Original subtitles

This case angered me from the very beginning.

What would be the reason for somebody wanting to harm her in such a brutal,

heinous way?

The pain of what she went through right before she died, what sticks with me,

it is a wound that will never, ever heal.

And I can only imagine the guilt that she feels.

I say it over and over again.

I'm so sorry I would have done anything for this not to have happened.

There's nothing I can do to fix it.

She's now dead because of me.

I'm Detective Brian Kendall with the City of Plantation Police Department.

Plantation is directly west of the city of Fort Lauderdale.

Tourism draws people to the area.

The way of life down here is obviously a little bit laid back due to the nature

of the weather.

Most areas in South Florida are wetlands, so in order to build homes,

out a series of canals and waterways.

Unfortunately, from time to time, we do find bodies in the canal.

This is my home office, sort of my space with obviously a lot of my treasures.

I've never really gone through.

She's with other people.

So this is my favorite picture.

This picture to me is Melissa as I knew her.

Melissa and I were out at a gathering with friends and somebody obviously said

something funny. She's laughing. She looks adorable.

When you come across somebody who will

truly be there and actually sacrifice themselves for your own happiness or to

lift you up and build you up, that's a gift.

And she was that gift to me.

His name was Tony.

He was very quiet, kind of like me, an introvert.

We worked for the railroad, had plans in life.

It's hard to trust people when you grew up the way that I did.

I didn't even really have a home growing up. You know, we moved every time the

rent was due and didn't have food sometimes.

So stability was screaming out to me.

This is Deborah.

This is me.

and this is Melissa.

My name is Christina Kitterman, and I was an attorney at Rothstein Rosenfeld

Firm. I worked with Debra and with Melissa.

She came in every morning with coffee and smiles.

I'm here, I'm here, I'm here.

She wants to tell me all about law school and all about her life, and I'm

like that at all.

Debra is very reserved.

She holds back a lot.

But Melissa is just this bubble energy that just fills a room.

She was kind of like a mother figure to Debra.

She's very nurturing, making sure that I ate lunch because half the time I

didn't.

That's just how our relationship began, and we're working in close quarters, so

we're talking a lot.

One of the things that we shared... was that she, too, entered the workforce as

a young teenager out of necessity.

The person who dropped out of high school, got her GED, started law school,

thrived.

Her ultimate goal was she wanted to be a judge. She wanted to sit on a bench.

And I have no doubt in my mind that she would have achieved that goal without

issue.

She knew that I wasn't happily married.

It took me a bit, but I got up the nerve and made the decision that I had to go

and get her divorced.

And so she was right there, right along the way, the good days, the bad days,

whatever I needed, whatever the kids needed.

I'd never had that before in my life.

It makes me sad that I will never see her in person again.

It's the end of the day, and there weren't many people left in the office.

late.

Melissa comes into my office.

She had on this chocolate brown pinstripe suit that she had just gotten

before at Neiman Marcus.

She had lost a few pounds and was feeling pretty sassy, and she's in the

going on and on about how great she looks.

I go, hey, Lucy. I call her Lucy.

Look, this is the guy. I'm going to go meet him tonight. He's different. I

you'll really like him. Let's see how tonight goes.

I show him his name. It's Danny.

Headed out to meet him.

Just really hit it off, so I couldn't wait to tell Melissa about it.

So I get my truck.

I'm already texting her.

And she didn't respond right away.

I sent her another text at some point, and then I get home, and I thought I

heard from her, and I was a little let down. I thought she would be excited to

hear about it.

So that was that.

I wake up the next morning, check the phone, still no text.

I was really surprised.

My son, Isaiah, said he wasn't feeling well. He couldn't go to school.

I tell him, okay, get ready. You're going to have to come to work with me

because I had a meeting.

So I get to work, and I run right into Cheyenne, who was Melissa's secretary.

And Cheyenne asked me, where's Melissa?

She's got an appointment.

I said, what do you mean, where's Melissa? She's not here?

At that moment, I would say that my bladder ain't cold.

There's something terribly wrong.

I call her sister, Carrie, and I tell her everything that I know. And Carrie

says, something's wrong.

We agreed to meet at the house.

I jump in my truck. I have Isaiah with me.

I'm heading to her house, maybe a 20 -minute drive into Plantation.

My mind's going 100 miles an hour, just fear, just absolute fear, wondering what

on earth has happened to her.

When she wasn't responding to my text messages, I should have done more. I

should have just gone to bed. I could have just shot over to her house then.

didn't I shoot over to her house then?

And we can see her car's not there.

Carrie already has the keys, so we go right into the house.

We're walking around the house.

Nothing looks out of place.

We went into every room. We went into her bedroom, kitchen.

Everything is there.

Nothing is really touched.

And all of a sudden Isaiah says, what is this here?

He's out in the garage.

And he points to all this yellow stuff.

And I'm reaching my hand out to touch it.

The police officer said, no, no, no, don't touch that.

The wall, the garage door and everything was pepper spray.

The officer told me, don't touch anything.

Get everybody into the house. Let's get out of here.

And that's when I burst into tears because where is she?

At about noontime on March 6th, I was notified by my supervisor that the

units were reporting a person missing.

They believed that she had been missing from the night before after leaving

work.

Her best friend and sister were adamant that it is so far out of character.

The report of pepper spray in her garage makes it suspicious.

This is Melissa Lewis' house.

Her house is situated here in a residential neighborhood.

Very unusual to be investigating any sort of violent crime in this area.

I meet with one of the first responding officers.

He immediately shows me the garage floor near the door. There's a large yellow

stain.

I could then immediately smell the pepper spray inside the garage.

A button is on the floor. The button looks like it was torn off.

It's flashing through my mind that that's a button from her suit that she

wearing.

There's numerous bruises. They hadn't been put away yet.

At this point, we're becoming increasingly concerned that this isn't

typical missing person, but there's some sort of criminal act had taken place

there.

Our heads are spinning.

Just trying desperately to figure out where is she.

Somebody has her somewhere.

One of the scenarios that we came up with was somebody had been waiting for

They slipped in behind her.

There was some sort of altercation.

We thought possibly could she have been abducted, placed into the back of her

own car, and then driven out of the area.

Time is of the essence to try to find her.

My guilt is hitting like a rainstorm. I'm going over in my mind all the

things that I could have done.

I'm just texting her, where are you? You know, we're so worried. You know, I'm

so scared. You know, I love you. You're my best friend. Please.

Just please call me.

On March 5th at about noontime, officers received a call that Melissa Lewis

hadn't arrived to work that day.

Her car was missing, she was missing, and no one had heard from her since

7 p .m. the night before.

When Plantation Police Department arrives at the house and they see the

that are amiss in the garage, the working theory was

robbery.

Her house had actually been robbed like a year, year and a half before that. So

Melissa had a safe installed.

Her sister Carrie goes to the safe to see if the jewelry's still there.

The jewelry is there.

Everything is there.

We know that there are no bullet casings, no bullet fragments.

No blood on the ground, no obvious signs. Significant trauma had taken

the garage.

Possibilities that they're considering at that point are that she's been

out, that someone has used mace to subdue her in a way that they're able to

off with her in her vehicle.

They're going with the assumption she's been abducted, so she's still alive.

So every second, every minute counts.

We don't know at the time whether somebody was waiting for her, somebody

targeting her, or somebody had even followed her from work.

They wanted to put together the best timeline of where she last was.

There was a receipt within the bags of groceries.

Melissa had been shopping the night before at a nearby public.

It's a grocery store that was not far from her house.

They then went and got the surveillance videos. They're looking for if someone's

following her, if there's any suspicious activity around her or in the parking

lot.

Investigators were able to ascertain that Melissa was at Publix about 8 .20 p

.m. the night before on March 5th, shopping alone.

You can see her walking up and down the aisle. She wears a very expensive watch.

She had an expensive purse.

That could lead us to believe that she had been targeted by somebody wanting to

commit a robbery.

But we don't know what happens once she leaves the store. There's no exterior

surveillance video.

Around the time of Melissa's disappearance, there were other

going on in Palm Beach County where women who had been followed from malls

different areas were attacked, kidnapped, and then murdered.

They all were driving high -end sport utility vehicles.

Investigators from a task force in Palm Beach County and Boca Raton contacted

us, drawing similarities between their murders and abductions.

And Melissa's disappearance.

You're just trying to put the pieces together, but, you know, they weren't

really making much sense.

You know, if she got snatched in the public parking lot by these guys who

snatching women, then why is there pepper spray in her garage?

She was alive and well at Publix, and once she gets home, that's where she

falls off the radar.

No one has heard from Melissa now in over about 15 hours.

So time is of the essence to try to find her.

Next step would be to find out, is she dating anyone? Does she have a

What's her marital status?

She was divorced, so of course they follow that lead and they ask a lot of

questions about Rob, her ex -husband.

Alyssa and Rob got married.

I was her bridesmaid.

She had married the love of her life, somebody who she felt was her equal. And

career -wise, they were both on a solid path as attorneys.

Everything seemed wonderful.

It was just a few short years in, and slowly she started talking to me about

issues.

He seems distant.

He's not coming home at night. He's working late on projects.

Rob was spending a lot of time with another staff member of his firm, a

So she confronts him on it.

And within a few weeks, he was gone.

He already had an apartment and started living with somebody else.

And she was just devastated and humiliated.

It's so hard seeing somebody who's so full of life and always helping

just basically curled up in the fetal position, devastated.

She did so much for me over the years, but that was the one time she really

needed somebody.

It took her a while, took a lot, but she bounced back.

Husbands, ex -husbands, friends, relatives are always looked at first.

Eventually, police tracked down Rob to question him.

Rob told police that he was at work all day.

He got home around 7 p .m. that night and he actually had an alibi because he

took his dog to an emergency visit at the vet around 10 p .m.

Her ex -husband was eliminated as a suspect because they were able to verify

his whereabouts.

About 4 p .m. on March 6th, LoJack was able to provide us with a location for

Melissa's vehicle.

Her vehicle, which is similar to this vehicle parked right here, was located

the parking lot three blocks from her home.

We did a cursory search of the vehicle.

Melissa was not there.

Inside the vehicle, we could smell some pepper spray, the same sort of smell

from her garage.

Melissa's suit jacket and her shoes were located in the back cargo compartment.

The corresponding button that we saw in her garage earlier belonged to the suit

jacket that was in the car. It looked like it had been torn off.

thing that pops out is a lot of staining on the jacket, a body fluid of some

type.

Their hypothesis at that time was that it was semen. That leads them to add an

additional element to the working theory of robbery that now they potentially

have a sexual assault case.

The crime scene unit then collected DNA swabs, attempted to obtain fingerprints

from inside the vehicle.

Unfortunately, it looked like the person who had worn gloves was very careful,

or they had wiped the car down prior to leaving.

They get an emergency order on the phone to try and see, was the phone still

active? And if so, where is it?

Everyone's hoping she was alive, so the phone is the best piece of evidence and

the best investigative tool a detective has.

Hopefully that will lead to whoever took Melissa.

Phone rings. It's the police department. They asked me to call her phone.

They even had me send a text message.

They told me just anything, something you would normally text to her, just,

know, text it.

I told them, look, I've been texting her nonstop and calling her nonstop. She's

not responding. And they said, just send it. Send it right now.

The feeling of somebody that you love going missing, I can't describe it.

There's really no words.

As I'm driving to work a little bit after 7 that following morning on March

hear over the police radio that a body had been found in a canal and

And they reported the body as a female.

And I drove directly to that location.

There's not a lot of houses nearby.

It's a pretty quiet place.

The building is a pump station which regulates the height of the water in the

canals.

I walked down to the canal bank and I immediately saw over in the distance a

body of a deceased female.

She was wearing the same clothing as described by Deborah.

And at that time is when the medical examiner notices some injuries to her

that would be consistent with manual strangulation.

This is no longer just a missing person.

We now know it's a homicide.

Phone rings at the police department, and I said, have you found her? You

what's going on?

And that's when he tells me they found her body in the local

sewage area.

I remember just collapsing to the ground, crying and crying and crying.

My best friend was gone.

Turned on the news.

They were showing a body being dragged out of a canal in a yellow body bag.

And I called my boss and I said, is it her? Please tell me. Please tell me

that's not her.

And he said, he said it's her.

Why would somebody kill her? Why would they dump her in a canal?

She didn't deserve that.

At this time, it doesn't feel random.

Random acts are things like road rage, things where someone's surprised when

they're committing crimes. It seems more personal.

The findings in the autopsy was that she had been beaten with some type of blunt

force trauma around her face, leaving marks, bruises in her facial area.

But more significantly, what led to her death was the marks around her neck.

Strangulation, not something that's quick.

You would be looking at them eye to eye.

You would have to continue strangling them until you actually squeeze the life

out of them and kill them.

A stranger isn't going to break in and use that as his mode of killing.

It's probably more likely somebody that knows her.

Unfortunately, getting results for DNA and things of that nature take a

considerable amount of time. So we knew that we had to do more on the ground

investigating at that point.

A few years earlier, Carrie had gone through a difficult divorce.

Her ex -husband was not a very pleasant man. He had had some past issues with

the law.

He had a propensity for violence.

And Melissa, of course, helped her sister in every way that she could.

And the ex -brother -in -law did not take that very well.

He actually had called Melissa and cursed at her, threatened her.

was just extremely angry.

She was really upset about it.

Anthony had a criminal past for armed robbery. He had spent time in prison.

He became our number one person of interest.

Carrie agreed to make a controlled phone call to Anthony Godinez to

find out what he's been doing the last couple days.

If he had seen Melissa, had he talked to her.

Was he angry with her for any reason?

We're looking to see if he's being evasive, if he's not answering the

to get him to possibly make some sort of admission on the telephone.

We're able to get him to come into the police department for an interrogation.

But when I first met him, I did see that he had significant physical

limitations. I believe he had MS. He walked with a cane.

We came to realize that he wouldn't have been capable of attacking somebody,

possibly abducting them.

He provided names of people that he was with on the night of March 5th, who

confirmed his alibi.

I was able to get all the call detail records, which included all the incoming

and outgoing calls from her phone, and sell to our location.

It was almost like breadcrumbs being left by Melissa.

We know that.

The phone was in the area of her home between 8 and 9 p .m.

March 5th.

Then Melissa's phone tracked out to the location where we found her dead body in

the canal.

The phone travels back on that night down the I -75 corridor.

Whoever had the phone at that point, it looks like the phone is at a residence.

It spends the night there.

The phone started moving again in the early morning hours where it traveled

north up into the city of Pompano Beach where the phone finally died.

So at this point, the million -dollar question is, who has her phone?

Here's something that I've held on to forever.

Kept it here in this same little bag all these years because it has

text messages that I sent to Melissa.

I guess I didn't know what else to do.

It's very impacting to look at it.

The last text message.

Happy New Year, Lucy. I called her Lucy.

I hope it's beautiful where you are. I love you.

There's just no words to describe when someone like that's just gone from one

day to the next.

especially because the guilt I have for it was the only way I knew how to say.

I'm just sorry.

I say it over and over again. I'm so sorry I would have done anything,

for this not to have happened.

After Melissa's murder, Debra started confiding in me that she felt guilty.

She blamed herself for Melissa's death, and so she just stayed hidden in her

home.

For the first several months, I couldn't work.

I have PTSD. I have severe anxiety.

I'm afraid to leave the house sometimes.

After Melissa Lewis is dead, her phone was still being used and still

activating cell towers.

The other curious thing that they found was whoever had kept the phone is

utilizing the phone to call voicemail, and they're listening to voicemail.

Listening to people calling and begging her to return their calls that

they're... scared, they're nervous, they're worried, please call me back.

got the reason to listen to those voicemails?

The phone remains stationary sometime after 10 p .m. until a little bit after

a .m.

It looks like the phone is at a resident that spends the night there.

We re -interviewed Deborah and Carrie to find out if they were familiar with

anybody that lived or worked in the area of where the cell tower hits were

taking place.

Deborah had said that her estranged husband, Tony Villegas, lived in the

vicinity of where the phone spent the night in the Miami Lakes region. That

the first time we ever heard the name Tony Villegas.

We asked her a tremendous amount of questions.

How well did he know Melissa? Did you guys ever spend time together?

Did he have any issues with Melissa?

Debra explained that Tony and Melissa really didn't even know each other very

well.

So law enforcement officers make arrangements to go meet with Tony

his place of employment at the railroad yard.

He worked for the Florida East.

Coast Railway. And Tony Villegas said it's cooperative.

Do you have anything to do with Melissa's death?

No.

I didn't even know her.

I mean, I know her, but I never spoke to her. Probably more than two words.

He denied any involvement with the murder, any involvement with Melissa or

in the area that night.

He complied with the search warrant, and we were able to get a DNA swab from

him.

We conducted a criminal history check. He had nothing significant in his past

that would make us think that he was a violent person.

He didn't strike me as someone actually that would carry out a crime like this.

In the morning, my oldest son, Caleb, came into my room.

And he asked me when the police were going to want to talk to him.

I tell him, oh, no, no, no, Poppy, don't worry. They're not going to talk to

you. It's okay.

You know, I don't want you to be worried about anything, you know.

And he goes, well, I know who killed Melissa.

Oldest son, Caleb, told me, I know who killed Melissa.

I asked him, Caleb, who do you think would have killed Melissa?

And he said, Dad did it.

And I just felt the room spinning.

But I just, I was physically sick.

So they talked with Caleb, and they got the information from him.

Over the years, I was living with a nightmare.

He was the boss, and we were his possessions.

We were his things.

He was just always...

Just always accusing me of things, and if I did one thing wrong, it was capital

punishment for anything.

One time, I was telling him, you know, I'm leaving.

And that's when he very calmly told me that I wasn't going anywhere.

And I turn around, and there he is with a gun.

You're not going anywhere.

And I just didn't know what to do.

I believed wholeheartedly that he would kill me.

And that's why I said, just follow the rules.

Try to make sure I don't do anything to upset him.

I felt trapped.

Nobody I worked with knew how we were living.

And that's another thing that I would tell myself if I could speak to myself

now.

Don't isolate yourself.

Eventually, I got up the nerve, and I called Melissa.

I told her my dirty little secret.

She just kept letting me know that she loved me.

I think that Melissa's strength was helping Debra see that she needed to get

divorced from Tony.

We learned that Melissa essentially

filled in and took the role that Tony Villegas used to have in Debra's life.

She would go over to the house multiple days a week, and they would cook dinner

together with Debra and her children.

They went on multiple vacations together.

Caleb had said his dad had become upset on how close Melissa was becoming with

who he thought was his family, and almost like he was being replaced by

This made him very angry, and the person he held responsible for that was

Melissa Lewis.

Did I believe he was capable of harming me? Absolutely.

But, you know, why Melissa?

I was so overwhelmed with guilt.

And I'm in the middle of the police department, and I'm trying to talk.

And everything is spinning and moving, and I just fell down to my knees, and I

just, I couldn't stop crying.

At the time, I had no idea what was going on with Debra. I think it was a

to the rest of the world that it could be Tony.

They're seeing cell towers that are being hit by Tony Villegas' phone, and

they're comparing it to the cell towers hit on Melissa Lewis' phone, and they're

mirroring each other.

Both their phones moved from the Miami location up the train track that we came

to know with Tony's job and when he was on the train.

She's now dead because of me.

She's dead for one reason, and that's because she's my friend.

I think Tony somehow got some inner joy

knowing. that Debra was in search of her best friend and probably had called her

a hundred times looking for her. That's why he carried it to his house. That's

why he brought it to work with him. It was on the train with him.

I think he got some sort of satisfaction knowing that he really hurt Debra by

killing Melissa.

Melissa's ability to fight off her attacker using pepper spray was crucial.

Tony would have been sneezing, coughing.

Mucus would have then been transferred onto Melissa's suit jacket that

a DNA profile, which was used to identify Tony Villegas.

I can't imagine being in Deborah's shoes.

It's bad enough to lose your best friend, but she carries that guilt with

if she was the one with her hands around Melissa's throat.

And it's heartbreaking.

He stayed through the whole thing.

He's still here now.

And he's just a wonderful person to my children, to his children, to me.

I'm so riddled with guilt.

The hardest times are when I'm happy because she's not there

to laugh with or she's not going to be able to experience this happiness that

I'm feeling.

There's nothing I can do to fix it.

Nothing.