PENNER: She was a mother,
eight-year-old triplets, and she was face-down on the couch,
strangled to death. - [knocking]
BRAMHALL: It's likely that whoever killed her
was somebody who knew her
and was conversing with her and then would have
flown into a rage and attacked her.
NARRATOR: A brutal murder with strange clues left behind.
PENNER: The scarf could have been used
to strangle Dana to death.
BRAMHALL: This case was a genuine whodunnit.
NARRATOR: Who would want this cherished
mother of three dead and why?
PENNER: The police looked at the estranged husband.
They looked at the boyfriend. They looked at the stalker.
Somebody did this.
They just had to figure out who that was.
NARRATOR: The truth will be revealed.
STOCKDALE: I may describe this person best
is somebody who's a fledgling psychopath.
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.
♪♪
NARRATOR: At the foot of Mount Rainier in Washington
lies Puyallup, a quaint peaceful town
with nature trails and tree-lined streets.
PENNER: Puyallup is a smaller town.
It's an old town. It has some nice scenery.
You move here for the schools and the parks and for your kids.
Puyallup is a safe town.
It's gonna have a lower crime rate.
It's not the kind of place where you expect
to see a lot of violent crime.
NARRATOR: But in August 2001, on a day like any other,
police get a worrying call about one of the town's
newest residents.
BRAMHALL: Dana Laskowski worked as a nanny for two doctors,
and she was scheduled to arrive at 7:30 in the morning
at work, and she didn't show up.
This was very unusual for her.
She was very reliable, so her employers called us,
and we responded out to her house to check her welfare.
PENNER: About 11 in the morning, the police arrive at
Dana's residence to just make sure that she's okay.
Knock on the door, and there's no answer.
They did a perimeter check, and they looked in the windows
and tried to see if they could see anything,
and they didn't notice anything,
but they did find that the back door was open,
and so they went ahead and entered the house.
BRAMHALL: Our officers came in, calling Dana's name,
and then found her on the couch in the living room.
She was underneath blankets.
She was in a position where her head was resting on her arm,
and then or other arm,
we found it behind her back.
She was deceased.
Police will always do at least a cursory examination
of the body to see where the injuries might be and look
for any kind of things, like stab wounds or gunshot wounds.
There were nothing like that, but they did notice
injuries to her throat, ligature marks.
And there was a scarf close by,
which indicated that she'd been strangled.
At this point, it's a homicide investigation.
NARRATOR: But who would want to kill 36-year-old Dana Laskowski?
Dana was a mother with eight-year-old triplets,
and she had a niece, Amanda,
that she felt like a mother to and said,
"You can come and go here
"however you please, and so can your friends.
And if you need anything from me, I'll be there."
BRAMHALL: When she'd walk into a room,
she would get to know everybody in the room.
Everybody would like her.
She's very outgoing, very personable.
She was always somebody that had a kind word,
uh, or a kind deed for everybody.
NARRATOR: Tasked with investigating Dana's murder
are veteran detective Scott Bramhall
and prosecuting attorney Stephen Penner.
BRAMHALL: There are certainly crime scenes, homicide scenes,
where there's, you know, blood spatter,
a victim on the ground,
visible injuries, maybe a disruption all around
the room -- That wasn't the case here.
There wasn't any blood, no weapons.
There wasn't anything really broken.
And she was face-down on the couch.
NARRATOR: When police turn Dana over,
they find bruising on her neck and dried blood around her nose
and ears.
The medical examiner ruled that the cricoid cartilage
of her throat was fractured,
so it's a crushing injury to the throat.
Dana died from being strangled to death,
probably with her own scarf.
It's possible to strangle somebody with your hands,
but like any tool, a ligature makes it easier.
If you're behind them with a ligature,
it can be very difficult to get the ligature
off the throat, and even if you can dig
your fingers in between the ligature and your throat,
it won't stop the compression of the airway.
In this particular case, uh,
it appeared that scarf could have been used to
strangle Dana with death.
So the police searched for any kind of trace evidence,
uh, DNA, bodily fluids,
something that they could use to try to identify the killer.
They looked for everything they could,
and they didn't find anything.
We kept going back to Dana's body,
where it was found,
in what position it was in, her arm up behind her back,
face-down on the couch, strangled to death.
It suggested that there was a struggle.
Whoever did this had enough strength to overpower her,
someone who's -- who's literally fighting for their life.
BRAMHALL: The crime indicated the offender was strong,
somebody with upper body strength, so we were
assuming the offender would be a male.
NARRATOR: To find Dana's killer, Detective Bramhall must
reconstruct the final 24 hours of her life,
starting with the crime scene.
BRAMHALL: There were abrasions to Dane Laskowski's knees
and elbows, and they would be an indication that
Dana Laskowski was not killed on the couch,
that it was likely that there was a possible struggle
on the floor.
We were able to process the carpet with luminol.
What we did was we marked on the rug
the location of the luminol illuminations, and that formed
a pattern.
The pattern would be an indication that
Dana was killed on the floor -- The person that killed her
would have then picked her up,
placed her on the couch, and then covered her up.
NARRATOR: Investigators believe the killer was trying to make
the body more comfortable after death,
an example of undoing behavior.
Undoing is a type of psychological defense mechanism.
We all have such mechanisms.
In this case, the fact that she was covered with a blanket
may indicate that somebody
had engaged in undoing behavior to cancel out
or counteract the murder.
You could read some remorse
or guilt into undoing behavior.
It implies that there's some sort of relationship
here between the killer and the victim.
PENNER: That would indicate that the killer
was someone who had affection for Dana.
This isn't a random burglar who
broke in and accidentally found her.
This is somebody maybe who knew her,
and that's important as you develop suspects.
NARRATOR: Then police receive significant information
about the timeline of Dana's murder.
The medical examiner was able to approximate that Dana had
been there for a few hours before the police arrived, um,
and most likely had died in the early hours of that morning.
We knocked on the neighbor's doors,
and one said that they reported hearing a woman
screaming during the night, um...
they estimated that time at about 1 AM,
so that gave us a timeframe.
We knew by 7:30 that morning,
Dana probably was dead, because she didn't show for her job.
NARRATOR: Having established Dana was killed between
the hours of 1 and 7:30 AM,
Police start looking into Dana's background
for clues about her murder.
PENNER: Dana was a mother.
She had three young children,
eight-year-old triplets living with her.
But at the time that Dana was murdered,
they were with Steve, her husband.
She had been recently separated, and police
were able to establish that she had started dating.
What that does is that just increases
the universe of people who might be suspects,
to people that Dana would have let into her house
late at night that
she would think that she was safe with when it turned out
that she wasn't.
NARRATOR: Detectives ask Dana's employers if Dana had
concerns about any of the men she'd been dating.
The people that she worked for as a nanny
told the police that Dana had mentioned a man, Adam,
who had turned as kind of a stalker.
BRAMHALL: Dan had just moved into her house, and Adam
ran a bucket truck for -- For a cable company,
and Adam had come to install some cable.
When the job was done, Adam asked Dana out on a date.
She wasn't interested, but that
didn't stop him from pursuing her.
Adam was a guy who wouldn't take no
for an answer and wouldn't leave her alone.
His behavior escalated.
Dana reported getting notes on her door, flowers, gifts,
and he was surveilling her
while she was at home and then calls
and texts that just wouldn't stop.
By all indications, this was obsessive, controlling,
angry behavior,
which would make it more credible that this person might
be able to get to the -- a mental state,
the emotional state, to kill somebody.
NARRATOR: Then what police learn next increases their interest
in Adam as a suspect even further.
Dana's employers told us that Dana had said that if anything
happened to her, it would be this
cable guy -- We find that significant,
and we take that very seriously.
If she was scared enough to tell people that he might do
something to me, something violent,
and then something did happen to her --
That, of course, raised concerns by the police.
BRAMHALL: At that point, Adam becomes the prime suspect.
NARRATOR: Police are closing in on a suspect,
a cable installer named Adam who had been stalking
Dana Laskowski in the weeks leading up to her murder.
Adam seemed to have a motive,
seemed to have a behavior that would suggest that he was
likely the killer.
BRAMHALL: We were focused on Adam as a prime suspect.
And we got search warrants
on his vehicle,
bucket truck, on his locker at work,
and we took him into custody.
He was belligerent.
He was very uncooperative, and he insisted
he wasn't the one that killed her.
NARRATOR: Detectives then press Adam about where
he was the night Dana was killed.
BRAMHALL: On the night of the murder,
he said he was at home hanging out with his friends.
NARRATOR: Searches through Adam's phone records
show he was at home that night.
BRAMHALL: Based on his alibi
as he gave it and the way it checked out,
he was moved down on the list of suspects
for our investigation.
PENNER: The police really thought Adam was one who
had killed Dana because of the stalking behavior,
but now they have to turn their attention
and resources to other suspects.
NARRATOR: Investigators shift their focus to
a small clue found at the crime scene.
BRAMHALL: Dana Laskowski had a phone number written
on her hand in ink, and some of that was faded.
But we looked at that phone number
and looked at identifying whose phone number it was.
NARRATOR: When police check the phone number,
they determine it belongs to a 35-year-old man named Julian.
ARNTFIELD: The phone number linked to Julian opens up
a realm of possibilities as to his potential motive.
This speaks to a certain degree of intimacy.
The fact that it's taken down in this
manner suggests that that number was important to her.
NARRATOR: Detectives track down Julian
and bring him in for questioning.
They asked why his phone number would be on Dana's hand.
BRAMHALL: He was not really answering.
I thought that was a little odd, so
we kind of zeroed in on his relationship with Dana.
NARRATOR: Julian tells investigators Dana was dating
his best friend, Matt,
but Julian seems nervous.
When we confronted Julian and asked him
if he also had a relationship with Dana,
he acknowledged that.
So it turns out that they were having an affair.
NARRATOR: With this startling revelation,
detectives now wonder if Julian could be Dana's killer.
They question where he was the night of the murder.
BRAMHALL: Julian said he was at a bar
on the night that Dana was murdered,
said he was there about from 10:30 at night
till past 1 a.m.
Checking into the bar,
the bar management,
it seemed to indicate
that that is consistent with truth.
He was with a group of friends,
his friends vouched for him being there.
So his alibi didn't put him anywhere
near Dana's house that night.
NARRATOR: With Julian's alibi ruling him
out as Dana's killer, detectives
question if their affair gave
his friend Matt a motive for murder.
Dana's killer would be the kind of person who
she wouldn't think twice about having in her house,
but also could be the kind of person who might be
jealous and could get angry enough
to strangle her to death.
Romantic relationships can lead to
that kind of intensity of feelings.
Of course, they don't all do,
but a lot of times, when you see that type of crime,
that's the situation.
The nature of this killing was very personal.
And so Matt, who seemed to be kind of a primary boyfriend
for Dana, naturally became a suspect.
NARRATOR: Armed with Julian's information,
investigators dig deeper into Dana and Matt's relationship.
We were told Matt was very much in love with Dana.
And Dana liked Matt but was less into
Matt than Matt was into Dana.
ARNTFIELD: In this case, we have one person in
this relationship who's clearly more invested than the other.
On top of that, he discovers that she's sleeping with his
best friend -- That automatically interjects
a degree of, obviously, jealousy and resentment.
NARRATOR: Dana's phone records reveal that she spoke
with Matt repeatedly the night she was killed.
BRAMHALL: According to the phone records,
Dana had been on the phone with her boyfriend, Matt,
talking to him a few times between 11:30 and midnight.
NARRATOR: When detectives ask Dana's friends about Matt,
they learn he's a rough type of guy.
BRAMHALL: We were being told by Dana's friends
and associates and family
that Matt was a biker
and a person that used hard drugs, a person who could fight.
He was a person -- we were told he could fight 10 men at once,
and so we looked at him as a very good suspect.
It's possible Matt found out about
the affair and went and confronted Dana,
um, because he felt that he had been jilted.
And during that confrontation,
flew into a rage, killing Dana.
NARRATOR: In the murder of Dana Laskowski,
investigators have zeroed in on her boyfriend, Matt, who
they learn is based just outside of Vancouver, Canada.
The fact that Matt lived in Canada --
That alone wouldn't eliminate him as a suspect.
Puyallup's only about a three- or four-hour drive.
BRAMHALL: So we went up to Canada
to look into him,
and when arrived,
we met with him, explained what we were
there for, asked him where he was
on the night that Dana was murdered.
NARRATOR: When Matt is questioned, he denies
having any involvement in Dana's death.
Matt said he tried to get down to Puyallup to visit Dana on
the night that she died,
but he was stopped at the border because he had
a suspended license and was not allowed entry into the country.
PENNER: So Matt told the police that at the time
that Dana was murdered,
he was at the Canadian border crossing and could not have
been the one who had committed the murder.
BRAMHALL: We looked into it, and we can verify
that he was where he said he was.
All that was documented -- Not by Matt,
but by the border officials.
It was about as good as alibis you could get.
It was, in fact, backed up by, uh, by the government.
NARRATOR: With Matt cleared as a suspect,
investigators ask him for any information that could lead to
Dana's killer.
Matt said that he was on the phone with Dana
on the night of the murder,
and she seemed a little bit inhibited by some of
her conversation.
And that suggested that Dana might
have had somebody in the house.
NARRATOR: Matt suggests the mystery person could have been
Dana's estranged husband, Steve.
PENNER: Steve would certainly be a natural person
to go talk to.
This was someone she'd shared part of her life with.
But the state of being separated is
a difficult state to be in emotionally.
Um, and depending on what else was going on,
it could lead to that kind of anger that was necessary for
this killing.
BRAMHALL: Steve might be
jilted and angry enough to kill her,
or they may just have had a planned meeting to exchange
the children, could have erupted into a spontaneous argument,
which led to the murder.
All of these were possibilities that we had to look into.
NARRATOR: Detectives dig into Steve and discover he took out
a life insurance policy on Dana.
BRAMHALL: The factor of a life insurance policy
would be a motive for murder
for financial reasons.
We also felt that passion, jealousy, anger
at having the family split up would be
a possible motive for him wanting to kill Dana.
With Dana's ex-husband in their crosshairs,
detectives bring him down to the station for questioning.
BRAMHALL: As we talked to Steve about his relationship
with Dana, he was found to be unusually locked up
and reserved in his emotions,
kind of a flat affect.
He was not very expressive.
NARRATOR: Then detectives notice another suspicious detail.
BRAMHALL: It was noted that he had abrasions to his knees,
and Dana had abrasions to her knees and elbows.
We felt that the two of them might have scuffled together
on the night that she was murdered.
When we asked Steve about the abrasions to his knees,
he said he got them playing baseball.
But then one of the detectives that was
there happens to be a real baseball fan,
and he said it was his opinion
that those abrasions were not consistent with
injuries that you get playing baseball.
At that point, Steve really moved up
the top of the list of suspects.
NARRATOR: But did Steve have the opportunity to kill Dana?
BRAMHALL: When we asked Steve where he was on the night
of the murder, he said he was at home,
five hours away from Puyallup.
He said he put the kids in bed, went out and gassed up
the vehicle,
got up the next morning, and drove to a local campsite.
ARNTFIELD: His alibi is interesting.
The fact that the triplets are conveniently
out of the house for the murder --
That could be a coincidence.
It could also speak to planning
and that the children couldn't be there for
that particular day, because he had plans for her.
BRAMHALL: The round trip from where
Steve lived to where Dana lived is 10 hours,
so we really looked at the possibility of Steve being
able to put the kids in bed and drive to Puyallup,
kill Dana, turn around, and drive back
or have the kids in the car, asleep,
drive to Puyallup, kill Dana, and drive back.
NARRATOR: If Steve did make the trip to Dana's house,
investigators know he would have needed to stop for gas
along the way. - We retraced the steps
and the route that Steve would have taken,
checked for possible places
where Steve might have gassed up.
We checked the surveillance cameras,
any indicators along the roadway that would have
picked up his car.
There was no evidence to support
the theory that Steve made that route.
NARRATOR: Not finding any evidence
connecting Steve to the crime,
investigators rule him out as a suspect.
Now they eliminated all the suspects,
and when they did that,
the investigation kind of hit a brick wall.
It was a source of frustration for them.
BRAMHALL: We had reached a point in the investigation
where we didn't have a very good suspect,
a very good plausible explanation
as to exactly how the homicide occurred.
We're kind of at an impasse, and with the positioning of Dana,
the way she was covered with the blankets afterwards,
that's very unusual offender behavior.
So I felt it was necessary for
an FBI profile to be done on the case.
So I contacted the FBI.
The local police department may not be able to say,
hey, I've seen this behavior in the past, hey,
I've seen this indicator in the past for the all the other
homicides we had.
The FBI brings that background,
that experience, and that knowledge to help the police
identify additional suspects.
NARRATOR: Five months into the investigation,
the FBI offers up a new theory, that Dana's murder wasn't
planned but happened in the heat of the moment.
BRAMHALL: The FBI said that the person who came
to Dana's house that night
did not come to the house to kill her.
And it's likely that whoever killed her
was somebody who knew her,
who was conversing with her, and then would have flown into
a rage and attacked her.
PENNER: The police looked at the estranged husband.
They looked at the boyfriend.
They looked at the stalker.
Now the police had to figure out
new suspects who weren't as obvious.
Somebody did this.
They just had to figure out who that was.
NARRATOR: Armed with new information from the FBI,
investigators expand their search
in the brutal murder of Dana Laskowski.
So now we were looking for somebody who was prone to
flying into a rage, had upper body strength,
maybe somebody that Dana would have rebuffed an advance from.
NARRATOR: Looking for new leads.
Detectives examine the video footage from Dana's funeral.
It was important to see who went to the funeral,
but it was also important to see how people acted at
the funeral.
STOCKDALE: From a psychological standpoint,
you want to see A, who was in attendance,
B, how they're responding.
It's entirely possible that the killer is present.
When you think about most people being killed by someone
they know, odds are
that those persons or people are going to be at
the funeral, because it would be socially unacceptable not to.
And then how do they manage that situation?
Is there something that could reveal
themselves and their involvement to investigators?
NARRATOR: As police look through the guest book,
they make an unexpected discovery.
BRAMHALL: Loved ones wrote comments in there, such as,
you know, they miss Dana.
They can't believe she's passed away.
They miss her dearly, think about her often.
Then there was an entry from a niece, and she said,
"Sorry, I wasn't a better niece.
"I've been clean and sober 34 days now.
It's all because of you."
And some of the family members
describe the niece as unruly and wild.
But the entry told us that the niece
had gone clean and sober after Dana's death.
PENNER: But even more importantly, she was doing it
for Dana, which showed two things --
One was her love for Dana.
But it also showed that she felt guilt for some reason
for her aunt's death,
and that was important.
It suggested that she may have been involved either
shortly before or even during or after somehow.
NARRATOR: Detective Bramhall sets his sights
on Dana's niece, Amanda.
BRAMHALL: I called Amanda, and I asked her
to come in for an interview.
NARRATOR: Amanda tells the detective that she
and her aunt were close,
almost like mother and daughter.
She adds that Dana was always there for her and her friends.
BRAMHALL: Amanda and her friends,
they call themselves the Park Rats,
which we on the police department are well familiar
with -- they're kids that hang out at Pioneer Park,
and they're kids that don't have good homes.
They don't have a stable home environment, and drug use is
their common bond, um,
as they're hanging out in the park.
PENNER: This whole group was, like, right out of high school.
They didn't really have plans.
I think high school was behind him.
They didn't know what was ahead of 'em, um...
you know, they weren't home doing their homework.
They weren't helping little old ladies across the street.
It's a nice town.
But to the extent that there was a rough group,
this was that group.
Dana tried to be a safe place for Amanda and her friends.
Amanda could go to Dana's place,
no questions asked, any time of day or night,
and she could bring her friends if she needed to.
That was significant when the police remembered
Dana's back door was unlocked that night.
NARRATOR: Investigators ask Amanda what she knows about
her aunt's murder and quickly get a lead.
BRAMHALL: So she gave me the list of names of the people
that had been in the house,
and she did kind of focus on one individual -- Zane.
She describes Zane as somebody with a lot
of upper body strength, and he had a temper.
Zane is somebody who
dealt in marijuana.
NARRATOR: Then Amanda makes an even more
alarming statement.
Amanda went in to describe how Zane made an advance at her,
and she rebuffed him, and that he bent her over the couch
and was being physical.
This was almost consistent with
the murder as we understood it.
I undertake a look at Zane, and I look in our files.
He's got a criminal history, um, dealing and drugs,
violence, so he was enough of in
the criminal element to be a very good suspect.
NARRATOR: Detective Bramhall reaches out to one of his
younger informants to see what he knows about Zane.
BRAMHALL: I had a sit-down with him, and I talked to him about
the murder of Amanda's aunt,
and I suggested to him that Zane would be a good likely
suspect, and he looked at me, and he said,
Zane didn't kill Amanda's aunt. Emily killed Amanda's aunt.
Everybody knows that.
PENNER: One of the people in Amanda's group
was a young woman named Emily.
Emily is 17.
She's living on the streets or close to it.
She's using drugs.
Amanda and Emily were very close,
maybe best friends.
NARRATOR: Detective Bramhall is familiar with Emily from
her troubles with the law in her past.
And I said to this person, "Are you telling me that Emily,
"this little five-foot-two girl,
strangled a 36-year-old mother of three?"
And he said, "Your records are old.
"Emily is not a skinny little five-foot-two girl.
"She is very muscular.
"She has a picture of her biceps hanging
"from a rearview mirror.
"We call her mutant, because she likes
to wrestle and fight with the guys."
But you can imagine, the police were a little
bit hesitant to believe that that was the case really,
um, because again,
somebody had overpowered Dana fighting for her life.
Emily is not a normal suspect.
NARRATOR: Detective Bramhall digs into
the story that Emily Lauenborg could be Dana's killer.
PENNER: As they started to interview these Park Rats,
one of the things that started to come out was
that maybe the toughest of all of them was Emily,
and that Emily would win arm wrestling and even
regular wrestling, and that she had
this strength that other people were really
surprised by, even the boys.
NARRATOR: Detectives bring Emily down
to the station for questioning.
BRAMHALL: She's wearing a very short blouse,
and it exposes her waist,
and I'm thinking about the position that we found
Dana Laskowski in, and it would have taken
torso strength,
and I can see the muscles along the side
of Emily's spine in the small of her back.
She's very muscular, and I'm now more
convinced that she could be the offender.
NARRATOR: Detective Bramhall confronts Emily with reports
of her involvement in Dana's murder.
BRAMHALL: She puts her hands on the table,
she puts her head back, and her eyes go side to side,
and then she comes forward very angrily, and she says,
"Those people are lying!" And I said,
"Oh, really, Emily? All those people are lying?"
And at that point, I was very persuaded
that this is the murderer.
NARRATOR: Police drill down on Emily, asking
where she was when Dana was killed.
Emily and Amanda had told us that they were
at a party at the time that Dana was murdered.
BRAMHALL: I found out that Emily and Amanda
left the party at the same time
another individual left the party.
The other individual drove
a given distance and made a purchase,
and we got that I receipt, so we had the time that Emily
and Amanda had left the party, around midnight.
It was possible they made it
to Dana's house before 1 AM.
So they have information that they're concealing.
They're likely involved in the crime.
So what happened here?
Could Emily be the killer?
NARRATOR: With the circumstantial
evidence stacking up against Emily Lauenborg
in the Dana Laskowski murder case,
police are granted a search warrant for the room
she's renting.
PENNER: One of the things that they found in
Emily's room was a diary or a journal,
and, you know, it had some of the typical stuff you'd expect
from a 17-year-old girl,
but it had a couple of things that you wouldn't
necessarily expect.
One was a bucket list,
and one of things on the list was to kill somebody
and get away with it.
NARRATOR: Then police uncover another
crucial piece of evidence.
There was an entry where she was angry at Amanda
and wrote in there
that she felt like strangling Amanda
the way she had strangled her aunt.
NARRATOR: This shocking revelation
confirms Emily's guilt.
STOCKDALE: Emily's diaries talk about committing the homicide,
strangling Dana,
wanting to possibly strangle her niece, Amanda,
in a similar way,
and in my mind that speaks to somebody who wants to dominate
people, somebody who's getting
self esteem and power from committing such offenses,
or even just knowing that should she want to,
she's capable of doing it.
I confronted her with the entry in the diary,
and I said, "Look, I could strangle her,"
referring to Amanda, "just like her aunt."
She says, "Well, it doesn't say"
I could strangle her just like I strangled her aunt.
Thing is, we hadn't disclosed
strangulation as the cause of death,
so she was booked, held for half a million dollars bail,
and I could begin
the investigation of Emily as the offender,
the murderer, of Dana Laskowski.
NARRATOR: Detective Bramhall questions Amanda again,
this time confronting her about the lies she's been
telling about the night of Dana's murder.
BRAMHALL: I said, "What happened?"
And Amanda said, "I don't know. I wasn't there."
Why was Amanda misleading us?
BRAMHALL: You said you cared so much about your Auntie Dana,
but you led us on a wild goose chase.
I list all the points where she has lied.
NARRATOR: It doesn't take long before Amanda cracks
under the pressure, telling detectives
everything she knows.
Then Amanda says, "Emily strangled my aunt
"right in front of my eyes."
"Sorry I didn't tell you earlier."
ARNTFIELD: The fact that Amanda watches Emily murder her aunt
and does nothing,
I think either speaks to the fact that she, too,
was afraid of Emily or, um,
this happened so quickly that she probably didn't even
realize what she was witnessing,
and that's not uncommon.
NARRATOR: With Amanda's cooperation,
investigators are now able to
fill in the final hours of Dana's life.
BRAMHALL: That night, Emily and Amanda
had left party around midnight.
Then they made it to Dana's house
before 1 AM -- They came in the back door.
They were on drugs.
Dana was on the couch in the living room.
They went in to try to get some money.
Dana said, "I'm not gonna give you any money."
And Emily said, "I want some money."
And then
there was a point where Dana said, "Enough,
you girls are gonna have to leave."
And Dana stood up, and she touched Emily,
and Emily exploded.
And then, Emily attacked her
and strangled Dana Laskowski.
PENNER: Amanda watched Emily attack Dana,
and Amanda yelled at her to stop,
but it was too late.
It was over.
BRAMHALL: The scream that the neighbor reported hearing
at 1 o'clock on the night that Dana was murdered
turned out not to be Dana's scream,
but rather Amanda's scream.
NARRATOR: Emily then positions Dana's body
on the couch under blankets.
They grabbed a few dollars
that Dana had around and got out of there.
On the way out, Emily stops and takes
some of Dana's clothing.
Emily attended the funeral of Dana.
She wore these clothes to the funeral.
This was a display of power and dominance.
I wore these clothes because I can, look what I did.
I may describe her best
is somebody who's a fledgling psychopath.
She was young.
Typically, you know, psychopaths are adults.
It takes several years for behavior to develop.
We clearly see there's a pattern here
of conduct disorder, and then there's a murder.
NARRATOR: The one unanswered question plaguing investigators
is motive.
BRAMHALL: Emily told her friends,
"Well, Amanda kept ditching me for her aunt,"
and Emily specifically said she was not sorry
she killed Dana.
STOCKDALE: Perhaps Emily wanted to kill Dana
to have Amanda all to herself.
Amanda, she was reportedly close to Dana.
It's entirely possible that she killed
Dana as a message to Amanda.
Amanda was present when this occurred.
So what message is that sending to Amanda?
I've done this, and now I can do this to you?
NARRATOR: Despite her role in Dana's murder,
Amanda is given a plea deal and sees no prison time.
BRAMHALL: We had a lot of discussion about what
we were gonna do with Amanda.
We certainly had her for robbery,
but I felt that we needed her
as a witness, because she witnessed the murder.
And if we charged her with a crime,
she'd have the right to remain silent.
So we decided that we were gonna treat her as a witness.
NARRATOR: With Amanda's testimony,
Emily Lauenborg is charged with the murder of
Dana Laskowski,
but her case never goes in front of a jury.
Emily pled a Newton plea,
wherein she does not admit guilt,
she just admits if she were to go to trial,
there would be enough evidence to convict her.
Emily was convicted for manslaughter
in the first degree.
She I received a sentence of about seven years.
NARRATOR: After serving just 5 and 1/2 years in prison,
Emily is released in 2008.
She moves back to Puyallup, gets married, and has children.
This case was a genuine whodunnit.
Most of the murders we go to,
we know exactly what happened even before we get there.
This one, we didn't understand going into it.
But we were able to get on the right path to get
this solved.
And I'm glad to bring it to light.
It was my job to do it, and I did my job.
PENNER: This case was complicated, because there
was a lot of emotion, and there was
a lot of personal connections with everyone involved,
and this was a terrible tragedy.
A woman, a mother, an aunt...
who shouldn't have died that night,
and then a 17-year-old girl who killed her
who shouldn't have killed her that night.
And no matter what the justice system does,
it doesn't bring Dana back.
BRAMHALL: Everybody loved Dana, and she is out of the life of
her father, of her mother,
and her kids, her triplets.
They were eight years old at the time,
and they grew up without her.
So this is not justice, and in a murder, nobody good wins.