(dramatic music)
(crickets chirping)
- Tim was fun loving.
He was funny.
He was a charmer.
He liked to dance.
He was just a happy-go-lucky young man.
Someone at the club told Tim's sister
Thelesa, that he left the club.
He got in the car with the two white men
and the woman and they left The People's Choice.
And that Friday night that was last that we saw Tim.
(dramatic music)
(police siren wailing)
- I remember when they came to our house
they showed a picture.
Everybody was just so upset.
So upset and really scared,
because who would do this?
(soft music)
- The well became a target for physical evidence
when a jailhouse informant came forward and said
Franklin Gebhardt is telling everybody
that there's clothing and a knife in that well,
but this jailhouse informant said he burned trash
over that evidence for years to destroy it.
When I realized that we were not going to be able
to excavate the well the traditional way,
I raised my voice.
I said, I don't care what it takes.
We're getting in that well.
My investigator, John Wright,
stumbles upon a way that we could hydrovac the well,
so we could send water shooting down in the well
with a big tube to suck up everything that the water gets
and put it in a big old tank.
The risk that we took was we would never
be able to retrieve DNA evidence, but at that point
I would rather have the evidence and not be able to test it,
than not have the evidence at all.
(dramatic music)
We weren't getting anything.
It was just dirt and gravel
and dirt and gravel and then bam, we hit burned trash.
And that's important
because that's another thing that was said
was that there'd be burned trash on top.
I could not believe it.
It's important to understand why that was so significant
because this was an Adidas shoe from 1983.
We knew that Tim had some sneakers like that.
That's why that was so important to the case.
(soft music)
We found a handle and a portion
of a knife that was recovered in that well.
The thing about Franklin Gebhardt
that you have to remember
is that he owned dozens and dozens and dozens of knives.
He threw no knife away.
He kept them all.
But this one knife,
the only knife that was recovered from that well
was in that well, and that's why that was significant
and that's why we argued
to the jury that it was the murder weapon.
We went out and continued to sift through all of this stuff
in the well and Sheriff Digs pulls up a white undershirt
and it has stab wounds in the back and in the front as well.
In that moment, the brutality almost overtook me
seeing it and knowing that he's wearing this when he died,
and died in such a horrible way.
That became very real to me.
And at that moment when I had those gloves
on and I touched that shirt,
I remember saying to Tim, we're gonna get him.
We're gonna get 'em.
It was just one of the most surreal moments of my career.
(soft music)