♪
- Oh, my God!
- [sobbing]
[police sirens]
- In the 21st century, we leave behind
the digital story of our lives, a chronicle
of our greatest triumphs, but also our darkest nightmares.
♪
both: ♪ He was a boy, she was a girl ♪
♪ Can I make it anymore obvious? ♪
♪ He was a punk
♪ She did ballet
♪ What more can I say?
[mouse clicks]
- Well, nice to meet you.
I'm excited to talk to you.
And I know it's a hard topic to talk about.
But first, I just want you to tell me about Lea.
- Hi, Lea!
- Lea, um, she was a good baby.
She came a little early, but doctors said she was perfect.
And she just wanted to come out and meet the world.
She had a good upbringing by her stepfather,
who's very smart.
She went to a great school in Redondo Beach.
It was a great school.
She loved it.
She liked to listen to music.
She took piano lessons because her stepdad
is a Steinway piano technician.
She was just a joy for everybody,
except her brother--
[laughing]
When she was little.
She would follow him around everywhere
and that would annoy him when he was a toddler.
In their early adulthood, they became very close.
She wanted to be like him.
♪
It was a hard move for them.
It was a culture shock because
we moved up into the mountains.
And it's just everything was so different.
- So how was it growing up in Cotopaxi?
- How old were you when you moved up there then?
- Yeah.
- Okay.
- She did get pretty heavily into social media.
It was a big part of her life.
I didn't even get on social media
until Lea went to college and she got me on there
so we could, you know, communicate.
And I had her dog.
And I could send pictures of her dog.
- You're so silly.
You're such a silly man. [toy squeaking]
[clears throat]
Come here, Odie. [clicking tongue]
Odie, come here! [clapping]
- She always liked pictures taken.
I used to make fun of her about taking so many selfies,
but I'm glad she did now because we didn't
do a lot of video-taking when they were younger.
[band music playing]
- Whoo!
Why's she got her purse?
- Lea! - What a dork.
♪
Everything was fine.
Everything was fine until she graduated high school.
Lea went to the same college that Maxx did.
[applause]
- Maxx K. Porter.
- Whoo! - Yeah!
♪
- That's when she started getting lonely.
She was going through a hard time and she dropped out.
♪
She had a car.
So she would go out a lot.
She wouldn't answer my calls.
It's like I don't know where you are and I'm worried.
[keyboard clacking]
- I think she was coming to terms
with the way her life was going and realizing that
this is not what she wanted.
[phone ringing]
- Your call has been forwarded to an automatic
voice message system.
- I got a phone call from Maxx and I says,
let me try and get a hold of her.
And then I'm trying to text her.
Never answered the text,
phone straight to voicemail, not even a ring.
And I remember--I remember my heart dropping
because she had that phone glued to her.
There was something wrong.
And so I called the police immediately after that.
[ominous music]
♪
- When did you talk to her last?
- What was that conversation about?
- She had a bunch of job interviews...
- It's like, she just disappeared
off the face of the Earth.
And it's not like her.
- Tried texting her, I've tried calling her.
Left her some messages on Facebook.
[line ringing, messages chiming]
- Automatic voice message system.
- She had already opened up to her brother
about what she was going through
and made him promise not to tell me.
I wish she would have told me.
- Can you spell your name for me?
- J-E-S-S-E-- - All right.
- Kay.
[chuckles]
[cell bars rattle]
- Westminster police are hoping you can help
find this missing 19-year-old.
She's Lea Chali Porter.
She lives in Pueblo, but she was
in Westminster last Thursday when she went missing.
- ...Facebook, so I started, you know,
hitting her up on Facebook.
And that's how we started talking.
And flowers and candy and all this [bleep].
And she was like,
"You're going to be my boyfriend
whether you like it or not," And I was like,
"No, I'm too old.
I can't take you seriously." And...
♪
- Then I fell in love with her, man.
Fell for her hard.
- Mm-kay.
- When Maxx would call her,
there would always be fighting in the background.
And Lea was always upset and he would be yelling at her.
- Your call has been forwarded
to an automatic voice message system.
- I suspected she was cheating on me.
- I had no idea because Maxx was
trying so hard to get her away from him
because it was abusive.
But she kept going back to him.
- Right now, friends and family are desperately
searching for Lea Porter.
- We have some good leads on where Lea is at,
so we're out looking for Lea.
We want to bring her home to her family.
- Mm-kay.
I ended up going into a hotel and charging a room.
I didn't think I had enough money on my card,
but I just went in and just tried to see
if it would go through and it went through.
So--
- You remember what that hotel was?
- Castle Inn.
We stayed the night there.
- Kay.
- The next morning, we checked out.
And we sat in the parking lot for a little bit
just kind of crying and hugging each other.
- Because I paid her bills,
the first thing I did was get into my AT&T account.
And when I saw that the last activity on her phone
was the 3rd... [sniffling]
And so I called, like, the last five people
that she talked to, but I kept noticing
one number over and over.
And it was actually the very last phone call
that she made as well.
- When's the last time you had conversations with her
after you left?
- And did she respond? - No.
[dramatic sting]
[door clicks]
She texted me on Tuesday morning.
[number pad beeping]
[line ringing]
- I was told that I'm not a suspect, but I mean,
I just want to be as co-operative
as possible to make sure that, you know, I stay that way.
- It was a medical, yeah.
- For psychiatric reasons? - Yes.
- OK.
You know, was he diagnosed with anything?
- No.
- [sighs]
♪
She makes it clear as day
that she does not want a relationship.
- Well, the family, they think you took advantage of her.
[chuckles]
[sighs]
[dog barking]
- It's believed that Waide was the last to see Porter alive
and had allowed police to search
his apartment nearby, along Federal earlier in the week.
- Mm-hmm.
- [sighs]
[sighs] And...
♪
[beep]
♪
[distant sirens wailing]
- Mm-hmm.
I asked them to read Lea.
[kids chattering]
[cards shuffling]
- [sighs]
[sighs]
- Okay.
- [sobbing]
[siren wailing]
- Developing tonight, the arrest after a young woman
disappears in Westminster.
The man who last saw her alive is now accused of killing her.
- Christopher Waide turned himself in
to Westminster police last night.
- Detectives here have been talking to him
since last Thursday.
That's when 19-year-old Lea Porter
was reported missing.
And you can see as recently as Monday,
Waide even posted a missing poster of Porter, writing,
please Lea, come back to us.
- Police say she left Pueblo to meet up
with Waide, a friend whom she'd recently
reconnected with over Facebook.
- Now Porter's family tells me that her brother and also
her boyfriend got Waide to confess
while the conversation was being recorded.
- They say that Porter's family definitely helped
get this case to where it is.
Just over a week after she's reported missing,
they have an arrest.
- Police searched his apartment twice
and today, sectioned off part of a public landfill
in connection with the case.
- But they say the search could be a costly
and a massive undertaking.
- Investigators spent 45 days searching the landfill
associated with that bin.
They were able to find Lea's clothes, her cell phone,
but never her body.
- Anytime you don't have a body in a homicide,
leaves the question as to, not only what the cause
of death was, but whether or not there is a death.
♪
- An emotional day in court for the family of Lea Porter.
Today, her killer, Christopher Waide,
accepting a plea deal of second-degree murder.
Both the first-degree murder and sex assault charges
were dismissed.
- And they said, "OK, well, where is Lea?"
And he said, "simply, I already told you."
He lied because he told us
that he redressed her in these clothes that we found.
And she's not in them.
- He got 48 years for killing, murdering my daughter.
She has been discarded somewhere.
You know, whether he's hidden her someplace where he can
go back and visit her, which is truly what my mama heart says.
- Today, her stepfather, who was emotional
both in and out of the courtroom.
- I want him to suffer.
I want him life in prison.
I don't...in regular jail.
And if they don't do it, I'm going to kill him myself.
I promise.
- I think it was the right thing to do.
I think it's justice.
I know the family doesn't think that right now.
I hope that one day they will.
- Lea's mom still wears this photo of her daughter
around her neck and says the hardest part
is not knowing where Lea is.
- I mean, I'm trying to--
I'm trying to come to terms that I may never find her.
♪
- Hi, Lea!
- Hi.
- A one, a two,
a skilly dilly do.
Eeh!
- It's New Year's Eve, 2015.
This month has been very difficult for us.
Thanksgiving was excruciating.
And then Christmas, which will...
never be Christmas again without Lea.
I would want her to know
that I wish I could have helped her...
♪
And how much I love her.
[sniffles]
And I miss her so much.
♪