[tense music]
- She had run into a wooded area and not came back.
[sirens wailing]
- After a lengthy search, a father discovers
his missing daughter slain in a neighborhood park....
- I let out a sound.
It's the sound of true anguish.
- This was a brutal attack.
- Has a small Queens community up in arms
in a case that became my top priority.
- Right now, there's evidence of strangulation.
- You ----er, burn in hell.
- But despite our best, the case goes cold...
- Was I frustrated? Yes, very.
- When a small crime scene detail connects to a big lead.
- The chipped tooth was an important clue.
- He says, "Can I bring a knife to school tomorrow?
'Cause I want to kill all the girls."
* *
[tense music]
* *
[tense music]
* *
- Howard Beach isn't what one might picture
when they think of New York City.
an hour subway ride from Midtown,
this Queens community trades skyscrapers
for single-family homes,
and many of those families are longtime NYPD and FDNY.
In 2016, as chief of detectives,
Howard Beach was the site
of my most difficult case of my career,
and I was determined as hell to get it solved
in the midst of intense media scrutiny.
I ordered my guys to use
every tool in their arsenal to get it done,
but the case of Karina Vetrano was a monumental mystery
that drove us mad,
gripped the city in fear, and proved to be
nearly impossible for us to crack.
* *
It begins on a warm August afternoon in southern Queens.
- Me and Karina were extremely close.
We were best friends.
She was a 30-year-old.
She was living at home.
Karina was an avid runner.
I usually run with her.
* *
August 2, 2016.
And around 5:00, she said, "I'm going running.
Do you want to go?"
And I said, "I can't, Karina. My back hurts."
And then I ask her,
"Are you going in there?"
meaning, "Are you going into Spring Creek Park?"
And she says, "Yes."
- Spring Creek Park is a sprawling nature preserve...
* *
And there's a main path that runs through the park.
* *
- I was concerned about
Karina running alone in there because it's isolated.
And I said to her, "I don't think it's a good idea."
And she said, "Don't worry, Daddy.
I'll be okay."
* *
- Karina departs to exercise in a park
which is only a few blocks from home.
But about 20 minutes later as Phil eats dinner,
his anxiety grows.
- I cook my steak.
I'm sitting down on the couch and I'm watching the news.
I started getting a...
bad feeling.
I had an intuition.
* *
I give Karina a call on her phone.
She don't answer, which is unusual for Karina.
Exactly one minute later, I give her another call.
She doesn't answer.
Two minutes after that,
I call her the third time, okay?
She doesn't answer.
Where the hell is she?
* *
- Phil calls a childhood friend
who now works for the NYPD.
Quickly, the man dispatches a patrol car to the park.
- A young girl who goes out running every day
and has her phone every day, when she doesn't come back
and she wasn't answering her phone,
that's extremely unusual.
We bring our search out.
- Phil grabs a flashlight and races to the park
to look for Karina.
Meanwhile, about 40 minutes after she left home,
officers from the 106 Precinct arrive at the park.
- Spring Creek Park is a huge park, two square miles,
and the search was officers on foot.
But the weeds are ten feet high.
The weeds were so thick
that if you put your arm in the weeds,
you couldn't see the end of your hand.
- The hope of any investigator
out doing an investigation into a missing person
is that maybe they tripped and they hurt their ankle
and they couldn't call for help.
- But they didn't find anything.
Two square miles, one car isn't sufficient,
so they called in more units.
It turned out to be kind of a big search.
As we were searching the path and looking,
you can feel the concern.
Someone actually said out loud,
"This doesn't feel good."
- Now at this point in time, it's just twilight.
Starting to get a little dark.
There were two bloodhounds, two heat-seeking helicopters,
and about 50 cops on the trail.
Everybody was looking for her.
- Hours pass with little sign of Karina.
Around 10:45 p.m.,
almost six hours since she left for her run,
Phil presses his way into uncharted territory.
* *
- I'm a retired fireman,
and a fireman's instinct is to help.
It's my first reaction, to jump into action.
* *
I started walking the trail.
I went about 75 feet, 100 feet,
and then something told me to turn around.
* *
And I turned around, and something tells me again,
intuition, to stop.
And I stop and I put my hands on my knees
and I look forward.
And I walked in.
And the further I walked, the more matted,
and the trail became obvious.
I was following it.
And it didn't take me long. It was about 30 feet.
And I found Karina.
* *
She was dead.
* *
I picked her up. I let out a--a sound.
* *
It's the sound of...
* *
True anguish.
* *
At that point in time, the cops heard me yell,
and they were swarmed all over me.
And they were telling me to put her down.
"This is a crime scene. Put her down."
* *
It was that instant my mind went blank.
It just went completely blank.
I was destroyed
to the utmost of--of destroyed.
* *
- As the grim reality of Karina's death sets in,
our guys begin to evaluate how she died.
- Karina was a small person,
but it looks like she struggled
and she fought for her life.
And she had substantial bruising in her face.
And she had a chipped tooth in her mouth
that suggested that she was punched.
But we didn't see any stab wounds or gunshot wounds,
and the victim's phone was found 30 feet away from her.
- The chipped tooth was an important clue
because we knew from speaking to family,
she didn't have a chipped tooth before.
And we didn't find a piece of chipped tooth
in the area around her body.
- The victim was partially clothed
and one leg was removed from her jogging shorts.
It suggests that there was some sort of sex crime
related to this homicide.
There was a rape kit performed.
At the end of the first night, we had no idea what happened,
and we proceeded with our investigation.
[somber music]
- In this tight-knit community,
word of Karina's tragic demise quickly spreads.
- I couldn't believe it.
I was like, "No, she's alive." I was just texting her.
And it took me a while to process it.
It was shocking and it was heartbreaking.
- Karina was successful, smart, courteous.
Everything you'd want your child to be.
The day Karina was born,
my wife, Cathie, was in labor for, like, 24 hours
until she was ready to come into this world.
We loved her so much as a young girl.
She was vivacious, spontaneous.
She would make believe she was Madonna,
you know, sing and dance in front of the mirror.
* *
Years later, when Karina decided
to go to Manhattan College,
I liked the idea that it was not that far away from home.
And then she finally realized
she wanted to be a speech pathologist,
and she went for her master's.
She paid her own way.
Karina, she was working in a school
on 14th Street in Manhattan.
She was working with disabled children, autistic children.
She was extremely passionate about it.
* *
- She was funny.
Karina had a laugh that echoes through rooms.
- This is the weirdest song ever. [chuckles]
- A little firecracker.
[Karina laughs]
- She's 4'11".
She was petite, but, like, just fierce.
- She was loved by so many,
and now we all have a piece of us gone.
* *
- Friends and family of Karina Vetrano
in this neighborly and safe community
are stunned by her murder,
and the vicious attack had us on high alert.
The following day, the medical examiner
delivered their determination on how she was killed.
- And it was found that she was strangled to death.
A rape kit was performed,
but they didn't recover anything from it.
But they recovered DNA from her neck,
her cell phone, and under her fingernails.
The DNA did not match Karina.
The killer probably left it there.
It created a profile for us.
So now in my mind, I know who did this.
I just need a name.
- Coming up...
- Tips started to come in.
So a person called 911
to report a male he believes going to commit a burglary,
going in and out of yards.
He had a long-sleeved tracksuit on
with a hoodie up over the head even though it was 80 degrees.
- Soon, we're going to have a face
to the (BLEEP)-less piece of garbage
[tense music]
* *
- On the day following the murder
in the Queens neighborhood of Howard Beach,
the loved ones of Karina Vetrano
are coping with her shocking homicide.
My guys are hunting for the assailant
and doing everything in their power
to make sure this brutal attack does not go unsolved.
Now they're racing to test DNA discovered at the crime scene.
- DNA profile is developed
based on the evidence taken from Karina Vetrano's body.
That DNA profile is then compared to local,
state, and national databases
that house legally obtained DNA evidence.
- We thought when we got that profile,
that we would get a hit and the case would be solved.
[somber music]
* *
But we got a no-hit,
which put the investigation right back from the start.
- There's no witnesses.
There's very little physical evidence around.
We didn't really know what happened to Karina Vetrano.
We were starting to collect tips
from the Crime Stopper tip line.
* *
- The next steps are to narrow the timeline
until when the crime actually happened.
* *
You narrow down the timeline, you narrow the possibilities.
[tense music]
* *
- We want to fill in every minute.
We thought to look at electronic records,
electronic communications, phone calls,
text messages, social media DMs.
She went out for a run. It was about 5:00.
But at some point, all that communication stopped.
Once we narrowed down a time frame
for when Karina was killed,
another part of the investigation,
we do what we call a canvas.
So what that entails is going door to door
and speaking to people on the street.
- So along her route... was someone following her?
A beautiful girl jogging,
sometimes a guy would try to maybe stop and talk to her,
or if any car was going back and forth,
traveling the same route.
We noticed that
there was a couple of houses that had cameras.
They actually spotted her
before she entered the park.
They captured her getting ready to go into Spring Creek Park.
* *
But it did not show anyone following her.
It led us to believe
the killer was waiting in the park for her.
- As the murder investigation ramps up,
the media swiftly takes notice.
- Everybody wanted a piece of Karina.
Everybody--the newspapers, radio stations, TV stations.
- Karina Vetrano was a huge news story.
It was all over the country and in some parts of the world.
It was like wildfire.
- Right now, there's evidence of strangulation, asphyxiation,
there's some petechiae hemorrhaging
that we're looking at right now.
[tense music]
- The media needed to be front and center
in order to maintain interest on the case,
but you're reliving...
the horror that she went through.
* *
- But despite this attention,
the public generates few viable leads.
With little to go on, police begin to investigate
the people closest to Karina.
- And you have to start with her family.
So we go to Phil and Cathie and said,
"Hey, you know, do you mind if we search the house?
* *
- They wanted to look in her room.
They took Karina's computer and they took my computer.
They took the phone. They asked questions.
- A detective's got to consider every fact.
Phil Vetrano found the body.
Many people in the neighborhood
know I was a member of law enforcement.
People would come up to me, "So what do you think?
I mean, the father, eh?"
But the fact that he was the last person with her
before she was found certainly led us
to a thorough interview with him.
* *
- Apparently, I'm the number one suspect at this time.
I said, "Whatever you need."
I said, "If you need my right arm, you can take it."
- I talked to Phil.
He was a very concerned father.
He blamed himself because he was supposed to be there.
There was no evidence of foul play or anything like that.
He was home with Cathie, and he was cleared.
* *
- Detectives move on from the family
to ask Karina's friends about her personal and work lives.
- Soon we received tips about an aggressive former colleague
who'd tried to get close with her.
- She worked in the city as a speech pathologist,
but through one of Karina friends,
we also learned that she had worked in a club in Astoria.
She was promoting for the club.
This was a part-time job.
She would get clients, and she invite them to the club
and they'll get a VIP section
and they would buy bottles,
and she would get a percentage
of whatever they spent.
And we learned that one of the coworkers
made unwanted advances to her.
His name was Paul.
She wouldn't want to date him, and as we understood that,
he didn't take it well.
* *
He made her feel uncomfortable.
According to her friends...
he was stalking her.
[tense music]
* *
- As the NYPD investigates the murder of Karina Vetrano,
detectives are asking around about her personal life.
As they do, friends point to a coworker named Paul
who they claim was stalking her.
- They said he was aggressive with her...
because he wanted to date her.
* *
We do a background search, and in our background search
a picture came up of Paul.
Tall, muscular guy, scary-looking guy.
My impression by the picture, this could have been our guy.
* *
So we tracked down Paul
and we had a detailed talk with him.
And he admitted, yes, he did like her very much,
and he was upset that she rejected his advances.
But he said he wouldn't kill her.
And he said he was at work at the time.
His alibi checked out.
* *
- As the NYPD investigates every lead
related to Karina's slaying,
on August 6 at St. Helen's Catholic Church
in Howard Beach, her family lays her to rest.
- It was summertime. It was warm.
There were a lot of cameras outside.
[camera shutters clicking]
- We were escorted in the back way
because at that point in time,
news, TV stations were attacking you constantly.
You had no peace.
- Her parents, they were distraught.
Literally the worst thing
that could ever happen to a parent happened.
[somber music]
But they had to represent their daughter.
- It was hard.
She had so much of her life to live.
To bury her and her not have justice was--
it--it angered me.
* *
- But nobody's anger burns brighter
than Karina's parents.
The day after the funeral
at a press conference outside their home,
mom, Cathie, unleashes fury at the object of her rage.
- I'm going to address whoever you are.
Soon, we're going to have a face
to the (BLEEP)-less piece of garbage
that you are.
- I saw Phil and Cathie's press conference on the news.
What struck me was how emotional Cathie was,
so much rage and anger.
I had never seen on TV or in person
mothers or parents so outraged.
It really-- it really struck me.
- I guarantee you, you mother----er,
that you will be reckoning with that force
for the rest of eternity
as you ----ing burn in hell.
- My wife, Cathie,
very strong woman, very powerful woman.
It was a necessity, because the more we got out there,
the more people knew, the more help we could get.
[tense music]
- But as the Vetranos grow exasperated
by the case's lack of progress,
nearly a week later, we all got some hopeful news.
Police hear the intriguing account
of one local man from the day of Karina's murder.
- We learn about a Verizon worker
who was working on some of the airport systems
near Spring Creek Park.
He told us he saw a man on the day of the crime
leaving the park.
He went westbound towards Brooklyn.
What stood out with the Verizon worker
is that he explained that
the guy was wearing a wool hat.
There's not a lot of people that goes jogging
in August with a wool hat on.
And it fit our timeline.
Like, you're leaving when a murder just happened?
* *
So this was completely unusual.
We had to find this guy.
- Unfortunately, after looking at thousands and thousands
of hours of video from around the park,
we found no one walking out of the weeds.
Our next best tool would be a sketch.
We brought the utility worker immediately
down to our artist unit.
- We didn't know whether this person of interest
was a witness or a perpetrator, but we wanted to talk to him.
He shot to the top of our list.
We agreed that we should put this out to the press.
- On August 31, we released the sketch.
Two days later, a police ally comes forward
with a tantalizing piece of information.
I got a call from a former NYPD chief named Vinny
who was the head of security at a Brooklyn apartment building.
* *
He saw the sketch on the news and it struck a nerve.
Vinny said the drawing looked a lot like someone
who lived in his building.
- A team of detectives and I, we went to talk to this guy.
His name was Kevin.
Knock on his door.
We see they open the peephole.
"Hey, can we speak to Kevin?
Can Kevin come to the door?"
No answer.
We know that they're looking at us,
but no one would answer.
[tense music]
It was suspicious that he wouldn't open his door.
[tense music]
* *
- NYPD detectives are investigating a lead
they received about a man named Kevin
who supposedly matches
a recently revealed police sketch.
* *
- They look out the peephole, but they did not answer us.
We said, "Okay. So we'll sit outside his building."
We sat out for hours. Kevin did not come out.
* *
We went back to the precinct.
* *
- Detective Brown returns to Kevin's apartment the next day
and encounters the same strange non-response.
But this time, he waits in his car
about 100 feet down the block.
- Two hours later, Kevin comes out.
"Hey, Kevin. How you doing?
You didn't hear us knocking on the door?"
"All right. What do you want?"
"Okay, Kevin. Um, listen.
Do you know where Spring Creek Park is?"
"Yeah."
"Have you ever visited Spring Creek Park?"
"Yeah."
[tense music]
I'm like, "Okay.
Do you mind talking to us about it?"
"I don't want to talk to you."
Well, I says, "Did you hear what happened
in the news in Spring Creek Park?"
"Yes."
But he said, no, he wasn't there on that day.
Says, "I just want to talk to you about it."
He says, "Okay.
I'll talk to you."
And then I actually showed him the sketch.
I said, "Does this look like you?"
And he was like...
"Yeah."
I was like, "That's a strange answer."
But he did look like the sketch.
* *
And we went back to the precinct,
and I said, "Do you mind giving a DNA sample?"
He says, "No. I'm not giving a DNA sample."
So that immediately caught the room's attention.
* *
Now another approach is an abandonment sample.
If he abandons anything,
I can take that and do a DNA on it.
I said, "Would you like a cigarette?"
He go, "Yeah."
So we start talking about nothing.
He smokes his cigarette.
He put it out and he puts the cigarette in his pocket.
I go, "Oh, Kevin's been through this before."
[laughs]
* *
But he start asking questions about the case.
He wanted to know a lot about the case.
And he ended up taking a bottle of water,
drinking the water.
And we finished our interview and Kevin was on his way out.
He takes his bottle of water.
Then he walks past a garbage...
[tense music]
And he threw the bottle out.
I'm going, "Perfect."
I take Kevin back home.
I call my partner who stayed behind.
I said, make sure that bottle
is put into evidence,
handled properly,
and taken straight to the lab for the DNA.
It gave me hope.
This is our guy.
* *
But the next day,
the DNA came back
and it was negative.
* *
Was I frustrated? Yes. Very.
When will my break come?
* *
- As lead after lead evaporates, months pass,
and the tips that we received become less helpful.
This was the biggest case of my career,
and we were running on fumes.
The only people more frustrated than us
are Karina's loved ones.
* *
- In the beginning, I had thought that
it would be solved pretty quickly.
But then as, you know, the first few months passed,
I felt nervous and anxious
because it wasn't getting solved
and I didn't know how they would solve it.
- As time went by a month later
and we don't have a suspect,
did I give up hope that we weren't going to find him?
No. Never.
* *
- This investigation was absolutely exhaustive,
but the case remained unsolved as we headed into 2017.
However, in January,
Lieutenant Russo had an epiphany
that blew the case wide open.
- I live in Howard Beach.
I remember back in May,
there was this guy walking around the neighborhood.
* *
He had a long-sleeved tracksuit on
with a hoodie up over the head.
It was near 80 degrees.
It was weird. It was warm out.
And he was going in and out of yards
like he might be looking to do a burglary.
People by nature stick to patterns.
I wonder if there was a possible connection
[tense music]
* *
- The Vetrano murder was the biggest case of my career.
I was keeping close tabs on the investigation.
One morning, I got a call from Lieutenant Russo.
It'd be one of those moments I'll never forget.
- So as the months went on,
it just had me thinking about the case again
and thinking of what we missed,
which is part of my job.
Whatever happened with this case?
Whatever happened with that?
I thought to myself...
back in May,
a few months prior to the murder,
I had worked early in the morning, came home.
And Howard Beach in the summertime especially,
there's really nobody out walking around the streets.
It's just not that kind of neighborhood.
People get in their car, they leave.
But on the side of the street one house over,
I just see a person walking away from me.
He had a long-sleeved tracksuit on
with a hoodie up over the head,
even though it was near 80 degrees.
So I said, "That's odd."
Then he started to kind of walk
up and down the block and doubling back.
In my experience, that's what a person does
when they're going to commit a burglary.
They're kind of casing a location.
So I called 911 and I said, "There's a suspicious person."
But by the time the police responded, he had walked off.
[tense music]
The next day, I was coming home from work.
It was around 2:30.
And I saw on my phone
getting alerts of 911 calls in the area.
So a person called to report a male
he believes going to commit a burglary,
going in and out of yards,
wearing a black and white tracksuit.
As I'm driving around, I see him.
I asked for the uniformed officer to respond
because I was dressed in a suit and tie
and I didn't want to get into a situation
where he didn't know I was a cop.
So I'm like, "You got his name?"
"Yeah." And that was the end of it.
- These separate incidents took place
two months before Karina's murder.
* *
Now about six months into the investigation
in January 2017, Lieutenant Commander Russo
has a gut feeling like he's never had before.
- I called up the squad and I said,
"Hey, what was the name of the guy
that I had stopped that day?"
So they send me the cop's memo book,
and it says Chanel Lewis with date of birth and an address.
I run his name now in our department systems.
He's never been arrested before,
but I saw he had received a couple of summonses
on the bike pathway that leads from Brooklyn Spring Creek
to Spring Creek Park in Howard Beach.
And I see he does not have DNA on file.
So I'm like, "Ah."
So I called Chief Boyce.
I said, "Take a good look at this guy."
- There was something in the sound
of Lieutenant Russo's voice
that I had a feeling like this could be it.
We jumped right on it.
- I thought it was a long shot, but you know what?
We sent a team out to actually talk to this guy.
* *
Chanel Lewis is a young man
who lives with his mother and his sister.
His father was living somewhere else
in East New York.
- The 19-year-old is a recent high school graduate
who resides in the Brooklyn neighborhood
of East New York...
Which is adjacent to Howard Beach.
- East New York is immediately to the west of Howard Beach
on the other side of Spring Creek Park.
- They are connected,
but one is extremely affluent
and the other is disenfranchised.
* *
- Two police officers went there and spoke with him.
Asked him, "Do he know about Spring Creek Park?"
He says, "Yes." He knows about Spring Creek Park.
He explained that he's a loner.
He don't have a lot of friends,
and he goes to that park to clear his mind a lot.
* *
He voluntarily gave up his DNA.
* *
We went to his high school
and we spoke with one of the teachers.
And the teacher advised us
that he had a troubled past with women.
Just the girls in the school.
And he one time asked one of his teachers,
"Can I bring a knife to school tomorrow?"
And she said, "What? No. Why?"
And he says, "'Cause I want to kill all the girls."
He was immediately suspended for his statements.
* *
- As suspicion of Lewis mounts,
police hear from his father, who defends his son,
but inadvertently lets slip a curious bit of news.
- He was saying that,
"My son couldn't have done this.
"He was in the hospital the next day.
He had a fight and I took him for his hand."
So we were like, "Oh, really?"
Okay. Let's check every hospital.
So we sent out a massive hospital canvas.
* *
We got one hit back.
The doctor said, "We had a guy who came in
"with an injury to his hand
and I removed a foreign object out of it."
"Do you remember what that object was?"
He says, "It could have been a tooth or epoxy,
but I didn't save it."
The significance was that
we know that
during Karina's attack,
she was punched
and her tooth was chipped.
And that foreign object could have been that chip.
* *
And that was like, wow.
* *
- With this stunning evidence in mind,
police raced to Lewis's apartment
and bring him to the station under arrest.
- I explained to him that, "We think you did it.
Are you willing to speak with the district attorney?"
And he said, "Yeah."
- I figure, "You know what?
[tense music]
* *
- In the midst of an interrogation,
prosecutors in Queens are bearing down
on murder suspect Chanel Lewis.
- This was a shock.
He was angry about something else
that had gone on in his house.
He released all of his rage
on a person that was not deserving of that.
- He was listening to music
and he said, "The music stopped..."
"And I just punched her."
[tense music]
He says, "I don't know why."
- This was a brutal attack.
- I-I-I couldn't believe it.
He was free and open about everything.
* *
This was a confession.
- My team was pretty sure we had our man,
but soon, I received even more astonishing news
and had to call Lieutenant Russo.
[police sirens echoing]
- My phone rang, and it was Chief Boyce.
And I go, "Chief, what's up?"
He goes, "John, you're not going to ----ing believe it."
I said, "What?"
He goes, "It's him. It ----ing matched."
His DNA matched.
And I got-- like now, I got chills.
- We had a confession and we had DNA,
so I felt very strong.
- He was processed and he was remanded
to New York City Correctional Institute pending a trial.
* *
- I don't know if I've ever been so proud of my detectives
or so happy an arrest was made.
My first call was to Phil Vetrano.
- I say, "Hey, Chief. What's going on?"
He says, "Phil, we got him."
I said, "Got who?"
It went from no suspect to we got him,
so it was mind-blowing.
* *
- Over two years after the crime, in November 2018,
Chanel Lewis's first-degree murder trial begins.
* *
- The DNA experts who testified
show that the probability that it was anybody else's DNA
other than Chanel Lewis
was, like, astronomical computations.
Didn't exist, basically.
And that was pretty compelling.
- But despite having a solid case,
we all know that a jury can always surprise you.
- I was watching the jury,
and I sensed that some people may not have been listening
because maybe their minds had been made up
one way or the other.
* *
Then they came back to court.
They were split.
Seven for conviction, five for acquittal.
And the judge declared a mistrial.
* *
- I was just shocked. I just wanted answers.
Like, who can tell me what went wrong?
[somber music]
- Disbelief.
How could anybody not come to the conclusion
that this--
this person did this,
murdered my daughter, is beyond me.
- It's hard to divine what goes into
someone's conviction on a jury
as to why they will take the contrarian position.
* *
[tense music]
- But prosecutors refused to let Chanel Lewis off the hook.
Six months later,
they returned to court for a retrial
to get justice for Karina Vetrano.
To press their case,
they shared new proof of the defendant's guilt.
- There was also reports brought in
about Chanel's searches on his cell phone
before he was arrested...
about Miranda warnings, the role of a prosecutor,
repentance or penance.
We also had searches about the case.
* *
And then the jury deliberated and they had a verdict.
Everybody's on pins and needles.
The foreman was asked to give the verdict.
[dramatic music]
- Guilty.
[somber music]
The whole courtroom erupted in a cheer,
fist pumping, clapping.
It was unreal.
- We screamed, and then we cried.
It was jubilation.
- On the sentencing,
life without the possibility of parole.
[lock clanks]
As best as we could, we got justice.
* *
- After she passed, there were so many people coming forward
telling her parents, like, oh, you know,
"She was so magical and special."
Karina's legacy is the fact that
she touched every single person she met.
* *
- This is an urn that Phil gave some of her friends
with Karina's ashes in it.
I think of Karina every single day.
I love her and miss her.
- Karina talks to me every day.
I picture my baby.
I picture her in life and I picture her in heaven,
and she is extremely powerful.