have ricky's baby.
And debby and rick sr. Vowed to find out who did this.
And that's when a long journey began.
Long, and as you'll see, very strange.
- On the trail of a killer.
- He actually told people, he said, "you
Saw those helicopters that were over there?"
He goes, "that was me."
He says, "I did that."
- When "dateline: Secrets uncovered" continues.
♪♪
- Welcome back to "dateline: Secrets uncovered".
I'm craig melvin.
Father-to-be ricky cowles fought bravely,
But could not escape death,
Leaving 16-year-old amy to have their baby alone.
Now, police shifted their focus to finding ricky's killer,
A search that generated a mountain of rumors
Until a hard lead
Pointed detectives toward a suspect.
But a tightly-guarded secret promised
To turn this case on its head.
Back to keith morrison with "mean girls".
- Ricky cowles was dead.
But why?
The cops went through the apartment,
But there was little evidence to go on.
- We found a shell casing.
- .25 auto I believe.
- Okay. - A shell casing.
No print trail, no useful dna, nothing missing,
And nothing in particular about ricky cowles
That would lead you to think he'd be a murder victim.
- And he's not the sort of person
Who would normally be a victim of that kind of crime.
Unless maybe he owed money in a drug deal
Or he hadn't paid a gambling debt.
- That wasn't anything that was out there.
- Tom harris and larry brandenburg,
Then detectives with los angeles county sheriffs homicide,
Worked on the case.
- You always look at your victim's lifestyle,
Because that's gonna usually tell you where to go.
And ricky worked all the time with his father,
He'd drink some beer when he'd get done working,
And probably smoke some weed every once in a while,
But beyond that--
- Pretty standard middle-class guy.
- Yeah, he was a hard-working kid,
You know, so he wasn't the type of kid
That would have some big drug debt.
- But if the cops didn't have much to go on,
That group of girls seemed to have some rather shocking ideas.
Though of course, reporting this to the cops
Would be about the last thing any of them would do.
- From the beginning it was finger pointing here
And here and here.
Well, jennifer's all, "well shaelynn's involved.
She was pissed at her brother so she..."
- Yeah.
- Or amy was involved
Or somebody else was involved
Or it was this or it was a home invasion.
It just--
Fingers were pointed everywhere at everybody.
- By?
- Everybody else.
- Months passed.
The paranoia was palpable.
Amy and best friend, wild jennifer,
Weren't talking.
Sara and jennifer weren't talking,
And ricky's family was just staying away from them all,
Convinced somehow they all knew something.
But there was a price to pay
For ricky's family staying away from amy.
- When she was at the hospital having the baby,
A friend of ours called us from the hospital and said,
"her name's up on the board,
Your baby's gonna come today.
Sometime today, you know?"
And I cried all day because I thought,
"here's this baby I'm never gonna see
Because, you know, my son's gone."
- About a month later,
The cowles, impatient with the progress of the case,
Decided to post a reward.
Shaelynn, ricky's sister,
Went to amy's house to give them some fliers.
Amy's dad answered the door.
- I asked her father when he answered the door
If they wanted any fliers.
And he said, "oh, why don't you come on in
And see your little niece."
- There she was.
- I just called my mom instantly
And just told her, you know, that,
"I'm holding your little grandbaby."
- Kaylee lynn cowles was born January 23, 1998.
- She was just precious.
I just knew that I wanted a relationship with her
And that, you know, through her pregnancy,
We weren't able to kind of
Let things go between each other, our families.
So I just knew that
Something had to kind of give
And that the baby would make it to where
It was easier to deal with each other if we were going to.
- It was.
Then, grandma debbie got to meet the baby.
- A couple days later, I went up to their house to see her
And I held her and just cried my eyes out
Because here she is,
This gift, but I don't have him anymore.
- And a break in the case came soon, too.
A 19 year old
Who lived down the street from amy and ricky's place,
Billy hoffman, was arrested for ricky's murder.
Turns out he'd bragged to loads of friends
About what he'd done.
- He was proud of it. He actually told people--
There was a girl that he would carpool with,
For instance, to go to work at kmart.
He said, "you saw those helicopters
That were over there?"
And she goes, "yeah." and he goes, "that was me."
He says, "I did that."
- So he denied it to the authorities--
- To the authorities. - ...But he had already told,
What, a number of-- several people?
- Several people.
He had one person that actually helped him get the gun,
He had another person that helped him get rid of the gun.
I mean, he would tell people that he did this.
I mean, which obviously was his demise,
Because, I mean, he got arrested shortly thereafter.
- Billy hoffman was a drug user and small time dealer.
And it turned out there was some kind of connection
Between billy and wild jennifer.
- The cops came and said--
Showed me a picture of the guy
And said, "do you know this guy?"
And I said, "well, I've met him once before
At jennifer's birthday this year."
And then they said, "well this is who did it."
- Sara even snapped this photo
Of billy and jennifer there smoking pot together,
Which the cops were happy to have.
Shaelynn recognized him, too.
It was the weekend before he died.
Ricky was away deciding what to do about amy.
Shaelynn went to the apartment
To hang out with the girls.
And sitting on the living room floor
Was a quiet guy named billy.
Jennifer was high on acid.
She told shaelynn she should try some, too.
It was billy who had the drugs.
Do you remember how billy came to be in that condo?
- Jennifer kellogg brought him over.
- A friend of jennifer's? - Mm-hmm.
- She introduced him, the killer, into the scene.
- Mm-hmm. Yes.
- Was jennifer somehow involved?
Remember, after she and sara moved in with ricky and amy,
Ricky wanted her out
And she was mad at ricky for that.
She was known for stirring up trouble, but murder?
The idea seemed preposterous.
And anyway, it was billy hoffman who went on trial,
Not jennifer.
And he just clammed up, denying everything.
No matter, he was convicted
And got life without the possibility of parole.
So, story over?
Not by a long
Shot.
- A conversation with the killer.
He has a little secret he wants to share.
When "dateline: Secrets uncovered" continues.
♪♪
- Lancaster, california ticked into the new millennium
Nearly three years after ricky cowles
Was dispatched from all knowledge of time.
And two families that might otherwise
Have gone completely off the rails
Stayed intact because of an amazing gift
He helped create and left behind.
Her name is kaylee.
The man who killed her father before she was born
Was in prison.
The teenager who gave birth to her
Grew into womanhood,
And even ricky's parents, the cowles,
Who hadn't liked amy from the start,
Developed a grudging respect for her.
- Amy was really good.
I can't say one thing bad about amy.
- As a mother? - As a mother.
- As a mother with kaylee. - She was perfect as a mother.
- And that might have been the end of the story.
Life does have to go on,
And their hours with kaylee
Were some of the sweetest they'd ever had.
But they just couldn't erase their one nagging belief,
That billy hoffman did not act alone
When he killed their son.
- Even though billy was convicted,
That wasn't the whole story?
- No, even in billy's trial, he didn't confess.
He was, um, convicted on circumstantial evidence.
- He kept saying, "I didn't do it,
I didn't do it." - yeah.
But and then in 2002, he wrote us a letter.
- Ah, yes, the letter.
The key to the whole thing, really.
Without that letter, well...
It was 2002,
And billy hoffman had been in prison for three years
When he wrote to the cowles that he was remorseful.
He'd found god, he said,
And with that, a sense of obligation
To say he was sorry.
- And I'm reading it, reading it,
And then I'm crying.
I'm reading and I'm crying, I'm reading,
I'm by myself crying-- - what did it say?
- That he was sorry, that, you know,
He had done things that he shouldn't of,
And that he, um, hoped that, you know,
We would forgive him some day.
- And then she went back to the beginning
And read this one curious phrase.
He wrote, "I would like to begin by confessing my part
"in the murder of richard,
As the one who took his life."
"my part."
When ricky's parents saw this letter
And they saw apologizing for "his part",
That spoke volumes to them I guess, huh?
- Well, yeah, they took the letter
To the d.A.'s office immediately
And in turn, the d.A. Contacted our office
And it went off from there.
- And so, five years after ricky's murder,
The dormant investigation was revived.
Sherriff's homicide detectives went to billy's prison
To ask him, "what did you mean by 'your part'?"
And finally, billy hoffman,
Grappling himself over what he'd done,
Stopped denying anything
And told the cops his long secret story.
And for the very first time,
A certain name came popping out of his mouth.
Astonishingly, it was that easy.
While jennifer simply asked him to kill, and he said, "yes."
But listen carefully to billy's monotone.
As he tells his story, you'll hear another name.
After all, mean girls don't tend to scheme alone.
So who was with jennifer when she arranged the murder?
Listen.
- Amy knew about it.
But not just knew about it, right along with jennifer,
She, the apparently loving girlfriend,
Said billy, had arranged everything.
He recalled how they gave him a photo of ricky,
Told him to hide in the bedroom
Where he could peak through the crack in the door
And see ricky coming up the stairs.
The murder of ricky cowles was all set to go.
And then came the day...
August 12, 1997, late in the day,
Jennifer and amy drove the 2/10 of a mile
Up the road to billy's house to pick him up.
Billy sat there, he said,
With a hammer, a knife, a gun,
A pillow to use as a silencer.
But remember, ricky ended up working late that night
Fixing lights at the county fair.
Waiting in the house, billy started to get sleepy.
He started having second thoughts.
And thus, the murder of ricky cowles was prevented.
Almost.
Billy left the apartment, shut the door,
Walked down the street toward his own house,
Had given up on the whole idea,
But then...
Remember, amy had been calling ricky all evening,
Trying to pin him down on when he'd be home.
So billy told the cops how he obediently returned
To sit behind that door,
Armed with his tools of murder.
Around 9 o'clock, ricky came home,
Needed a shower, went upstairs,
Entered the bedroom.
He never saw it coming.
Billy hoffman attacked him with the claw hammer
Straight to the skull.
Ricky fought back.
Then, billy gathered his things, walked home,
And paged jennifer.
The signal that it was done.
After the page, jennifer and amy split up.
Jennifer took pot to billy,
Amy asked sara to go home with her.
Sara, who didn't know anything about the plan,
Who was used as an alibi stooge,
Was used as the fool who'd find ricky.
- Lift this here for me, please.
- Why did billy do it?
But in real life, of course,
Murder is not glamorous, not at all.
That night, billy went home scared.
Soon enough, he was arrested,
Consigned to life in prison.
And now, it looked like two more arrests
Were called for.
- Amy involved in the murder of ricky?
- Do you have some dark nights of the soul
Where you look at each other and
Say, "she must have done it"?
- Was a killer's word to be trusted?
That would be a question for a jury.
When "dateline: Secrets uncovered" continues.
♪♪
- Welcome back.
Convicted killer, billy hoffman,
Described to detectives, in chilling detail,
How he ambushed ricky cowles,
Lying in wait to murder the young man in his own home.
And, he dropped another bombshell.
Ricky's pregnant girlfriend, amy
And her friend, jennifer, helped set the trap.
It was a stunning revelation, but was it true?
Investigators were determined to find out.
Here's keith morrison with the conclusion of "mean girls".
- Justice, as everybody knows,
Tends not to roll quite so quickly
As the movies would have you believe.
In the case of ricky cowles, murdered in 1997,
It rolled slow indeed.
Billy hoffman had his heart to heart
With homicide detectives in 2002.
But a case needs more than the words of a convicted killer.
More investigation was needed.
So they waited, everybody waited.
- We knew after 2002 something would happen,
But all we ever told 'em was
If it comes to the point where you're gonna arrest amy,
Please let us know
Because we don't want kaylee to be with her
Because I don't want that in her little brain
The rest of her life
That her mother was taken away by the police.
Just let us know.
We'll take care of her,
And you do what you have to do.
- Meanwhile, months and months and months went by.
- Oh, years.
Years went by.
- And during those years, the cowles held their breath
And their tongues every week
When they went to pick up their granddaughter
From the woman they had come to believe
Had arranged their son's murder.
- We knew, but you know what,
Sometimes there's one more thing
More important than that was kaylee.
She superseded all that
Because I wanted her to have a happy life.
- It was easter 2005.
Love was in the air again,
Amy preasmyer was just about to be married.
Baby kaylee was seven years old,
Though we're only showing baby pictures of her,
When ricky's parents got the call,
An arrest was imminent.
And that set into motion a case
In the completely different type of court.
- We had had an attorney for kaylee.
We called her and said, "we need to go tomorrow
And get custody of this little girl."
- The family court judge gave the cowles temporary custody
And thus began a 5-year battle
Between two sets of loving grandparents.
- There was so, so much turmoil between our families
That we couldn't agree on anything.
- You say, "turmoil between our families."
- Just-- there was no talking between either one of us.
They blamed us for everything.
- They blamed you?
- They blamed us for it.
That if we hadn't been persistent that--
- That amy wouldn't have been arrested.
But she was.
She was charged with murder,
Taken to jail to await trial.
- Amy's parents stood by her then.
Still do.
- Do you have some dark nights of the soul
Where you look at each other and say,
"she must have done it"?
- No. - Never?
- We have never, ever. - Not a moment's hesitation?
- We have never, ever looked at each other
And said, "she has to be guilty of something."
- Nope.
- But the jury did not agree.
Nearly 10 years to the day after the murder of ricky cowles,
July 30, 2007, ricky's parents got the news
They had been waiting for: Guilty.
What was it like to hear that?
- Just-- - finally--
- Quiet, crying, just every emotion.
You wanna scream, but you can't,
So we just quietly cried to ourselves.
- Amy's family has cried too, of course.
Just not for the same reason.
- Everybody looks at us now like we're the bad people.
You know? We're bad.
Because of what your daughter did.
And I go, "I did nothing wrong."
- In fact, the judge gave you folks a lecture.
- Oh, she did that. She did that.
- At sentencing,
The judge looked straight at amy's parents and said,
"there was a total breakdown of parenting,
"of moral leadership,
Of any kind of sense of responsibility."
- What was that like for you, georgia, to hear that?
- That was very hard.
Because as a parent, I knew in my heart
That we had done the best that we could do.
- Amy preasmyer got life without parole.
And jennifer?
Wild jennifer, the girl who loved to make trouble?
She lucked out.
The prosecutor, having seen the toll
The trial took on ricky's mother
To avoid yet another trial, offered jennifer a deal.
She pleaded guilty to manslaughter
And solicitation to commit murder,
Got 15 years and four months.
At jennifer's sentencing,
The judge blamed her for spurring amy on.
But what made amy preasmyer want to kill ricky?
They did fight about her hanging out with friends
When he wanted her home with him.
They did talk about breaking up,
But that hardly seems a reason to kill.
Even billy hoffman,
Who so casually agreed to murder a man,
Did not seem to have any real reason why.
Serving life without the possibility of parole,
Billy hoffman had plenty of time
To think about his own role in the murder.
After more than 18 years in prison,
He asked the governor of california
To grant him clemency,
Citing his youth when he committed the crime
And his exemplary conduct in prison.
Governor jerry brown reduced hoffman's sentence
To 20 years to life,
And two years later, he was paroled.
The cowles are unhappy that billy is free,
And still it remains the unanswered question,
Why did amy want ricky dead?
Was she so immature,
Is that possible, that she just--
The idea of killing somebody was like playtime?
- That's what I wonder sometimes.
How do you go from living with somebody to thinking,
"okay, it's okay, you know,
"we'll just have somebody else do it and then it's fine,
They're gone, they're dead."
Maybe it was being too young and immature
To really fathom what was going on.
The fact that you are really going to take somebody's life
And you are really gonna ruin other people's lives.
- And it did.
Sara, deeply scarred by the betrayal of the girls
She thought were her friends,
Still struggles to make sense of her life.
Shaelynn admits she is often, frankly, a mess.
You wonder what would have happened to you
If that hadn't interceded?
I mean, you'd be a different person.
- Yeah, I wonder.
But the most thing I wonder is who my brother would be.
- Yeah. - You know?
Seeing-seeing people his age,
You know, now I'm thinking,
"oh, how would my brother be in his life?"
- Kaylee.
- And then there was kaylee,
The only good thing about the story.
- She's a wonderful little kid.
She's not little anymore, but she's wonderful.
- Does she get sad sometimes?
- Kaylee can hide her emotions very easily.
And, um, that's not a part
That she will let me see very often,
But yeah, she does get sad.
- The face she presents to the world is...
Happy little girl? - The face-- yup.
- Happy, happy, happy.
- That's exactly what she does.
'cause she doesn't wanna disappoint anybody.
- Shaelynn sees that quality too.
It reminds her of her brother.
- Because my brother was the kind of person
That didn't really talk about things that bothered him
Or, you know, he just was happy like her
And that's the part that I get.
That she's a lot like my brother,
She has his heart.
- After years in court,
The two families agreed to share custody,
Though kaylee spent a little more time with ricky's parents.
They also agreed, if unofficially,
To leave the past behind for her.
- We both love her, there's no doubt about it.
Um, we just-- we love her in different ways.
- We want the best for her, they want the best for her.
That's our goal,
Is to be the best for her,
This is her life.
- Of course, amy's parents, ricky's parents
Wanted the best once before, as all parents do.
Could anyone have seen into those mean girl minds
Before two families paid the price?
- That's all for this edition of "dateline: Secrets uncovered".
I'm craig melvin, thank you for watching.