[insects chirping]
- Terri's Consignment
Furniture has expanded again.
TERRI BOWERSOCK: It really was
the all-American success story from $2,000 to $36 million
in about 10 years.
- From one warehouse in 1979
to six adjoining warehouse showrooms,
filled with furniture--
- She says, "Your mother's missing
and possibly kidnapped."
MARY ANN MORGAN: I am a psychic detective
for law enforcement.
[clock ticking]
I said, "I can see this blue.
There's blue everywhere."
[dramatic music]
TRENT LUCKOW: Picture that's
emerging is there's a dire financial issue that's
going on inside the house.
[clock ticking]
[plastic rustling]
FABIAN PACHECO: What were you doing out there
for two hours in the desert?
- Where the hell is that woman's body?
- Thanks, mom.
[eerie music]
NARRATOR: In the Sonoran Desert,
east of Casa Grande, Arizona, sagebrush and towering
saguaro cacti dot the remote landscape.
[wind whistling]
JANA BOMMERSBACH: All around it is just
a brown, brown, brown desert.
It is rough, scrubby bushes.
There's no flowers.
Nothing is going on except there's lots of saguaro cactus.
NARRATOR: In early January 2006,
miles from the nearest rest stop,
a family parks at an abandoned motel
and sets out to do some rock and fossil hunting.
JANA BOMMERSBACH: They're looking around.
And they're finding some turquoise,
maybe a piece of alabaster.
And all of a sudden, the son comes running up and says,
"we've got to get out of here.
We got to get out of here."
He's obviously afraid.
The mother starts wandering up a little bit
and then sees a skull sticking out of the earth
with a little tuft of blonde hair,
and goes, "Oh, my god, that's a body."
[phone ringing]
NARRATOR: The family calls the authorities
to report the grisly find.
TRENT LUCKOW: A group of forensic investigators,
along with detectives from Tempe Police Department, all
responded out there and proceeded
to do a body recovery.
FABIAN PACHECO: The crime scene technicians continued
to process their crime scene.
They're removing these boulders and uncovering a black tarp
underneath it, which contained the mummified
remains of the victim.
The shallow grave was approximately a foot and a
half deep.
Whoever buried this body in the shallow grave
would have definitely needed a pickaxe and a shovel
to dig through this soil.
TRENT LUCKOW: I think the person
who placed these buried remains there
intended all along to have them never be discovered.
There's a high likelihood that a crime occurred.
(OFF) FABIAN PACHECO: Big question
on everybody's mind is who is this person buried
in the backyard of this motel.
[suspenseful music]
JANA BOMMERSBACH: Tempe, Arizona has always
been a place of newcomers.
And with newcomers come new ideas.
There's a lot of business startups here.
There's a lot of new ideas happening.
TERRI BOWERSOCK: Back in 1979,
in Tempe, I got the idea for a consignment furniture store.
And so I borrowed $2,000 from my grandmother
and just basically opened the store.
My mother had gotten a divorce 15 years before.
And we started Terri's Consign and Design Furnishings.
And it took off from the get-go.
It really did.
- Thanks to you
and Mom, Terri's Consignment Furniture has expanded again.
- This beautiful Bernhardt sofa.
And you save $1,400.
TERRI BOWERSOCK: Thanks, Mom.
- Terri became a local celebrity.
TERRI BOWERSOCK: It really was the all-American success
story from $2,000 to $36 million in about
10 years, and lots of fun.
We'd go everywhere and be recognized.
And people would always look at me--
aren't you that girl?
You and your mother, you own a business together.
At that time in her life, my mother really came alive.
It was fun to watch her be so happy.
NARRATOR: With all the success from the store,
Loretta moves into a larger home but soon starts to feel lonely.
Hoping to meet a friend, she decides to rent a room.
JANA BOMMERSBACH: So Terri tells her,
if you don't like living by yourself, why
don't you get a renter.
You've got the other side of the house.
Why don't you rent that out?
TERRI BOWERSOCK: My mom put an ad
in the paper for somebody.
And a man that had just come back from Scotland
came and answered the ad.
(OFF) JANA BOMMERSBACH: Up drives
this guy on a motorcycle.
He's good-looking.
He's tall.
He looks suave.
They start talking.
TERRI BOWERSOCK: He was handsome with blue eyes
and talked kind of with a English accent.
"I am Taw."
And they met and talked about renting out a room.
JANA BOMMERSBACH: He said, you know, I'm from Scotland.
And I've been working in Saudi Arabia for Bechtel.
And I'm an inventor.
I've got several inventions going on.
TERRI BOWERSOCK: By the time they came over to meet me
at my house, I thought, I don't think this
is just a roommate situation.
She was kind of beaming from ear to ear.
He actually moved in.
It seems like it was only about a week or two weeks.
But my mom was happy.
And she was excited.
NARRATOR: Though Loretta had hoped
for a friendly roommate, she unexpectedly
found a romantic companion.
- She immediately
was attracted to this guy.
So they become a couple.
And they're a damn good-looking couple.
She's 50.
He's 48.
They're both fit.
They both look great.
I mean, when they walk down the street together,
people turn and look at them.
[gentle music]
[train rumbling]
TERRI BOWERSOCK: My mother and I both were so
excited about all of his ideas.
We'd have dinners together and laugh and had a good time.
Christmas together-- you know, holidays.
NARRATOR: By 2004, the fashionable, successful
couple, now in their late 60s, has been together 17 years.
JANA BOMMERSBACH: They were the perfect couple--
made for each other.
NARRATOR: And Terri's consignment
stores are thriving too.
TERRI BOWERSOCK: So after about 15
years being in the business, I said,
"We're going to franchise."
Very soon, we went from five stores in the Phoenix area
to San Diego and Sacramento and Denver, Atlanta, Texas.
By then, I'd bought out my mother
so she could put time into building
the relationship with Taw.
NARRATOR: In late December that year,
Taw is headed to Tucson for a meeting
about an upcoming project.
Loretta decides to tag along and do some Christmas shopping.
TERRI BOWERSOCK: Taw called and said your mom
and I are going down to Tucson.
JANA BOMMERSBACH: He says, "I
have a conference there with some people
about one of my inventions."
NARRATOR: The couple makes the almost two-hour drive
from Tempe to Tucson.
Taw drops Loretta off at a local mall
and then heads to his meeting.
When he returns to pick her up two hours later,
she's nowhere to be found.
TERRI BOWERSOCK: I think we got a call about 4:30.
[phone rings]
I got on the phone and Taw says, "Your mother's missing.
She was shopping at Dillard's.
And I came back to get her and she's missing."
I said, "Oh, Taw, just go back in, look around,
check the front counter."
I said, "I can't do anything right now.
I'm in a meeting, so call me later."
Hung up the phone.
I think about 40 minutes later [phone rings] he calls again.
And he says, "Your mother's still missing.
Something's happened, I think."
JANA BOMMERSBACH: Terri puts down the phone
and she runs to her Porsche.
It's a two-hour drive between Phoenix and Tucson.
She makes it an hour and 10 minutes.
NARRATOR: Mall security confirms
that there have been no medical emergencies on the premises.
At 5:44 PM, Taw calls 911 to report Loretta missing.
FABIAN PACHECO: Terri Bowersock arrives at the scene,
and she was very distraught.
By this time, there were many police officers at the mall.
[police siren whoops]
It's a strong possibility that a person like Loretta--
very well-dressed, looks affluent, elderly,
and not paying attention to her surroundings--
may have appeared as a target to steal her purse, rob her.
When we spoke with Terri, she indicated
to detectives that Loretta is a well-known person
in the Phoenix area with their business and their commercials
and felt that her mother may have been kidnapped.
TRENT LUCKOW: Terri thought
she's in the limelight-- locally, anyways--
worth some money.
(OFF) FABIAN PACHECO: Now this is
a situation of a missing person to possibly an abduction.
[phone ringing]
TERRI BOWERSOCK: I was taking every call that came in.
JANA BOMMERSBACH: The psychics
come out of the woodwork.
MARY ANN MORGAN: I said, "You're
going to find out that your mother received a letter.
The house is in foreclosure."
NARRATOR: 69-year-old Loretta
Bowersock has disappeared from a Tucson shopping mall.
As a prominent businesswoman who has achieved notable success,
investigators have reason to believe
the local celebrity may have been the target of kidnappers.
[suspenseful music]
TRENT LUCKOW: In mall parking lots,
you could hide in plain sight visibly.
Anybody's vulnerable.
FABIAN PACHECO: It's important to locate Loretta
quickly because Loretta was described
as a 69-year-old elderly person.
We don't know if she's in danger.
So in the first few hours, it's very
important to apply all the resources
available to this search.
In these types of investigations into missing persons,
it's not uncommon for the last person
to see the victim to become the primary person of interest.
But Taw Benderly was very concerned, distraught,
and expressed genuine concern for her disappearance.
He described as coming to Tucson for a
business meeting/mini-vacation.
He was going to meet with some folks
here at the University of Arizona
where he was going to present a solar panel invention.
Following that, him and Loretta were
going to go to Portales, New Mexico,
where they were going to dig for geodes.
At that time, neither Taw or Terri were suspects
in Loretta's disappearance.
TRENT LUCKOW: Taw had told Tucson detectives
that after he had dropped Loretta off,
he had observed a white van driving the mall parking lot
and, to him, was acting suspicious.
TERRI BOWERSOCK: He goes, "When I was leaving
the Dillard's store, there was a white van that came
in and went around the circle.
And I saw this door open up, then it shut, and by the time
I got back around to it, they had taken off.
FABIAN PACHECO: Detectives press Taw with a little bit
more information.
He believes he may have seen that same vehicle
hours earlier in Casa Grande and possibly following him.
This information changes the dynamics.
A vehicle may have been following Taw and Loretta.
And now persons associated with this suspicious vehicle
may have kidnapped Loretta.
It changes our approach.
This description that was given now of a white van
went out as a BOLO--
Be On The Lookout--
and attempt to locate this vehicle.
Patrol, including K-9 officers, bicycle patrol, and the air
support unit-- the helicopter-- conducted a search both inside
and outside the Park Place Mall and the surrounding
area with no success.
There's dozens of video cameras within the mall itself.
And then also, within the Dillard's department store,
there's dozens of cameras, different angles,
covering entrances and exits.
Those were all checked by police officers and detectives.
So far, there is no sign of Loretta
from any of the video surveillance that we obtained.
There was video surveillance on the parking lot area.
But it appeared that Taw's car was in an area
where the video surveillance didn't capture his vehicle.
NARRATOR: There is no sign of Loretta inside the mall.
It's as if she has simply vanished.
(OFF) TERRI BOWERSOCK: I remember,
at the end of that first day, I would say I was in shock.
NARRATOR: Terri checks herself
into the same Tucson hotel where her mother and Taw are staying.
TERRI BOWERSOCK: That night, I got on the phone
with every media person I knew.
I had media.
I had newspaper.
I had stories in Phoenix, stories up in Tucson.
FABIAN PACHECO: Terri was trying to make the 10:00 PM
cutoff for news so that her mother's photograph could be
shown on the news and hopefully somebody
with information on where she might be would come forward.
JANA BOMMERSBACH: The media start
asking questions about the white van,
wanting to know what's going on.
All we know is that Loretta Bowersock is
not where she's supposed to be.
There's a thousand white vans in Arizona.
And every one of them was a suspect.
FABIAN PACHECO: There's a lot of tips coming in,
both to Tucson and to Tempe, people reporting sightings
of Loretta, as well as people calling in tips
on sightings of white vans.
NARRATOR: There is one call
that is particularly alarming.
(OFF) 911 OPERATOR (ON PHONE): Uh-huh.
[suspenseful music]
JANA BOMMERSBACH: It has become
apparent to both the police and to Terri
that this kidnapping may be a real thing.
I mean, my god, Taw, he never saw her actually
go into the store, right?
And the police are taking it seriously.
And you damn well know that Terri is taking it seriously.
NARRATOR: It's been 24 hours
since 69-year-old Loretta Bowersock
was last seen outside a Tucson shopping center.
TERRI BOWERSOCK: They said there
had been a really weird white van that was going
around the hotel that day.
So there was a white van that possibly kidnapped
my mother at the mall.
And now they see the van at the hotel.
I couldn't believe it.
And then I found a picture of my mom and made up flyers.
So I headed out that morning, and I hung flyers everywhere.
I just really wanted to find my mother
and know that she was OK.
That's all I cared about.
TRENT LUCKOW: It became a local front-page story.
It was broadcast on the various news broadcasts
and in the paper, online websites
for news organizations.
FABIAN PACHECO: If Loretta was a kidnapping victim,
then the process is eventually somebody
would make contact just to indicate they have Loretta
to begin ransom demands.
Both Taw and Terri were told to keep
their phones charged and handy.
TERRI BOWERSOCK: I was taking
every call that came in because one of them
could have known something.
And my goal was to find my mother.
That's it.
NARRATOR: But the ransom request doesn't come.
The kidnapping theory soon loses traction.
Investigators believe more answers could lie
at the couple's home in Tempe.
FABIAN PACHECO: We asked detectives in Tempe to go
to Loretta's and Taw's house.
TRENT LUCKOW: From Tucson, Taw was asked if it would be OK
if we searched the Tempe home.
And he said it was OK, provided his consent to search it.
FABIAN PACHECO: House was pretty well-kept,
nothing in disarray.
The detectives went through the mailbox,
and they found foreclosure paperwork in the mailbox.
Loretta's house was being foreclosed upon.
Maybe this wasn't a kidnapping at all.
NARRATOR: Believing Loretta's finances
could be a factor in her disappearance,
for now, investigators choose to keep the information
from Terri and Taw.
TERRI BOWERSOCK: The detectives
asked about if maybe Taw had ever been abusive
or anything like that.
And I said, you know, 17 years, they've had their ups
and downs, but I don't think it's
been any different than other couples.
So I don't really feel like they have a problem.
NARRATOR: Meanwhile, Terri's plea to the
public yields a flood of calls.
[phone ringing]
JANA BOMMERSBACH: The psychics swoop in on Terri.
They come out of the woodwork.
They've got theory after theory.
TERRI BOWERSOCK: It did get to be a little bit crazy.
But I had to really learn how to stay calm, not react
[phone ringing]
I got a call from a psychic, very, well, famous
psychic calling.
Her name is Mary Ann and wants to talk to you.
She had many big cases I had heard about.
I thought, well, that's interesting.
MARY ANN MORGAN: I'm a psychic detective
for law enforcement.
I work with law enforcement on every level,
from county sheriffs all the way up
to international law enforcement,
and have for quite a while.
When I look at a case, I can go into a room
and see everything about that room, a detail,
like a newspaper, very unique gifts that I have from God,
I believe.
[phone rings]
TERRI BOWERSOCK: I gave her a call.
And she introduced herself.
And she said there's something going on with the house.
(OFF) MARY ANN MORGAN: I said, you're
going to find out that your mother received a letter
from a man at the door.
I said, Terri, the house is in foreclosure.
- And I said, that would never happen.
My mother would-- this wouldn't happen.
I said, well, thank you.
I'll just talk to you another time.
FABIAN PACHECO: Terri calls me
and tells me about her conversation
with Mary Ann Morgan.
And that information was not shared with anyone.
It wasn't shared with the media.
Nobody knew about that outside of our law enforcement circles.
So I was a little bit awestruck.
And basically, I confirmed to Terri, yes, in fact,
your mother's home was under foreclosure.
TERRI BOWERSOCK: I would say I was in shock.
My mom would make sure--
that's her house-- and make that payment.
But I don't know that I knew all of their business.
TRENT LUCKOW: The picture that's
emerging is that there's a dire financial issue that's
going on inside the house.
In the garage, we found a number of boxes that contained
stuffed-away utility bills, home mortgage bills, late notices,
foreclosure notices.
They're all addressed to Loretta.
JANA BOMMERSBACH: This is not adding up.
Something's very wrong here.
Something is really, really wrong here.
[suspenseful music]
NARRATOR: Loretta Bowersock
vanished while on a holiday shopping trip to Tucson,
Arizona two days ago.
An initial search of the Tempe home Loretta shares
with boyfriend Taw Benderly reveals
troubling financial concerns.
TRENT LUCKOW: What we found out in the following days
is that the financial situation concerning the house
foreclosure only went deeper.
TERRI BOWERSOCK: There was about eight credit
cards with about $40,000 on each credit
card in my mother's name.
I think there was a lot of things
that my mom didn't tell me because she was too ashamed.
NARRATOR: With questions mounting,
investigators ask Taw for permission to search his car,
still parked at the hotel in Tucson.
FABIAN PACHECO: He had a pickax and a shovel
still in his car.
His car had a lot of brush in the undercarriage of it.
NARRATOR: The dirty tools are alarming.
But they mean nothing on their own.
Investigators turn to Taw's cell phone for clues.
FABIAN PACHECO: We had his phone number.
And so we began the process of checking
with cell phone providers to find where that phone had been.
According to Taw Benderly, they left their home in Tempe
at about 10:10 in the morning.
They're driving eastbound on the Interstate 10.
He said they arrived in the Casa Grande outlet area right
around 11:30.
They continue their journey, arriving at their hotel
at about 12:30 PM.
Cell phone towers in the Casa Grande area,
they were picking up Taw's cell phone,
indicated that he spent much longer amount of time
in and around that area.
He said he arrived in Tucson at 12:30 PM
but the hotel registration, which
the timestamp was accurate, showed
that he arrived at 2:38 PM.
So this is not matching up at all with what Taw is reporting
in terms of his timeline.
What were you doing out there for two hours in a desert?
NARRATOR: Though he claims he dropped Loretta at the mall
and headed to a business meeting at the University of Arizona,
cell phone records failed to track
the journey to the campus.
TERRI BOWERSOCK: The police were suspecting Taw.
But I wasn't there.
I didn't believe it at all.
- Terri was at a terrible
crossroads mentally.
She was so fearful for her mother.
But this also was the guy who had stepped in as a stepfather
for 17 years.
NARRATOR: Investigators continue their search
of the couple's house in Tempe.
FABIAN PACHECO: They find a rolled-up towel.
And we discover that it contains a black clutch purse.
It's Loretta's purse, contains her driver's license,
her credit cards and checkbook.
- Everything she would need
to be in Tucson to go shopping.
- Taw had been adamant that Loretta,
when he dropped her off, he saw her walking into the mall
with her clutch purse.
Yet her purse is found in her house.
So this is changing how I'm looking at this case now.
Finding Loretta's purse is a definite game changer.
We're starting to see several red flags popping up.
And I decided to ask Taw to come down to the police
station the next day.
FABIAN PACHECO: I tell him his timeline doesn't add up
to what we're receiving, both from the cell phone company
and also from his arrival at the hotel.
FABIAN PACHECO: I confront him with the fact that, look,
we have detectives at your house in Tempe.
They found Loretta's clutch purse.
How is she supposedly shopping at Park Place Mall
and yet her purse is over here?
And he was pretty shaken.
(OFF) FABIAN PACHECO: I told him,
I think something happened to Loretta.
And I think you're not telling us the truth.
FABIAN PACHECO: At this point in the investigation,
he is number-one suspect in this case.
But yet, we're just short of having enough evidence
to make an arrest.
I truly felt that Loretta was most likely dead
and that Taw was responsible for her death.
But we can't really keep him.
So I told him, you're free to leave.
NARRATOR: He returns to Tempe to the home
he shared with Loretta.
But who is Taw Benderly?
FABIAN PACHECO: A criminal history check
revealed an arrest in the Washington/Virginia area
for a fraud activity.
JANA BOMMERSBACH: Instead of coming home
from Saudi Arabia and Bechtel, Taw Benderly
had just gotten out of prison.
[suspenseful music]
NARRATOR: A week into the disappearance of Loretta
Bowersock, her partner, Taw Benderly,
has emerged as the number-one suspect.
But investigators don't have enough evidence
to make an arrest.
TRENT LUCKOW: Most of the information that Taw was giving
detectives appeared to be inaccurate
or some sort of attempt to disguise
something that had gone wrong.
- Taw went back to their house in Tempe.
So I just went ahead and went home also.
I was a little bit concerned about us all heading back
to Tempe so soon because I felt like we still needed to look
around Tucson quite a bit.
But at the same time, I thought I could
get home and kind of regroup.
JANA BOMMERSBACH: She keeps checking on Taw.
This is her only conduit to her mother.
She wants to be sure he's OK.
NARRATOR: Terri diligently checks in on Taw
at the house every day.
But on December 23, nine days after Loretta went missing,
Taw isn't picking up his phone.
TERRI BOWERSOCK: I called.
And there was no answer, which he had been pretty
much answering every day.
I called a couple more times and then called the Tempe police.
And I said, I think something's wrong.
[distant siren wailing]|
FABIAN PACHECO: At that point,
we had officers do a welfare check.
- Nobody's answering the house.
We have a potential, possible murder case.
And so mindset-wise, they don't know what they're
going to be confronted with.
Officers had their guns drawn.
Once they make entry into the home,
they methodically search it.
Once they got through the garage,
they found Taw hanging from an electrical cord.
And he was deceased.
[eerie music]
TERRI BOWERSOCK: I was in shock.
That was a really hard night, because now I
was going through, did he kill himself
because he was in so much sorrow,
or did he kill himself because he did kill her?
NARRATOR: Poring over the couple's records,
Terri soon discovers the extent of Taw's betrayal.
JANA BOMMERSBACH: Terri finds Loretta's checkbook.
And indeed, in the checkbook, it shows
that every month the first thing she writes
is the mortgage payment.
And they go to Taw's bank account, every month,
that same amount is being deposited into his account.
Apparently, he said to her, hey, I'll mail the rent check.
He washes the rent check and remakes it out to himself
and is stealing that money every single month.
And then when the foreclosure notices start coming,
he swipes that mail away before she ever sees it.
The bottom line is that Taw had been embezzling
from Loretta for years.
TRENT LUCKOW: I notified Terri of financial issues
at hand.
I think, at that point, she was figuring out who Taw was.
TERRI BOWERSOCK: He was basically,
through my mother's name, frauding everything she had.
So did he ever really love her?
Was this completely fraud?
TRENT LUCKOW: What we're finding out from his family
is how Taw had manipulated a lot of people before Loretta.
JANA BOMMERSBACH: Since that, investigators
find out that he had seduced and defrauded a female warden
and defrauded two other women before he ever got to Loretta.
He would just suck the blood out of everybody
he could find and use his charm to get away with it.
Taw Benderly was a serial abuser of women.
TERRI BOWERSOCK: He was a charming predator.
He only stayed about three to five years
and walked away with usually about a million to 3 million.
Person that I knew for the last 17 years wasn't the person--
wasn't Taw.
I think he was a pathological liar.
JANA BOMMERSBACH: So from the very first moment
he opened his mouth, Taw Benderly
was lying through his teeth.
He wasn't even from Scotland.
TERRI BOWERSOCK: Everything was a lie.
That almost makes the Earth kind of fall
out from under your feet.
Nothing was real.
NARRATOR: Now Taw Benderly is dead.
And Loretta Bowersock is still missing.
It seems likely that Taw took the secrets of
her disappearance to the grave.
FABIAN PACHECO: You think that, OK, he committed suicide
now and the case is over with.
Not really.
The case isn't really closed, because where is Loretta?
NARRATOR: With cell phone pings to guide them,
investigators search the desert.
- To find a body buried in that desert
area is like finding a needle in a haystack.
TRENT LUCKOW: The search and rescue team
consisted both ground search--
people on foot, cadaver dogs searching for human remains.
NARRATOR: After weeks with no result,
the search is suspended.
Terri is unwilling to give up.
TERRI BOWERSOCK: I thought, it's time
to call Mary Ann, the psychic.
We met at my mom's house.
MARY ANN MORGAN: I just immediately started
hearing and seeing things.
And I told her that Taw came up behind her with a plastic bag,
put it over her head, and started strangling her.
She fought a little bit.
But he was stronger.
I said, I can see this blue.
There's blue everywhere.
I can hear children laughing.
And it's from days gone by.
That is where she's at.
She's 150 feet from the blue.
(OFF) TERRI BOWERSOCK: I searched
months and months and months and still hadn't found her.
But I just couldn't give up.
I needed to find my mother.
JANA BOMMERSBACH: Where the hell is that woman's body?
This poor daughter has been searching for her mother, never
could find the mother.
No one could find the mother.
What happened to Loretta Bowersock?
NARRATOR: Loretta Bowersock has been
missing for almost 13 months.
But her daughter Terri hasn't given up hope.
TERRI BOWERSOCK: I thought for sure I
was going to find her.
And then months turned into months
and turned into a long time.
[suspenseful music]
NARRATOR: And then on a brisk winter day, a family
hikes through the tabletop wilderness
southwest of Casa Grande.
- A group was out hiking, looking for rocks.
And they came across some skeletal remains.
[suspenseful music]
NARRATOR: The family calls the authorities
to the desert location behind an abandoned motel.
- Forensic investigators proceeded
to do a body recovery.
FABIAN PACHECO: The shallow grave
was approximately a foot and a half
deep, along with numerous boulders that had
been placed on top of the site.
TRENT LUCKOW: They find skeletal remains
that were wrapped in a bag.
FABIAN PACHECO: They were determined to be the remains
of Loretta Bowersock.
TRENT LUCKOW: It was determined that her cause
of death was asphyxia.
TERRI BOWERSOCK: I got a phone call.
And it was the Maricopa Sheriff.
And they said, we found your mom.
As much as this day was really hard,
I was glad to know where she was.
I knew where she was.
I had her.
I had her with me.
And I was OK.
I could stop looking now and start working on healing.
They drove me out.
And we all of a sudden come up to this motel.
The sign is blue.
The building is blue.
And then they drive around to the back,
because he had gone way out in the desert,
and the whole playground was blue.
The very last thing that Mary Ann talked about with me
before she left was that she saw blue.
What is blue?
And we don't know this until we found her.
NARRATOR: But how had Loretta
met such a terrible fate?
TRENT LUCKOW: On December 13,
what I believe occurred is that she
finally found out that the home was in foreclosure.
You can see on her phone records that there's numerous phone
calls to Wells Fargo Mortgage trying to get a status
on what is exactly going on.
JANA BOMMERSBACH: Loretta would have gone berserk.
Don't let the screen door hit you in the ass
as you're out the door.
You're done.
You're gone.
TRENT LUCKOW: There was a confrontation.
And it turned violent.
It's my conclusion that she died as a result of strangulation.
JANA BOMMERSBACH: They believe he took a plastic bag--
and put it over her head, and held it there
until she suffocated to death.
[eerie music]
FABIAN PACHECO: You start putting
all the pieces together--
reports from the cell phone companies,
they're telling us he spent two hours in that Casa Grande area,
he had a pickaxe and a shovel still in his car,
the fact that his car had a lot of brush
in the undercarriage of it.
After reviewing many, many hours of video surveillance,
there was no sign of a white van with a sliding door open.
It was Taw that had told us this information.
There was never a white van.
TRENT LUCKOW: The case is closed.
In the end, Taw acted alone, murdering
Loretta and burying her in the back yard of the motel.
FABIAN PACHECO: I'm confident that had
Taw not committed suicide, he would
have been placed under arrest.
NARRATOR: Loretta Bowersock is gone.
But she will not be forgotten.
TERRI BOWERSOCK: I know that my mother
is acting as my guardian angel.
And I have lots of dreams where she visits me
and she just tells me, you're not alone.
I'm with you.
[gentle music]