[suspenseful music]
On the night of June 21st, 2012, around 1:00 AM,
I received a call from the Summit County Sheriff's Office
advising me that they were going to be taking
a missing persons report.
I arrived at the Domino's about 1:21 AM.
The manager was really concerned about his driver, Ashley Biggs,
because she had not returned from her last delivery,
which was very unlike her.
NARRATOR: The call for pizza came in at 11:42 PM.
Nine minutes later, Ashley Biggs went out
the door to make her delivery.
The location that she was supposed to deliver the pizza,
it's a mile, a mile and a half away.
Knowing the area and knowing that the businesses there
are never open that late, it struck me as odd.
NARRATOR: Ashley Biggs is 25 years old, the mother
of a six-year-old daughter.
Her life partner of three years, Brittany,
also receives an alarmed call from the pizza shop.
At Brittany's request, she's interviewed in shadow.
I got a phone call from the manager, who was a good friend
of both mine and Ashley's.
He said to me, have you talked to Ashley?
Because she went on a delivery and she never made it back.
I thought he was pranking me.
And I said, oh, that's not funny.
And he yelled back, I'm not kidding.
I was like, oh my god.
NARRATOR: Police zero in on the address given
for the pizza delivery order.
Ashley Biggs had made a delivery
on West Turkeyfoot Lake Road.
I wanted to check the address out.
It was a business area.
As I'm driving to the location, I
knew she could not have gotten any type of accidents
because I would have seen a traffic accident.
And there was none.
When I arrived at the location at 2:00 AM,
I noticed it was a business that was closed.
To me, that was weird.
That business shouldn't have been getting a pizza delivered
there at that time of the hour.
It's very dark.
There's no lighting.
There was no vehicles in the front parking lot,
so we decided to go around back to see
if there was anything there.
I came across a big puddle of what appeared to be blood.
There was change spread across the parking lot.
It looked like there had been some type of struggle.
There was no car.
There was no delivery vehicle.
There was no Ashley Biggs there.
With the amount of blood that was in the parking lot,
I knew that we had a serious problem.
My hope is that we could find Ashley.
It made us concerned that she needed attention right away.
I saw the cops and I immediately had
the worst feeling in my gut.
And you know, I told them my partner's name is Ashley Biggs.
I couldn't get my words out fast enough.
NARRATOR: Five years before she fell for Brittany,
Ashley was in a serious relationship
with a man named Chad Cobb.
They met when Ashley was only 17, and he was 22.
Within a year, Ashley and Chad moved in together.
And at 18 years old, Ashley gave birth to a baby girl.
Ashley and Chad never married, and by the time
their daughter was one-year-old, the couple broke up.
They agreed to share custody until Ashley
made a major life decision.
In 2008, Ashley decided to join the army.
And she was so excited.
She says, mom, what a great way to better myself.
What a great way to further my education.
When she went into the army, she had to sign full custody
of her daughter over to Chad.
The agreement was that when she got out of the army,
their parenting would go back to 50/50.
NARRATOR: Ashley's time in the army was short lived.
After basic training, she was medically discharged
for asthma.
When Ashley left the army, Chad completely
cut off all means of communication,
basically keeping their daughter from her.
Chad's phone number had changed when she called it.
When she went to his home, he had moved.
NARRATOR: Around this time, Ashley
and Brittany began dating.
We were happy, but she hadn't talked to her daughter
for about a year.
This wore on her a lot, and she finally said,
I have a right to be her mom and be in her life.
If I can't do it civilly through him,
I'm going to do it civilly through a court.
NARRATOR: In 2011, Ashley was awarded temporary full custody.
Pending the judge's final decision,
Chad was allowed limited time with their daughter.
At the pizza shop where Ashley went
missing 2 and 1/2 hours earlier, Brittany
talks to officers on the scene.
I knew exactly where to point the finger.
And I told them, she and Chad Cobb are involved in a very,
very nasty custody battle.
NARRATOR: Four hours after Ashley disappeared,
police are on the hunt for her ex-boyfriend Chad Cobb.
Police learned that Chad Cobb drives
a black Lincoln Navigator.
Once we didn't find Chad at his residence,
we went to the home where the black Lincoln
Navigator was registered.
And that home belonged to Chad Cobb's grandparents.
NARRATOR: Chad's grandparents live just a half mile
down the road from the delivery location
where police found signs of a struggle.
Once they got there, the officers
walked down towards the back of the property
where there was a barn.
And upon walking behind the barn,
they located the Navigator parked next to the wood line.
There was four children in the car and a female.
Chad was nowhere to be seen.
NARRATOR: Sitting inside the vehicle
are Chad's current wife, Erica, and four children,
including Ashley's daughter.
While Ashley was in the army, Chad
had moved on with his life.
He had dated a girl previously to Ashley,
and her name was Erica.
And he ended up marrying Erica.
She had a previous child, and then
they had two more on their own.
And then they had Ashley's baby.
Erica was there in the vehicle with her four children
at that time in the morning.
To me, that's awful weird.
Why would you be out there with your children
at that time of night?
NARRATOR: While talking to Erica,
police hear noises in the woods.
The officers entered the woods with their weapons
out, not knowing what they would encounter.
They found Chad out there in the woods.
This was very strange.
Why is Chad hiding in the woods at 4:30 in the morning
so close to where there was a struggle?
Brought him out of the woods, and he
was placed in the back of the police car
and the same as Erica.
I asked him about Ashley Biggs, and he
really wasn't forthcoming.
And he couldn't help us is what he said.
We kind of had an idea that Chad might be involved
but why Erica would be out there with him at that time of night?
She really didn't want to talk to us about anything.
NARRATOR: Less than 12 hours after Ashley
Biggs was reported missing, investigators
have located her car.
Once we got there and I walked up, it was gruesome.
It was a rough scene and not the outcome
that obviously we wanted to find.
We found a female which was presumed
to be Ashley in the back seat.
She had zip ties around her neck and different parts
of her body.
You could definitely tell that she
had went through some major trauma, a lot of struggle.
She had some head injury.
It was definitely a violent, violent scene.
NARRATOR: Police also found an insulated pizza bag
in the vehicle and pizza orders from that night stuck
to the steering wheel, including the delivery order called
in when Ashley went missing.
We were confident that Chad Cobb was responsible
for killing Ashley Biggs, and we decided to go ahead and charge
him with aggravated murder.
That night, he was taken to the Summit County Jail
where he was kept until his arraignment,
and bond was set at $1.5 million.
The medical examiner confirmed that Ashley had died
from asphyxiation due to the zip tie around her neck,
but that she also suffered multiple injuries to her head
and to the rest of her body.
Chad Cobb was arraigned and told that he would be
facing the potential for death.
NARRATOR: With Chad behind bars, investigators still
have one more mystery to solve.
Information we learned from the manager
at the Domino's Pizza about the phone call
was that it was a female, said her name was Jen.
We had no idea who Jen is.
And now, the question was, who made that call?
NARRATOR: Chad Cobb pleads guilty to nine charges,
including aggravated murder, aggravated robbery,
and kidnapping.
He was no longer facing the death penalty
and would go to prison for the rest of his life
and never be eligible to get out.
Chad's mother was granted guardianship and custody
of Chad and Ashley's daughter.
The case wasn't done, not in my mind.
We still know there's another person out there.
There's still a female that was probably involved in this.
While listening to jail calls from Chad to Erica,
it's noticeable that their relationship is struggling.
NARRATOR: In the letter to Detective Hitchens,
Chad drops a bombshell.
He clearly says that Erica is the one that was involved.
She was Jen.
She's the one that made the call.
And that she is the manipulative cunning individual
that's the mastermind behind everything.
He was explaining to us that Erica is the one who drove him
there in the Lincoln Navigator and dropped him off, and then
followed him back to the cornfield
to drop Ashley's body and car off
on the way back to their house.
NARRATOR: Seven years after the murder of Ashley Biggs,
investigators receive a stunning piece of evidence
from Chad's mother, Cindee Cobb.
She dropped off a recording device
with approximately three hours worth of secretly recorded
information between her and Erica.
Hearing that audio recording was huge.
It shows that she had knowledge, shows that she was part of it,
that she set this all in motion by calling
and ordering the pizza.
NARRATOR: Erica Stefanko is charged with murder,
aggravated murder, kidnapping, and aggravated robbery.
One year after Erica Stefanko's arrest, her trial begins.
At this time, guardian count 15, the jury
has found the defendant Erica Stefanko guilty of the offense
of aggravated murder.
The jury found Erica Stefanko guilty of aggravated murder
and murder.
And we believe the jury got it correct.
Erica Stefanko was sentenced to life in prison
with parole eligibility after 30 years.
She will not see the light of day for a minimum of 30 years.
[suspenseful music]