Original subtitles

Narrator:

Narrator: In a tranquil seaside town,

a landscaper made a haunting discovery.

He found a woman's head buried in the backyard

with a calendar from 1982.

Narrator: To find the killer,

investigators unraveled a decades-old mystery.

Peter Austin: She had picked up a hitchhiker,

and that was the last time she was seen alive.

Narrator: 32 years later,

detectives faced an unimaginable challenge.

Austin: We don't have a lot of evidence to go on.

All we have is a gravesite with bones in it.

Doug Sanderson: I knew that was fresh blood.

Human blood.

Gigi Bridgers: We had to make sure

he will never see the light of day.

Austin: If he does not get a new conviction,

then we will have a murderer running around on the streets.

Narrator: On September 2, 2015,

in the plush seaside community of Monterey, California,

a routine backyard landscaping job

was about to become a gruesome nightmare.

I was hired to do landscaping at a house

to plant some fruit trees in the backyard.

I started digging.

That's when I noticed this object.

It was very circular,

almost looked like a coconut to me initially.

Instantly knew it was not a coconut.

There was teeth, it had the face.

There was still hair follicles remaining.

I was definitely panicking,

'cause it freaked me out.

And my boss, like, rushed over,

and we decided to call the police.

Never in a million years

would I have thought I'd see something like that.

( indistinct radio chatter )

Narrator: A forensics team swung into action,

carefully excavating the soil around the skull.

They do discover the grave of an adult female...

a woman buried face down

in the backyard along the fence line.

There was a green, plastic garbage bag

over the area where her head and torso were.

She is wearing a deep red dress bunched up toward her neck,

and ultimately is not found to be wearing any clothing

from the waist down.

Narrator: Based on the condition of the bones,

there was no clear cause of death.

It looked like she'd been there a very long time,

even longer than the homeowners who bought the house in 1998.

L'Heureux: The homeowners could not believe it.

Obviously, they had no knowledge

that there was somebody who was buried in their backyard.

It was certainly a very jarring

and shocking experience for them.

Narrator: It was hard to believe such a grisly secret

could be hiding for so long in a place like Monterey.

Kelly Nix: When word got out people were just shocked.

That kind of thing doesn't happen in Monterey very often, if at all.

Monterey is an idyllic coastal California town.

Millions of tourists visit Monterey County every year.

The air is clean, the people are friendly.

It's kind of small town living.

Narrator: Now, this peaceful enclave was the backdrop to a horror story

with everyone clamoring to know

who was the female victim buried in the shallow grave?

L'Heureux: One of the things that was found in the grave

was a woman's purse with personal items like

makeup and breath spray,

and a calendar from 1982.

So, they were operating under the assumption

that that might have been the year that she was buried there.

Narrator: Detectives were facing a steep challenge

finding out who committed this atrocious act,

and unmasking the identity of the victim.

L'Heureux: They discovered a photograph of an African American female.

They were very hopeful that it was something

that would give them a direct lead

as to who this woman might be.

Narrator: Would this faded image found so many years later

be a significant lead for detectives?

Combing through the missing persons files

from the early 1980s, police feared the answer was no,

but their luck was about to change.

L'Heureux: Once they pulled the missing persons reports,

they discovered that a woman was reported missing

on December 9, 1982.

When they compared

the photographs that they had

to the photograph of the woman that was found in the purse,

they appeared to be the same person.

Narrator: Detectives needed more than a picture to be certain.

L'Heureux: During the investigation in 1982,

the detective had obtained dental records

for the missing woman.

It was certainly gonna be the easiest

and best way to figure out who she was.

Narrator: When detectives compared the dental records

against their Jane Doe, it was a perfect match.

More than three decades after she vanished,

local mom Sandra Steppuhn was no longer missing.

Gigi Bridgers: September 3, 2015, I received a phone call

from Seaside Police Department.

They had found remains in Monterey, California.

Those remains belonged to my mother.

They were sure it was my mom,

because she had three crowns in her mouth.

I was shocked.

Narrator: At the time she disappeared,

32-year-old Sandra Steppuhn was living

in the neighborhood town of Seaside,

a loving mom with three daughters,

12-year-old twins, Gigi and Bridgette,

and seven-year-old Tammy.

Bridgers: My mother was an amazing woman.

She was the life of the party.

She was the one that, nobody's dancing on the floor,

my mom would be out there on the floor dancing.

Nobody was singing,

my mom would get out there and start singing.

My mom was not afraid to do anything.

Tammy Williams: All the neighborhood kids liked my mom,

because she would always let everybody come to our house.

I mean, she was just-- she was the neighborhood mom.

Everybody loved her.

She would mother everybody's child.

Bridgette Washington: She gave the best hugs.

You know, she was a full-figured woman,

so it was like cuddling up to a teddy bear,

'cause she was just--

She felt safe.

she always felt safe to me.

Narrator: She met her husband, Patrick,

when he was stationed at Fort Ord in Monterey,

but it wasn't a match made in Heaven.

Bridgers: My parents were kind of an ironic couple.

They were like two ships passing in the night.

They never wanted to be with each other

at the exact same time.

Narrator: They split in 1976,

and Patrick moved a few towns away.

For the kids' sake,

they maintained a friendly relationship.

They co-parented well.

They had an agreement:

every six months we would stay with my mom,

and then six months later we would stay with my dad.

In summer of 1982, we had already started talking

about not wanting to keep rotating every six months.

We wanted to stay with my father for a year,

and then go back to my mother's for a year,

because it was just getting complicated.

Narrator: Sandra agreed to the new arrangement.

Still, it was heartbreaking for her.

Washington: We were her world.

All of a sudden you no longer have your girls at the house.

You just kinda feel a little sad,

but, ultimately, she was like,

"If this is what's gonna make you all happy,

then I'll go with it."

Narrator: Sandra welcomed in two roommates

to help her pay the rent.

Gigi, Bridgette, and Tammy kept in close touch with their mom

through weekly phone calls and regular visits

until the end of 1982

when their perfect sheltered world began to fall apart.

Bridgers: On December 11th,

we got a phone call from my grandparents

asking us if we had heard from my mom.

Sunday night was not her night to call,

so we had not heard from her at that time.

Narrator: Sandra's parents filed a missing persons report,

and police discovered that Sandra was last seen

on the night of December 9, 1982.

Her two roommates told officers

that Sandra was heading out to a bar to go dancing,

but no one had seen her since.

Bridgers: Christmas rolls around, still hadn't heard from her,

which was odd.

Our birthday comes right after that.

Still, nothing.

Narrator: One month after Sandra's disappearance

her little girls struggled to understand

why their mother had stopped calling them.

Inevitably, they reached the only conclusion

that made sense in their young minds.

Williams: As a little girl, nobody mentioned to me

that my mom could possibly be dead.

So, in the back of my mind,

all I thought was that my mom had left me.

Bridgers: I thought that a lot of the things

that happened after that moment

were because we chose to stay with my father

at that point and not go home and stay with my mom.

So, yeah, I blamed myself for years.

Narrator: Decades later in 2015, when Sandra's body was found

in the backyard of a Monterey home,

investigators were faced with the task

of finding Sandra's killer.

L'Heureux: It's incredibly daunting

to begin an investigation

where you're already 32 years behind.

Austin: It was a long time ago.

Finding out if witnesses are still alive,

still in the area, if their names changed.

It's very difficult.

Narrator: As detectives opened

an official homicide investigation,

there was a startling development.

L'Heureux: A commander with the police department

recalled having worked on

another homicide that had occurred at that same home

back in 1983.

That is the time period

when Sandra Steppuhn had been buried there.

We had learned that another

homicide occurred at the exact same property.

Made my hair stand up.

When I shined my flashlight on a clock radio,

I could see that it had the appearance of human blood.

I just put my hands up and went,

"I don't wanna hear any more."

L'Heureux: Without a body, without physical evidence,

they couldn't make a case.

( siren blaring )

( indistinct radio chatter )

Narrator: In 2015, detectives investigating

the buried remains of Sandra Steppuhn

discovered that another woman had been found murdered

on the very same property.

Nix: The initial reaction from the community

was they were shocked.

You know, Monterey has some crime for sure,

there's no doubt about it.

But to hear that two bodies had been found

in the backyard of a Monterey home,

they couldn't believe it.

Narrator: Four months after Sandra vanished in March of 1983,

another young woman was reported missing,

30-year-old Suzanne Nixon,

who lived with her close-knit family in nearby Pebble Beach.

Dianne Nixon Sullo: Suzanne was very artistic.

She went to college and earned an Associates Arts degree.

She was very beautiful.

She had a lot of wonderful traits.

Suzanne was really outgoing,

and very friendly and very sociable,

always thought the best of everyone.

And she was a lot of fun to be around.

Narrator: On the evening of March 3, 1983,

Suzanne told her mother

that she was going to meet some friends for pizza,

but she never came home.

( phone rings )

Sullo: I was home when I got a phone call,

and Mom was on the phone,

and she told me,

"Suzanne's missing."

And I went, "What do you mean, she's missing?"

Suzanne was never missing.

"What do you mean, she's missing?"

So we all knew something was wrong.

Narrator: Suzanne's mom called police,

and detectives quickly began retracing her daughter's steps.

Suzanne's friends told them they'd last seen her

leaving a pizzeria with a friend named Alfred Powell.

Since Alfred Powell was the last person

we had information who had contact with Suzanne Nixon,

we immediately went to his residence

to see if he had any information concerning Suzanne.

Narrator: Records reveal that in 1983,

Powell rented a property in a suburb of Monterey.

Sanderson: Alfred Powell befriended an elderly woman

living by herself,

and she had made arrangements with Alfred Powell

for him to live rent free in her garage

if he would do the gardening,

and take care of some things around the yard.

( indistinct radio chatter )

Narrator: Detective Doug Sanderson would never get

the night of March 4, 1983 out of his mind.

I arrived. It was very dark,

a little bit windy.

I walked to the side door of the garage,

and I knocked.

Alfred Powell answered,

and he invited us into the garage to talk with him.

The garage was maybe 20 feet by 30 feet at the most.

He had no facilities.

There was no running water.

No lights.

Narrator: Despite his hardships, Powell seemed friendly and cooperative.

Sanderson: He told me that he had last seen

Suzanne Nixon about 1:30 AM,

that she had come down and met him at the pizza parlor.

They had pizza.

Afterwards, she drove him to his house.

He then went into the garage,

and that was the last time he saw her that night.

Narrator: But minutes into the conversation,

the mood took an eerie turn.

Sanderson: As I was talking to Alfred Powell,

I shined my flashlight on a clock radio.

I could see that it had the appearance of blood.

The blood still had the glistening effect

that it has if it's pretty fresh.

I then asked Powell where this blood came from on this radio,

and Powell told me, he said,

"Oh, that was a raccoon that had tried to get in through the garage.

He said, "I smashed it in the head,

then grabbed it by the throat and strangled it,

and then I skinned it and ate it."

Now, raccoons,

they are about the most vicious animal that you can deal with,

and nobody, but nobody is gonna be wrapping their hands

around a raccoon and trying to strangle it,

because their hands would be shredded.

So I didn't believe the raccoon story,

and I felt definitely he's describing what he did,

but it wasn't to a raccoon.

When detectives asked Alfred Powell

if he would mind accompanying us

back to the police department

to interview him further concerning

the disappearance of Suzanne Nixon, he agreed.

Narrator: Meanwhile, officers bagged the blood-smeared radio,

and raced it back to the police lab for testing.

Sanderson: Back in that day, we did not have DNA.

What we could find out quickly

was whether it was human blood or animal blood.

What we found out was the blood on the clock radio

was in fact human blood.

Which then caused the hairs

on the back of my neck to stand up.

Narrator: Detectives returned to the property,

and in a tool shed attached to the garage,

made a grim discovery.

Sanderson: And there they found Suzanne Nixon's body

wrapped in a trash bag.

I will never forget the moment I saw her.

That'll be with me forever.

( phone ringing )

The phone rang all of a sudden.

And Mom was on the other end of the line,

and she told me, "They found her body.

They found Suzanne, and she's dead."

And I had the receiver in my left hand,

I clenched my fist with my right hand.

I slammed the receiver down.

And I screamed, "No!"

And I put my hands up and went,

"I don't wanna hear any more."

We were all in shock.

Sanderson: Suzanne Nixon's death was attributed

to blunt force trauma to the head,

and strangulation.

It seemed to be the same description

that Alfred Powell had given me

concerning his killing of the raccoon.

Narrator: With Powell maintaining his innocence,

Sanderson formed his own theory of what happened to Suzanne.

Sanderson: I think Alfred

got in the car for her to give him a ride home,

and invited Suzanne Nixon into the garage to talk with him.

Well, this got her out of the car,

into the secluded garage.

And then he took the clock radio,

and began thoroughly beating her in the head.

Strangled her until she died.

Alfred Powell's motive--

it's hard to say.

He was mentally unstable.

Narrator: In 2015, police investigating the murder of Sandra Steppuhn

made a startling realization.

Sandra had been buried just a few feet away

from where Suzanne was killed,

at a time when the garage was being rented by

none other than Alfred Powell,

which raised the inevitable question:

did Alfred Powell kill both Suzanne Nixon,

and Sandra Steppuhn?

And, if so, would detectives be able to prove it?

Austin: It was troubling,

because he made no confession regarding Suzanne's murder.

He made no statements regarding Sandra's disappearance.

We didn't have a lot to go on.

L'Heureux: Well, as an investigator,

I think that when you believe you know what happened,

and you feel in your gut that you have the right person

but you can't prove it,

that's a very frustrating feeling.

Narrator:

Narrator: In September 2015,

Monterey County police were trying to solve the murder

of Sandra Steppuhn, who was buried in the same backyard

where Alfred Powell killed Suzanne Nixon 32 years earlier.

Austin: In 1983, Alfred Powell was sentence to 15 years to life

for the murder of Suzanne Nixon.

Which means after 15 years,

he could be paroled at any point.

Narrator: In 1998,

Alfred Powell had served his 15-year sentence,

but was denied parole.

He couldn't prove he'd been rehabilitated,

since he never admitted to killing Suzanne Nixon.

By 2015, he was still behind bars.

But that was little comfort

to the loved ones of Sandra Steppuhn.

Washington: I don't feel like

at any time during the process

of them finding my mother,

and then finding out that Alfred Powell was incarcerated,

that didn't make me feel any better.

I just wanted my mom back.

I'd hoped for 32 years...

...eight months and 22 days,

that she'd come home and she didn't.

It was important that we'd be able

to bring justice for our mom.

And so we felt like it was her right.

Narrator: Determined to help Sandra's family

bring their own case against Powell,

investigators pored over every word

from Sandra's original missing persons case.

It chronicled the last night Sandra Steppuhn was seen alive,

December 9, 1982.

L'Heureux: The missing persons report was very detailed.

It was an account by two of her roommates who lived with her

in a house in Seaside.

Narrator: At the time of her disappearance,

Sandra was sharing an apartment with two friends.

In that report they described

that Sandra had intended

to go out with them that night to a club.

Austin: And as she was driving home

to get ready to go out for the evening, she saw a hitchhiker.

And she picked that person up.

Being someone who wanted to help other people,

Sandra drove the hitchhiker back to the house

where she was going to pick up her roommates.

They described him as an African American male,

on the shorter side.

They described him as bowlegged,

and they described him

as having very large, empty eyes,

like there were nothing in them,

that they were dead.

Sandra went to change her clothes in her bedroom,

put on a red dress and a black blazer.

Narrator: By now it had gotten late,

and Sandra's roommates were growing tired.

L'Heureux: Sandra's roommates had decided

that they were no longer interested in going out,

but Sandra decided that she still wanted to,

so she was gonna go out alone.

Sandra said goodbye to her roommates,

and left with the African American male.

Narrator: Sandra told her roommates

she was dropping the hitchhiker off at his house

and heading to a club downtown.

Austin: And that was the last time

the roommates had ever seen her alive.

Narrator: After Sandra vanished,

her roommates were able to ID the hitchhiker

from a photo lineup.

The man they identified was none other than Alfred Powell.

At the time, police questioned Powell

about Sandra's whereabouts, but he claimed he didn't know.

Without proof that a crime had even been committed,

investigators' hands were tied.

L'Heureux: Without a body,

without physical evidence,

they couldn't make a case.

Narrator: Three decades later,

investigators had Sandra Steppuhn's body,

but lacked forensic evidence

because of the advanced state of decomposition.

Could they overcome the odds

and prove that Alfred Powell killed her?

Austin: The chances of two

separate killers killing two separate women at the same property,

it was highly unlikely

that there was somebody else involved.

32 years is a long time ago,

and we don't have a lot of evidence to go on.

All we have is a gravesite with bones in it.

That's all we have.

So, looking at this case in 2015,

we needed more evidence to make this case

beyond a reasonable doubt standard.

We were gonna pull up everything in his past,

every police report that was ever mentioned about him,

every contact he's ever made.

Narrator: Powell refused their attempts to question him in prison,

but investigators found other ways to dig up Powell's past.

We had found that at least two women

had made rape allegations against him.

In each of those cases,

Powell said he did have consensual sex with them,

and that it was not rape.

Austin: Those cases were not prosecuted

because there was no other evidence

that a sexual assault had occurred.

And with each of those victims there was credibility issues.

L'Heureux: Some of these women who made these initial reports

were kind of living their lifestyles on the margins.

You know, some were involved in prostitution,

some had mental health or substance abuse issues.

And also, Alfred Powell, he was a smooth talker,

and for whatever reason, talk his way out of it.

Narrator: Powell had done a good job of covering his tracks,

but prosecutors soon realized

that he hadn't buried all his dirty secrets.

L'Heureux: We got very lucky.

We were able to uncover a victim

who had not come forward before.

Austin: Matt and I went to go interview her,

and she remembered in great detail,

what happened to her that night.

It shocked us.

Narrator:

Narrator: In 2015, Monterey Deputy DA

Narrator: In 2015, Monterey Deputy DA Matthew L'Heureux

finally caught a break while building a case

against Alfred Powell for the murder of Sandra Steppuhn.

We were able to uncover a victim

who had not come forward before.

Her story was important to us.

She said that Alfred Powell crashed a party...

that her brother was holding at his home.

And she reported that on her walk

after the party, he followed her.

And she reported

that he actually then just jumped on top of her

and started strangling her

for no reason.

Austin: The victim said that she remembered

that she was going to die,

and there was nothing she could do about it.

She said if it wasn't for the person who was walking by,

and called 911 for her,

she probably would've been killed.

( indistinct radio chatter )

L'Heureux: So by the time the police arrived,

Powell had stopped strangling her

and was pretending that he was asleep,

and later would tell the officers

that she had just freaked out and he'd done nothing to her.

Austin: She never disclosed that to anybody.

She said she was embarrassed.

She felt like it was her fault.

She didn't want her family to know.

That was the first time she ever mentioned it to anybody.

And Matt and I were shocked.

L'Heureux: That victim's story was very close in time

to Sandra's disappearance and homicide,

and it showed that the very first thing he did

when he got this woman alone was to attack her.

And when you're trying to develop a motive

for why he would kill the good Samaritan Sandra Steppuhn,

who was just giving him a ride when he was hitchhiking,

you have to understand in context

that he was someone who was preying on women.

Narrator: Without hard evidence

to connect Powell to Sandra's murder,

prosecutors needed to prove that Powell engaged

in a pattern of predatory behavior,

not just towards Suzanne Nixon and Sandra Steppuhn,

but other women as well.

L'Heureux: As we were going through our interviews,

looking through all the reports of the prior incidents,

we were starting to see a pattern that was emerging.

Women were reporting that Alfred Powell had sexually assaulted them.

He would tell the police it was consensual,

and he was being believed.

And what was different about Suzanne Nixon

and Sandra Steppuhn from some of the other women

is that they were

well-respected, productive members of society.

He couldn't risk those women coming forward

claiming that he had assaulted them,

because they would be believed.

And they are both murdered.

Austin: The parole board asked Powell how did he treat women,

and he replied that women were there for his sexual desires.

It just confirmed everything that we thought,

that he was out raping women.

Narrator: For Sandra's daughters,

learning of Powell's violent past

only added to their frustration and outrage.

Washington: I think what surprised me was that no one saw this.

People that are violent

just don't wake up one morning and just be violent.

There has to be a pattern.

And so it just boggled my mind

that no one had concerns about his behavior.

It was like he just slipped through the cracks.

If he had been convicted of these crimes,

then my mom and Miss Nixon wouldn't have been murdered.

Narrator: As prosecutors embarked on the task

of convincing Powell's alleged victims to testify

at Sandra Steppuhn's murder trial,

they received alarming news.

Bridgers: Alfred Powell had just had his 60th birthday,

and in California,

a bill had just been put in place

that if you had not been charged

with first-degree murder,

you could be put up for parole

and the possibility of getting out of prison.

We needed to make sure we got him to trial

before that particular bill affected Alfred Powell.

L'Heureux: It certainly scared all of us.

With the change in law,

if we did not convict Alfred Powell of this crime,

he could and very likely would be paroled and kill again.

The stakes suddenly became much higher.

If he does not get a new conviction,

then we will have a murderer

running around on the streets.

Narrator:

Narrator: After more than 30 years

Narrator: After more than 30 years in prison,

convicted murderer Alfred Powell could soon walk free

due to a new law granting parole to older inmates.

Washington: In the state of California,

if you are not convicted of first-degree murder

and you are over 60,

you are eligible to be released from prison.

So it was important to make sure

that he didn't come out.

Narrator: The only way Deputy DA Matthew L'Heureux

could make sure that didn't happen...

was to bring Powell to trial

and prove that he also murdered Sandra Steppuhn back in 1982.

L'Heureux: In terms of our evidence against Powell,

it was largely circumstantial,

but we felt that it was a very strong circumstantial case.

We had him positively identified

as the person who was last seen with Sandra

the night that she disappeared.

We had Sandra being discovered buried

in the same clothing that she'd been wearing

the night that she was last seen with Alfred Powell.

And we had her buried in his backyard

at a time when he lived there.

Austin: It was apparent to me

that Alfred Powell was the person

who had committed both of these murders,

but Matt and I needed to prove it.

I was excited to see what we could do

about getting justice for the family.

We told them that we would fight for 'em.

Their mom deserves justice.

Their mom deserves that first-degree conviction,

and Matt and I agreed.

Williams: I knew that Matt and Peter were gonna fight.

You know, and they were going to do their best

to make sure that the man that murdered my mom was punished.

Washington: I think it became mandatory

for them to solve this.

And it became them

sharing the experience with us.

Bridgers: The biggest thing that my family wanted,

we wanted our day in court.

We wanted Alfred Powell to see us.

We wanted him to understand

what he did.

Whether he looked at us or not, we didn't care,

but he needed to hear us.

Narrator: With the trial looming,

prosecutors scrutinized both cases

and turned up a number of striking details.

L'Heureux: Both vehicles had the keys in the ignition.

They were both dumped in public parking lots in Monterey,

actually not very far from each other,

and both of them were wiped clean of fingerprints.

Also the similarities

between how Suzanne Nixon's body was found

and how Sandra Steppuhn's body was found were very staggering.

Suzanne Nixon and Sandra Steppuhn were both found

with their heads and torsos in green plastic garbage bags.

Austin: Both had evidence that a sexual assault had occurred.

Both had their bottoms removed.

Both had their tops up above their torso area,

and they were both found facedown on the same property

where Alfred Powell lived.

Narrator: During the pretrial hearing,

L'Heureux flooded the courtroom with witnesses.

L'Heureux: We brought in everybody we could,

everyone who was still alive, Sandra's roommates,

the detective who did the initial investigation.

I wanted to get them into court.

You know, make sure that Alfred Powell

saw the strength of our evidence.

Narrator: As multiple victims from Powell's alleged attacks

took the stand during the pretrial hearing,

DA L'Heureux felt a wave of momentum

in the right direction.

He also noticed a shift in Powell's behavior.

L'Heureux: Every witness that we put on,

every piece of evidence that started clicking,

I think he started to get nervous.

I saw him start to lose his composure a little bit.

He was clearly frustrated and upset

at some of the things that were being said.

He started to get a little antsy, a little jittery.

I saw him, you know, whispering pretty furiously

to his lawyer.

It seemed like we had rattled him.

Narrator: Prosecutors held their breath.

Then, moments before the trial was set to begin,

they got a call that brought the case to a grinding halt.

Austin: I was shocked.

I-- I think Matt and I just stood silent in my office

for a good couple minutes. Couldn't believe it.

Narrator:

Narrator: On January 5, 2018,

Monterey Deputy DA Matthew L'Heureux

was just three days away from trying Alfred Powell

for the murder of Sandra Steppuhn

when he got a phone call that changed everything.

L'Heureux: My cell phone rings,

and it's Mr. Powell's attorney,

and she said he is willing to plead

to second-degree murder right now.

I really never in a million years

thought he was actually going to try to plead,

'cause that would involve admitting

that he had killed her,

and it would involve having to deal

with what he had been trying to bury for those 32 years.

Austin: On Monday, January 5, 2018,

Alfred Powell pled guilty to second-degree murder

of Sandra McGee Steppuhn.

Narrator: Alfred Powell received 15 years to life

on top of a sentence he was already serving

for the murder of Suzanne Nixon.

For prosecutors and the families of both victims,

justice was served.

Bridgers: I don't believe Alfred Powell

will ever see the light of day.

He will never choke another woman.

He will never rape another woman.

And I believe that.

Austin: Alfred Powell will be in prison

for at least another 15 years to life,

and with his age there was a good chance he was gonna die in prison.

This was the best option to get their mother justice

and to make sure that he never got out again

to hurt anybody else.

Narrator: Detective Austin was convinced

that Powell got the sentence he deserved,

especially after piecing together

what happened to Sandra Steppuhn

on the night of December 9, 1982.

Austin: Powell took her back to his house.

He invited Sandra into his living area,

which was the garage.

There was no evidence of a struggle.

She was not beaten.

There was no traumatic injury to her bones.

And I believe,

just based off everything I've learned about him,

is he choked Sandra to death.

And then he raped her.

And then he buried her in the backyard.

Narrator: Getting Powell off the streets

was a bittersweet victory

for Sandra's loved ones,

but the pain endures for Suzanne's family.

Sullo: For many years we weren't reminded of Suzanne's murder,

but it's really hit home in these last two years

when they found Sandra Steppuhn.

My whole family just is--

we're still in shock over this whole thing.

And our heart really goes out to the Steppuhn family.

Narrator: For years, Sandra's daughters grappled with the pain

of not knowing what happened to their mother.

Learning the truth was painful,

but knowing that their mother never deserted them

was a gift from beyond the grave.

Washington: They released our mother's remains to us.

35 years later, we're gonna lay her to rest.

So, January 17, 2018,

we officially said goodbye.

Bridgers: For all of us,

we finally have closure.

We finally know where she is.

Williams: I have gotten a sense of peace

that I haven't had for 35 years.

Knowing that my mom didn't leave

is a weight off my shoulders.

She loved me. She didn't leave me.

Austin: The most difficult part of this case for me

was listening to the girls talk about their mom.

To grow up 30 years thinking your mom abandoned you...

...that was hard.

This tragedy took a mom from them,

but I felt like I gained three sisters in the process.

This evil man took their mom from them,

murdered Suzanne Nixon,

and he will spend the rest of his life in prison for it.