[Petersen] The killer was heartless.
This was at the top of the list
as far as brutality for us.
If she did not like what you were doing,
she made no bones about telling you,
but if she liked you,
she would absolutely do anything for you.
[Stukenholtz] You had two people with pretty strong personalities
that clashed in the Main Street.
[Petersen] People thought that they were having an affair,
because he was more or less her go-to-man.
[Stukenholtz] He needed money for drugs and alcohol,
he felt like she was gonna have money in her house.
He has an anti-social past,
and so she became the object of this anger and rage.
It was one in 28 quadrillion possibility
it was a DNA match.
Go back to where you began.
More times than not
the killer's name is already in the file.
[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.
Colon, Nebraska.
The definition of a one horse town.
[Stukenholtz] Colon is a real small farming community
made up mostly of just the bank,
the post office and one bar.
[Coughlin] There's probably right around 100 people
that live in the actual village of Colon itself.
Many of the people that live there
have lived there all their lives
or grown up in the area.
[Stukenholtz] Everyone knows everyone,
everyone kind of looks after one another,
all and all it's a pretty tight knit community.
[Coughlin] There's very little crime that goes on in Colon
in the years that I've worked at the Sheriff's Department,
typically the type of incidents
that we respond to are things like domestic disturbances,
or possibly a vandalism or maybe an occasional theft.
[narrator] But on a warm summer evening,
a call to the sheriff's office
changes the town of Colon forever.
The first notification we got was at 6:30 p.m.
on June 30th, 2003.
[Coughlin] Our dispatch center received a call,
indicating that a suicide had happen
in the village of Colon.
And we responded
from approximately 10 miles away.
The location of the reported suicide
is a one car single detached garage
on the south side of Main Street.
Inside the garage, we can see a silver Ford Taurus,
and on the left side we see a female,
obviously deceased, laying on her back
with a large amount of blood on the ground.
There was a small caliber handgun
that was laying on the ground near the victim,
but we started to notice a lot of very extensive head trauma
that did not appear to be from a gunshot.
And she had some bruising in areas on her legs
and some marks on her arms
that did not appear to be normal
from what you would find in a suicide.
[Petersen] There was a semi-automatic Beretta handgun,
but we didn't notice any shell casings lying about,
which indicated it hadn't been fired,
and there was not even a magazine in the gun.
Either somebody had scared the victim with that gun
or she was trying to scare somebody with it.
She appeared to have some defensive wounds,
her arms were beat up, her legs were beat up,
and it did appear that she had been
in a fight with somebody.
[McCoy] We saw the shoe prints
in blood around the vehicle
and smudge on the car.
As you're looking around further,
there's some blood spatter
up on the side of the garage a little bit,
from where someone had forcibly
come in contact with the blood
and put it up onto the wall.
And so, you're coming up with a struggle,
something violent that had occurred.
[narrator] Police determined they're looking at Colon's
first murder in decades.
[Stukenholtz] In my lifetime here in law enforcement,
there's probably been three homicides total
in Saunders County.
[narrator] The victim is 66-year-old Sharron Erickson,
a lovable busybody and a Colon town fixture.
[Stukenholtz] Sharron Erickson spent her entire 66 years
in the community of Colon.
There's probably no one in the Colon area
that she didn't know or she wasn't familiar with.
She worked at the courthouse for a number of years.
She was very positive and outgoing
and would offer up her opinion
about different situations in the town,
so, that kind of personality doesn't always win
everybody's friendship.
[Petersen] One person referred to her
as "Gladys Kravitz,"
who was the neighbor on the old show Bewitched,
that was always looking out the window
to see what other people were doing.
If she did not like what you were doing,
then she made no bones about telling you,
but if she liked you,
she would absolutely do anything for you.
[narrator] Heading up the investigation
into the murder of Sharron Erickson
are investigators Jay Petersen
and Jeromy McCoy.
[McCoy] We're trying to look for some clues
that maybe would point to what actually happened.
How did Sharron die,
and what are the circumstances surrounding that?
[Petersen] It appeared that Ms. Erickson
had died from asphyxiation.
It was a pretty forceful choke.
Whoever had done this to her
had really cranked on her throat.
The victim's body was starting to move
into the stages of rigor mortis,
and so, she had been there for a while.
Based on all of the variables in this case,
including rigor mortis,
we can determine that Sharron was killed
sometime between late in the evening
on Sunday the 29th
and early morning on Monday the 30th.
[narrator] To track down Sharron's killer,
investigators will need to unravel
the final 24 hours of her life.
[Coughlin] Her clothes seemed to be kind of disheveled
where her shirt was pulled up a little bit.
[Petersen] Her underwear was exposed,
so we thought, "Well, it's possible
that Ms. Erickson could have been sexually assaulted."
However, she was also in a pretty good fight.
So, it was a loose fitting clothing
that could've just come down
through that sort of a struggle.
So, at that point, we weren't sure
that she had been sexually assaulted,
but we would let the pathologist
collect the sex assault kit at the autopsy.
[McCoy] We located her purse,
and in the purse we find a movie ticket
to indicate that she'd been to a movie
early in the afternoon on Sunday.
We also find her cell phone in the car.
Sharron didn't carry
her cell phone with her everywhere,
her cell phone was for emergencies
when she was driving,
and so, it was just left in the vehicle
and she rarely used that cellphone.
[narrator] Looking to build a narrative of the murder,
officers turn their attention to Sharron's home.
[Coughlin] Sharron actually lived
across the street from the garage,
which was a little bit odd
that her garage was on one side of Main Street,
and her residence was on the other side.
[Petersen] Her ex-husband, Robert Erickson,
gave her the property across the street
that she built her garage on,
and he had also given her that home that she lived in.
[Coughlin] There's a delivery slip
from a food delivery service
that's posted on the front door,
and it says something to the effect
that they're sorry that they missed Sharron,
and it was dated at one o'clock
on the day that she was found.
[Petersen] The door was still open,
and there was a newspaper
that was just inside the door.
As we moved our way through the house,
we didn't notice anything
that we considered to be out of the ordinary,
until we got to the kitchen area
where it appeared that the door had been pried open,
and it appeared that the interior wood door
had actually been kicked in.
And then we also found a coal chisel
that could have been used to pry open the back door.
[Coughlin] We found a motion alarm
that had been hanging on the door,
and once this person
tried to force their way through the door,
I think that set the alarm off.
[Petersen] And then we noticed
that her phone lines had been cut.
[narrator] Working the theory that the murder
could've been a robbery gone wrong,
investigators continue their search of the house.
[McCoy] You can see that Sharron's bed was unmade,
so it looked like she had been sleeping at some point.
[Petersen] There was a gun holster on the nightstand,
which was consistent with the gun
that we found in Ms. Erickson's garage.
[Coughlin] The victim was startled
and was in her bed sleeping at the time.
[Petersen] But I saw no signs of struggle
in the house,
no blood in the house,
it appeared to me that Sharron and the killer
had some sort of a confrontation,
and she was still able to get to the garage
before it came to a head.
[Stukenholtz] Clearly, robbery seemed to be a motive in the beginning,
but, you know, there was nothing
of substance that was taken
so obviously the homicide
preempted any further robbery.
[Stockdale] Are there multiple motives here?
Did he break into the house with the intention to steal,
and then this evolved into a sexual assault?
And I personally think that this could be less likely.
Why would you break into a house at night
when you know that the resident
is likely to be there?
Plus, if he's making arrangements
such as cutting phone lines,
it makes me think that he may have gone there
to possibly commit
a sexual assault against Sharron.
[narrator] Investigators turn to the locals
gathered at the crime scene,
hoping they can help piece together
Sharron's timeline leading up to her murder.
[Stukenholtz] Rick Hartman is the postmaster in Colon,
he was also on the volunteer
fire department.
He had a close relationship with Sharron,
was one of the first people there
when she was located in her garage.
[McCoy] He was upset, confused.
He was having trouble processing what was going on.
[Petersen] And Rick tells me that Ms. Erickson
is a creature of habit.
She did the same things pretty much every day.
8:30 a.m., Ms. Erickson goes to the post office
to see the postmaster,
and then down to the bank
to see the women that worked at the bank.
[McCoy] She spoke with her cousin,
who lived in Lincoln, Nebraska,
every day at five o'clock on the telephone.
[Petersen] Ms. Erickson and her cousin
got together almost every Sunday.
[narrator] According to Sharron's family and friends,
Sunday, June 29th, was just as structured
as any other day in her life.
[Petersen] Ms. Erickson and her cousin
had lunch in Lincoln at around 11:15 that morning,
and then, after that lunch, they had gone to a movie.
[McCoy] Sharron started to drive back to Colon
at 4:30 that afternoon.
Probably got back to Colon at about 5:30,
and no one saw Sharron after that.
[Stukenholtz] June 30th at about 8:30,
Sharron would've normally gone
to the post office and picked up her mail,
and that didn't occur.
[Petersen] She occasionally buys food
from a Schwan's Delivery driver,
and he had stopped by her house about one o'clock,
he thought she was around,
because her door was ajar, but he didn't find her.
So, he left her a note on her door.
- [phone ringing] - [Coughlin] When Sharron's cousin called at five o'clock
and didn't receive an answer,
she asked some of the ladies at the bank
if they would go down and check on Sharron.
They informed Rick Hartman,
and he volunteered to come along
to see if they could find anything.
[narrator] Not finding Sharron in the house,
the locals move on to the garage.
[Coughlin] They could see that
there was somebody laying on the floor of the garage,
and then Rick Hartman yelled to the ladies from the bank
to call 911 and get some help there.
[narrator] As investigators wrap up their interviews,
they notice that postmaster Rick
is behaving in an increasingly odd manner.
[Stukenholtz] He was of some assistance
but then, at the conclusion of that,
he turned to the deputy and said,
"Well, if you're not gonna arrest me, I'm gonna go home now."
That wasn't something that we would normally hear
from somebody who was just trying to help out.
[Arntfield] The fact that Rick challenges the police,
"If you're gonna arrest me, go ahead and arrest me,"
then naturally, he's gonna make himself a person of interest.
In most circumstances, if someone was truly innocent
and had nothing to hide, no involvement in this crime,
they would be cooperative and forthcoming
to clear themselves.
So, this cavalier-offhand attitude
is naturally going to raise eyebrows.
Some of the things that he said and did
made him a person of interest fairly quickly.
[narrator] Detectives are investigating
Colon, Nebraska's first murder in decades.
The brutal slaying of 66-year-old Sharron Erickson.
They already have the first person of interest,
the town postmaster and Sharron's friend,
Rick Hartman.
[Stukenholtz] Rick was very cooperative
with investigators.
He was so close to Sharron
and offering up so much information
that it caused us to... to want to look further
and that maybe he had some role in her homicide.
[narrator] Investigators dig into just how close
Sharron and Rick were.
[Stukenholtz] Rick Hartman would have contact
with Sharron Erickson virtually every day,
and sometimes multiple times a day.
He was able to disclose that he had a key to her place,
was able to come and go,
and that she would solicit him to do odd jobs.
So, he was very forthcoming
that they had a good relationship
that didn't include any kind
of romantic relationship at all.
[Petersen] He would take care of her property for her
if Sharron traveled out of state,
make sure that heat was on,
make sure there was no water leaking anywhere,
and stuff like that.
His sons even mowed her grass for her,
so they were really pretty good friends.
[narrator] As detectives question Rick,
his behavior becomes increasingly suspicious.
[Stukenholtz] Rick continued to ask the investigators
what they thought,
what they were looking for for evidence.
So, his curiosity caused probably more focus on him
than it would have normally
if he hadn't been asking all of those pointed questions
about details of the crime.
[McCoy] When Rick was told he was a suspect,
he was indignant, he couldn't believe
that he would be considered a suspect.
He was angry that he was being considered as a suspect.
[Stockdale] One way to explain Rick's behavior is
that this could be a reaction to trauma.
To me, it speaks to feelings of guilt
that they couldn't protect
somebody that they care about.
They may also want to get close to the investigation
to be able to get details so that they can redirect
or slant an investigation away from them
as opposed to having people following up with them.
So, there could be multiple motivations at play there.
[narrator] Investigators press Rick for his timeline
on the night of Sharron's murder.
[Petersen] He says he was at home
that Sunday evening with his wife, watching TV.
His pager went off about 10:30 that night, roughly,
because the fire department
was getting paged out to a fire.
And then his wife actually accompanied him in their car
to the scene of the fire.
And then he and his wife arrive back home
at about 11:30 p.m. on Sunday night.
And then they remained at home
the rest of the night,
until he left for work roughly at 7:20 a.m.
on Monday morning, June 30th.
[Stukenholtz] Rick Hartman's wife
confirmed his alibi on the timeframe
of when he was there and when he left.
[Petersen] We had nothing to refute
that that wasn't true.
You know, minus his wife not telling us the truth
or minus him slipping out of the house,
we don't believe that he would have had
anything to do with this crime.
[Gadhia] If an officer takes one lead
and just follows that lead to the exclusion of others,
what it may do is take away from the probability
of finding the right person.
So, every lead has to be followed,
every piece of evidence has to be looked into
especially in a homicide,
because not everything is as it seems.
[narrator] Looking for new leads,
police canvass Sharron's neighbors.
[McCoy] We spent days
walking around the town of Colon,
trying to find people at home during the timeframe
that this murder would have occurred,
their whereabouts, any suspicions,
we were trying to cover every base.
[Stukenholtz] We were hoping that we would find
some clue from somebody who saw something,
or heard something,
that would give us a description of a vehicle,
a different timeline, that sort of thing.
[Petersen] One of the people
that we wanted to contact, their last name is Marrs.
So, if you look out the Marrs family's front door,
you're looking directly into the back
of Ms. Erickson's house.
[narrator] Investigators speak with the Marrs family,
asking if they had seen or heard anything unusual
on the night of June 29th
or in the early hours of June 30th.
[Petersen] Donna and her husband
and her two sons had returned from Kansas,
and they were helping their aunt
put a roof on her house.
One of the sons, the youngest,
had gone to bed,
and the other, James, had left.
Donna told me that she was home that evening,
and had fallen asleep in the living room.
And that she was there until James had returned home
at about 1:30 that night.
And then, after he returned home,
she had gone to bed.
[Stukenholtz] The fact that James Marrs
came home around 1:30 a.m.
and lived almost a stone's throw away
from Sharron's home,
certainly gave him an opportunity
to have witnessed something
or have participated in that homicide.
He was certainly a person
that we felt we needed to cross off our list.
James Marrs was kind of a low functioning individual.
He did odd jobs, worked for a local farmer,
but he didn't have any real consistent employment
where he was required to be somewhere at a certain time
and got off at a certain time.
[Petersen] He was described as to be a heavy drinker.
He drank a lot, so he had some alcohol violations,
perhaps of driving under the influence of alcohol,
but nothing more violent than that.
[narrator] Detectives question James about his timeline
in the hours leading up to Sharron's murder.
[Petersen] He seemed to be fairly reserved
and fairly quiet.
He just didn't seem to me as the kind of person
that really wanted to talk much about anything.
I had asked him about what he was doing the weekend
of June 29th and 30th,
and he said he and his brother
had come back from Kansas
and they actually got back into town
around 10:30 that Sunday night.
[Stukenholtz] James left Colon around 11:30 p.m.
Went into Wahoo to a friend's house
to drink some beer.
He was at his friend's house for approximately an hour,
left around 12:30
and went to a bar in downtown Wahoo.
[Petersen] After spending a little bit of time there,
he said he moved over to another bar,
however when he got to that bar,
it was roughly one o'clock in the morning
and it was the last call,
so it was at that point he said that he drove home.
And he said once he got home at about 1:30,
which was consistent with what his mom said
when he walked in,
he said he drank a pop,
and watched TV for a little bit,
and then he said he went off to bed.
The next thing he remembers
is his dad had to wake him up at 9:00 a.m.
[Stukenholtz] There were no immediate red flags,
and the alibi was fairly solid,
where he was in Wahoo,
who he talked with, that he went to the bar...
We were able to confirm all of that.
[McCoy] There was nothing
which really tied James to Sharron.
There was not a relationship between them.
There was not a feud between them.
There was not a lot of interaction between them.
And so, there wasn't anything specific
tying him to the case.
[Stukenholtz] We were having trouble really getting a motive
for why he would have killed Sharron.
So, him lacking a motive and his level of cooperation,
caused us to focus more on other people
than we were on James.
[narrator] With James Marrs ruled out,
police turn to the evidence from the crime scene,
looking for clues that could lead them
to Sharron's killer.
[McCoy] The gun after it was sent to the lab,
came back.
No fingerprints were retrieved,
no DNA was found on the gun.
And so, that was basically a dead end.
We were really struggling to figure out what happened,
how it happened, who did it,
and get some justice for the victim.
So it's frustrating.
[Petersen] And it's not easy to cope with sometimes,
I'm at my wits' end right here,
I don't know where to go.
The community was on a heightened state of alert,
because this sort of thing doesn't happen
in a small town like Colon.
[Stockdale] People are afraid,
people know that most people are murdered
by somebody that they know.
So then the question becomes
is who in this small town is a killer?
[narrator] In the investigation
into Sharron Erickson's murder,
detectives have hit a dead end,
until the autopsy results
breathed new life into the case.
The cause of death was a manual strangulation.
Her hyoid bone had been broken,
which takes a lot of force and pressure to the throat
to break that bone,
and so that's just another indication
of what type of struggle she was in.
[Petersen] The pathologists also determined
that Ms. Erickson had been sexually assaulted,
and the killer was heartless.
This was at the top of the list
as far as brutality for us.
[McCoy] The amount of violence
led us to think that it was someone
who may have been close to her,
or someone who was very, very angry,
and it was a very personal attack on Sharron.
[narrator] As investigators hunt
for suspects with emotional connections to Sharron,
a new witness throws the whole timeline
of the murder into question.
[Stukenholtz] There was a young girl
that delivered newspapers in the Colon area,
and she had gone to Sharron's house
to deliver the newspaper on June 30th.
[Petersen] She had told her mother
that when she had delivered the newspaper,
she had seen a man chasing Ms. Erickson out of her house
and chased her over to her garage,
and then that she had heard a couple of bangs.
She initially couldn't describe
Ms. Erickson's killer very well,
but she did say he was wearing
dark blue jeans and a dark shirt.
When the little girl dropped the paper off,
and when the women from the bank
actually found the body,
we're talking about an hour and 15 minutes
to an hour and a half.
And when we arrived on the scene of the crime,
the blood was pretty dry,
and it certainly was a crime scene
that was older than two hours.
Also, when the little girl mentioned two bangs,
I just didn't believe it was likely
this is what transpired.
[Stukenholtz] After further investigation,
we were able to determine that she developed that memory, if you will,
from listening to family members
or people in the community talking about it.
[narrator] As police eliminate this one tip,
more come in.
Many people told us that we needed
to talk to the truck drivers
that would park their trucks on the street
in front of her house and leave them idle,
which irritated her because they're loud.
One truck driver, Chuck, had this shop right next
to Ms. Erickson's house.
He told her he was gonna plant grass in there.
Well, what he had done was he tore it down,
and they hauled rock in there
so they can park trucks on it.
And that made her mad too because apparently,
she was worried that her property
was going to be damaged,
when they tore the building down.
She wasn't scared or afraid of confrontation
and she would definitely let someone know
if she didn't enjoy something that they were doing.
[Stukenholtz] He wasn't overly respectful of her,
and she was pretty demanding.
You had two people with pretty strong personalities
that kind of clashed in the main street of Colon.
[Petersen] There was an instance where somebody
had an open bottle of beer,
and they set the bottle down
in front of Ms. Erickson's house.
So she tossed it over in front of Chuck's shop,
and it shattered on the sidewalk,
and he was in the shop.
And so, that made him mad,
and he walked over to her house,
he pounded on the front door
and told her to get out there, "Come out here."
[narrator] Could Sharron's neighbor Chuck
have built up so much rage towards Sharron
that he finally snapped?
[Petersen] One thing that Chuck had said
when I interviewed him,
was he made reference to her about being a busy body
always having to know everything that's going on.
And then he said,
"She's a nut, but she's our nut."
And that's how he felt about her.
[narrator] Not buying Chuck's story,
investigators homed in on where he was
at the time of the murder.
[Petersen] Chuck had told us
that he had been out of town driving.
He was in the Ohio area,
that he had picked the load up on June 26th
then had it delivered,
and actually didn't get back to Nebraska
until July 1st.
[Stukenholtz] Chuck had receipts
on the 29th and 30th, I think it was meal and fuel,
so he clearly had receipts
that proved he was several states away,
and didn't return to Colon until July 1,
so he was eliminated immediately
with his truck receipts.
[Petersen] The truck drivers had a very solid alibi,
mostly due to their profession
that they are required to keep certain records
and they had all of those to provide to us
and it was proven that they were all out on the road.
[narrator] With investigators not making any inroads,
fear tightens its grip on Colon.
[Petersen] People were very bothered
by a crime like this
occurring in their small town,
they were bothered by the fact that this person
had not been arrested yet.
And they felt like this could happen
to one of them, as well.
[Stukenholtz] You had people looking around
over their shoulder about, "I think it's this person, oh, I think it's that person."
[Petersen] So I think that the community was on a heightened state of alert.
[Stockdale] When something like this happens in a small community,
I think that there's a large spillover effect,
people may be questioning each other
as to who might be responsible.
It could also pressure the investigators as well,
to find the killer
and explain the theory of the crime
which can be stressful.
In addition to the fear that the crime itself is causing.
[narrator] Having eliminated
every person of interest in the case,
investigators hope forensic testing on Sharron's rape kit
will provide a DNA profile of her killer.
[Arntfield] This is a case that really epitomizes
the importance of offender DNA.
When you have no suspects and nothing really to go on,
this is why advances in the forensic science
have been so crucial.
[McCoy] With the sex assault kit
that went to our State Patrol Crime Lab,
they were able to determine
that there was a DNA profile there,
however, they weren't able to extract that DNA.
So, their technology
wasn't able to come up with the DNA profile.
[narrator] But detectives have one more trick
up their sleeve.
[Stukenholtz] Our university Med Center
is well known for their progressive technology there,
so we took the DNA sample to the UNM Med Center,
hoping that they could get a profile.
[McCoy] They were able to come up
with a DNA profile,
but the DNA doesn't just tell you who it is.
The job's not over.
Now you have to come up with the suspect.
[narrator] Just as police learn a DNA profile
has been established
for Sharron Erickson's killer,
a previous suspect comes back on their radar.
[Petersen] People thought that Ms. Erickson
and Rick Hartman were having some sort of an affair,
because Rick Hartman was more or less her go-to-man.
But there was another rumor
that somebody had seen Rick Hartman
and Ms. Erickson talking out
in front of her house on the street at 4:00 a.m.
on the morning of June 30th,
during the timeframe of the crime.
[narrator] Rick's behavior only contributes
to the suspicion swirling around him.
[Petersen] Rick Hartman just kept talking
to the media and other people about this.
And so, it would just shed more suspicion on him,
because why would you want to keep opening this up,
and opening yourself up,
to people running you down and wanting to ask you
questions about this?
[Stockdale] They may actually want the attention,
they may want to go out tell their story
and get that gratification from pulling one over
on the investigators
if they are in fact the killer,
and the media can be very useful
in terms of capturing those reactions.
[Stukenholtz] The family of Sharron Erickson
decided that they were going to have an estate sale
where they were going to sell off
a lot of her items,
and at that estate sale,
Mr. Hartman bought her bed and mattress
that caused a lot of conversation
in the community.
[McCoy] We were also contacted after that
by a mother whose daughter indicated
that she saw Rick Hartman at the sale.
The daughter became scared
and covered behind her mother.
And also, since that point
had not wanted to go into the post office,
for some reason she was scared of Mr. Hartman.
She was the same girl who had also had the story
after the murder about seeing Sharron
being chased across the street.
[Petersen] If Rick Hartman and Ms. Erickson
were having a relationship
that was more personal than platonic,
if one of them wanted to get out of the relationship,
and the other one didn't,
it could always lead to some sort of violence.
[narrator] With the incriminating evidence
against Rick building,
investigators haul him back down to the station
for another round of questioning.
[Stukenholtz] He denied that he had purchased
those items at that estate sale,
and that really raised red flags,
if he bought those items, why did he buy them?
And then if he did,
why would he deny that he bought them?
So, there were just a number of things
that he did that continued to cause us
to focus in his direction.
[narrator] Investigators confront Rick
about the rumors that he was having
an affair with Sharron,
but he dismisses them as idle gossip.
[Petersen] We don't wanna see somebody
get wrongly accused of a crime,
we don't wanna see the wrong people arrested for a crime,
and so, we proceed very, very cautiously.
[McCoy] One of the reasons
we use polygraph tests is to eliminate suspects.
And so, during one of Rick's interviews,
he volunteered to take a polygraph test,
in order for us to eliminate him
as possible suspect.
So, the results of the polygraph test
came back inconclusive.
And so, at that point,
we can't eliminate him as a suspect,
based on the polygraph.
[narrator] But with a DNA profile
of the killer now established
detectives know they could be one match away
from solving the case.
[McCoy] And so we asked Rick to give DNA samples
for the investigation
and samples were collected from Mr. Hartman.
[Stukenholtz] We did not get a DNA profile match
with Rick Hartman.
[Petersen] So, he was completely eliminated
at that time.
Looking back, I just think that,
you know, everyone deals with death differently.
He was probably anxious, and that was his reaction.
[narrator] With yet another suspect eliminated,
police are back to square one
in the investigation
into Sharron Erickson's brutal murder.
[Stukenholtz] We began taking DNA samples
from those people that we felt probably were
close to the top of our list,
and submitting them for examination.
[narrator] As they await the DNA results,
investigators circle back
to a previous person of interest, James Marrs.
[Stukenholtz] James Marrs had also
made statements to other people about,
"If the cops ask you where I was
on this particular night, tell them I was with you,"
which was not consistent with what he told us,
so when those kinds of things started to surface,
you know, that pointed more to James Marrs.
The question then is, could the son of the neighbors,
the Marrs family,
could he be good for this,
considering he was actually spoken to
back on the first day?
I always like to say, when you're stuck
and a case seems to be bogged down or going cold,
go back to where you began.
More times than not,
the killer's name is already in the file.
[narrator] After a series of dead ends and false starts
in the murder investigation
of 66-year-old Sharron Erickson,
her neighbor, James Marrs,
has come back on police radar.
[Petersen] When we had interviewed James' girlfriend,
she had told me that they'd been girlfriend-boyfriend
for about two, two and a half years,
and they had a child together,
but they weren't living together.
When James left the bars in Wahoo,
and had gotten home the night of the crime,
he called his girlfriend about 1:30 that night.
He started confronting her
about possibly seeing other men,
and I think that the two of them
had gotten into an argument on the telephone,
so the call lasted about ten minutes that night
and then the girlfriend ended up hanging up on James.
He was angry, part of me thought that he wanted
to go meet his girlfriend,
but she maybe wasn't interested.
And he was stewing a little bit
and then he left the house again.
He was out of money, you know,
he wasn't a wealthy person,
and perhaps he thought Ms. Erickson
might be an opportunity for him to get some,
and he went over her fence,
and then broke into her house.
[narrator] When the DNA results
from the list of suspects come in,
they confirm the investigators' new theory.
[McCoy] The DNA matched to James Marrs.
It was one in 28 quadrillion possibility
it was someone else.
And so, there was a lot of relief.
[Stukenholtz] That's the nail in the coffin.
We know we had the right guy,
and we've got scientific evidence
that's gonna support it.
We were frankly over the top
happy with where we were going.
[narrator] Having tied James Marrs
to Sharron Erickson's murder,
police's moving to arrest him.
[McCoy] We decided to arrest him
early in the morning, before he went to work
and to try to catch him off guard,
which we did.
[narrator] While in custody,
investigators question James about Sharron's murder,
but he isn't talking.
[McCoy] He acted surprised.
He couldn't believe that he was being arrested for this,
you know, he claimed that he had nothing to do with it.
[Petersen] "You've got the wrong guy.
This is BS. I'm not going anywhere.
I want a lawyer,"
and then he was taken down
to the Nebraska Department of Corrections.
There was some other inmates there
that James had actually confessed to
that he had actually committed this homicide.
[narrator] With James' jailhouse confession,
investigators are able to piece together
Sharron Erickson's final 24 hours.
[McCoy] On the night of June 29th, 2003, at 11:30,
James Marrs left Colon,
went to Wahoo to a friend's house,
where they drank some beer,
and then eventually went to a bar after that.
And then, at 1:05,
James Marrs went to the Oasis bar in Wahoo,
tried to get a drink,
it was after hours so they did not serve him.
He left shortly thereafter.
[Petersen] And he arrived back at his house
roughly at 1:20 a.m. on Monday morning, June 30th.
James calls his girlfriend about 1:30 a.m.
James and his girlfriend have the fight,
and they have about a ten minute conversation.
James is pretty mad.
He's been drinking.
And at that point, he obtains a coal chisel.
James leaves the house,
and he goes over to Ms. Erickson's house.
[McCoy] So he jumps the fence in her backyard,
he cuts the phone lines first,
and then pries open the back door.
[Petersen] Sharron is waking up...
and Sharron has been able to get dressed,
or at least get her shoes on.
At that time, she confronts James Marrs
about breaking into her house.
I think Sharron may have picked up the telephone
to call the police and found it was dead,
and so, her only option was to drive somewhere.
She had to get to her car.
[narrator] Sharron runs to the garage
where James catches up with her.
[Petersen] James confronted her
and realized at some point that that gun wasn't loaded.
And at that point, he beat her
and sexually assaulted her in that garage.
[McCoy] She fought back
and was trying to defend herself,
but she was just overcome.
We concluded that she was killed
before three o'clock in the morning.
[narrator] The one piece that still
doesn't make sense to investigators
is James' motive for the murder.
[McCoy] He'd been drinking,
consumed some cocaine and he'd been in a fight
with his girlfriend, he was angry,
that probably all came to a head,
especially after he had a gun pointed at his head,
and was probably yelled at by Sharron as well,
and so that probably just made more angry.
[Stukenholtz] He needed money for drugs and alcohol,
so, he felt like Sharron
was going to have money in her house.
And then he assaulted her physically and sexually.
But why was it necessary to kill her?
[Stockdale] James Marrs went there deliberately
to commit a sexual assault against Sharron,
because an older woman is an easy target.
Someone who's a vulnerable victim,
and the amount of violence reflects his background.
[Petersen] The end result was good,
that James is in prison,
but I can't help but think sometimes
if we could have had him there quicker,
had we approached some of the things differently.
So, I carry that with me all the time.
[narrator] The town of Colon is saved the pain of a trial,
when James pleads guilty to second degree murder.
[McCoy] It was a big relief for Sharron's family
to get that closure,
and be able to hold someone accountable for his actions.
It's not gonna bring Sharron back,
but it's the most we can do for Sharron.
[Stukenholtz] The timeline really helps us
in excluding possible suspects
and then narrowing down
who we want to really focus on.
And then the DNA, you know, that's the nail in the coffin.
[narrator] On what would have been
Sharron Erikson 67th birthday,
James Marrs is sentenced to life
with no possibility of parole.
[Coughlin] I think it's unfortunate
that somebody took her life so soon.
Sharron was a retired person
that had worked hard all her life,
and had chosen to live in a small community
because of how safe it was,
and essentially all she wanted to do
was just live there quietly and simply.
[Stukenholtz] Probably the saddest thing
about this is the fact that Sharron grew up
in that community,
she contributed to the county with her hard work
and wanted make Colon a good place to live,
and the fact that, you know, that was cut short
is a tremendous tragedy.