She was actually alive when she was set on fire.
GUTH: You've got a gruesome homicide,
one of the worst killings ever seen.
SCHAEFFER: Even though she was 23 years old,
she has more of a mentality of a teenager.
GUTH: She's very friendly. She's very trusting.
STEDMAN: She may have been taken advantage of.
He was controlling, jealous, manipulative.
He's also a very violent person.
He even says that he would have
to be killed to keep them apart.
GUTH: We have a very, very strong suspicion
who it is that has committed this homicide,
and now it's time to go after them.
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.
Just 75 miles north of Philadelphia,
Robesonia, Pennsylvania, is a peaceful,
family-friendly borough.
Robesonia is a small, tight-knit community of about 2,000 people.
It's rural, it's working class.
It's got a lot of farmland in the area.
GUTH: It is very quiet.
You don't have the crime or some of the other problems
that you see in some of the more populated areas.
SCHAEFFER: The people who live in the borough are very
community-oriented,
I would say -- it is an ideal place to raise a family.
GUTH: Because the population is so small,
the people that live there do know each other well.
NARRATOR: As dawn stirs the sleepy hamlet
on the first day of 2014,
one worried father calls police for help.
[phone ringing]
STEDMAN: Michael Kline called us to say
that his daughter Ashley was missing.
She hadn't been seen since about 10 o'clock
in the evening on December 30th.
He was very concerned and reported her missing.
SCHAEFFER: We respond to the Kline household immediately.
We interview Michael there.
GUTH: Mike explains that his daughter did not
show up at a New Year's Eve party
that was hosted by her best friend.
STEDMAN: He was calling Ashley's cellphone,
and he wasn't getting any response.
GUTH: He's very distressed that his daughter
hasn't shown back up,
because normally, she would let him know where she was,
what she was doing.
She was not very secretive in that respect.
NARRATOR: Detectives open an investigation into
the disappearance of 23-year-old Ashley Kline.
Leading the case are detectives Eric Schaeffer
and Raymund Guth of the Pennsylvania State Police.
SCHAEFFER: It was unusual to receive a call of this type
for a 23-year-old.
Ashley experienced lead poisoning as a small child,
so due to that, she had some diminished cognitive functions,
which, even though she was 23 years old,
she has more of a mentality of a teenager.
STEDMAN: So Michael is definitely concerned
given his daughter's loving
and trusting nature that she may have been taken advantage of.
NARRATOR: Detectives asked the worried father about
his daughter's whereabouts before she disappeared.
O'DONOVAN: Michael tells the detective that his daughter
left the residence at around 10 p.m. on
the 30th of December, two days earlier.
She walked past him in the living room.
They had a brief interaction.
He noticed she was wearing her favorite boots,
her pajama pants, and a sweatshirt with a jacket.
Michael tells us that Ashley was supposed to show up
at her friend Laney's house on the 30th,
spend most of the day with her on the 31st,
and set up for a New Year's Eve party.
Ashley never showed up.
We want to do everything we can to try to
find Ashley and bring her back home to her family.
NARRATOR: While patrols look for Ashley throughout Robesonia,
investigators ask her network for clues to her whereabouts.
STEDMAN: We start contacting anybody that would know where
she is or where she might have gone on December 30th.
NARRATOR: Investigators call on Ashley's boyfriend, 28-year-old
Wade Donahue, to come in and answer some questions.
They've been dating for a number of months at this
time, and he's concerned that he hasn't heard from her.
O'DONOVAN: Wade tells them that they have
a very good relationship.
They're very happy together.
SCHAEFFER: He communicates with Ashley
routinely through the week.
However, he only sees her mainly on
the weekends, because he works long hours in a pizzeria.
NARRATOR: Investigators ask Wade about his last
interactions with Ashley before she went missing.
SCHAEFFER: Wade gave Ashley an early Christmas present,
a necklace.
It had their names engraved on it.
It was in the shape of a heart.
Ashley was so excited about this,
she posted a picture of the pendant on
her social media the day she received it.
Wade tells us that the last time he
actually saw Ashley in person was December 28th,
and he last spoke with Ashley on December 30th.
They were communicating via text message.
STEDMAN: And he's been trying to reach her for the last two days.
So at this point, we don't
have anything that raises suspicion about Wade.
You're always gonna look
at boyfriends and significant others.
So he's not out of the picture,
but we need to start looking in a new direction.
NARRATOR: So investigators turn to another young man
who knew Ashley well.
We contact one of Ashley's oldest friends,
19-year-old Ryan Schannauer.
STEDMAN: Ryan and Ashley's mothers were best friends,
and the two kids had actually grown up together.
Ryan tells us that their parents even joked that one day
they might even get married,
because of the amount of time they spent together growing up.
STEDMAN: So we asked Ryan,
when's the last time you saw Ashley?
SCHAEFFER: Ryan tells us that
he picks up Ashley in front of her house on December 30th
around 10 p.m.
He says they go back to his house,
they watch a movie together.
O'DONOVAN: Ashley was distracted.
She wasn't really paying attention to the movie.
She was more interested in her phone,
and she was texting somebody on the phone continuously.
Approximately an hour after they start the movie,
Ashley asks him to drive her home,
that she needs to go home,
and he's curious as to why,
but he says that he consents to do this.
O'DONOVAN: About a block away from her home,
she asked to be let out of the car.
STEDMAN: So we ask him, "What do you know about this?
"Who is she meeting?
Why is she getting dropped off before she goes home?"
And he said he didn't know, this is what Ashley wanted to do.
O'DONOVAN: Ryan said the last time he saw Ashley was she
got out of his car, and she walked into the neighborhood.
So investigators are extremely interested in Ryan's story,
because he is now
the last person to see Ashley since she actually disappeared.
Being the last person to see the victim would
elevate Ryan to the top of the list of suspects.
GUTH: Ashley is a young lady in her twenties
with the mental capability of someone much younger,
and it's late in the evening.
What is he thinking doing this?
Ryan Schannauer becomes suspicious at this point.
NARRATOR: In the mysterious disappearance of
23-year-old Ashley Kline,
Pennsylvania investigators learn that her childhood friend,
Ryan Schannauer,
was the last person to see her on December 30th, 2013.
Ryan tells the investigators that Ashley asked him
to drive her home before the movie was finished.
So they got into his car,
and he headed back towards her house.
When they got into the neighborhood,
she asked that he stop the car, and she got out.
STEDMAN: He adds that, after he dropped her off,
he actually continued to be in a text message
conversation with her and showed us that he was in
conversation with her up until 1 a.m. that night.
O'DONOVAN: Ryan tells the investigators that he spent
the rest of the evening at his friend's house,
and then he drove home.
But on his way home, Ryan's car broke down.
He calls his mother for assistance.
She was working nearby at the time.
So she leaves her job.
She meets with Ryan, and they arrange for
a tow truck to tow the vehicle back to their house.
And that occurs around 1 a.m. on December 31st.
Ryan was very cooperative,
answered everything we asked of him, said if he
learns anything else, that he would give us a call.
[phone ringing]
NARRATOR: Three days after Ashley went missing,
detectives receive a call from a neighboring town.
A jogger calls police to tell them that
she's found some items of concern
in Adamstown, Pennsylvania.
NARRATOR: Adamstown is just 10 miles south
of Ashley's home in Robesonia.
SCHAEFFER: We arrive at the scene,
and we observe a pink boot,
an empty cellphone case,
a black and gray Philadelphia Phillies baseball cap.
We go back to Michael Kline and his family and see
if they can make sense or recognize any of these items.
Michael Kline believes that the pink boot is consistent to
a pair that Ashley owned and most likely consistent to
the pair he remembers her walking out of
the house with on December 30th.
He has also shown the cellphone case.
He believes that that is also consistent with
what he remembers of his daughter's cellphone.
The one article that they do not attribute
to Ashley is the Philadelphia Phillies ball cap.
Michael has no idea whose hat that might be.
And, of course, now, finding these items,
it becomes even more of a concern that something bad
may have happened to her.
And now we're trying to put the pieces together.
NARRATOR: Just 10 days after Christmas,
Ashley's family is forced to consider
whether they'll ever see her alive again.
To answer that question,
investigators return to Adamstown,
where Ashley's belongings were recovered.
GUTH: We begin to search the area,
and there's a wastewater treatment plant right there,
and it's got a high fence
and inside the fence, you have a water treatment pond,
and there's a grassy area.
SCHAEFFER: There's a sock in the water,
and there's a sock outside the retention pond.
So whoever discarded these items most likely threw them in
an attempt to throw them in the water to conceal them.
GUTH: The sock matched up with items that Ashley Kline would
have had on when she disappeared
on the night of December 30th.
These items are collected, and they're taken into evidence.
SCHAEFFER: The issue with the tanks for us
is that the water is gray water.
You can't see through it.
It's wintertime, it's cold.
It's a possibility that other items are concealed
in the water, and it's possible that even
a body could be concealed in the water.
We make a request that the retention pond tanks are all
drained, and we have our forensics team analyze
everything that's left behind.
NARRATOR: When the tanks are drained,
thankfully, Ashley's body is not found at the bottom,
but detectives do find something else.
O'DONOVAN: In one of the tanks that they've drained,
they find a keychain with a charm attached to it.
They show this charm to Ashley's family,
and they confirm that this was Ashley's.
All they have to hang on to is their hope at this point.
NARRATOR: But 10 days later, detectives get
a grim tip that threatens what little hope remains.
It's two weeks since Ashley's been reported missing.
I get a call saying that two hikers were hiking
in Middle Creek Wildlife Preserve
and came up to an area where there was some
burnt brush and things.
They walk the trail towards what they thought was
a campfire, and as they get within 12 feet,
they realize there's a severely burned body.
[siren wailing]
STEDMAN: So they called 911, naturally,
and we immediately dispatched a forensic team.
SCHAEFFER: I'm thinking the worst.
It's unusual for a body to be found,
much less two weeks after a girl that's been reported missing.
The brush around the body has been burnt.
The clothing around the body has mostly been burned off,
and there's serious trauma to the body itself.
Based on the condition of the body,
we are not able to identify if this is Ashley Kline or not.
GUTH: One of the things that we find
on the body is a badly burnt boot
that is very similar to
the boot that we found at
the waste treatment center close by there.
NARRATOR: To confirm whether the remains are Ashley's,
investigators must now ask
Ashley's father for her dental records.
In my career, that's probably the most crucial
conversation I've ever had with somebody.
To knock on their door, look him in the eye, and not be
able to tell him we found his daughter,
but then turn around and ask for
who's his daughter's dentist.
At that point, I think, for the family,
all hope is pretty much lost.
NARRATOR: Dental records confirm
the burned remains are Ashley Kline's.
It's not every day that you
see something this heinous take place.
People want answers, and we're the ones
responsible for providing those answers,
so there is a lot of pressure.
Once it's been confirmed that this is Ashley's body,
the investigation takes on a new meaning.
Now you've got a homicide.
The pace of the investigation actually picks up.
NARRATOR: Based on evidence investigators have so far,
they formulate an initial theory
of what likely occurred to Ashley.
SCHAEFFER: We received the results of the autopsy.
She was physically assaulted, beaten.
Ashley was stabbed five times
And then she was doused with
a petroleum accelerant and set on fire.
There was burning on the body, mostly around
the pelvic region, which made us suspicious of
sexual assault.
However, forensically, there was no way for us to prove
that that happened, as the intensity
of the fire destroyed any type of physical evidence that could
have been discovered in the area.
There was the presence of soot in Ashley's lungs,
which indicated that she was
actually alive when she was set on fire.
GUTH: You've got a gruesome homicide,
one of the worst killings that many of
the investigators have ever seen or had to investigate.
It's really a horror story in its own right.
NARRATOR: Two weeks after 23-year-old Ashley Klein
went missing from her Robesonia, Pennsylvania, home,
investigators recover her charred remains just
10 miles from where she grew up.
Detectives suspect the homicide of the mentally
challenged but loving young woman was sexually motivated.
It's a tragic case and also a sad commentary on society.
Here you have a young girl,
possibly looking for love and to feel a sense of belonging,
only to have that used against her and wind up murdered.
NARRATOR: To solve the mystery of Ashley Kline's murder,
detectives will need to reconstruct
the last 24 hours of her life.
They circle back to Ryan Schannauer,
the last known person to see Ashley alive.
STEDMAN: We look at the timeline that Ryan Schannauer
told us where he says he dropped her off,
and, of course, he showed us text messages from Ashley
on his phone up until one o'clock after he left her.
NARRATOR: Based on Ryan's story, detectives estimate Ashley was
murdered sometime between
11 p.m. on December 30th when she was last seen alive
in the early hours of the morning of December 31st.
Now, investigators take a closer look
at 19-year-old Ryan.
STOCKDALE: Most of those who are killed, unfortunately,
are killed by those who know them.
Ryan is one of Ashley's oldest and closest friends,
so it raises red flags for sure.
NARRATOR: Detectives now consider if Ashley Kline
was murdered by her lifelong friend, Ryan Schannauer.
When they interviewed Ryan in his home two weeks earlier,
was he telling the truth?
Our goal is to corroborate Ryan's story to make sure that
all the details that
he gave us in the first interview check out,
that he was with the friends
he said he was with, that his vehicle did get towed to
the place they said it was towed to.
GUTH: When we speak with Ryan's mom,
she does corroborate
the fact that his car broke down
and that she arranged for the tow truck,
and she also tells us who it was that towed the vehicle
and where the vehicle was towed to and where it is now.
And at this point, everything checks out
with Ryan's story.
NARRATOR: Ryan Schannauer's alibi is airtight.
Detectives eliminate him as a suspect.
The investigators have to look for something else.
They have to look for another lead.
We turn our attention to Wade Donahue,
Ashley's boyfriend again.
We wanted to go to Wade's workplace to
see when he was working, what his schedule was,
and discover that Wade was not at work on December 30th.
O'DONOVAN: Wade didn't call to say he wasn't coming in.
He just never showed up, and he didn't come
back to work until December 31st at 12 p.m.
NARRATOR: Suddenly, Wade is the detectives' prime suspect.
SCHAEFFER: We're concerned enough to go back to
the Kline family and ask
for some clarity of the relationship
and how they felt about Wade.
We learned some things that were, again, problematic.
We learned more about who Wade Donahue really
is and became even more concerned with his background.
Wade was controlling, a bit jealous,
maybe even manipulative of Ashley.
Ashley's brother tells us that the day
after Ashley is last seen, which is December 31st,
Wade shows up at the Kline residence
and insists that he has to use Ashley's computer.
Wade logs on to the computer and changes
Ashley's password, gets
on her social media account, and proceeds to go through it.
Is he this jealous, that he
needs to control Ashley's every move?
Learning this information made it obvious to us that there
were some issues in the relationship between Wade
and Ashley, that there were some control issues,
some trust issues, and that maybe not everything was
the way he wanted it to seem.
GUTH: So now he's got more to explain.
Is he telling us the truth about what he knows?
And did Wade Donahue murder Ashley Kline?
NARRATOR: 28-year-old Wade Donahue was possessive
of Ashley and lied about showing up
for work at the pizzeria on December 31st,
the day after she went missing.
GUTH: His boss speaks very highly of him.
He's very reliable,
except for this one time.
NARRATOR: Detectives bring Wade in again for more questioning,
this time on suspicion of murder.
SCHAEFFER: He was very cooperative.
GUTH: He admits that he did not show up for work
at the pizzeria on December 31st as he was supposed to.
He just decides he doesn't want to go to work.
Doesn't call in.
He just didn't feel like it and didn't
feel that he had to let anyone know.
He needs to come up with an alibi,
and he actually does.
Wade tells us his brother came over,
and they were playing video games,
and sometime around 10 p.m.,
his brother leaves.
He tells us that he went to bed then.
One of the problems with his story is that he has no alibi
whatsoever from the time
his brother leaves around 10 p.m. on the 30th
until he arrives at the shift at 12 p.m.
the next day at the pizzeria.
NARRATOR: Detectives ask Wade why he logged into Ashley's
social media the day after she went missing.
GUTH: When we press him as to why he was on her computer,
what he says is that he's frustrated, he's scared,
he wants to know what happened to her,
and the only way he can think of is to
get on her computer and see who she's had contact with.
Wade claims that he found numerous
conversations with men that he didn't recognize.
And when he sees this, he feels that he needs
to block these people from speaking with her.
Wade's perspective in all this,
he knows that Ashley is naive,
and he feels that he's protecting her.
When we asked him why he wasn't up front about this,
basically, he's embarrassed, and he didn't want to
cause suspicions as to what he was doing.
He didn't want to make himself a suspect,
and he just did not
envision that this would even come out.
SCHAEFFER: Wade was still very suspicious to us.
However, he provided some interesting information
of things that we should investigate.
When he looked in the computer,
he found a conversation that Ashley was having with another
individual, which could be a person of interest.
Wade made us aware that she was
having a conversation with an individual
named Blake Caucafuoca.
Blake Caucafuoca is in his mid-20s, from out of town.
Ashley's family doesn't recognize his name, and there's
a lot of question marks around how he knew Ashley.
We looked into his background and discovered he had arrests
for burglary, theft,
and of most concern to us was an arrest for sexual assault.
O'DONOVAN: Ashley's father searches Ashley's room,
and he finds hidden away in a corner
love letters to Ashley that are written by Blake.
In these letters Blake shows great love for Ashley.
He even says that he would have
to be killed to keep them apart.
It was shocking to discover that the love letters were sent
from Columbia County Prison,
which is about 65 miles from Ashley's home.
Michael Kline tells the investigators that
he believes that this relationship started
through a prison pen pal program
that was organized by their church.
GUTH: We discovered that he was actually released
from prison several days before Ashley's disappearance.
And we find that Ashley and Blake actually
communicated on December 30th,
the day that she disappears.
This heightens the imperative to find out
just where he was.
ARNTFIELD: Experienced sexual predators
have an intuitive radar for
potential victims.
They know that these people
can be easily manipulated and dominated.
O'DONOVAN: On examining the letters,
it looks like Blake was absolutely obsessed with Ashley.
Obsession can be unhealthy.
NARRATOR: Two weeks after the brutal murder
of 23-year-old Ashley Kline,
her killer remains at large.
Detectives learn that she was corresponding
with 26-year-old Blake Caucafuoca,
a violent sex offender who was released from
prison just days before she was murdered.
Detectives set out to find him.
We track down Blake to Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania,
which is about a two-hour drive from Ashley's hometown,
and we bring him in for questioning.
NARRATOR: Detectives begin by zeroing in
on Blake's letters to Ashley.
SCHAEFFER: Just the amount of love that he expressed for
Ashley was super alarming for someone
who was just a prison pen pal.
So we wanted to get to
the bottom of who Blake Caucafuoca actually was.
GUTH: Blake tells us that he wrote these letters
to pass his time in prison
and he never actually met Ashley in person,
nor had he ever been down to her residence.
Blake's behavior is concerning, maybe a little bizarre, that
he said some of the things that he's said.
And so now, of course, what we need to find out
is if he had the ability
to be involved in her disappearance.
NARRATOR: Detectives ask Blake for his whereabouts
the night of December 30th,
when he last communicated with Ashley on social media
before she disappeared.
SCHAEFFER: Blake tells us that the night Ashley disappeared,
He was in Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania with a friend,
and he bizarrely tells us
that he has no way to contact his friend to prove his alibi.
GUTH: He's telling us he wasn't in the Robesonia area.
We have nothing to put him there.
We can't even find a means for him to get down
there as to a vehicle that he would even have access to.
SCHAEFFER: Despite Blake's criminal history,
we have no way to link him to Ashley's hometown.
We have no way to link him to Ashley's disappearance.
We have no way to link him to Ashley's murder.
O'DONOVAN: Just like everybody else they've spoken to,
there's no evidence to hold Blake.
The investigators are getting frustrated at this point,
so they have to go back and start from scratch.
NARRATOR: Hoping to find something
they may have overlooked,
investigators re-examine the evidence retrieved from
the water treatment plant
in Adamstown and from the crime scene in the woods.
SCHAEFFER: We had to look at the physical evidence,
things that were dumped around Adamstown,
and what that could mean
for Ashley's disappearance and murder.
STEDMAN: One thing that we know is that
an accelerant was used on her body.
That accelerant is coming from somewhere.
We start to take a look at all the gas stations in
the vicinity to see if anybody
had purchased some gas or some type of petroleum substance in
a container around the time of Ashley's murder.
The results of our request was extensive.
We've obtained hundreds of transactions of fuel,
hours and hours of surveillance,
and we had to sift through all this new information.
NARRATOR: One piece of footage
gets the investigators' attention.
There's surveillance film of one man visiting a gas station
about 10 miles away from the crime scene.
What caught our eye was gasoline that was not put
into a vehicle, it was put into a small gasoline carrier.
And while this individual was fueling,
he took off his jacket,
turned it inside out, and put his jacket back on.
STEDMAN: There's a few reasons that someone
would turn your jacket inside and out.
One of them would be to not be identified.
SCHAEFFER: The timing of where this purchase was located
and the bizarre actions of this individual made us
determine that this is someone we want to identify.
GUTH: When it's zoomed in on,
what really stands out is that
the individual is wearing a black Phillies hat
very similar to the one that is found in Adamstown.
NARRATOR: Detectives don't just identify
the Phillies baseball cap.
They identify the man wearing it.
STEDMAN: We're actually able to identify
the man as 21-year-old Adam Lynch.
This is the single biggest break for the case.
SCHAEFFER: We look at Adam Lynch's criminal history
and discover that he had multiple arrests
all the way through his juvenile
and adult years that included assault, theft,
drug possession charges, as well as a charge of
criminal battery.
GUTH: He's a person who has not only
spent a lot of time in jail,
it becomes apparent he's also a very violent person.
SCHAEFFER: We interview Adam Lynch, and we ask him what
he was doing on the evening of December 30th.
GUTH: What he tells us is that he had nothing to do with
Ashley Kline, and it must just be a coincidence that
he was getting gas at this gas station, and he doesn't
understand why it is that we're even talking to him about this.
We don't believe him, and we're not going away.
He needs to be a bit more up front with us.
Adam was nervous during the interview, tapping his foot,
tapping his hand on the chair,
spinning back and forth in the chair,
clearly withholding information.
STEDMAN: We don't give up and keep questioning him,
confronting him with the Phillies baseball cap
in particular, as well as the gas can.
And eventually Adam changes his story and says, "Okay,
"I still didn't have anything to do with it,
but I know who did."
NARRATOR: In the murder of 23-year-old Ashley Kline,
20-year-old Adam Lynch tells
detectives he has something to confess.
GUTH: What we have is Adam Lynch claiming that he had nothing to
do with Ashley's murder,
but he can tell us who did,
and he comes right out and tells us,
"Well, it was Ryan Schannauer."
NARRATOR: Ryan Schannauer is Ashley's lifelong friend
and the last person to see Ashley the night
she disappeared.
Adam tells us that Ryan went to Ashley's house,
kidnapped her, and killed her.
GUTH: Adam claims that he only found out about her being killed
when Ryan comes to his house after it's done
and tells him about it.
It really doesn't make a lot of sense, because we already
know what Adam's activities were earlier in the evening.
Adam Lynch is seen on CCTV buying the gasoline.
He is seen wearing the same type of
hat that was found where Ashley's boot was found.
Adam is more involved in Ashley's murder
than he's telling us.
NARRATOR: Detectives keep Adam in custody and re-examine Ryan's
claim that after he dropped
Ashley off on her street on the night
she disappeared, his car broke down
and was towed in for service.
The investigators talk to the tow truck driver, and now
they realize that Ryan's car is still in the workshop,
and they get a search warrant to go and search Ryan's car.
NARRATOR: Detectives find disturbing evidence inside.
STEDMAN: We find boot prints on the inside of
the window, in the back seat of the vehicle,
but we also noticed two empty knife sheaths,
and we find the heart pendant with
Ashley and Wade's name engraved on it.
We now have physical evidence linking him to
her death from what we got from the car.
At this point, things are stacking up
against Ryan Schannauer.
We sit him down, and it's, "Hey, pal,
"you gave us all these really nice statements
"about your relationship with Ashley Kline.
"Well, here we have your buddy Adam Lynch,
and he's telling us that you murdered her."
Ryan's response to that? "I had nothing to do with that.
It was Adam that did all those things."
You would never realize that these two were good friends,
because they have now continued to elaborate more
and more on how the other person murdered her.
So in trying to condemn each other,
they're condemning themselves.
NARRATOR: But detectives still aren't sure
which one is the real killer,
Ryan Schannauer or Adam Lynch.
That's when a woman named Ellery
steps forward claiming to know the truth.
Ellery says she knows,
because she's the girlfriend of Adam Lynch.
She needs to get this off her chest
and let us know what she knows.
She comes right out and tells us that it wasn't just Ryan.
It wasn't just Adam. It was both of them.
That they planned to do this together.
Ellery denied any type of involvement.
Ellery informed us that the plan that Ryan
discussed with Adam
was to kidnap Ashley, take her out in the middle
of nowhere, assault her, rape her, and kill her.
She says that she was present when she heard Ryan
talking about how he loved Ashley
and was upset that she wasn't reciprocating his feelings.
Ryan had a love interest with her because of
the amount of time they spent together growing up.
Ashley Kline was moving forward with other
relationships in her life,
was talking about moving in with her boyfriend, Wade,
and on a different path in life and leaving him behind.
Ryan was jealous of that,
and he wanted to do something about it.
NARRATOR: According to Ellery, all Ryan needed was
an accomplice to turn his violent fantasy into a reality.
Adam Lynch was the criminal catalyst,
the criminal element, criminal motivation that Ryan
needed to get the nerve to do this.
NARRATOR: Ellery's account, together with evidence
recovered in Ryan's car,
as well as from the crime scene,
enabled detectives to finally confirm the events
that led to the murder of Ashley Kline.
SCHAEFFER: On December 30th around 2 p.m.,
Ryan Schannauer texts Ashley Kline relentlessly
through the afternoon,
basically begging her to come watch a movie.
She eventually agrees to meet him in the evening.
GUTH: At 10 p.m.,
Ryan Schannauer picks her up outside her home.
Ashley gets in the car and sees
Adam Lynch, who she was not expecting.
O'DONOVAN: Between 10 p.m. and 11 p.m.,
Ashley Kline, Ryan Schannauer, Adam Lynch drive around in
Ryan's car.
STEDMAN: Around 11 p.m.,
they arrive at the Middle Creek Wildlife Preserve.
Between 11 and 11:25 p.m.,
Ryan Schannauer beats and sexually assaults Ashley
before they both pull her from the car.
O'DONOVAN: They begin stabbing her with two separate knives.
GUTH: While she's still alive,
they pour gasoline over her body
and set her on fire.
At 11:30 p.m., Ryan Schannauer
and Adam Lynch drive away from the scene.
They then dump Ashley's items near
the Adamstown waste water station.
While doing so,
Adam Lynch's hat falls off, and he doesn't
realize it or forgets to pick it up.
O'DONOVAN: In order to cover his tracks,
Ryan uses Ashley's phone to text himself
to throw police off and to show that
he was texting with her up to 1 a.m.
It was a very horrific, violent set of circumstances.
NARRATOR: On December 8th, 2014, Adam Lynch and Ryan Schannauer
are sentenced to life in prison without
the possibility of parole for the murder of Ashley Kline.
O'DONOVAN: This is an extremely sad case
where you have a vulnerable young girl
who everybody liked and who went about
her daily life thinking that the world is a good place
and without any fear of something bad happening to her.
STEDMAN: It's hard to wrap your head around it.
You have one life taken, Ashley's family's lives forever
altered, and you have two
culpable individuals who are gonna spend the rest of