- I'm craig melvin,
And this is "dateline: Secrets uncovered."
- She had this look of absolute terror on her face.
She was scared.
She really, really was afraid,
And I don't really know why.
- She was a sunny, free spirit
Who had yearned to make it in hollywood,
But she made headlines instead when she vanished.
- One day, she was gone. Her pets were gone.
- I knew that something happened.
- Did something drive her away?
Or maybe someone?
There was that old friend turned enemy.
- They seemed to be very passionate
About hating each other.
- There was the new friend--
Young, handsome, a man of mystery.
- He said, "I'm not what people think I am,"
And I thought, "wonder what that means?"
- I told her this could end up killing her.
- A brother and sister desperate to learn the truth.
- It's just chilling for me to think about that.
♪♪
- Hello, and welcome
To "dateline: Secrets uncovered."
Brittany tavar wore her heart on her sleeve,
Opening her life to anyone she thought needed her help,
Whether that meant pets or people.
But after she vanished, her family learned
That a secret she had been hiding
May have inadvertently exposed her to danger.
Now could investigators find her alive?
Here's keith morrison with...
- They noticed it first at her favorite place,
That private beach club faces out at the south atlantic.
Took a little longer for the story
To spread up and down the historic streets,
This oldest of all american cities,
Until it reached the ears
Of a young reporter named justine griffin,
Who worked the crime beat at "st. Augustine, florida times."
- This one was definitely
One of the most bizarre that I've covered.
One day, her car-- she was gone. Her pets were gone.
- The "she" justine is talking about
Was the local fixture here in st. Augustine, florida,
A striking and friendly woman named brittany tavar
Who had, without a word to anyone, up and vanished.
Hardly a big story at first.
After all, people do come and go around st. Augustine,
And this was July 2010, heat ratcheting up.
Good time to head north, maybe?
- Just as the weeks went on,
It sort of got a little bit more strange.
- A little bit strange?
In fact, the disappearance of brittany tavar
Was about to become the biggest and perhaps strangest story
Of justine griffin's young career.
Not just that brittany disappeared,
But that she'd vanished
On such an important day for her,
The day she was due to appear in a st. Augustine court
And bring charges against a bitter enemy.
- She had an enormous amount of anxiety.
- This is brittany's sister pat bellamah.
Pat lived clear across the country in portland, oregon,
So she couldn't do much about her sister's worries,
Couldn't help her confront her nemesis in court,
But pat had been aware since girlhood
Brittany was pretty good at looking after herself.
- We were polar opposites.
I was much more academically oriented than she was
And sort of more staid and analytical.
She was very agile and athletic, and I wasn't.
So I spent my childhood following her up trees
And trying to jump over creeks,
And she could do it, and I couldn't.
- Scattered family. Five siblings in all.
Andrew bellamah, one of brittany's three brothers,
Kept track of her from his place up in the northeast.
- She was very extroverted.
She-she, uh, marched to the beat of her own drum.
- So when they heard she was missing,
Pat and andrew had to consider the possibility
That brittany had decided to try something new.
- Well, she very much had a sense of inventing herself,
You know, her whole life.
- Like the time she went to hollywood years ago,
Wanted to be a movie star.
- She wanted certain things in life,
And she just thought if she believed in herself,
And she went out and tried, you know,
She would-- she would get those things.
- Didn't get those things, up to now at least,
But she had some family money,
Settled comfortably in st. Augustine,
Took up photography, sold real estate,
Bought a nice house,
And joined a private beach club called the serenata,
Where she developed a group of very close friends.
For example, brenda lemke. - The thing about brittany,
She was a single woman living on her own,
And I just thought she was very strong and very brave.
You know, she had money.
She didn't have to worry about that,
But still, you know, she had to create a life for herself,
A social environment.
She was interesting. She wasn't boring.
- Joanna simmons was also a friend from the serenata.
- I invited her to come to choir one night
At this church that I was going to,
And she came and seemed to really enjoy it,
And so she joined the choir.
- Was she a spiritual woman? Was she--
- I think she had a very much of a spiritual side to her.
- They enjoyed her personality.
You know, she could be very sort of sparkly and vivacious.
I was impressed that she had so many close friends
Who cared so much about her.
- So because brittany's family members lived so far away,
It was friends like joanna and brenda
Who first tired to solve the puzzle of her absence
That week in July. - I called a few times,
But I didn't hear anything.
And then Thursday came,
And I called Thursday, and I knew.
I knew Thursday that something happened.
- So brenda called brittany's family
And they asked her to go 'round to the house,
But, frankly, just looking at the place from the outside,
She didn't see any sign of foul play.
Back in portland,
Brittany's sister pat didn't know quite what to do.
- I actually happen to have a long-time friend
Who's a police officer, so I called him,
And I said, "what do we do?"
And he says, "well, just get a locksmith.
"send brenda back with a locksmith,
"and have her go into the house."
- Which, by now, several days
After brittany dropped out of sight, brenda did.
And inside, nothing seemed amiss,
Although, she had apparently taken some of her pets,
Her two little dogs.
- Her dogs were gone,
Huey and kuebear, her little white bichons.
- But brittany also had cats,
And they were still in the house alone.
- One of the doors was open for the cats to go in and out.
- Some people do that, it's true. But brittany?
- Well, my sister loved her cats very, very much,
And she would never just go away on a trip
And leave them to fend for themselves.
- Where had brittany gone?
Why would she take her dogs, leave her cats,
And take off, vanish,
On the very day she was all set to appear in court
To resolve a bitter feud,
A feud which she told her family
Kept her in constant fear?
- It was very strange that all of a sudden,
The day that she was supposed to be in court,
Now she's gone.
- Brittany tavar was a master of reinvention.
Had she simply run off for a fresh start?
Or did something sinister happen to her?
- Over the years,
Eight different people lived in her spare room.
- That's a very interesting thing
That a single woman living on her own would do.
- She wasn't really practical. I mean, the risk of it--
But I think she really liked the idea of helping people.
- When "dateline: Secrets uncovered" continues.
♪♪
- Something was off, something very wrong,
Here in the dripping heat of the st. Augustine summer.
Friends of brittany tavar had been unable to reach her
For several days. - Everybody that knows brittany
Knows that she would never just take up
And leave like that without telling me.
- So brittany's family,
Frantic but far away in opposite corners of the country,
Called a locksmith,
Asked brittany's friends to go inside her house,
Have a look around,
And the place seemed perfectly normal,
Except one or two little things
Didn't quite make sense. - There were some anomalies,
Like the air condition was blasting,
And she never would have left the air condition blasting.
- Oh, and there was one more thing, though.
It wasn't so much as something wrong
As it was just a little too right.
One of the friends who searched brittany's house
Was tim martin, a man brittany had been dating.
- She was a little unorganized, but the house was very clean,
And so it looked like maybe somebody
Was going somewhere, but-- - somebody had
Fixed the place up. - Yes.
- The good news was, everything was tidy.
There was no sign of a crime scene.
The bad news is, the home looked too clean.
- It certainly could be that brittany simply
Cleaned the place more thoroughly than usual,
Then packed up and left
And left the back door open for the cats.
The police told the family that in the absence of foul play,
There wasn't much they could do.
No law against a grown woman
Taking off without telling anyone.
- We hired a private investigator
Who started looking around to find something
That would get the police involved in the case.
- While the pi made his inquiries,
Over the next few days,
Brittany's family began their own investigation,
And soon discovered a few very brittany-esque secrets,
Things she had never told them about.
- We didn't know that over the years,
Eight different homeless people
Lived in her spare room.
She usually had some kind of an arrangement with these fellows
That they would help her with stuff,
Like the first guy helped with the yard work.
I mean, she would never tell us that,
Because, of course, we would say, "bad idea."
- "what are you thinking?" yeah.
- You know, you can't just invite strangers
To live in your house, you know?
- That's a very interesting thing
That a single woman living on her own would do.
- She wasn't really practical.
I mean, the risk of it-- either she would have dismissed it,
Or maybe that was what was interesting about it.
But I think she really liked the idea
Of helping people.
- It's kind of like bringing home
A bird with a broken wing,
And you're gonna fix it or something like that, and--
- Right. - Make it right.
- Well, she also grew up in a family
Where serving people and serving the poor
Was just part of the environment that we lived in.
- Brittany had recently been hosting
A handsome young man named joe roberts
Whom she had met at a barnes & noble store.
- She was trying to start up some enterprise,
And he was gonna help her do the computer work.
- According to friends, brittany was a doting landlady.
Bought young joe new clothes,
Even a computer.
Brittany's friends got to know him some
When she showed him off down at the serenata beach club.
- Here she is. "joann. Joann.
"I want you to meet the guy in the hot tub.
"he's so good looking. He's so nice."
- He seemed like he could be my brother,
My younger brother.
- He just seemed like such a nice guy
And that he was just-- he just really wanted to try.
- They accepted him as somebody brittany was
Trying to help and who might help her.
- Very charming.
I thought he was well mannered.
He thought the girls were really shallow his age,
That they just wanted to go out and have, like,
One night stands and he didn't want
To be involved in relationships like that.
He really wanted, uh, sincere relationships with women.
- In addition to which he was, those women could plainly see,
A bit of a hottie and of course
You know how gossip can be.
A good looking young guy that brittany
Had treated very kindly.
He stayed in the master bedroom?
Where did she stay?
- She had a room over by the pool, the swimming pool.
She liked to listen to the fountain at night.
It helped her sleep.
- There had been speculation that there was
Nothing romantic or sexual about
Inviting this young man in?
- You know, I joked with her about it.
She would always say no, he likes megan fox
And, you know, he's not interested.
I'm too old.
- Still, who really knew what went on
Behind closed doors?
Anyway, they couldn't ask joe.
He never stayed anywhere very long
And he wasn't around anymore to shed light
On his ex landlady's disappearance.
So, still playing ametuer slueths,
Brittany's family now asked the obvious question.
Was there anyone here in st. Augustine
Who might want to harm brittany?
And the answer was a resounding yes.
Friends like joanna simmons told how at the serenata beach club
In the days before she disappeared,
Brittany seemed terrified.
- I saw her one day leaving the, uh, hot tub area
To go into the pool and she had this look of absolute terror
On her face.
- Why britney was terrified began with a very weird story
About a neighbor she'd gotten to know.
This woman, her name is ann lydon.
- Everybody knew brittany and if she stopped you,
She'd want to chat and, you know, get into your life.
- You couldn't get away from her for a while.
- No, she's a busybody.
- And if ann doesn't speak very kindly of brittany now,
You have to understand it was very different
At the beginning.
Then they were friendly enough to become partners
In a little dog breeding venture.
- She wanted to breed huey with one of mine.
- But then complications.
Brittany began a romance with a fellow named billy,
Friend of ann and her husband's.
Billy, uh, as the new boyfriend, moved right in
And everything was hunky dory
Until, well, love is unpredictable.
And in this case, it didn't last.
- They got into some stupid fight.
So, billy calls up and said, "I'm coming to get my stuff."
And, um, she said, "come by yourself."
- But billy didn't go there alone.
He was accompanied by ann lydon and her husband.
- Brittany said, "don't come in the house."
And they came in.
- But she was cussing and screaming and whatever
And, um, I said, "okay, I'm leaving."
- What happened?
- She hit me over the head with a wine bottle
And she was sitting on top of me strangling me
And michael and billy pulled her off.
- Two sides to every story, of course.
Brittany said ann and her two men refused to leave.
- You would think that's her house.
If I say, "get out of my house,"
You should leave my house.
- And yes, it was true they fought, said brittany,
But in a report to police, brittany claimed
She didn't start it.
In fact, after the fight subsided, it was brittany
Who called the police to accuse ann of assaulting her, but...
- They went over and talked to ann
And then they came back and arrested brittany.
- Arrested brittany?
But why her?
- She admitted that she put her throw--
Her hand on ann's throat
And-and they arrested her based on that.
- They charged brittany with battery.
She spent the night in jail.
It was a very traumatic experience
And she called me up crying.
- In court, brittany was sentenced to probation,
Anger management classes, community service,
And a one year order to stay away from ann lydon.
But ann, oddly perhaps, chose to be closer
To brittany, at least physically.
She and her husband joined brittany's sanctuary,
The serenata beach club.
- Felt so bad for her because that was a place
That she really, really got peace and she was able
To socialize with people and then enjoy herself there,
And then all of a sudden here they show up
In the hot tub all the time.
- And before long, the conflict--
The growing fear was all brittany could talk about.
She was fearful for her life and I-- and I-I told her,
Um, this could end up killing you.
- Did brittany's terror drive her
Hundreds of miles away?
- Her dogs were found roaming the streets
And they were both found separately.
- How did they manage to connect two dogs
In columbia, south carolina to her?
- That's just the beginning of a long, strange tale.
- They were following her credit card transactions
To north carolina, idaho, oregon.
- When "dateline: Secrets uncovered" continues.
- What a respite was the serenata beach club.
What a lovely perch from which to enjoy the brilliant sun,
The warm soothing currents.
But on those summer days in 2010, events at the serenata
Were perhaps a little too warm.
Day after day, the sworn enemies faced each other
Across swimming pools and hot tubs,
And all the while brittany seethed with
An expanding collection of insults and incidents
Heaped on her by her ex friend ann.
- I was like, brittany, can't you just let this go?
And she just-- she couldn't let go of it.
It was so-- it was sub-- an obsession actually.
- Brittany accused ann of keying her car.
So, she began carrying around a video camera
As a kind of a visual bodyguard until the day when ann,
Tired of being taped, swam over to the camera.
At that point poolside inside brittany's bag.
- Yes, and I knocked the camera in the pool.
She pushed my buttons.
She went around town-- the whole neighborhood--
Everybody, "I'm scared for my life."
- It was after the dunking of the video camera
That brittany launched legal action against ann.
By this time she invited joe roberts into her house
And so she listed the help of the handsome young border
To prepare a dvd of the incident to show the judge.
When she got to court, said brittany,
She was going to tell that judge just how dangerous
She believed ann was, and in fact she was afraid
Ann was going to kill her.
- I think all her friends made very clear she was
Quite traumatized by this.
She was just very, very much afraid of this ann.
- The court date was Wednesday July 7th, 2010.
The morning arrived.
Ann came with her attorney.
Sat in court waiting and waiting
And brittany did not show.
So, that was the very day she disappeared.
A convenient repree for ann-- too convenient.
Bizarre thought the crime reporter,justine griffin.
In light of how important that court date was to brittany.
- She had become very obsessed of--
With this restraining order.
Everything she was doing was to basically make sure
This restraining order was going through,
- Perhaps brittany was afraid to show up.
Afraid of what'd might happen?
These were not necessarily genteel ladies, then.
- No, no.
They seem to be very passionate about
Hating each other, especially toward the end.
- So, in the days following brittany's disappearance,
Some people around town wondered just how much
Ann lydon knew or what she might have to do with it.
After all, if anybody had a motive it was ann.
Had all the anger, the emotion, the bitterness
Finally culminated in some violent confrontation?
Were they looking at you as a suspect, you think?
The media. - Of course they're gonna--
That's the first thing you're going to think of.
I already had all the news and the helicopters
And all that, you know, filming the front of my house.
- The local police department got wind of it of course.
- That's basically where detectives
Started asking questions.
- But not very many questions and not for long.
In fact, according to ann,
There was really only one thing those detectives asked her.
Did she know anything about where her arch enemy had gone?
What did you tell them?
- I haven't seen her.
He goes, "that's all I need to know."
Never heard from her again.
- And poof!
Just like that, the police ruled out
Any involvement on the part of ann lydon.
There were other reasons too, of course, for doing that.
One of which was that brittany was just fine
The day before she failed to show up in court.
- They had surveillance footage at this gas station
That showed her getting out of her car,
Putting gas in it, and then driving away.
Nothing unusual.
- And between the time that video
Was recorded on July 6th
Then court the next morning,
It turned out ann lydon had an unassailable alibi.
So, what could brittany's family do?
Through all their efforts,
They couldn't persuade the police
That a crime had occurred,
That something bad may have happened to brittany,
And thus the investigation stalled.
So, those who loved brittany had no choice
But to follow what leads there were on their own.
- We were keeping cool heads and being vigilant,
Trying to do everything possible,
Coaxing them to do things they hadn't done.
"did my sister go on a cruise?
"did she leave town for a week or something?
"search this area.
"you haven't searched this area.
Why haven't you done this?"
- But they also hired a private investigator,
Remember, and he had an idea.
If they couldn't find brittany,
Maybe somehow they could find her dogs.
- We were checking the pounds.
We were doing anything and everything
You can possibly imagine.
- Word about the dogs spread
And a week after brittany's disappearance,
A call came in and what do you know?
- A tiny white dog.
- It looked like a rabbit at first.
- Her dogs were found in columbia, south carolina.
- Ah. - Without collars.
Just roaming the streets,
And they were both found separately.
- How did they manage to connect two dogs
In columbia, south carolina, to her?
- She had the microchips implanted in the dogs
With her information on them,
So the veterinary clinic were able to scan them
And figured out that these dogs were from florida.
- And belong to brittany.
- They belonged to brittany, yep.
- Now all of the sudden the case broke loose,
Because one of the dogs is found two or three states away.
No tags.
Um, now finally there's probable cause.
There's no question.
That was, uh, a key-- a key break.
- That was enough to get the police involved,
But unfortunately, at that point,
It was 11 days after she disappeared.
- Finally, st. Augustine police took over
From the band of amateur sleuths.
Pat flew to florida to do what she could to help,
Met with the police, did the rounds of local media,
Tried to keep the search for in her sister
Front and center in the public mind.
- The family long ago ruled out any possibility
That this is just a purely innocent, uh,
Departure for her.
I mean, you know, that just is not possible
That she would abandon her pets and--
And, you know, stop calling her friends.
I really felt that it was a short--
A brief window of opportunity
While there was still some publicity about the case,
And then people will move on.
There will be other stories.
- Quite reasonable worry,
Especially when the search for brittany
Seemed to be going nowhere.
- Her picture had been everywhere,
And had she been anywhere, somebody in florida--
Somebody would have seen her picture.
That's why we started to think she really has disappeared.
- And then, suddenly, a break.
Almost two weeks after brittany disappeared,
The police finally picked up her trail.
Looked like she was on a long, winding road trip.
What they found were her credit card transactions,
Which headed north from florida to south carolina
Where her dogs were found.
- They were following her credit card transactions.
There were transactions in north carolina,
Idaho, oregon.
- The question was, was brittany alone?
Or was she with someone else?
Was she the driver? The willing passenger?
Or was there something else going on?
- And what about that young drifter
Who disappeared along with brittany?
- He said, "I'm not what people think I am,"
And I thought, "wonder what that means?"
- They thought maybe the two of them had just left,
Could have just gone on a trip together, just left town.
- You realize that something irreversible has happened.
- When "dateline: Secrets uncovered" continues.
♪♪
Welcome back to "dateline: Secrets uncovered."
I'm craig melvin.
Brittany tavar had generously opened her home
To people who needed a place to stay,
But brittany kept details of these relationships a secret,
And now she was gone.
Investigators discovered a trail of digital breadcrumbs
Leading across the country,
And the race was on to catch up to her.
Back to keith morrison with "the stranger."
- A spouse is late for dinner.
A teenager stays out all night.
The awful, sinking feeling
When a loved one is out of touch.
Usually, of course, everything rights itself,
But not for the family of brittany tavar.
In July of 2010, they found themselves stuck fast
In the purgatory of missing persons,
The place where families must go to wait,
For what they do not know.
- You alternate between, "it's not real.
"it isn't really happening."
To having these terrible, terrible moments
Where you realize that something irreversible has happened.
- Brittany's two little dogs had been found,
Abandoned by the side of the road,
Three states away in south carolina.
Brittany loved those dogs,
Would never abandon them,
And yet, the credit card record
Made it look like she had done exactly that,
That she'd been driving her car
Clear across the country.
At last, a nationwide alert was issued for brittany's car.
Now with the whole nation's law enforcement on watch,
The answer to what happened to brittany tavar
Should not be long in coming.
The family held its collective breath,
Waited, and hoped.
- We were dealing with the bank authorities,
And they were talking to the police.
If there's any activity, one guy had a pager on him
With one of the cards.
If anybody tries to put anything through on this card,
Our guy's pager's gonna go off.
- By now, the local police had been joined
By u.S. Marshals and the fbi.
And attention now turned to the young man
Who'd been living at brittany's house,
The one she'd been showing off at the beach club,
26 year old joe roberts.
It seems that joe had left
Around the same time as brittany disappeared,
And police now had to consider the distinct possibility
That brittany had simply washed her hands
Of the feud with ann lydon
And taken off on a cross-country trip with young joe.
For justine griffin, that only made the story more interesting.
- I mean, living in her house for free, so...
- Makes you think, doesn't it?
- Yeah. They thought maybe the two of them had just left,
Could have just gone on a trip together,
Just left town.
- So, really, it was all speculation.
In fact, nobody had a clue what those two did.
And then another lucky break,
Or it seemed lucky.
The good news in mid-July--
Police found out that just four days after brittany vanished,
A cop stopped her toyota on a highway out west,
But brittany wasn't driving. Joe was.
- On July 11th, uh, roberts was actually stopped by police
In wyoming for speeding.
- The bad news?
That cop stopped the car before the alert went out.
He wasn't looking for the car or brittany or anybody.
He said he didn't recall seeing a passenger,
But then, he wasn't looking for one.
- They let him go with a warning.
- And now that car and whoever was in it was long gone.
But that stop triggered a serious effort
To find joe roberts.
- It was after that
That they had released an arrest warrant for him
With grand theft charges.
- So the investigation took a turn,
The police hoping that finding roberts
Would lead to finding brittany.
They went on tv hoping to raise public awareness.
- We believe that they, uh, car's gonna relate to people
More so than him,
Because it's a rav4 dark blue color vehicle
With florida tags.
He pretty much can blend in with any crowd.
- Trouble was, police soon discovered,
That only a few days after brittany disappeared,
Just after the time of that traffic stop,
The credit card trail abruptly ended.
They must have stopped using the card,
And without the credit card trail,
The police had no idea where roberts and brittany were now,
Or if they were even still together,
And if not, where was she,
And what was he up to?
- What we're concerned about
Is did he meet someone else at a coffee shop?
And is he living in someone's house right now?
And that's why I think it's very important
To get this story out as much as possible.
- And all that effort finally produced another break,
Or what seemed like a break and justine's next big story.
Police discovered somebody caught roberts on videotape
Just four days after he and brittany disappeared.
- There was surveillance footage of him
Walking into a walmart in ontario, oregon,
And him buying a tent and some clothes.
- Just him. No brittany.
But, again, by the time somebody found the walmart video
And got it to the florida police,
Roberts was nowhere to be found.
- So they had alerted police in that area,
Had started putting out flyers.
It looked like from-- once he got to the walmart,
He was going to go off the grid
With his tent to live in the woods.
- But just who was this kid anyway?
What was his story before brittany took him in?
Oh, a lesson in recent history seemed in order--
The curious story of young joe roberts.
- He said to me something really interesting
Which I thought was-- kind of stopped me for a second.
He goes, "I'm not what people think I am,"
And I thought, "wonder what that means?"
- That strange and charming drifter--
Was he hiding a shady past?
- Well, he would just sleep in his car,
But this is how he came to know a few other women
In st. Augustine. - The more I got to know him,
The more he started scaring me.
- When "dateline: Secrets uncovered" continues.
♪♪
- It's a strange thing, rather cruel, actually,
How an answer so desperately sought
Can slip away just at the moment of capture.
Police had finally sniffed out the trail
Left by joe roberts, the one person
Who seemed to know what happened to brittany tavar,
But before they could catch up to joe,
He was gone in a puff of oregon fog.
- The investigators had alerted, uh, police and law enforcement
All the way up through washington,
Past seattle in the pacific northwest,
'cause they thought he was headed in that direction.
- Meanwhile, investigators warned brittany's family.
- Well, they were telling me he had a history
Of falling off the radar screen.
- And sure enough, that's just what he did.
And days turned into weeks.
Summer turned into fall.
No sign of him.
Police suspicions turned darker.
- I think it's important for us here in florida
Not to lose interest
And to not just be thinking and puttin' it off
As this guy is, you know, 2,000 miles away,
'cause he might still be in our backyard
Or comin' back to our backyard, for all we know.
- Life went on for the rest of the world,
But not for those who loved brittany tavar,
And who knew full well
That time is not on the side of the missing.
- I really did feel that the more time went on,
The less likely we would be to find him.
- Brittany's family found themselves in kind of limbo,
A barren landscape shared by more people
Than they had ever imagined was possible.
- People would say to me, "oh, you need to talk to so-and-so.
"his sister disappeared."
There are hundreds of thousands of missing persons,
Um, all heartbreaking stories,
And you're just a number in a pool of people
Who are going through this or who have gone through this.
- Back in florida,
Police had been digging up everything they could find
About joe roberts.
As crime reporter justine griffin learned,
Joe had been on the road roaming the country,
Ran out of money about the time he got to st. Augustine
Where he began living off the kindness of local women.
- Came here and got a job
Working as a clerk at a kangaroo gas station,
And, uh, I guess when he couldn't afford
To stay at a local motel, he would just sleep in his car,
But this is how he came to know
A few other women in st. Augustine.
- One of them was a coworker,
A single mother named cheryl davenport.
As joe needed a place to stay,
Cheryl invited him to her place,
Put him a spare bedroom right down the hall
From cheryl and her two little children.
- He was a nice guy.
He was always really good around the kids.
- So cheryl wasn't worried about joe--
No reason to be, apparently.
- Joe has too much of a pretty boy face.
He wasn't very intimidating at all.
I think I was more intimidating than he was.
- But then cheryl began to tell us
Some rather more disturbing things about joe.
- He told me that the reason why he left home,
He had run some type of internet scheme
To where he was getting people's credit card numbers
And stuff like that.
And they had found out, and so he took off.
- He confessed this to you? - Yeah.
And he said that him and his family don't get along,
Because they believe he has mental issues,
Severely messed up in the head,
And that he was convinced he didn't have issues.
- When he moved in, said cheryl,
He told her he used to have a drug problem,
But swore he'd stay clean,
Certainly at least while living with cheryl and her family.
- He actually looked for a job
For the first month.
And then he slowly just got lazier and lazier.
- What was he doing? - He was going on drug binges.
That's when the anger, like, started coming out.
The more I got to know him, the more he started scaring me,
And the more he started upsetting me.
- And that's when she says she demanded
That joe get out of her house.
And then...
- He was about this close into my face,
And he went like this,
Like he was gonna punch me in the face.
And I just looked at him with a dead stare
And I was like, "joe,"
I was like, "I swear to god, if you hit me,
I will take you down." [laughing]
- So he left and found brittany,
Who police would learn told her friends
Not long before she disappeared
That she was getting a little exasperated with joe, too.
- She said that, um, she would come home,
And he would have gone through her stuff
And that they got in a few little fights.
I was kind of worried. I asked her about them.
You know, she would go, "no, it's okay, it's okay."
- Did you warn her? - No, I did, I did.
I warned her about having people into her house.
- And now still no word.
- We still didn't stop believing
That there was a chance that she was alive.
- Police rededicated their efforts
To find the elusive joe roberts.
- We are looking for him. There's no question about that.
- Then sure enough.
- We figured it would be something trite or petty
That he'd get caught for.
Sure enough, that's what happened.
- The drifter makes a mistake,
And brittany's family learns the truth.
- It's just chilling for me to think about that.
- When "dateline: Secrets uncovered" continues.
♪♪
- Welcome back.
The search for brittany tavar
Became a hunt for her secretive roommate,
A drifter named joe roberts.
He was the one person who could answer
Whether brittany was still alive,
But roberts had been good at covering his tracks so far.
Now police were hoping he would slip up.
Here's keith morrison
With the conclusion of the stranger.
- For three long months, brittany tavar
Was just missing.
And all the searching since by agencies
From the canadian mounties to the fbi
Had produced no sign of brittany or joe roberts,
The young boarder who disappeared along with her.
Nothing, not a thing.
But then on October 12th, 2010...
- He was caught in seattle
In a grocery store in the area,
Trying to steal lunch meat.
- His captor was a clerk in a grocery store.
- He wasn't a sheriff. He wasn't a police officer.
He was somebody that was employed by a grocery store
To deter theft.
- But it wasn't until after the seattle police
Showed up and arrested roberts on a shoplifting charge
They discovered this was one very wanted man,
And so called the police in st. Augustine, florida.
- Sometimes we just have to count on luck,
And sometimes we can count on their mistake,
And in this case I think he made a mistake,
And, um, we had a little luck on our side.
- And then a little more luck.
- They had found brittany tavar's car parked
In, like, a north seattle library parking lot.
The keys had been locked inside of it, actually.
- So the police had the car, but no brittany.
It wasn't long before policemen from florida
Were sitting in a seattle interrogation room
With young mr. Roberts.
Her family waited again,
This time to hear what roberts would say.
Only he could resolve the mystery,
Why she'd been out of touch for months.
- You always hold out a small amount of hope
That she would be alive, and you never give up hope.
- And then within three hours,
There in that police station,
Joe roberts finally answered the question
That had been hanging over everybody,
Half hope, half dread,
Over what happened to brittany tavar.
- The answer was perhaps the most dreadful story
This young crime reporter had yet written,
Taken right from the confession roberts gave police.
- She woke up early on the morning of her court case,
And woke him up very angry
That something wasn't done correctly
Or he didn't do it at all
And was bugging him early in the morning,
Trying to get him out of bed, yelling at him.
- Now why would she do that?
It didn't take but a minute
For her friends to figure it out.
- This whole big argument with joe was about
Him not being able to get this dvd or cd
Up to perfection about what they were gonna take to court.
- The court case against ann lydon, that is.
And so her friends speculated about what happened
That last morning of her life,
Said she must have vented her temper on a man
Who according to a former landlady
Had a drug habit, possible mental health issues,
And an anger problem.
- I think it just got to the point
Where he got pushed to the point of no return.
- In a statement to police,
Roberts said they argued
The nght before her disappearance.
And then the next morning
Brittany went off about something,
Which is when...
- He grabbed a hammer
And hit her in the head a couple of times.
- That anger issue again. - Right.
And she was laying on their-- on the kitchen floor bleeding.
And in the report he says
There was lots and lots of blood.
And at first he tried to stuff her body
In the attic of her house,
But he said that she was too heavy for him to carry
All the way up those stairs,
And then decided he was going to leave town
And dump her body in the woods.
Roberts would tell investgators
That he brought the dogs with him
To buy him some time,
Because he knew people that knew her well
Would think that it was strange
That she just left without her animals.
- It was a shock, of course.
And then joe roberts answered another question,
This one with no good answer,
Where was brittany?
- She was found on a state road,
Sort of where some homeless camps in the area,
But it's mainly just woods.
- One of the most terrible things would be
To know that someone you loved died in fear,
You know, died in a moment of terror and pain.
And that was a very, very hard thing for me to accept.
It just was-- even today, it's just chilling
For me to think about that.
- But at least...
- We never would have found the body
If he hadn't told us, you know,
It was in a forest somewhere.
And the likelihood, you know,
Maybe it would show up in 20 years,
But we wouldn't have found it.
- Having offered his detailed confession to police,
Roberts pleaded not guilty to first degree murder.
But ultimately his case did not go to trial.
After years of legal wrangling...
- State your name. - Joseph roberts.
- Roberts pleaded guilty to second degree murder
On an amended indictment in may, 2014.
- And you still believe this plea is in your best interest?
- Yes, sir. - Thank you.
- And was sentenced to 30 years
In a florida state correctional facility.
As brittany's family struggled
With the aftermath of her loss,
Her friends looked after brittany's dogs.
And her friends mourn, as does her family.
- My sister was the one
That my parents worried about the most, you know?
She was the one they were concerned about,
Because she had the hardest time
Getting her feet on a path in life,
Finding her way.
We never, ever, ever dreamed
That anything like this would happen,
That anything violent would happen to her.
I guess you have a point from which you move on,
But there isn't really closure.
That actually is something that the homicide detectives know.
There really isn't closure.
You know, that's a cliche that people use,
But there's no closure.
- Brittany tavar lived life on her own terms.
Naive? Maybe. Reckless? Sometimes.
And it cost her dearly.
- She just thought she was invincible.
She didn't think anything bad could happen.
- But that's part of who she was.
She did have a very big heart.
- So she did, and lived out loud
And was exuberant and generous,
And for those who loved her, is eternally missed
For all of those things.
- She was my sister, and I've been robbed
Of the rest of my life with my sister.
I've been robbed of that relationship.
I've been robbed of those conversations.
You know, I've been robbed of that friendship.
- That's all for this edition
Of "dateline: Secrets uncovered."
I'm craig melvin. Thank you for watching.