[music playing]
NARRATOR: 2:00 AM and the town of Tyler, Texas is quiet.
A single set of headlights creeps
down 29th Street towards a frame house set back among the trees.
A shadow slips through a door and down a hallway
towards a back bedroom.
Inside, an eight-year-old boy named Chad Choice sleeps.
He never makes a sound as the intruder gathers up the boy
and carries him into the night.
The mother of four allows her children to sleep in
and heads off to church.
Just minutes into the service, Karen gets a call from home.
It was my daughter, and she asked me if Chad was with me.
And I said, no, I left him at home.
And she said, well, we've looked everywhere
and we can't find him.
NARRATOR: Within the hour, Karen,
family and friends are walking the neighborhood,
looking for Chad.
Hoping the boy is just playing a game of hide and seek.
We were just looking up to see if he
was just playing a joke on us.
And we were walking around the house, looking up in the trees
to see if he was there.
But all in the same time, there was
just something that just kept--
I just had this feeling something was wrong.
NARRATOR: Karen Choice puts a call in to police.
Sergeant Bill Goecking responds.
The first thing he notices, no pry marks on the door
and no sign of a struggle inside the house.
We didn't see anything like a forced entry, any blood trails,
any signs of ransacking, things that would
be indicative of a crime scene.
NARRATOR: Goecking floats the idea
that Chad might be a runaway.
Chad's mother doesn't buy it.
Karen Choice believes her son has been kidnapped.
As Sunday afternoon deepens into Sunday
evening, that feeling becomes a certainty and a mother
wonders if she will ever see her son alive again.
Devastation, fear starts to set in,
and you're wondering what is going on,
who is he with, because I knew it was historic now
and he's ready to come home.
Kind of a rule of thumb, and it's
not like this in every case, but if you're not
on the road towards resolving something in 48 hours,
it's going to be difficult to resolve.
NARRATOR: 48 hours have already slipped by, then a week,
and a month.
Six months later, Chad Choice's disappearance
slips into the cold files.
And his mother continues to wait.
By the fall of 1995, Karen's son Chad
has been gone for four years.
One fall morning, a grocery sack is left on the doorstep
of the Choice's home.
Inside it, a human skull, and the moment Karen choice
has been dreading.
I didn't want to believe it.
There was this part of me that was saying this may be,
but I'm saying no.
No, this is not Chad.
Chad is still alive.
NARRATOR: Cold case detectives send samples of the skull
to the FBI for DNA comparison with samples taken
from Chad Choice's family.
The results, however, are inconclusive.
Investigators then turn to a university in Texas
and the science of forensic anthropology.
Working with different photos, Goecking
determines that the skull left on the family doorstep
belongs to Chad.
In her heart, Karen Choice has known
her boy was unlikely to ever be found alive.
She never thought, however, that his skull would
be delivered to her front door.
Who could be this demonic to do something like this,
and then to place it on the family's doorstep?
Who is this person?
And I mean, I think that there was an anger that rose up in me
that I had never felt before.
I had to see who this person was.
[music playing]
In April of 1996, Pat Horn sits in a Texas jail cell,
looking at either life or a possible death sentence
for his part in two bank robberies
and the murder of fruit stand owner JC Levasseur.
Horn decides he wants to cut a deal
and mentions the name Chad Choice.
Pat Horn lived in the same neighborhood as Chad Choice
and knew the family.
He claims the boy was killed by two local drug
dealers, Colombian nationals who go by the street
names Paco and Carlos.
Pat Horn receives a package in his jail cell.
Inside it, the leg bone of a young boy.
The jailers intercept this package
that was sent to Pat Horn.
And they find what appears to be a leg bone,
and also a note threatening him that if he gives
any information about Chad Choice,
that they'll kill him or kill his family.
NARRATOR: The leg bone is confirmed as human
and eventually confirmed as belonging to Chad Choice.
The question is, who sent it?
Pat Horn claims it was Paco and Carlos.
Cold case detectives suspect Horn
knows more than he is telling.
FBI agent Jim Wilkins.
JIM WILKINS: I think one thing that made us doubt Pat Horn was
knowing just how much he was involved with these guys
because Pat had a reputation of exaggerating
and trying to build up his own self-importance.
He really opens the door wide as far as us
looking at him as being involved in this.
Certainly more so than he tells us.
NARRATOR: Months after the leg bone is confirmed as belonging
to Chad, Pat Horn still claims to know nothing
more about the disappearance.
[music playing]
According to Horn, Paco and Carlos are still the killers.
But now, Horn admits he actually saw the murder
and knows where Chad is buried.
Jeff Block is an agent with the FBI.
JEFF BLOCK: Eventually, he told us that he had helped--
that he had dug a hole, dug a grave for Chad at the direction
of Paco and Carlos.
He tells us, he says, see, basically I'm
a victim in this crime as well.
All I did was help bury the child.
I didn't have any other involvement in it.
And now, they're threatening me because of my knowledge
of what they did.
NARRATOR: Horn claims Chad Choice is
buried in Horn's own backyard.
Investigators put the convict in cuffs and drive
into the heart of Tyler's west side.
At 4:00 PM on May 31st, detectives start to dig.
Some of the agents and officers dug down.
They hit a plastic bag, and dug a little more and found bones,
found clothing.
NARRATOR: The remains are that of a young boy quickly
identified as Chad Choice.
Also in the grave, 380-caliber shell casings.
Probably the shots that killed Chad.
Investigators believe Pat Horn is Chad's killer.
[music playing]
Keaton Horn is Pat Horn's younger brother.
In June of 1996, he sits in a jail cell in Athens, Texas,
booked on a probation violation.
While he's in there, cold case detectives take a chance.
Keaton tells detectives he dug up Chad Choice's bones,
prepared a threatening note, and sent the package
to Pat Horn's jail cell, all at his older brother's direction.
BILL HORTON: He admitted to digging up the bones or the leg
bone, and mailing to Pat in jail at his direction,
preparing the note to make it look like a threat
from Paco and Carlos.
NARRATOR: Pat Horn's elaborate scheme finally collapses
under its own weight, leaving him
as the man who took Chad Choice from his home,
killed him, and finally used the boy's bones to try and lead
cold case detectives astray.
As for why Pat Horn chose to kill Chad Choice,
detectives could only offer Horn's need
to be bigger than life itself.
JIM WILKINS: Well, as I said, Pat's ambition was to be
a gangster, to be a crook.
And Pat is one of those people that I believe that if he's not
recognized by someone else, he's going to make sure that someone
recognizes what he did.
I mean, it's a sixth sense of what he did.
NARRATOR: On September 24, 1999, a jury agrees with detectives
and finds Pat Horn guilty.
He is sentenced to die in Texas lethal injection chamber.
[music playing]