[suspenseful music]
NARRATOR: Deer hunting season, 1985.
Childhood friends David Tyll and Brian Ognjan
joined the exodus upstate.
A 3 and 1/2 hour trip to a cabin owned by David Tyll's family
in White Cloud, Michigan.
The two men leave Friday evening.
Monday morning dawns with no word from the hunters.
An accident offers the most likely scenario.
Steele alerts law enforcement to be on the lookout
for the hunters' vehicle--
a 1980 Black Ford Bronco--
and asks the media for help.
By early December, several people
claim to have seen their truck in the Mio area,
some 150 miles distant from their cabin.
The woods of Northern Michigan, however,
offer no clue as to the whereabouts of the Bronco
or the missing men.
PHILLIP: Thereafter, the hunters have been in the woods,
but they've not come across the vehicle.
They did not come across a weapon, anything that would
lead you to believe that they got lost or something
happened that was accidental.
Then you're pretty sure that they
met some type of foul play.
NARRATOR: In 1985, Phillip Steele will
work 14 missing persons cases.
By year's end, only one sits unsolved.
The fate of the missing hunters remains a mystery,
slipped into the cold files.
[suspenseful music]
Two years later, the hunters are still missing.
Their truck-- apparently swallowed
whole by the Michigan woods.
Their picture is still plastered in Mio's local watering holes.
Investigators finally get a break
in the form of a confidential informant
who overheard a conversation and wants to get it off his chest.
Lloyd tells detectives he was at a birthday
celebration with family and friends
in a Michigan bar called Osaze.
At the other end of the table, a family of seven
known as the Duvall brothers, also known as local bullies.
LLOYD: Everybody was sitting around at the table drinking.
A few of them was getting up back and forth dancing.
And they were talking to a brother-in-law
and my father-in-law about fights that they had been in,
things they were doing.
And were laughing and having a good time.
NARRATOR: The Duvall's begin talking about the beating they
once gave two Michigan hunters.
It begins with one of the brothers, JR,
getting beat up himself.
LLOYD: I guess an altercation took place
and they beat JR pretty good.
And he went home and told the other brothers
what had happened.
NARRATOR: According to Lloyd, at least two of the brothers
returned to the bar, took the hunters outside,
and beat them to death.
LLOYD: They made a remark-- you should have
seen the expression on one of thems
face when we did the other one.
And they had made the remark that they
had fed them to the pigs.
NARRATOR: As Lloyd listens inside Osaze.
The brothers describe how they took
the hunters' bodies back to a local farm
and into the pig pen.
They were laughing and joking about it.
And I mean, when somebody makes a remark,
yeah, we fed them to the pigs, the guys are BS-ing you know.
NARRATOR: Detective Curt Schram takes Lloyd's story
seriously and begins to dig into the Duvall
brothers' background.
He starts with the local pigs.
Huge animals more than capable of devouring a human.
When we initially heard it, it was, that seems about as
far fetched as it could be.
But what we learned was is that one of the brothers
did have pigs or large hogs.
And the information that we learned
was that they were extremely mean and would eat anything.
NARRATOR: As for the brothers themselves,
they are pretty mean too.
All of them carry criminal convictions
for either boosting cars, poaching
deer, or assaulting women.
Just enough violence to scare the locals into silence.
Persistence however, has its rewards.
Over time, Schram cultivates some contacts--
people who are willing to risk the brothers' anger
and begin to talk.
For their part, the brothers are not happy.
One of them phrased it as, there
was a snake in the woodpile.
And they were concerned about who is talking.
Unbeknownst to them is that they were the ones that were talking
to other family members and friends,
and eventually, it was getting back to us.
NARRATOR: The stories largely corroborate what Lloyd has
already told police about a fight outside a bar,
the hunters beaten to death, and then a ride out to the pigpen.
The problem for Schram--
how does he prove it?
None of his informants claimed to have
actually seen the beating.
The Duvalls are holding their piece
and pigs don't make very good witnesses.
Without something more, the Michigan DA declines to press
charges and the case goes cold.
Bronco catches a whiff of rumor about a woman
who might have been an eyewitness
to the hunters' death.
Bronco talks his way into the home of Barb Boudro.
The fear in her eyes is naked and palpable.
The detective knows he has his first break in the case.
She knew something and I just needed
to establish a relationship with her, a rapport.
Some kind of a trust with her to where
I could get her to talk to me.
NARRATOR: Bronco meets with his witness
over a period of months, months that eventually become years.
Each time, he draws out more of Barb story.
Barb tells Bronco she saw the hunters on the night they died.
She and her friend, Ronnie Emery, now deceased,
were drinking at a bar called Linker's Lost Creek Lodge.
The two hunters were standing at the bar.
A pair of Duvall brothers, JR and Coco,
walked in and confronted the men.
Barb knew the Duvalls and knew there was going to be trouble.
I said, if the Duvall brothers are here
and they zeroed in to these two deer hunters,
there's going to be some ass kicking tonight.
NARRATOR: Barb and Ronnie pick up
stakes and head out of the bar.
Back to Barb's house less than a half mile away,
outside her kitchen window, Barb hears men in the street
and the makings of a fight.
You could hear men cussing at each other, saying, you MF.
And just bad language.
And I says, Ronnie, they're fighting down here.
So he says, well, let's go watch.
NARRATOR: Barb tells Bronco that Ronnie Emery
headed down to the fight alone.
A short time later, the yelling stopped, then Ronnie returned.
He came back and said, they're beating them.
I think they killed them.
I think they beat him to death.
These guys are pleading for their lives.
Barb said she could hear these pings
and it sounded like an aluminum bat hitting a softball.
NARRATOR: Barb's testimony is not
the eyewitness account Bronco had hoped for,
but it's close enough.
Investigative subpoenas are issued,
and Barb Boudro is asked to repeat her story
before a prosecutor from the Michigan
attorney general's office.
[suspenseful music]
Four years after they first met, Barb Boudro
and Detective Lesniski trade kitchen
talk for an on-the-record deposition.
Barb is nearing the end of her testimony
when conscience takes hold, and her story takes a twist.
When I went to the attorney general,
I was sworn to tell the truth, which I did,
sort of, until near the end.
And I said, you know, I can never tell you the whole truth.
And they shut the tape down.
And I looked at Bronco and I said, you know, I know.
And she just blurted out that she saw it.
She was there.
She saw the whole thing.
She was with Ronnie Emery.
She witnessed the whole thing.
And I mean, I suspected there was more,
but I never thought it was that.
NARRATOR: Barb Boudro explains that she watched
from behind a tree as at least five men surrounded
David Tyll and Brian Ognjan.
JR and Coco Duvall beat the two hunters with baseball bats
as the others looked on.
Then she describes exactly how the missing
hunters met their ends.
David Tyll was on his knees.
He had already been beat because he was pretty well bloody.
And he had his hands up in the air and he goes, oh, my god,
somebody help us.
And Coco swung the bat and said, you're a dead MF-er.
And his head popped like a pumpkin.
It just sounded like you drop a pumpkin.
And he was down.
NARRATOR: David Tyll lay dead in a snow-covered field.
His companion, Brian Ognjan, broke free
and began to run for his life.
They went after him and dragged him back.
And he's saying, you killed my friend, you killed my friend.
And then they stood him up.
And they said, look at that.
He pissed himself.
And then they threw him on the ground,
proceeded to start kicking and beat him
until there was no more noise.
NARRATOR: Barb runs from the scene with Ronnie
Emery hot on her heels.
A short time later, the two hear a knock at the front door.
It's the Duvall brothers with simple instructions
and a highly specific threat.
It was Coco and JR. And said, you saw nothing,
you heard nothing.
We know you and your family.
Pigs have to eat too.
She remembers that statement.
And I mean, and when she told me that, I just,
I couldn't believe it.
NARRATOR: JR and Coco Duvall are finally
arrested for the murders of David Tyll and Brian Ognjan.
For 18 years, JR and Coco Duvall cut figures
that were larger than life.
Bragging freely in bars and restaurants
at the time they murdered two hunters and the loathsome way
they disposed of their bodies.
On November 13th, the brothers are cut down
to size, sent to jail for life without the possibility
of parole.