- I'm Craig Melvin,
and this is "Dateline: Secrets Uncovered."
- Jake had disappeared.
They didn't know what had happened to him.
- This needs to be reported to the police.
- Unusual for him not to tell one of us
that he was gonna be gone.
- His dad stated that he's been known
in the past to take off.
- It was always pretty tense at the ranch.
- If the wrong thing was said or done,
there was fire in her eyes.
- The river that runs through all of this
is grandma's money. - Very much so.
- Now was time to find out the truth.
- I just kinda froze,
and I said, "is that what I think it is?"
She just looked at me and said,
"you know you can't ever leave now.
Right?"
- Hello, and welcome to "Dateline: Secrets Uncovered."
Jake Millison was a man of few words,
but the reserved Colorado rancher
had no shortage of loyal friends.
Then suddenly Jake vanished.
Those closest to him feared the worst.
Years would pass before a series of clues
exposed a secret far darker
than even they imagined.
Here's Josh Mankiewicz with "Trouble at the 7-11 Ranch."
- Home on the range.
Sometimes here in western Colorado
it's so quiet that all you can hear is the wind.
- Beautiful hay meadows that wave in the breeze,
and it's just a lovely part of the valley.
- It is beautiful, no doubt.
At the same time, that lovely, lonely valley
can be an unforgiving place to live.
It can drive some people to extremes.
No one understood that better
than rancher Jake Millison.
- He would always spend the majority of daylight
out at the ranch, just working.
- And a rancher's work is never done.
There's always a fence somewhere that needs mending.
Jake Millison seemed cut out for that life.
At least, until one day at age 29
Jake apparently gave up that life
and disappeared.
- Nobody ever got a call, no one ever got a text,
no one got a Facebook message, nothing.
- Nothing.
- Yeah, he-- he evaporated.
No one heard from him for two years.
- It was weird.
The ranch had been Jake's life for most of his life.
The spread was the 7-11,
hundreds of acres outside the town of Gunnison,
under a canopy of Colorado sky.
Jake lived there with his older sister Stephanie
ever since they were kids.
Jake's parents had divorced,
and his mom, Deb Rutibaugh, found another husband,
a guy who owned the 7-11.
They homeschooled Jake
so he could help out more on the ranch.
- I mean, he was out there all day every day--
almost every day, you know?
- Another Jake, Jake Pettigrew,
and Rebecca Diani used to help out at the 7-11.
What was the vibe at the ranch?
- It was really quiet.
You know, maybe a couple times a year
they would have, like, a family reunion,
or hunters would come up and stay in the cabin.
- By 2003, Jake's sister Stephanie had moved out,
looking for a life beyond the sprawl of the 7-11.
What about Jake and his sister?
- I know that he loved his sister,
but, like,
he kinda was upset
that she married who she married.
- That would be David Jackson.
- So Jake didn't like Dave so much,
'cause he was a carny.
And he did the paintball booth
in Gunnison when the carnival came through.
- And Jake thought what, "my sister can do better
than a guy who works the paintball booth"?
- Exactly, yeah.
- They married anyway and lived in town,
only coming out to the ranch occasionally.
Jake's pal Nate Lopez says
Jake had an adventurous streak.
- He was kind of a recluse, but he was always willing
to go explore the mountains
and just to try anything new with his friends.
- Randy Martinez was another member of Jake's posse.
- He was always pretty quiet. Especially towards girls.
He was very shy towards girls. It was funny.
- Jake's stepfather died in 2009,
and the workload got heavier.
Now it was 23-year-old Jake and his mom running the ranch.
Except for that time he took off to Alaska
to make money on a fishing boat,
and even that was really about the ranch.
- He was out on the ship for, I think, three months.
He came back with a good chunk of money,
and he put all that into the ranch
to kind of save it from going under.
- The only break Jake ever got was time with his friends,
a kind of second family.
- We were all best friends,
so we would all hang out.
We would kind of know everything we were doing,
and, uh, we'd always do it together.
- That meant shooting pool at some local hangouts
and drinking beer, except for Jake,
who was always happy to be the designated driver.
- Jake would always go up to the bar and order a Coke.
Even though he was just a couple years older than us,
he always acted like an old man.
He was always the responsible one,
trying to do the smart thing
in tricky situations.
- I met Jake in the winter, December of 2012,
at the Gunnison jiu-jitsu gym.
- That was the other important part of Jake's life,
and another group of friends--
martial arts, particularly jiu-jitsu.
Derek Chodorowski was one of his sparring partners.
And Jake was good at it.
- Jake was good.
Jake was the most consistent student
that was ever in that gym.
He was there every night, four nights a week.
Jake usually announced his presence
on his beloved motorcycle,
a 1976 Harley-Davidson Sportster.
He'd had it since high school.
- I can picture him coming on it right now.
- He was proud of it. - Oh, yeah.
He wore a red bandana when he drove it
with a leather jacket.
- In mid-May, 2015, they were practicing
for an upcoming tournament in Denver.
- He landed on his ankle, and he twisted it.
And I believe he had to pull out of the tournament
because he couldn't walk.
- Then came Friday night, May 15th.
Stuck at home, Jake called his pal Randy
about going to a movie up in Crested Butte.
After the movie they hit a couple of bars,
played some pool, and parted ways around midnight.
There aren't a million things to do in Gunnison,
and this all seemed routine.
It turned out not to be.
- The next morning, I woke up,
we kind of planned on doing something.
I texted him to see what was up
and never got a reply, which was really weird,
because I pretty much talked to him every day.
- The next week, Jake's jiu-jitsu pals
were back from that tournament
and back on the mats. No Jake.
They figured he was still nursing his ankle.
And then after a few days they started to wonder.
- A week goes by, and we're like,
"guys, where's-- where's Jake?"
- Unusual for him not to come in.
- Also unusual for him not to tell one of us
that he was gonna be gone.
- Gone because he was fed up
with that hard life on the ranch?
Or was there a side of Jake
that even his best friends didn't know about?
- His dad stated that, uh,
he's been known in the past
to take off abruptly
and do things.
- The mystery deepens.
- When somebody doesn't show up,
there's a lot of ground to cover.
- Right. - There's a lot of things
that might've explained his absence
that aren't criminal. - Absolutely.
And that's why I didn't want to jump to any conclusions.
- Jake's mother had her own idea
about what might have happened to her son.
- When "Dateline: Secrets Uncovered" continues.
* - It was May, 2015,
ten days had passed,
and there was still no sign of Jake Millison
at the jiu-jitsu gym
or anywhere else in Gunnison, Colorado.
Jared Hooks, one of Jake's gym buddies,
decided to do something.
- This needs to be reported to the police,
and so I stepped up and said, you know what, I'll do it.
- Because you're not just any friend.
[chuckles] - No.
I'm a sergeant with the town of Mount Crested Butte,
and so I thought, you know,
I had a little bit of credibility.
And so if I had red flags, you know,
it would translate also to the deputy there.
- That deputy was
Gunnison County Undersheriff Mark Mykol.
His first order of business--
call Jake's mother, Deb Rutibaugh.
- Deb told us that he left with a friend
and was going to the Reno, Nevada, area.
- Investigators also phoned Jake's father.
- His dad, Ray, stated that, uh,
he's been known in the past
to take off abruptly
and do things.
- Like that fishing job in Alaska
and a few camping trips.
At 29 Jake had no obligation
to tell anyone where he was going,
and it didn't mean something bad had happened.
When somebody doesn't show up,
there's a lot of ground to cover.
- Right. - He meet some girl,
and they decide to go to Las Vegas.
He has some fight with his family or somebody
and decides to just hit the road,
and to hell with it.
I mean, there's a lot of things
that might have explained his absence
that aren't criminal. - Absolutely.
And that's why I didn't want to jump to any conclusions.
- There was something
Jake's pal, Randy Martinez, noticed
when he'd' gone to the ranch with a buddy looking for Jake
and they ran into Jake's closest friend.
- His dog Elmo, which is a big, black, curly haired dog,
really cool dog, and he runs out and meets us,
and it's like, oh, that's weird.
Elmo's here, so Jake should be here.
And so then we start talking to more people,
and we literally talked to everybody
we knew that he knew, we talked to,
and everybody that we knew that he knew
hadn't heard anything, hadn't been told any stories
about any trips, anything, so it was really weird.
- In early June, Undersheriff Mykol
paid his own visit to the 7-11 and heard
that Jake had returned.
His mom said Jake had been gone for a little while,
but then came back to pick up supplies.
She said Jake was with a friend,
someone she didn't know.
- Deb was telling us that it was late at night, uh,
took a bunch of camping gear, and load this up
in a dark colored pickup truck, and took off.
There wasn't any room for the dog.
- None of it made sense.
What could Jake be up to?
And, who takes a trip without his cell phone?
- She told us the phone fell in an irrigation ditch,
and she showed us the phone.
It was, uh, in a bag of rice.
- That could definitely explain why Jake wasn't answering
any calls or texts.
Deb said Jake told her he was off to Nevada
to study martial arts.
- So really didn't have anything to go with
at that point.
- By August, Jake had been gone almost three months,
and by then it seemed even his mom was becoming concerned.
She filed a missing person report.
That wasn't enough for Jake's friends.
They wanted to get his story out,
so they contacted Chris Rourke,
a reporter for the Gunnison Country Times.
And she called Jake's mom.
What's Deb like?
- Uh, small, wiry woman,
very talkative.
She liked to talk.
While the reporter's recorder ran,
Deb told her the same thing she told the sheriff's deputy.
- Jake had run off, and Jake took off in a truck
with a friend, and the friend didn't want the dog along.
- She started out a little reticent,
and then the details started coming.
- Deb also told Rourke something
the reporter had never heard before.
Jake had a dark side, a serious drug problem.
Because of that, Deb said, there was tension
between mother and son.
So maybe that's why Jake left.
He was just sick of fighting with his mom all the time.
A picture of a different Jake was starting to emerge.
- And I think it lends itself to the two sides
that were painted of who Jake was,
this reckless person that was irresponsible
and had run off, and his friends described him
as someone who was very disciplined,
who cared about his martial arts,
cared about his friends very much.
With that in mind, Chris filed her story.
So, you make sort of reference to-- to Jake's.
- Right.
- And what reaction does that article provoke?
- Oh, the friends were mad. They were upset.
They said that something has happened to him.
The Jake that Deb is portraying
is not the guy we know.
- Jake's friends seem hellbent on finding him.
That was in October.
Soon, the case would get as cold
as a Western Colorado winter.
- She did a posting that said big things are happening
for the Jackson family.
A couple days later she posts again,
"Do you ever hear such great news in the morning
"that... you can't stand it?"
- With Jake gone, his sister Stephanie
moves into help with the ranch
and reveals a dark side.
- If the wrong thing was said or the wrong thing was done,
there was fire in her eyes.
- When "Dateline" Secrets Uncovered" continues.
- He had never met Jake Millison.
But Jeremy McDonald would have a ringside seat
to the circus that was Jake's family,
starting with Jake's brother-in-law Dave.
- You've known Dave Jackson for a long time.
- Yeah.
Since we were, like, nine or ten years old.
- Remember, Dave Jackson was married
to Jake's sister, Stephanie.
It was the Spring of 2016.
By then, Jake had been gone almost a year.
And without him, his mom had been running the ranch
all by herself.
That was about to change.
Dave called Jeremy and offered him work.
- He said, "Hey, we're gonna be taking over the ranch again."
- Jake's mom Deb had been diagnosed with cancer
and recently undergone major surgery.
Dave, Stephanie, and their then eight-year-old son
had moved to the ranch to help out.
Dave asked Jeremy to live with them
and fix up the place in return for room and board.
- I just decided, you know what, it's not a--
it's not a bad idea.
We were gonna turn the ranch around,
have the guest cabins, and all of that.
- Get the ranch back to making money.
- Pretty much. Yep.
- What's it like when you get there?
- It's a mess.
And there's-- there's clutter and junk everywhere.
A lot bigger project than I had even expected.
- He decided to stick it out.
After all, Dave was one of his best friends.
What about Deb?
Did you know her when you moved there?
- I never had met Deb until I moved there,
and she seemed very reclusive,
but it was very obvious that she was a little bit ornery.
We'll say that.
- How'd that manifest itself? - She was super controlling.
Uh, any time we tried to clean anything up on the ranch.
For instance, there was a building
that we were cleaning out, and it had some couches in it
that were covered in rat feces, and they were destroyed.
And Dave and I were moving them out,
and she came out and started screaming
and yelling at us that she wanted to keep those couches.
- And you chalked that up to what?
- Crazy.
[chuckling] Honestly.
That's just how she was.
Like, everything she got didn't leave.
- And Jake's sister Stephanie,
Jeremy says there was a side of her
few people ever saw.
- There is the Steph that most--
a lot of people knew, which was a very nice lady.
But, it seems like there was a switch.
And if the wrong thing was said or the wrong thing was done,
there was fire in her eyes.
- Stephanie and her family seemed pretty cool
with Jake's disappearance.
His friends were not.
They created a Facebook page, "Where is Jake Millison,"
and they peppered Sheriff Rick Besecker's office
with phone calls.
- They would not give up on Jake.
Every one of the friends had credibility.
Besecker says his investigators had been looking all over
for some sign of Jake Millison.
- Our heads are up in Alaska,
our notions are in Nevada,
and we're still running a crust. Nothing.
- In the Fall of 2016, mostly because of the attention
generated by Jake's friends, the case finally landed
on the desk of Gunnison County Deputy District Attorney
Jessica Waggoner.
- His friends knew that this is not something
that he would have done.
- At that point, Jake had been missing for more than a year.
- The Colorado Bureau of Investigations got involved
and we went from there to put in a plan in place
to do search warrants on phones,
and begin the process of looking for Jacob.
- The more the prosecutor talked with the investigators,
the more concerned she became.
Normally when somebody disappears,
it's the family who's saying to you,
"This isn't normal. Something's wrong."
But, in this case, family is telling you,
telling law enforcement, there's nothing to worry about.
- Right, and it wasn't until the friends really pushed--
they started posting it on Facebook,
and started calling law enforcement,
and I think that's where we had to just keep digging.
- And when Waggoner dug into Stephanie's Facebook page,
she noticed something Stephanie had written
just a few days after her brother went missing.
- She did a posting that said big things are happening
for the Jackson family.
A couple days later, she posts again,
"Do you ever hear such great news in the morning
"that you can't stand it," or something like that,
and her friend responded saying, "Oh, Jake's gone."
- Stephanie seemed to be treating Jake's sudden absence
as some sort of opportunity.
The prosecutor found that troubling
as she read through the interviews
Jake's friends had given to investigators.
And she saw comments like this.
- It was always pretty tense at the-the ranch
when-whenever Dave was out there.
- In fact, she learned Jake was afraid of Dave
and taking up jiu-jitsu hadn't been just for the exercise.
- So he decided to start taking jiu-jitsu
because he was kinda scared for his--
fear of his brother-in-law trying to do something to him
or-- and just kinda protecting himself.
- So that made it all the more strange
when Waggoner saw this posted on Dave's Facebook page.
Him astride Jake's prized bike,
something Jake never would have tolerated.
- He loved that motorcycle.
It had a history with him.
Nobody could ride it, if I remember correctly.
- He loved that bike
and he rode it as much as he could, when he could.
To see somebody, his archnemesis on his bike,
which was really, really weird.
- Maybe Jake would ditch the ranch,
maybe even the dog, but not the Harley.
That picture told Jake's friends something
they didn't wanna admit, but now couldn't avoid.
Jake was never coming back.
- Was Jake's family hiding a secret?
Detectives turn up the heat
and uncover a twisted trail of lies.
Coming up...
- The cities kept changing
and the reasons why he was leaving kept changing.
- And in any of those cities,
you couldn't find anybody who'd seen him or talked to him.
And there was no financial record of him
anywhere in those places? - Correct.
- Deb said that she thought that he might be
in witness protection somewhere.
- Witness protection? - Yeah.
- So, maybe he's living under another name
somewhere else in the country? - Yep.
- As the excuses grew stranger,
the prosecutor grows more suspicious.
- We couldn't buy the family's reasoning any more.
- Spring 2017, Jake Millison had been
off the grid for nearly two years.
He had disappeared without a trace.
Reporter Chris Rourke had been
watching the story closely,
along with all of the town of Gunnison.
- It was always talked about in the community.
It was always on people's mind.
Um, I recall a body was found west of town.
I-It turned out to be a hiker that had, you know,
gone the wrong way on a trail.
But, you know, anytime something came up like that,
we always wondered, "Do you think that's Jake?"
- Rourke kept thinking back to her interview
with Jake's mom, and to something Deb had said.
Now, for just a second, think about that.
I interview a lot of women whose children are--
have disappeared.
And they know exactly when the last time
they spoke with them was. - Yeah.
- To the minute. - Yeah.
- But I can't remember
when the last time I talked to him was.
- Right, "I have to look at my calendar."
- Very odd. - Yes.
- By now, Prosecutor Jessica Waggoner
had moved on from "odd" to "possibly criminal."
Jake's friends seemed credible,
saying Jake would not have taken off like that.
His family? Not so much.
- We couldn't buy the family's reasoning any more.
Deb Rudibaugh had said from the beginning
that he had left for Reno, Nevada
to do some martial arts fighting.
And then Stephanie Jackson would tell friends and family
that Deb Rudibaugh told her that he was in Portland or Seattle.
And the cities kept changing.
And the reasons why he was leaving kept changing.
- And in any of those cities, you couldn't find anybody
who had seen him or talked to him.
And there was no financial record of him
anywhere in those places. - Correct.
- Since he disappeared,
Jake had never used a credit card,
never used his passport. Never gotten a new cell phone.
And never visited an ATM.
And as she pieced it all together,
the prosecutor began to wonder if Jake Millison
had really ever left the 7-11 ranch.
It was time to search the land that seemed to have
a starring role in this family drama.
That would be easier said than done.
- The property that we're talking about is massive.
They owned some hunting rights in various places
up in the mountains.
They had a quarry across the road.
They had caves.
- By spring, she had enough
to convince a judge to sign a search warrant.
But the prosecutor was born and raised here.
And she knew she had to wait.
- With Gunnison and its weather,
we couldn't have searched for him in the spring.
Grounds are still frozen.
And that would have caused some problems
of being able to find him.
Um, so we knew it had to be in the summer.
- Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Jeremy McDonald's experience
was going from weird to weirder.
How'd they explain Jake's absence?
- So, they had -- always told me
that he just left. He just disappeared.
I never met Jake.
And so I didn't know anything about what he was like.
So, I just kinda thought, "Well, maybe he did just leave",
you know, if that's what they say.
There was even times when Deb said that
she thought that he might be
in witness protection somewhere.
- Witness protection? - Yeah.
- So maybe he's living under another name
somewhere else in the country? - Yeah.
- He said theories about what happened to Jake
would be dinner conversation.
Maybe Jake was dead, had an accident, maybe worse.
One night, Jeremy says he was having dinner
with Stephanie and Dave.
And threw out his own theory, just as a joke.
- I mentioned, "What if-what if Deb did it?
"And buried him in the backyard?"
And at that very moment that I said that,
the whole demeanor of Steph completely changed.
And it got really awkward.
And you could see that darkness in her eyes.
I-I remember just feeling I stepped somewhere wrong.
- Coming up...
- I just kinda froze and I just said,
"Is that what I think it is?"
- A frightening discovery followed by a terrifying threat.
- She just looked at me and said,
"You know you can't ever leave now, right?"
At that point, I didn't really know what to do.
- You sleep with one eye open that night?
Or maybe both eyes open?
- I don't think I slept for a couple nights.
- When Dateline: Secrets Uncovered continues.
- By summer of 2017, Prosecutor Jessica Waggoner
was ready to execute a search warrant
at the 7-11 Ranch.
She had listened to Jake's friends,
gathered her evidence, and then waited for
the Colorado sun to melt the frozen ground.
And there was one more event Waggoner had waited for.
An annual convention of dogs, but not just any dogs.
These dogs have a very particular set of skills.
Skills that make them a nightmare for some people.
- So, every year, a bunch of cadaver dogs
will come out and get certified for FEMA
by going to these old mining towns
and doing these searches for the old grave sites.
- That's right, it's a gathering of
some of the top cadaver search dogs in the country in,
of all places, Gunnison.
And you thought, "What better time to look for a body
then when there are a lot of cadaver dog teams in town"?
- Exactly. - There you go.
- Lisa Higgins was there,
a dog trainer for more than 30 years.
Her dogs have helped solve all kinds of cases,
from missing children to serial killers.
- The sheriff asked that I become the liaison
between the K9 group and the agencies
working with this case.
- So, early on July 17th, the cadaver dogs
formed up with dozens of investigators
about a mile from the 7-11 Ranch.
A small group of investigators went ahead to serve the warrant.
Jeremy McDonald was asleep in a trailer
in front of the main house. - It was fairly early.
It was about 7:00 in the morning and, uh, all of a sudden
pounding on my door, you know? "Police, open up."
"Police, come out. Get your hands up."
- Jeremy wasn't wondering for a moment why they were there
because, it turned out, he'd seen something.
So, let's talk about what happened
when you sort of accidentally witnessed something
t-that I'm guessing you wish you could unsee.
- Yeah.
- It was two months before the day of the raid.
Jeremy says David Jackson was operating a backhoe.
- And so I walk around the corner.
I see Dave and Steph standing, looking at a rib cage.
- You heard that right. A rib cage.
- And I just kinda froze. And I just said,
"Is that what I think it is?" And at that moment,
Steph and Dave both turned around
a-and Dave had shock in his eyes.
And Steph turned and threw her arms up in the air.
"I don't know what it is. I'm gonna go call Mom."
"Blah, blah, blah."
And took off running to the house.
You could see-- You could see the rib cage.
And you could see the top part of
what looked like a pair of jeans.
Steph came back and she said, "It's a bear
"or some wild game that Jake shot, illegally."
"Just cover it back up."
- I mean, you have to be thinking,
"Is that Jake?" - I-I definitely was thinking
that was Jake. A-and in my heart,
I knew it was Jake. There-- it had to be.
- Did you say anything. - So, I guess I didn't--
I didn't know what to think.
A-And I know a lot of people outside looking in think,
"Why didn't you just call the police?"
You have to understand, at that moment,
that was my family.
And even though it wasn't the most functional family
in the world, it was--
That was who I ate dinner with every day.
And so a lot of it was I didn't want their boy
to be drug into all of this.
- That boy was Stephanie and Dave's nine year old son.
And, Jeremy said, any thought of contacting police
later evaporated in the name of self-preservation.
- Steph was kinda talking to me and Dave was there
and she just looked at me and said,
"You know you can't ever leave now, right?"
And, uh, at that point, I didn't really know what to do.
- That sound like a threat to you?
'Cause it sounds like a threat to me.
- It did sound like a threat.
- You sleep with one eye open that night?
Or maybe both eyes open?
- I don't think I slept for a couple nights.
- And you never told law enforcement?
- I didn't, I tried to just block it all out.
I didn't-- I didn't want to be involved.
And I wanted no part of it.
- And yet, you were a part of it.
- Yep.
- Now, there they were, the prosecutor, the police,
and the dogs. The search for Jake Millison
was about to get very focused, very fast.
An answer no one wanted.
- I think at that point we felt tapped out.
And reliving it right now,
I'm reliving that aspect of it as well.
Damn. [sniffs]
You mind if we take a break?
- And questions no one could answer.
- We're all scratching our heads,
saying "why?" and "how?"
and asking ourselves all the questions,
but still no arrests.
- When "Dateline: Secrets Uncovered" continues.
- Welcome back.
Prosecutor Jessica Waggoner was convinced
Jake Millison was dead.
She believed members of his family had killed him
and then buried his body somewhere
on their sprawling ranch.
Now investigators with search dogs in tow
went sniffing around,
and they found someone...
in a surprisingly talkative mood.
Here's Josh Mankiewicz with the conclusion
of Trouble at the 7-11 Ranch.
- July 17th, 2017,
Jake Millison had been missing for more than two years.
While a convoy of law enforcement
and a pack of cadaver dogs waited down the road,
an investigator questioned Deb Rutibaugh
about her missing son.
She was evasive at first,
and then when Deb heard about those cadaver dogs,
she coolly and calmly...
dropped a bombshell.
- Deb Rutibaugh said that while Jake was asleep
in the upstairs area of the lodge,
she went up, and she shot him in the head.
- The confession was almost casual,
as a mother described murdering her own son.
- She said that she was able to drag the body out
and then, uh, she took the backhoe
and buried him in a manure pile.
Deb had pointed them to the corral,
so that's where dog handler Lisa Higgins sent Jack,
a German Shepherd from West Virginia.
- Jack went in, and he performed his trained final response,
which was a passive sit
in the area he was most concerned with.
- Investigators brought in a backhoe,
and the 7-11 Ranch slowly gave up its secrets.
- Jake Millison was no longer missing.
His remains were found wrapped in a trash bag.
- I think at that point we felt tapped out.
I felt tapped out.
And reliving it right now,
I'm reliving that aspect of it as well.
Damn. [sniffs]
- You okay?
- You mind if we take a break?
- Jake's friends had long accepted the truth
that they'd never see him alive again.
So when they got the word, it was no shock.
- It's closure, but it sucks,
because I'd rather have my friend than closure.
- Now it was time to get, uh--
get some convictions, find out the truth,
find out, you know, who was involved.
- If this feels to you
as if it should be the end of the story
of what happened to Jake Millison,
listen to this.
No one was arrested that day.
The news spread quickly around Gunnison.
- We learned that Deb had confessed,
and we're all scratching our heads,
saying "why?" and "how?"
and asking ourselves all the questions,
but still no arrests.
- You got a body, you got a confession,
why aren't you putting the handcuffs on people?
- There was a lot of people on scene
that wanted that to happen,
and I heard a lot of screaming when I said no,
but nothing was matching up yet.
- It was hard to believe.
As tough as Deb was, she was 5 feet tall, 97 pounds,
and remember, suffering from stage IV cancer.
About a week before Jake was murdered,
she'd had surgery.
- Deb admitted that she couldn't lift a gallon of milk
all the way into July or August
from the surgery without help.
- Investigators didn't think there was any way
she had dragged Jake's 180-pound body
down the stairs, outside,
and then buried him all by herself.
They were certain she had help.
The suspect needle
is sort of pointing away from Deb
and towards Stephanie.
- This entire case,
the suspect needle was pointing at Stephanie.
- The motive?
The prosecutors said this was all about the 7-11,
millions of dollars of valuable ranch land.
Stephanie wanted it,
but Jake stood to inherit it.
Jake was murdered
so that he wouldn't inherit the ranch.
- We believe so, yes.
I believe that Stephanie knew almost immediately,
if not at the time.
- And had manipulated this into happening.
- And had created the situation.
If it was not for Stephanie Jackson,
Jacob Millison would be here breathing today.
- The prosecutor also believed
Stephanie persuaded her husband Dave
to help with the cover-up.
Finally, seven months after Jake's body was discovered,
deputies arrested Deb.
And Stephanie. And Dave.
Jeremy McDonald cooperated with investigators
and was never charged with any crime.
- Gunnison District Court is in session...
- After initially denying any involvement,
Dave Jackson pleaded guilty
to tampering with a deceased body
and received ten years.
- Yes, sir.
- By then, forensics left little doubt
who actually pulled the trigger.
At Jake's autopsy
they found the slug that killed him.
- The bullet was still there,
and we were able to match it to the gun.
- Deb's gun, a Lady Smith & Wesson revolver.
They found it under Deb's bed
with Deb's DNA on the handle.
- Ms. Rutibaugh, you certainly do have
the right to make a statement...
- In May of 2019,
four years after she killed her son,
Deb pleaded to second degree murder.
Even then Deb maintained
she alone did the crime and the cover-up.
- And my daughter Stephanie Jackson
in no way knowingly had anything to do
with Jake's death or subsequent cover-up.
- She was sentenced to 40 years.
- I would like to start out by saying thank you
for the opportunity to speak.
- Then facing a trial
for the first degree murder of her brother,
Stephanie admitted she was part of the cover-up.
She pleaded guilty to aiding and abetting
and to tampering with a deceased body.
- What I am guilty of is believing
the stories and lies my mother told everyone
for over two years.
- All of it, she said, was her mom's idea.
- I would also like to apologize to my father,
my grandparents, my extended family,
and anyone else who's been affected...
by my mother's heinous actions.
- The judge didn't buy it
and sentenced Stephanie to the maximum,
24 years in prison.
It all seemed to flow from homespun greed,
and the river that ran through it
was green with money and maybe a drop of jealousy.
In November, 2019,
Deb Rutibaugh died in prison from her cancer
at the age of 70.
So whatever really happened,
maybe Deb took that to the grave with her.
- I think so.
I don't think Stephanie will be telling us anytime soon
what really happened that night.
- We do know this-- all those stories,
Jake taking off, Jake abusing drugs,
the idea that there were two Jakes,
those were all lies,
and his friends never believed them.
You know, if it weren't for you
and Jake's other friends,
this case quite possibly would never have been solved.
- I believe that.
Jake's several buddies on the mat
and his friends outside,
we were the ones that pushed this
to get this out.
- His family kind of underestimated
his second family, didn't they?
- Absolutely.
- Now it's the end of the story
of what happened to Jake Millison.
His friends fought for him.
His family fought against him.
And in the end it's hard to tell who won.
- That's all for this edition
of "Dateline: Secrets Uncovered."
I'm Craig Melvin. Thank you for watching.