NARRATOR: A young mother of three vanishes
from a remote California suburb.
LINDA: He saw his wife's car by the side of the road
with a flat tire.
NARRATOR: And leaves a disturbing mystery
in her wake.
JEFF: The flat tire didn't look right to him.
NARRATOR: Could she have been looking for a fresh start?
DENNIS: She had said that
she just wanted to leave and disappear.
LINDA: She could have just needed a break or had a break.
LARRY: There's no way that she would leave her kids.
Maybe she had been abducted from that vehicle.
JEFF: There is a series of bodies being found.
LINDA: She would be the victim of a killer
that was killing younger women.
NARRATOR: A family waits years for answers.
LARRY: I started getting mad.
I was afraid I might not be able to control myself.
NARRATOR: Until detectives learn the truth
may lie disturbingly close to home.
LINDA: Maybe she had gone off with her boyfriend
who wanted to get rid of her.
JEFF: This is a setup.
LARRY: And I was totally shocked.
JEFF: The youngest child said,
"I know why you're here.
You think my mom's buried in the backyard."
[**]
NARRATOR: Just north of the border with Mexico,
the small town of Jamul offers breathtaking views
of the majestic Southern California desert.
LINDA: Jamul is known as East County San Diego,
and it's about as far east as you can get.
The properties are large.
You can see a lot of rolling hills
and oak trees.
LARRY: The people are real friendly.
They're-- they're-- they're spread out.
They like a privacy.
[**]
NARRATOR: But a few days before Christmas in 1991,
the peace of the hillside community is disrupted
when a throng of law enforcement
descends upon a home on a normally quiet street.
LINDA: On December 21st, 1991,
investigators obtained a search warrant
to search the backyard,
hoping to find a woman who had been missing.
[**]
DENNIS: The property itself is a four-acre
piece of-- of land with a house on it
and ravine behind the property.
One section in the ravine was filled in.
From investigators' standpoint, you'd look at that and say,
"Why would someone fill in
just one 20-foot section of a ravine
that's a natural runoff for water?"
It didn't really make a lot of sense.
JEFF: The backhoe operator was able to dig
a hole down there, probably eight to ten feet deep.
They found a portion of a chain-link fence
down in the hole.
It had been basically nailed into the ground
with two wooden stakes
so it wouldn't wash away if there was ever any flood.
NARRATOR: As detectives step in for a closer look
at their strange discovery,
they spot something beneath the chain-link fence
that looks like a blanket.
JEFF: A sheriff's detective pulled out a knife
and dug around the cloth material found in the hole.
And she felt a bone.
Our forensic anthropologist
was able to determine that it was a knee bone.
NARRATOR: The detectives believe
their gruesome discovery may finally end a dark mystery
that has pained a family for four years.
DENNIS: The only identifying thing on the body itself
was the clothing,
but I was confident that it was our missing person.
LINDA: When you find a body in a backyard,
you-- you need to know who it is.
But you're also wanting to know
how this person died.
What was it that led to them being buried
so unceremoniously like this?
It's not every day in San Diego County
that you find somebody buried in the backyard.
[**]
LARRY: We grew up in Southern California
for the most of our life.
It was 68-degree weather it seemed like year-round.
It was a beautiful place to grow up.
[**]
LARRY: I'm the oldest of six.
Vickie was the second-oldest in the family.
SANDY: She was beautiful.
Long, dark-brown hair,
and a smile that just could melt your heart.
She was just a beautiful young lady.
Fun, adventurous, willing to try new things.
And she would do something that was really exceptional.
They'd always say, "There she goes,
Vickie Valerie Vess, three V's for victory."
[**]
NARRATOR: The Vess' hometown of San Diego
is also home to the US Navy's Pacific Fleet.
In 1975, at the age of 17,
Vickie meets a sailor stationed there,
Lieutenant Commander Leonard Eddington.
LARRY: Leonard was aspiring to go into the officer corps.
SANDY: She was so vivacious and-- and bubbly.
I'm sure that's what caught his eye.
NARRATOR: It's a whirlwind courtship.
Even though Leonard at 29 is much older than Vickie,
her parents give her their blessing.
SANDY: She had already finished high school,
and back in those days,
it just seemed like a normal progression
to find somebody and get married.
[**]
NARRATOR: Vickie and Leonard Eddington
moved to Jamul,
on the remote edge of East San Diego County
to begin their life together.
SANDY: They had three children,
two boys and a girl, and they were her life.
Her whole future was based on doing
what was right by those children.
During the first part of their marriage,
Lenny had several promotions.
LARRY: Leonard wanted to go to dinners and the dances
in order to advance his career,
and he wanted Vickie to be a wife
that would support that kind of activity.
And Vickie was her own woman,
and I think that's where some of the problems
that they had in their marriage started out.
LINDA: Over time, they decided
they were going to separate.
Leonard went to live in a mobile home
that was on his mother's property,
which was actually right next door to their property.
NARRATOR: It's a painful decision for both,
but with Leonard living just next door,
they agreed to remain separated and to co-parent,
raising the children
with as little disruption as possible.
Knowing she'll need to provide for her kids,
Vickie sets her sights on becoming a nurse.
She started working, um, in medical clinics,
and then she started picking up classes,
one or two at a time.
LARRY: She loved to help people.
She was a caring person.
SANDY: So she was going to school, and working,
and then taking care of her children.
[**]
LINDA: Vickie was one credit away
from finishing her medical training.
But everything was just cut short.
[**]
NARRATOR: On a bright and warm summer morning,
the San Diego Sheriff's Department
receives a frantic 911 call from Leonard Eddington.
LINDA: He had seen Vickie's car
by the side of the road with a flat tire.
DENNIS: The car was approximately four miles
from their home on Highway 94.
LINDA: And he saw this as he was taking
his children to swim class.
He actually was calling to report her missing.
DENNIS: Leonard stated that
he had dropped the children off at the YMCA in La Mesa.
He said he signed them in at 8:02 that morning.
[**]
JEFF: From there, he drove back, uh, to the car,
took a closer look at it, and saw, uh, the flat tire.
[**]
JEFF: Leonard called Vickie's first job,
the hospital.
They indicated that she had not shown up for work that evening.
He said he also called Colorspan,
Vickie's second job.
And likewise, they had not seen her that day.
[**]
NARRATOR: The sheriff's office dispatches deputies
to Leonard's home,
and he provides as many details as he can
about Vickie's movements the previous day.
LINDA: He said the night that she disappeared,
her mother was supposed to come over
and take care of the kids
while she went off to her night job,
and her mother couldn't make it.
So Leonard stepped in, he came over to her house,
walked out to her car,
and that's the last he saw her.
[**]
JEFF: Leonard told Deputy Miller,
Vickie had left for work around 10:30 the previous night.
[**]
NARRATOR: After hearing Leonard's story,
deputies head to the location
where he spotted her abandoned station wagon.
LINDA: When investigators arrived,
they did indeed find the car with a flat tire,
just off the side of the road.
JEFF: Deputy Miller found the car was locked
and secured, uh, it looked like someone
had tried to change a flat tire,
but the spare tire was missing.
The flat tire didn't look right to him.
There was no damage to the rim, the metal part of the wheel.
That should be scraped.
You know, where the car was parked
at the time of the disappearance was,
it was off to the side of the road,
there were no street lights, no sidewalks.
Then Vickie walked four miles on a dark,
lonely, curvy road at night,
it didn't make sense.
Why would she just disappear and leave her children behind?
I've got this uneasy feeling that, uh,
it may be a crime of violence.
[**]
LINDA: It brought up everybody's deepest fears.
LARRY: You can tell when things aren't right.
I had a lot of that feeling.
JEFF: He was nervous.
He's like a cat on a hot tin roof,
he-- he-- he could not sit still.
[**]
NARRATOR: Vickie Eddington has vanished.
And the condition of the flat tire on her car,
abandoned on a remote and desolate California road
is raising red flags for law enforcement.
[**]
DENNIS: Deputy saw the car on the side of the road,
looked it over, but it didn't look like the tire
had been driven while it was flat.
What you had at this point was,
"Vickie Eddington missing under unusual circumstances."
[**]
NARRATOR: In an age before cell phones,
Vickie could not call for help
in the event of a flat tire,
and investigators know that even if there was no foul play,
she could have run into trouble
late at night on a dark, lonely road.
DENNIS: Sometimes people get disoriented,
especially at night in-- in rural country,
part of their county, and they take off walking.
[**]
DENNIS: And maybe she was trying to perhaps
take a shortcut to go home because her car broke down
and-- and she got injured in a fall.
She could have been walking and hit by a car
and knocked on the side of the road.
[HORN HONKING]
DENNIS: There was a search in the area
and residents in close proximity
to where the car was found were contacted,
but that was with negative results.
JEFF: The sheriff's department did an aerial search
to see if they could find anything
that might look suspicious.
It was negative, they didn't see anything.
NARRATOR: Later that day,
deputies impound Vickie's station wagon
and begin processing it for evidence,
looking for any clue it might yield
that could help lead to her.
DENNIS: We were hoping to find prints of someone stopped
and may have touched her car or other evidence on the car.
JEFF: They lifted latent prints from the flat tire
and they were Leonard Eddington's prints.
DENNIS: So at that point,
the only prints they've gotten off the vehicle
were Vickie's and, uh, Leonard which was suspicious.
NARRATOR: Meanwhile, detectives head back
to Vickie's home to see what clues it might offer.
JEFF: The detective checked around the house
for signs of a struggle, blood, anything out of place.
He saw nothing.
[**]
NARRATOR: That afternoon,
Vickie's family learns of her disappearance,
her mother Alice is beside herself with worry.
Mom called dad, and then dad called us.
There was a lot of fear.
We didn't know what to think.
LARRY: After she went missing, it was high stress.
Vickie was not the kind of person that would disappear.
She would have found a way to reach out or we would know more.
You can tell when things aren't right
and I had a lot of that feeling.
Most my worrying was when I came home at night.
I tried to sleep.
I think that would have been about the only time
that I would have let myself focus on that.
NARRATOR: As the family prays for Vickie's safe return home,
police extend their investigation
beyond the immediate area where her car was found.
It quickly results in a promising lead,
from the clerk at a convenience store
two miles up the road from Vickie's abandoned car.
JEFF: The worker indicated that a female
came into the store that evening
complaining that she had received a flat tire
and she had $20 and she wanted change
to make a call for somebody to come help her.
He was shown a photograph of Vickie Eddington
and asked if that was the person that came to the store.
And he said that he thought it was her,
it looked like her.
At that point, he gave her, uh, change
and she went off and he didn't see where she went
and he just assumed that she went to make a phone call.
LINDA: Because it was hard to believe
that she had just taken off,
it led to, kind of, an assumption
and that something really bad had happened to her,
possibly involving some stranger.
My thought was that was that,
after she left the convenience store
presumably walking back to her car,
that somebody stopped,
and either picked her up,
or forcibly picked her up.
DENNIS: The next question would come to mind would be,
"Who would she have called to help her?"
And also, if she was there that night,
where is she now?
JEFF: Leonard Eddington said, "She would call me,"
uh, that's who she would call
if in fact she got some change
and was able to make a call,
and he said that that call was never made.
NARRATOR: But he admits there is possibly
someone else she may have tried to contact.
So Leonard told investigators that Vickie had a boyfriend.
He was a CHP officer,
California Highway Patrol officer.
Leonard suggested that detectives look at that person.
NARRATOR: The detectives are surprised,
it's the first they've heard that Vickie has a boyfriend.
JEFF: He told that detective
that the marriage, uh, was stormy.
They were having a hard time.
LINDA: Vickie was separated from her husband.
They had talked about getting divorced
and they had decided on staying separated.
So she had been separated for a couple of years at this point.
JEFF: Detectives needed to interview, uh, the CHP officer.
LINDA: Maybe if she had gone off with her boyfriend,
[**]
NARRATOR: There has been no sign of Vickie Eddington,
a young mother of three for twenty-four hours.
Police have been talking to the people closest to Vickie
and have just learned that with a troubled marriage,
she may have a boyfriend
who is a California Highway Patrol Officer.
Certainly the detectives needed to interview,
uh, the CHP officer. And they did so,
but they need to do it face-to-face
so you can read the person
as they're giving the answers.
And they found out from the officer
that in fact, he did know Vickie Eddington.
They had met about 1985,
two years before he was working
some sort of patrol unit up in the mountains.
And he and Vickie made contact in a traffic stop.
He was assigned to the area of San Diego County
where Vickie lived, his county.
And she would see him occasionally
while he was patrolling.
At the time, he was going through a divorce,
Vickie was going through a divorce,
and somehow the connection was made about that.
DENNIS: It was a very friendly relationship.
He went over to the house one time for iced tea.
He had met her children.
JEFF: The CHP officer, he liked her.
He had hopes of maybe cultivating a relationship
if both of them could get out
of their respective divorce proceedings.
DENNIS: At that point, she was separated from Leonard,
but they mutually agreed that the relationship
probably couldn't go much further
because of their marital situations.
NARRATOR: The officer tells the investigators
Vickie did not call him
on the night of her disappearance.
He had not seen her socially for over two years.
At the time, he had been happily married to his wife
for six months.
And he heard about Vickie's disappearance
from his wife.
Apparently, she had seen it on the TV,
which told me that he had been forthcoming with his wife
and that he had nothing to hide.
As far as an alibi for the night of Vickie's disappearance,
the CHP officer, he was working that night.
It was checked into it.
His supervisors, they confirmed he was working
a different area and so he was ruled out as a suspect.
NARRATOR: Now, the investigators wonder
if Vickie didn't call her husband Leonard that night
and didn't call her boyfriend,
then who did she call with the change
the convenience store clerk gave her.
And why did she disappear right afterward?
To help answer these questions,
law enforcement mounts a publicity campaign,
hoping to generate tips.
DENNIS: It's very important to get the media involved
as quickly as you can in these types of cases.
People are generally helpful and they'll give you a call
and say, "Hey, this is what I saw,"
and they can break a case wide open.
Vickie's disappearance was actually all over the news,
not just in San Diego County.
The people in Jamul were quite concerned
because they knew Vickie as a very responsible individual
and this is not the kind of thing that would happen.
She would not just disappear.
She was a young mother
and she had her life ahead of her.
It brought up everybody's deepest fears.
NARRATOR: After hearing from the community
and talking more with Leonard,
the detectives realized they can't rule out
the possibility that despite her family's concerns,
Vickie's disappearance may be voluntary.
DENNIS: Leonard said Vickie had told him
that she just wanted to leave and disappear
because she was stressed out and needed a break.
LINDA: So, what we were hearing in terms of theories was
she was tired and wanted her own space
and just left-- left the family.
It seemed like it was possible that this woman
who was working two jobs
and dealing with a separated husband,
raising three children that she could have
just needed a break or had a break.
NARRATOR: But Vickie's family finds that theory
hard to accept.
My sister would never leave her kids.
That's unthinkable.
She loved her kids. Her kids were everything to her.
LINDA: At the time, there was quite a bit of pressure
on these detectives to
really figure out what was going on.
There was community pressure.
People wanted to know
what happened to Vickie Eddington.
NARRATOR: With Vickie's disappearance making headlines,
she's never far from the thoughts
of her neighbors in Jamul.
They even organized their own search parties.
At this point, everybody was seeing her photo everywhere.
It was even up in the convenience store
that she supposedly stopped at.
NARRATOR: The effort pays off.
A potential witness comes forward
and his story sets off new alarms.
On the night Vickie vanished,
he tells the police he saw a man
lurking around the convenience store.
The nervous way the man acted made him seem very suspicious.
JEFF: We heard from witness that he was antsy, pacing.
He was nervous.
He-- like a cat on a hot tin roof.
NARRATOR: With little to go on,
police immediately begin trying to track down the man
seen at the convenience store.
Has she been kidnapped,
held against her will?
Time can be of the essence in a case like this,
so you really do want to try and figure out what happened
as quickly as possible.
LINDA: He had ads placed in the San Diego Union Tribune
and was actively seeking relationships with women.
JEFF: Looks like somebody had flattened the tire.
LARRY: I start getting mad and when I got mad,
[**]
NARRATOR: There's a new witness
in the search for Vickie Eddington.
And police find his story alarming.
It concerns something he saw at the convenience store
where Vickie was reportedly seen late
on the night she vanished.
DENNIS: Someone called in from Jamul
and said that on the evening of Vickie's disappearance,
they had seen a man by a parked car,
drinking some beer.
His behavior, he was perspiring, nervous.
That's when he said he became alarmed
or suspicious of this person.
NARRATOR: The witness says the suspicious man
was sitting in a green Volkswagen.
Police start trying to track down the vehicle
and again ask the public for its help.
And the community were all involved in searching.
Someone called in to tell the sheriff
they had seen a vehicle.
NARRATOR: The call helps detectives identify
the owner of the green Volkswagen
and they quickly track him down.
DENNIS: It turned out that he just was a fellow
who was drinking beer by his car,
who stopped and want to decompress little bit
before he got home.
It was checked into.
He had a reasonable answer for why he was there.
NARRATOR: The search for Vickie Eddington
is back at square one.
And the odds of bringing a missing person home safely
grow slimmer with each passing hour.
Looking for anything they might have missed,
the detectives ask Vickie's supervisors at the hospital
to dig into their memories for every detail they can recall
about the morning she was reported missing.
DENNIS: The hospital kept a log
of what time the calls came in
and they received a call from Leonard Eddington
at 7:00 that morning
asking if Vickie was there.
And they received a second call at 7:10 that morning
asking if Vickie had been to work,
and they were told she had not.
NARRATOR: Something about those calls
stands out to the detectives.
Leonard Eddington told them he called the hospital
looking for his wife that morning
after he dropped his children off.
JEFF: He said he did not see the car
with a flat tire till 7:30
and he did not drop his kids off at the YMCA till 8:00,
which means he didn't get back to the house
till some time 8:30 or so.
So he was calling asking about Vickie Eddington
before he claimed he knew she was even missing.
NARRATOR: A week into the investigation,
the new questions about Leonard's story
prompt the detectives to take a closer look
at everything he's told them.
And they discover another discrepancy.
DENNIS: The hospital was concerned
that Vickie didn't show up for work.
JEFF: They started calling every 10, 15 minutes
or three or four hours, let the phone ring.
Nobody ever picked up.
But Leonard had told law enforcement
he was sleeping at Vickie's house that night.
And he didn't get any phone calls.
NARRATOR: As the investigation begins to focus on Leonard
as a possible suspect in his wife's disappearance,
Vickie's family finds itself in an agonizing position.
SANDY: It was very tense at times
because we had to play nice
in order to be with the children.
LARRY: The first couple times that we came to the house
and we'd be in the backyard
and every time we got near the back,
he would steer us out of there.
And finally, we confronted him and said,
"Oh, why can't we walk around?"
"No, you have to leave now."
He just-- he kicked us off the property.
We told the investigators
and they said it's just not enough to get a warrant.
And we couldn't gather any proof
because we couldn't go there.
We were restricted from the property altogether.
If we wanted to see the kids, the kids were brought to us.
I started getting mad
and when I got mad,
I was afraid I might not be able to control...
uh, myself around Leonard
and I might do something
that would make it even worse for the family.
[**]
JEFF: Leonard Eddington was intensely tied
to his property.
Although the house was built
while he and Vickie were married,
uh, he still considered it his and his pride and joy,
and he did not want to lose possession of it
or have to divide it or sell it.
In fact made numerous statements to his Navy coworkers
that he would not give up that house willingly,
cut it in half with a chainsaw
if the court ordered it to be split.
NARRATOR: Despite the air of suspicion about him,
Leonard seems to be doing all he can to help find Vickie.
LINDA: Leonard actually appeared on television,
pleading very emotionally
for anybody with any kind of information
to please come forward.
NARRATOR: But it doesn't have the result
he may have been hoping for.
DENNIS: We were contacted by a lady
who said that at the time of Vickie's disappearance,
she was engaged to Leonard.
Leonard had told her that he'd been divorced
for a couple of years.
What started to come to light was that Leonard was actively
seeking relationships with women.
He had ads placed in the San Diego Union Tribune
and had some encounters and involvements.
When this information started coming out
after Vickie's disappearance,
it really opened the door
to the possibility that he wanted to get rid of her.
NARRATOR: It's been a month since Vickie Eddington vanished
and suspicions are growing about her husband Leonard.
DENNIS: Even though there was a lot of suspicion
that points finger at Leonard
for being somehow involved in Vickie's disappearance,
there's really no hard evidence that he is.
The case kind of comes to a standstill
when there's really nothing more definitive than suspicion.
NARRATOR: Detectives keep their sights on Leonard
but months go by, then a year,
and they can still find nothing
that connects him to Vickie's disappearance.
Then a frightening new possibility arises.
On the afternoon of July 15th, 1982,
two boys on a bike ride discovered the body
of 16-year-old Wendy Caulfield
in the Green River in Washington.
Within a month, four more bodies would be found.
SANDY: In Washington, young women were disappearing.
And their bodies were being found along the Green River.
Well, it turns out in San Diego,
the same pattern had started to develop down there.
JEFF: At the time, there was a series of bodies of women
being found in the east county portion of San Diego.
Uh, a lot of them prostitutes,
runaways, hitchhikers.
DENNIS: Vickie disappeared 1987 and people brought up the--
the issue of the Green River Killer.
So the Seattle group contacted the San Diego group
and they started correlating their information
to figure out if there was a connection.
LINDA: What we were hearing in terms of theories
was that Vickie could be a victim of that person
who was killing younger women.
[**]
NARRATOR: Investigators pour over every bit of evidence
they have collected since Vickie Eddington vanished
from a desolate road in July 1987.
But there's nothing to connect her to the other cases
in San Diego County
or to the Green River Killer.
Police conclude the timing of Vickie's disappearance
is just an eerie coincidence.
Vickie's family is losing hope
that they will ever learn what happened to her.
After the first year,
we accepted the fact that she was dead and gone.
It was very frustrating,
but until the body is found, what else can you do?
[**]
LINDA: Four and a half years go by
from when she first went missing.
Case is completely cold
but there's still a lot of interest in the community
in finding out what happened,
so much so that a member of the community
actually brought it up to a detective
who was working a different case.
[**]
DENNIS: I was assigned to the San Diego Metropolitan
Homicide Task Force and I was in the Jamul area
of San Diego County investigating another homicide.
JEFF: Uh, the proprietor had a feed store in Jamul,
didn't know anything about the, uh, the Jane Doe case
but he brought up, "What about Vickie Eddington?
Why don't you check that out?"
DENNIS: At the time, I didn't know
who Vickie Eddington was.
So that day, I went back to the office
and I pulled her case.
NARRATOR: Like the original investigators,
Detective Brugos quickly becomes suspicious
of the story told by Vickie's estranged husband Leonard
about finding Vickie's car abandoned with a flat tire.
The original team had noticed something strange
about the tire.
DENNIS: Deputy Miller reported that there was no wear
on the tire like there always is when, uh,
someone has a flat tire on the road.
NARRATOR: Detective Brugos learns
that even after four years,
Vickie's car is still in a police impound lot.
DENNIS: That made me decide that the tires should be sent
back to the manufacturer for examination.
And their experts said the flat was not from the result
of any type of road damage.
JEFF: Then they got inside the tire
and found why it went flat.
There were two puncture holes
on the inside of the tire right next each other.
So it looked like somebody flattened the tire.
You know, that tells me that this is a setup.
NARRATOR: The new discovery
combined with what the original detectives
found in Vickie's car paint a damning picture.
JEFF: Only Leonard Eddington's prints
were on the spare tire,
on the jack,
inside the door,
and on the frame that concealed the spare tire.
Her fingerprints were inside the car.
NARRATOR: The new evidence once again
makes Leonard Eddington a prime suspect
in his wife's disappearance.
Detective Brugos begins digging deeper
into his relationship with Vickie,
looking for the proof he needs.
His interviews include a neighbor
who tells the detectives something that sets off
a major alarm.
DENNIS: They said about two months after her disappearance,
Leonard brought in some heavy equipment
to fill in a ravine behind the house
for no logical reason.
He actually had told neighbors he was gonna put
his motorhome on the property which he never did.
NARRATOR: Aerial photos confirmed
there's a suspicious spot in Leonard's backyard
along with the new evidence pointing to him,
it's enough for investigators to get a search warrant.
[**]
NARRATOR: On the morning of Saturday
December 21st, 1991,
Detective Brugos and a team of investigators
and forensic techs descend on the Eddington home.
[**]
DENNIS: Leonard came to the door
and, uh, explained to him that we had a search warrant,
and he was very nervous.
JEFF: He could not look the police officer in the eye.
One of the female deputies
was assigned to take control of the children.
When she got the children,
she explained who she was and the youngest child,
I think she was four years old at the time,
told her, "I know why you're here.
You think my mom is buried in the backyard."
NARRATOR: Four years after Leonard Eddington
reported his wife Vickie missing,
California police are searching his backyard.
New evidence and a tip from a neighbor
suggest Vickie maybe buried there,
a hunch even her own children have picked up on.
DENNIS: I asked that the backhoe operator
dig in a specific spot on the property at the ravine
that Leonard Eddington had filled in shortly
after his wife's disappearance.
[**]
JEFF: Ultimately, we found a portion of a chain-link fence
down in the hole, it was flat,
we were able to see that there was some cloth
down into the hole next.
[**]
And then the bones.
[**]
JEFF: We'd obtained Vickie's dental records
from her dentist
and eventually the autopsy
was able to match records
with the records of the-- of the body.
[**]
DENNIS: And then Leonard Eddington was transported
to, uh, county jail and charged with murder.
[**]
LARRY: I was numb,
but it was a relief when I...
heard that they had found her.
I knew that we could put her body to rest
and that we could move on from that point.
[**]
DENNIS: The medical examiner
determined that Vickie died
blunt force trauma to the head.
NARRATOR: As they prepared for a trial,
prosecutors are finally able to put together
a clear picture of what happened
to Vickie Eddington
on the night of July 30th, 1987.
[**]
JEFF: Leonard Eddington said he was in Vickie's house
consensually on the night of her disappearance.
Kids were asleep
and Vickie eventually went to sleep
to get ready for her 11:00 shift at the hospital.
While she was sleeping...
he beat her badly.
[**]
JEFF: He wrapped her up in the items that were there,
the sheets, some other bedding that may have been there.
[**]
JEFF: When he buries her, he puts the chain-link fence
over the top so that when the rains come,
even if it erodes the top layer of dirt,
the body's not gonna come floating off.
[**]
NARRATOR: After burying Vickie, prosecutors say
Leonard drove her car four miles down
an isolated road.
He staged it with the tire he had already punctured
to make it look like an accident.
Then he walked back to the house.
LINDA: A young woman, 29 years old,
is brutally murdered buried in her backyard.
It was so disturbing
to know that her husband had killed
the mother of their three children.
NARRATOR: The reported sighting of Vickie
at a convenience store
is determined to be a case
of mistaken identification
and a strange coincidence.
JEFF: Ultimately, we were able to locate a woman
who looked like Vickie
and claimed she went to that 7-Eleven
either that night or close to that night
claiming she had a flat tire and she needed change
to call somebody for a flat.
[**]
NARRATOR: Five years after Vickie Eddington vanished,
Leonard goes on trial for her murder.
JEFF: Leonard Eddington's motive in this case was money,
greed, financial gain.
He knew a divorce was going to happen
but there was a dispute over how the property
and the assets were gonna be divided.
He did not want to divide up his house,
his property, his pension, and share it with Vickie.
So instead of doing that, he made her disappear.
[**]
NARRATOR: The jury deliberates less than a day
before finding Leonard Eddington guilty.
JEFF: He was sentenced to life in prison
without the possibility of parole.
SANDY: It was a relief,
we pretty much knew he was guilty
and the fact that they were able
to prove it so clearly,
it really let us change our focus now
from mourning Vickie
to taking care of Vickie's kids.
[**]
NARRATOR: But Vickie's family receives another blow.
After a court hearing, Leonard Eddington's sister
is awarded custody of the children.
(Sobbing)
It didn't seem just.
They need to know that they are loved.
I miss Vickie.
It's a hole in my heart,
one that can never be filled.
And anybody that has a loss
will understand that.
It just makes no sense.
[**]
LARRY: The world is missing a very bright individual
that's loving and caring, and was full of life.
She was a positive influence no matter where she went.
[**]