Transcript of Wrong Turns

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He was my person. Justin just wanted to be a dad so much. I love and I miss him and I really wish he was here. She said, your brother's dead. And I was like, what?

Justin was driven out to that desolate area by the lake, stabbed and shot, and then eventually shot? Yes.

He didn't deserve this.

I see the girls laying by the fire hydrant. She was bleeding everywhere. I got a call. Something's happened to your daughter. She had been murdered.

It's beyond thinkable what would ignite such an evil murder of two people.

That pursuit was seen by nearly everybody in southern California. And now, all of a sudden, this feels like a much bigger plot. Yes, it did. I've never had that happen.

Money, greed, jealousy.

If you'd left that night, you'd have been murdered, no question.

Yeah, it could have been all of us.

One killing, then two. Who was behind this dark double murder plot? I'm Lester Holt and this is Dateline. Here's Josh Mankiewicz. With wrong turns, it's impossible to know where life will take you. Some roads lead to hope.

We were just really happy and excited.

Others to heartache.

I still don't understand why he couldn't just go on with his life.

The challenge is knowing which fork in the road is the right one. This changed everything, didn't it?

It really did.

Because when you make a wrong turn, even by mistake, the results can be tragic. In the spring of 2015, Tanya Reppey and her boyfriend, Justin Hilbert, got some unexpected news.

I took a test, and it was positive.

You already had a suspicion?

Yeah. Yeah.

A baby boy.

Even though it wasn't the best timing, we were both really excited. He went with me to all the doctor's appointments, and he was there with me in the hospital.

This is the beginning of the life you were supposed to have.

Yeah. It was like I had finally gotten back on the right road.

Their relationship had taken some detours, as can often happen with love that starts in high school. They split up. They reunited. The new baby was a new start for Justin, who got clean after struggling with addiction.

That's when he got into machining school and, you know, came up with a plan for how he was going to support his family.

Knowing that he was going to become a father made him want to sort of sit up straight and fly, right?

Yeah. Yeah.

By June 2016, their son Logan was six months old. Justin had started a new job and felt some pressure to provide for his family. Tanya was living with her mother in Riverside, California.

That was just temporary until we were able to get our own place.

On June 17, while Justin was at work, Tanya received a friend request on Facebook from a woman named Bailey Sharp. Who's Bailey? I mean, did you know her?

No, I had no idea who she was.

Curious, Tanya accepted the request, and three days later, Bailey began sending her messages saying she wanted to talk female to female. And what Bailey told Tanya was concerning. These Facebook messages suggest that Bailey knows.

That Justin's cheating on you and that he's using again.

You believe either of those things?

I didn't believe the cheating thing. I kind of just disregarded that. But the using thing, that was a concern because, you know, it's a hard thing to stop.

Tanya said Justin started using drugs as a teenager.

When you're a teenager, too, and you get into something like that, you really have no idea what you're getting into.

She had helped him through the ups and downs of his addiction when they were younger. Tanya believed he'd been clean since the baby was born, and she was proud of him. She definitely didn't want him sliding backward. When Justin finished work that day, Tanya showed him those messages. She said Justin denied both relapsing and cheating. It turned out Justin had recently met Bailey at a restaurant, and she had offered him an opportunity to make some money, a drug deal. Tanya desperately tried to talk him out of it.

In our conversation that night, I told him, I was like, well, just. We'll figure out another way. Just put a pin in this. Don't do anything fair to call this.

A fight or not.

It started as a fight, but we resolved it the same night.

So you guys were in a good place?

Yeah. Yeah. When he left that night, we told each other we loved each other. He gave me a kiss goodbye. He gave Logan a kiss goodbye. And I'll see you tomorrow.

Later that night, Tanya continued to receive messages from Bailey, asking her to meet nearby. Well, Tanya was home with her baby, Logan. You didn't go meet her?

No. But that whole night, I was. I was awake and just restless.

The next morning, Tanya reached out to Justin.

I tried to just be like, okay, let's just wipe the slate clean. I think I sent him a picture of Logan to show him how he was doing that morning, and I didn't get any response.

Unusual.

Very unusual. He always responds, like, right away. I kept texting him. I tried calling him.

Maybe he's angry.

I thought that at first, that maybe he's still upset at me and he just doesn't want to talk right now. But that's also not normal either when he's upset.

Later in the day, she finally received a text from Justin.

His phone was broken and had water damage. So my thought at that time was, okay, he's at the phone store and he's gonna be over here soon.

That must have come as kind of a relief.

It was. I was super relieved. I was like, oh, okay, everything is fine.

And this is why he isn't texted all day long.

Yeah. Yeah.

Her relief wouldn't last at Justin's parents home. His mother, Kathy Hudson, a nurse, was upstairs getting ready for work on the night shift. Her husband Steve was downstairs, and that's when she heard it. I heard him scream. I come flying down the stairs, and I'm like, what's going on? What happened? What happened? And he goes, he's gone. He's gone. Detectives were at the house. Their message, Justin had been found dead. That evening, Kathy broke the news to Justin's older sister, Mallory goins.

I think she said, he's dead. Your brother's dead. And I was like, what?

What?

And it didn't compute.

Mallory had to give the awful news to Tanya.

I just remember her screaming, and she was. Oh, God, she was so upset. They found him at Lake Matthews, and I don't know what happened. That was terrible.

Terrible doesn't begin to describe this. Justin Hilbert had been stabbed multiple times and shot in the face. His body found on the side of the road near a place called Lake Matthews, about 15 miles from Tanya's home.

I couldn't wrap my head around it. It didn't make sense.

Making sense of what happened to Justin Hilbert would take years.

It's like this disbelief that you go through, like, no, you can't be right. That has to be wrong.

As investigators chased down a killer, she was bleeding everywhere. 335. Looks like he's going south on that. And uncovered a sinister plot. He was actively planning to kill you, where nothing was as it seemed. That wasn't the end of the bad news.

No. It wasn't a real clear picture as what transpired and who was involved. It hadn't materialized yet.

Justin Hilbert's body had been discovered by a motorcyclist on a stretch of road near a place called Lake Matthews in Riverside, California. When you find a body out there in the middle of nowhere, what's that say?

It can point to a lot of things. It's either, you know, gang related. It could be murder for hire. So there's just a lot of options that we have to look at.

Within hours, Sergeant Lance Steuer of the Riverside county sheriff's office was running down leads.

It was close to 07:00 till we actually got to walk into the scene and see what we were dealing with.

What do you see there? What does it look like?

There's no houses, no streetlights or anything like that. It's just kind of a desolate stretch of road.

To Justin's girlfriend Tanya. It made no sense at all.

I never even heard of Lake Matthews, and I live in the area. I was like. When I first heard that, I was like, lake Matthews? Where is that?

He'd never mentioned it.

Yeah, never.

Tanya had loved him since they were both 14.

He was always funny. He always made me laugh. And I think that was the thing I loved most. And, like, making me laugh would bring that smile to his face.

Tanya came to appreciate Justin even more during one of the breaks in their relationship. That's when she met and married another man who did not treat her as well as Justin had. That marriage didn't last long, and once the divorce papers were drawn up, Tanya called her old high school sweetheart Justin.

I wanted him to know that, you know, I still loved him, whether or not he wanted to be together or not, that, you know, that would be his choice at that point. But I missed him, and I loved him, and I wanted him back in my life. And he said that he loved me, too. And I think it was like that same night, or maybe not long after that, we met up, and that same spark is still there, and it just feels it feels like home.

And you think, how could I have been so foolish?

Yeah.

Yeah, it sounds romantic. Justin's family was not thrilled. I remember the day he told me he was back with Tanya. And I'll be honest with you, I was very adamantly against it because she'd broken his heart. Yeah. And that's all I thought she was gonna do again. Justin's sister Mallory, on the other hand, was not surprised at all.

We know that they were meant to be together. They're just magnetized to each other. They can't get too far away. So it wasn't surprising that they were back together. It was exciting that they were pregnant, and his love for Tanya ran pretty deep. So it was extra special, I guess, that it was with her.

Tanya saw Justin's bond with their son Logan, right from the beginning.

Logan was a blessing. He got the first moments with him, which I think is really special. They were building a really strong father son relationship. Like, he would spend as much time as he could with me and the baby.

Justin had just celebrated his first father's day.

That was the one and only father's day that Justin got. I had, like, a built in best friend.

Mallory was a year older than Justin, who was known to all in his family as buddy. There was a time when Justin didn't actually answer to Justin.

Yeah, it was as if he thought his name was buddy for a long time, because that's what everybody always called him. He was at the grocery store, and some checkout person said, hey, buddy, how you doing? My brother was stunned. He said, mom, how did he know my name?

When Justin enrolled in machinist school, his stepfather Steve saw Justin's future finally coming into focus. He put himself through that school 100%. Nobody. I didn't help him. His mom didn't help him. He worked at the gas station, and he went to school every day. You must have been really proud of him. I was very proud of him. But always, you know, he was a good kid. Everybody loved him, which was why Justin's murder was so shocking. Do you think of Justin as having any enemies?

No. Buddy was super loving, super fun. Everybody liked to be around him. He was just that kind of person.

I was thinking, who would do such a horrible thing? A transient, a serial killer. Who would do this? We couldn't think of anyone.

I remember the whole speculation with me and Tonya and my mom of, well, what could have happened? Maybe it was a carjacking. And, you know, knowing my brother, he's not just gonna hand over the keys. So it's possible he got killed because he fought back or something. You know, that that's. That was kind of where we were going with it.

When you say to his family, who didn't like Justin, who had it in for him? They say no one we can think of.

That's right.

Everybody liked him.

Yes.

You've heard that before, haven't you?

Sometimes, yeah.

And it's not always true.

Correct.

Sergeant Lance Steuer knew Justin's girlfriend was key. Tanya had mentioned those strange Facebook messages from the night Justin disappeared.

She identifies to us. A female subject had, out of the blue, a friend requested her on a social media platform.

Somebody that Tanya didn't know.

That's correct.

That's Bailey Sharp?

Yes.

You'd never heard the name Bailey Sharp? No. None of us had. No. Justin had never mentioned her? No. No. So what about that drug deal Bailey supposedly offered, the one Tanya tried to talk Justin out of making? Did Justin go through with it after all? And maybe get himself killed in the process? I'm guessing that's probably where the investigation was headed.

I think that they thought that it was just gonna be a drug deal gone wrong.

Yeah.

Because people who do that sometimes end up dead.

Yeah, but I don't think that he actually left that night to make the deal. I think that he was taken.

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Free wherever you download your podcasts. In a quiet suburb, a community is shattered by the death of a beloved wife and mother. But this tragic loss of life quickly turns into something even darker. Her husband had tried to hire a hitman on the dark web to kill her. And she wasn't the only target, because buried in the depths of the Internet is the kill list, a cache of chilling documents containing names, photos, addresses, and specific instructions for people's murders. This podcast is the true story of how I ended up in a race against time to warn those whose lives were in danger. And it turns out, convincing a total stranger someone wants them dead is not easy. Follow kill list on the wandering app or wherever you get your podcasts, you can listen to kill list and more. Exhibit C truecram shows like morbid, early, and ad free right now by joining Wondry, check out exhibit C in the Wondery app for all your true crime listening. In the days after Justin Hilbert's murder, his mother, Kathy, was numb. The nurse needed to see her boy, needed to hold him one more time.

My mom insisted on seeing my brother's body, and she told investigators she can't believe that he's gone, which I was in the same boat. But they ended up letting her see him maybe a week after he died.

As a nurse, I'm going over all the wounds on his body, and I was like, who would do this? How could this happen? I don't know. The pathologists report provided additional clues for Sergeant Lance steuerhood from the Riverside County Sheriff's office. The cause of death was a gunshot to the head, but before that had come an unusual stabbing.

He was able to tell us that there was not one, but two knives that made the lacerations and puncture wounds to Justin.

Different knives.

Two different knives suggesting more than one assailant. Possibly.

Those stab wounds came well before the shotgun blast that killed him.

Yes. They were able to determine that Justin was alive when those lacerations were made, which indicated to me that they were possibly torturing Justin, because none of the lacerations or stab wounds were life threatening. They were superficial, obviously extremely painful, but not fatal.

They noticed something else.

There was dried blood on his jeans. It was consistent with him being in a seated position when those stains were made, and it looked inconsistent with how he was found there on the roadway.

In other words, Justin's injuries had likely happened elsewhere, and his death had not been quick.

It was a prolonged situation where he had been injured, he had bled, and then the gunshot wound appeared to be more close in time to when we were actually notified.

Can you tell what kind of gun or small caliber? Large caliber, yeah.

Based on the injuries that we could see, there was a lot of small red injuries that would have been consistent with possibly, like a shotgun that was used and then just given the severity of the wound to the head, that's what we initially assumed.

And as to where he was found, what goes on out there at Lake Matthews?

It's a no body contact reservoir. So there's no boating, there's no picnic areas or anything like that. It's just a reservoir. There's no houses nearby.

So a good place to dump a body, correct? Yeah. And nobody will see you?

Correct. We're trying to determine, was this some sort of gang related crime or possibly a drug debt? So everything was on the table at that point. That's why we had to contact Justin's family, to determine his associates and kind of work backwards from there.

Your job's not only about finding somebody's fingerprints and then finding that person and then finding out if they had an alibi. I mean, it's also examining all sorts of personal relationships that people have with each other and trying to determine sort of exactly what the nature of that is. And there's some of that going on here, too, right?

Yes. It was a little bit of a web to.

To untangle, and that included those strange messages from Bailey Sharp to Tanya about Justin's behavior.

Bailey relates to Tanya that Justin's now using illegal drugs and that they're meeting up Bailey and Justin. And Bailey portrays herself as kind of a concerned female friend that Justin's engaged in this type of behavior.

Tanya pretty clearly found that suspicious.

Yes.

Did you find that suspicious?

Absolutely. The timing was just too coincidental to not have something to do with the murder.

Do you talk to Bailey?

We could not locate her. A lot of the addresses that we had checked were old addresses. People that were living there at the time said that they had either moved there recently or had never heard of Bailey Sharp.

Cops were looking for Bailey. Tonya was looking for answers.

You want to know what happened, because that's all you have left at that point. That person's gone. But at least knowing what happened should at least give you some sort of closure. I guess so.

When investigators asked her who might want Justin dead, she mentioned someone from her own past.

I don't think that this person, like, it's so funny far to take it to where you're going to take someone's life. It's hard to wrap your mind around, because I think it's that thought of, like, that's crazy. That's stuff that you see on tv.

Tanya's life suddenly looked very different. Her first love and the father of her child was gone. And in his place, a new reality as a single parent. She says she tried to help the sheriff's department.

They did ask who I thought, you know, could possibly be involved in this.

And you said?

I said that there's issues with my ex husband, but I don't think that.

That'S anything investigators thought it was worth looking into. Jared Bischoff was Tanya's ex, the man she married during one of her breaks with Justin. It was four years earlier.

I was gonna go on a date with his cousin, and he tagged along, and I guess we hit it off.

At that time, Tanya said she was drawn to Jared's confidence.

He talked about things in a very ambitious way that just. It kind of made you look at him like, oh, wow, this person's got, like, lots of goals, and they're trying to get somewhere.

He's going places.

Yeah.

And the first place he was going was into uniform.

He always talked about the navy, not any other branch.

He'd always wanted to be in the navy.

Yeah.

And you were prepared to move all over the world for him?

I mean, it does sound good, exciting when you're young to be able to move different places. But it did conflict with my desire to have a family.

Jared enlisted. He and Donya married.

There wasn't really a proposal. It was more like, we should get married because I'm in the military, and it'll be easier. We'll get more money. We'll be able to, like, get housing easier.

So practical, but not super romantic.

Yeah, it was very practical. We got married at the courthouse.

She moved to San Diego, and they shared a condo near the naval base. Justin's sister Mallory stayed friends with Tanya and got to know Jared.

Jared struck me as a thrill seeker, like an adrenaline junkie wanting to do things like skydive and break into, like, apartment pools, like jump the fence to go in and swim in the pool after hours.

Tanya says her relationship with Jared began to change because Jared began to change.

From the point we got married. I feel like it kind of started happening fast that I started realizing, oh, this isn't it.

What was Jared looking for in a wife?

I think he wanted someone that he could, like, turn into what he felt was the ideal woman for him.

Which is what? A doormat who also makes dinner?

I guess I think more just someone that, like a subordinate, someone that you could tell what to do and they would follow through.

Jared also made quite clear he liked his women thin. He bought you clothes that were a couple of sizes too small.

More than a couple of sizes. There was, like, a size zero jeans and I've never even been anywhere close to a zero.

And by buying you that, he's saying, I want you to lose weight. I want you to fit into this.

Yeah, he said it was like, to motivate me.

Tanya was motivated to realize she had made a big mistake. The ambitious navy man Jared was not her path to a happy life. He was one leading straight to a quick divorce. She moved out of their condo while Jared was deployed and returned to Riverside, where she rekindled her romance with Justin and waited for Jared to return and sign the divorce papers, which he did. But it was taking a while.

Yeah, and he seemed to be getting impatient, which, I mean, I wanted to be divorced, too.

By this time, Tanya and Justin were raising their son, Logan together. So was Jared jealous of this new life Tanya had created so quickly? To investigators, that certainly felt like a possible motive. They needed to find Jared, and it didn't take long. He was still stationed a hundred miles away in San Diego.

We were able to interview Jarrett at the naval station. He was adamant that he was at work around the time that this had happened.

And there's nothing to disprove that.

Correct. Tanya had stated that she had last seen Justin about 07:00 p.m. on the 20th. And then Justin wasn't found until 02:00 a.m. on the 21st. So we're dealing with a pretty large time window.

Was Jared Bischoff provably on the base all that time?

Yes.

Cell phone records backed up Jared's story. I kind of get the feeling that despite all the bad blood between you and Jeremy, you were relieved that he had an alibi, that he was not there when Justin was murdered.

It was like, okay, it's not this. That's something.

Whoever had shot and killed Justin out by Lake Matthews, investigators were convinced it wasn't Jared. So back to square one. Well, not for long. A huge twist in the case was coming as impossible to predict as it was to understand. My hands were covered in blood. It was pretty bad. I mean, hard to relive it. Oh, yeah, for sure. It had been three weeks since Justin Hilbert's body was left on a desolate road in Riverside. Just 8 miles away, another violent struggle was about to take place. There's a suburban park where California Avenue meets calm Hill drive. Sam Marquez drives past it all the time. On July 10, 2016, something made him stop. What do you see? I see a girl standing at the street sign right there. I could tell she was waiting for somebody. And as I was driving by, when I got to this point here, I see the guy walking up. I think it's a boyfriend girlfriend. Until he grabs her. And I'm, like, right here now. So then when I see that she doesn't want to go with him, that's when I decide to turn around. She's, like, struggling. Yeah.

She's pushing away. Like she's going this way, he's going this way. Sam made a U turn and headed back. And I see the guy take off. I park right there. The girl's laying by the fire hydrant, face up. Still alive. Still alive. Sam called nine one, and while he waited, he tried to comfort the young woman. All I could tell her is, it helps. On the way, did she say anything? No. She couldn't talk. She was bleeding everywhere. When I first got to her, her top was down. I pulled her top up. My hands were covered in blood, and it was pretty bad. I mean, hard to relive it. Oh, yeah, for sure. Why'd you stop? Why'd you get involved? I just thought that was the right thing to do. The woman had been stabbed at least 25 times. She did not survive. It doesn't seem like a scary area where a lot of people are getting assaulted. No, not at all. It's not a really high crime area, Robert. By the time sergeant Adrian Tillett with the riverside police arrived on scene, the young woman's killer was long gone and a homicide investigation was underway.

Unusual to have such a brazen, bloody crime in broad daylight on a suburban street where a lot of people would have been home. Yes, definitely. Sam wasn't the only eyewitness at the park that day.

Do you anything in water?

Anything in the drain? Green like that? This man was also there. He said he was friends with the victim. She called me and she said, can you meet me here? In part. And I asked her by their side. His name is Ricky. We're only using his first name because he's still nervous about everything that unfolded. Ricky said the woman was anxious about meeting her boyfriend. They'd been arguing, and Ricky agreed to be there for her just in case. I just walked up. I walked up on the hill to get a 180 view of it. I sat down, I saw the kid coming. Once I saw that, he pulled up, he sped up, slammed on grace, got out of the car, ran around, tried to drag her.

He said there's some type of struggle.

Almost like maybe he's trying to pull her into the car. And then he sees kind of a downward motion with his hands, like he's stabbing her.

He starts to run down to the intersection to help her.

He doesn't see the actual knife, but he sees the motion. You can see him, like, stabbing and just jabbing. Then once I saw her fall down. I was running off the hill because I told her I would help her. Except Ricky couldn't get to her in time. He could only watch exactly what his friend had feared coming true. And now police had to let the victim's family know the terrible news. She came from a suburb of Seattle, Washington. I got a call from my son that a sheriff's deputy had shown up at the house, which I thought was odd. The young woman's father is a detective with the Seattle police department. I told my son to give him my phone number, and I got a call from the coroner, who says, sit down. And you knew? Mm hmm. Without knowing what it was you knew. What'd the coroner say? I don't remember exactly, but something to the effect of, something's happened to your daughter. I probably said some things I shouldn't repeat here. And we got down to the bottom of it, and she said, I asked something to the effect of, is she alive?

And she said no. She had said something about an incident. Their daughter's name? Bailey Sharp. Yes, the same Bailey Sharp. Investigators wanted to ask about Justin Hilbert's murder. The woman who had suddenly contacted Tanya on Facebook in the days before Justin died. She'd now been killed herself. What exactly was going on here? You think that has something to do with what happened to Justin? That's when it started to make it more so. That's when it started clicking. Bunk. Bonk. Bonk. Hey, Michael, what are you doing? I'm saying bonk, Vinny. What's a bonk? I'm glad you asked, Vinnie. Bunk is a super, easy to use, free digital bank that pays 3.36% interest on your savings. Paid weekly, fully on demand, and can be set up in just five minutes. And it's fun to say. Bunk.

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Oh, I see. What did my bank pay? Next to nothing. And bunk? 3.36%. Vinnie. Paid weekly. Paid weekly. Okay. Bunk. Bunk. Hey, it is fun to say bunk. Ireland is regulated by the dutch central bank and by the Central bank of Ireland. For rules of business conduct. Terms and conditions apply. They were sweet little old ladies, Helen and Olga. Their mission? To get homeless men off the street. Street. And then one day, tragedy. Why are we telling you this? Well, we've covered many plots over the years, but nothing quite like this. I'm Keith Morrison. Think you've heard every Dateline story. Think again. Listen to the thing about Helen and Olga and a dozen other riveting series when you follow the Dateline originals podcast. Hi, I'm Kristen Welker, moderator of Meet.

The Press, and I want to tell.

You about a very special conversation I had for our Meet the moments segment with longtime Dateline NBC producer Dan Slepien, author of the Sing Sing Files. This new book follows Dan's two decade.

Journey, navigating the criminal justice system and.

His fight to help free six wrongly.

Convicted Menta, including JJ Velasquez, who will.

Also join our conversation. You can listen to the full interview right now. Just search Meet the Press wherever you get your podcasts. Bailey Sharp was dead, and without her, investigators looking into the murder of Justin Hilbert had just lost one of the few potential leads they had. It feels like Bailey's murder both sort of accelerates and decelerates.

The investigation mainly decelerates because now at this point, we. We don't have anywhere else to go.

She's clearly holding a lot of answers, and she's not around now, right? Meaning no way to find out what she knew about Justin or what happened at Lake Matthews. Bailey had been in contact with Justin prior to his murder. Remember, she'd also sent Tanya those odd messages about his behavior. Investigators had been looking for Bailey in the days before she was killed. They did not find her in time. Bailey's family would have to fill in the blanks for their murderous daughter. Erica is her mom.

It's one of those situations where you kind of go through and look back and just, you know, you wonder how you, you know, functioned on some days.

Bailey grew up the oldest of three kids.

She had all kinds of sort of aspirations. As a kid. In her bug phase, she wanted to be an entomologist. You know, there was a time where she thought she would be an astronaut. There was a time where, when she played soccer, she was going to be a professional soccer player.

That changed when chronic illness hit her first diabetes and later lupus. She was devastated that she had to quit soccer, that she couldn't play anymore because of her pain. Devastated. That was something she loved, something that she absolutely viewed as a part of her identity.

And so she didn't have practice anymore.

She never games.

Her life was now completely upside down.

The pain cut off Bailey from her friends. Her parents say it drove her to self medicate.

We had had the conversation about marijuana in that she said, I didn't use that to get high. It helped with my pain, and it helped me feel hungry.

Then Bailey was injured in a zip lining accident. Soon she was searching for. For something stronger to manage her pain. And someone had said, well, you should try this, you know?

Which wound up being heroin. And she said, I thought I'd been.

Able to handle everything else I could drink. It didn't be an issue. Pot wasn't an issue.

But she said, I tried heroin, and that was it. And she said, that was it. Just spiraled from there.

No, we'd have to. Robert Bailey ended up in rehab twice. Her parents always hoped she could pull out of it. Was there a time when you guys were thinking, if we can just get through the next couple of years, she's gonna grow up. She's gonna be okay daily.

We figured, kind of through high school, you know, if we can just kind of cross that line. And she did. She graduated, and then.

And you thought, maybe we're not home free, but we're on the way. Yeah, somewhere. When Bailey moved to southern California, her parents worried about her sobriety. She'd met a new boyfriend through some mutual friends, a guy who served in the armed forces. Her parents thought he could be good for her.

You think, hey, somebody's in the military stable.

Potentially used to following the rules. Used to following the rules. There's. This is a good sign.

It was hopeful.

Then came unimaginable news from California. Bailey was dead. Not from drugs, but a murder in broad daylight right in front of her friend Ricky. Most people do not witness a murder, let alone the murder of someone they know.

Yeah, it doesn't happen very often.

And you can tell he was shaken up by the incident. You could tell that he was. Yeah. Just seemed like maybe thinking about maybe what he could have done different, you know? Rickey told Sergeant Adrian Tillett how he saw more than just Bailey's murder. That day, as Ricky ran down the hill after Bailey was stabbed, he saw the killer get in his car. When he opened the back door, it was locked. When he opened his front door, he just looked at me. He made eye contact. I could see the blood on his face. And he took off. And Ricky said the murderer had a very familiar face. He had to look like a scared person in his eyes, but, I mean, I recognize his face. The killer Ricky had recognized was about to go on the run. He's at kidding Madison now that he's found that kidding Madison, leading investigators to uncover some hard truths.

And that's when he said, what do.

You want to know? Everything about a plot as devious as they come.

Money, greed, jealousy. That's where you really appreciate the wickedness of this scheme.

As Rickey watched his friend Bailey slash to death right in front of front of him in the park that day, his mind went to a terrible place. That man holding the knife wasn't a stranger. It was the Navy man Bailey was dating, the man she was afraid of meeting. According to Ricky, Bailey had only said nice things about him. You can't hurt a fly. Like a child. He can't hurt a fly as long as he she's ever said about him. But, I mean, I recognize his face, and I know that he saw me. His name was Jared. As in Jared Bischoff, Tanya's ex. The man she married while broken up with Justin Hilbert. And even though Bailey had described Jared as harmless, she was clearly scared of him. Now, after the stabbing, Ricky said Jared got into his car and drove off. Police discovered Jared's car was registered to his father's home nearby. Detectives checked there, and no Jared. When they learned he'd been married to Tanya, they showed up at her place late that night.

They start asking me if I've seen him.

With police searching her backyard, Tanya was confused. That's when detectives told her Jared was suspected of killing his new girlfriend, Bailey Sharp, earlier that day. The same Bailey who'd been messaging Tanya the night Justin disappeared. So Justin's murdered, Bailey's murdered. The thing that connects them is Jared and you.

Yeah.

And now he was nowhere to be found. You feel in danger at that point?

Yeah. Yeah, I was. And even the police were concerned. They suggested that we leave for the night until they found him.

Tanya was terrified, although not entirely shocked, because she recognized some of that behavior from when she and Jared were together. That sound like Jared to you?

That sounds like him when he's completely lost control of his anger.

Riverside police notified other agencies they were looking for both Jared Bischoff and his car. By the next day, they had a lead 100 miles away. A cell phone number that detectives thought might be Jared's was connected to an address in San Diego.

We contacted San Diego PD to check.

That address to see if they can see the vehicle that we're looking for.

And as they're getting set up on the address to conduct surveillance, the vehicle.

Drives away and a pursuit ensues, exiting Madison. Now, I know he's done. Exiting Madison. That pursuit was seen by, I think, nearly everybody in southern California, probably.

It started in San Diego and came.

All the way back up to Riverside right now at five. Video you'll only see right here. Police in person. San Diego police spotted him early this morning, leading to a high. At around 05:00 a.m. jared peeled out of the San Diego neighborhood where police had spotted his car driving 90 miles an hour through streets and freeways. San Diego police located Bischoff driving his Waikia on Interstate 805. Law enforcement agencies across southern California joined in the pursuit. Is wanted for the stabbing murder of his girlfriend. They say the two met at a riverside park, where he killed her and drove off in a white Kia.

I was watching the news, and Jared actually called my mom while he was being chased, and he wanted to talk to me, but I didn't want to talk to him.

Did you talk to him for a second or not?

No.

Tonya wasn't the only person Jared tried to talk with. As he was racing out of San Diego. Choppers, overhead lights and sirens in his rearview mirror, Jared called his mother and father, too. Maybe he wasn't planning to walk away from this alive. You've got to be thinking, we may never actually end up arresting this guy.

Yes, that thought did cross my mind.

How long does that chase last? Probably about an hour. Finally, Jared slowed down and pulled over in the same spot where police began looking for him at his father's house. It eventually came to a peaceful end in Riverside. He surrendered to officers, who cuffed him and took him to the station. I attempted to interview him, read his Miranda rights, and he invoked and said he wants a lawyer. Justin's sister Mallory, found out the morning after.

I wake up to, I don't know, hundreds of texts and calls, and I'm looking at my Facebook messages, and it said it was him. It was him. There's a car chase. I would never have guessed that Jared would just haul off and start hurting someone like that.

Jared was locked up and lawyered up at the Riverside police department. He was formally charged with Bailey's murder, and he wasn't talking at that point.

It kind of throws us back to square one.

Investigators returned once again to Jared's father's house, this time to search for evidence that might connect Jared to Justin's murder. You find anything?

No.

No knives, no shotgun?

There are knives, but nothing that we believe was related to the. To the murder of Justin Hilbert.

If these two killings were connected, it wasn't clear exactly how. Detectives continued their investigation, which included the search for Justin's car. It had been missing since the night he died. And four days after Bailey's death, they got a hit. It came from Santa Ana, 50 miles from where Justin's body had been recovered.

We find blood staining on the inside of the vehicle. On the passenger side of the vehicle.

Tests determined the blood belonged to Justin, suggesting that the assault against Justin began in that car.

Correct. So, given the fact that he has these superficial stab wounds, if you assume that somebody's in the driver's seat of his vehicle, he's in the passenger seat. It's consistent with the injuries.

That wasn't all.

There's fingerprint on the exterior of the vehicle and then DNA from inside the.

Vehicle, a partial fingerprint on the car door, and some touch DNA inside. Investigators ran both and came up with a name. Danny Serrano, 24 years old, was no stranger to law enforcement. Investigators discovered he had a lengthy rap sheet and had been convicted of domestic violence. Was there any relationship that you know of or could find out about between Danny Serrano and Justin Hilbert? They know each other, hang out together?

No. No indication that they had ever met before.

Investigators dropped by Serrano's temporary home, a cozy little place called PI Desert State prison, where he was serving time for those domestic violence charges. Danny had been picked up four months after Justin's body was found, and he denied any involvement in the murder.

His explanation for his fingerprints and DNA being inside the vehicle is he steals cars.

That's a sophisticated criminal.

He knows to give just enough information to explain away his involvement in something, but not enough to actually hang himself with it.

Despite that fingerprint, they didn't have enough to charge Danny with anything.

The real clear picture as what transpired and who was involved and why it hadn't materialized yet. We weren't able to put our finger on it.

With no clear answers, Sergeant Steuer moved on to the other cases piling up on his desk. Justin's family was left to wonder, would anyone ever be held accountable for his death? I just kept looking at everybody, thinking, you know, were you the one? Were you the one? We were hunting for a killer. Then in 2017, more than a year after Justin's murder, Steuer's phone rang. It was the DA's office. How was that Justin Hilbert investigation going? By now, the lead investigator had retired.

I was asked to take a second look at it. We reviewed all the evidence that we had collected. We were able to identify a couple individuals that hadn't been contacted yet.

One of those people was Ricky, who'd watched as his friend Bailey was stabbed across the street from the park. And he would have a very interesting story to tell about a sleepless night the summer Justin was killed. And suddenly, you know what it is.

And now we have a clear picture as to why.

In a quiet suburb, a community is shattered by the death of a beloved wife and mother. But this tragic loss of life quickly turns into something even darker. Her husband had tried to hire a hitman on the dark web to kill her. And she wasn't the only target. Because buried in the depths of the Internet is the kill list, a cache of chilling documents containing names, photos, addresses, and specific instructions for people's murderous this podcast is the true story of how I ended up in a race against time to warn those who lives were in danger. And it turns out, convincing a total stranger someone wants them dead is not easy. Follow Kill list on the wandering app or wherever you get your podcasts, you can listen to kill list and more. Exhibit C true cram shows like morbid early and ad free right now. By joining Wondry, check out exhibit C and the wondery app for all your true crime listening. For true crime fans, nothing is more chilling than watching Dateline. Have you ever seen such a thing before? For podcast fans, nothing is more chilling than listening.

What goes through your mind when you make a discovery like that.

And when you subscribe to Dateline Premium, it gets even better. Excuse me, I sound a little skeptical. Every episode is ad free. Ooh, wow.

So this could be your ace in the hole.

And not just ad free. You also get early access to new intriguing mysteries and exclusive bonus content. So what were you afraid of? Dateline Premium. Subscribe now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or datelinepremium.com. you ready for what's coming?

Hey, guys, Willie Geist here, reminding you to check out the Sunday sit down podcast.

On this week's episode, I get together.

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Free wherever you download your podcasts. Investigators looking into the death of Justin Hilbert had come to a full stop. Now, Sergeant Lance Steuer was in charge of the case, and he was taking another look at the murders, starting with Bailey Sharp. She'd been in touch with Justin the week he was killed, and then she was murdered just three weeks later. How many phones did Bailey Sharp have?

She had two cell phones, and those.

Were both in her possession at the time she was murdered?

Yes.

So you have those and you can get into them?

Yeah, they're able to do a forensic extraction and get the data that's on the phone now.

Steuer sifted through Bailey's text messages again and this time, something stuck out.

We do find some text messages that start to get interesting. From the time that Justin's murdered until Bailey's murdered, there's conversations between Bailey and another individual. His contact is just alcoholic Ricky.

That's how he's listed in her phone.

That's how he's listed in Bailey's phone. That is alcoholic Ricky.

Alcoholic Ricky worked at a hookah lounge. Investigators tracked him down.

So real quick, what I wanted to do is just get your contact information, make sure we're talking to the. To the right, Ricky.

With audio recording, Sergeant Steuer and his partner sat down with Rickey to ask about Bailey and how she knew Justin. However, Ricky started talking about the day Bailey died.

You were present when Bailey got killed?

Yeah.

Oh, okay.

Steuer had no idea that Rickey had actually witnessed Bailey's stabbing. I can see the blood on his face. Because her murder had been investigated by the Riverside Police Department, a completely separate agency.

I was caught off guard when he had told me that he was interviewed by Riverside Police Department for Bailey's murder.

This was the first time Sergeant Steuer from the sheriff's department was speaking with him. Steuer asked Rickey about his relationship with Bailey. Ricky said he met Bailey at the Hookah lounge. And in early 2016, about four months before Justin was killed, Ricky said Jared started hanging out there. He's like, can I see it with you guys? Yeah, why not? They need to start coming by all the time. He said a favorite topic of conversation for Jared was his very soon to be ex wife, Tanya. He would always talk about his wife, okay? And how he was unbeatable. He was going to lose everything with the divorce finalizing.

So he just said he was going to get divorced, and he was going to lose.

He was going to lose a lot of stuff, money wise, everything. He would bring up maybe once or twice a week about how much he hated her. Ricky said it felt like just talk. He insisted he'd never heard Jared threaten Tanya or anyone else. Steuer knew there was more to that story.

I could tell that he was withholding information.

Steuer tried to tease more out of the man sitting across from him.

Just be honest with us. If you got wrapped up in something, it's understandable. But the best thing to do is not compound that bad mistake and not tell us what you might have seen or what you might have heard. You know what I mean? Ricky.

And finally, Ricky started to crack. He told detectives that on the night of Justin's murder, around 02:00 a.m. he saw Bailey, pull up to the hookah lounge. She wasn't alone. With her was Danny Serrano, the man who'd left his fingerprint on Justin's cardinal. And Ricky said Danny was holding a weapon. I was the only one there. And he had a knife. He walked in, and he changed his clothes, and he threw a bag in the trash can. Mm hmm. I was like, if you carry one, my. I don't want to hurt you. Did you see blood or anything like that? He had dark stains on his pants. And then came a lightning bolt. I know. Jeb is supposed to get a payout if something happened. He was supposed to get a payout if something happened. To who? To his ex. Suddenly, Ricky stopped the interview. Can I talk to just one of you guys?

Why's that?

I don't know. Just. Very nice. Now, Sergeant Steuer was with Rickey alone at that point.

His demeanor changed. I could tell that he was now being forthcoming with the information.

I don't like thinking about it, because every time I think about, I have nightmares.

I'm sorry to do this to you, man, but I need to know the truth. Okay. What did Bailey tell you?

And that's when Ricky's whole story came spilling out. They were essentially stalking Tanya, right?

Surveilling the house, seeing who's coming and going.

On. That bloody afternoon near the park, Ricky had watched as Bailey was stabbed to death. Now, he was about to tell Sergeant Steuer something else he knew. Something Ricky had never told anyone. In the days leading up to Justin's death, he'd overheard a conversation between Bailey and Jared at the Hookah lounge. The murder. Ricky, just 19 at the time, said he was too afraid to tell police. And that wasn't all he knew. Right before she met with Jared, minutes before her death, Ricky said Bailey had made a kind of confession. Bailey said Jared said he was gonna get money if his ex wife died. Mm hmm. So Bailey said, if you pay me so much money, I'll get it done. Ricky said Bailey not only confessed her involvement in killing Justin, but what was behind it. An insurance payout.

Did Bailey say how much money she was gonna get from Jared?

It was 50% of whatever Jared was getting. So how exactly would that work? Jared and Tanya hadn't been together for months. They'd both signed divorce papers, and she was with Justin. Except they weren't actually divorced. Not yet. Not on that exact night Justin was killed. Those papers weren't legally in effect yet. So since Jared and Tanya were still legally married in the eyes of the us navy, if Tanya died, Jared would receive the standard military insurance death benefit of $100,000. And investigators say the plan was to split that with Bailey and Danny. Timing was everything. Tanya and Jared's divorce was all but finalized. So whatever fate Jared had in mind for Tanya, it needed to arrive very quickly. On the basis of that payout, which was about to evaporate when Jared and Tanya were officially divorced, a murder plot is hatched.

Yes.

Now, investigators had enough information to assemble a timeline of what they believe happened the night Justin was killed. As Justin and Tanya argued over those messages from Bailey, detectives said Bailey and Danny were already outside Tanya's house watching. They were essentially stalking Tanya.

Right, surveilling the house, seeing who's coming and going.

Eventually, Justin walked out of Tanya's place.

They see Justin get into the car. So they see that as their opportunity to grab Justin.

They forced their way into his car, investigators said, trying to figure out how they could get Tanya outside as well. Any doubt in your mind that if Tanya had left the house that night, that she would have been killed, and if she brought the baby with her, they both would have been killed?

No doubt at all.

That was the plan.

That was the plan.

As Tanya sat inside the house with baby Logan, investigators said it was likely Bailey and Danny were at that moment torturing Justin in his car.

I want to say it was probably ten to 15 stab wounds designed to.

Inflict pain, not to kill.

Right. Your lacerations here on the forearms that were consistent with, like, defensive wounds, also to the hands, the lacerations, like I had said, up here across his collarbone. Again, superficial, non fatal, and deliberately so.

You think deliberate torturing him to get him to give up some information. Was there something he knew?

It was either information that he knew Orlando, his relationship with Tanya, and possibly trying to get Tanya out of her house.

Investigators believe that when she didn't come outside, they shot Justin in the head and dumped his body at Lake Matthews. Steuer had his theory. Now he needed to back it up. He searched for evidence in cell phone records. You can put Jared, Bailey and Danny's cellphones at the Hookah lounge?

We can.

Steuer also took a look at the GPS locations of Jared, Bailey and Danny's phones the night Justin was killed. Danny's phone wasn't traceable. Jared's was at or near the naval base all night. And Bailey's. It was right outside Tanya's house. It's got to be really sort of eerie to watch these movements of the people that you believe are the co conspirators.

It is. And to just think about what's occurring as you see that cell phone move through the city.

And after Justin's murder, Danny's phone came back on and headed straight for the naval base.

And it's there with Jarrett's phone and Bailey's phone and Justin's phone.

How long until Justin's phone stops pinging?

We had location hits, I believe, for the next day. Day and a half.

Investigators saw Bailey had texted Ricky about a phone, one that belonged to someone she described as someone who was found by the lake without a face. That sounds like Justin helpers.

Exactly. Justin Hillbert.

You hadn't released his injuries.

We're not released. That's correct.

So she was there?

She was absolutely there. Because you can't guess that.

Remember, someone texted Tanya from Justin's phone after he was already dead, saying his phone was broken. Had Bailey taken Justin's phone after killing him and tried to make it seem as if Justin was still alive? You never found the phone?

Never found the phone.

Long after Bailey Sharp died, the story of her final days continued to evolve. She'd started as a murder victim. Now police believed she was also a murderer, part of a plot to kill Justin and also lure Tanya to her death armed with Rickey's statement and the cell phone records to back it up. Sergeant Steuer, Washington. Ready to go to the DA? Is this the place where you think. Okay, we got it.

Yeah. So at this point, we're ready to move the case forward.

In the spring of 2018, Jared Bischoff was charged with Justin's murder, and so was Danny Serrano. They would sit behind bars for nearly six years, waiting for the case to go to trial. And when it finally did, the prosecution star witnessed. Ricky would make a surprising admission under oath, something he'd never told investigators. Why did he keep that a secret?

I don't know. Maybe he was scared of some sort of culpability.

Sometimes the hands of fate move with agonizing slowness. On the night Justin Hilbert was murdered, Tanya's fate was determined in just seconds. You not wanting to leave your son in the middle of the night probably saved both your lives.

If it wasn't for my son, I would have gone out there, too. For the last eight years. Eight years. Justin Hilbert's son has grown up without his death.

March 2024, Danny Serrano and Jared Bischoff stood trial together. And the reason for that is because of these two men. Prosecutor Amy Zoyce argued Jared was consumed by greed for that payout from Tanya's life insurance. At the same time, incredibly jealous that Tanya had moved on with Justin. So the prosecutor said he came up with a bloodthirsty plan. Kill Tanya for the insurance money, Justin for the jealousy, and their six month old baby, Logan, because he was the living proof Tanya loved someone else. And, said Zoice, Jared promised Danny and Bailey a cut of the loop if they helped him with the murders in.

The summer of 2016. Two people were brutally murdered that summer, within less than a month, weeks apart.

The prosecutor's first witness brought the jury straight back to July 10, 2016. To Bailey, sharp, broken and bloodied, lying motionless on the curb.

I wanted them to understand and appreciate the violentness, the viciousness of Bischoff. I thought it was important for the jury to see that people who had no relationship with anyone saw it happening, saw a man stabbing a woman with this crazy knife, and he didn't care the amount of rage that he must have had in those moments.

She argued that even though Jared wasn't physically there when Justin was murdered, he was the person who stood to gain the most. She said the plan was to kill Tanya, Justin, and the baby, and that Jared was also careful to set up an alibi for himself while Bailey and Danny did the wet work. And that by the time it was all over, Jared would get the insurance money and also be rid of a man he hated. Justin's the guy that took Jared's place?

Yes.

And the baby is the proof of that. Absolutely. You're not required to provide a motive. No. But you did.

Yeah.

Juries like motives.

I think people like motives because we want to understand the why.

And in this case, the why is Tanya and Jared are legally still married. And if she dies, there's an insurance payout.

Money, greed, jealousy. That's where you really appreciate the wickedness of this scheme.

And that wicked scheme, said the prosecutor, was right there for the jury to see. In Jared's, Bailey's, and Danny's cell phone records, Ricky testified, looking frankly, terrified to be in the same room as Jared and Danny. He told the jury the same story he told Sergeant Steuer.

We had an exact mapping, based on circumstantial evidence, with the cell phone data, text messages where the phones were at, certain time frames that corroborated everything he was saying.

And then Ricky added a new detail, something he'd never admitted to before. He told the jury that Danny actually asked him to get rid of Danny's bloodstained clothes after the murder.

It was closing time. There were a few people there still hanging out. Danny walks in and he has bloody clothes on, and he walks to the.

Bathroom, changes, comes back and says, get.

Rid of the trash, and then threatens him and says something to the effect of to be quiet.

That was news to the prosecutor and to Sergeant Steuer.

I think Danny was pretty intimidating to Ricky, and I think Danny took advantage of that with Ricky and had him dispose of the clothing.

These people were as dumb as they were bloodthirsty.

There. There was definitely a lack of planning.

And forethought for his testimony. Rickey received immunity. He was never charged with anything related to Justin's murderous. After Justin's death, said prosecutor Amy Zoyce, the conspiracy began to fall apart, and Danny began to distance himself.

There's a disconnect from him and Bailey and Bischoff after that first murder. You don't see the same communication, whether meeting in person or talking to each other via cell phone or an app.

You think Danny Serrano saw a different side of all of this?

Or maybe just there wasn't a financial benefit anymore. He never got the money because he didn't kill Tanya. The life insurance policy was on Tanya.

Without that insurance money. The prosecutor said things also started to head south between Jared and Bailey. When you're looking for a motive as to why Jared killed Bailey, the idea that I don't want to share the money with you is no longer one of the those possibilities.

Oh, it's not?

It's either I'm angry at you, that you screwed this up because Tanya's still alive, she didn't come out of the house, or I think you're gonna talk.

I believe it was the latter, actually. Maybe a little bit of both. But I also think that he was losing control over Bailey, and he doesn't.

Like losing control over baby. No.

She didn't want to be around him anymore. She didn't want to be alone with.

Him in over her head.

Oh, absolutely.

Amy Zoy showed the jury the pants and shirt Justin wore the night he was killed.

They can see the holes in the shirt where they were stabbed or the clothes and the amount of blood that these people suffered from.

For Justin's mom, Kathy, who was in court every day, seeing Justin's bloody clothes, clothes was painful. It was like reliving everything all over again. That just devastated me, because I was like, that's my son's favorite shirt. The prosecution couldn't show the jury the weapons used to kill Justin, and there wasn't much other physical evidence. So the knife that was used to stab Justin Hilbert's never been found, nor has the shotgun. That was a big problem if you believe Jared's defense attorney. He argued there was next to nothing connecting Jared to Justin's murder because he said someone else had planned the whole thing. Jared Bischoff said his defense attorney, Richard Swanson, had nothing to do with Justin Hilbert's murder. Bailey Sharp was the mastermind behind all of this, said Swanson. She basically framed Jared, set him up.

She's the one who came up with the idea. Jared may have mentioned something about the fact that he had a life insurance policy to her and then that something she latched onto and said, hey, this is a way for us to get some money.

You think this is about Bailey's greed and murderous nature, not Jarrett's?

Yes.

And she gets it in her head that, you know what? If we just kill your wife, we can all get rich.

Well, I don't know how she found.

Out about it, but you think this is her idea?

I think the idea of killing somebody is her idea, yes.

Conveniently for this theory, Bailey was no longer alive to defend herself. Jared's attorney had an explanation for her murder, too. He argued when Jared stabbed Bailey, it was self defense. He was afraid of her, all five foot four of her.

She grabbed his knife, and they struggled.

And she got stabbed 25 times.

Quite a few times, yes.

Yeah. That's not Jared trying to silence Bailey because she knows about the plot that he's in charge of.

I can't say that it wasn't for the purposes of silencing Bailey, but I can say that it's probably not for the purposes of silence her, because he was involved in Justin's killing.

And despite cell records showing Jared Bailey and Danny's phones at the Hookah lounge the night Rickey said he overheard Bailey and Jared's murderous plan, Jared's defense attorney pointed out there was no evidence Jared had actually agreed to take part in anything.

The overheard conversations, nobody could talk about what details were talked about.

He said Ricky, who had testified to that conversation, had every reason to obscure the truth. Rickey had gotten involved when he got rid of Danny's clothes, said the defense. He was just out to protect himself.

He's going to want to distance himself as much as he can. And so by pointing the finger at somebody else, he can do that.

Remember, Jared's phone was at or near the naval base the night Justin was killed. And no one disputes that he wasn't there.

There was no conversations. They pulled all the gps records from his phone.

Which to you, means he's not given orders, correct? Not possible. That he gave the order in person, not on the phone at some earlier time.

He was at the base at the time of the incident.

And what about the fact that Bailey, Danny, and Justin's phones all ended up at the naval base by the afternoon of June 21, just hours after Justin was killed? The defense said that was when Bailey and Danny broke the news to Jared. So when those foes all get together at the base, that's. That's Bailey and Danny saying to Jared, we've committed this crime. Now you know about it for the first time, and we expect to be cut in on the money.

Yes, but there wasn't any money.

Right.

And if Jared, again, was this control person in all of this, he would have made sure that there was money.

Swanson argued there was one obvious detail proving Jared's innocence. Tanya, whose life insurance payout was the supposed motive, was still alive.

If there was a plot that Jared had to kill Tanya, I think that it would have gone differently than the way it did.

Meaning what?

Jared would have been a lot more involved in it. He would have participated in it, he would have organized it, and he would have made sure it probably. It would have happened if that was what his goal was.

The defense pointed to prosecutors lack of evidence they'd never recovered a murder weapon. And even though Jarrett had initially told investigators he did own a shotgun, he said it had been stolen way before Justin was killed. As proof, the defense attorney showed this image to jurors. He said it was taken from a video Jared's dad recorded of Jared at his car looking for the missing shotgun.

He was expecting the shotgun to be there because he had left it in the car.

And you think he's having his dad videotape that? Because what, that proves he wasn't involved? I mean, because it could also look like somebody trying to cover their tracks.

Well, I suppose you could Monday morning quarterback that and look at it that way. Not necessarily proving that the shotgun wasn't there, but proving that, hey, when I picked up the car, there wasn't any shotgun there.

Jared's father told us the video was real and denied staging anything. As for Danny's defense attorney, he pointed the finger at Bailey as the one who'd pulled the trigger. His attorney argued there was no proof Danny even knew Justin. Justin's family, who'd waited eight years for justice, sat through every day of the trial. He didn't deserve this. And everybody says, if you're a good Christian, blah, blah, blah, you will forgive. You're not there. I will never be there. There is no forgiveness for what I saw that day. After twelve days of trial, the defense rested. The case was in the hands of a jury, and Justin's sister Mallory was worried.

They have to be very factual and show very specific things in court. And the way that it sounded to me was like Danny would be convicted and Jared wouldn't.

You couldn't live with that.

No. That's a huge insult to injury.

There's always more to the story. To go behind the scenes of tonight's episode. Listen to our talking Dateline series with Josh and Keith, available Wednesday. Bailey Sharp, Washington, on trial here. That was only because she'd already been killed.

I didn't want her to be the demon or the villain and not also.

Be perceived as the victim because she was also. No question, if she lives, she faces a murder charge 100%. Since 2016, Bailey Sharp's parents, Erica and Jeff, had spent years grieving their daughter, completely unaware that even in death, Bailey remained under investigation for committing murder. That changed the day Jeff was on the phone with the prosecutor handling Bailey's murder case, and the subject of Justin's murder came up and I said, wait a minute, did my daughter have a part in this? And I got that. That uncomfortable silence. I knew.

And that's when he said, what do.

You want to know? Everything. That's when they learned Bailey's murder was connected to Justin's in the worst possible way. I know you said to Bailey, don't use drugs. I know you both said to her, watch out for who you're hanging around with. I'm thinking you probably did not think that you had to say to her, don't get involved in a murderous. No, I didn't think I had to say that.

It goes against everything that we knew her to be.

Erica flashed back to an early court appearance. I just remember seeing Jared's family and.

Thinking, I can't imagine how it would.

Feel to know your child was involved.

In something like that. Yeah, we. You know, we know.

Yeah, we now know.

Yeah. I don't know if there's words.

Yeah. You would do anything to stop talking to me right now, wouldn't you? It's not that I'm struggling to get past the part that she played.

Right.

That's what I would do anything to not have to think about. I mean, how many parents you heard make excuses for their kids or what they did, you know, you're not. I refuse to do that. Yeah.

Yeah.

She did what she did. There's no way around it. And the only thing we can do now is focus on our family and just moving ahead. Their daughter's descent into addiction gave Jeff, a career law enforcement officer, a different window into the lives of some of the people he interacts with in his job. It changed the way that I look at drug addicts. I used to look at them as just that. Drug addicts that made a choice. I don't think it's so much of a choice, is what their brain is telling them they have to do. I have a lot more empathy for that. I mean, how many times were you in a drug house after that and thought to yourself, this could my daughter lying here every time? In March 2024, Jeff and Erica Sharp attended as much of the trial as they could bear. It wasn't that she wasn't a victim, but she was less of a victim, which sounds horrible coming out of my mouth, but we stayed for Bailey's part of the trial. Justin's part of the trial was not for us to be at. Justin's family and his girlfriend Tanya once attended court hearings together, a united front to get justice for Justin.

All that changed during the wait for trial. Tanya's relationship with her son's grandparents slowly fell apart.

I realized that it seemed like they were never going to let go of the element that, you know, if I didn't exist or if I never gotten with Justin or didn't get back with him, that he would still be here.

Justin's death took away all the joy and innocence of everything. It's like if it wasn't for you, I'd have my son. You don't think she had anything to do with that plot? No, I don't. This is Jared, not her. But without her, this doesn't happen. Yes. The families of both Justin and Bailey waited 6 hours while jurors deliberated. Then came word of a verdict.

We the jury, in the above entitled action, find the defendant Danny Serrano guilty of a violation of section one eight. We the jury in the above entitled action, find the defendant Jared Bischoff guilty.

Jared Bischoff was convicted of murder, kidnapping and conspiracy in Justin's death. Danny Serrano was convicted of the same charges. Jared was also convicted of murder and attempted kidnapping in Bailey's death. So what's it like when you hear that verdict? I was so happy to finally wipe that smirk off his face. You know, you're not this great navy sailor. You're a killer, plain and simple. Guilty on all counts.

Everything. We work in a business that is dark. And so when we do a good job, it feels rewarding to know that something good comes of this. But at the end of the day, someone's dead here. Two people are dead.

You can't unwrite the past, but they're not going to be doing this to anybody else.

That feels good.

On June 7, 2024, Jared Bischoff and Danny Serrano were both sentenced to life in prison.

It didn't give me any kind of solace. I didn't feel vindicated.

Or it doesn't give you the life back that you had before. Unfortunately, yeah.

But it was a long time coming.

Steve and Kathy acutely feel the loss of their son, their buddy. When you think about Justin, what do you think about? How much we miss him. Every day. Every day? How many photos of Justin are there in your house? Oh, my goodness. He's in every room. He's a big part of our lives. Will always be. Tanya still grapples with the suffering that Justin faced and with the failed plot to murder her. You were wrong about Jared. He was not just a controlling, abusive guy. Yeah, and he didn't see you in his rearview mirror while he was on deployment. He was actively planning to kill you for the insurance money.

Yeah. I feel angry. I still don't understand why he couldn't just go on with his life, why he had to do all this.

Logan, the baby she had with Justin is now eight years old.

Someone like that shouldn't be taken away. Especially like that.

What do you tell Logan about his father?

I tell him all the stories from our teenage years about how silly he was and how I see that silliness in our son now.

Tanya says Riverside now feels less like home. You don't live in California anymore.

Yeah, I know.

That's not accidental. That's because of this.

Yeah. Even though there are really happy memories here that I had with Justin, it's like they're overtaken by this negative stuff, and it's like I can't even get them out because I'm smothered by this.

Whenever she's in town, Tanya often returns to the road where Justin's body was found, to remember him and to honor him. What do you say to him when you're there?

Just that I love and miss him. And I really wish he was here when I talked to him about Logan.

That's the funny thing about the roads we choose. They lead us to dark places. They diverge, then intersect again. And maybe sometimes they'll take us home again to the ones we love. Even if it's only a memory. That's all for this edition of Dateline. We'll see you again next Friday at nine, eight central. And of course, I'll see you each weeknight for NBC Nightly News. I'm Lester Holt. For all of us at NBC News, good night. Friday night on an all new date line, I hear my mom scream, stop. Stop. Help me. Help me. She was stabbed over 70 times. A night full of terror. I'm scared he's gonna hurt me. Quite a bomb that went off in that family. The story you have to hear. This is a call from an inmate at Harris county jail. You didn't see what I saw that night. An all new Dateline, Friday night at nine, eight central, only on NBC.