[Nic Edwards] You can't write this stuff.
It doesn't get any more strange or bizarre than this.
[reporter 1] Police are treating the deaths
of Barry and Honey Sherman as suspicious.
[reporter 2] One of the nation's wealthiest couples found dead
at their mansion in Toronto.
[Michael Arntfield] You don't get to be someone of Barry Sherman's wealth
and not make a few enemies along the way.
[reporter 3] Police say this could be the key.
This individual is a suspect.
[Michael] This was clearly done expressively.
Is this done as some sort of message?
Or is this done strictly for some perverse gratification?
[Monica Button] I am just frantic.
I'm calling everyone I can think of.
We have to find Nieko.
His cell phone ping heading to Michigan
and then heading to Tennessee.
After almost five years of dead-end leads,
today police found the pick-up truck
Nieko Lisi had been driving when he disappeared.
It was just, like, the wind had been sucked right out of my sails.
[siren blaring]
[narrator reading]
[narrator] The police are called to a mansion
in one of Toronto's wealthiest neighborhoods.
What they discover sends shockwaves across the country.
[reporter 1] Canadian police are investigating
the mysterious death of one of the nation's wealthiest couples.
We turn to that murder mystery that has gripped Canada.
[reporter 2] The Shermans were found there Friday, strangled.
CBC News has confirmed they were found beside the pool in the basement.
[reporter 3] Police are treating the deaths as suspicious
and homicide detectives have taken over the case.
The memorial will be held at the International Centre.
[reporter 4] To hold everyone who came to say goodbye,
the prime minister among them.
Remember this...
Our parents never left anyone behind.
They were taken from us.
[narrator] Barry Sherman was born in 1942
into a Jewish family in Toronto.
His father, a partner in a zipper-making company,
dies when Barry is nine years old.
Barry grew up as a bookish kid.
He was gifted in math and science from a very early age.
Was not into sports,
was quiet, shy, reserved.
[narrator] A bright teenager,
at 16 Barry studies engineering
at the University of Toronto
and completes a PhD in astrophysics at MIT.
[Molly Hayes] He was very driven.
In his teens he worked for his uncle who ran a pharmaceutical company.
Barry was a workaholic.
He was invested in math and science,
and he learned the pharmaceutical business
from his uncle and he excelled.
This was also someone who admitted to having an ego.
He told a Globe and Mail reporter that his IQ was 180,
and that he'd declined an offer to work for NASA.
[narrator] By the mid '70s, Barry owns his own pharma company
with annual sales ultimately exceeding $1 billion.
[Molly] Honey was volunteering at a a hospital when she met Barry.
She was there. Her mom said it was a good place to meet a doctor.
And a friend, a nurse, had introduced her to Barry.
A year later they were married.
They have four children.
Three daughters and a son.
[narrator] Barry's wife Honey rises to prominence in Canadian philanthropy,
serving on the boards of several charities.
Dancing in the drugstore...
with Apotex products.
I think from the moment we heard whispers that the Shermans,
that there was something involving the Shermans,
it was very obvious that it was going to be a huge deal.
[narrator] On December 12th, Honey misses a board meeting at her hospital foundation
without notifying them beforehand.
This is highly unusual for her.
Reached by email, Honey says I'm dealing with some stuff.
The next day, Honey meets Barry at work
to discuss design plans for a new house they're constructing.
She drives home and Barry leaves the office a little later.
It's the last day the Shermans are seen alive.
[Molly] So, Barry and Honey were in the process of selling their home,
and it was a real estate agent who came by the house on December 15th.
The Shermans' real estate agent
was showing the home to two prospective buyers.
They're touring this big magnificent home
and now it's time for the lap pool, the hot tub area.
And they walk into this horrific scene
where they discover the homeowners have been killed in this room.
Barry was seated with his legs outstretched in front of him.
One was crossed over the other.
His glasses were sitting on his face untouched.
[Nic] They had belts tied around their necks
hanging from the railing around the pool.
They're both almost in this seated position.
It's very strange.
[Michael] The manner in which the bodies were discovered
is indicative of what's known as a low hang.
You're going to stage a crime scene
to look like a murder-suicide,
a very expedited convenient method
to use for the offender.
[narrator] One eerie detail about the scene,
the positions of Barry and Honey's bodies,
nearly match those of a sculpture of human figures
sitting on speakers in the basement.
[Michael] This was clearly done expressively.
Is this done as some sort of message
that only a handful of people would understand?
Or is this done strictly for some perverse gratification
to further degrade the victims in death.
[narrator] After initially investigating the scene,
the police can't say definitively
if it's a homicide or murder-suicide.
[Michael] The first investigators on the scene would have
no doubt been a little perplexed.
This was not the type of scene that they were accustomed to seeing.
The cause of death for both Shermans was ligature neck compression
with the only presented options being double suicide,
homicide-suicide, or double homicide.
Now we have to consider was this murder or was this suicide.
And also we have the fact that there's no forced entry into the home.
The fact that there's no forced entry,
the offender was known to the Shermans and was allowed entry
or got the drop on Honey Sherman when she arrived home
and essentially forced his way in.
[narrator] The Sherman family is not convinced this is a murder-suicide.
They hire a famous lawyer, Brian Greenspan, to conduct a parallel investigation.
The lawyer assembles his own team
of private investigators and forensic specialists
and even conducts a new autopsy.
The second pathologist hired to look at the bodies
determines it's unlikely Barry or Honey died by suicide.
Furthermore, the abrasions found on Barry and Honey's wrists
indicate that they may have been handcuffed,
possibly with something like zip ties.
The second pathologist was able to extrapolate
that the scene had been staged
just from the data he was able to acquire from the autopsies.
After the second autopsy,
We realized that we're talking about a double homicide investigation.
[narrator] The police begin to change their tune.
I believe in the six weeks of review of the evidence that we've attained
that they were targeted.
[indistinct chatter]
[narrator] Now that the police are convinced this is a double murder,
the question becomes who would want to kill Honey and Barry Sherman?
[Michael] When it comes to strangulation homicides,
in the case of the Shermans,
this is either something very personal
or this was something that needed to be done with expertise.
Maybe a combination of both.
[narrator] One of the first people police are interested in speaking with is
Barry Sherman's cousin, Kerry Winter.
Kerry Winter definitely had motive to kill Barry Sherman.
He hated the guy.
Kerry and Barry at some point were very close.
So much so that at one point
Barry was almost like a father figure to Kerry Winter.
In his younger years, Barry had actually been quite supportive of him financially.
You know, supporting his different ventures.
Many, most of them, failed.
But at some point he discovers these documents
that he said show that he was owed a share of Barry's fortune.
[narrator] Their relationship sours when Kerry Winter finds out
that Barry allegedly lied to him about an agreement Barry had with Kerry's dad.
[Nic] Kerry Winter's father owns Empire Laboratories.
Kerry's father passes away unexpectedly.
At some point Barry takes over Empire Laboratories.
And at this time, Barry Sherman fails to mention to his cousins
that they have the opportunity to purchase some of their father's company.
From there Barry Sherman goes on to great success
with his new company Apotex.
Kerry Winter believes that he is due money
or a portion of Barry's company
based off of his father's success in creating Empire Laboratories.
And so this led to a lawsuit that went on for a decade.
[Nic] A lawsuit from Kerry Winter backfires in his face.
Three short months before the Shermans are killed,
a judge rules against Kerry Winter.
So much so that the judge also determines
that Kerry Winter is now due to pay $300,000
back to Barry Sherman in legal fees.
[narrator] Kerry Winter is livid and in a strange twist shortly after the murders,
he makes a remarkable admission to Canada's public broadcaster
about a conversation he had with Barry years earlier.
[Kerry Winter] He said, "Kerry, I want you to do me a favor."
And I said, "What's that, Barry?"
He said, "I want you to whack my wife."
And I said, "You're serious?
You're asking me to arrange whacking your wife?"
He said, "Yeah, I hate her."
[narrator] Toronto police interview Kerry Winter as part of their investigation.
[Molly] He was very vocal about his dislike for Barry.
He said he didn't do it,
but he also said he could have and would have.
The stories he had were far-fetched to say the least.
I don't believe for a minute that Kerry Winter had either direct involvement
or any direct knowledge of these murders.
[narrator] Losing the lawsuit gave Kerry motive,
but it turns out he wasn't the only one suing Barry,
and police quickly realize they have their hands full.
Barry Sherman was in the generic pharma business,
and there's a lot of lawsuits that come with that industry.
On one side you have Big Pharma protecting their patents.
On the other side you have the generic knock-offs
fighting each other for market share.
All to say the generic drug business is a pretty cutthroat industry,
and Barry had quite the reputation.
He was in dozens of legal fights at a time.
Rival companies, rival litigants
in his multiplicity of court filings.
You don't get to be someone of Barry Sherman's wealth
and not make a few enemies along the way.
[narrator] Even though they deny it,
it's been reported that a German pharmaceutical company
allegedly hired private investigators
to try and recruit Barry's employees as informants.
Barry was even convinced that they tried to plant
illegal drugs in his car to frame him.
You have to wonder, would one of these companies take this a little too far?
[narrator] Barry was convinced his pharma business rivals were out to get him.
A spokesperson from his company once told The New York Times
Barry was receiving death threats.
Barry was a brilliant businessman,
but he was also known to enter into other more questionable ventures.
Barry Sherman found himself involved with scam artists, with fraudsters.
At one point he invests in this yacht company.
The problem is there were no yachts.
It was only a shell company. It was a scam.
[narrator] Barry invests in dozens of companies
including a failed casino bid,
a money-losing gold mine
and a company that deals in loose diamonds that files for bankruptcy.
We know of all these stories.
These people have come out of the woodwork.
So, this is a huge challenge for investigators.
These are all potential persons of interest,
who need to be eliminated, and if they can't be eliminated,
get elevated to the level of suspect.
[Nic] The problem is the people that he got involved with,
he didn't vet these people.
He was naive. He wasn't street smart.
[narrator] Barry is connected to another convicted fraudster.
Shaun Rootenberg allegedly took Barry's money to invest in an online trivia game.
He isn't a suspect for the murders,
but the timing of the deal draws suspicion.
[Nic] Just days before Barry Sherman is killed,
he instructs his attorneys to file an aggressive motion
for a lawsuit against Shaun Rootenberg.
[Michael] In Barry's case there was a lot of eccentric characters
sort of on the fringes of his life at any given time
that normally people of his status would have nothing to do with.
[narrator] One person police are very interested in speaking with is
Barry's best friend, Frank D'Angelo.
Frank D'Angelo is another big character
that emerged in this story early on.
Frank loved Barry.
He described him as like a brother to him.
Frank D'Angelo is a guy that looks like he just got off the set of The Sopranos.
He's an entrepreneur in the food and beverage industry.
D'Angelo's even got a restaurant called
the Forget About It Supper Club.
There's such a contrast between them because Barry is,
you know, this sort of introverted serious workaholic
and Frank is this larger than life character.
And we know that Barry bankrolled a lot of Frank's ventures.
[narrator] Frank convinces Barry to invest in the film industry,
including a gangster vampire movie starring James Caan
and Frank as the main character.
[Frank D'Angelo] I swore to God that I would never tell anybody.
[narrator] Barry also partners with Frank in the beverage and brewery business.
[Nic] The company ends up losing $100 million
and goes belly up and files for bankruptcy.
[narrator] Barry keeps betting on Frank.
He finances more of his films,
most of them starring Frank.
One person who isn't impressed with Frank is Barry's son.
Barry Sherman's son, Jonathon, he's this successful guy.
Educated from Columbia, his father is investing in him.
However, Jonathon wants to know why is my father giving
so much money to this guy and his weird ideas?
Why wouldn't he be investing in me? I'm his son.
Why wouldn't he be investing in our family, our legacy?
A lot of the reporting suggests that Jonathon was quite bothered
by his father's relationship, particularly his business relationship with this guy.
[narrator] In a heated email exchange with his father in the spring of 2015,
Jonathon questions the logic of spending so much money on Frank.
Barry disagrees and ends the conversation
by sending Jonathon a trailer to one of Frank's films
and says actors in Hollywood clearly take him seriously.
[Nic] We need to look at this through the lens of their friendship.
And Barry's not going to listen to his son.
Frank's his buddy. He listens to Frank.
[narrator] The Toronto Star reports that Jonathon wanted
more money for his own ventures
and less with Frank D'Angelo.
In an email to his sisters, Jonathon even suggests
their father's actions were jeopardizing their inheritance.
After the Shermans die, Frank is devastated.
But Jonathon is adamant that he not attend any of the services.
[narrator] With Barry gone, Frank had a lot to lose.
He's not considered a suspect.
Police question him anyway and are tight-lipped about the investigation.
But in the Sherman's social circles,
speculation swirls over who could be
the real focus of the investigation.
We've had to navigate through a terrifying maze
of non-information and unfounded speculation.
A lingering question in this case for investigators
is if Barry Sherman was the primary target,
why also kill Honey?
Who gains from Honey Sherman's death
in addition to Barry Sherman's?
[narrator] With Honey deceased,
Barry's will stipulates that the entire Sherman fortune is left to their four children.
The family tries to have the details of the will sealed,
but police have made it known the contents of the will are part of their investigation.
I think it's fair to say that it would be a sensible investigative move
to look at who stood to inherit from somebody
who really did have so much money.
[narrator] When a reporter asks the Sherman's son Jonathon
why he thinks detectives are including the will in their case,
Jonathon simply replies, "I would hope they have looked at all of the family."
According to reports, Jonathon admits that Barry asked him
to repay $50 million two weeks before the murders,
and then says he's not going to kill his dad because he needs $50 million.
It's also reported that in the year leading up to his death,
Barry was working on plans to give away a large part of his wealth to charity.
In other words, not to his kids.
Police investigators have publicly indicated
that they have a working theory in this case.
That said, this is not an inquiry
where you would want to proceed to naming a suspect,
much less making an arrest,
until you had absolutely all your ducks in a row.
This is a case that if and when it goes to litigation
will be an absolute circus.
[narrator] Four years go by and after hundreds of search warrants,
interviews and no suspects,
the case seems stalled.
But then out of nowhere, the police make a surprise announcement.
[reporter 1] This is the person detectives now say is wanted
for the murders of Honey and Barry Sherman.
[reporter 2] Police say this 22-second video clip
could be the key to solve a four-year-old double murder.
This individual is a suspect.
[narrator] December 2021, four years after the murders,
police release a video of a suspect walking near the Sherman property.
[Molly] It shows a man walking on the Sherman's street that night.
It's from a security camera on a neighboring house. It's not from their own.
They didn't have any security cameras despite their wealth.
[narrator] The media asks why the police waited
four years to release the video.
One school of thought is that police held back
this particular piece of evidence
hoping to identify this person on their own.
So, police had collected four terabytes of video footage in this case
and that almost every single person they saw,
they were able to identify and rule out.
But this man was the one person that they said they could not account for.
That there was something suspicious about why he was there that night.
[narrator] If you look closely,
there's a small detail that might be an important clue.
What police point out in particular is that he has this very specific gait.
[narrator] An abnormal stride or limp can be very telling.
Michael Arntfield, who teaches criminology,
analyzes the video and informs the police of an intriguing theory.
I actually received a tip
from a very experienced physiotherapist who works with veterans and amputees.
She felt that this was actually
a very seasoned amputee walking with a prosthetic leg.
I subsequently insured through my contacts
that this information was passed on to investigators.
The suspect sounds like the bad guy from The Fugitive.
You can't write this stuff. It doesn't get anymore strange or bizarre than this.
Can one imagine that after everything that has gone in this case,
all the twist and turns, and characters, and conjecture,
that you also have a one-legged man at the end?
It's uncanny.
[narrator] Police continue to say very little
regarding their investigation.
And while the media and the public
have their opinions about the case, one thing is certain,
whoever killed the Shermans is still a mystery.
There's no end of theories out there.
There's no end to the amount of potential suspects
that one could be looking at.
[Michael] This really, sort of, is a Shakespearean drama
with a bunch of characters and interpretations,
and people forget about the actual crime.
This case was so high profile from the beginning,
and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau
was at the memorial service for this family.
So, as much as it's become this sort of larger than life mystery to solve,
I think it's also very politically charged,
and there's a lot of pressure on Toronto police to solve this.
These were billionaires, but they were also parents, and grandparents,
and, you know, they had an active social life.
One of the things that was reported so much in the beginning
was that Honey had been emailing with her friends,
looking to setup a dinner party
when they got to Florida that winter.
So Honey, in particular, was very generous,
and they donated tens of millions of dollars
to universities, health care centers.
And as the daughter of Holocaust survivors,
Jewish charities were particularly close to her heart.
[narrator] In September 2022,
the Sherman family sells Barry's company, Apotex, to an American firm
for an undisclosed amount of money.
There's a $10 million reward
for information leading to an arrest
for the murders of Barry and Honey Sherman.
It's a case that started in New York
and has ties to middle Tennessee.
It involves a young man missing for nearly 10 years who was last seen in Franklin.
[reporter] Nieko Lisi was last seen on October 1st, 2011
on Flintlock Drive.
This week, the New York State Police
came to town in search of new leads
in the cold case of Nieko Lisi,
and you won't believe what they found.
I just never believed that something so crappy would happen here.
How can someone just disappear? They don't.
Ten years later, it's still just as hard as that first year.
I remember going to the car and just sitting in my car, just crying.
No one is helping me. No one is helping my son.
[narrator] Born in 1993,
Nieko Lisi grows up in the small town of Addison in Upstate New York.
[Monica Button] Nieko's dad and I were married,
and we had three children.
We divorced when the boys were two and three.
I was pregnant with my daughter.
Nieko as a brother was very tough,
protective, fun, adventurous.
Nieko was an awesome kid. He was funny, friendly.
He was my special one, you know?
Nieko was a very rambunctious child.
He loved sports, baseball, basketball, soccer, wrestling.
When he was a little bit older
they moved from Addison to Jasper, which is even smaller.
And everybody in the county knew Nieko.
[narrator] Like a lot of teens, Nieko has a rebellious streak.
He didn't like rules. He didn't like authority.
He stuck up for [voice shaking] the underdog.
And sometimes that got him in trouble.
[narrator] In September, 2011,
18-year-old Nieko is working odd jobs for the family
while preparing to apply to the military.
His big thing was the Navy SEALs.
He wanted to be a Navy SEAL like his dad.
[Kerrigan Lisi] He was training with my father.
He would a lot of workouts.
And he was helping my step father a lot
with some different apartment buildings that we own.
[narrator] Friday, September 30th, 2011.
In the evening, Nieko's mom, Monica,
receives a call from her brother.
He says that Nieko and another young man named Robbie Knight
swung by his house in Addison around 2:00 p.m. that day.
Monica said, "Robbie Knight? They're not even friends.
What were they doing together?"
"Well", my brother said,
"Nieko told me that they were going camping in Buffalo."
And I said, "What do you mean they're going camping?"
It's cold out.
He said, "Well, they've met some girls on the internet
and they're going to Buffalo to go camping."
I tried to call Nieko's phone, he wouldn't answer.
And I text him, and I said, "I know you were here today
because your sneakers are gone and your bedroom door is open.
What else did you take?"
And I got a text back, and it said, "Clothes, duh."
And I just thought, [sighs in exasperation] "Now what is he up to?"
[narrator] Nieko's uncle also mentions
that Robbie was driving a truck
that he said belongs to his grandfather.
[Monica] Saturday morning, I went to work.
My sister worked with me at that time. We were both hairdressers.
The first customers of the day came in.
The woman said to my sister, "Did you guys hear about the stolen truck from town?"
And I'm reading this article, and I called my brother,
and I said, "When Nieko was at your house yesterday
what kind of vehicle were those boys in?"
And he starts describing this truck
that I'm reading about in the paper.
[narrator] Monica is unable to reach Nieko that morning.
She calls Robbie's grandparents in the afternoon
to see if they have any information
about Nieko and Robbie's whereabouts.
One of the first questions that I had asked,
"Does Robbie have your truck?"
And Robbie's grandmother said, "We don't have a truck."
At that point I knew
that my son and Robbie Knight were in this stolen truck.
[Rachael Davis] The grandmother said that Robbie appeared
at his parents' house in Romulus, Michigan, that morning.
And Robbie's grandmother said, "Well, nobody saw Nieko. Nieko wasn't with him."
I am just frantic.
I am calling my mom, my brother, my sister, my ex-husband.
I am calling everyone I can think of. We have to find Nieko.
[Rachael] My mom did talk to him, or we thought it was him.
It was about five o'clock in the afternoon,
and the person that was on the phone said,
"No, no, I can't talk right now. I'll call you right back."
And that was the end of contact with Nieko.
-[phone rings] -[Monica] I call the state police.
I said, "I think my son might have something to do
with this stolen truck that I'm reading about in the paper."
"Ma'am, you're gonna have to call back Monday
to talk to an investigator."
I'm like, "Something is going on with my son.
Someone needs to look for my son."
[narrator] Over the weekend, Nieko's family accesses his phone records.
[Kerrigan] As his cell phone pinged in his travels,
we found that it went to various locations in New York,
before heading to Michigan, and then heading to Tennessee.
[narrator] Nieko's cellphone pings for the last time at 4:05 p.m. on October 1st,
on Flintlock Drive in Franklin, Tennessee.
[Alex Denis] It's about 30 minutes south of Nashville.
There are some undercurrents in the community,
just based on wealth,
that people don't like to talk about
all their secrets.
I think it's like that in a lot of small towns.
[narrator] Nieko spent the summer of 2009
and some of his junior year of high school
living in Franklin with an aunt and uncle,
but they say they haven't seen Nieko at all.
Monday, October 3rd.
Nieko's mom, Monica, receives something startling in the mail.
[Monica] There's a letter addressed to Nieko.
I open it up and it was his license.
And it had a note attached that said,
"I found this on the ground. Thought you might need it."
[narrator] The letter says his license was found in Hornell,
a small town in Upstate New York
half an hour north of Nieko's home in Jasper.
The following day, Monica's husband tracks down a phone number
for the father of Robbie, with whom Nieko was last seen.
[Monica] Robbie's dad answered the phone and he said,
"Well, Robbie's with the Michigan State Police right now.
When he comes home I'll have him call you."
When Robbie Knight was questioned
by law enforcement in Michigan
he had some sort of psychiatric episode
and he was taken to a psychiatric hospital for evaluation.
A few days later, I was on Facebook
and I noticed that Robbie had posted,
and it said, "Just got out the hospital.
Show me some love."
[telephone rings]
[narrator] The next day,
Monica learns some shocking news from her brother-in-law.
He said, "Monica, Robbie Knight is dead."
And I said, "What do you mean, he's dead?"
And he said, "One of my coworkers told me
that they spoke with Robbie's grandparents this morning,
and apparently Robbie died last night."
He died of an apparent overdose of prescription medication.
It was just, like, the wind had been sucked right out of my sails.
I had sympathy for his family,
but, as Nieko's aunt,
I was more worried about would we ever, ever find out what happened to him?
As far as we knew, Robbie was the last link to Nieko.
[narrator] Monica combs through Nieko's call log
and reaches out to everyone in Tennessee
that he had been in contact with prior to his disappearance.
On October 15th, she receives a promising lead
from an old classmate of Nieko's.
One young man called back and said that Nieko had been at his house on October 1st
and spent the night.
The young man said
that the next day they went to play soccer,
and then Nieko disappeared and he didn't know where he went.
I immediately called the police.
The investigator called him, and he said,
"I don't know who you are. I'm not comfortable speaking with you."
And that was the end of the phone call.
I was beside myself.
We have a person that says that Nieko was at his house.
Why wouldn't you do something about that?
[narrator] The number of calls
between Nieko and this young man
raises serious red flags for Monica.
From the time Nieko left New York, and went to Michigan,
and on his way to Tennessee he called that boy 36 times.
So what were they talking about on the phone
is my question that has never been answered.
Why an individual needs to be called 36 times
and everyone else is being ignored,
or no other contacts are being reached out, is very odd to me.
[narrator] Months pass with little movement in the case.
Then, in March, 2012, Monica, her sister Rachael, and a friend head to Tennessee
to try and get more information
from the young man who said Nieko stayed at his house.
Whenever I would ask him anything about Nieko the father would interject.
The boy hardly said anything.
[narrator] Monica says that from the initial phone call to the in-person meeting
she received three different stories from the young man
about how Nieko arrived at his house.
"Nieko got dropped off, I picked Nieko up two blocks from here,
Nieko just came walking up to the house."
And I asked was Nieko with anyone?
Well, that was just not discussed.
It was skipped over and we'd move on to something else.
[narrator] Monica soon learns a curious detail about the timeline of events.
The young man sent Nieko a money order for $90.
Nieko picked it up in Ohio seven hours before his cellphone's final ping
in Franklin, Tennessee.
So, my question was, "Why did you send him money?"
And the boy never gave a direct answer.
It was just, "Nieko needed money."
The boy gave me a copy of that money order
and I gave it to the state police.
[narrator] While they're in Franklin,
the three women plaster the town with missing person flyers
and desperately search for any sign of Nieko.
We were up for days.
I went to homeless shelters, I went to bus stations.
I was underneath a bridge [voice shaking] looking for my son
with hundreds of homeless people.
We did go and visit some of the friends that Nieko had
that he kept in touch with after he had gone to school down there.
[narrator] None of the friends have any information to share
about what may have happened to Nieko
or why he drove to Tennessee in the first place.
We just go through the motions,
2012, 2013, 2014, [sniffs] 2015.
We had went through five investigators.
Everybody had different theories.
[Rachael] One of the theories of where Nieko was
is that he's hiding out because they stole that truck.
Other teenagers in school that would come up and tell me
that my brother was chopped up and found in a ditch.
[Rachael] There had been a rumor
that Nieko had been buried inside of a tractor tire.
We had heard that he was under a bridge.
We went and looked under this bridge.
We heard he was along railroad tracks. We walked the tracks.
I stuck my arm down woodchuck holes looking for bones.
[narrator] November, 2015,
the New York State police detectives
who have been leading the investigation
travel to Romulus, Michigan
to interview Robbie Knight's mother and his brother, Christopher.
They actually did a search for Nieko out there
with the help of the Michigan State Police,
but that yielded nothing.
[narrator] Then, in July, 2016,
a tip leads to a major discovery in Nashville, Tennessee.
After almost five years of dead-end leads,
today police found the pickup truck
Nieko Lisi had been driving when he disappeared.
[reporter] They say they found the truck
in a garage of a Middle Tennessee home.
In just a minute you'll see that it was dismantled and stripped down,
which only increases officers' concerns
that foul play was involved in Lisi's disappearance.
It was broken down in different parts
and there were only certain parts of the truck that were remaining.
There was evidence collected,
and, of course, the vehicle itself was collected.
[Alex] In speaking to police, we asked, "Why would a truck be in this condition?"
And they said, "A lot of times
it's because you're trying to cover up a crime."
Now, they couldn't confirm that something had happened here,
but they said that's never a good sign
when you find a vehicle stripped, hiding behind a locked door.
[Monica] I can remember getting the phone call,
and I just felt like
the floor had dropped out from underneath me.
I did not expect the police to be calling me
and telling me that they have located that vehicle.
I just remember feeling if someone did that to that truck
what in God's name did they do to my son?
[narrator] Police haven't publicly released details
of who owns the property where the truck was found,
but they say that there was a connection
between Nieko and the people who lived there at the time of his disappearance.
People in Nieko Lisi's circle from Middle Tennessee
would have been staying at the house.
[Rachael] We found out that the owners of the property
were people that my sister had spoken with
in December of 2011,
and they said that, no, they didn't know that Nieko was missing,
and if they heard anything they would call us,
and they offered their prayers,
and that truck was in that garage the whole time.
[narrator] Desperate for any answers
as to what may have happened to her son,
Monica reaches out to the original owner of the truck
shortly after it is discovered.
[Monica] He had said, "When the police found the truck
they called me and they asked me
if I'd ever hauled a dead animal in the back of that truck."
And he said they had blood evidence.
The blood evidence on the truck that was collected
came back inconclusive.
It was a mixture of male DNA.
In the first few days after the truck was found,
I really, really had faith that someone else was gonna call in another tip.
And I thought, "Finally, after all these years
we're gonna know what happened."
And that day just never came.
[Nathan Neese] Any time you work an older case
it's difficult because memories fade, witnesses pass away.
When Robbie Knight died
my whole family felt that he was our last link.
That turned into a snowball effect
because I believed that Robbie Knight's dad had information,
I believed that his brother, Christopher, had information.
-[bell dings] -And then, after Robbie died, Robbie's dad passed away.
And then, two years later, his brother passes away.
And then we find out after the truck was found
that two people that were involved in the decimation of the truck
have also died.
[narrator] November, 2017.
The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation takes over Nieko's case.
Special Agent in Charge Nathan Neese
believes that there are people still living in the area
who have information that could progress the case.
He's urging them to share what they know.
This property had been rented in 2016,
so the renters and the owners of the property
would have known the truck being in the garage,
and we're looking for that information
if anybody that can come forward
and tell us how did the truck get here?
And what was the circumstances around how the truck got in
the condition that it was found in 2016?
[narrator] For Nieko's family, the pain of not knowing where their loved one is
has only grown deeper over time.
They long for the day when they'll have answers about their beloved Nieko.
[Kerrigan] I just moved back home about a year ago,
and moving back home was probably just as much
as a struggle as the first few years
because everybody wanted updates.
And it was just really hard going into the local stores
and seeing his missing posters still.
I also have two young boys
[voice shaking] who won't ever get to meet their uncle.
And quite frankly, I'm not even sure what to tell them.
I don't ever use the word closure...
because I think of a book.
And you could never close a book on your child.
Whether he's alive or whether he's not,
it's still a story that will go on for years to come.
So what I look for is resolution to this event.
[Rachael] The most important thing, to me,
is that we can bring Nieko home
and lay him to rest
so that we have a place to go and visit him.
Part of me wants justice for Nieko,
but at this point in time
all I care about is I want him home.