Transcript of Her Last Note

This show is sponsored by Killer Ken, a podcast from ID. Family dynamics can be tricky, and sometimes even the people closest to you can become the most dangerous. Killer Ken from ID explores real cases about how family life can fall deep into manipulation, obsession, and murder. Unpack what happens when rivalry and desire for control lead investigators and relatives questioning what fueled some of the darkest crimes ever committed. Does evil run in the family? Listen to Kill or Ken wherever you get your podcasts. Well, temperature in the 90s, and our heat advice continues.

Yeah, relief still a couple of days away.

John Milan has the complete forecast still ahead.

Also coming up with moving the board. July 12th. It was a beautiful day. The sun was beating down. I decided to go to the park with my dog, Remi. When I pulled up to the park, there was a van sitting there. I didn't really think anything of it because it's a park. It was very peaceful, very quiet, and it was just me and my dog, which is what I love to do. We walked through the woods a little bit, and we were there for about an hour. Once it got really hot, I'm like, Okay, let's get back to the car. That's when I noticed the van was still there. I probably got halfway to my car. I heard somebody running from behind me. I did a very quick double take, and that's when I saw the knife in his hand. He tackles me on the ground. I thought he was trying to kill me. I was terrified. We fought on the ground. There's blood everywhere. I think that was my fight or flight. The police, they wanted to figure out who was this, who did it, how can we find them, and just try to understand what's going on here.

And as scary as this attack was, what was about to happen next to a different young woman in the area would be even more terrifying.

Oh, my God.

Oh my God. Hartford, 901. What's your emergency?

My daughter is blue. I went to wake her up, and I just got home for lunch, and she won't wake up. How old is your daughter? 19. She's 19? Okay. Oh my God. She's 19? Okay. Okay. Is she breathing? I don't think so, no. Oh, not breathing? I don't think so. She's blue. I tried to wake her up, and she's not even waking up. Okay.

Jessie.

Jessie was really bright. She had a ton of energy and passion. I'm Buck Blodgett. I'm Jessie's dad. Jessie, she went to UWM University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. She's 19 years old.

Jessie was a very talented musician. She could play the piano, she could sing, she could play the violin.

Jessie was a performer more than anything.

She would find her way to a stage and entertain.

There's nothing like the opening night of a show. It's high energy. Everybody's really excited.

That energy is infectious. The audience feels that from the moment they come through the outer doors.

The first week of Fiddler on the Roof, it was everywhere. It was the talk of the town. Jessie got the role as the Fiddler. A Fiddler on the Room.

Sounds crazy, though.

She got to play the violin, which is something that she was always extraordinary at.

I was so proud of her. She won the title role in her first community theater out of school. And she started her own business that summer and had 28, mostly kids, come into our house every week for piano, voice, and violin lessons. The morning of July 15th was Jessie's first morning that summer to sleep in. They just had opening the weekend on the late night cast party. So this Monday morning, she was pooped.

It was a typical morning for Jessie's mom. She walked into her room to drop off some laundry before she headed off to work.

Joy came home for lunch, called up to Jessie. No answer. She didn't think much of it. She called up to Jessie again, still no answer. And then she looks out the picture window while she's eating a quick lunch, and sees one of Jessie's six-year-old students and her dad walking up our driveway. And so now she calls upstairs, Jessie, Jessie, your lesson's here. And there's still no answer. So she runs upstairs and goes into Jessie's room. She goes over to her. She reaches out to wake Jessie up, and Jessie's cold.

She's cold. She's cold. She's cold. She's cold. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Oh, my God.

I'm going to page out Police, so hang on.

I will be with you just a second. You can hear Joy's emotion. It's heartbreaking. Then when she's put on hold, you can still hear her in the background calling out for her daughter. Honey, what is happening to you? Ma'am, I have... The EMS is coming, and police will be there shortly. They're on their way. Ma'am, is anyone else with you? What? Is anyone else with you? No.

I got the phone call that every parent fears. And Joyce said, Honey, it's Jessie. I came home and she's not responding. No.

Honey, no.

And she said, The EMTs are here. And I said, Hon, Is she? And then I didn't want to say the word. So I said, Gone. Is she gone? She just tailed off in tears. So I hang up the phone and grab my car keys and drive home.

We saw a bunch of police cars outside of Jessie's house. We tried calling her, we tried texting her, but we couldn't get a hold of anyone.

Lieutenant Jim Zawicki was one of the detectives that arrived that day. So we're outside what was the Blodget home. You came here to process the scene. Yes.

It was a day off for me. My phone rang. It was my captain at the time saying that they had a suspicious death in the city of a young person. They parked, I walked around, I checked doors and windows and checked for anything that looked like forced entry or if there were going to be any problems. I didn't notice any of that. I walk into the house and I just get an immediate feel of what we have here.

Where was Jessie found?

Jessie was found up in her bedroom.

Upstairs. Upstairs. So this was Jessie's room?

This was. We had taken video of her bedroom, and I saw it was a normal young lady's bedroom. When I arrived up here, Jessie She was laying in this general direction right here with her feet facing towards the door, her head right about in that direction. I learned subsequently that her mother got her removed from the bed because part of CPR is you wanted on a hard surface. So her mother had moved her. I had immediately noticed the way that her head was tilted, you could see a faint ligature mark on the side of her neck. Pressure was applied to her neck via some type of ligature, and there was pressure applied from the back, which is something she couldn't have done. We could also identify some faint bruising on the wrist and the ankle area. Her hands had been bound together. Her ankles possibly bound together as well.

This was a more intimate murder.

Yes, I would agree with that. Someone who strangles, that's someone who is more comfortable, especially if they come into someone else's house to be able to do So as Lieutenant Zawicki looks over the room, he's searching everywhere, just anywhere, to see what could have been used as the murder weapon. We found extension cords in the room that were used to plug things in. She also had the pulling type of shades that you can pull and control that had that rope on them, too.

None of the items that he was finding in that room matched the marks on her neck. Any other evidence found in this room?

There was a little bit of blood evidence that was found on the sheets and the pillow cases. There was no signs of a struggle, no ransacking. Actually, when I had first shown up, I went into the breezeway area. She had a piano, and on top of that was some cash from a piano lesson, and that money wasn't taken. This wasn't a robbery.

Did the scene seem staged?

Yes, absolutely. The way her mother had found her, she was in bed, she was covered up, her head was on the pillow as if she was sleeping or as if someone placed her back in bed to make it look like she was sleeping.

Investigators are talking to Jessie's mother. Trying to figure out what happened. In those conversations, Jessie's mother tells Detective something really unusual that Jessie's hair and pants were wet in bed when she found her daughter.

It appeared to be that she was bathed. That struck me as extremely odd.

Now, a mystery surrounded the death of a 19-year-old woman in Washington County.

She died in Hartford.

When we found out that she had been murdered, there was a panic in Hartford. We were so scared. There was a dangerous person on the loose.

To have an actress killed after the first week of your musical, it was beyond any imagination.

Holy cow, something's happening in our area.

Nobody saw this coming.

Nobody knew who had killed her or what had even happened. This was all just completely a mystery.

Ma'am, can you stay in line with me. We're going to get EMS off for you. Who are you? She's cold to the touch, and she's blue. And she's gone. It looks like strangulation marks. There are strangulation That's what it looks like. I don't know what's going on. I don't know what's going on.

After talking with Joy and her telling me what she saw on Jessie's neck, we realized somebody had intentionally taken her life.

So as part of the investigation, you're canvassing the neighborhood. Did you get any helpful tips from neighbors?

We'd gone to each one of the houses in the neighborhood, even in the back neighborhoods. Nobody saw anything, and there was nothing that rose anyone's suspicions. We have a killer in our community, and it could be anyone.

I had no idea who would ever want to hurt her. We were so scared.

This case absolutely stood out to us. We don't have homicides in the city of Hartford. They're very, very rare.

Hartford, Wisconsin, is is a small town. We're just off the northwest corner of the greater Metropolitan Milwaukee area.

Beautiful community, roughly 16,000 people.

There's a lot of art. There's a lot of performing arts.

Hartford is an example that simplifies the heartland of America.

Perk Place is like a staple in Hartford. It's the local coffee shop. It's where a lot of high school students would go out and hang. If you didn't know where Jessie was, you would probably be able to find her at Perk Place.

Buck. Hello. Perk Place. Hotspot in town. And that's where I met Jessie's dad, in downtown Hartford, Wisconsin.

Jessie loved this little shop. Often was in the habit of coming after school with friends. They'd come here and do homework or just hang out and have fun. This is Jessie when she's one day old, and that's a very tired but very present-looking Joy who had just had her. It was the most miraculous day of my life.

Jessie was Joy's and Buck's only child. They only had one daughter. For Joy, this is still too much. She can't speak about this. It's too heartbreaking for her.

It's too painful. We had to leave Hartford so she didn't have to relive the nightmare constantly every day. I miss everything about Jessie. Our bond just It got deeper as the years passed. We talk about everything. My kid, it was never an issue trying to pull anything out of Jessie. I couldn't shut her up sometimes. She just was free to talk about everything and things that mattered.

Sometimes I would get annoyed. I'd be like, Let's just talk about high school things. But she was definitely wise beyond her ears.

She was the kid at the high school parties that chastised the smokers and the drinkers. She had great inner strength and belief Music was so important to Jessie.

It was her way to express herself.

She started playing piano as a kid.

As a kid, first grade, yeah. I took piano with Jessie because I thought I would need to in order for her to stay in it. She was so far ahead of me and loved it so much. She didn't need me anymore, so I just dropped out.

I met Jessie in high school. We heard someone playing piano and singing, and we're like, We don't recognize that voice. Who is We convinced her to try out for the concert choir, and she was incredible. Jessie wrote her own music. I think that was what made her unique. That's what made her special, and that's what drew a lot of us to her.

Jessie's Coming Out party as a local musician was the eighth Grade Talent Show. The first song she ever wrote, Joy and I had not heard. We didn't even know about it.

She starts to play, and she starts to sing, and I hear what's coming out of my kid.

And then the whole place exploded.

And standing ovation, and she won the talent show. It was the first time for me, it was the first time I really saw her talent as a musician.

Super musical. So in college, she auditioned for the University of Wisconsin Music Program.

So you want to do your name and introduce your pieces? Okay. Well, my name is Jocelyn Blodgett. I'm a freshman at UWM right now. I'm in English Education Program, hopefully Transition Music Head. After her audition, she called me and she just was beaming. She made it into the School of Music. Well done. Thank you.

Her dream and her vision was being a music teacher. She really thought that she was going to change the world through music. Music was going to be her vehicle.

I took on the directing for the Fiddler on the Roof production. I first met Jessie at auditions. She stuck out even from that first night of auditions. She had an effervescence and an energy that was infectious, and she could play the fiddle. That, I had no idea someone was going to walk through the door and present that way.

She came home one day and she said, I'm the fiddler. She loved the cast. She called them her second family. Jessie's last weekend on Earth was opening weekend for the Fiddler on the Roof.

We talked to the director, did anyone have a problem with Jessie? Were there any jealousy issues? Were there anything that could potentially lead someone to feel that they needed to harm her? Because my mind started to think that this could have potentially been a targeted attack. They knew their way around the house. They knew where Jessie's bedroom was, and that's where they went. The crime lab did the rape analysis where they end up checking for any body fluids. It usually takes time to get the results back from any type of sexual assault kit that would be done or any type of evidence that was potentially found on Jessie's body.

As investigators are waiting for the results to see if Jessie was sexually assaulted, they're trying to piece together a timeline of Jessie's last days.

We made the determination that she was killed that morning simply by when we got there, the body temperature was still warm. She did not have rigamortis that had set in.

They had performed Friday and Saturday, and then Sunday afternoon matiné, and then they had the cast party, the traditional late night cast party. Jessie came home late and was a little troubled.

The diary that she had that she was keeping, we found next to her bed.

Detectives learn that Jessie wrote in her diary just hours before she was murdered, and something that she wrote immediately immediately jumps out at them.

In a way, I'm furious. There was a subject in the cast that she was furious at who was a little older than her. We might want to find out why she was upset with this person.

It's a big clue in this investigation, and that diary entry includes a name. She was an actress, a musician, and also a college student.

My name is Jessie Blanchard. I'm a freshman at UWM right now.

But now, 19-year-old Jessie is at the center of a bizarre murder mystery.

Everyone wanted answers. Nobody had any.

It was very much like hearing that your daughter had been killed. I cannot imagine what Buck went through.

I was sorry for her dad not being there when she needed him most, and that I would never stop loving her, and I would never forget her.

We did a full workup on Jessie Blodgett and her friends, who she knew, who they knew, where she worked, what type of person Jessie was. When we did that, Jessie was an amazing person. She was doing everything in life right, everything.

Jessie had no enemies that I could think of.

The detectives asked us if we had any thoughts about who might have done this, and we did have some thoughts. There was the guys who trimmed our trees, who were in the trees, literally over Jessie's bedroom, trimming big limbs just the week before. They came in the morning and she was sleeping.

That is potentially a lead here. The trees that they were working on overlooked her bedroom window.

Where were those trees? Just right back here?

Yeah, those trees were right over in this area.

And that's a window to her room. It is.

That is. It's her bedroom. They're here for a day, two days, three days. They're picking up what the routine of the house is. When do mom and dad leave?

I just thought maybe they had thoughts seeing her or thinking about her in her bedroom.

We interviewed people from the tree cutting place, and we were able to determine that none of the tree cutters were involved in this.

But Buck tells the detectives about a concern that Jesse had about another individual.

There was an old man in a restaurant where she was a waitress right in our neighborhood, and he had once done an inappropriate thing when she was on the job. He positioned himself in a narrow hallway where the waitresses had to come into contact with him, had to rub against him as they passed.

But detectives are able to determine that that former coworker wasn't even in town when Jesse was murdered, so he's completely cleared.

There is still no official cause of death.

Authorities say they are awaiting toxicology results. According to a police affidavit, Jesse's mother says after coming home from a cast party about 1: 00 AM, Jesse went to bed alone.

The cast party was at a really neat property.

It was out on a farm. There were llamas out there. It was a big swimming pool, and the kids were swimming and playing.

We were having chicken fights.

It was just fun.

Jessie was happy and smiling. I'm actually in that video with Jess sitting next to me chatting. Jess comes up and sits down in the chair next to me and is just bubbly as all get out and tells me how much fun she had had this first weekend being this character. I was thrilled to hear this.

Jessie came home from the cast party that night. Joy heard Jesse come in and got up and asked her, How was the day and the party? Then Jesse was a little troubled.

She had to talk with her about being uncomfortable at the party with this older male subject who she thought became a little too flirtatious with her. Jessie was uncomfortable enough to write it in her diary and leave it for us as evidence.

This was her last entry into her diary. This was written the night before she was murdered.

It was, I think I'm being corrupted. I think certain men are taking what should be platonic love and perverting it into competition. In a way, I'm furious.

And Jessie writes about just this relationship with an older castmate. It's that she needs to clearly define that relationship. And that castmate's name is Randy Talley.

Randy Tally was the choreographer for the show.

He also played one of the young men with a leading role in it. The Bible clearly teaches us, Never trust an employer.

At the cast party, I did see her sitting in his lap.

It was around a fire.

This was a 46-year-old individual, and she was 19.

I did feel very unsettled seeing him her in his lap. I just remember feeling like, Is this something that she's okay with?

Because if yes, then whatever. That's their business.

But if not, I just felt this like, What if she's not comfortable? Does she need somebody to intervene?

It just stuck with me. Detectives have seen this entry that talks about an older castmate, Brandy Tally. They've got questions for him now. They call him in for an interview. What happened? Well, let me get to that.

He was probably one of the last people to see her. Certainly, the police would want to talk to him. I'm getting the vibe.

From me? Yeah, just that you feel like you got a little more to tell me.

That was another one of those red flags for us.

I just can't believe this.

I hugged her goodbye last night, and now she's gone. And there's something else investigators here don't know yet. That just three days earlier, in a town just about 15 minutes away, there had been that other violent attack on a young woman.

I the knife in his hand. I was terrified.

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We are going to begin with a mysterious death of a teenage actress. Her mother discovered her dead in her bedroom the day after a cast party.

We were all terrified. Oh, my gosh. Is it somebody that we were working with on this show?

And Jessie had mentioned that someone in the cast had made her feel uncomfortable.

The subject was identified as Randy Talley. He was a 46-year-old individual, and she was 19.

One of Jessie's friends tells investigators they saw Randy pull Jessie onto his lap at one of the cast parties.

We subsequently were able to have an interview with Randy and determine whether he was our suspect in this homicide. What happened? Detective Thickens conducted the interview Okay, I can tell you Jessie was found deceased today by her parents.

They found her early this afternoon.

Okay, so that-Can you tell me anything about the circumstances of finding her?

Well, that's what I'm trying to figure out. It's not real clear right now.

We tried to get his time frame for that period that she had died. Oh, my God. This is so horrible. And that was a little difficult because he was supposed to be at a certain job.

Did you work this morning?

No, I did not. So That was another one of those red flags for us.

Randy says he works a temp job, and he didn't get a call that day.

They tried to call me, but they had the wrong number or something. They didn't get a hold of me until almost end of the work day.

We talked with him about how things went at the cast party, what his interpretation was, what his feelings for Jessie were.

What happened at the party? There was swimming and talking and hanging out. I literally sat right next to Jessie for most of the night.

Were you just sitting next to her or was she sitting tight up?

We were on a couch with four or five kids. We were about hip to hip. I think I probably put my hand on her back a few times She may have touched my leg a few times.

So you would have had some contact with her? Sure. Do you have any impression from her that anything was wrong? No. Unkosher? No. Correct.

No. In fact, we had the best night, Sunday night.

We had also learned through our investigation that at another cast party, Jessie was actually sitting on his lap.

One of the comments I got from one of their people that was at the party was that it seemed like you guys were flirting a little bit.

A little bit.

One of the things they said was that we had the party on Saturday night, you pulled her on your lap.

I did. She's one of my favorite people in the cast.

Okay. Did anything more than that happen? Absolutely not.

Okay.

I don't want I understand.

I understand the questioning. I understand exactly what you're saying.

Okay.

I felt very close to her.

I never kissed her or anything beyond what those people saw. Like you said, You got, you got- I have a girlfriend, and yeah, you know.

That probably would repress her a lot.

It would not. I mean, but you know what? It's not anything I'm ashamed of. I'm a dementia a relatively affection person.

We had learned that he had a longtime girlfriend. He was in what we would have considered a stable relationship.

Since Randy had physical contact with Jessie in the last few days, they asked him for a DNA sample, and he agrees to it. Swap it up back and forth inside your cheek.

I would stay in a different room, watch the interview.

We'll be back in 30 seconds, right? Yeah.

Okay. Then Detective Thickens would come out. We would confer a little bit. Do you want anything to drink? I need to caffeine. Then he would go back in and he would re-initiate the questioning.

Okay, I don't want to leave here. I just get the vibe that there's something more that maybe you have more insight. That's what I'm getting I don't. Okay. I wish. I wish I had some more insight.

I can't imagine this.

Detectives want to know, if you didn't go to work that day, what were you actually doing? What did you end up doing today when you were getting a day to sleep in after? What did you.? Yeah, I just slept in.

I Facebooked some friends. I sent out a couple of resumes. I hung around the house.

I guess actors, I have a hard time reading sometimes what emotions people have. I don't know if that's why I'm getting the vibe. It's like, I mean...

The vibe from who? From me?

Just that you feel like you got a little more to tell me. But if you don't know, that's fine. If there's something You can think of. No, I'm just floored, sir. I just can't believe this. Okay.

I hugged her goodbye last night, and now she's gone.

He was asked, did he commit this homicide? And he adamantly denied that he had any involvement in it.

I didn't know Randy very well, but I never saw anything that caused me to say, Oh, wait a minute. I've got a member of my production staff who I feel is unsafe with these young people. That thought never, ever occurred to me.

This is the George and I job. Why don't you come in? But detectives aren't so sure. They want to take a closer look at what Randy was doing the day of the murder. And Meanwhile, investigators just a few towns over are working their own disturbing case.

And got a phone call. There was an alleged attack at the park.

I really thought he was going to die.

It was like, oh, boy.

We started to wonder if this is something that could be potentially connected.

This is unreal. My fear is that this happened. This is somebody that knew her. You said you haven't been to her house.

Never. I don't know where she lives.

What led us to a guy named Randy Tally was Jessie's last entry in her diary where she speaks of this person that made her feel uncomfortable at the cast party.

I'm a hugger. I hug people.

You know her. You're saying you don't know her a lot.

I'm saying that I've known her for six weeks, and then I feel very close to her.

I'm completely freaking out.

So there weren't any tips or hot moments or anything like that?

No, not any. Detectives want to verify Randy's story, so they pull his phone records.

We were able to determine his movements, so there was an impossibility that he would have been able to be at the house on that Mr. Talley was ruled out as a suspect in this case.

As all of this is going on, just a few towns over, investigators with the Washington County Sheriff's office are investigating their own case of a young woman attacked just three days before Jesse Blodgett's murder. We're going to need probably an ambulance. My son's girlfriend was just attacked in a park by a guy. So July 12th, you are here? Yes. Walking your dog. Yep. Was there anybody else out here when you first arrived?

I remember there being one person here. He was sitting in a van, but I didn't really think anything of it because it's a public park.

Melissa said that she ended her walk with the dog, walked back to her car, and she had turned around and there's a guy running towards it.

When did it hit you that you were in real danger?

When I turned around and said, Oh, you scared me, and he didn't stop. He just kept coming. And that's when I saw the knife in his hand. He just straight up tackled me. I grabbed the knife and I've got the blade end in my hand. And I'm just yelling at him like, What are you doing?

Where did you get the wherewithal to put your hand on the knife blade?

My body was like, You know what? This is our best bet at survival. I knew I had a grip on the knife, and I was not letting go. My adrenaline just really kicked in and was like, You don't have time to feel pain right now. You need to survive. A lot of people also said, Why didn't your dog bite him? She just turned a year old. She just was standing there and probably just confused.

Then he went back, ran back to his van and took off. Then she went to her car, threw the knife into the car, and drove home.

Who was your first call?

Joel. We weren't even dating for that long.

She was just frantic. She said, I just got attacked.

I just told her to go to my parents house, and I stayed on the phone with her the whole time.

I'm on the phone. My hand is ripped open. There's just blood everywhere. I'm so thankful that he was there, and he kept me calm because I truly believe that's what helped save my life.

And then your dad calls 911. She tackled her. She fought him off in everything in the park.

She's got his knife.

She's bleeding from the hand or legs. Okay, did she know this person?

No.

In our area, there's very little stranger on stranger crime. You're very cynical at first, right? You're like, It probably is some BS, something manufactured. But that was my initial a lot. When I got to the hospital, I introduced myself and talked to Melissa. Okay, this is Detective Closing, July 12th. Yes. We're at Monomony Falls Hospital. She was obviously distraught. She was obviously shook.

So then what happened? So then he tackled me on the ground. I somehow managed to grab the knife from him. I really honestly couldn't tell you how I got it, but I did. I'm just glad that you didn't hurt my dog. I really thought he was going to die. But I grabbed it and I wasn't going to do that to me.

So did he ever say anything to you?

When I was grabbing it from him, he said, Can I go? He was asking me if he could go. And I was like, No, no. And he tried grabbing the knife away from me. And I'm like, If you're going to go, I'm taking this with me. And he started running back to his car. And then I got out there as fast as I could. He didn't say a word until, Can I just go?

And what did that sound like?

Weak, scared. It sounded confused. And who asks that anyways? I mean, what a weird thing to ask.

So The detective calls you. What did the detective say? Just interrogating me. Asking me where I was last night. How do I know her? Detectives have cleared Melissa's boyfriend, and they determine the story that she's telling is true. And there's one particular detail that seals the deal for them.

She had gravel dust on the toes of her shoes. Her story was that he was on top of her and she was on her stomach. That would create these circles of gravel dust.

He's white. He's a white guy. Blonde hair. Blonde hair. Black frame glasses.

She described him to a T, and she was, to this day, one of the better witnesses I've ever talked to in my entire life. She would have made a better witness than I did. Would you be able to do a composite sketch on him?

I could try, for sure.

The sketch was very detailed, and it was actually pretty remarkable her recollection of this attacker during a traumatic incident where she's being attacked and possibly to be killed.

Washington County deputies are searching for a man who assaulted a woman in Richfield historical Park.

I remember watching it on TV. I'm like, Why is nobody calling? Nothing. Zero. Zip. Not a single call. You get that realization of like, Wow, this is not going to be easy to solve.

But soon, there's an unexpected breakthrough in the knife attack on Melissa.

I was like, Holy shit. That never happens.

They zero in on a suspect, but when they track him down, no one can believe where they find him.

I said, I was wondering if I could talk to you. And he's like, Sure. And I'm like, Where are you?

He was portraying himself as something that he absolutely wasn't.

He was with us when we were grieving. He saw our pain.

Both cases very different, but investigators are now piecing the puzzle together.

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Now, a mystery surrounding the death of a 19-year-old woman in Washington County. 15,000 people have been on edge ever since Jesse Blodgett's murder.

That 19-year-old UWM student was found dead inside her family's home.

That crime sent shockwaves through Hartford. Fiddler on the Roof. Jessie's a part of the cast.

She was the Fiddler, and after she was murdered. The Hartford players didn't know if they should do the second weekend without Jessie. Everybody was traumatized.

What do we do now?

Do we cancel? What would Jessie want us to do? It was very challenging to get back into it.

They debated it hard and decided together that Jessie would want the show to go on, and they were right.

Final decision was made to take a candle. We placed it up there where she had originally sat. That candle was lit through the entire musical.

Just a lit candle because they said, Jessie wasn't replaceable, so why even try?

The The symbolism of the Fiddler sitting on the roof is that life is always tenuous, and you never really know what's going to happen next. She could never have known that that harm was coming toward her.

While police in Hartford, Wisconsin, are investigating Jessie's murder, they don't know yet that just three days earlier, there had been a violent attack on Melissa Etzler in a nearby town. Washington County deputies are searching for a man who assaulted a woman in Richfield historical Park.

When I found out about the attack in the park, I did think it was related because we live in a small town, so there's not a lot of crime that happens here.

The detective that went down to process Melissa's car located a knife on the passenger floorboard of the vehicle. Then later Melissa was like, That's the knife that I took from him.

Blood on the handle still. Most likely her blood from the defensive wound of her hand.

We had assigned a detective to go to the park. There was a litany of evidence through the driveway of the parking lot.

There were sunglasses that were located there.

Then we found a roll of tape.

Ventilation tape. It's like an aluminum backing on it a little bit so that when you put it on, it sticks real tight and it's real hard to get out of.

Why would he have a roll of tape on it? This is not a robbery. I've done legit robberies. It's a threat of force. A guy with a gun, guy with a knife, we now have your attention. But that's followed by a request. Give me your wallet, your necklace, and then you go in deeper and you're thinking, why didn't he hide his identity? Put on a mask, put on a Why didn't... Absolutely nothing. Really, the answer is because he didn't expect that there would be a witness, probably because he wanted to take her with him.

That's when my brain was like, Oh, were you trying to kidnap Were you trying to rape me? What is this?

He was probably going to credit find her up somehow or control her that way. She really showed a lot of strength and a lot of determination to survive by fighting him off.

Tuesday, July 16th, 139. We're in Richfield at the historical park. Melissa is going to walk us through what had occurred.

Was it the 12th?

Yes.

July 12th?

It was the 12th, Friday.

So a couple of days after the incident, you come back with police.

I basically walked them through the park of what happened during the attack. Right to the gravel part after this. Because I still had my leg bandaged up from the hospital. The whole side of my leg was just ripped up from being tackled on the ground. I noticed he was looking at me out of his car, and when he noticed that I saw him, he went like this, so I couldn't see who was there. Okay.

But she did say something about a blue minivan. A minivan, that's a pretty common vehicle, at least in Washington County.

Where does the van at?

Right here.

So something really interesting happens. Just two weeks before the attack on Melissa, an officer on routine patrol in that same park makes a crucial observation. Richfield historical Park, there's not a lot of traffic at all.

If you see three cars in the parking lot at one time, that's quite a busy day.

Part of our duties are property checks and park checks.

I drove through this park at least once a day. I saw a single vehicle. Tend to recognize the vehicles you see on a regular basis. This was one I hadn't seen before.

I ran the registration.

I did a brief background check. There were no red flags, no criminal history, nothing that caused any concern.

I concluded that the registered owners They were probably just out here walking or walking their dog. So he hears from fellow officers that they're looking for a similar vehicle that may have been involved in that attack.

Andy came up to me and said, Hey, I don't know if it'll help or not, but there was this blue van parked, and here's the plate. Here you go. Thanks, Andy.

With that license plate, we were subsequently able to identify who the vehicle belonged to.

It came back to a couple out of Ridgefield, local.

Then detectives went out to their house and they said, Do you have this minivan? They said, Yes. Our son uses this minivan.

And found out that they had a 20-year-old son. I called him, said, I'm investigating an incident that happened last Friday. I was wondering if I could talk to you. And they said he'd be there in 15 minutes, right? I hung up the phone and I looked at Aaron. I was like, Holy shit, Aaron. He never asked me what this is about. That never happened.

It's just hot in here because... And when they sit down to talk to him, he says something about Jesse Blodgett's murder that raises some serious alarms. That's information that hadn't been released. Correct.

So that would be inside information that he shouldn't have had.

Everybody has had some mix of broken bones or broken heart or broken dreams or broken relationships.

But I've never had a pain that was one 100th, literally, of the intensity and the duration of this pain.

The day after Jessie had been murdered, some of us friends were invited to go over to the Bladget house.

We thought it would be a good idea to be there for her parents, especially with her being the his only child.

It was all of Jessie's friends.

That house was packed to the gills with people.

Mariah, Jackie, and Ian were among Jessie's closest friends that were there that day, along with Jessie's former boyfriend, Dan Bartelt. Those are some good friends.

Those are some good friends, some good kids, some good young human beings. We formed a big circle in our living room around the fireplace and told stories, just shared memories and shared tears and shared hugs.

We were also laughing. Jessie's life, she was a light in this world.

Dan was Jessie's first boyfriend back in freshman year high school. Jessie was head over heels for Dan temporarily. For, I think, about three months, Dan broke up with Jessie, so they stayed friends.

You would see them laughing or hanging out or just doing music together.

They sat right next to in school for four years, first and second chair of islands in the orchestra.

Dan was also very musically talented as well. He was very similar to Jessie in that way.

They were in a lot of the musicals and the plays together. And Dan was just over the week before playing music in Jessie's music room with her.

When we were gathered as friends the day after Jessie had died, I sat with Dan on the fireplace and I was holding his hand, and I had my head on his shoulder crying, and he He squeezed my hand in comfort.

And then his cell phone rang.

So he excused himself from the room and went over into the dining room and was on the phone for a while. He came back into the room and he said, Okay, well, I have to go and said, I was just on the phone with a police officer, and they asked me to come down to the station for an interview.

And Joyce said, Don't worry, Dan. Police are going to want to talk to all of Jessie's friends.

So we drove him to the police station. We dropped him off, and he just simply said, Pick me up in 30 minutes.

The police do want to talk to Dan, but not about Jessie's murder. Instead, they want to ask him about the park attack on Melissa.

We need to talk to him because I have his picture, and that was a heck of a resemblance for the sketch that I had in my hand. Okay, My name is Joel Cloddington.

That's Aaron Walsh.

Just so you know, you're not in trouble.

Okay. Do you get dropped out here? Yes, I got dropped out. Who dropped out? Some friends of mine. All these different questions gets a person talking. What's your name? What do you do? Do you have a job? Where are you working? Roller?

Well, Associate Engineering.

And what do you do there?

Mostly cart around the This is about an incident that Detective Walsh and I are investigating.

It happened last Friday. So this happened at a park. And if you have any knowledge about what this is, best to tell me how you understand that.

Yes. Okay.

The game plan was to get him to admit to being in that park at the same time that Melissa was. Were you at a park last Friday? No. At any park? I don't think so. Is it possible that you're at a park? No. Okay. If this is our guy, he was in a fight on Friday where a girl, the wounds would still be there. You could see both of us looking, occasionally looking underneath tables looking for abrasions, signs of a struggle. Let's see your hands. Go like this. What time did you tell him? Got a stamp of a screw at work. Up. Grab off.

I have a card that I move my stuff around on there.

There was a screw through the one. Aaron thought, This guy ain't working. Aaron just saw an opening and went. You don't have a job, do you? It was an intuition.

If we check with your employer, would you still have your job? No.

Okay, that's what I thought.

How long when you lose your job?

A while ago.

Do your parents know you lost your job? No.

First proof of life. No Then now he's on the defense, right? And that's when I went in and said, How did you hurt yourself then? How did you injure your thumb? So then you want to cut your finger at work?

No. Where'd you cut your finger? Oh, at the last. Okay. Tell us about that.

What's cooking in your tone here?

Where and when did this happen?

Okay. Hold on a second. Let's talk. At At the point that I moved my chair, we went from an interview to an interrogation. Listen, nobody in their right mind would lie about cutting themselves if it happened at home cooking.

Hey.

Where are you? What happened? Just be honest.

I've gone to the park before.

I've been there. We're knocking down dominoes, right? We have our guy. He's now admitted to being there.

Unless you got things aren't going well for you and we can understand it, okay?

And then when things aren't going well for people, they do things that are very much out of character. And what you have to do is basically make them understand or make them feel like telling you the truth is better than not telling you the truth. If nobody made a mistake, they wouldn't put erasers on pensions. If you made a mistake, you made a mistake.

You in the state. I'm not telling that he got fired. It happened to be working. They up the pressure, telling him there's evidence. There's blood on the knife. It's being processed by the crime lab. Finally, Dan cracks.

Now, he's at the park. Correct. And you went after that girl, right? Yes. Okay. Why? I'm scared. It's I like scary.

I don't handle it well. College was stressful.

I left college, and I saw him, I employed him, and I wanted to scare someone else.

He was over in the house.

He was so comfortable. When that's been, right? That was just his out. Fine.

In his version of events, it was to, quote, unquote, to scare Melissa, but we didn't believe that.

But we didn't believe that. You're under arrest. Okay. You understand that? Yes. Now stand up and bring your hands in there.

He was arrested by law enforcement, and then we charged him with an attempted murder and a recklessly endangering safety.

I was very thankful because I was scared that he was going to come back and finish the job.

As for Dan's friends, the ones who had dropped him off at the police station, they had no idea this was all going on.

And so we came back in 30 minutes and we said, We're looking for Dan, and a police officer came out and said, We can't release Dan. He's being detained right now. We were so confused, and we just assumed that meant we could come pick him up later.

So what arrest has been made, and investigators are now wondering, Is it possible that the man who In fact, Melissa could have also killed his own friend?

He was living this secret life.

Washington County Sheriff's deputies arrested a man for attacking a woman in Richfield historical Park. It was all over the news. This young man was taken into custody. The reason why the police found him was because I remembered the van make and model and what it looked like. I'm one of the people that I like to watch crime shows. I do always joke about that the reason why I was able to remember what he was wearing and how tall he was and his weight is because I watched those shows. Dan and I became friends through high school. How could the guy that I was friends with do something like that?

Dan appears to be in denial as well. Just moments. After his arrest for attacking Melissa, he asked detectives a really odd question. Anyone has a record?

Please not say this. It's fine. Interesting. What's? Depends on the idea.

But there were two other comments that Dan made during that interview that really struck investigators.

Did you get dropped off here? Yes, I got dropped off. Where were you at again? I was being partred. He just flogged us. Did he see who? Blodget. Is that the girl that dispatched? Yeah. You were just being a fix. Okay. Sorry to hear about that.

They just thought it was a little bit odd and unusual that he had been coming from her residence from this vigil.

I asked him, Do you know anything about that? I was making small talk, right? I had no idea.

What happened?

Someone raped a mother. You think so or do they Did he say that he had been killed?

He said that his friend Jesse had just been murdered and that she had been raped.

But that's information that hadn't been released.

That is true. That had not been released.

That she had been raped. Correct.

So that would be inside information that he shouldn't have had. This is a detail of the crime scene that only the killer would know.

Daniel Bartel came from a nice family. He went to church, and he was involved in theater.

And he also goes to Daniel Bartel.

He was a straight A student. He was one of the few students at Hartford Union High School who had a higher GPA than Jesse did. He's a gifted violinist. He's athlete on the cross country team.

Dan Bartelt was funny. He was a fun person to be around. He lightened up a room. He could pull in a crowd and get people to gravitate toward him. We loved being part of that group. He could sing, he could act, he could write music. He was a good entertainer.

Dan often showed off his talent. Here he is singing Master of the House from Les Misérables.

Master of the House, tuning up the jump, ready with the handshake and a new ping-pong. I know that Jessie and Dan were also close at that time, and I was always jealous of their friendship because I was like, Dan is so cool. He's so fun, and he's so smart, and he's an overachiever.

And he went off to University of Wisconsin, Stevens Point, and he was there for his fall semester, freshman year. And then he dropped out of school. His father told him, Well, if you're going to be home, you need to work.

He told his parents he got a job, but he also landed the lead role in the theater production of Bye Bye Birdie. Here he is singing One Last Kiss.

Jessie and Dan were also close at that time. They made music together, they wrote songs together, they sang together, they recorded together. The They loved music together, and it was just a shared love that they had.

He's Jesse's friend. He's a good kid. He's never in any trouble.

Daniel Bartelt was playing the part of an actor who was portraying himself as something that he absolutely wasn't.

Dan had been pretending he had a job that he didn't have for months, and nobody knew.

He never worked there. Apparently, he never even had applied for the job.

He would get up every morning, 5: 00, 5: 30. His mom would pack his lunch for him.

He would He put his lunch pail, his work boots, his computer, and a backpack in a van and drive away from the house. His parents had no clue that he didn't have a job.

In fact, what he was doing is he was hanging out in parks. He was becoming a predator, and he was looking for easy prey.

He was one of the smartest people that I've ever interviewed. He was a creep. I'm trying to think of a better way to put it. When I found out that he had a relationship, friendship with Jesse, I knew I I was going to call Hartford right away as soon as they had time to do it.

The Sheriff's Department gives us a call and says, We have someone in our custody right now for our attack in Richfield. He's a friend of Jesse's. He knows Jesse. You guys are probably going to want to come talk with him. So our detectives had gone over there to conduct an interview with him pertaining to Jesse Blodget.

But this time, Dan has an alibi. He says he was at the park.

Sure enough, he was there like he I bet he was.

But there's something else at that park that also catches the detector's eye.

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When Daniel Bartelt was arrested, Sheriff's Department gives a call and says, We have someone in our custody right now for the attack on Melissa.

A, he came and met me from Jesse's vigil. B, he mentioned that she was raped. You need to look at this guy.

So our detectives had gone over there to conduct an interview with him.

July 17th, Borchert is brought in once again for questioning.

They had already gotten the evidence, and they had a enough for the charging, for the attack on Melissa. Now we wanted to speak with him about Jessie, and Detective Thickens was leading the investigation at this point, so he conducted the interview with him.

I'm trying to talk to anybody, everybody who might have some information that's going to help me to figure out what happened.

Initially, Dan was cooperative and wanted to say how great she was.

What person was Jessie? How would you describe her?

She wanted to help. If one of her friends is having trouble at home, she doesn't think no, I'd repeat her Peter on the bus. She wants to help them confront him. Crazy tree hugger, and she only eat organic food.

Then he would become emotional as he was talking.

She advocated What?

What? That he finally found his violence against women.

He was exhibiting signs that would show somebody It was emotional, putting his head down, making sounds. But every time he would look up, there wasn't a single tear in either one of his eyes.

By this point in time, they knew that he had lied about having a job. They asked him what he was doing. That Monday when Jesse was killed. Where were you on Monday?

I'm driving around.

Where'd you go?

I was about that woodlawn.

You're worried about woodline?

It's a reading, trying to write.

I'm not writing outside.

He said that he was at Woodlawn Park in fairly close proximity to Jesse's house.

What do you think happened to Jesse? I have no idea.

Sometimes things happen that are intended.

You've been in a situation like that.

You make me very uncomfortable.

Why is that? Why did I make you feel uncomfortable?

Because of what you're trying to be saying you hate.

The reason he would be asked that question, What do you think happened to Jesse? Is because we want to see what he's going to tell us. We try to keep them open-ended. See how this is helpful.

You don't want to answer what you're on the up to. If we're going to talk more, I might down the road.

That's what you're on to do. He wants to have an attorney present, so we end our interview with him. What we got on the interview was a little bit more of the time frame during this time that the homicide potentially happened.

Officers did what good officers would do, and they tried to figure out, Okay, is there any way we can tell if Daniel Bartelt was at Woodlawn Park?

How many cameras are set up here throughout park?

We've got the one, just the one up at this park. When we pulled that video, we saw that he was actually here at the park. He walks this way over towards this pavilion here. There's children in here playing. He walks by these garbage cans here, and then he goes out of frame as he's walking down the pathway to get out of the park.

So that actually corroborated what Daniel had to say, that he was at Woodland Park sometime on Monday morning.

I think Daniel Bartelt was being asked so many questions, and he was starting to get so frustrated that he thought the easiest way is maybe feed us a little bit of the truth with a lot of lies.

He was there at 10: 00 AM on Monday morning, like he said he was, but there's still between 8: 00 and 10: 00 that he's unaccounted for. So they went and pulled all the garbage from that park.

They asked the person in charge of the When was garbage taken? And he said, Well, garbage was last taken a Monday morning around 7: 00 or 7: 30.

At this point, several days have passed since the murder. What were the odds that that evidence would still be there in a trash can like this?

Closest to zero that you could get, I would say. There's being good and there's being lucky. In this line of work, you need a little bit of both of them. In this case, we had a lot of luck.

They did locate something. We called it the mother load.

Inside this garbage can, they ended up finding a Frosted Mini-Wheats box. The top was opened up on it. Stuffed inside that Frosted Mini-Wheats box was a ligature, the rope, alcohol wipes, a ball gag that was homemade, made with the same type of tape that is used for ventilation systems.

This type of tape was located at the crime scene with Melissa.

I refer to it as a kill kit. It's just someone Someone who has bad intentions to harm someone else, gathering up all the supplies that they would need to do it, keeping it all in one place for easy disposal.

But now the critical question is, can they connect these items to Dan? Since Jessie would have been killed sometime after her mother went to work at 8: 30, and Dan was seen at the park at 10: 25, police believe he would have had plenty of time to dump them there.

They were able to locate Jessie's DNA on the ropes and on some of the antiseptic wipes.

On that tape, they were able to identify a fingerprint belonging to Daniel Bartelt, and they were able to identify a hair follicle with DNA match to Jessie Blodgett. The only DNA that was in that box was Daniel Bartelt's and Jessie's. We've got him.

We begin with an arrest in the killing of that young Wisconsin actress found dead after a filler on the roof cast party. The suspect is one of her high school classmates.

It's the same man who was arrested for assaulting a woman in a Washington County park days before Jesse's death. This is a close friend of Jesse's. They had been hanging out all summer, and now all of a sudden, he's being charged with her murder.

He was welcome in her home. He was over the week before. Joy and I couldn't quite believe it.

Dan Bartelt is charged with first-degree intentional homicide and pleads not guilty. Then, as detectives continue digging into his relationship with Jessie, they discover a chilling social media post from just a month and a half before her murder.

We were able to retrieve a Facebook post that Jessie had written about Dan coming into her house.

Jessie wrote, When Dan Bartelt breaks into your house while you're sleeping to awake you. And as people start commenting, she adds, He walked into my house and then my room while I was still in bed. What a freak.

He knew how to get in. He knew her parents. He knew her parents worked, and he also would have the perfect alibi. I'm just over here to see Jessie, and we're just going to play some music.

I think, honestly, it was a practice. Could I get into her house? Could I get up to her room?

But that post is just the beginning.

I did search warrants on the home, the van, the computer.

Looking at this search history, it looked like that Daniel was attempting to play the part of the killer.

His opening statement started today in Daniel Bartelt's murder trial in West Bend.

Thirteen months after Jesse's murder, Dan Bartelt walks into a Wisconsin courtroom to face a jury. He would eventually plea guilty to the charge of reckless endangering for that attack on Melissa. And the charge for her attempted murder, that was dismissed. But he insists he's not guilty of killing his friend.

You see Jesse's side on one side of the aisle and Dan's side on the other side of the aisle. Like a bizarro horror movie wedding. People are crying. People are angry. You could look at anybody's face and you'd see a different emotion.

Although Bartelt's DNA was found on Jesse, he was never charged with rape.

Our biggest fear was that Dan was going to claim that this was a consensual thing that Jesse participated that went wrong. And we knew that wasn't true. That didn't mean he might not claim it in court and smear her name.

Yes, there's tons of pieces of evidence. We want to think through a logical order of how we're going to present the case. Jessie's mother, Joy, was our first witness.

She didn't ever keep the covers on her, and her bed wasn't cluttered.

Joy was an important witness because she was the person that found Jessie, and she was also on that 911 in one call. She's cold. She's cold.

She's cold. She's cold. Oh, my God. When the defense cross-examines Joy, they focus on Jessie and Dan's friendship, suggesting he would have no reason to kill his friend. You would see Dan at the house on those three occasions. Did Jessie and Dan appear to enjoy each other's company and be having a good time making music? Yes?

Yes.

This was an unusual case because Daniel Bartelt's family actually knew Jessie's family, And there was an interesting dynamic because we had two mothers testify.

Daniel Bartelt's mother broke down in tears on the witness stand today. Love your son?

Yes. Is it fair to say that you and your husband have done everything to provide a decent and loving home? Yes.

I didn't blame them for this. They didn't do this. I only know them to be a good family who gave him a good environment to grow up in.

But when questioned by the defense, Laura Bartelt admitted it wasn't son's nature to be a bit of a liar.

Was Dan a kid who would lie to you often as he was growing up? Well, yes. From time to time? From time to time.

When you found that out from law enforcement that your son didn't have a job, were you surprised? Yes. Why were you surprised?

Because he was leaving every day.

I don't know where else he would have been going.

Jesse Blodgett's parents walked out of court at one point today. The testimony, simply too much to take. A detective took the stand. He testified about some key evidence that he found.

Based upon your experience, was it also an unusual mixture of materials to be located in a cereal box?

Very much so.

Here we had a box with all the stuff used to kill Jessie.

Rope, laces, antiseptic wipes. The Intertape 698 was a huge piece of evidence. It's not like duct tape or masking tape or Scotch tape.

It's not a common tape. The police couldn't even find any in all the hardware stores in Washington County.

Was located at the crime scene where Melissa was attacked on July 12th in the mother load of the Frost and Mini Wheat cereal box. And that same inner tape 698 was also located in Daniel's house. In addition, an actual roll was found under Jessie's bed, and it had Daniel's fingerprints on it.

We had taken good video and good photographic evidence of her bedroom, you can see in one of the photographs, the roll of tape that was underneath her bed.

The defense definitely made some hay out of this roll of tape because that was not initially taken into evidence. It was located about a week later. They never came out and said that somebody planted this tape, but they were trying to cast doubt on the investigation.

Another important piece of evidence for the prosecution was that rope that was found in the serial box.

Jesse's DNA was in the middle of the rope, and Dan's DNA was located on the ends of the rope by the knots that he made. These same ropes were located by a search warrant in Daniel's house. It was our theory that Daniel cut this rope at his house. He made a knot around it, so it would be a good grip for him, and then he used that to strangle Jesse. The defense tried to claim that there was some cross-contamination within the mother load, and that you can't tell which was Jessie's on one or on the other.

If there is two items that touch each other, there is that possibility of transfer of DNA to occur.

But the defense never really said what those alternative explanations were for how this DNA got there.

We learned today that the young man accused of killing Jessie Blodgett seemed to have a fascination with murder.

The computer search history A lot of the search history on Dan's computer was very, very disturbing.

It was serial killers, spree killers. How many bodies do you need to be considered in one or the other? And it was intertwined with very graphic, violent pornography.

There was videos on there for bondage and sexual assault and homicide, much as the same way as we suspect that Jessie was bound.

Jessie was in her bed, sleeping. She never had a chance to fight back. The motive was, I want to kill somebody, and I want to kill somebody that's going to be an easy mark. Jessie's screaming to us. She's screaming to us. She's telling us the story. His DNA is all under her fingernails, under her left hand, on the right-hand.

I don't believe that you have heard any testimony that would give you reason to believe that Dan Bartel had any motive to cause the death of Jesse Blodget.

That jury came back. I was nervous, as everyone on the prosecution team was. Breaking news now.

Daniel Bartel found guilty of murdering 19-year-old Jesse Blodget.

The jury reached a verdict in just three hours this afternoon.

It wasn't a victory. Jesse's still dead, and Dan's still lost. And the world still It hasn't changed. The kid's still gone forever. But it was justice.

Dan Bartelt took from this family their only daughter. He played on their emotions by going to the vigil. He had just killed their daughter the day earlier.

How could he show up to her house after he had just killed her? It's almost as if he was there, so he could get a front seat. To find out that he was acting apart was It's horrifying.

Sometimes evil comes to our door with a familiar face.

At sentencing, we each had 10 minutes, me and Dan.

And what Dan Bartelt had to say there, set shockwaves through the courtroom.

I'd never witnessed anything like that.

Daniel Bartelt will spend the rest of his life in prison. The judge sentenced him to life without parole.

At the sentencing, we each had 10 minutes, me and Dan, to give our statements. And he looked at Joy and I and he said, These shackles in this orange jumpsuit don't make me guilty.

Buck, joy.

I can't give you the answers that you're looking for.

I pray for you, for all of you. And I hope that someday I will be before a court that will know that my conscience is good.

I love you. I'm so sorry for your loss.

There was some sobbing, but I didn't see any actual tears. I never saw genuine, actual remorse for Jessie, for what he put her through. When it was my turn, mostly I talked about Jessie. I wanted people to know who she and the last quarter of it was directly to Dan. I wish no vengeance or retribution. I not only forgive you, I love you.

Of course, I hate what you did.

You are forgiven, but you won't know it, and you won't feel it and experience it until you tell the truth.

Where does this place of forgiveness come from?

For me, it comes from a higher place. It was a gift to me that I didn't hate him and want vengeance. We enjoy, well, look what came out of our concern for him, a movement to end violence like this.

Shortly after her death, Buck started the Love is Greater than Hate Project in Jessie's memory. Laughing at me.

We believe that violence tends to happen a lot less in the presence of love and a lot more in the absence of love. So it's really simple. The more we presence love, the more we absence violence. That's what we're trying to do.

The project recently hosted an event for survivors of Violence and featured performances of Jessie's music. There's nothing I would do.

So when you're in trouble, come to me and I'll be there. All I swear to you is if we were to stop living this life all so suddenly. How could we ever see I think the music that Jessie brought into this world still lives on, and that's the legacy she left. How are you?

And Melissa Etzler has also teamed up with Buck in his mission.

My name is Melissa Etzler. My story is forever tied to Jessie's. What he's done is just incredible, bringing his daughter's legacy to life.

You never met Jessie.

No, but we have a soul connection. We do.

Somebody said to me, You know, if Jessie was a soul waiting to come into a life, and they said, This one is going to be short. It's going to end bad, and it's going to be violent, but you're going to cause more love than most people ever will in their 80 years. Jesse would have been at the front of the line to jump into that life.

To help keep her memory alive, there's now the Jessie Blodgett scholarship given every year to young people following in her footsteps, David, hoping to study music.

And as for Dan Bartelt, his latest appeals have been denied, and he continues to serve his life sentence. That's our program for tonight. Thanks for watching. I'm David Muir. And I'm Deborah Roberts. From all of us here at ABC News and 2020, good night.

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