[John] Over the embankment,
I could see an arm coming out of the sleeping bag.
More than 30 stab wounds in this woman's body.
Chest, neck, head, arms.
[Stan] We had this lovely young mother
who had some problems in her life.
The wounds on Ginny's body
suggested there was domestic violence.
Why would he run if he has nothing to hide?
[David] We have another murder.
Do we have a serial killer here?
[John] We're under tremendous pressure
to solve these crimes.
[David] He refused to give us his DNA.
Genevieve's case
now goes cold for nine years.
This new discovery breathes life into the case.
[David] This has got to be the guy.
[narrator] Every day in North America,
dozens of people are murdered.
The key to solving the toughest of these homicides
lies in the final 24 hours of the victim's life.
To crack the case,
detectives must reconstruct that critical timeline,
the minutes and hours containing evidence
that can help unlock the mystery and catch the killer.
Carved between Cook Inlet and Chugach Mountains,
Anchorage is Alaska's most populous city.
[Stan] It's a fairly large city,
300,000 people,
but at the same time,
it's on the edge of the wilderness
and kind of part of the wilderness.
[David] I call it a great town
because it has a town feeling.
Every time you go into the supermarket,
you see people you know
and there's a cooperative feeling to this community.
But it does have its dark side
and it always has.
That's an intrinsic part of Alaska history
everywhere, including Anchorage.
Trouble is very easy to find in Anchorage.
You don't have to look very far or very hard.
[narrator] And on the morning of March 22nd, 2000,
just outside of Anchorage,
trouble finds a passing trucker.
Anchorage police lieutenant John McKinnon is first to respond.
I received a call on the radio
that a delivery driver
had discovered a body in East Anchorage
and I responded code three to the area.
Code three means that you respond with your lights and siren
and it's urgent.
Upon my arrival, the driver told me that
he was making a delivery to the military base
and that he needed to stop and relieve himself.
The driver pointed my attention
over the embankment -
it's about 30 feet from the top of where the street level is -
over to where the sleeping bag...
There was an arm coming out of the sleeping bag.
I can see blood
and I know that this is potentially a homicide.
I walked, kind of, around where the body was
and I start to take pictures.
I could tell by the hairstyle and the clothing
that it was a female.
She had a light-colored shirt on.
I could see by her bone structure
that she was likely a native female.
[narrator] Lieutenant McKinnon calls in backup
to secure the location
so that crime scene technicians can process the site.
Anchorage police lieutenant David Parker joins the investigation.
This woman had multiple stab wounds on her body.
That would exclude any kind of accident,
thus we are sure that it is a homicide.
It is the fifth woman of color within a year
whose body has been found outside
and none of those crimes have yet been solved.
So the question on our mind is
are we dealing with a serial killer
or are we dealing with isolated incidents?
So we have to start from ground zero.
We have virtually nothing to go on.
We don't see a blood trail.
We don't see blood surrounding her body.
It's basically contained within the sleeping bag.
So we know that
she was murdered somewhere else,
and so our investigation begins upon that premise.
This is a dump site.
This woman had been thrown off of the roadway
to the position where she landed.
Most people don't have the strength that it takes
to do such a thing
to get a body into that position.
[John] There were two sets of footprints next to each other.
[David] So, we knew that there was probably
more than one person involved,
at least two.
[narrator] Before they can solve the crime,
investigators must first ID the victim.
There is no identification with the body,
either in the bag or on her person.
Also, there was an absence of jewelry.
So that could indicate that
there was a robbery motive to her murder.
[narrator] But crime scene technicians find other clues
that may help identify the victim
and catch her killer.
[David] Within the sleeping bag,
we find small pieces of beauty bark,
that, kind of, landscaping material
that people put around their trees and gardens.
We find a crutch
with a person's name written in tape on the side of it.
Higgins was the name.
We find, also, a large trash bag
containing papers and all kinds of trash
next to the body.
It's lucky that we had found her on that particular day
because we may never have found her.
Could've had bears
or other predator animals
that had happened upon her and drug her into the woods.
[narrator] When a victim is killed elsewhere
and the body dumped,
investigators face an uphill battle.
[narrator] Investigators may never know where this woman was killed
or by whom
until they answer one key question.
How are we gonna figure out who this person is?
I took a thumbprint off of her hand.
In the United States, it's not uncommon
for an individual to have their fingerprints taken
for purposes of employment
or if you have a criminal history.
We're able to use her fingerprint
at the police department and scan it,
and within a few minutes, we have identification.
[narrator] The victim is 28-year-old Genevieve Tetpon
who works in an Anchorage bakery.
Known as Ginny,
she was a devoted mother of four.
Now comes the very tough job of notifying the family.
We go to talk to her mother who works at the local hospital.
This is not an easy job for officers.
[Stan] David was described by her mother
as a sweet, loving person with a huge smile,
somebody you would really like to know.
[narrator] Throughout her short life,
Ginny struggled with hardships
but always persevered.
[David] She had difficulty with finances,
difficulty making ends meet.
She was a single mom
and had all of the responsibilities
and the stress that comes with having four young kids.
She worked hard to try and provide for those kids,
and now, after all her effort,
those kids are gonna have to grow up without a mom.
Knowing this, it puts tremendous pressure on the detectives
to find the person responsible for this killing.
[narrator] Police now attempt to piece together
the final 24 hours of Ginny's life.
The first challenge is to determine exactly when she was killed.
[John] In Alaska, it is very difficult
to determine the time of death
because of the elements.
Temperatures are cold,
so bodies do not decompose like indoors
or, say, in a warmer climate.
As I look at the footprints,
I can see that they look like they had been there
for some few hours, probably,
or maybe even almost an entire day.
[David] Ginny had gone missing
a couple of days before her body was found.
[John] On March 19th,
three days prior to Ginny's body being discovered,
her mom tells us that she helped her move into a new place.
Ginny worked in a bakery and, on March 20th,
after her shift, at 3:30 PM,
she was supposed to come to her mom's house,
but she never showed.
Ginny's mother never heard from her again
and on March 22nd her body is discovered.
[narrator] A coroner's exam
tells investigators more about how Ginny died.
[John] There were over 21 stab wounds.
Massive defensive wounds were discovered on her hands,
which indicated that she had fought off her attacker.
She had deep penetrating wounds to her chest,
so deep that her heart was punctured.
She has a slash mark on her neck
where it went very deep
and the wound was one that could very easily have killed her.
[John] Someone must have been very angry with her
to stab her this many times.
[David] Often, when we find a woman deceased outdoors
in this kind of a situation,
we automatically assume that there has been
some kind of sexual assault that took place.
In Genevieve's case,
there was no indication of a sexual assault.
[John] There was foreign skin cells
that were located under her fingernails,
likely that of the suspect who was responsible.
We know that DNA
is preserved through freezing.
So we're hopeful that we'll get an immediate match
and have an understanding
of whose DNA is under Genevieve's fingernails.
[John] The DNA results return
and we do have a DNA profile
that has been developed from the zipper on the sleeping bag
and also from underneath the fingernails of Genevieve.
[narrator] The profile matches no one
that's already in the DNA database.
But DNA isn't the only thing the killer left behind.
Back at headquarters,
investigators take a closer look
at evidence collected from the scene.
[David] Within the plastic bag,
we find bills and that sort of thing
that you would normally find
in trash being thrown out of a person's home.
As we dissect the contents of the garbage bag,
we find emails
to a woman named Alana Tufnell.
We discover she is an employee
of the Anchorage School District.
[John] We need to go talk to Alana Tufnell right away.
We're not sure what we're gonna hear
when we present these papers to her.
It's very suspicious.
[narrator] Investigators have their first lead
in the murder of 28-year-old Genevieve Tetpon,
known as Ginny to her family and friends.
Alongside Ginny's body are found printed emails
belonging to a woman named Alana Tufnell,
a married mother of two boys
who's an administrator for the Anchorage School District.
[David] Alana was mystified as to how
her garbage could've ended up at a crime scene.
Alana's job with the school district
was one that required a lot of paperwork,
a lot of computer communication
and she often printed those things out.
She would often take them home with her
and that was her explanation
for why the emails would be in her car.
Then she remembered that, a few months prior,
her car had been broken into.
She made a police report about that.
And she hypothesized that, perhaps,
the garbage bag had been taken out of her car at that time
and that's how it ended up
separated by miles from her home.
The other evidence found at the scene,
the crutch with the name on it, was Higgins.
She didn't have any idea who would be using a crutch
or whose name that was.
[John] Upon looking for connections
between Alana Tufnell and Ginny,
there are no connections.
Alana does not know Ginny.
They have never met before.
It's very confusing.
[David] In reviewing the police report about the car break-in,
we're not able to determine a suspect for that.
We don't have any idea
who may have broken into the car.
Every time we follow up on a lead,
we hope that that's the lead
that's gonna lead us to the killer.
In this case, our best lead
turned out to be nothing.
At this time, we go back to Ginny's family and friends
and try to determine her routines
and her associates
and what she would've been doing prior to her death.
[narrator] Ginny is last seen leaving her bakery job
at 3:30 PM on March 20th.
Two days later, on March 22nd,
she's found dead by the side of the road.
A key to our investigation at this point is
what happened in those intervening days.
Where was Ginny? Who was she with?
Who knew her whereabouts?
Everyone we talked to at that point
could not give us specific information
about where she was and what she was doing.
We were trying to determine who was the last person
who had spoken with Ginny when she was alive.
The family is unclear who that was,
but they believe there is someone that we should talk to,
Cameron Gessler,
whom Ginny had been engaged to recently.
This sets off alarm bells because, in many homicides,
the victims know their assailants.
A large portion of knife crimes
are linked to domestic violence.
In domestic incidents involving violence,
when knives are used,
it could suggest a heightened level of anger.
So, "I am going to get up close and personal with you
in order to exact this violence,"
which could be indicators of rage, jealousy,
those sorts of motivations.
[David] What we learned from Ginny's family
about her relationship with Cameron
was that their relationship was a troubled one
and that there was often friction.
Ginny's family didn't like Cameron
because he did not treat her
as well as they thought that he should.
From our perspective, we really need to follow up on this
because that is so typical
of a relationship in which violence breaks out.
[narrator] Investigators knock on Cameron's door.
He's not home,
but his roommate is and he invites them in.
We learn that Cameron and Ginny had actually broken up
about three weeks prior to her body being discovered.
Cameron was very upset over the fact
that he had given her an engagement ring
and wanted that ring back.
And so there had been some kind of a dispute
over whether or not she would give the ring back.
That sends up alarm bells in our minds
because we know that no jewelry has been found on her body,
no wedding ring, no engagement ring.
So the assumption there would be that,
because of this argument,
perhaps Cameron had murdered her
and taken his ring back.
Cameron's roommate was cooperative
and he allows us to look around the house.
There, we find a sleeping bag
very similar to the one that Ginny was found in
and Cameron's roommate tells us that
that belongs to Cameron himself.
When we were able to examine that sleeping bag,
we find dark blood stains in it.
We collect it and send it off for DNA testing.
[narrator] Detectives need to find Cameron
and they fan out across Anchorage.
[David] We then go to Cameron's last-known place of employment.
It's a major hotel in downtown Anchorage
and it's under construction.
Cameron's job was that of a handyman at the hotel.
[John] When we get there, Cameron is nowhere to be found.
In looking around the hotel,
we notice that there's fresh beauty bark
laid out on the ground covering a,
kind of a manicured, groomed area.
[narrator] It looks identical to the bark
found inside the sleeping bag with Ginny.
When my partner and I find the beauty bark,
we start asking ourselves,
"Is this the place that Genevieve was killed?"
So we collect samples of that for analysis.
We then go upstairs and search the entire hotel.
Since the hotel is under construction,
it was easy to gain access.
And we find nothing. Nothing.
No blood. Nothing that would indicate
that any kind of a struggle had taken place there.
Our hopes are completely dashed.
So we have to pick up,
carry whatever evidence we do have back to the lab
and continue our investigation.
[Slav speaking]
[David] So, we go to his new girlfriend's home.
She is not very cooperative with the police.
She doesn't know where Cameron is, she says.
[David] And it was at that point that we see Cameron
escaping out of the back of the house
and running away from the police.
Why would he run if he has nothing to hide?
[narrator] 10 days after Genevieve Tetpon,
known as Ginny, is murdered,
detectives hunt for her ex-fiance, Cameron Gessler.
Cameron was last seen fleeing from police on foot.
He's too fast.
He knows the neighborhood better than we do.
We lose him.
This is a crushing blow to the investigation.
First of all, this is Alaska,
over 500,000 square miles of nothingness, basically. Wilderness.
Lots of places to hide.
And also, a few miles away, there's a gigantic airport
that'll take you to any place in the world you wanna go.
There's a lot of things stacking up against Cameron.
The wounds on Ginny's body
suggested there was, potentially, domestic violence.
He is evading talking with us
and is on the run.
Another factor
that we have to consider,
is the fact the beauty bark
found in Genevieve's sleeping bag
matches the beauty bark that we find at Cameron's workplace.
[narrator] The evidence pointing to Cameron as Ginny's killer
doesn't stop there.
[Parker] As we received the DNA results of the blood in the sleeping bag
seized at Cameron's former residence,
the DNA indicates that that blood
was from Genevieve Tetpon.
[Parker] We look at our police records,
everything that has to do with Cameron,
and we find that less than 12 hours before
Genevieve was discovered,
his car was in a hit and run accident.
And a man matching Cameron's description ran from the scene.
[narrator] On the hunt for Cameron, police turn to Ginny's neighbors for help.
[Jones] Now the police go back to Ginny's old neighborhood
and they try to talk to people who knew her,
people she interacted with,
find out what went on with her in the last few days of her life.
We learned from the neighbors that sometime about February 27th
that Ginny and Cameron had a big argument
at her new residence,
and ultimately she left that scene
with a man they identified as L.T.
[narrator] Police discover L.T. has a history of assault,
and he's already incarcerated.
[Parker] When we brought L.T. in for interview,
he refused to give us his DNA
for comparison with the DNA on Genevieve's body.
and he refused to take a polygraph test.
Those things are huge red flags.
So now instead of just one prime suspect, we have two.
[Markiewicz speaking]
[Parker] L.T. does give us an alibi
and we follow up on those contacts that he tells us to make.
Ultimately, we find that L.T. was indeed not with Genevieve
when we believe she was murdered.
[Markiewicz speaking]
[narrator] It's not until five months after Ginny's murder
that police get a new break in the case.
Ginny's ex-fiance, Cameron Gessler,
is arrested for assault in a bar fight,
and homicide detectives are notified.
Now that Cameron had been on the run for five months,
we had a lot of information that we wanted to talk to him about.
[Markiewicz speaking]
[Parker] Cameron was insistent
that though he had a troubled relationship with Genevieve,
he had nothing to do with her murder.
We ask why it was he ran from the police
and stayed hidden for five months.
Well, he tells us he was driving without a valid license
and he was afraid there was a warrant for his arrest
for having that accident and driving with a suspended license.
[narrator] Investigators are skeptical of Cameron's explanation.
They press him on the sleeping bag
found at his former address with Ginny's blood on it.
It also matches the sleeping bag found with Ginny's remains inside.
[Parker] He explains to us that he and Genevieve had gone camping
and that she had been on her menstrual cycle
and she had bled inside the bag.
Police investigators encounter these stories all the time.
"I ran not for the reason you think.
But for an entirely different reason."
And often this is a story that is neither verifiable nor falsifiable,
and as the interview goes on does the story change.
Are there holes that start to emerge?
Uh, which might indicate that, uh,
one lie is being used to cover another.
Cameron does tell us that the last time he saw Ginny
was the end of February.
Sometime around their big argument
that the neighbors had informed us of.
That was actually three weeks before her body was found.
If Cameron's story is true,
then the DNA that we found
under Genevieve's fingernails
would not match his DNA.
So that sample was taken and then it was sent away to the lab.
[narrator] Days feel like months while police wait
to find out if it's Cameron's DNA
that's under the fingernails of his dead ex-fiance.
[Parker] We received the results back
the DNA under Genevieve's fingernails
does not match Cameron's DNA.
So he has to be eliminated as our prime suspect in her murder.
[narrator] Anchorage police have hit another dead end.
And then things go from bad to worse.
We find the beaten body of Della Brown in a shed.
Not more than 20 miles from where Ginny's body was discovered.
[narrator] Like Ginny, Della Brown was a young native Alaskan woman.
She's the sixth woman of color murdered in the past year.
Her death causes police to revisit a theory
raised earlier in the investigation.
Do we have a serial murderer here?
Is Genevieve's murder tied in some way to these other murders?
[narrator] Less than six months after the body of Genevieve Tetpon,
known as Ginny, is discovered on a roadside near Anchorage,
another native Alaskan woman is murdered.
[Jones] The body of Della Brown is discovered in a shed
which is 20 miles from where Ginny's body was found.
The obvious question is: Was it the same person?
Did they have the same killer?
You can imagine the terror
that the native community especially felt.
[McKinnon] The police are under tremendous pressure to solve these cases.
A taskforce is developed to help solve these crimes
which brings in resources from the FBI.
[narrator] Investigators also open a tip-line
for information that may lead to an arrest.
[Parker] We get a call from an individual
who said that he saw Della Brown's body
before it had been discovered and reported to the police.
His friend took him to show him the body
and claimed responsibility for her murder.
[narrator] The name of the alleged killer is Josh Wade.
[Parker] Josh Wade had significant criminal history
including misconduct involving weapons charge
that he was convicted of.
So he's not someone who's unknown to police.
[narrator] Could Josh also be a serial killer
responsible for a string the murdered native Alaskan women
including Ginny?
[Parker] We decided to use the tipster as an informant
and wear a wire.
And talk to Josh Wade about the other murders
as well as Della Brown's murder.
The tipster has some pictures of these women who had been recently murdered.
He shows these pictures to Joshua Wade,
and Joshua looks at 'em and starts saying,
"Oh, yeah, that one's mine. That one's mine. That one's mine."
On September 30th, 2000, Joshua Wade is arrested
for the murder of Della Brown.
[narrator] Anchorage detectives take the opportunity
to press him on Ginny's murder.
He denies killing the young mother of four.
He claims he's never met her.
But Wade's DNA will tell police whether or not he's lying.
[Markiewicz speaking]
[narrator] Since Ginny's body was found
on the side of the road six months earlier,
Josh Wade is the third suspect police have cleared in her murder.
At that point we have exhausted every lead that we have,
and so Genevieve Tetpon's case goes cold.
[narrator] Nearly a decade passes without any new leads,
but there is no statute of limitations on justice for a victim of murder,
and a homicide case is never closed.
[Jones] Nine years
after Ginny's body is discovered at the bottom of this embankment,
her case gets reopened
by a cold case unit at the Anchorage police department.
[narrator] Investigators also take a second look at the email print outs
found where Ginny's body was discovered.
[McKinnon] With fresh eyes on the case,
we discover that the emails are dated two months
after the break in in the vehicle from Alana Tufnell.
So to backtrack a little, when the emails were first found with the body,
way back in 2000,
they talked to the woman who was the recipient
and what she said was he car had been broken into
in January, 2000, two months before the murder,
and she suggested the emails were taken during that break in,
and somehow the person that took them ended up murdering Ginny Tetpon.
Well, fast forward nine years, they look at those emails and guess what?
The date on the emails was not January of 2000,
It was March of 2000.
The same month Ginny Tetpon was murdered.
So it's like these emails did not exist
when the vehicle was broke into.
This new discovery breathes life into the case again.
[narrator] It also means Alana Tufnell might've been lying.
Now detectives have to figure out why.
We contact Alana.
She has no idea how
that email ended up at our crime scene.
And that she had had never had any contact whatsoever
with Genevieve Tetpon.
We tell her we need to speak to the folks that had access
to her vehicle at that time.
We begin with her husband, Archer Tufnell.
Archer is cooperative with the police.
He is retired from the Air Force,
he is a pastor in a church here in town,
and he voluntarily gives us a DNA sample for comparison.
It was a long shot.
and Archer Tufnell's DNA is not a match
for the DNA beneath Ginny's fingernails.
We contact the only other member of the family
that was here in Anchorage during the Genevieve Tetpon murder.
And that is Alana's son, Derrick.
Derrick was 17 years old when Genevieve Tetpon was murdered.
He was also the captain of the football team,
he did volunteer work for his church.
He also was a straight-A student.
He had no criminal history.
So he is a person that it just doesn't seem likely
would be responsible for the murder of a woman and the dumping of her body.
He agrees to cooperate with police,
and tells us that he has no knowledge
of this woman, Genevieve Tetpon,
or how she may have been murdered.
It all changes when we ask him
to give us voluntarily a DNA sample.
[Markiewicz speaking]
[McKinnon] He's 27 years old, he lives on his own,
and he doesn't want to give us his DNA sample.
That raises major red flags in this investigation.
[Jones] The suspicion level is going up and up and up.
[narrator] Nine years after the body of Genevieve Tetpon,
known as Ginny, is discovered dumped in a roadside ditch,
investigators' suspicions are raised when 27 year old
Derrick Torian refuses a DNA test.
Derrick becomes cagey.
He doesn't want to talk to us.
[narrator] But police don't have to wait for Derrick
to talk in order to move forward.
Detectives already know he's the only one in his family who had access
to the printouts in his mother's car at the time of the murder
that has not been cleared.
This allows us to approach a judge and get a search warrant
for Derrick's DNA.
With the search warrant in hand, we're able to go
to Derrick's workplace.
He's a coach on football team in a local high school.
We serve that search warrant and take that DNA sample,
and again it is sent away for analysis.
[Jones] In the course of the investigation,
they also talked to people who had known Derrick
at East High, back in 2000,
around the time of the Ginny Tetpon murder.
[narrator] In 2000, derrick was only 17,
and an outstanding football player.
We learned from a fellow student of Derrick Torian's
that Derrick was injured while he was in high school,
and that he had to use crutches.
The name of one of the football coaches at that time was Higgins.
That would match the name that was found on that crutch
at the Genevieve Tetpon murder scene.
[narrator] That connects Derrick to the crime scene,
but doesn't prove he killed Ginny.
We need more information to build a solid case.
We ask Derrick if he would take a polygraph examination.
He agreed to do so.
The examiner says that Derrick is being deceitful
about Genevieve Tetpon's murder.
[narrator] The test results are a good sign the detectives are on the right track.
But to charge Derrick with Ginny's murder,
they'll need something concrete that ties him directly to her.
We get the DNA results back.
They show a positive correlation between
the DNA from Derrick Torian
and the DNA which was taken
from underneath Genevieve Tetpon's fingernails.
He's our guy.
[narrator] A decade after Ginny's murder,
Anchorage police finally know who killed her,
27 year old Derrick Torian.
Now it's time to go arrest Derrick.
Turns out he's left Alaska.
[Parker] Derrick Torian knew his DNA would show up at that crime scene,
and I'm certain that's why he thinks he can hide out somewhere else.
[narrator] Anchorage police send out a BOLO,
a "Be On the Lookout" for Derrick Torian
to law enforcement agencies across North America.
After questioning Derrick's friends and family,
they're able to find him 3,000 miles away
in Spearfish, South Dakota.
Derrick Torian is arrested and transported to Anchorage
where he's charged with first and second degree murder in the death of Ginny Tetpon.
Nearly ten years after the mother of four's body was dumped by the road,
Derrick tells police his version of events that led to Ginny's murder.
Finally, police can piece together what may have happened
during the 24 hours prior to Ginny's murder.
[Parker] Late on the night of March 21st,
Genevieve entered the pizza parlor
where Derrick Torian was a night manager.
His story is that Genevieve Tetpon
was intoxicated and he took pity on her.
He gave her a blanket.
He gave her a crutch.
And then he tried to escort her out of the pizza parlor
which was then closed.
During that time, they had an argument and she scratched him
and that is why his DNA ended up under her fingernails.
She comes back in a little bit later
and discovers him and his partner, Louis de Jesus,
in the process of preparing cocaine.
He claimed at that time that he and de Jesus were drug dealers.
He was worried because she had seen them
in the process of dealing their drugs,
and that his life would be ruined.
He would lose his scholarship to college if he were found out.
So he panicked and told Louis de Jesus to take care of Genevieve
while he went into the office.
[narrator] Derrick claims that while he was out of the room,
De Jesus stabbed Ginny more than 30 times.
So when Derrick returns from the office,
he sees Ginny is on the floor, covered in blood.
She's dead.
[Jones] In the early hours of March 22nd,
they throw her body from the embankment,
along with other items from the trunk of the car.
Derrick confesses to having helped Louis de Jesus
to dispose of the body using his car
That's how his mother's garbage ended up at the scene.
That's how the crutch ended up at the scene.
[narrator] Following the murder, Derrick resumes his life
as a high school student and football star.
So there were clearly two sides to Derrick Torian.
One was the model student and star athlete,
and the other was the guy who was dealing drugs.
Raises the question that comes up in a lot of murders.
Who was Derrick Torian?
[narrator] Although Derrick's story sounds credible,
investigators have no way to corroborate it with evidence.
And the only other witness who could confirm or refute Derrick's story is dead.
It's a very convenient thing for him
because Louis de Jesus was murdered
shortly after Genevieve's murder in a shooting.
[Markiewicz speaking]
[narrator] So the only witness left alive
to explain how Derrick's DNA got under Ginny's nails
is Derrick himself.
Because of the difficulty in
prosecuting a case beyond a reasonable doubt of first degree murder,
the prosecution here in Anchorage offered Derrick
a plea of manslaughter instead of first degree murder.
That is the plea that he ultimately took.
[narrator] Derrick Torian pleads guilty to aggravated manslaughter,
and is sentenced to 15 years in prison.
[Jones] How does Ginny Tetpon's feel of this?
Some of them think it's too sweet a deal for Derrick Torian.
But her mom thinks it'll just be nice to get it over with,
and not have the family dragged through the trauma again.
For me as a police officer, this is a bittersweet victory.
We've found the person responsible for this heinous crime,
but Derrick Torian did not receive
anywhere near the sentence he should have received.
[Jones] It was a tragedy.
You know, I mean, you had this lovely young mother
who had poor kids that she loved and who loved her,
and her life was just cut short unfairly,
and perhaps the most tragic element of it
is it was all so pointless and random.