[dramatic music]
- Placentia is a very quiet
bedroom community in Orange County.
- This is a town that was defined by its orange groves
and by its walnuts and fruits and other farming.
- Lynsie loved everything about Orange County.
What's not to love?
* *
- But even in this quaint, agricultural hamlet,
evil hides in the shadows.
- That night, I watched her drive away.
And that was it.
* *
- Because of her disabilities, the force
that would be necessary to overtake her
would be far less than perhaps the average person.
- I was terrified that she had trusted the wrong person.
- Who could possibly want to harm
this beautiful young woman, and why?
- The investigators ask him, why the fake name?
- She has no driver's license.
She has no car.
Why would he drop her off there?
- When this person talked about Lynsie,
he talked about her in the past tense.
- Nancy says that an older gentleman comes to her work
looking for Lynsie.
- I thought it was very strange.
Why would he be doing that?
- We needed to somehow chum the waters.
- We searched this whole area to see if we could get
any hits with cadaver dogs.
- It was like a needle in a haystack.
- I was just totally alone.
I had to keep my hope alive.
[waves crashing]
[dramatic music]
* *
[waves crashing]
* *
- My name is Corrine Loomis, and in 2001,
I was a detective in Placentia.
My caseload was primarily domestic violence,
sexual assault, and missing persons.
[tense music]
On February 19, 2001, a woman named Nancy Ekelund
made a police report that their daughter,
Lynsie, had not come home.
* *
- My name is Nancy Ekelund,
and my daughter is Lynsie Ekelund.
[somber music]
When the police came over to my home,
I said I haven't seen Lynsie in over 48 hours.
[dramatic music]
At the time, she was 19 years old.
She went to Fullerton Junior College on Chapman Avenue.
She lived at home.
Lynsie was very dependable.
If she was going to be late for something,
she always called me.
I knew something was terribly wrong.
* *
- In the peaceful Orange County community of Placentia,
Nancy Ekelund is beside herself with worry.
She tells police that she's seen
no trace of her daughter, Lynsie,
since the night she left to go out with friends.
- Nancy was very concerned but very obviously eager
to try to give us any information that she could.
- I told the police February 16, 2001.
It was a Friday night,
and Lynsie was going to spend the night at Andrea's house
with another girl from college.
I'd never met the girls,
but they were friends from school.
I was comfortable with her staying overnight with Andrea.
So I helped her put a few things
in a little duffel bag-type thing.
And then the door rang.
I opened it.
There was a boy that she was friends with, Chris.
* *
He was taking her over to Andrea's house.
She always got a ride with different people
she was friends with because she didn't drive.
* *
And I watched her drive away, and that was it.
* *
[dramatic music]
* *
- Nancy tells police that the next day
started out perfectly normal.
[phone ringing]
- The next morning, Chris called me around 10:00.
He asked if he could talk to Lynsie,
and I said Lynsie is still
over at her girlfriend's house.
- Nancy was expecting to see her daughter around lunchtime,
but things didn't go as planned.
- Lynsie was gonna tutor two children
that she tutored every Saturday.
- About a quarter after 11:00,
the mother of the two little girls called,
asking if Lynsie was coming.
And I says, I have not seen her.
I assumed that she was already there teaching your children.
* *
And then I really got worried,
because Lynsie was always reliable.
* *
- As panic sets in, Nancy springs into action.
- I called everybody that knew her,
but I did not know Andrea's phone number,
and I should have had the phone number.
That's basic information, to know where your daughter is.
So I called the hospital.
I was panicking.
* *
Something definitely was wrong.
* *
You have to wait 48 hours to file
the missing persons report.
So the next day,
Corinne Loomis took the report.
* *
- In speaking with Nancy, we needed to get
more details about Lynsie's background
to determine what happened.
* *
- Lynsie was born in 1980.
She had two older brothers, Scott and Christian.
My husband at the time, his name was Stuart.
Lynsie was about four weeks early when she was born,
but it was like a dream come true.
She was always smiling.
She was just a happy little girl.
[solemn music]
* *
When Lynsie was about five years old,
Christmas Day,
we're driving to Placerville, California,
where my mom and dad lived.
We got as far as Bakersfield...
[dramatic music]
And we were hit by another car.
[siren wailing]
Lynsie sustained massive head injuries.
As a result of the head injury,
she was partially paralyzed on her left side.
She didn't have normal function on her left hand.
Her left leg and foot were also impaired.
My husband and I separated
about a year after the accident.
The divorce, in part, was caused by the accident
because I was driving, and I think
I was probably accused of causing it.
Stuart moved to Texas with the boys after the divorce.
So my marriage was broken,
and Lynsie and I were on our own.
* *
- My name is Francine Bless.
Lynsie Ekelund was my student.
She was in my class for fourth grade.
She had some pretty horrific injuries.
Her left side was compromised.
* *
- When Lynsie went back to school, kids were mean,
and that's normal for kids.
They made fun of her, and it bothered her,
but she was so determined to overcome that.
[soft music]
- She was a very determined student.
She had been left-handed before the accident,
and now she had to learn to do everything
with her right hand, which was extremely difficult.
But she had such a grit about her.
As she got older, she wanted to be a journalist.
She was involved in tutoring students, community service.
She just thrived on helping people.
* *
Lynsie loved everything about this community.
She loved everything about Orange County.
* *
But she was such a trusting person,
to the point of being naive.
She trusted everybody.
That was her personality.
[dramatic music]
- For the most part,
she's just kind of like every other kid,
but because of her disabilities,
the force that would be necessary to overtake her
would be far less than, perhaps, the average person.
* *
- Given her vulnerability,
police are even more anxious to track down
the friends Lynsie was with the night she disappeared.
So they canvassed Fullerton Junior College,
where she goes to school.
- My name is Geoff Boucher.
I was a staff writer at "The Los Angeles Times,"
and I covered crime in Orange County.
Investigators, for them, the starting point
would be Amy, Andrea, and Chris,
the people that were mentioned by the mom.
Amy and Andrea were going to college at Fullerton College
in the neighboring city.
* *
- One day after Lynsie is reported missing,
detectives get their first break
when a student from Fullerton College puts police in touch
with Amy and Andrea, the friends
Lynsie was with the night she disappeared.
- The girls were both visually very upset
hearing that Lynsie was reported missing.
They confirmed that regarding the movements that night
on February 16th, Amy, Chris, and Andrea,
all of them were together.
- And what detectives find out next
makes the case even more challenging.
- Both Amy and Andrea told us
that Lynsie had lied to her mother
and told her that she was spending the night,
but that she really hadn't.
All of them had decided to go to San Diego and go to a club.
And I'm thinking, what happened?
What happened to Lynsie?
We had more questions than we had answers,
and the answers that we needed weren't even close
at that point to coming true.
It's all just a puzzle.
* *
- I was at work, and an older gentleman
met me in the parking lot.
And he says, this is Lynsie's money.
I thought it was very strange.
- That was scary because this was so out of character.
- He got quite upset.
He seemed to me to be very suspicious.
- He was very evasive.
I was thinking, he knows where she is.
[dramatic music]
* *
- The day after Lynsie Ekelund is reported
missing in the quiet Orange County enclave of Placentia,
detectives discover that Lynsie lied to her mother
about her whereabouts on the night she vanished.
* *
- In reality, the plan of the evening
was that Amy and Andrea and Lynsie and Chris
were headed to San Diego.
* *
- San Diego is about 100 miles south of Placentia.
[tense music]
Amy and Andrea had said they were gonna go meet up
with a couple girlfriends who lived down
in the San Diego area and go to a club,
but through a series of missteps,
they never connected with the friends in San Diego,
and they got frustrated.
So around midnight or so, they went and had breakfast
at Denny's, and then they decided
to just drive back up to Placentia.
* *
- Amy and Andrea said that Chris is at the wheel,
and he drops the girls off at their homes.
Lynsie is the last person to be dropped off.
That's the last known path of Lynsie.
* *
- Chris and Lynsie were left alone in the car ultimately,
and then Chris ostensibly was the last person who saw her.
So now we needed to talk to Chris.
Amy and Andrea gave us his contact information.
* *
The next day, Chris voluntarily spoke to us.
He spoke freely and confirmed what Amy and Andrea had said,
that all of them had decided to go to San Diego
and go to a club.
Chris told us that later that night,
he drove Lynsie, Amy, and Andrea
back up to Placentia.
Chris was driving his truck, and the other girls
got dropped off first.
He then drove Lynsie up to her home.
- Chris tells the investigators that
at about 4:30, he dropped Lynsie off
near her house, but not at her house.
[dramatic music]
- Chris said he dropped her off on the corner
because Lynsie didn't want her mother
to know that she was returning home
in the middle of the night.
So he did not see her go into the house.
- Investigators find it odd that Lynsie would want
to be dropped off on a dark corner
at 4:30 in the morning.
But when they ask her friends about it,
they don't bat an eye.
- Amy and Andrea said that Lynsie had, in fact,
been asked to be dropped off on that corner in the past.
- Her friends said she wanted to not disturb her mom
or get into the house quietly.
So according to the girls, that is not
necessarily an unusual pattern.
* *
- Still, investigators have no choice than
to press Chris for more answers.
- He told us that after he left Lynsie at the corner,
he made a U-turn and went back up to his house and--
in his apartment-- and went to sleep.
So we couldn't verify that.
He lived alone, but he seemed to be forthcoming.
He didn't seem like he had anything to hide.
* *
And also, Amy, Chris, and Andrea,
their stories all matched, so it kind of lent credence
to the fact that Chris then took Lynsie up
and dropped her off.
- But to clear him of any wrongdoing,
Detective Loomis needs to verify his innocence
any way she can.
* *
- We asked Chris if we could look at his truck,
and he said yes.
So crime scene investigators come and take swabs
from the car to see if we could locate any bodily fluids
or any blood or DNA that would indicate
that there was some sort of struggle in the vehicle.
But we didn't find anything.
So we really had to take Chris's statement
at face value while we continued to move forward.
- Four days have passed since Lynsie was last seen.
As detectives continue searching for her,
word spreads across peaceful Placentia that she is missing.
- Lynsie Ekelund was my student and became my friend.
When Lynsie didn't come home, that was scary,
because this was so out of character.
I was terrified that she had trusted the wrong person,
that something had happened to her,
that she could not get home.
I was very, very worried.
- The disappearance of Lynsie Ekelund
is just a savage shock for the people that knew her
and for that community in Orange County.
- Nobody wanted to believe in our little town of Placentia
that something bad could happen to such a beautiful young lady.
She was the kind of person that just cared about everybody.
And you just couldn't imagine anyone being unkind to her.
* *
- Five days pass.
Desperate to find Lynsie,
detectives scour her cell phone records,
looking for any calls that may have taken place
before she disappeared.
- One thing we're able to do in the investigation
is to look at Lynsie's phone records
and see who she may have called.
And we did determine that she had made
a phone call around 2:00 in the morning
to somebody named Matt.
* *
- Matthew was a student at Fullerton College,
and they had gone out a few times,
but nothing serious.
She didn't come home and endlessly talk about him.
She didn't say that he was the love of her life.
He was just a friend.
- Nancy said that they were dating on again, off again.
So he was someone that we needed to talk to.
It's always important to look at a boyfriend
when someone goes missing because the dynamics
of those relationships can often be volatile.
[dramatic music]
* *
- After one week of searching for 20-year-old
Lynsie Ekelund, Placentia detectives are
zeroing in on a new suspect:
her on again, off again boyfriend, Matt.
- We did determine that she had made a phone call to Matt
around 2:00 in the morning.
Maybe they could have argued because she had gone
to San Diego with other people.
So was he jealous?
Did he have a reason to maybe kill her
or abduct her or do something to her?
* *
So detectives called and asked Matt to come in
and speak with us, which he freely did.
And he told us about the dynamics
of their relationship.
* *
- Matt tells them that he and Lynsie
had just broken up a week earlier,
right before Valentine's Day.
* *
Matt said that the last time Lynsie had contact with him
of any kind was that 2:00 AM phone call.
- Matt told us that he and Lynsie were on good terms
and that she left a voicemail message.
She just basically said, I'm on my way home.
Sweet dreams.
- The only way to confirm Matt isn't involved
in Lynsie's disappearance is to get an alibi
for the night she went missing.
- We asked Matt where he was the night Lynsie went missing,
and he said that he was at home with his parents.
- And that alibi checks out as they follow up.
So investigators find him to be credible.
* *
- It's a very frustrating feeling,
because you want to find Lynsie.
So it's a big weight when you just don't have
anything else to go on.
- But more than one week after Lynsie's disappearance,
Nancy is approached by a strange character.
- I was at work, and an older gentleman
met me in the parking lot.
He said he knew Lynsie because he offered her
a ride home a few times.
And he says, this is Lynsie's money.
It was $250.
And I says, well, why would you have Lynsie's money?
And he said, she gave it to me for safekeeping for school.
* *
And I thought it was very strange
that an older man would be holding
that money for my daughter.
Why would he be doing that?
* *
- My name is Michael Michelena.
In 2001, I had been working with the DA's office
during the investigation.
Detectives get a call from Nancy.
She says that an older gentleman comes to her work
looking for Lynsie.
This person who approached Nancy
said that his name was Marty Rossler.
- It just seemed to be a very odd dynamic,
given the age difference.
And their relationship just somehow didn't make sense.
* *
So we needed to talk to him about his relationship
with her and when was the last time he saw her.
[tense music]
- Police obtain Marty's contact information
from Lynsie's cell phone records
and bring him in for questioning.
- I remember him being relaxed.
And ultimately, in speaking with Marty,
we find out his last name is not Rossler.
- The fact he gave a different name really stood out.
We found that very suspicious.
- It's just--it's a red flag,
because, you know, somewhere between
the truth and a crime, you find a lie.
So investigators ask him why the fake name,
and he says he was trying to protect his marriage.
- His explanation was
just that he was married,
and he didn't think his wife would like it
that he was hanging out with
and driving around a 20-year-old.
- Marty was trying to protect his marriage
and in the process of doing so,
was putting himself square in front
of a missing person investigation.
- Marty told us that he had first
met Lynsie when he saw her walking up the street,
juggling flower pots.
And she seemed to be clumsy with them and dropping them.
And so he stopped to help her.
- Marty said he had met Lynsie and felt bad for her
and started to drive her around.
- Marty said that she had physical difficulty
holding on to her money.
He said that he took her shopping,
that he took her to school.
He seemed to have an inordinate interest in her.
- Investigators asked me if Lynsie
had ever talked about Marty to me,
and she had never mentioned him.
I thought maybe it's someone that she
just was friends with, and he gave her rides home.
It didn't seem odd to me because Lynsie had
friends of all ages, all types of people.
- So we asked Marty to take a polygraph
because it is a good tool to see if there is deception.
* *
- At first, Marty seems okay with it,
but as the topic is kind of pressed, Marty gets angry,
and he cuts the interview short.
There's a lot of things about him that seemed suspicious.
[dramatic music]
* *
- More than one week after Lynsie Ekelund went missing,
police grill a man named Marty about her disappearance.
- They ask him to submit to a polygraph test,
but he didn't want any part in talking to them anymore.
His reaction was to become very defensive.
- These interviews are consensual.
They don't have to answer any questions.
So that's all voluntary.
And there's no evidence showing that Marty
is responsible for this.
- He had an alibi for that evening,
and it completely checked out.
We couldn't prove anything with him, so we had to let him go.
* *
- Investigators are back to square one.
So once again, they circle back to Chris McAmis,
the last known person to see Lynsie alive,
to retrace his steps the night he dropped off Lynsie.
- We asked Chris to come in for a second interview.
My intent was to try and basically marry him
to the story of where he said he went
after he left Lynsie at the corner.
- Chris's version is that he drops her off
at 4:00 in the morning
and returned to his apartment in Whittier.
* *
- His route would have been to go north up
through the intersection where there is
a Wells Fargo bank on the corner.
So we seized the film from the Wells Fargo Bank.
We knew that Chris drove
a white Ford extended cab truck.
So detectives did view the film and saw,
in fact, a white truck that passed that camera
at about 4:15 in the morning.
The truck matched the description
of Chris's truck.
- It seems to corroborate his story,
especially in a town that's not very big
with not a lot of traffic.
- The bank film lent credence to the fact
that Chris was telling the truth.
- Chris was essentially off the table as far as suspects.
- More than two weeks into the investigation,
the hopes of finding Lynsie alive begin to dwindle.
* *
- At this point, we believed that Lynsie
had been abducted and/or killed.
It was frustrating because we couldn't really prove
anything with Chris or Matt.
And now, as suspicious as Marty might look,
we couldn't prove anything with him either.
* *
- As time went by,
all the possible leads dried up.
- We felt like we were never going to be able to find out
what happened to Lynsie and give her mother
and her family closure.
* *
- As weeks become months and months turned to years,
there's still no traction in the case
and no sign of Lynsie.
- There was nothing positive out of those years.
I was just totally alone.
I had to keep my hope alive.
I just went all over the city, putting up flyers.
I wanted Lynsie to be home safe.
* *
[soft music]
- But Placentia police never give up
on finding closure for Lynsie's family.
Finally, seven years after Lynsie vanished,
a new investigator breathes life into the case.
- My name is Larry Montgomery.
In 2008, I was given the opportunity
to work in a cold case unit
at the Orange County District Attorney's Office.
I saw this case in the files,
and I have, you know, daughters,
and I really felt for her mom.
It was like, I just wanted to do something.
So I was able to take over the Lynsie Ekelund cold case.
- The first thing Detective Montgomery reviews
from the case files are the police interviews
with the three potential suspects.
- All the cases I've had where the innocent people
that are talked to, they are the person that's worried,
they are the person that's scared,
and they would ask what's gonna be done.
I listened to Lynsie's boyfriend,
Matthew, his interviews after she was missing.
And everything I saw him do, the actions he took
were all consistent with a boyfriend
who's missing his girlfriend, and he's really worried.
* *
- Larry is very meticulous.
He starts going over every single thing
from the beginning, including an older gentleman, Marty.
[dramatic music]
- During the interview that Marty had with the police,
he was suspicious because he used a phony name,
and he didn't want to take a polygraph.
But Marty had an alibi.
He actually asked about where Lynsie is,
and he was doing everything you would do
if you really wanted to find her
and she's missing and he's concerned.
I don't see murderers usually do those kind of things.
So I was able to rule him out fairly quickly.
* *
- But when Detective Montgomery reviews
the tapes of Chris's interviews with the police,
he notices something out of the ordinary.
- He was very evasive.
I noticed numerous occasions
where he'd hold his hand in front of his mouth,
and he'd talk kind of covering it.
You know, what do you think happened to her?
Well, I--I don't know.
I--I hope nothing bad.
- There's one more very telling pattern
Detective Montgomery notices during Chris's interview.
- When Chris is asked questions about Lynsie,
and the person who's asking the questions,
she actually says things in present tense
about Lynsie's activities and what she's doing,
and when Chris answered and talked about Lynsie,
he talked about her in the past tense,
which is very interesting because if she's still alive,
you wouldn't do that.
If she's dead and you know it,
but you don't think about it,
that slips out.
* *
So that was a big red flag.
* *
I started looking very closely at Chris.
- Larry starts to review the video from the ATM
that, in theory, Chris's truck drove by
after dropping Lynsie off.
Now, of course, we're talking about early 2000s videos.
They were not very clear. It wasn't high def.
- And I was looking at that to see,
well, is that really his truck?
* *
And lo and behold, I do notice the mirror
that was on the side of the truck
didn't have a white front, and Chris's truck did.
So then I knew that's not his truck.
Finding that this was not his truck in that picture,
he could have never been there at all.
And it just opens up that possibility.
I was thinking Chris knows where she is.
[dramatic music]
* *
- By 2009, more than eight years after Lynsie Ekelund
vanished, cold case detectives uncover inconsistencies
in Chris McAmis's previous statements to police
and with his alibi.
- Larry realizes that the truck on the video of the ATM
is not McAmis's truck.
- Basically, Chris's story is not confirmable,
and the question is, was he lying about that?
At this point, I was interested as to what his activities were
when Lynsie disappeared.
- To get a better understanding
of McAmis's movements
the days following Lynsie's disappearance,
cold case detectives subpoena his bank records.
- Early in 2010, one of the things I looked at
was his credit card usage.
And on the day that she disappeared,
the particular date and time that he was apparently home,
according to him, all day, his credit card was used
in Santa Clarita at a gas station.
That made me wonder why.
Why is he up in Santa Clarita?
[dramatic music]
- Larry spoke to multiple family members
and discovered that Chris had been working
with his father doing construction.
It was under the table at a site in Santa Clarita.
So Chris has access to heavy machinery,
heavy equipment that can help him bury a body.
* *
- Once we learn that Chris had access to a tractor,
we figured, okay, if he did bury her up there,
we need to look.
Maybe she's up there.
* *
We went up, and we searched this whole area
where the tractor was being used to see if we could get
any hits with cadaver dogs.
* *
- You don't know what physical evidence
you're gonna get, especially after all that time.
It was like a needle in a haystack.
* *
- We spent months and months up in the Santa Clarita area
where this dig occurred,
and we looked for any possibility,
but we could not find her.
* *
We decided we needed to go use
a different technique to find her.
One possible way is to try to get the person
who buried her to show us where it is.
- Larry decided that we needed to somehow
chum the waters here.
We needed to stir Chris up and somehow
get him to speak or get him to make some sort of mistake.
- We decided we would try to give him the impression
that the body's been found.
And we thought that if we could bring somebody to his door
one night and give him that information,
that may trigger him to want to go up
to see if it's true.
* *
- Larry has another officer play the role
of a journalist for a local college paper
and knock on Chris's door.
* *
- And Chris answered the door.
She told him that she's with the newspaper for the school.
And it looks like they may have found Lynsie's body,
and she was hoping that she could get an interview
with Chris about that.
And he didn't want to do that.
He said, no, I'm not interested.
And she left her card with him, and she left.
* *
And our hope was that if he buried the body,
he may want to go up and see if there's a hole there
or if the body is gone.
* *
- With a trap baited,
on the night of October 21, 2010,
undercover officers sit in waiting
outside of Chris McAmis's house.
- That night, about 3:00 in the morning,
a light turns on in the house.
* *
The garage door opens, and he took off fast,
and he went through neighborhoods.
And I think five or six vehicles were following.
* *
It looked like he was gonna get on the freeway
to go northbound towards Santa Clarita.
- But the way he was driving,
it kind of makes it seem like Chris was very much on edge,
and he was very nervous
and was checking behind him at every step.
- And he floored his car and went really fast
and tried to get out of the track really quick,
but they were still following him.
And he went to the Fullerton Police Department.
- Chris reported that he was being followed.
Fullerton PD gave him the standard, you know,
do you owe money to anybody?
Do you do drugs?
Just be careful of your surroundings.
And Chris then left the police department in Fullerton.
So we got burned on the surveillance.
* *
- We decided to call off the plan.
So we figured we would have to try another idea.
I wanted to be able to find Lynsie's body,
get some closure, even though it's terrible,
some closure for Nancy, her mom.
The biggest hurdle was getting him to admit that he did it,
and can we find her body?
* *
- After mulling over possible options,
detectives decide to take the ultimate risk
in hopes of finally getting answers
about what happened to Lynsie.
* *
- At the time, investigators really only
had a suspicion that Chris was the person
involved in this crime.
- So we went for broke and decided,
let's just get the Ramey warrant.
- What that means is that they're allowed to arrest him,
and they're allowed to hold him,
and of course, they can interview him.
But they have to decide within two days
whether the case is fileable.
And realistically, if they didn't find anything more,
he was gonna be released in two days.
* *
- On October 27, 2010,
more than nine years since Lynsie Ekelund disappeared,
detectives issue Chris McAmis a Ramey warrant for his arrest
and bring him in for questioning.
- Deciding to make an arrest on Chris
was a difficult one to make because if he invokes Miranda
immediately and doesn't talk,
we're not gonna have much that we can do.
- It was a make-or-break interview.
If he doesn't talk, we won't have enough for the DA
to file charges, and he would be let go.
[dramatic music]
* *
- More than nine years after the disappearance
of Orange County college student Lynsie Ekelund,
cold-case detectives have
the potential killer in custody.
- Chris McAmis had been given the Miranda warning,
so he knew he didn't have to speak to us.
But if Chris doesn't confess, he's gonna walk out the door,
and justice will not be served.
- When Chris brings up the fact that he thinks
he might need a lawyer, we're really getting close
to that area where he might ask for one,
but then my partner gave the idea
that we want to hear your side.
- And that's what actually broke him,
and he immediately decided to start to talk to us
about what really happened.
- Chris said he drinks quite a bit, he says.
And then he gets more energy, whatever.
He comes back in to try again to have sex with Lynsie.
- Hearing somebody actually speak the words,
I was stunned.
I never sensed remorse.
He was finally unburdening himself
from this horrible thing that he had done.
[dramatic music]
- Chris McAmis agrees to show investigators
exactly where he buried her in Los Angeles County.
* *
- As we arrived at the construction site
in Santa Clarita, Chris said it was very different-looking
10 years earlier when he buried her.
* *
Then he said it could be as far as maybe
about 10 to 15 feet that way or 10 or 15 feet that way.
- The LA County coroners have the scooper,
and they're digging.
And they're digging and digging and digging here.
And I'm thinking, we're not gonna get anything.
- We spent one full day digging.
* *
And then one scoop brought up a bright blue shoe.
* *
And in it were the bones of a foot.
* *
And I knew we found her.
* *
- I couldn't even believe it.
We actually found her.
And Chris was telling the truth.
* *
- I got a call at work in the middle of the day
from the police, saying that we have news about Lynsie.
Can you come home?
And as I'm coming through the parking lot
of my apartment,
I knew that Lynsie was going to be standing there.
There was no other thought in my mind.
[somber music]
And I looked up, and she wasn't there.
I saw Mrs. Loomis.
- She looked at me, and she said, I was hoping
that when I walked up the stairs,
that you would be standing there with Lynsie.
That was heartbreaking.
So even after all those years, when common sense
and just rational thinking tells you,
this person's not coming back,
she still held on to that hope.
And that's-- that's what parents do.
* *
- And then it hit me.
Then they said she was dead.
* *
I felt that everything was just gone.
Nothing mattered anymore.
- With Lynsie's remains finally recovered
and Chris McAmis's confession on tape,
Chris hires an attorney
who offers prosecutors a plea deal.
- Chris's attorney came to me and said he would plea
right away to second-degree murder
for 15 years to life in prison.
- That decision was run by Lynsie's mother, Nancy.
She agreed to go along with that
and just conclude the matter.
* *
- Almost a decade after she went missing,
Lynsie Ekelund is finally laid to rest.
- Lynsie's memorial service was in December 2010.
We wanted to go. I think it's because
we had been embedded with the family
and embedded with this case for so long.
I remember how emotional it was, even for me.
- There was a lot of people there because all of us
cared so deeply for Lynsie.
And the memorial gave us closure,
just to hug each other
and to just have that special moment.
- I did speak at her memorial.
I thanked everyone for being there.
And I said, Lynsie, up there, somewhere, is your star.
Your angels are looking over you.
I know she's there.
I can't physically see her anymore,
but she's always on my mind.
* *
[seagull calling]
[waves crashing]