Original subtitles

Many parents' greatest fear

is for your child to be

snatched from your home.

I'll tell you as a mother who lives in Richland County

that this case was devastating to watch.

Just imagineú your child going missing,

and you know nothing about how that happened.

Just imagine that.

[dog barks]

A predator who comes in under the guise of a friend.

And then to think somehow, you let the wolf in.

It was one of those cases, for some reason,

it just stuck to me,

because I felt the pain in the family,

and all they wanted was an answer.

[chilling music]

A Richland County mom isúpleading for your help tonight

to find her missing teenage daughter.

[anchor 2] She's 15 year old Gabrielle Swainson.

She went missing Saturday

between three and seven that morning.

She's five feet, two inches tall with black hair,

last seen wearing pink and black pyjamas.

[anchor] News 19's Nate Stewart

spoke to her mom tonight

who's asking the public for your help.

It was an early Saturday morning

we received a call from her mom

that her mom had went to work

and returned home and her daughter was gone.

There was panic.

There was just the fear, "where's my daughter at?"

Our deputies responded to take a report.

15-year-old girl going on 16

disappears in the middle ofú the night in her own home.

Her mom returned home and saw that her daughter was gone

when there was no forced entry.

[narrator] Elvia Swainso n tellsthe sheriff her daughter Gabbiee

would never just disappear like this.

Her cell phone is with her,

but other items that she usuallyú takes with her are not.

There's no forced entry in her home

that there is no evidence that there was a struggle

or that she was taken away forcefully.

You could tell that something was wrong,

this was not a runaway.

It was a really normal night,

she gets home and sheú spends time with her mom.

And they watch a movie together.

And everything is fine.

[news] Swainson describes herú daughter as a good student,

a cheerleader at Ridgeview High School.

She doesn't believe there was anything going on

that would have caused her daughter to run away.

That's the puzzling part, so right now,

I'm just focused on finding my child

and bringing her home.

Gabrielle Swainson, or she was known as Gabbiee,

by a lot of her friends,

was the only child of her mom, Elvia.

And she and her mom seemed to have a really good relationship.

Different teachers, educators, and other classmates

had spoken very highly of Swainson

and spoke about her smile

and who she was as a person

and, you know, what she brought to the school.

And so a lot of people didn't understand why Swainson,

why did she disappear, what caused this?

She was reliable, she was conscientious,

she was smart,

she was involved in a special program at school

for students who wanted to go into the medical field.

She had just made a junior varsity cheerleader

for her sophomore year,

which she was very excited about,

and she played the guitar.

She was really in a lot of respects, I think, the daughter

all of us would want to have.

[reporter] With a house full of family in town

to help with the search,

Swainson has nowúturned to the public for help.

This afternoon, a search party posted flyers

around their northeast Columbia neighbourhood

for signs of Gabbiee.

[woman] We're asking people, knocking on doors

because there's so many neighbourhoods in this area.

[Leon] Richland County is Columbia, South Carolina,

it's a mid-size city.

We have rural areas, but have very urban areas, also,

so it's a little mixture of everything.

Residential streets, communities together,

families together,

all sort of a quieter area,

a quieter part of this larger Columbia, South Carolina.

A community that would find it strange

that something like this,

that a 15-year-old girl goes missing.

[reporter] While friends andú family search the streets,

others have turned to social media sites,

like Facebook and Twitter usingú the hashtag "#findgabbiee",

hoping that the large onlinencommunities will turn up clues.

We have been getting some phone calls here and there,

but we have not got anything definite

or anything that's been verified.

[Leon] The mom had lots of friends, so erm...

they were very active in their church.

They were a member of a fairly large church

so they had the church family that was involved in it too.

So it was a community turnout, a girl's missing.

Your worst fear is thatú a child's been kidnapped.

The community responds,

the police department responds,

with hundreds of officers involved in the search

with the use of criminal justice personnel,

behaviour analysis.

All that this community can put together

to find this 15-year-old girl is mustered together

as time becomes critical.

[narrator] Four days after Gabbiee is reported missing,

her friends walked back into school for a new year

without her.

Gabbiee Swainson was going into her sophomore year

at Ridgeview High School.

[news] With Ridgeview starting school this Thursday,

Swainson hopes her worst fear as a mother

will soon be put the rest

so she can wrap her arms around her daughter.

Just imagine your child going missing

and you know nothing about how that happened.

Just imagine that.

[Leon] We were looking for Gabbiee.

There was people walking and looking for Gabbiee.

We were still conducting and searches of the house,

crime scene, investigators come in.

You're looking for any type of clues that you can find.

They found Gabbiee's phone charger, her purse,

her ID, her clothes,

they're all at the house, but her phone is missing.

[Naida] We understand thatúteenagers run away from home,

but why would she leave anyú of these things behind?

Why would she go out in just her pyjamas?

[narrator] But also inside Gabbiee's bedroom,

investigators soon reveal

they've made another troubling discovery.

We found some blood on her bed.

It wasn't enough blood

to imply that some murder had happened

or something catastrophic,

but it was certainly unusual.

Any parents' greatest fear

is for your child

to be snatched from your home, from her bed.

And you just kind of get that feeling,

this was going to be some very serious.

There was no forced entry,

so law enforcement automatically begins to think

it has to be someone that has access to the home.

This gives to police officers, detectives,

the indication that the person who may have taken her away,

the person who may have seen her last,

was someone she knew.

Maybe even invited that person into the home.

Family is ruled out through alibi or other means.

But then you go to that next line,

that next circle, if you will, of friends and associates.

[Joni] They're looking for things that you would think

when a child is goes missing.

Is it somebody who was a boyfriend

who she had a difficult relationship with,

a violent relationship with, the answer was no.

Could this be somebody she met online,

that kind of groomed her

and convinced her to meet him in a certain place,

the answer was no.

So, a lot of doors are closing.

As we talked to the mom, ú she gave us names of people

that had access to the house, úhad done some work on the house,

and any friends that she'd had

that had access to the house.

So, we just started interviewing those people.

And one person who relatively quickly

comes to the surface is a man named Freddie Grant,

a 52-year-old man.

He has done handy work around the house.

He was working on their floors.

He was somebody that the family

seemed to know and to trust.

We knew he had access to the house previously.

And so that just put him on a list of people

that we had to talk to.

[Joni] Elvia had actually called him, asking for help.

So Freddie Grant was somebody, I think,

that Elvia trusted, andú thought of as a friend.

And he actually had been somebody

who initially was handing out flyers.

And his phone number was one of the names

that was on the missing person's flyer

as somebody to contact.

[narrator] In late August,

detectives contact friend of the family,

Freddie Grant.

When one of the investigators went to speak with him,

the first thing he said is "I'm not talking to you."

We actually had documentation when I worked at WLTX

of all of the people that wentú out to search for Gabbiee

and we have video evidenceú that showed Freddie Grant

was a part of that search to find Swainson.

If you're gonna have someone

that is "a friend of the family" in quotes,

and then they're refusing to cooperate,

it immediately sets off this...

What are they hiding? What's happening?

[narrator] In the days after 15-year-old Gabbiee Swainson

disappears from her South Carolina home,

police and volunteers flood the area.

The community is extremely involved.

I mean, flyers go out.

The sheriff himself just seems to

take an incredibly personalú interest in this case.

There's no Gabbiee.

They can't find her.

[ Leon] That's when we started doing some other things,

tracking Gabbiee's mobile phone.

And when it left the house

and the general area where it was last turned on.

When they are able to download, you know,

her activity, they find that there's

some pings that have occurred

from her house to Elgin.

To give reference, you know, úElgin and where Swainson live

are not too far from each other.

I mean, there are a couple miles,

they're in different counties, but realistically,

it's about a 10, 15 minute drive.

Elgin is more of a rural community,

but it neighbours up against the highly populated Columbia.

So, once you get into the town of Elgin,

you're seeing mom and pop stores,

similar to pharmacies, restaurants.

You have a really small town hall.

[narrator] Investigators soon realize

there's another connection with Elgin.

Elgin had like 1,500 people in it.

It also happens to be where Freddie Grant lives.

So this of course is putting him at the top

of their suspect list.

They go into his background.

And they find that he has been arrested

and convicted on felony violent charges

against other people.

[Joni] He was basically a career criminal.

He had had over 20 law enforcements,

either convictions or arrest.

He had served time for aggravated assault.

He had a history of domestic violence.

He had been in the army

and had been sentenced to Fort Leavenworth

after he had slashed somebody with a box cutter.

I mean, this is somebody who had a very, very dark past.

That gave us enough probable cause

to go to a judge and get a warrant to search his house.

[narrator] On August 23rd, 2012, detectives search Grant's home.

Upon searching Grant's home,

this is where they confirmed he did have access to the house.

Indeed, the key was at his house.

It wasn't given by the mom, he obtained the key.

And there's speculation that at some point

when he was doing work on the house,

he was able to take the key

that she allowed him to use to do the work

and go make a copy

cause he returned her key to her.

[narrator] Investigators uncover something more.

We found some duct tape that had blood on it.

We also found bullets, ammunition.

And his record prohibit him

from having possession of ammunition or a fire arm.

That was a federal violation.

So that gave us a means to have him arrested.

[Joni] He's now awaiting trial for that,

which I think really does give law enforcement

some breathing room

because he's behind bars for now.

So they can now take their time

and look for Gabbiee.

[narrator] As they search for Gabbiee,

Grant awaits trial for his firearm violation.

Forensic results from inside his home

are now returned to officers.

Unfortunately, we found Gabbiee's DNA on some duct tape

along with Freddie Grant's DNA.

And that placed her inside his house.

[narrator] The DNA places Gabbiee Swainson

inside Freddie Grant's home,

but it doesn't prove what happened to her there.

With Grant now behind bars on unrelated firearms offences,

investigators shift their focus.

We felt like we knew who had taken Gabbiee,

but we didn't know where Gabbiee was at.

We had called in additional assistance from the FBI.

We were not going to leave a rock unturned

to see if we could find something that was

associated with Gabbiee.

So months passed by, and can you imagine the strain,

the emotional pull on the family, the community,

as there are no definitive answers where Gabrielle is.

[Naida] I'm a mom. ú I have two teenage boys.

I cannot imagine the purgatory that is not knowing

and having hope

that maybe just maybe she ran away and fear.

Like to sit in the purgatory between hope and fear

is a cruelty that I just cannot imagine.

[narrator] Detectives try to get any information they can

from Freddie Grant.

Freddie wasn't talking,

so we didn't know where Gabbiee was at.

That's pretty much a dead end.

The hate that you must harbour in your soul

to be that cruel to someone is just...

it is astounding to me.

I can't wrap my head around the cruelty of that.

Law enforcement did a really good job in terms of recognizing

that this was somebody

that appealing to his emotions appealing to his guilt,

appealing to "what about the family",

he would not be phased by any of that.

We're gonna have to find something if there is something

that is gonna speak to any potential problem for him.

If it's not something in it for him,

then we're not going to get any way where.

[narrator] Then, almost a year after Gabbiee disappears,

her family and investigators receive news,

and a call they never expected.

It was a Friday night, I got a call from Gabbiee's mom,

on my cell phone and she said,

"I just got a call from Gabbiee's phone."

She's thinking that her daughter is finally reaching out.

She's finally calling her back and this is her calling.

[Joni] You know, as a mom, you think she's alive.

You know, she's calling me. She's been somewhere.

She's been held captive.

She's managed to get away.

[narrator] The call fromGabbiee's phone brings new hope

in the search for the missing Columbia teenager.

Almost a year after Gabbiee disappeared,

all of a sudden one day,

Elvia gets a call from Gabbiee's phone.

[phone rings]

[ Walker] She called that number back.

And another woman answers the phone and says,

"I found this phone."

It's heartbreaking for a mom that's

been looking and searching for their daughter for months.

[Joni] It is 140 miles east, close to Myrtle Beach.

She had charged the phone, and then she was calling,

basically, to let somebody know

that she had found this phone.

[narrator] For Gabbiee's family, the discovery is devastating.

But for investigators, the call offers a possible new lead.

This phone call on that Friday night,

really got us going back again.

[Joni] This was very confusing to everybody,

especially law enforcement,

because they knew that Gabbiee had never been to Myrtle Beach.

But it ultimately, in many respects,

broke this case wide open.

[narrator] When detectives trace the phone's movements

from Columbia to Myrtle Beach,

it leads them to somebody else's daughter.

Dominique, who was Freddie Grant's daughter,

had actually planted, at her father's direction,

put this phone in South Carolina, in Myrtle Beach.

Basically it was to try to throw police off

from what her father had done.

It was to try to distract people.

So she took the phone to Myrtle Beach.

And threw it in one of those trash cans

behind the grocery store.

Freddie's daughter,

we were able to track her from Columbia

to where the phone had been located,

where it had been found.

[narrator] Dominique Grant is charged with

accessory after the fact

for her alleged role in helping to plant Gabbiee's phone.

That was a key mistake that he made,

was to try to throw us off by using his daughter

and that backfired on him.

This doesn't, of course, tell them what happened

to Gabbiee or where she was.

But what it does do is it gives him some leverage

in terms of going back to Freddie Grant.

We had his daughter now. She had criminal charges.

She should go to jail.

We felt that as a father, that Freddie may be willing

to save his daughter.

There was an opportunity to maybe bring Gabbiee home

in exchange for a deal.

We just sat back and eventually,

Freddie's attorneys reached out to us.

[narrator] Facing overwhelming evidence,

Grant agrees to plead guilty to Gabbiee Swainson's murder

in exchange for a deal.

In exchange for that,

the charges against his daughter would be dismissed

and he'd take us to where Gabbiee was at.

In other words, the only reason I'm providing information

is to make sure that my daughter doesn't get charged for this.

And that means I'm only willing to give you

as little information as possible

to get that deal through.

[narrator] Charges againstúDominique Grant are dismissed.

Under heavy security,

Grant is flown from prison in Kentucky back to Columbia.

There's some excitement, cause

you may be able to bring Gabbiee home to her mom.

But there's also just not trusting him whatsoever.

Is this something Freddie's planning

to have others involved to try to escape.

And I didn't trust him till the moment...

we walked to a certain spot in the woods,

and he pointed out and said, "She's right there."

I knew she was there.

He was, you can see it in his eyes

when he pointed to where she was at.

[narrator] It's an area

law enforcement is familiar with.

Members in the community like myself,

we watched the search partiesú go and look for Gabbiee.

They walked over the area where she was buried.

They even had aúcadaver dog out there looking,

trying to find Gabrielle.

He was able to bury her deep enough

and fix it up enough that you would not be able to tell.

[Naida] It is difficult to dig a grave.

So, someone would have to know

that you need to be at least five feet deep

in order for the smell of a decomposing body

not to not to rise up,

but we also learned that Freddie Grant had a history

of being a landscaper.

And he would understand how to position things in the area

so that it did not look disturbed.

[narrator] Grant himself had joined the search for Gabbiee

in that same area.

And we have video evidence that showed Freddie Grant

walking out and walking around the area

that you already know where you buried someone.

[news] In this video,

News 19 took weeksú after she went missing,

you canú actually see Grant himself

joined in the efforts to find her.

It took investigators a year andGrant's cooperation from prison

after his daughter was arrested in connection to the case

for him to finally lead investigators

to the teen's remains.

[Leon] That to me is one of the cruellest things, I think.

That's part of all this whole story is

the fact that, you know, he was there

acting like he was someone concerned

when he was the one responsible for her death

from the very beginning.

[Joni] He knew how much Elvia loved her daughter.

He knew how much Gabbiee was Elvia's w orld.

And so, to be willing to betray trust on that level,

I don't think for him, it was any trouble at all,

to continue that.

As a family, as a community, as cops,

you always have that little glimmer, maybe

maybe she's alive somewhere,

but you're really in your heart, you know, she's not.

[narrator] The coroner begins the painstaking task

of recovering Gabbiee's remains.

When you have a body that is discovered a year later,

buried, you lose some of the information

that can be gathered from soft tissues.

And so that's very difficult to gather information

that may be forensically valuable.

But we understand that people don't bury themselves.

She was found in a grave that was about five feet deep,

that there was duct tape with blood on it

with the impression of a mouth with her DNA on that duct tape.

There was so much information that showed

that this was intentionally done by someone else.

And so the classification of homicides

seemed to be the most appropriate for her case.

[narrator] Together with law enforcement,

the coroner's office piece together events

leading to Gabbiee's death.

After the mom went to work,

Freddie used the key that he had made a copy

of the mom's key.

Came in the house, kidnapped Gabbiee,

took her to his house,

sexually assaulted her, smothered her,

put her in his vehicle and transported to this wooded area

where he dug a very deep hole.

He buried her and then covered the area up.

[Joni] I think this is somebody who saw

a beautiful 15-year-old girl.

I mean, this is somebody who was a career criminal.

He had a diverse range of charges,

and he just decided to get what he wanted.

[narrator]ú As part of the agreement

to reveal Gabbiee's body,

Grant also agreed to plead guilty to her murder,

making a trial unnecessary.

The prosecution put out the facts

and then the judge asked him if they were true

and he stood in a court room and pled guilty,

but really talking about it, nah, it just...

If we had not locked his daughter up,

we'd probably would have never found Gabbiee.

[narrator] Freddie Grant is sentenced to 30 years

for Gabbiee Swainson's murder.

In addition to theú separate federal sentence

for ammunition possession thatúis later reduced to 10 years.

[Leon] There's no feeling of satisfaction.

Gabbiee was murdered,

Freddie was responsible for taking her life away.

I'd like to see him executed.

It basically took making a deal with the devil

to bring her home, but I felt like it was worth it.

[narrator] Eight years later, the coroner's office

received a letter from Grant

requesting the autopsy file for Gabbiee.

I literally like just threw it on the desk.

I was like, whoa, this is creepy.

Because why do you want the details of this

when you know exactly what happened to her?

Like are you getting some sort of sick,

you know, pleasure from reading what happened to her

all over again.

It was very chilling.

The fact that

a murderer

who has also sexually assaulted a victim

is asking for autopsy photos

or any pictures of that murder

to me just screams trophies.

This person is looking for a way to relive that event.

The other thought that I had was

is Freddie Grant a serial killer?

The Elgin communityú is working to keep alive

the memory of a woman who'súbeen missing now for 11 years.

Adriana Laster was last seen in 2011.

[police] We are here to celebrate

Adriana's 39th birthday.

Bring attention to the fact

that she has been missing for 11 years.

That's 11 birthdays.

11 years that her daughter is not going to have.

At the time of her disappearance,

Adriana was living with a man named Freddie Grant,

who later pled guilty to killing 17-year-old Gabbiee Swainson,

here in Richland County.

[narrator] While investigating Gabbiee's disappearance,

police make a chilling discovery.

A former girlfriend of Grant's is also missing.

[Leon] We knew he was dangerous.

We knew he was a killer.

And for someone to live with him and then just to disappear?

I think everyone was thinking, "Oh, my gosh,

we might be able to find out what happened to Adriana."

Adriana Laster and Freddie Grant

were dating at the time.

So she was living in Elgin, South Carolina.

They had met in Florida.

Her daughter lived in Florida.

And they said that Adriana called her every single day.

She checked in on her daughter.

She really was a loving mother who wanted to know

how her daughter was doing.

[narrator] When her family

stop receiving calls from Adriana,

they fear the worst.

She has warned them she is in danger.

She's, you know, trying to stay in contact with her family.

She's been making calls to them

stating that there are issues in the relationship,

stating that it is a dangerous relationship for her to be in.

There have been reportedú cases of domestic violence

between him and Adriana,

where I thinkú one of the reports said

that he drug her across the ground,

he slammed her head into a wall,

and he actually poured gasoline on her

to try to set her on fire.

We had had a neighbour say that she had blood

running down her face when he saw her.

And so it was known to people in that area that

there was violence occurring in that relationship.

She was living with a friend.

She had been staying away from Grant, trying to hide from him,

and she was walking to church that Sunday morning.

A friend of hers had said

that she should not go to church that day.

[narrator] But Adriana decides she will go to church

and is never seen again.

Also when you drive out there

there's no bright lighting in that area.

There were not any cameras in this area.

A lot of these homes are spaced out

so it is more of a rural community.

[narrator] Police look to Gabbiee's case

to help their search for Adriana.

We knew that our Gabbiee had been...

body had been concealed.

What Freddie was capable of

and we could be walking over where the second body was

and never even know it.

But we looked, there were some searches done

and some areas dug up.

But unfortunately, we didn't find anything.

I think it's a case that law enforcement

had tried so hard to solve

and kept hitting road blocks.

[narrator] Detectives appeal to

Freddie Grant again for information.

Even given that, ú which I mean, at his age,

he would have been in his 80s

when he had been even up for release.

He is refusing to say anything about Adriana's disappearance.

In the case of Gabbiee Swainson,

he was willing to save his own daughter

while having taken the life of someone else's child,

but he was willing to save his own child.

And I think there's no incentive

for him to give up information on Adriana,

which is really sad.

[narrator] Despite best efforts, the case goes cold,

leaving the family once again without closure.

Her face remained up on signs

through the town of Elgin during her entire disappearance,

there were images of her,

candlelight vigils that the community would hold.

They would do everything to keep her name alive

until they could bring closure to the family.

I think that one of the things

that's just so difficult for families

is this term called ambiguous laws.

And as when families are in this limbo,

even though the hope I think over the years

becomes less and less,

it's impossible to extinguish that hope, you don't want to.

I had interviewed the family and I got to connect with them

and build that relationship.

She called me every day,

that was one, we talked every day.

And then when we didn'tú talk, they were letters.

And you know, if we knew where she was

and she had a proper burial,

at least she could go to theú graveyard, to the cemetery.

You know to say, "Hey, mom, it's your birthday, I love you."

But I'm just, I just want somebody to please

help us go to the next chapter.

Going on TV and having your own daughter, who is a young woman,

speak about her mom being missing,

and I felt that pain in those interviews.

Then in Richland County,

human remains that were found last week

have now been identified.

[reporter] Deputies who responded to the scene

found what appeared to be a human bone

and about a five-foot deep gravethat was hidden under the sand.

We received a call one day to our office

that said that a gentleman was working out in a landfill area,

and that as he was digging using the excavator,

that he found what was thought to be a human bone.

Now we've received these types of calls all the time.

We dispatched our deputies, I said,

go and check it out and tell me if you think it's real.

And Dr. Bill Stevens called back and said,

"Corner, I think you should come out here.

He found some bones,

and they told me where they were at.

It hit me at that point.

I was driving out to Kershaw County,

and we had gotten a report

that remains had been found at Richland County.

And I immediately knew or had a feeling deep down

that it was Adriana Laster.

While they were trying to piece together

the parts of the skeleton

that we were able to find during the excavation process,

I was looking at the clothing that we had

and what we discovered was that this was the clothing

that was possibly worn by Adriana Laster

when she was last seen.

And so now we have to call the family

and we have to do DNA and we're just waiting,

so imagine that call to the family.

That we have a possible match.

I felt a sigh of relief for the family

because during our extensive conversations,

I knew how much this had hurt them

for her daughter to not have any kind of closure

for where her mom was.

[reporter] Phyllis Horne lives in Florida

with Adriana Laster's daughter, Crystal,

and his her paternal grandmother.

She remembers Adriana as a loving

daughter, sister, and mother.

The family was devastated,

but we were also able to give them the closure

of burying Adriana

to give her the proper dignity and respect that she deserved.

When I spoke with theú family of Adriana Laster,

they said this to me

and they wanted me to share it with all of you.

They just wanted a pinky.

She said to me, we just needed to know

that she was dead, to not know, to not know where she was.

They said, we just wanted a pinky.

Just one little bone to tell us that she was gone

and now we have that.

So to be able to offer that amount of closure

to the family

is... is certainly a humbling experience.

[narrator] As the discovery of Adriana's remains

bring renewed hope of justice,

attention turns back to Freddie Grant.

[news] As the family plans to lay Adriana to rest,

they won't find peace until justice is served.

When we find bodies that have been buried

for such a long time, we lose so much evidence

and in the case of Adriana Laster,

we knew that the manner of death was going to be homicide,

but in terms of her actual cause of death,

medical reason why

Adriana Laster is no longer here with us,

that was very difficult to determine,

and so we left it as undetermined

in case more information becomes available to us.

The cause of death and the manner of death

may not have been able to be determined

like it was for Gabbiee,

but there were certainly similarities

in terms of the depth of the grave

and kind of the intent behind concealing that death.

It shows premeditation.

They are related

in that Freddie Grant's a common denominator.

He lives close. He knew Adriana.

He was a suspect.

He was the suspect from day one.

We were all very confident

he was responsible for her death.

There was so many similarities

between how her body had been buried

and the closeness of it and Freddie being involved,

that another agency charged him with her death too.

[reporter] Tuesday morning, ú the Elgin Police Department

released all the charges it plans to file

against Freddie Grant,

the man accused of murdering Adriana Laster.

On the list are murder,

domestic violence and kidnapping.

[Naida] You don't celebrate something like that.

It's not a celebration.

You go home and hug your loved ones

a little bit tighter.

[news] Grant is currentlyú serving 30 years in prison

for killing Gabbiee Swainson

and Lott is hoping for another conviction in this case.

He should be there for life.

But I don't have any control on that.

That's just my personal feelings

that he should never see daylight again as a free man.

He's a killer.

He didn't care.

No remorse. Nothing.

He just, he's just a cold blooded killer.

I just hope there's not any more out there

that we haven't found.

[narrator] Freddie Grant's trial date is yet to be set.

In Elgin, the story hasn't stopped

as Adriana and Gabbiee's names

continue to echo through the community.

A community yard sale in Elgin today,

is helping mend a broken community.

Elgin residents organized this event

to raise money for Adriana Laster.

Well, we as a community want to come together and help

the Laster family with

the remains to taking back to Florida and the burial.

[Walker] Elgin is such a rural and small community

and her disappearance never vanished.

Never, you know, her name and face never vanished.

They kept her alive

and they did everything in their power

to remember Laster

and to make sure that Freddie Grant

was ultimately arrested and charged in this case.

Richland School District 2

and Ridgeview High Schoolú spent the day honouring

a former studentú who was killed back in 2012.

"Cuts for Gabbiee" is an annual event

honouring Gabbiee Swainson.

They then offered free haircuts for students,

fun activities, and a space to give back.

Just as organizers say, Gabbiee was always trying to do.

I think sometimes when we get cases like this,

everyone talks about the suspect, right?

But I don't want them to lose Adriana the mom.

Gabbiee was a 15-year-old girl

who had her whole future ahead of her.

I want people to remember those names

and not the name of the person who caused them harm