Original subtitles

[grim music]

Well over a million american children

Disappear from their homes or neighborhoods every year.

[mike] the president had mentioned jonelle matthews.

But they were exactly at the same place they were

At the start of the search.

[male reporter] the absolute mystery about her disappearance

Remains unsolved.

I felt that she was taken. There was absolutely nothing.

I wasn't a part of this. I don't know what happened.

[mike] other than raking in the snow,

They really didn't have any evidence

That she'd been kidnapped.

Oh, I absolutely thought he was acting strange.

Why was the car on fire?

His control grew and grew.

It wasn't safe.

[police radio chatter]

[siren wails]

[robert] jonelle matthews disappeared on

December 20th of 1984.

[jim on phone] hi, robert. This is jim matthews.

[robert] jim and gloria,

I need to tell you guys before, uh,

Any social media got to ya...

For decades, a monster

Tapped on the shoulder of law enforcement

Because he couldn't help but to do it.

I'll never forget this.

[siren wails]

[female reporter] this area's about 30 minutes away

From her family's home in greeley.

Greeley police and the other agencies involved

Have been keeping very tight lipped about it.

[robert] it took more than three decades,

But we found her.

[suspenseful music]

[jennifer] thirty years had passed

When I had got a phone call from my friend robert cash.

He was assigned jonelle's case.

Rob and I have known each other since ninth grade.

Was I expecting much? Not really.

But go ahead, pursue it, you know?

Maybe he'd uncover something.

I still had her on my mind daily, nightly.

It just never goes away.

[jim] we knew that there was a distinct possibility

We would go to our graves not knowing what happened.

[jennifer] she just remained an unsolved mystery.

[robert] the matthews case rings in the halls

Of the greeley police department.

It's unrivaled.

There's kind of a fantasy about being able to solve

A case like this,

Particularly since you knew the family.

Failure wasn't an option.

I never let myself fear failure.

[tense music]

[angela] we were living south of ketchum

Here in idaho.

My marriage with steve was awful.

The coercive control was always there.

The physical abuse was more random

And it wasn't all the time.

I was working cleaning houses.

We were renting a house from one of my clients.

I was at work one day.

I expected my paycheck to be there, and it wasn't.

So I asked her about it.

And she said, "you have a lot of nerve asking for your paycheck

When you guys haven't paid your rent."

So when I went home, I said to steve,

"steve, I didn't get my check

Because she said that our rent isn't paid."

And he said, "well, I had to use the money for legal fees.

"police are persecuting me.

I won't tell them what they want to know about jonelle matthews."

"jonelle matthews?"

That was the first time jonelle matthews' name

Had come up in 10 years.

He turned kind of halfway to me and said to me,

"do you really think I would hurt her

When she looks so much like you?"

There's an expression that something makes

Your blood run cold,

But it's the only time in my life

I've experienced it.

All those odd occurrences,

The quick trip to big bear, the dogs being dumped,

The car being on fire,

The episode at church where he's saying, "false prophet!"

In that moment, all that

Meant something different to me

Than it ever had before.

Something had happened to this 12-year-old girl,

And he was acting like he might've done something.

I had to figure out

If he had murdered jonelle matthews.

[suspenseful music]

[mike] cash and I had been working on

Jonelle's disappearance for years.

This case was chock full of oddities

And strange occurrences, for sure.

To be blunt, the investigation was a mess.

There were a lot of missed opportunities.

Names and subjects,

They weren't necessarily followed up on.

Two reports generated by the lead detective

In January of 1985

Mentioned an individual that was claiming to be a pastor

Named steve pankey.

He straight out said that he knew

Jonelle was probably dead

And tried to direct attention towards

The local nazarene church here in greeley,

Where jonelle attended services with her family.

And there's references to a friend of jonelle's family,

Russell ross, as a potential suspect.

But then several days later,

Pankey arrived at the police department

And basically said, "disregard. Don't worry about my lead."

[robert] there was a lot of connection to

People involved in the church.

There was still questions in my mind

Surrounding russ ross,

The last trusted adult to have seen jonelle.

Given the fact that the statements forming his alibi

Came from family members,

We couldn't entirely eliminate him 100%.

There were times when I had

Fairly confrontational interviews with him.

However, that scrutiny led us, then,

To other people who would become more important,

Much more important, in the case.

[russ] robert cash, basically he was going through

The whole scenario of

How things happened in that night.

And he said, "the name steve pankey sound familiar?"

And I go, "oh, wow."

[robert] he remembered steve.

There was some friction between him and pankey at work.

[russ] he worked for me.

In the report or something was that

I held him and beat him up and that and so on.

Yeah, I don't know.

It was never substantiated, I guess,

So I don't know what that was all about.

It seemed to me that russell ross felt awkward

Or uncomfortable talking about steve pankey.

This fact fueled my curiosity more

As far as the relationship between the two

And what pankey himself might tell me about russ ross.

[unsettling music]

[dial tone]

[dialing touchtone phone]

[line trilling]

[music intensifies]

[unsettling music]

He was cagey, guarded, making these odd comments.

Why would you need a deal, steve?

Um, I'm, I'm curious about your relationship

With russell ross.

I was really scared then,

That my intuition or that my feelings about it

Were right.

[unsettling music]

[angela] I started watching for clues.

It became like a quest for me.

Is there any more pieces to this puzzle that I can gather

Or that I can find?

Steve had mountains and mountains of paperwork.

He was suing a lot of people. A lot of people were suing him.

So this is something I found on top of steve's desk

After I kind of started watching for things.

So this one says, "pastoral privilege, jonelle.

Jonelle dead before crossing 10th street and greeley."

That speaks volumes to me.

I mean, he names the very street that we live on.

The next thing that I found,

A yellow legal file torn into pieces.

I could see on one of the piece of papers

That it said "jonelle matthews."

So I put that piece of paper back together.

And on that document, it said,

"the snow outside the matthews home was raked."

And how would you know that unless you were there?

Steve couldn't find out that I saw it and copied it.

I laid out towels.

I laid the documents in the towels.

I took the insert out of the tongue of my tennis shoe

And then just walked out of the house with them

As bags of laundry taking back to clients.

And then I took all the copies to the police.

I talked to cam daggett first,

Who was the sun valley police chief.

I told him about everything

That had happened in '84 and '85,

About the comments that steve said.

And they said, "you've just gotta figure out a way

To get out of this."

I agreed to send all this documentation

To the greeley police, who's handling the case

In greeley, colorado so that it can go forward.

He said, "I'm gonna be praying. I know you're praying.

And we'll leave this in god's hands."

For a long time,

I was waiting for the police to contact me.

And that never happened.

[unsettling music]

[angela] I was still living with him,

Trying to figure out how am I gonna get out of this.

I just didn't see any safe choices,

And he had made so many threats.

It took me a while.

But in my mind, I was like, "that's it."

I went and started trying to talk to attorneys.

All the attorneys I was talking to were saying,

You know, "we've represented somebody suing him,

So we can't help you."

I mean, this was just attorney after attorney after attorney.

Finally I found an attorney

Who hadn't had any dealings with him.

And I was able to get the divorce in motion.

Me and the two boys, we got a civil protection order

So that steve couldn't come around us.

You know that expression,

"keep your friends close and your enemies closer"?

I decided that would be the best way

To approach my relationship with steve.

As far as I knew, he didn't know that I had talked to the police.

I thought if something slipped and he found out,

I knew that he would kill me.

[steve] hello, this is steve pankey.

I'm in front of the idaho governor's office.

I just filed for candidacy

As a republican candidate for governor of the state of idaho.

[angela] one day, to my surprise,

I saw steve campaigning for governor.

So together, we can make a safe, prosperous, and moral idaho.

I'm just shocked.

This is steve pankey. Steve pankey.

Your republican-- republican--

Idaho-- idaho governor.

If you're young and beautiful, 18,

And this is your first time voting,

I welcome your vote.

If you're young and ugly, I welcome your vote.

The pankey family had always had a trust.

After we were divorced,

Steve spent over $300,000 of his inheritance

To run for governor of idaho.

Steve's dad was a baptist preacher,

Then a judge, who invested heavily

In california real estate.

His great-grandfather had been the governor...

I believe of arizona.

So steve had this air that that's what he planned to be.

But I didn't think he had a chance of winning.

Pankeyforidaho.Com.

Feel free to donate the big bucks.

[angela] it just made me sick to my stomach.

He's out there acting like he's this big shot,

And she didn't even have a chance

To see her 13th birthday and, you know, have her life.

[unsettling music]

[angela] after 20 years,

I just felt like there was nothing I could do.

I tried to do something, and that didn't work.

[line trilling]

It was a lot of waiting and a lot of years.

[line trilling]

All these years later? Seriously, now?

This is the longest I've ever waited for a callback.

There was kind of a pause or a silence.

I had absolutely no idea what she was talking about.

What the hell happened to that file?

After everything I went through,

And the greeley police department

Doesn't have the file?

No one had done anything.

I was a bit put off.

[cacophony of voices]

[robert] I was completely surprised.

So I asked her kind of, "well, what can you tell me?"

[unnerving music]

[angela] detective cash, I would say,

Knows more about my life, my marriage with steve,

Than anybody in the whole world.

He heard it all.

My whole story.

[steve] together, we can make a safe,

Prosperous, and moral idaho.

Angela hicks had so much information to give.

I had several conversations with her

Over the next few months.

She would bring copies of the things

That she had found in the house.

Notes, legal briefs, important writings.

Angela would talk about his statements to her

That made her blood run cold.

The trip to california and dumping the dogs.

The interesting fire suddenly.

His behaviors, his running for political office

For governor of idaho,

How she suffered abuse at the hands of steve pankey,

Physical, emotional.

But the biggest development, I would say,

Is angela had notations summarizing

A conversation she had with steve pankey

About shoe impressions that had been raked out of the snow

Surrounding the matthews house.

[dramatic music]

[mike] my blood pressure rose.

I'm like, "oh my god, steve knew the holdback information."

The general public never, ever had any idea

About the raking in the snow.

Yet angela is making notes in '99

That pankey knew about those rakings.

[robert] knowing this was monumental.

I had to sit back in my chair.

Steve pankey would've been the one who was at the house

December 20th of 1984.

I'm like, "ah, dude, we are going to idaho.

We have to go see him."

But on July 24, 2019...

The phone rang.

[line trilling]

[gloria] the detectives called us up.

[line trilling]

To be honest, we, uh...

I didn't want to have that phone call.

[line trilling] [sad music]

I...

I didn't want to find a body.

This is county road 40, 34 and a half.

"the road to nowhere," is what we called it.

-Over here, right? -Yeah.

An oil exploration crew had dug up

What they believed were unidentified remains.

I walked up to the remains and saw that the skull

Had a penetrating gunshot wound through the forehead.

When I saw the braces,

I knew...

That we had found jonelle matthews.

[male reporter 1] this is a case the greeley police department

Has been working to solve for more than 30 years.

[male reporter 2] police say they've found the skull

Belonging to a missing 12-year-old

At an oil and gas site in weld county.

[robert] it was like a slow-moving car crash.

You know, filled with anxiety, with apprehension,

Desire for it to actually be something positive in the case.

[female reporter] this area where jonelle's body was found

Is about 30 minutes away from her family's home in greeley.

Greeley police and the other agencies involved

Have been keeping very tight lipped about it.

[jim] to get a phone call 35 years after it happened

Was absolutely earthshaking.

This has been something we have been waiting for.

This was closure.

[male reporter] jonelle matthews

Was 12 years old when she went missing.

Today, she'd be in her mid-40's.

Never in my life...

Did I think of that she was shot in the head,

And how afraid she was.

[mike] I was angry that somebody could do such a thing to her.

The bullet, because it was at a downward trajectory,

In my opinion, she was on her knees,

Looking up at the individual that shot her.

I wanted to find who that person was.

And so we hit the road, robert and I,

To drive out and see pankey.

[unsettling music]

[robert] mike prill and I made the nine-hour trip to idaho

To attempt to contact steve pankey.

Arriving up in idaho,

Steve pankey answered the intercom.

[steve] hello?

He couldn't believe that we were at his front doorstep.

[laughs]

We never alluded that we were there

To treat him as a suspect and that he was being charged.

I explained to him that for him to get the deal he was seeking,

It would have to be a deal for a crime

That I could arrest him for.

[mike] retorts, "I need a deal."

He's just told me, without saying it directly,

I murdered jonelle,

And I'm not gonna talk to you without a deal

Because that's a crime from 1984

That you could still arrest me for.

[mike] when I got into our car, I told robert,

"that's our guy. That is definitely our dude."

[robert] we both felt that we had the guy.

The sense was that we had the guy.

We now needed to prove it.

[tense music]

[robert] we consulted with the district attorney's office.

Their response was, "we need more."

I get a phone call, and I'm thinking to myself,

"I can't believe what I'm hearing."

This is as big as it gets.

Fortunately at that point there was enough evidence

That we could write a warrant to get into pankey's house.

[suspenseful music]

Police department. Search warrant.

The same "steve pankey" meant nothing to anybody.

Police, search warrant!

But all of a sudden,

When you're talking about somebody

Who's running for the governor,

It's like you've taken

Two complete, irrelevant concepts

And smashed them together in one person.

That's what it felt like, is he's an enigma.

Is he a criminal? Is he a witness?

Who is he?

[mike] the tactical team hit pankey's house.

But pankey was not at home.

He had no couches, no televisions, no radios.

He had a picture of himself from his--

Perhaps his high school years hanging on the wall.

He had three cell phones and two laptops.

And then he had a very expensive,

Brand-new gun safe.

It was almost like he was living in his own self-imposed prison.

[robert] we seized 14 or so handguns,

Numerous cell phones, and laptop computers.

[unsettling music]

[michael] results of the search warrants

Of his computers was an utter goldmine.

He would search for jonelle thousands of times.

And it became very clear that

Once he learned jonelle's remains were found,

He was up on his computer for the better part of 36 hours.

He never went to sleep.

[mike] I took a deep dive into pankey's life in colorado.

Robert would be tasked with locating cases filed against

Pankey throughout idaho during the years that he lived there.

And we started amassing police reports

And court documents.

[robert] I'm reaching out to various records departments,

Getting documents from legal actions

That he's involved with.

In the 1990s, he would make

Exceedingly incriminating statements

Saying that he is a master manipulator.

[michael] he's writing things to the idaho supreme court

Believing that he would receive the death penalty

In exchange for providing information about jonelle.

Who says that?

[mike] in his many, many case files,

He was so amazingly slick

That he controlled both the courts and law enforcement

With the use of his pen and his own personality.

[michael] we got one particular report from idaho.

A police officer was on a traffic stop.

And he starts videotaping the police stop.

She confronts him, tells him to step away.

And he starts talking and saying

That he's buried more bodies than she could possibly imagine.

She stops and says, "oh yeah? Where?"

"well, in colorado."

This is back in the late '90s, long before pankey's ever on

Anybody in colorado's radar screen.

[robert] for decades,

A monster tapped on the shoulder of law enforcement

Because he couldn't help but to do it.

To get the attention that he thought that he deserved.

This was part of what he does. This is part of steve pankey.

[michael] we were sitting in our office.

And one day, detective cash comes over and says,

"you're not gonna believe this."

[male interviewer] so steve, why don't we

Just start from the beginning?

Steve pankey was going on a media crusade.

Prill gets right in my face and he starts spitting.

Like, he says, "steve, I need to talk to you."

[michael] we looked at each other and said,

"what in the world is he doing? Why is he doing this?"

[steve] it's not like I don't have compassion.

It wasn't until my wife and I

And our five-year-old returned from california.

[angela] all of a sudden, you could put in the name

"steve pankey" in a search engine,

And it would just have link after link

To either a newspaper article, a television interview,

A radio interview, a podcast interview.

I'm a true crime/ missing persons podcaster.

I've covered 317 disappearances.

Steve contacted me to tell the world

About why he was innocent

And did not kill jonelle matthews.

That was a first.

[upbeat music]

Always friendly. Always gracious.

What steve has done over the last 35 years is not unusual.

I have many disappearances where there are steve pankeys.

People who take an unusual interest

In a disappearance or a murder.

He's a strange cat.

[ed] I came away thinking...

I have doubts whether steve pankey killed jonelle.

[robert] the three-decade mystery

Of who had taken jonelle matthews was over.

We'd taken the correct steps to end this nightmare

That had been going on for, at that time, 38 years.

[knocking on door]

[police officer 1] contact.

[police officer 2] would you come outside, please?

We need to talk to you, steven.

[police officer 1] steve, we have a warrant for your arrest.

[michael] it is with great honor today that we announce

That the grand jury indicted an individual

Named steven dana pankey

For the kidnapping and murder of jonelle matthews.

Can I get my phone?

[female reporter] steve pankey was once a candidate

For governor of idaho.

And now he's charged with killing a girl

Who vanished 36 years ago.

[michael] please understand that while he has been indicted,

That he is still presumed innocent,

Unless and until these charges are proven

Beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law.

[mike] the second thing that should never have happened

Just happened.

Now, not only has jonelle actually been found,

We just arrested somebody.

[male reporter] steve pankey was arrested at his home

In meridian, idaho,

Facing charges of first degree murder and kidnapping.

[female reporter] pankey is being held without bond

At the ada county jail in boise, idaho

And is waiting extradition to colorado.

We had never heard the name before.

Why would a person like him wanna do this jonelle,

Spend the time and the effort to run for governor?

To me, there's no stereotype for a killer.

[gloria] why he would pick her?

I don't know.

[angela] it was kind of a high-low feeling.

On the one hand, like,

"oh my god, I was right! I was right!"

And on the other hand, it was like,

"oh my god, I was right. I was right."

[somber music]

[male reporter] jim and gloria matthews

Sat in a weld county courtroom

As steve pankey pleaded not guilty.

Steve pankey has been getting off for 37 years

For murdering my sister.

The hands of justice were moving for us, for jonelle.

[gloria] I hardly even looked at him in the courtroom.

I didn't care anymore. I just wanted him guilty.

[michael] your goal since December 20th of 1984

Has been self-preservation. Would you agree?

Not necessarily.

In the courtroom, he was cagey, guarded,

Demanding a deal.

[michael] you're asking for immunity, demanding it,

For murder and kidnapping

Before you'll say anything about jonelle matthews, right?

You don't know what's in my head.

It was him continuing to gaslight the public,

To manipulate what was happening.

[michael] you were probably the first person on the planet

To assert she was deceased. You know that?

That's not true.

[ed] so I knew there was going to be a trial.

I didn't know I was going to be part of it.

[steve] in 1977, I was a youth pastor

At sunny view church of the nazarene.

[ed] they chose to play the podcast.

The goal was to show that steve had told

Contradicting stories over the last 38 years.

However, lying to me is not a precursor

To somebody being a murderer.

Never could prove that he knew the family.

Never could prove that he owned a gun of that caliber

That was used to jonelle.

Had they even been able to prove

That steve was on that street even that day?

They couldn't even do that.

[lacy] so this was my first homicide trial.

At the first meeting, it was like,

"are we sure we have the right guy?"

Juries today expect dna.

[michael] the biggest problem we had

Is the inability to forensically link pankey

Either to the matthews home,

To the location where jonelle's body was found.

We couldn't do it through dna.

The reality is it's fragile evidence

When it lays in soft sand soil for 36 years.

So there was no expectation of recovering

Any forensic evidence.

[lacy] how do we explain this to a jury?

How do we explain almost a 40-year investigation

And make it simple that a layperson

Who's looking at this from the outside can understand it?

[mike] we had overwhelming amounts

Of circumstantial evidence.

During the search of his home,

I encountered a copy of a book that pankey authored

Entitled "graveyards."

It's a story about an individual named david darkson

That has a falling-out with the nazarene church in greeley

And all the long has an incredible grudge

Towards a woman named deb moon.

As I'm reading this book, I realize

Everything was essentially true,

And david darkson is pankey.

In 1977, deb moon,

A college student attending the nazarene church,

Files a sexual assault complaint against pankey.

[lacy] michael rourke and I called her,

And miss moon told us that

She was the jonelle matthews that got away.

She said pankey drove miss moon out into the country

In weld county

And he raped her for four hours.

The weld county district attorney's office

Filed charges on him.

It was a male prosecutor.

And told her this is a he said versus she said.

And the charges were dropped.

His name ended up in the newspaper,

And he got excommunicated from sunny view nazarene church.

And then he starts spiraling in hatred,

Having members physically pick him up

Out of the congregation and forcibly remove him.

The testimony about deb moon's case

We could not use in the trial.

The concern there is that the jury

Would misuse the information and say,

Well, if he raped miss moon,

Then he had to have kidnapped and murdered jonelle.

But we found his motive.

He was angry and stalking members of the church.

And deb moon was the source of this hatred.

[michael] you told us that you began

A very bitter relationship with

Sunny view church of the nazarene,

Russ ross.

Because you hated those men?

Yes, sir.

[lacy] detective cash told us

Mr. Pankey had a vendetta to get after the man

By the name russell ross.

Turns out that he was part of the same congregation.

Russell ross happened to drive jonelle matthews home

The night of December 20, 1984.

And he was also pankey's former boss

And part of a lawsuit that mr. Pankey had engaged in.

[michael] we had documented evidence to show

That pankey had made efforts to harass and follow russ ross.

He coupled the hatred of the church

With the hatred of russ ross,

And we had our belief that pankey

Was following russ ross the night

That he dropped jonelle matthews off at her home.

[robert] there was no doubt in our mind

That that evening, steve pankey

Followed russ ross,

Saw that jonelle walked into a dark house.

He knew that that moment was his opportunity

To take revenge on everybody who had wronged him.

[angela] I was subpoenaed to testify.

It was so frightening.

And I knew that he was gonna be right there in the courtroom.

[male reporter] the ex-wife of a man accused of

Murdering a 12-year-old girl decades ago took the stand,

And she remembered the time her husband, steve pankey,

Brought up jonelle matthews.

[angela] I had been told,

"you can't make any kind of prejudicial statements.

"make your statements as brief as possible,

Five words or less, if you can."

[lacy] we had to have the conversation with angela

That the judge had restricted her testimony

To a sanitized fashion.

"the jury will not hear about any physical acts of violence

Mr. Pankey perpetrated against you"

Because it was overly prejudicial.

[angela] I felt like I had to give people enough information

So they understand what happened,

But I didn't feel like I was able to do that.

Steve says, "don't worry about the dogs.

I dumped the dogs. Get us ready to go."

All the da's and the detectives said,

"oh, you did so well! You did so well!

You did such a good job!"

And all I could think was, "I just sucked."

I just didn't leave with a good feeling.

[michael] at the conclusion of that trial, we felt good.

We felt like we had presented to that jury

A complete picture,

Almost a 200-page document that served as a summary

Of the entire investigation.

When you put that together

And you spend the time to read it from start to finish,

It reads as, you got the right guy.

[train rumbling] [bell dinging]

[train whistle]

[jennifer] I was a little bit undecided about

Steve pankey's guilt,

Just listening to what was presented in the trial.

Anticipating was daunting.

[michael] we got a note from the jury to the judge.

And it says, "we don't believe

We're gonna be able to reach a unanimous verdict."

[male reporter] we go to weld county,

Where a jury is split on what happened

To young jonelle matthews.

[female reporter] the jury couldn't agree

If steve pankey is innocent or guilty

In her kidnapping and murder.

This morning, a judge declared a mistrial in the case.

[jennifer] I didn't know exactly what that meant.

You might think it's so blatantly obvious,

But you don't know what 12 other people are thinking.

Our family has to wait again for justice for jonelle.

[gloria] I was so disappointed.

22,000 pages of testimonies, documents,

And it all didn't mean anything because three of the jurors said

That we couldn't prove that he was on the premises.

What else can we do?

No way we were gonna give up.

And I told the matthews family right away

That there's no question in our minds we'll be back.

But this was gonna be a massive undertaking.

Within two hours, prill's writing a to-do list,

Things that happened during the course of his trial

That we think had opened doors to

Other pieces of information, other evidence,

Other witnesses that we couldn't call the first time.

Pankey opened the doors for us when he testified.

That was significant.

[robert] we knew that there was a lot of things in this case

That had to with steve. We couldn't get into it.

We couldn't talk about deb moon

And the domestic abuse towards angela hicks.

But if the defense opens the door

To a piece of evidence that has to do with

Something that we can't provide--

If they open the door to something,

Then we can...

We can start talking about it.

I never imagined that she would say

All the things that she said about me.

In the first trial, mr. Pankey painted angela

As a vindictive, bitter, scorned woman.

[michael] any other reason you can think of

That she would get on the stand

And lie about something that happened 37 years ago?

A woman scorned. That's all I know.

[lacy] he taunted us with what we knew

And didn't have a court order to get into.

But him painting her as a scorned woman

Allowed us to explain the psychological abuse

That she had endured through her marriage with pankey.

[michael] this elaborate lie that you have talked about

Is to get back at russ ross,

Sunny view church of the nazarene,

And the greeley police department.

That's partially right.

When mr. Pankey testified,

He told us as much on the stand himself,

In his own words,

That everything about jonelle stems from deb moon.

[michael] are you trying to get back at anybody else?

That's part of the protected stuff.

[michael] excuse me? What protected stuff?

The stuff that's-- the judge ruled on.

[lacy] he talked about it being pure hatred with the church,

And that it all stems from 1977, but that's the protected stuff,

And you're not allowed to go there.

And finally it allowed us to at least argue

That deb moon's instance was connected with

Jonelle's disappearance.

At that point, we had the judge's blessing

To bring in miss moon.

And she said yes.

[mike] most importantly,

I knew all along

That pankey had filed a complaint

Against the greeley police department in 1985.

And made a statement that he knows specifically

That two cops lived on the same street as jonelle.

So for pankey to know that any cop,

Let alone two cops, lived on the same street,

He would've had to conduct his own private surveillance.

But in his podcast and his other interviews,

He would assert that he had never been in that neighborhood

And really didn't even know where it was at.

But we couldn't use that in the first trial

Because the perceiving witness is dead.

But between the first and second trial,

Angela found yet more writings by him

With a whole different story.

[angela] I had kept all of this documentation

That I provided to the sun valley police in the '90s.

And I could see on one of the piece of papers,

It said, "two cops living within a block of jonelle matthews."

[mike] couldn't believe it when I saw it.

I called rob and I'm like, "dude, you have to hear this."

And I could hear him jumping up and down

On the other end of the line.

Like, we finally get to introduce this evidence.

And it's coming in through pankey.

He wrote it!

So now we're able to tell a jury

That pankey was conducting surveillance

In jonelle's neighborhood before she passed away.

[female reporter] thirty-eight years

Since a 12-year-old girl in greeley

Was kidnapped and murder.

Today, the man accused of killing jonelle matthews

Was back in court for his second trial.

[male reporter] jonelle matthews is a name

That we've heard in colorado for decades now.

So once again, steve pankey was in the courtroom

Listening on headphones

While county da michael rourke argues

Pankey is guilty based on things he said

And how he's acted over the years.

[lazy] when deb testified,

She tells her story very factually.

She's eloquent.

And she takes a moment, and she turns around,

And she faces mr. Pankey.

And she looks him dead in the eyes

Until he looks away first.

And I think that moment was

All the satisfaction she needed out of this trial.

[dramatic music]

[lacy] but angela was essential.

We could not do this without her.

[michael] angela was our star witness.

There's no way that we convict steve pankey

Without angela hicks.

This time, she wasn't muzzled

As much as she was the first time.

[angela] all those years I had to suppress

The story of what I went through.

I had to go through it all again.

It was like a moment of reckoning to me.

I just said, "god, I give this to you.

"please let there be a resolution to this.

"please keep me safe.

And let there be justice for jonelle."

[tense music]

[robert] it took 38 years for us to...

To find steve pankey.

But we found him and we convicted him

For the murder of jonelle matthews.

[female reporter] nearly four decades

After a young girl disappeared,

A jury has convicted her killer.

[angela] I could just feel my heart pounding.

And they said, "kidnapping in the first degree, guilty."

And then, "murder, guilty."

[male reporter] a master manipulator

Who murdered a 12-year-old girl in cold blood.

A judge sentenced him to life in prison.

I am a christian.

I will be in heaven.

I am innocent.

It was the best feeling ever.

Almost an instant release of the last 38 years.

All the blood, sweat, and tears that have gone into this.

After the verdict, I talked to cash.

I just have nothing but admiration for him,

For all the work that he's done for our family,

What they all have.

[mike] it felt great.

Justice has finally been meted out.

[michael] when you hear "guilty"?

Are you kidding me?

On a case like that that we worked on so hard...

It meant the world.

Um...

Relieved.

And proud.

It had been a long time coming.

[robert] it flashed before my eyes,

First being tasked with the case back in 2013

To all the work that was done,

The sticking to it, not giving up ever.

I don't think I cried. [laughs]

[bright, gentle music]

[robert] there are monsters in this world...

...That will exist only to hurt others.

I think it's important that

People listen to their gut feeling about things.

Cases like this only exist because of bad people.

[bright, gentle music]

Let me just leave it at that.

[jim] if jonelle had been alive today,

I'm she would make us all proud.

We only had her for a little less than 13 years.

But...She was an amazing child.

[jennifer] I feel peace and know that

She is part of my story.

I had a sister. Her name was jonelle.

[gloria] I think both jim and I, at the very end,

Don't care whether we have all the answers or not.

So many of my christian friends say

That I have to forgive him.

But I can't.

Sp was going to go

For the rest of his life...

Behind bars.

And I, I like that.

[bright, gentle music]

[angela] having someone treat you this way

For a long period of time,

It just forever distorts your trust

And your perception of everything.

But for the first time in a long time, I feel safe.

[jennifer] angela took her life in her hands.

We owe all of this to angela.

Her pursuit for justice for jonelle

Is why we are here.

[bright, gentle music]

[bright, gentle music]