Original subtitles

Whoo!

This is the story of a talented girl...

Michelle was born with a gift.

...whose family have high hopes for her.

It was very exciting -- very proud moments, very proud.

But those dreams are dashed...

I knew that I wasn't gonna be

able to see her for a long time

...by a terrible crime.

It's something that you will never forget,

and you'll never be okay with it.

I went, "holy cow. Here it comes."

It's January of 1994,

and the parents and friends of

the elementary school band here in humble,

Texas, are ready for a show.

Behind this home video camera is proud dad,

Walter chaffin, and his wife, Donna.

Donna soon picks out her 12-year-old daughter, Michelle.

Michelle is quite the musician

and has spent months practicing for this concert.

Whenever Michelle and her band would have a concert,

I always anticipated as much as probably

she did. I was always very excited to hear them.

It was very exciting.

Very, very proud moments. Very proud.

Michelle has always been one to enjoy attention.

Here she is, age 13.

When she realized that someone was laughing at her,

because laughter is contagious,

then she would do something else to,

to make the people laugh more.

Whoo!

Michelle's younger brother,

twelve-year-old David, is her polar opposite.

He was quieter than Michelle.

Um, of course, everybody was quieter than Michelle.

David is the type of personality that will sit

back and wait a little while and observe people.

Whereas Michelle's quite the opposite of that.

We could fight like cats and dogs one minute,

and, you know, be one hundred percent

on each other's team five minutes later.

She was a comedian -- to US,

I guess, to family members more than anything.

The -- the pot shots that she would take at US,

you know, you have to be able to laugh at yourself.

Michelle used to pick on David and tell him he was

an accident, um, just to --

just to give him grief.

The chaffins enjoy a typical middle-class life.

This 1994 Christmas video shows everyone in

the aftermath of the grand present opening.

In our household, Christmas was fun.

And any time I could, I took a lot of pictures and videos.

David's inspecting his new camera,

and that's dad, Walter, with his gift,

a keyboard case.

By the time Michelle is in high school,

the chaffins have moved to grapeland, Texas,

to be nearer to Walter's parents.

Michelle has stuck with her music practice.

That's her, age 15, during

a special dixieland halftime performance,

walking to the front with her soprano sax.

As a musician, Michelle was phenomenal.

Michelle played piano.

Michelle played saxophone. Michelle sang.

Michelle was, you know, born with a gift.

I think she -- she came out singing when she was born.

When she performed, as far as I could see,

especially when she sang...

That seemed to be her greatest love.

It's during her junior year in high school

that 17-year-old Michelle

starts to date 19-year-old football player,

chase Warner.

Chase went to school junior high

and high school years with Michelle.

Chase and Michelle were a cute couple.

The relationship between Michelle and chase,

I felt, would last a lifetime.

I really did.

It's may 29, 1998, and Michelle is ready

to step on stage for a different reason.

It's graduation day.

The proudest moment of all probably was

when Michelle walked to take her diploma,

then walked across the stage as a graduated individual.

Thanks to her dedication to music

and the grapeland high marching band,

Michelle receives a special $500 scholarship,

and she's got big plans for the money.

After high school,

Michelle wanted to be a lawyer.

Michelle would stand up for what she thought was right.

She would stand up for the underdog.

She had the passion for the law,

and aside from that, being as stubborn

and hard-headed as anybody I've ever met in my life.

Michelle attends Stephen f.Austin

university to study criminal justice.

They're no longer in high school,

but the love between Michelle and chase holds strong.

Meanwhile, things aren't going so well back in grapeland.

Donna and Walter's marriage is crumbling.

It was, probably not the best example

of a marriage and of a relationship between a mother

and father with two children growing up in the household.

David and Michelle's father and I

ultimately decided to get a divorce.

But some surprise news is about to bring

the family together.

Michelle announces that she and chase are expecting.

They'll move in together before the new arrival,

but she still plans to continue her studies.

The chaffins rally around Michelle.

In this never-before-seen footage,

they are throwing her a baby shower.

I know it.

I guess I was -- I was just worried that when

she got pregnant and they decided to move to the city

that it was gonna be

too much too soon for them to handle.

But once they moved into their apartment

and chase found a new job,

everything kind of settled in.

On march 29, 2001,

19-year-old Michelle gives birth to

a little girl, who she and chase name Hayley.

I'm smiling because I can't help it.

So the day that Hayley was born.

I remember standing at the glass looking at Hayley,

and -- and I cried,

but it wasn't sad cry, it was happy cry.

We were just all so happy -- happy tears.

I was honestly very surprised at

the mother that she became almost instantly

not concerned with her ability to be a good parent,

but I felt like it was -- it was a little premature with

Michelle being so young at the time she had Hayley.

Shortly after Hayley's arrival,

Michelle and chase tie the knot.

They were just moving forward in

the right direction, and I was happy for that.

It's a small and simple ceremony,

but Michelle Lee Warner has never seemed happier.

I guess I'd never seen Michelle look so

beautiful and happy,

and I really figured that that was gonna be it

for the both of them.

When talented musician, Michelle chaffin,

met football player, chase Warner, the two were sure

it was true love.

Now that they're married

with a baby, things seem perfect.

From my early memories of my mom and dad together,

I remember living in an apartment.

I remember my mom and my dad happy, and one

specific memory I have is him carrying her into

the bedroom, and they were laughing,

and it was very playful.

But the pressures of a new baby start

to put a strain on the young couple.

We spoke on the phone regularly,

so when things started coming undone, obviously,

I was gonna be one of the first people

that she's talked to about it.

Look, Hayley!

Michelle finds herself bored by

chase and their settled lifestyle.

Michelle was still going to school,

but Michelle was also working as a paralegal.

I think that Michelle's sights started to turn to

what she deemed to be bigger and better things.

He was too simple-minded,

to -- you know, to use her words,

but it's like I told her at that point,

I said, Michelle, you're not gonna find a better man.

The arguments escalate,

and Michelle and chase eventually decide to separate.

They agreed to an amicable divorce.

Michelle moves back to grapeland to live with her brother.

Chase will keep custody of little Hayley

in baytown until Michelle gets herself figured out.

However, after the divorce, she lost her health insurance.

Losing her health insurance is

a daunting prospect for Michelle.

She's relied on anxiety medication for some time to

deal with the struggles of college life and motherhood.

Chase was able to remove her from his policy,

and she couldn't afford to buy her medication.

The idea of being without her family

and her medication is too much for Michelle to handle.

Once the divorce between Michelle and chase started

to unfold, and then after the divorce was finalized,

Michelle started going down a rough path.

When Michelle can't afford

to buy anxiety medication,

she turns to alternatives, like painkillers.

Painkillers are different than --

than normal drugs.

It's not like it's cocaine or heroin or something else,

where you're completely out of your sorts

while you're on the drug, you know, she could

take those, and nobody's any the wiser.

She starts to spiral,

looking for more ways to numb her pain

and ease her addictive impulses.

From that point, Michelle started to move from

smaller-type drugs to basically street drugs

and even started shooting up

from time to time.

There were times that I would -- I would leave

after having visited with her,

and I literally would cry,

because I was so worried about her.

In January 2006,

Michelle is stopped for speeding.

The officer must have noticed that not all her senses

were correct, and at that point,

the officer searched the vehicle.

And police arrest her for possession of cocaine.

She is sentenced to 8 months in prison.

Chase will have full custody of Hayley in her absence.

I didn't understand what was fully going on.

But I knew that I wasn't gonna

be able to see her for a long time.

So I do have memories of US crying

and me hugging her and telling her bye.

You know, I was young, but I remember seeing the heartbreak

on my mom's face, having to say bye to me,

and I just know that she felt incredibly guilty

that she had done that to me.

So it was -- it was just very heartbreaking,

and I don't even really have

the words to describe how heartbreaking.

When she completes her prison sentence,

Michelle enters into a rehab program.

Because Michelle was arrested on drug charges,

she was required to take part in this program.

It takes a year of hard work, but fueled by her love

for Hayley, Michelle finally beats her addiction

in January 2008.

This program truly did rehabilitate her

from her drug abuse.

It was the best thing that could have ever

happened to her, because it did clean her up.

By 2008, the now 26-year-old

Michelle has moved to Houston looking for a fresh start.

With her family around her,

Michelle is back on track.

In early 2008,

she lands a secretarial job

at a medical equipment group in clear lake.

Michelle seemed to be doing really well job-wise.

Michelle seemed to be doing really well

in her personal life far as keeping her life

drug-free and -- and spending it the way

that she should, which was with her family.

Before long,

she is hosting her daughter for weekend visits.

It was amazing when I finally did get to start

spending time with her, and that's when

we really, really started getting close.

In 2008, Michelle makes a new friend at work.

What I do remember is Michelle talking about this guy that

worked I.T., and Mark this, Mark that.

Mark castellano is

the company's freelance I.T. Consultant.

As time went on, Michelle talked about Mark

more and more, and I realized

that, at that point, that there was -- there was probably

a little more there to the relationship.

Soon, Michelle is introducing Mark to her family.

The very first thing that hit me about Mark was that

his physical features was not

what I was expecting for someone that Michelle

would have been so interested in.

He just was awkward -- he was very awkward, very nerdy.

He'd try to fit in, but he was just kind of

a misfit in a way.

Michelle seems happy, and that's all her family

could hope for.

I also do honestly remember telling myself,

if she feels comfortable with this man, Mark,

then that's what she should do.

When I.T. Consultant Mark castellano lands

the confident and talented Michelle Warner

as his girlfriend,

he can't believe his luck.

Mark had told me about Michelle several times.

I saw her picture.

She was very attractive, and I was, in my mind,

thinking like, okay,

you know, this is his "girlfriend,"

and, like, she didn't really exist.

The couple are on cloud nine.

But before things can get serious, Michelle needs

the approval of her seven-year-old daughter, Hayley.

I just remember meeting him,

and that he was someone significant,

and I could tell that she was

anticipating me meeting him, so that it was something

that she had been really looking forward to.

Mark makes a real effort to win Hayley over.

He was nice, and Mark was actually really good with me.

And I enjoyed spending time with him.

With Hayley's blessing,

Michelle and Mark move in together.

With Michelle, it's almost like history repeating.

In 2009, not long after moving in with Mark,

she learns she's pregnant.

She got her mind set on beginning again,

you know, getting herself on a career path again.

So I guess after finding out that she was pregnant

with Cayden, in a way, I was kind of happy about it.

That October, little Cayden arrives.

The day that Cayden was born was

the happiest day of my life, by far.

The family is thrilled.

I remember Mark saying, "you know, I know Michelle

"is beautiful,

"but I never expected this baby to be so beautiful.

This is just a beautiful child."

But as time goes by,

fatherhood weighs heavily on Mark.

He knows Michelle loves being a mom again,

but fatherhood terrifies him.

What I started to see was that Mark started

to distance himself from the baby and from Michelle.

Mark begins to leave more and more

of the responsibilities to Michelle.

He was lazy, didn't help out with her.

She felt like she was...

Carrying most of the burden.

In early 2010, just three months after Cayden

is born, Mark announces that it's all just too much.

He quits his job and leaves Michelle and the kids behind.

He decided to bail out and go back to his parents.

Mark moves 500 miles away to his parents' house in Odessa.

Michelle and her family are furious at Mark's selfishness.

How can you say to yourself

that I'm more important than this child who is helpless?

How can you do that? And it really pissed me off.

Michelle does her best

to raise the two kids without Mark.

I think she did as good as she could on what she could afford,

you know,

doing things with Cayden and doing things for him.

Michelle is sure to preserve precious memories

on video just like her mother, Donna, did with her.

It isn't until two and a half years later,

in 2012, that Mark resurfaces.

When Mark came back into the picture,

he moved back from Odessa to the Houston area.

He tells Michelle that he's back in town and has taken

a new job as a technician for a computer repair shop,

and he's got a new perspective on things.

He wanted to be a father to Cayden,

and he wanted to stand up to the responsibility,

which all sounded really good.

Mark starts helping out with childcare,

taking care of Cayden when Michelle has other plans.

It seemed like it was working out pretty well

as far as any of US could tell.

As for Michelle, Mark's return is a relief.

It allows her to reclaim some free time

and see more of her friends.

Here, in a video shot by her now 10-year-old daughter,

Hayley, Michelle sings for a friend's first dance.

Watching my mom perform was amazing.

When I filmed her performing at the wedding,

I remember just being so proud to be her daughter

that, you know,

she was my mom, and everyone was watching her,

and obviously, everyone loved to hear her sing.

There may not be wedding bells on the horizon,

but another dream of Michelle's is about to

come true.

In summer 2011,

she lands a new job as a paralegal at an upscale

law firm in downtown Houston.

She was finally getting to do

what she was driven to do the entire time, you know,

and it just so happened to be on

the same side of town that Mark was living on.

Now Michelle just needs to find a place closer

to her new office for her and now three-year-old Cayden.

She reaches out to Mark.

He's staying in a nice condo complex

just 10 minutes from her new office.

The two decide to move in together as roommates.

The only reason that Michelle moved back in with Mark was

for the very specific reason that he had

a two-bedroom apartment.

He agreed to help with watching the child.

Other than that, they would keep their lives separate.

Once Michelle's paycheck kicks in,

she hopes to find her own place nearby.

I eventually decided that this idea of Mark living

in the same household with Michelle and helping raise

Cayden was a very good idea.

In September of 2012, when she visits her brother,

David, to celebrate the birth of his baby,

Michelle's luck seems to be changing.

I'm so glad that she managed to make it

for the birth of my daughter.

She was so excited about me having a girl.

The family hopes that Michelle's troubles are over.

But on sunday, September 23, 2012,

Michelle's brother David gets an alarming call

from Michelle's ex-husband, chase Warner.

He told me that I might want to try and call Michelle,

because she was supposed

to have come to his house and picked up Hayley,

and she had yet to show up.

For her to not show up to pick up Hayley,

that was -- that's kind of a big deal.

The family is frantic.

Chase said,

"I think something has happened with your sister.

"Either she's back on a drug binge,

or something bad has happened to Michelle."

Chase basically said, "I don't have a good feeling about this."

When Michelle Warner stops answering her cellphone,

it sets off alarm bells within her family.

When I first received a phone call from my son, David,

letting me know that he believed that Michelle

was missing,

my first thought was maybe she got back on drugs.

With his sister not answering her cellphone,

David chaffin calls Mark castellano.

He shocked to learn that Mark and little Cayden are

all the way over in Odessa at his parents' house.

Mark tells David that he hasn't

seen Michelle since last Saturday night.

They got into an argument, and Michelle stormed off.

When Mark realized she was missing, he decided to bring

Cayden to his parents so they could help with the child care.

What's more, Mark reveals that

Michelle has been acting erratically.

She's gone back to abusing prescription drugs.

That's why he and Cayden left.

But for Michelle's family,

something just doesn't sit right.

They can't believe she would up and leave like this,

especially with the new job she was so excited for.

That Tuesday morning,

Houston police file a missing persons report.

Police call Mark, who insists that

he has no idea where Michelle is.

He does, however, go into detail

about what happened on that Saturday night.

He and Michelle had gotten in

a fight over something Cayden had done,

their little three-year-old son,

and she got very angry with him, hit him in the face,

and she went into the bedroom, slammed the door,

and then he decided

he was gonna walk back in there and try to

assuage things.

He said he opened the door, and she was gone.

Police are suspicious.

The odd thing about that was that she was gone,

but she had left her car in the parking lot below

the apartment.

So this threw up some red flags, of course.

The quick check of her phone records shows

that her last call was that same Saturday afternoon.

There's no phone activity after that at all.

With her not being there

to pick up her child, you know,

me calling countless times...

Obviously one would begin to worry at that point.

Homicide detective fil waters now takes over

from the missing persons department.

In this particular case, the problem was there was

no evidence, here was no crime scene.

We have no body.

We have no real suspect.

So this is really a whodunit

or was there anything done?

Detective waters and his partner head over to search

the now vacant apartment that Mark and Michelle shared.

As we're looking through the apartment,

we're looking for evidence.

We're looking of some kind of a sign of a scene.

We're not finding anything.

There's no blood. There's no blood spatter.

We are not finding any kind of a struggle.

But then, detective waters notices

that across from the condo unit

is a commercial building with exterior

security cameras.

There was video cameras on the office building across

the fence from the apartments, and they were directed

right on to Mark and Michelle's apartment.

Police request the footage from the company.

We went to look at the video

and see if we could see anything on it.

As it turned out,

their dvr was malfunctioning

detectives will have to wait

to see what's on the cameras.

After searching the apartment,

detectives call Mark.

We're investigating...

He's very congenial. He's very talkative

and he agrees

to come to Houston and talk to me.

Mark was the last person to see Michelle.

The detective hopes this interview will provide a lead,

but what comes next is totally unexpected.

While police wait to interview Mark castellano,

they take a look at some cctv

they've recovered from a camera

pointing toward Mark and Michelle's building.

We seized the dvr.

We took that to the company that had supplied it.

They downloaded everything off of it,

and we were able to recover from that dvr video of

that entire weekend period of activity.

The camera footage shows Mark's truck pulling

up to his space at 6:48 P.M. on Saturday evening.

He makes several trips back and forth to his car...

Before he and Cayden drive off at 9:28 P.M.

So far, normal.

But then the video shows him returning

at 1:27 A.M. Monday morning.

And what the camera captures explains a lot.

Later that evening,

we did see Mark with a container

dragging it down the stairs.

Mark's not a physical guy.

It was apparent that he was struggling.

Whatever's in there is heavy.

He heaves it down the steps

and loads it into the back of his car.

Now we're looking at the video,

and it's all falling into place.

You know, these investigations are big Jigsaw puzzles.

We start to put these pieces together.

That sunday morning,

Mark flies into Houston, as promised,

to talk with detective waters.

Though they'd gone over his story on the phone,

detective waters gently asks Mark

to take him through the details of what happened

that night.

So we want to have an atmosphere in there

of building trust.

I want him to trust me.

He has, in his mind, I think, formed a story

that's believable.

And so what I have to do,

I have to find the weakness to get to the truth.

The way I do that is through

his relationship with Cayden.

I see him reach up to his face.

And then he takes his glasses off.

And he goes into what we call surrender.

When he took those glasses off, I went,

"holy cow. Here it comes."

Mark brought Cayden to his parents' home in Odessa.

Then he drove all the way back

to Houston to deal with Michelle's body.

Later, with Mark's help,

Houston investigators locate Michelle's remains.

Eight days after vanishing,

Michelle Warner has been found.

Detective waters makes the call to Michelle's family.

Even though in my heart I already knew,

hearing those words makes all the difference in the world,

and you knowing now this is final, this is it.

I won't ever see her again.

When I received the news,

I felt empty and kind of robbed of a mom.

All I could really do was lay there and cry.

In may 2014,

Mark castellano stands trial for the murder of

Michelle Warner.

The defense is, is that this was a crime of passion,

which would mitigate the murder charge.

But the prosecution proves that the killing

was not a crime of passion.

Mark had lied about many things,

including Michelle's drug use.

She was clean at the time of her death.

The jury decides that the killing was intentional.

It takes just four hours to

find Mark castellano guilty of murder.

But the family are disappointed with his sentence --

27 years in prison.

I didn't expect him to get a simple twenty-something-year

sentence and a possibility to parole out in half.

And when the judge read the sentence,

Mark castellano looked at the jury and mouthed the words,

"thank you."

Whoo!

I will never forgive him for what he's done to

her family, because he took an intricate part

of our family unit.

Every holiday that we sit down to a meal,

or Christmas when we sit down to open gifts,

there is an empty seat

where Michelle will never be again.

It's something that you will never forget.

And you'll never be okay with it.

You just learn how to live with it.

Hayley is doing her best to fill

her mother's shoes in being there for Cayden.

Cayden and I have a really amazing relationship.

Now that he doesn't have a mom,

and he doesn't really have a dad,

I have really kind of -- have been parenting him more.

He really is this great little man,

and he's so sweet, and he's just a really good kid.

I miss my mom a lot.

When I was next to her, you know,

I just felt like the coolest person in the world,

because I was just so proud to have her

as my mom, because she was just so amazing.