Transcript of True Crime Vault: Dying to Meet You New

I've been hearing for decades that the markets can solve climate change. Today, we have more incentives for market solutions than ever, and emissions are rising. On this season of Drilled, Carbon Cowboys: the story of three market solutions colliding in one multinational boondoggle.

Gotta give Bruce and the guys credit.

They're Republicans.

They don't give a shit about any of this stuff.

Listen anywhere you get podcasts.

Step into the 2020 True Crime Vault, where each story is unforgettable.

I have a dead body.

When you did see the body, what was your impression of what had happened to Scott Sessions?

There was rage involved in it, absolute horror that somebody could be treated that way.

The body had been wrapped in plastic sheeting. It was a man, and his head had been covered and duct taped as well, and his body had been burned.

And I was like, what?

We found your son. He is deceased.

It was like somebody had punched me in the gut.

At this point, police are scrambling for clues, anything that might lead them to Scott Sessions' killer.

What about, um, girlfriends?

What's your record there?

He became very jealous. He would get really angry.

When they find a guy like him that they fall for, then they got to start remaking him. And he was not to be changed.

You meet somebody that you think might be a great person to start dating, and then all of a sudden your life is gone.

But before it's all over, there will be a second body.

It's hard to hide blood when it's everywhere.

We had a sold-out two-night concert at Candlelight Dinner Playhouse. It was February 10th, uh, 2020. It was a Monday night. Scott Sessions was in my Elvis tribute band. He was a trumpet player.

I had been promising Scott for months that I would make it to one of his gigs. We bought our tickets the minute they went on sale, and I was going to get to see Scott play for the first time in forever. It was pretty exciting.

As it got closer and closer to start time, you know, Scott wasn't there.

It was weird because Scott had failed to show up for the gig, something Scott doesn't do.

He was always ridiculously early to the gig and always ready to go, dressed, looking good.

When the curtain opened and he wasn't there, we thought, well, maybe he'll show up in a little bit. And if I remember correctly, it was, it was starting to snow.

It was snowy, it was cold. Scott didn't show up.

Yeah, in the back of my mind, I had a bad feeling.

We were all trying to figure out what had happened.

Our story begins here in Greeley, Colorado. It's about an hour north of Denver, and it's a community built on cattle, oil, and agriculture, but one that has a thriving blues scene.

Greeley, Colorado. We're about 115,000 people, primarily agricultural.

We have been known for our beef in this area forever.

People are friendly and it has a small town feel.

We're located in this pristine little valley where we have the best of both worlds.

00:04:09

53-year-old Scott Sessions grew up here in Greeley. He was part of the local music scene, played his trumpet at some of the local bars here. But some say that his personality played louder than his horn.

He started playing, oh, probably 8 or 9. There's a picture with that trumpet holding it across his chest. That trumpet's bigger than he is.

His high school teacher said, hey, you ought to play in the jazz group. And I think at that time he really started getting interested in playing the trumpet.

When he put that trumpet to his lips was—

whoo!

I've known Scott since high school. We've been friends for the last 40 years. He always wanted everybody to be happy and to get along.

He was a very caring person. He cared about people, cared about helping others out.

Scott was very much a people person. He was just a good guy.

Music made him larger than life.

He was always on. There was no off switch with Scott Sessions.

He was a very loud and explosive personality, and that's what made him great on stage.

He played the trumpet in a Denver-based band called the Movers and Shakers.

This song is called "High-Rod Helen." It's incredible when you watch video of Scott performing.

When he was up on stage, he had the facial expressions, he had the body movement, like when he was really hitting those high notes, and they kind of crunched down and got the look on their face. He really got into the music.

Satisfactions on the trombone!

Scott and I met in January of 2018 at a gig of his. He was nice and thin and in shape and You know, he had this, you know, strong arms and yeah, he was very cute.

Scott's former girlfriend agreed to do an interview, but she asked that we not use her name.

Scott's really good at love and he's good at expressing love. He's really good with his words and he would sing me songs, just all those romantic things. When Scott played up on stage, you know, women would grab his butt or try to kiss him. I always called them fangirls.

Our band, the Movers and Shakers, it just exploded out of the gates.

They were competing in competitions and winning them, and they were really beginning to go somewhere.

When my band started to do bigger concerts, we added a horn section, and Scotty was my trumpet player for many years. Best trumpet player, Mr. Scott Sessions. [APPLAUSE] He loved live performances. Scott loved being up on stage. He loved being part of a group of musicians.

Scott could lose his left leg and he would still show up to a gig.

Scott was always known to be reliable, so it stunned his friends and bandmates when he didn't show up for his sold-out concert.

It was Tuesday morning.

I get a call from George Gray, and I said, hey, uh, Scott didn't make it to the gig last night. And he said, well, that's strange.

Turns out that's not the only thing he missed.

They had made plans to go see his mom. His mom wasn't doing well with her health.

He never came out, and I didn't give it any thought.

Those guys stayed up late or something, and he thought maybe he just slept in. I said, I'm going to go over to his house and see if he's okay.

And George said, I'm kind of— I'm really worried about him. I don't know, something might have happened.

His father met me there. So I checked in the garage, and Scotty's car was not there.

The snow hadn't been shoveled. The cat hadn't been fed.

Scott was very particular about taking care of his cat. It was the one thing that could get him to leave a party is if his cat needed attention.

Something was clearly wrong.

There'd been a snowstorm. Maybe he went off the road somewhere while he was going for a drive in the mountains.

I went to the police department and filed a missing persons report, and that was about noon-ish.

As that day went on, and we were all putting stuff on Facebook and texting his number, "Hey man, we're getting worried about you, you know, what's going on, you know, we're concerned." I got a phone call from the police department.

They said, Would you be willing to come in? The detective would like to visit with you.

I'm on the Pingree Park Road and I have a dead body.

I'm in Poudre Canyon, in the heart of the Colorado Rockies. And it was just down there that a snowplow driver sees something smoldering, burning up on the hillside.

I'm on the Pingree Park Road at the Monument Gulch exit, and I have a dead body. Okay, we'll get help on the way. Are you able to provide any details? Well, there was a tree on fire, and I went up to put it out, and he's laying next to it. OK, and do you believe he's beyond any help? Yeah, he's definitely passed away.

He thought somebody had been out there camping and had left a campfire. And so he was going to go throw some snow on it and make sure that he put out whatever fire was there. When he got close to the plume of smoke, that's when he realized this was a body.

The body had been wrapped in plastic sheeting. It was a man, and his head had been, uh, covered and duct taped as well. He was found next to a smoldering log, and his body had been burned.

Driving out here, this is as remote as it gets. The nearest store, much less house, is miles and miles away, and everywhere around us is just trees, forest, and snow. Detective Justin Atwood took me to the very spot where that snowplow driver made the deadly discovery. So he literally walked up this pretty steep embankment here from down below.

Exactly.

Clambers up here to this smoldering log.

Absolutely. And then gets surprised when he realizes that there's a body. It shocked him. It scared him.

It had been intentionally burned. It had been wrapped in plastic. And that plastic had been bound in duct tape.

I got a phone call from the police department. They said, "The detective would like to visit with you." I should have known something was not right on the Sunday morning when he didn't come to go see his mom.

We wanted to make sure that we made contact with Stan as soon as possible.

So it was about 4:30, 5 o'clock when the detective said, "We found your son.

He is deceased." Stan immediately broke the news of Scott's death to his ailing wife.

She said, "Who would want to kill my Scotty?" It's a very difficult thing to tell somebody that their loved one's deceased. Emotionally, it's difficult.

In Greeley, the music community is mourning the loss of a gifted trumpet player. Sessions was found dead on February 10th by a snowplow driver in Bellevue.

Mr. Sessions was ultimately identified with a fingerprint reader during the course of the autopsy.

If you've been to a local bar that plays rock or soul recently, there's a good chance you've heard heard Scott Sessions on trumpet. Sessions' body was found alongside a road in Bellevue.

He was a person, you know. He had a soul. He had a smile. He had a laugh. He was real. I mean, it's hard to describe. And now, you know, he's just a body.

George called and said that they had found a body in a remote area of the mountains outside of Fort Collins.

And my wife and I looked at each other and thought, no way, heck no, that's not Scott, it can't be.

He was found deceased, almost decapitated, and that his body was lit on fire.

When you did see the body, what was your impression of what had happened to Scott Sessions?

It was very deliberate. There was rage involved in it, absolute horror that somebody could be treated that way and then disposed of that way. No one deserves that.

You don't get a lot of murders in Larimer County.

No.

And here you have a body that's almost decapitated.

Yes.

This is probably the worst I've ever seen.

It was like somebody had punched me in the gut. There was A lot of regret that I hadn't made it to a gig sooner. And a lot of regret that the world had just lost a very amazing man. We didn't know at that time who would— who would have killed him. Something had to go terribly wrong.

Okay, so where are we?

We're out in front of Scott Sessions' residence, uh, in Greeley, Colorado. This is where he lived prior to his death. We came here to serve a search warrant.

What kinds of things were you looking for?

Well, the first thing that we're looking for is a scene of a disturbance. It was a— your standard bachelor pad, single guy living in there. It was fairly clean. It had some clutter to it and stuff like that. We were looking for blood. Was his vehicle parked in the garage. We tried to find a cell phone. One of the major things that we were looking for was his trumpet, his instrument that he played in the band, because he never went anywhere without that trumpet.

One theory was that Scott has been robbed and killed for his trumpet.

We were told that it was a very expensive trumpet. We started looking on databases, pawn shops, to try and find if there was a trumpet that was identical to Scott's that— would have been sold. And we actually found his trumpet in his house. It was in a closet. It ended up turning out to be a dead end.

Investigators press on, desperate for clues that could point to a motive or the killer.

They were kind of at a loss. They didn't have a suspect.

It was important that investigators find out everything they could about their victims. Scott Sessions.

I was the last person he talked to before he died. And I get this call on a Saturday evening, and he said, Dad, I'm back home, and I have a date tonight.

Can I get you some water or something? No, thank you. OK.

So obviously, they began questioning his friends. And his family, including Scott's father, Stan.

Well, obviously, this is a difficult time for you and your family. And we want to be as respectful as possible. But we also need to get to the bottom of what's going on.

He was an emotional guy. And if he fell in love with a woman, he went clear to the core. There was no holding back. And this was kind of a flaw.

What about girlfriends?

He had a hell of a track record there.

He had a difficult relationship with a girlfriend that lived in Greeley. There was documented contacts with law enforcement, and there was a restraining order that was in the system.

Scott had several tumultuous past relationships, and detectives wondered if one of them might have a motive to murder the popular musician.

One day after Scott's body is found, his car appears out of nowhere. Who is this person driving a dead man's car?

2020 is partnering with Vybz open-ear wireless headphones. That's V-Y-B-Z. If you listen to a lot of true crime, you probably like to listen with a good pair of headphones. But it can be tricky to find a pair that provides great sound quality that's not too overwhelming. Because when you're out with a podcast during a late-night dog walk or pre-dawn run, you don't necessarily want noise cancelation that blocks out the sounds around you. That's why you'll want to get yourself a pair of Vibes, your perfect companion in audio. They're designed for maximum comfort with ultra-lightweight earbuds that sit just outside the ear canal, and they offer crystal-clear audio. So no matter what you're listening to, whether it's your favorite song or a SoundRich true crime podcast, it'll come across loud, clear, and silky smooth. The battery lasts up to 10 hours per charge, and they come in a range of sleek modern colors and styles. So what are you waiting for? Order now and you'll be listening to better sound with better headphones before you know it. For a limited time, our listeners can get more than 60% off a pair of Vibes wireless headphones. Just go to abcsecretsavings.com/2020. Again, that's abcsecretsavings.com/2020. abcsecretsavings.com/2020.

Whoa.

You need some water? I need a martini. Yeah. I love the sound of cooking. It's the sound of music.

It is.

I'm Stanley Tucci, and I want to invite you on a journey through the country that I love.

Italy.

Join Stanley Tucci for a new season.

You are a good cutter.

I'm not bad.

Of National Geographic's Tucci in Italy.

All right, should we eat?

National Geographic's Tucci in Italy, an all-new season, is now streaming on Disney+ and Hulu.

Whenever you have a case that's big like this, you start working it. You start living it. Everything that you do was nothing but the case.

This was my first assigned homicide. There was a huge team that came together to work in this case. So we kind of prepared to not get any sleep for the next 4 or 5 days. In situations like this, there's a lot of stuff that you need to start doing. We started reaching out to his friends. Does he have any new associates? Anybody that nobody knows about? Does he have a secret girlfriend that nobody knows about type thing? There was a lot of things that we needed to do.

While interviews with some key witnesses are happening, another set of investigators are busy analyzing data from local cell phone towers. What they're trying to do is pinpoint exactly where Scott Sessions may have spent the final moments of his life.

The cell phone provider was constantly retrieving data from your phone. It's sending data to the cell phone provider as to the location of that phone.

Those records will also tell you last made phone calls, last received phone calls, or last known telephone numbers that you sent a message to. That tower is going to capture specific data.

Scott's cell phone last pinged 3 miles away from his house in Greeley, Colorado.

That was the last location where Scott's cell phone had been prior to his death.

At this point, police are scrambling for clues, anything that might lead them to Scott Sessions' killer. They have cops canvassing neighborhoods, and they find Scott's car here, right across from that King Soopers.

It looked like somebody else had driven Scott's car and potentially left it in the parking lot of the supermarket with the keys in it.

One thing that was unusual was one of the floor mats from Scott's vehicle was found underneath the vehicle. When the vehicle was originally located, and that floor mat was also processed for potential blood evidence. It tested positive on a screening test for blood. However, we were unable to get a DNA profile on that stain.

It was pretty evident to us that this was a vehicle dump.

Police pulled surveillance video from the King Sooper supermarket and surrounding businesses including an urgent care.

And they were able to see the car pull into the parking lot. They were able to see somebody get out of the driver's side, walk around the car, and then ultimately walk away from the car on foot and leave the car in the parking lot. And that happened after they had already found Scott's body.

That was the first video that we had of our potential suspect. We needed to talk to every single one of his friends and find out who he's been hanging out with.

Investigators talked to two of Scott's ex-girlfriends.

Well, obviously we're here because your dear friend Scott has passed away.

Yeah, I like to go out and listen to live music, and he's a trumpet player. And I met him through that. Dated for 2 years and then I broke up with him.

Okay.

And so during that relationship, um, you had indicated that there were some troubles and stuff like that.

He became very jealous. We'd get really angry. So I decided for my own safety, I filed a restraining order, um, and that was for 3 months. He's really straightened out. He's the happiest I've ever seen him. That's why this is such a shock.

A friend of his called me and she said, "Did you know Scott was missing?" And I said, "No." And then her next sentence, "Well, he was murdered." And I was like, "What?" We were on and off. It was pretty tumultuous. And so we were seeing each other for a little less than 2 years. When you would go do things with him, he'd hold you and he'd put his arm around you. I felt so safe and loved when I was with him. So this is the last message I ever received from Scott.

Hey, how's it going?

I'd love to tell you all about Memphis.

It was—

It was really fun. It was really cool.

We did really well.

So anyways, give me a holler and stuff.

Hope you're having a great day.

Talk to you soon.

See you.

Bye.

[SPEAKING SPANISH] Little did she know that investigators were already eyeing her as a person of interest. They were collecting pieces of chewing gum and a hair sample from the ex-girlfriend's trash. And there were a series of text messages and a 30-minute phone call between Scott and his ex just one day before he went missing.

So I'm very sorry that we're here, and this is going to be a very sensitive topic to discuss. We started to identify that there was a recent relationship. There was a restraining order that was in the system and that they had an argument where the police were called. And we knew that her house was in the central part of Greeley.

We dated consistently until he got arrested on July 15th, 2018. There was a restraining order put on him.

We had a big fight here at the house. We started yelling at each other. And he ended up throwing coffee at me. I told him to get the eff out of my house or I was going to call the police. And he left. I was pretty agitated when he left, but I didn't think much of it. I started cleaning up, and then the cops showed up at the door. So he had called the police.

He reported himself.

He thought, she'll call, and then I'm going to get picked up. Well, he called, and he got picked up. Picked up anyway.

I wrote a nice letter to the judge. To me, it really wasn't that big a deal. I said, please help Scott resolve this situation. And so he solved it, and we moved on with it. You're talking to them, and they're asking questions. You could tell they started getting distracted.

We were in the middle of that interview, and we get a knock on the door. We got to go right now. It was on Valentine's Day, and we were out at the Weld County Sheriff's Office.

Investigators are speaking with Scott Sessions' ex-girlfriend.

This is going to be a very sensitive topic to discuss.

You know, they'd ask me if I had information on Scott, and then I could tell they started getting distracted. And then all of a sudden they just cut the interview short. They're like, okay, thank you so much.

We get a knock on the door and it says, you gotta go, we gotta go right now.

After hours of questioning Scott's exes, police get a new lead, one that would clear his ex-girlfriends of involvement.

They served a search warrant on the 14th of February on Scott's apartment.

During that investigation, they actually found passwords I raced down to 35th Avenue in Greeley because we had broken into Scott's Facebook Messenger and found out that at the same time that Scott was talking to his dad on the phone, Scott was having a Facebook Messenger conversation with whom we identified as Heather Frank.

Just a couple of weeks before his murder, Scott Sessions met a local Greeley woman. Named Heather Frank.

Heather and Scott had exchanged multiple communications via Facebook Messenger. They were talking about her attending some of Scott's concerts. In particular, she had seen him perform and she liked him. It was obvious that they had met in the past.

What we discovered to be the beginning of the story, so to speak, January 24th, there was some Facebook communication between Scott and Heather. This seemed to be starting or developing between the two, and it seemed to be romantic in nature.

The pair first connected over a shared love of music.

I met Heather at a club, and that's when Scott met her as well. It appeared she was very taken with Scott. She was a beautiful woman, and I remember the look on her face when she was watching Scott, you know, was like, you know, puppy dog eyes, you know.

Now we are trying to understand Heather Frank's life. What is her lifestyle? Where does she work? There's a lot of stuff that we had to figure out at that point.

When I met Heather's friends, they described her as a fun-loving free spirit. Tell me how you knew Heather.

I seen her every 2 months for a haircut and a style, and we took her hair from blonde to red, and it was like 4-hour appointments, so it's just you and her usually.

It's interesting, in your, your line of work, you become kind of a therapist, right?

Oh yeah, that's what my business card says— hair therapist. You put the hair color on and the truth serum comes out. She's very colorful and she always had the best clothes. She's very friendly, very boisterous, just a happy girl, just super fun.

Heather was a mom to 3 boys. Her eldest son Alex said The two were inseparable.

She was pretty much like my best friend, and we did everything together. My mom and my dad got divorced in 2010, and after they separated, it was kind of rough. But us three boys always put a smile on her face.

She would be there for me when I had hard times. She would just drag me out to go do fun things and get back in the swing of things.

She was always blasting music. She loved it. Every time I'd come over, we'd always do dance parties, like little dance-offs. She loved nature. She loved going camping.

She worked as a server over at Doug's Day Diner. People loved her.

I met Heather at Doug's. We worked together every single day for those 3 years. She didn't waste any time. I'd been there for a week when she invited me to go out to a concert with her and have a really fun night. And from that point on, it kind of just grew.

Every Thursday, girls' night. We always looked forward to that. That was our night. We'd start out, we'd go the same place, order the same thing, and just drink, eat, hang out, and have fun. And if we got off work early enough, We'd just go walking around downtown Greeley, little shops, little hole-in-the-wall bars, just fun times. She did tell me that she had met somebody, and he plays in a band, and she really enjoyed going to listen to his music because it was jazz.

She just said, met somebody, and I've been meeting him at this bar. It definitely just kind of seemed like an innocent little, I met somebody, and I'm going to hang out with them now. I didn't ask too many questions yet.

I remember meeting Heather. He had brought her down to one of our gigs in Denver.

He'd only met her a few weeks prior to when we'd gotten on this trip to go down to Memphis.

He says, "Oh, there's this new girl that I'm talking to." So in the days leading up to his disappearance and murder, what were they exchanging? What were they saying in those messages?

They were very friendly with each other. They were making plans to hang out with each other. There was a point, though, on the 8th of February where the tone of those messages changed. You could actually see the different tone. It was more of a, hey, let's connect, let's meet, come over to my house. It was a little bit more direct and demanding.

At this point in the investigation, police are putting the pieces pieces together, and they realized that the date Scott told his father about on February 8th was actually with Heather Frank.

We were seeing that leading up to the last time that Scott had a conversation with his dad Stan, about 5:30 in the evening, almost 6 o'clock in the evening on February 8th, was that he said, hey Dad, found the door that I'm going to, and I'll talk to you later. I'll see you tomorrow. I love I'll talk to you later. And that was the last conversation that, that we know Scott to ever have.

By that time, they had pulled the phone records for Scott Sessions, and they had started to put those pieces of the puzzle together and realized that Scott Sessions' phone had traveled to the area of Heather's apartment.

It started pinging in the area of Heather's apartment, and they also knew that his phone had stayed there overnight. But at that time, the fact that his phone eventually dies in her apartment or gets shut off, one or the other, and they never found his phone was very telling for detectives.

Police have zeroed in on Heather Frank as the last person to see Scott Sessions alive.

So we had to be very cautious about what our next steps were. We can't just go storming in there and say, hey, Heather, what are you doing? And what happened to Scott? Well, I remember very vividly pulling into this cul-de-sac. There was a vehicle that was there that had some damage to the front of it, and it looked like it had driven in a snowstorm. It had very, very bright red dirt on the side of it.

Authorities discovered this security camera footage.

You can see the, the cars driving westbound up the canyon heading towards Pingree Park.

Where's this car going, and could it lead to the killer?

Sunday nights on ABC.

What happens when the person you love the most turns out not to be who you think they are?

Everything he told me was a lie.

I was betrayed for From the number one true crime podcast, Betrayal.

He's been living a secret double life.

My marriage ended with a 911 call.

The tape is blood-curdling.

Betrayal: Secrets and Lies.

So many people are living with their own betrayal.

Sunday nights at 10/9c on ABC and stream on Disney+ and Hulu.

No!

Oh no!

Welcome to Get Real. I got something to say. A weekly talk show for the reality TV obsessed.

Oh my God.

He's got to be deliciously desperate.

Why do these girls forgive him?

Well, she has a soft spot for troubled men.

Boo, bloody boo.

This is your show. Find Get Real wherever you get your podcasts.

Love runs deeper than we know.

And stream new episodes Thursdays on Hulu and Hulu on Disney+. Investigators seem to be on the right path with Heather Frank. And now they need to know more.

Detectives, they can't say for sure that Scott Sessions died at Heather's apartment, but they can start watching behaviors.

We started writing cell phone data record warrants for Heather Frank. At the same time, we're doing this background check and finding out that she had a very difficult relationship with a subject, Kevin Eastman.

Usually whenever she got a new boyfriend, the first thing she would do is introduce us three to the person she was seeing. In the beginning, Kevin, he was always very nice and always interested in our lives, like, how was your day, how'd work go, you know, just trying to become closer with us.

Kevin is an oil field worker. He had worked here in Greeley.

Kevin was previously married and had a daughter. He'd been dating Heather for more than 5 years.

Kevin probably proposed, that I know of, 3 or 4 times. She didn't want to be tied to that forever. But as hard as she tried to get away from him, it just got harder and harder every time, it seemed like.

There were a number of police reports where she had been the victim of domestic violence at the hands of Kevin Eastman.

She didn't want to continue talking anyone, but they'd still see each other from time to time. But it wasn't until the end of the year of 2019 when she told us that she had finally told him that she's done.

Despite telling friends and family otherwise, Kevin appeared back in Heather's life in February 2020.

My mom called and asked if me and my husband and my two brothers would all like to go out and eat, and I heard someone whispering in the background. Me and my husband, we didn't make it, and neither did my brother Christian. My brother Blake and his girlfriend, they ended up going. After Blake came home, he told me that Kevin was back, and he was there at dinner with them. This was after they posted on the news that there was a body found up in Pingree Park.

So while Heather's family learned that Kevin resurfaced, police learned who owned that mysterious car that had been parked in front of Heather's apartment.

We identified that the vehicle that I had seen that had the mud on the side of it belonged to Kevin Eastman. It registered to him. So all this stuff was starting to come together that we're going down the right path that we need.

Detectives decided they are going to now start to surveil them.

We wrote search warrants asking a judge to grant us permission to look at Kevin Eastman's cell phone as well. And when we got those records back, we started putting those records together and trying to look at the last known locations.

Investigators realize that Scott, Heather, and Kevin's phones are all in the same place at the same time on February 8th, the night that Scott disappeared.

All 3 cell phones were in the same location at the same time. And then Scott's cell phone disappears. It's not registering anymore. At this point, Kevin Eastman and Heather Frank are both suspects in the disappearance and death of Scott Sessions. We got a tracker on Heather Frank's vehicle as well as Kevin Eastman's vehicle. We decided instead of having a law enforcement officer parked on their street 24 hours a day, watching their front door, watching when they leave. We can put a pole camera on there and we can remotely watch.

So you actually had a camera that you had the utility companies put up on that pole?

Yes, almost to the top. It was attached facing towards Heather's apartment, that building right there.

They were hoping to figure out when they were coming and going and being able to follow them and do other things.

We had a tracker on the vehicle, so we were able to see they drove to Loveland, to Best Buy, to Victoria's Secret. Not a lot of information that they're involved in something.

Police didn't notice anything suspicious while they're surveilling Heather and Kevin, but more data from their phone starts to come in, and police get a big break in the case.

On the morning of the 9th, about 7 o'clock in the morning, we could see that Kevin Eastman's cell phone and Heather Frank's cell phone left her apartment at the same time and traveled the same path. The cell phones stopped pinging at Ted's Place, which is a gas station off of Highway 14 and Highway 287 in Larimer County. About the same time where you would go into the mountains and lose connectivity to your cell phone. Based off of the last known direction of travel of Heather Franken, Kevin Eastman's cell phone, we knew that this vehicle had to pass by the Mishawaka. The Mishawaka Amphitheater had cameras outside, and we knew that we could get vehicle traffic traveling eastbound and westbound on Highway 14 going up to Pingree Park.

The way the surveillance camera is positioned, it shows Kevin's Subaru passing the restaurant going westbound up the canyon. And I think it was 8:37 in the morning.

This footage shows Kevin's car driving toward the area the body was found just 3 hours after Scott's cell phone dies at Heather Frank's house.

Same damage that I saw on his vehicle parked outside of Heather Frank's apartment. Was on the camera at the Mishawaka.

Then we see what would appear to be his Subaru traveling the opposite direction. I think it was 11:30 or so later that morning. So it was about a 3-hour time frame where it looked like Kevin's vehicle was up in the canyon in the area generally of Pingree Park.

That was our third major break to this case. That vehicle passing by the Mishawaka the cell phone records leading up to Pingree Park and then going back to her apartment. We started writing warrants for people's arrests for the murder of Scott Sessions. On February 15th, about 5:30 in the evening, we saw Heather Frank leaving her apartment with Kevin Eastman walking directly behind her.

This is the moment that turned the case upside down. One of these people will never be seen again.

It took everything I had to not scream.

Why?

And I'm sure that you've seen stuff in the news about somebody disappearing from Greeley.

Our friend Scott was killed in one of the most brutal killings ever.

They found him, but now someone else in the area is missing.

Her children don't know where she's at. Her boss doesn't know where she's at.

That it had to be some sort of love triangle gone wrong.

All they have is this one man to guide them in a 6-hour police interview unlike anything you've ever seen.

My head's getting all screwed up.

All right, this is almost 3 hours in, and he's alone in the room.

Don't please your father. Let me help these men get to the bottom of this case, please.

Do you think at this point that Kevin Eastman is dangerous?

Where was the blood at?

Where.

I was like, whoa, what really happened to Scott Sessions?

Oh, please, no, it's, it's not detailed. It's not detailed.

No, I don't want to hear any of that.

Do you think this is all theater? Somewhere among the 110,000 Greeley, Colorado residents a killer roams free. Cops are on the hunt for Scott Sessions' murderer, and they focus their attention on a waitress and a former oil rig worker. And that focus is thanks in large part to a camera pointed right in their direction. It's the day after Valentine's Day, about 5:30 PM, and Heather Frank and Kevin Eastman come out of her apartment They loaded to his silver Subaru.

Heather is carrying a jacket in her hands. She looks almost unsteady on her feet as she's walking out. They're not having a conversation, and she gets into the passenger side of the vehicle.

One of them is never coming back, and this is a key moment in the case because it's being captured by a surveillance camera set up on a light pole across the street.

We have a pole camera up. We have trackers on the vehicles. So we decided that night that we're going to go home now. Our team is going to power down for a night, get a good night's sleep, and that we were going to come back to work the next morning at 6, 7 o'clock in the morning and start this case back up again.

The plan is to arrest Frank and Eastman the following morning. But while the investigators are trying to get some rest, Kevin Eastman, is not. He's driving far and wide into a rural area, and overnight he'll be making multiple stops. The first stop is to the home of a man named Troy Bunnell.

Troy Bunnell runs his own trucking company, essentially, and Troy is always needing help and assistance with that, and that's actually how Troy and Kevin are connected. They used to work together in the past.

So I came to the office and Donnie Robbins called me and he says some strange stuff happened overnight while we were sleeping. And we had a tracker that was going off on Kevin Eastman's vehicle all throughout the Pawnee Grasslands.

That concerned me enough that he is destroying evidence. I wanted to get out here and see what he's doing.

Donnie Robbins is a no-nonsense lawman who has spent a lifetime working major crimes. He's running this investigation. Do you think at this point that Kevin Eastman is dangerous?

Oh yeah, for sure. Uh, suspected him being armed at least with a, with a knife, obviously, because of the way that Scott Sessions was murdered.

In the early morning hours, the GPS tracker tells Robbins that Eastman's vehicle has been down by a river crossing. Not a bad place to get rid of evidence. So Robbins heads in that direction, but then he sees smoke, and the veteran investigator's experience tells him where there's smoke, there's fire.

And then you're thinking, uh-oh.

So that's when I decided I probably needed to drop by there to see exactly what was going on with that Woke.

Upon his arrival at Troy Bunnell's, he sees who he positively identifies as Kevin Eastman wearing a baseball cap and tending this fire.

It's a very rural area. Some people burn their trash. What was uncomfortable is he couldn't see Heather Frank. He could see Kevin Eastman.

The other thing about Donnie Robbins at that point though is he has no backup. He's out there by himself. He's not in a marked car. He's looking at a guy who's got a warrant for murder.

At that point in time, we don't even have a search warrant for that property.

So while the suspect is occupied at the burn pit, Robbins makes a quick detour to survey that river crossing. But when he returns to the Benell property, Eastman is driving away, and the two cars actually pass each other.

Lieutenant Robbins actually sees Kevin Eastman driving north on Kenner Road 45.

I turned around and began to follow him, and, um, we ended up going to a small town called Kersey.

And at that point is when Sergeant Robbins decided that he needed to make contact.

It's early here at Phillips 66, and until now Sergeant Robbins Robbins has been keeping a safe distance as he follows Eastman, but earlier that morning he had seen him burn something in that fire pit, and he's right there at the first gas pump filling a gas canister, and Robbins decides he cannot allow him to burn anything else.

He pulls in behind him at the gas station. Uh, Kevin is standing outside of his vehicle and he's pumping fuel into a portable gas can.

Obviously already a burn pit over there that he's been burning something in. Uh, Scott Sessions' body was burned, so I had, like I said, concerns that he was going to take that gas can and probably use it as an accelerant to destroy evidence of some kind.

From the moment Eastman pulled in, security cameras captured it all. So you arrest him, you pull out your pistol.

Pull out my pistol.

How far away are you from him?

10 yards, maybe.

What'd he say?

He didn't say anything.

What do you say?

Sheriff's office, you're under arrest. Get on the ground, uh, Mr. Eastman. I'm pointing my weapon at him. He's, uh, he turns around and looks at me, and he gets on the ground. I go up and I handcuff him. I did search him, and on his purse He had a wallet, a substantial amount of money, and a fixed-blade knife in the cargo pocket of his pants.

We later found out that there were shell casings to a.22 caliber rifle or handgun in his pocket.

Did you ask him, where's Heather? Where's your alleged accomplice?

After I advised him of Miranda, I asked him where she was at, and he wouldn't respond. We executed the search warrant on the Bonnell property, and then first, uh, contact we had with Troy Bonnell. We cleared the entire property, um, which was a, a garage, the house, uh, and we didn't find Heather Franks, which I was concerned with at that point.

Just because investigators can't find Heather Frank on the property doesn't mean she's not there.

And if Kevin Eastman knows where she is, he's not saying.

Where's Heather?

What?

Where's Heather? She's probably at work.

She's not at work.

Larimer County Sheriff's Office, they're serving a search warrant at Troy Bunnell's. They're getting a search warrant ready for Heather Frank's apartment, and they're also interviewing Kevin Eastman.

So there's lots of things happening simultaneously with a bunch of questions that still need to be answered in a hurry. A Greeley man has been arrested in the murder of a Northern Colorado musician.

Complicating matters more, Heather Frank is not with Eastman at the time that he's picked up.

Her children don't know where she's at. Her boss doesn't know where she's at. And in fact, in the investigation, they find out that not even Troy Bunnell has seen Heather Frank.

So this is your office?

Yes, we're at the Larimer County Sheriff's Office, and this is the interview room where we had a conversation with Kevin Eastman for 6 and a half hours. For 6 and a half hours, yeah.

Your name?

Uh, Kevin Eastman.

Nice to meet you.

Is he relatively calm at that point?

He's very calm, he's very polite, he's very cooperative.

My head's gotten all screwed up, so I had a crash. So, um, yeah, my memory's not always what it should be.

During this interview, Eastman has this story about getting a head injury at work that caused all this memory loss, so much so he just cannot remember being read his writes only about 1 hour earlier.

How many times during that interview do you think he said, I don't remember, or I can't remember?

Oh, I don't know, 30, 40, 50 times.

I know you don't believe that I can't remember. I'm sorry I can't remember because I can't remember.

But Eastman's mind is not totally blank. He is able to recall certain dates and times and conversations, just as long as they have nothing to do with either Heather Frank or Scott Sessions.

Sunday the 9th, it snowed.

I remember it snowing a lot.

Okay.

That's kind of different from the guy who was warning you, "I have a head injury and can't remember anything." He's telling us that he can't remember things that happened 2 or 3 days ago, but he's telling me stuff that happened 6 weeks ago. He's starting to lose credibility with us. With me at this point in the interview. And I'm sure that you've seen stuff in the news about somebody disappearing from Greeley.

Is it a musician?

Is it a musician? Yeah, he was a musician.

Yeah.

Did his eyes drop when you mentioned Scott Sessions the first time?

This is a person that is hiding. He really does not want to be present in this conversation because he's very uncomfortable. He does not want to face me. He's hiding his face. He's hiding his emotions. He's hiding whatever his reactions are going to be.

Some of the more interesting moments in this cat and mouse game come when the investigators briefly leave the room, but those cameras are still rolling.

All right, this is almost 3 hours in, and he's alone.

In the room.

Don't please your father. Let me help these men get to the bottom of this case, please. My appointment was on the 6th.

Do you think this is all theater?

It could be, or he's actually feeling the stress of it. He's taking a lot of deep breaths because I think he's starting to feel some of the pressure where this conversation is going. We're trying to get him locked into a timeline of events prior to Scott going missing. Up until this point, we have not really been in your face presenting facts that, hey, look, you need to tell us this stuff. We are getting very close to us transitioning from an interview into an interrogation. So you can see that I'm leaning in to apply that emotional pressure. I wanted to see what his emotional reaction would be to asking him to say Scott's name.

So you're saying that this musician guy—

why don't you just say his name?

You can say his name.

Scott.

You're having a hard time saying his name.

He cannot utter the name Scott Sessions.

Yeah, he continued to say, well, I didn't know the guy.

Yeah, like, I never did the dude.

He didn't want to say his name.

Eastman appears to have this emotional breakdown when investigators investigators attempt to read him a transcript of the messages between Heather and Scott.

Oh, please.

No, it's not detailed. It's not detailed.

I know.

I don't want to hear any of that.

Are you thinking that this is someone who is a clever criminal?

I think he's experienced. He knew exactly what he was doing. He had a plan. But we need to be completely honest with each other, okay?

I can't.

I can't. I can't be completely honest with you.

Originally, he said that he wasn't there, that he didn't know anything about Scott Sessions. And then he says, I was in the scene, and I started dry heaving.

Can you get a trash can?

Where was the big mess at?

I said, if you guys' snacks are any good, they'll be able to find it for sure.

Many hours into this back and forth—

Pick your head up and breathe, OK?

—the one word that changes everything. Blood.

It had to be something serious for that amount of blood.

So there was a lot of blood there. Where was the blood at? It's fucking where?

It's fucking where?

What Kevin Eastman is saying inside the interrogation room is shocking enough, but outside the room, another bombshell.

According to the investigators, There was personal items half burnt in the pit, something that was Heather's.

There was only one Richard Simmons.

It's sweating time! Megastar, adored by millions.

Then one day, he disappeared for a decade.

Where in the world is Richard Simmons?

Now his closest family and friends speak out for the first time to Diane Sawyer.

He had to be in a lot of pain.

He had to be in a lot of pain.

And what does Richard's live-in housekeeper, the last person to see him alive, now say happened behind closed doors?

This is the first time I'm talking about this.

The Mystery of Richard Simmons, a Diane Sawyer special, premieres tonight on ABC and stream on Disney+ and Hulu.

Hi, I'm Pedro Pascal, and I can't wait for you to see my new movie, The Mandalorian and Grogu, hitting theaters on May 22nd. See you there. What are you waiting for?

I like this kid.

This summer Star Wars is back. We have to stop the Empire. On the big screen. Are you scared? You should be. Like never before. Hang on.

Good shot, baby.

The Mandalorian and Grogu, rated PG-13, may be inappropriate for children under 13.

In theaters and IMAX May 22nd. Get tickets now.

As Kevin Eastman continues to bend but not break in his interrogation— I don't know, man.

This is just crazy.

Investigators are still hunting for Heather Frank. They don't know where she is, but they do know where she is not, and that's her apartment. So they get a warrant to search her property.

Our job is is solving puzzles using physical evidence. In the living room of the residence, there were some shopping bags near the sofa which contained some paper towels, some cleaning products, and the box for a cell phone. I did observe a black commercial-style rug in the entryway, and that did appear odd and out of place. Underneath that black commercial rug, I did see a large reddish-brown stain that was consistent with the appearance of a blood stain. It did look like the blood stains were trying to be hidden from view of someone entering the apartment. That blood, as well as other blood stains located around that area of her living room, were tested. And those blood stains came back to Scott's. Sessions.

It's hard to hide blood when it's everywhere. Everywhere. Everywhere. Everywhere.

And at some point during this back and forth with Kevin, the interview changes drastically.

Yes, it does. You can see in some of these clips that Ryan had his cell phone out and he was getting text messages from other investigators as to Hey, we found out this information.

So the first time you heard that Heather is dead is from hearing Ryan talk about it to Kevin?

That is correct. We found Heather, and Heather is in the same condition that Scott is. It's time to start talking. The information came in that Heather Frank was found deceased at Troy Bonnell's property, and it was like a baseball bat to my gut. I was like, whoa. And I was expecting something, but I wasn't expecting that.

And that makes the actions or the inaction of investigators somewhat controversial when it comes to that video of Heather Frank leaving her apartment. At the time it surfaces, investigators are still piecing things together, trying to determine what is going on, so they do not move in for an arrest. How'd you feel when you saw it?

To this day, I'm still conflicted. You're watching somebody drive away to their death. Could we have changed it or done anything differently? I don't think so. This is a very unfortunate, sad story, and I feel horrible for her kids, the fact that, that this happened to Heather. The unfortunate thing is that decisions that she made played into the situation and how it unfolded, and she did not deserve to die. It's a very powerful image that you're seeing right now.

It was just so shocking because I was like, what? And I was just so confused. First, she's wanted on murder, and then She ends up dead.

Heather Frank had been shot to death. An autopsy would later conclude she was killed at close range with her body pressed up against a hard surface.

I got a phone call from my boss telling me that they needed help at the scene. At that point, they had found a body on that property.

She had been wrapped up. In plastic.

She had bailing wire around her. Her body was found, and it was near the fire pit. And he had placed her underneath a piece of wood that looked like a big door.

With the body being wrapped up, it made it even more suspicious. And the fact that it was wrapped in plastic made it pretty comparable to the first murder that was involved in this case, and that was that of Scott Sessions.

Happy New Year.

Mama. I assisted in the delivery of the notice for Heather's boys. They were all living together, and we all went with the coroner's office to deliver that crushing news.

It was the morning of February 16th. The detectives came to the house, and they told us that they had found my mom.

I answered the phone. I said, Alex, are you OK? He said, yeah, I'm OK, but Mom's not. And I just started bawling. I said, please tell me she's still alive. And he said, I wish I could, or something like that. He said, this is so bad.

Now there are also some questions for the man who owns this property where Heather Frank's body was found and where Kevin Eastman was seen just hours earlier. So Troy Bunnell is brought in for questioning.

They found a body out on your property. Um, they believe it's a female, so obviously you know what we're thinking. It is, uh, that's Heather. Jesus Christ. Christ. Yeah, yeah, I got nothing to do with this shit, okay?

Bonnell says he was sleeping at the time Eastman was at the burn pit, had no idea what he was doing on his property. But investigators cannot take Bonnell at his word, especially after they learn about a missing gun from his garage, a.22 caliber.

Well, they're saying that she was shot by a small caliber pistol. And it's, you know, that's what I had.

He's admitting that there's a gun on the tool chest and we're searching the property. We served a search warrant in his house and we're not finding this gun. Where is this gun?

But now also acknowledges Heather didn't care for him.

She didn't like me for whatever reason. I think it's because I kind of had some words with, with, uh, Kevin, you know.

Back in his interrogation room, Kevin Eastman is implying that Troy knows more than he's letting on.

No more games, Kevin. Tell us what happened. It's okay, tell us. You can tell us. Troy's gonna start talking, and that's okay.

You guys go talk to him. He probably knows more than I do.

Who's in the burning pit?

Who, like But according to investigators, there are clues in the burn pit, clues that point to Kevin Eastman.

There was some personal items that they found half burnt in the pit that appeared to be something that was Heather's, possibly. You know, they had asked me, you know, days later when they were doing their investigation, if I had disposed of, you know, lipstick and makeup, and I think there was a hairbrush and something else. But of course I don't throw that stuff away. I'm pretty much solo, you know, at the ranch.

We need the truth. The truth needs to be told out of respect for Heather, respect for her boys. I'm done talking, guys.

I'm sorry. After After a marathon interrogation, Kevin Eastman is finally arrested. Kevin, you're under arrest.

Okay, fix the wall for me, please.

But he's got a plan. He's going to point the finger at Troy Bunnell.

Well, I'm angry with Kevin because I feel like, you know, I was taken advantage of. If I could have words with him again, I'd like to, you know, ask him why. Why wouldn't you do this to me?

And Heather Frank's His voice will finally be heard when this dramatic video surfaces. Who did this to you?

Kevin Eastwood.

I'm here at the Weld County Courthouse where, after 2 and a half years Kevin Eastman finally goes on trial. Eastman is charged in the murders of Heather Frank and Scott Sessions.

Sessions, a well-known trumpet player here in Northern Colorado.

To be sitting in that courtroom and watch that man be brought in to sit at a table with his attorneys was the first time that I had seen Kevin Eastman in the flesh, in front of me, as a human being. It took everything I had to sit there and not want to scream at him.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. At its very core, this case is about domestic violence. The defendant, Kevin Eastman, he didn't want to lose Heather Frank.

Kevin Eastman was the only one that had a motive to kill Scott Sessions.

These hands, these hands brought danger, destruction, and death. These hands killed Scott Sessions and Heather Frank. These hands are the hands of the murderer. These are the hands of the defendant, Kevin Eastman.

What really happened to Scott Sessions and Heather Frank. That's what everyone is hoping to hear from the prosecution.

On February 8th, Scott Sessions never saw it coming, literally ambushed from behind by a man with an anger fueled by jealousy and a large sharp knife.

And do you solemnly swear or affirm under penalties of law to prove its case that Kevin Eastman ambushed Scott Sessions in a fit of jealous fury. Prosecution calls more than 40 witnesses.

It's obvious that it's a very large sharp knife that went from the front to the back that nearly decapitated Scott Sessions. People's Exhibit 126.

The prosecution also presented DNA evidence they argued linked Kevin Eastman to the murder of Scott Sessions.

The biggest thing that we have Was a pair of pants that was found amongst Kevin Eastman's clothing, actually had blood on them.

The DNA profile that was developed from the cutting of the jeans indicated a mixture of two contributors. It's a mixture of Mr. Eastman and Mr.

Sessions.

A speck of blood. If anything, that's consistent with helping after the fact.

Those genes become important important because that connects Kevin Eastman to Scott Sessions' murder.

At the heart of the prosecution's case was the abuse they say Heather Frank suffered at the hands of Kevin Eastman. Thanks.

Why don't you have a seat, please?

The only thing that we really knew of Heather is what came out through her son.

Can you tell the jury about the first time you knew, uh, the defendant had physically harmed your mother?

It was in February of 2014. When I seen her, she had a slash in her throat, like a knife, like a, you know, a cut in her throat. Her— I believe it was her right side of her face was really beaten up, like really bad. It was black and blue. Her wrist had been broken.

So testimony came out that Kevin was was not a nice man. His pattern of behavior included breaking the arm of Heather's son, slitting Heather in the throat at one other time, throwing her into walls.

They were at a bar. They came home, and he started fighting with her. And she told him to leave. And he got pissed. And he grabbed her arm and basically broke her arm, grabbed a dull kitchen knife, and slit her throat and then beat her right side of her face up.

That alleged throat-slashing incident was never reported to police. But in 2015, Eastman pled guilty to misdemeanor assault against Heather for a separate altercation.

Please have you raise your right hand.

And do you solemnly swear or affirm under a penalty—

Her hairdresser testified that she'd come in to get her hair fixed and there'd be big chunks of hair missing out of her scalp.

Do you recall an appointment with Heather in that September of 2019 time frame?

Yes, I do. She had a bald spot about the diameter of a golf ball on the top of her head. She came in for that appointment. I was parting out her hair and she was missing a golf ball size amount of hair on the top of her head.

Like a piece of her scalp. Scout.

What does that mean? So the hair was completely gone. There was no— there was no hair there. And I told her, I was like, Heather, what is going on in this section? Are you having some problems with alopecia? She's like, no, that's from Kevin. And she said he grabbed a hold of her and yanked her as hard as he could by the top of her head.

Can we turn the lights on?

10 months before her death, police responded to another domestic violence incident between Heather and Kevin speaking to her at a Denver hospital. We shared this video with the family's permission.

I just got assigned this call. You want to tell me what happened?

Just argument in the hotel room. Punches to the left side of my ribs. And I had to get out of there because I was going to hurt worse. So I left.

Who did this to you? Kevin Eastwood.

You look at this video and you see her lying in that hospital bed. She's barely able to talk.

How many times did he punch you? 3 times. A warrant was issued for assault in the third degree, but Kevin was not arrested until after the murders.

He just like fucking get away like he always does.

This is the first time he's done this. [FOREIGN] During trial, the defense acknowledged that the relationship between Heather and Kevin was tumultuous, but they did not directly respond to the claims that Kevin was abusive.

This case was about domestic violence, and we wanted to make sure that the jury understood that power and control ultimately was what killed Heather, Frank, and Scott Sessions.

I think that Kevin Eastman murdered Scott Sessions.

Kevin attacked, you know, Scott Sessions and murdered him. I couldn't even imagine what my mom was going through at that time.

I don't think that she could have left, and I think Kevin started to believe that Heather was going to go to the police, or Heather was going to go tell somebody to somebody, and Kevin was going to get caught, and he had to eliminate the last witness.

Every piece of credible evidence in this case points to one reasonable conclusion: Kevin Eastman killed two people between February 8th and February 16th.

You saw no physical evidence that proves at all, let alone beyond a reasonable doubt, that Mr.

Eastman murdered Mr. Sessions. In jailhouse phone calls with his sister, to hear Eastman tell it, the evidence against him is slim.

I don't think they really got anything for evidence. I'm going to be a very unpopular witness because I am very anti-Nether.

As the trial enters its second week, attorneys for Kevin Eastman lay out a much different version of events than prosecutors. They allege it was Heather Frank who killed Scott Sessions and then Troy Bonnell who killed Heather Frank. Kevin Eastman, they claim, he was simply left to clean up the mess. Mr.

Eastman made an easy target for an accusation built on assumptions, but he did not kill Mr.

Sessions.

Ms. Frank killed Mr. Sessions, and Mr. Eastman helped in the aftermath.

Eastman's lawyers claimed the motive for the attack on Sessions would be revenge.

The defense team would like you to believe that Scott raped Heather. Heather was so mad about the rape that Scott wouldn't leave her alone that she lured him to her apartment so that she could kill him. And Kevin may or may not have helped her dispose of the body.

Ms. Frank planned for Mr. Sessions to come to her residence that evening. Ms. Frank initiated Mr. Sessions to hurry up and come over. Who was it that wrapped Mr. Sessions' head in duct tape before his body was burned?

And the DNA on that duct tape Although there's no evidence a rape occurred, this defense strategy comes from an unlikely source: the investigators who interviewed Eastman.

She's saying that this guy raped her. If he actually did, or just as she's saying it, I think that's what I mean. That we're— that's like splitting hairs. I mean, how does that make How do you feel? She says that this guy raped her.

That was an investigative interviewing technique to get him to continue to, to talk. And so they threw that out as a potential theory of what might have happened, and he took it and ran with it and, and adopted it and turned that into his version of events.

I feel like she had no way out and that she had to help Kevin clean up that mess. I don't think that she lured him. That was rough.

And I feel like with the lawyers, you know, on Kevin's side, they tried to put it all on her, which really hurt me.

Can you please raise your right hand? Shelly Brinklow was character witness for her brother Kevin.

Is your brother an angel? No, he's not. At some point, did the relationship between Mr. Eastman and Ms. Frank essentially deteriorate? Yes, it did.

I was so mad at her testimony because she was again blaming Heather. She blamed Heather for everything that happened.

You didn't like him for a second?

I did like Heather in the beginning. Yes, I did like Heather.

In January 2020, you were not a fan?

Oh, probably No.

So Heather killed Scott. Troy Bonnell killed Heather. That was their theory.

Mr. Bonnell panicked. He took matters into his own hands, and he killed Ms. Frank.

Please have you raise your right hand. I felt like the whole world was watching. I had TV cameras panning in on me, and I could hear shutters of the cameras going, and the courtroom was Yes, sorry.

Bunnell testified for the prosecution, and they seemed convinced he wasn't involved in any way. But to try to make their alternative suspect theory plausible to the jury, the defense would throw everything they had at Troy Bunnell.

The day that Troy Bunnell testified, I mean, he was cross-examined at length about everything, and he took a beating.

You told Detective Schell quote, that you did not even know people, referring to Mr. Eastman and Miss Frank. You said, and I quote, I don't even know these people.

Correct. That means I don't even know this— I don't even know who this guy is. You know, stop right there. Hold— stop, stop. I've never once ever, ever said that I did not know Kevin Eastman. I mean, they asked me if I knew Heather. I mean, I see her.

Troy Bonnell does tell us that him and Heather had a very difficult relationship, that they did not like each other, that Heather was very vocal about not liking Bonnell.

Your DNA was found in a pack of cigarettes on her deceased body. Explain how that could be, how your DNA could be on Ms.

Reng's DNA. I have no explanation.

It was odd that his DNA would be there, but touch DNA can be on items for lots of different reasons. If that cigarette pack had been in his house and he picked it up and moved it, that would mean that Heather was in fact there at his house.

So certainly that, that caused problems and it raised suspicion and turned him into an alternate suspect for the defense that was viable for them, gave them an argument at trial that had he been honest about everything, I don't think would have carried much weight.

What we knew at that point was that the night before, Troy was with another woman, and that the other woman had confirmed his location, what he was doing. He had an alibi. Yeah, he had an alibi.

The defense was ridiculous. I could not believe— that that was their only defense was, what about Troy?

Well, what about Troy?

Did Troy drop everything he was doing on his ranch to go, to go, you know what, Kevin, I'll go ahead and take care of that, that murder for you. I got you, buddy. No. So it's just, it's ridiculous to even think about that.

2 years have passed since both deaths, and the government will still not be able to show you any murder weapon. They will not be able to tell you where Miss Frank was killed.

I would be lying to you if I told you that every time I got a case that I sat there and said, ah, I got this one in the bag. Get 12 people to agree on, on what pizza to order. Good luck.

Until now, the only man who truly knows what happened has remained silent. Will Kevin Eastman finally tell all?

Mr. Eastman, is there anything you would like to say?

July 20th, 4:52 PM. Please rise. After 10 days of testimony and less than 10 hours of deliberation, the jury has reached a verdict.

We the jury find the defendant Kevin Dean Eastman guilty of murder in the first degree.

I think when you hear a guilty verdict in a homicide, my initial thought is gratitude that the injustice of the death itself wasn't compounded by the system not working. As the court has was heard repeatedly. Scott Sessions was a gifted musician.

At the sentencing, the district attorney played a video of Scott playing Taps. [MUSIC] It was so timely. It was like he was playing Taps for himself. Kevin got 2 consecutive life terms, as well as an additional 27 years on some of the other charges.

Kevin Eastman was offered the chance to speak at his sentencing, but he declined.

Mr. Eastman does not wish to make a statement at this time.

Thank you.

There was a relief knowing that he's not going to get out.

In my head, I danced a jig. But the thing about guilty verdicts is this: nobody wins in a homicide. Their families are devastated. People still feel unsafe.

I will not let him or anyone else determine my happiness for the rest of my life. So, Mr. Eastman, I have no quarrel with you.

I basically turned to him and said, you know, I forgive I wish I was able to forgive him the way Scott Sessions' dad has forgiven him.

I'm not there. I can't. As for Troy Burnell, the Colorado rancher who says he was unjustly dragged into Kevin Eastman's murder trial, for him, closure has been hard to come by. I've never been charged with anything.

I've pretty much been alienated from everywhere. I'm still the one here trying to make sense of all this. I lost a quarter million dollar a year profession. I've been forced to seek employment, and I'm planting corn. Who'd have thought? It's not as easy as everybody thinks.

I miss talking to her. I miss her laugh. She was a great woman. She was a beautiful mother, and she loved all of us and loved all of her friends. She just ended up being a part of something that she didn't ask for. She was a victim.

Can you come show me what this is?

It looks like it's a very small memorial.

You got a little bit emotional when you first saw it.

Yeah. When you get so involved in the last moments of somebody's life, you become connected to them.

Scott's family hopes his spirit will live on through his trumpet.

What we want to do is find a good home for this, somebody that plays trumpet that's not as fortunate. Maybe a young child, a young child, or somebody that we could give that to.

We should point out tonight that Kevin Eastman maintains his innocence and is appealing his murder convictions.

He declined to speak with us.

That is our program for tonight. Thanks so much for watching.

I'm David Muir, and from all of us here at 20/20 and ABC News, Good night.

And you can find all new broadcast episodes of 20/20 Friday nights at 9 on ABC.

Road to the NBA Finals is happening now on ESPN and ABC. It's make or break now. Best on best now. Watch him sit with his chest now. Greatness is up for grabs. And the world is watching. Just wait. On the home of the NBA Finals. All the work, all the sacrifice. The NBA Playoffs presented by Google continue on ESPN and ABC.