(tense music)
- It was almost as if Rebecca Cawthon
had vanished into thin air.
- It's unlike her to not communicate with us.
I mean, somebody always knew where she was.
- She would've text or called somebody.
She wouldn't have vanished.
- [Reporter] No one has heard from Rebecca's husband either.
- They had been in a domestic dispute.
That's a red flag.
- We learned that Lee and Rebecca had an open marriage,
multiple sex partners.
- Jealous lovers.
Anything of that nature has to be looked at.
- She has friends here that support her
and I just want her to come home.
(tense music)
- [Narrator] Every suspect accused of a crime
has the right to remain silent.
Many agree to be interrogated anyway,
but they can stop the interview at any moment,
making it a race against time.
Justice hangs in the balance.
(pensive music)
- The Oconee County Sheriff's Office
received a call for a welfare check for Rebecca Cawthon.
The call was made by her mother
and she stated that she had not seen or heard
from her daughter in approximately two days,
and she had expected to see her for Sunday dinner on Easter.
- She was worried about her daughter
and that she always comes to visit her on Sundays,
whether it's to eat Sunday dinner with her
or just visit with her, and she felt something was wrong.
- It was also relevant that Rebecca's mother
had not heard from Rebecca's husband, Lee.
They had been together for some 17 years or more
and were almost never seen apart.
It would've been expected that she could have reached
one or the other of them.
(tense music)
- The house was located on a large piece of property.
It was in a remote, rural area.
When the deputy arrived, we didn't have any evidence
that would validate a search warrant.
Basically, all you can do is knock and announce.
And once he did, no one came to the door.
There was no forced entry to the residence,
so he did not see anything out of the ordinary
or suspicious at that time.
(eerie music)
- Investigators believed that the two of them,
Rebecca and Lee,
had been in a physical domestic altercation.
So clearly, Lee was a person that law enforcement
wanted to speak to immediately.
- The mother's not being contacted,
we cannot find where the husband is.
That point is when we decided to enter her into our database
as a missing person.
(pensive music)
- Rebecca looked at me as a friend, like a true friend,
and I guess we just kind of clicked right off the,
you know, from the start.
Rebecca was a really good pool player.
She was phenomenal.
She would hustle guys just for the fun of it
because nobody would ever expect a girl to be good at pool.
Rebecca's favorite holiday was Halloween.
One time, her and her husband was gonna be vampires.
Her outfit that she created herself was just like,
I thought she bought it,
but she went more than just putting on an outfit,
she like, played the part.
I was like, "Yeah, you look like you're ready for a movie."
When I first saw Lee, I liked him.
I liked his personality.
They were the most smiling people you could ever see.
Smiled all the time.
I noticed that sometime when I would talk to Lee,
when he would say something and Rebecca's already smiling,
and then he'd look at her and they'd both start smiling.
I first learned about Rebecca missing through Facebook.
Then I called her phone a couple times.
I knew that she would answer my call.
I just knew that.
But when it went to voicemail,
then I became worried something is not right.
(tense music)
(car engine revving)
(soft music)
- We were running down every lead
and investigating every possibility,
but ultimately coming up short.
Law enforcement reached out to the media
to put out her information as a missing person
and try to broaden the scope of the search.
- [Reporter] The Oconee County Sheriff's Office
says Rebecca was reported missing April 18th.
It's a situation these friends of Rebecca Cawthon
never imagined they'd be in.
- She would've used Facebook
or she would've text or called somebody,
me, her mother, somebody.
She wouldn't have vanished.
- I want her to come home and know
she has friends here that support her
and, well, I just want her to come home.
(tense music)
- Lee's half brother lived in an adjacent property,
so you could say that they were next door neighbors,
but they were many acres apart at the same time.
- We had made several attempts to contact Lee,
but Thomas had told us
that he had talked with Lee days before.
So it had appeared that Lee
was trying to avoid law enforcement at this time.
Lee was our number one person of interest.
- Lee's half brother did additionally provide information
that Rebecca and Lee had what he described
as an open relationship,
that they had multiple romantic partners.
This information was new to law enforcement
and obviously piqued their interest
with regard to an expanded range
of individuals they might talk to.
(tense music)
- How do you go from being at the happiest time of your life
to not talking to any of your friends,
your family, nobody apparently?
(tense music)
- Thad was very cautious.
He had a dislike or maybe a distrust of police in general.
I am a person that if they're upset, I can talk 'em down.
Instead of fighting fire with fire,
I just fight fire with water.
- He was very critical
of how we were conducting the investigation.
And I could tell
that he was trying to control the interview.
He wanted to be in charge.
And my thoughts on that is, that's okay
because if someone thinks they're in control
of an interview, just let 'em talk.
- That statement right there
kind of perked my ears a little bit.
Okay, you were the last person to see her.
How do you know you were the last person to see her?
We're talking about red flags big time at this point.
(tense music)
(eerie music)
(tense music)
- You saw somebody at 5:30,
however, you was too drunk to know
where you saw this person last.
That just absolutely did not make any sense at all.
Really made me think, okay, yeah,
he's trying to avoid the tough questions.
- He talked and he talked and he talked and he talked.
- I believe he was trying to wear us down.
He was talking so much
that he was trying to complicate our questions.
So all through this, I was thinking, something's not right.
This guy is not wanting to answer a question.
(clock ticking)
- It's almost like it's a lover's spat to me.
"Where are you? Why didn't you call me?
I tried to call you."
It sounds like somebody's romantically involved.
He was obviously affectionate towards her.
I believe it was more than just a friend.
- Investigators know that Lee and Rebecca
have this open marriage and want to know
what Thad's involvement may be in this relationship.
Is he just friends with them
or is he one of the parties in their open relationship?
(eerie music)
- We're figuring out this relationship between them,
even though no one asked specifically.
We're kind of tiptoeing around it a little bit.
He said that they were just friends,
it was strictly platonic.
- I could tell that Thad was being truthful,
but also I could tell that Thad wasn't forthcoming
with the whole truth.
He's not necessarily a person of interest at this point,
but a person who knows more than what he's telling.
So we ended the interview
and I wanted to leave with a good relationship.
We could get up, shake hands,
and maybe another day, he would tell me more.
(tense music) (insects chirring)
(tense music)
- Initially, the Sheriff's Office was unable
to find any information, because as it turns out,
Rebecca went to the hospital under an assumed name.
She left the hospital with six stitches over her eye.
Once investigators had evidence of a crime, it allowed them
to get a judge to sign a search warrant to search the home.
(eerie music)
They were searching for anything that might be out of place,
any evidence of a crime.
The lead investigator made a comment
that law enforcement was unable
to find anything out of place
because nothing in that house had a place.
- You have smells, and old food laying around,
clothing, roaches,
and all kind of bugs crawling everywhere.
- The crime scene tech
did find some minute blood particles
in the living room area.
The little bits of blood that was found
could have been a cut on somebody's finger.
We proceeded onto the garage.
When I say garage, I'm talking about like a shop
where you could work on cars or whatnot.
We just wasn't finding anything
that would lead us on a path to find these people.
We were basically square one again.
(tense music)
(eerie music)
- Law enforcement was absolutely relentless
in running down every lead
and investigating every possibility,
but the fact of the matter was, as time went on,
as days turned into weeks without finding Rebecca,
the chances of ever finding her diminished.
(eerie music)
(tense music)
Rebecca and Allite had had text conversations
between the time period when she was seen on Easter
and when she was reported missing.
And whether it was just her intuition or whatever it was,
these text messages were suspicious to Allite.
(tense music)
(clock ticking)
- The messages here sent up some red flags.
These may not be from Rebecca, or if they are,
there's some situation that's causing her
to speak differently than she normally would.
(tense music)
- When Thad came for his interview,
he did not give any information
saying that he had saw Rebecca after her injuries
and visit to the hospital on Easter.
- We now have inconsistencies in Thad's story.
There are things that he chose not to tell investigators
during his interview,
which certainly raises red flags regarding Thad.
(tense music)
- Lee Michael Cawthon appeared.
He walked through the front door at the Sheriff's Office
and said, "I think you've been looking for me."
(tense music)
(eerie music)
- When someone freely and voluntarily comes in
like Lee did, he can discontinue the interview at any time
and ask for a lawyer.
So we were gonna keep the interview casual,
and I was pretty much gonna listen
to what he had to tell us.
(clock ticking)
- I was shocked.
I had no idea that he was just gonna bluntly come out
and say that he had shot Rebecca.
Once Lee confessed, I still wanted him
to keep on telling me how it happened, when it happened,
what did he do with evidence?
'Cause we had to collect everything possible
to corroborate what he was saying.
- He freely and voluntarily gave us that information.
So we went and searched the vehicle and found the gun.
That is a unusual event,
being able to recover a murder weapon that quickly.
(tense music)
- He showed no emotions whatsoever.
It's just like a casual interview.
It takes an evil person to do that.
And the man sitting across from me,
he's definitely an evil man.
(eerie music)
(tense music)
- I was stunned.
It was shocking when he told us that.
He had put her in the oil drum, put her in the grease pit
that was underneath the tractor.
At this point, Captain Reed left the interview room
to get with other investigators
and get the search warrant to recover her body.
(tense music)
- The evidence that we found in the living room
was not supporting what he was telling us.
We didn't see a lot of blood.
When someone's usually shot six or seven times,
you got blood all over the place.
So there was some issues with what he was saying.
(tense music)
- The grease pit was what you would expect
if you were to have a place to change
oil in a car or a tractor.
In fact, there was a tractor parked over the grease pit.
(tense music)
She was there in a 55-gallon drum full of oil
where she had been for weeks.
- He had done a good job concealing her.
The top was on, and plus the oil inside the barrel
helped conceal the odor.
That's the most disturbing part of it
is the way he left her and the way he disposed of her body.
(tense music) (insects chirring)
- Once Rebecca's body was discovered,
we started asking more questions
and trying to theorize, was there an accomplice?
Even though he said that he did it all alone,
we still had to verify whether he did or didn't.
- He said he was the only one involved in it,
but it just did throw a red flag of him
being able to drag her up that hill
and partial wooded, gravel parking lot.
- Law enforcement still had a question
about Thaddeus Sosebee.
There were inconsistencies in his statement.
They still had suspicions
that perhaps Lee Michael Cawthon had an accomplice.
(tense music)
- [David] You got some water, you said?
- This time, instead of just coming alone,
he brought his dad with him.
He was not under arrest.
They told him from the beginning of the interview,
you are free to get up and walk out that door at any time,
but we need some answers.
(clock ticking)
I would never do that to somebody.
You know what? - Just breathe.
(tense music)
- The motivation for the murder is simple as any.
As Rebecca grew closer to Thad and further away from Lee,
Lee became jealous and ultimately lashed out.
While it was apparent that Thad was not forthcoming
from the beginning, it's hard to speculate
whether it was being protective of his privacy or Rebecca's,
with respect to their unconventional relationship
in a very rural town.
But at the end of the day, there was nothing to suggest
that he was a participant in a crime and he was free to go.
(tense music)
- The point of this second interview
is to try to corroborate physical evidence
versus a confession.
And we had some questions.
Did he text from Rebecca's phone pretending to be her?
- There really was no particular explanation
for why there wasn't more blood found at the scene.
But at the end of the day, there was a wealth of evidence
and Lee's statements tied all of that evidence together.
In this situation, we had a horrific crime.
Lee Michael was cold and calloused,
not only in in what he did,
but how he described it and his reaction to it.
(eerie music)
(solemn music)
- It's chilling to think about a couple
being so happy as them and to see it end tragically.
So I think domestic violence, it's like a ghost.
It's there, but you don't see it
until something bad happens.
I think about Rebecca often.
The world lost a good person,
but I'm really comforted in knowing
that her spirit lives with me mentally, and her memory.
I think Rebecca will want to be remembered
as the adventurous person, that fun,
outgoing, throw-anything-at-you type of girl,
'cause that's who she was.