[announcer] And here's the kick.
[man] Going to a Friday night football game
is all there was to do around town.
Basically the whole city participates.
[announcer] Here's a snap. Pitch out left side.
You can miss church, but you can't miss the football game.
I was there more for the social aspect
and watching the cheerleaders.
The cheerleaders were the cool kids,
so it was always fun watching Natasha do her thing.
[woman] Natasha had a lot of eyes on her.
And when you're popular, you're gonna have haters.
[suspenseful music playing]
The last time anybody saw Natasha alive
was at that party with the football players.
This case was a unsolved murder
of a young 19-year-old cheerleader.
It was a big deal.
There was a murder and there was a cover-up.
Pretty cheerleader taken from the Friday night lights
by the rich and powerful.
That story has legs.
[woman] There were so many stories.
No one really knew what to believe.
Someone out there does know the truth.
I just wanted to know what happened to my sister.
[upbeat music playing]
[indistinct voice on the radio]
[siren wailing]
[dog barking]
[light music playing]
[bell ringing]
May, 1992,
my senior class was on the cusp
of becoming adults,
leaving for college and having the world
at our fingertips.
[Keisha] We didn't have a whole lot
to hold us accountable.
We were doing a lot of things
that we should not have been doing.
We were reckless. We were invincible.
We did what we wanted.
[Todd] Most of us who grew up in the country,
we were doing one of two things.
We were either ranching or playing football
when we weren't in school.
There was no TikTok,
no cell phones, no social media.
People had to make their own fun.
[Darla] Parties spread word of mouth.
And within a few hours,
you have a house
or a pasture full of teenagers
drinking and partying up
and having the time of their lives.
[rock music playing]
Everybody had their own versions
of what happened that night.
You've got the kids clearing out a place in the pasture
and starting a fire.
A lot of my classmates had been in attendance
of that party.
[Valerie] You've got the football players
and their Lions t-shirts.
And where you have football players,
the cheerleaders are gonna follow.
All the cheerleaders hang out together,
so do the football players,
that popular group
that everybody wants to be.
[Keisha] Natasha was there that night.
Everyone knew Natasha.
She was the wild one.
[Darla] Natasha attended Livingston High School
with all of us.
She was a cheerleader.
[Keisha] Natasha was a very pretty girl.
Of course, all of the cheerleaders were pretty girls,
but Natasha just kind of stood out
because of her charisma.
[Darla] Natasha had a lot of eyes on her.
Some were jealous and some were in love.
And when you're popular, you're gonna have haters.
And, you know, some say
that Natasha was in a fight that night.
[suspenseful music playing]
Natasha jumped in her car and she sped off,
just being pissed off about,
you know, everything that was happening.
That was the last time anybody saw Natasha alive.
[Chad] Livingston's a small, typical East Texas town.
Everything is owned by local people.
So you visit your friends, stop for dinner.
Part of the population is rich and powerful people
that are descendants of railroad barons
and the big lumber companies.
But for most people in Livingston,
it's just about getting through life day to day,
paying the bills, raising your kids.
So that's why in the early '90s
when the economy took a hit,
it was pretty devastating to the whole community.
So you kinda looked for your joy where you could find it,
like at Lion Stadium.
You still got together and had a heck of a time.
[announcer] And here's the kick.
[Keisha] The recession hit my family pretty hard.
So that made the football games even more special,
because they were able to come together
and forget about that
and just celebrate.
Friday night lights in small town Texas
really means the community comes together.
There's a sense of pride in winning a game,
a team being together.
You can miss church, but you can't miss the football game.
[announcer] Here's the snap. Pitch out left side.
[Todd] Livingston is the county seat
in Polk County.
That's where the courthouse is.
That's where sheriff's office is.
Going to those football games on Friday nights,
it's not uncommon to see the high profile
like a judge, like a sheriff, like a state rep.
But when you sit down there,
they're not Representative Bailes, they're Ernest.
They're people that you've known your entire life.
People that usually wouldn't,
would sit side by side in the stands
and cheer on, you know, their team together.
[announcer] Nobody's gonna catch him.
Touchdown, Livingston.
That was the social event of the week.
End of story.
[dog barking]
[Todd] At approximately 8:00 a.m. on May 3rd,
a father and son were coming back from a fishing trip.
They saw smoke and at that point,
make a call into the sheriff's office.
So the sheriff's office sent a deputy out to investigate.
And the deputy saw a burnt-out car
that was on a hunting trail.
The car vaguely looked to be a late '80s,
early '90s Chevrolet Camaro, two-door coupe.
Since the car was still smoldering,
they just put it on a hook
and dragged it to a storage yard
to try to let it cool down
before they started trying
to identify the owner or anything.
They run the VIN numbers and determine
that the car belongs to Natasha Atchley,
a young girl from Livingston.
And coincidentally,
Natasha Atchley has been reported missing
by her mother.
When we wake up Sunday morning,
I could tell something wasn't right.
Uh, mom was in a panic,
'cause Natasha had not shown up.
Mom knew that Natasha was gonna stop by a friend's house
for a birthday party, Saturday night.
She would at least always call,
you know, "Hey, Mom, I'm not gonna make it."
So she started calling the friends,
you know, "Hey, have you seen Natasha?"
Call the hospitals, you know, "Is she there?"
Was there a reported wreck? Was there an accident?
By the time Sunday night rolled around,
she started to realize,
"Hey, something really wrong here,"
and called to make the missing person's report.
[Todd] The next day, May 4th, there has been contact made
with Natasha Atchley's mother.
And she meets sheriff's deputies
at a George Lindsay's Tow Yard in Shepherd.
[Chad] So upon arrival, mom started to investigate the car.
She first started looking in the front of the vehicle,
and she saw in the cup holder section
some of Natasha's rings.
She's like, "Well, that's weird.
Natasha wouldn't leave her rings behind."
And then next, mom was looking in the back
and she saw some small bones.
She said to herself, "Oh, my God,
there was a animal back here."
And then she looked up and saw the skull.
And she realized at that point that,
that's her... That's her daughter.
She basically, you know, lost a part of herself
'cause her worst nightmare had come true.
[Todd] Natasha's remains were identified
by her dentist.
[police radio] 78 to 95, code six.
It was difficult to ascertain exactly
what had happened to the vehicle,
just from the amount of damage that was done.
There appear to be nothing that had struck the vehicle.
The windows appeared to be rolled up
at the time of the fire.
It did not appear that the gas tank
on the vehicle had been ruptured.
It was a very puzzling scene.
I mean, this fire had to be extremely intense.
I've seen a lot of car fires
where people are killed in them,
and they were not burned anywhere
to the degree that Natasha was.
When they do a forensic examination of the Camaro,
they'd find traces
of this really intense petroleum product.
[Todd] There was some debris on the ground,
debris from the front driver seat,
and the front passenger seat, and the floorboard
that were consistent with drip gas.
Drip gas is basically a petroleum byproduct.
So this comes off of the top of a oil well.
It's not something that's refined.
Where did the drip gas come from?
At that point, the case was looked at as a homicide.
[Valerie] Now, the word races through town
that a 19-year-old former cheerleader
has been murdered.
It sends the county into a tailspin.
[birds chirping]
[bell ringing]
It was a Monday
and we returned back to school
from the weekend,
and almost instantly,
there were rumors about Natasha
and her death.
And no one knows what happened.
I thought, "Oh, my God,
I've just lost my girlfriend.
I'm not gonna see her again."
It was a pretty bad time.
[Valerie] News crossed my desk that a burned body
had been found in Shepherd.
And it was just bizarre
because that almost sounds like a,
you know, organized crime thing.
And that didn't happen
in our little corner of East Texas.
So how does that beautiful young girl
find herself in a situation
where her remains are found in a burned-out car?
[dramatic music playing]
[Keisha] I first met Natasha in first grade,
Livingston Elementary.
Even at a young age,
Natasha's spirit, just... It was evident.
She was just always a light.
Natasha was eight years older than I am.
Some of my fondest memories of my sister
was how brave and how strong she was.
We lived in a small community.
And some of the neighbors had like a zip line.
And she was just fearless.
Climb up, go down that zip line.
Me, on the other hand, petrified of heights.
So I climb up to go down that zip line,
and then I get petrified at the top
and unable to zip line down.
So here comes the big sister to the rescue
to help me get down that tree.
It was that "go get 'em" attitude
that even as a kid I admired.
[Darla] She was in the drama club.
She was cheerleader.
She was loud, and she was fun.
Natasha loved being a Livingston Lion cheerleader
because of the attention it brought.
The cheerleaders were the cool kids.
So it was always fun watching them do their thing
on the track.
[Darla] Natasha loved attention.
And Natasha was known to have a very wild streak.
[Chad] Well, as soon she got her driver's license,
that's when the wild streak really kicked in
because she was able to go whenever she wanted
and wherever she wanted.
[Keisha] She was all about her cars,
and she liked to drive fast.
She got into a lot of trouble.
She got a lot of tickets,
a few DWIs,
but she made no apologies
for who she was.
To be a cheerleader, you have to uphold certain values
and present yourself in such a way
that you don't bring any kind of negativity
to your school or to your community.
She was a party girl.
She didn't keep her mouth shut.
She wasn't the girl next door.
Natasha was too big for this town.
Her personality was definitely busting the seams
of this small community.
I think Natasha was the way she was
because she had suffered such a loss at an early age.
Natasha's mom and dad had divorced
when she was very young.
By third grade, they had both remarried,
and that's when her father died.
[dramatic music playing]
Natasha struggled with that a lot.
I think the loss of her father
kind of left a hole in Natasha,
and that led to a lot of anger,
and frustration,
and just acting out.
Well, there finally reached a point
after Natasha got her third DWI,
wrecked her third car, that mom realized
that she's gonna have to get Natasha out of this area
in hopes that she would get on that right track
without the distraction
of fitting in here in Livingston.
By Natasha's senior year,
she had moved to Odessa to live with her uncle
and go to school at Permian High School.
But by the spring of '92,
Natasha had come back to Livingston.
And on May 2nd, ended up
at the birthday party in Shepherd
at a girl named Debra Fowler's house.
She wanted to meet up with some old friends
from high school.
The Fowler residence was a mobile home
that was on the main road
on the Trails End Subdivision
which is on the northern end of San Jacinto County.
It is just a few miles off of the border
with Polk County in Livingston.
Natasha's vehicle was found
just under a mile from the Fowler residence.
[Valerie] So when investigators go
and talk to Debra Fowler
who's the birthday girl,
she says that Natasha left the party
at about 3:00 or 3:30.
So now that finally puts a time peg
on when Natasha was last seen alive.
And the witnesses were all fairly consistent about this,
that Natasha was seen leaving the party
at a high rate of speed
at 3:30 in the morning,
in her car by herself.
[Valerie] But beyond that, when you start looking
through everybody's statements
and the different accounts,
there are too many missing pieces,
and it was just all over the place, you know.
People either had no recall at all of what they had done,
or they had completely opposite stories.
[Todd] These are kids who have been out partying.
There's been drinking. There's been drugs.
There's, you know, sexual relations going on.
So you've got a bunch of kids
who are fresh out of high school
who don't wanna tell that they've been doing
all of this stuff.
[Keisha] There's multiple stories that I've heard.
Some say that Natasha was in a fight
with her former schoolmate Cindy Hennings.
[Darla] Cindy Hennings was in my math class.
And she would come in on Monday mornings
and talk about which guy she was dating.
And the problems that she had with Natasha,
and there was a lot of animosity
between the two girls,
boy-related.
And Cindy had been at the party
with a guy she had been dating, Jim Morton.
[Darla] Jim Morton attended Livingston High School
with all of us.
He played JV football.
And he was a popular kid
that ran in that popular crowd.
Several of Natasha's friends have told me
that she came to that party kind of itching for a fight,
that Cindy had gotten really close
to one of Natasha's old flames.
I can only imagine
that if Cindy Hennings was standing
in that front yard
when Natasha showed up,
there were probably almost instant words.
So when Cindy and Natasha
began fighting allegedly,
Jim Morton came to Cindy's aid.
[Todd] Some people make it sound like it was fight club.
Some people make it sound
like this was just like some yelling,
screaming, maybe pushing.
But it is clear all the witnesses did say
that they had some type of confrontation.
And that Natasha left in a hurry
in her Camaro alone
at 3:30 in the morning.
No one saw her after that.
[Todd] Both Ms. Henning and Mr. Morton
downplayed the confrontation that they had.
Ms. Henning said that it wasn't,
you know, a complete fight,
that it wasn't, you know, throwing knuckles
and stuff like that at each other.
And Mr. Morton tended to say
that he was simply just trying
to break up the fight between Cindy and Natasha.
Even Cindy's denial to law enforcement
that they had anything to do with any kind of assault
that night,
I don't buy it.
[Darla] There were so many rumors
that it was hard to decipher
what's true and what's not true.
[Valerie] Investigators had a theory
that after Natasha left,
Jim and Cindy followed her, and beat her to death,
and they tried to set her body on fire
using gasoline
but that was unsuccessful.
So they went and sought help,
and they found an adult
who knew how to get drip gas.
[suspenseful music playing]
[Valerie] My thoughts after talking to investigators,
it seemed possible
that whoever caused Natasha's death
may not be the same people
who destroyed her car and her body.
That destruction was done by somebody
who thought they were protecting a loved one
or themselves.
One of the rumors was that the father
of where the party was taking place
did help get rid of the evidence.
This was Clarence Fowler's home,
where Debra Fowler
who was celebrating her 18th birthday lived.
[indistinct radio chatter]
[Todd] Something that concerned investigators
was that Mr. Fowler had also worked
in the oil and gas industry.
But on the other side of where the party was,
there's a oil well
that has a capability to produce drip gas.
[dramatic music playing]
So Ms. Fowler is absolutely high on the suspect list.
[indistinct radio chatter]
They found several gas cans
that were at the Fowler home.
They found a burn barrel.
They also executed a search warrant on the house
to see if there was any fiber or hair samples
that they could connect up to the scene
or anything like that.
[indistinct radio chatter]
Mr. Fowler did say
that he had been at the house all night initially.
Mr. Fowler then amended what he had said afterwards
and said that, "I'd gone to the gas station
for cigarettes."
Couldn't remember what time it was.
Later on, he said that it was about 11:00.
So Mr. Fowler absolutely acted
very, very fishy to begin with.
[Valerie] What was Fowler's motive for lying,
for the lack of consistency?
He didn't really come across as an innocent man.
[Todd] But the search of Mr. Fowler's home
showed no evidence
that linked him back to Natasha's car.
All of the gas cans were searched
to see if they contained drip gas.
None of them contained drip gas.
They were all gasoline or diesel.
There were scrapings done
from the burn barrel in his backyard
to see if there was any human tissue,
burnt blood, or anything like that.
None of that was found in there.
They just never had enough evidence
to actually arrest him.
[Darla] May was a very dark time for us.
The summer was almost like the Natasha case
would be solved
and that the new school year
would be something fresh.
And it will be a new football season.
Some happiness in our community
could be renewed,
but as the days went forward,
there was no resolution in this case.
And the rumor mill still continued.
[Valerie] Everybody was discussing it
at the grocery store, church, school.
Everybody has their theories all summer long.
And then, football season comes back around,
and for just a minute,
everybody's back focused on the new game.
But as soon as we get out there,
your memories of what happened to Natasha
are right back.
So by the fall,
the two biggest topics in town
are football and murder.
Natasha was never acknowledged
or honored after her murder,
to my knowledge,
by the community or the high school.
I think it would've been nice if they had done that.
Honored her in some way,
balloon release,
a picture in the case,
you know, whatever.
We attempted to have a homecoming
where it was in her memory.
We made like special ribbons,
and we invited her class,
the class before her,
several classes below her.
And there were probably about five people in attendance.
I feel that people turned their backs
on Natasha after her death,
because she was the wild child, you know,
she was in trouble frequently.
There was a lot of behind the scenes things
that went on at that time in Livingston.
In my opinion, I feel that a lot of the kids
that were at the party were told
not to talk about it.
Because some of these kids were sons and daughters
of elected officials,
all the way up to state representative status.
There was a rumor
that no one wanted those kids
to be investigated.
The rumor mill started that
the good ol' boy system is alive and well
and that people are covering for them.
[Valerie] Someone out there does know something.
But they're not telling.
Months and months and months went by
without the investigation
seeming to make any forward progress.
Detectives are just left
with take a statement after statement
and doing witness interview after witness interview
with people who can't be consistent
or have no memory at all.
They never seem to tell the same story twice.
But just when we thought the case was getting cold,
investigators come through with a break they needed.
On early 1993,
a gentleman comes forward
and said unequivocally
that he saw who killed Natasha Atchley.
[birds chirping]
[phone rings]
We were made aware that somebody had come forward
and testified
that they witnessed what had happened,
and so there was like, "Oh, gosh,
here's that break we needed."
[Keisha] I was elated.
I was like, "Thank God, finally
someone is gonna be held accountable."
A gentleman comes forward
by the name of Anthony Cornelius.
Anthony Cornelius was a Livingston fixture.
He played JV football in Livingston,
same place where Natasha had been a cheerleader.
He ran in the same crowd
as Cindy Henning and Jim Morton.
And Mr. Cornelius' story
to the sheriff's deputy is this,
that while he wasn't necessarily at the party,
he was driving by.
And when he saw who he believed
to be Natasha Atchley
on the edge of the woodline
with Cindy Henning and Jim Morton.
And he stated that he saw Cindy Henning
fighting Natasha Atchley.
Natasha winning that fight,
then he saw Jim Morton
strike Natasha, knock her down,
and then proceed to stomp her head
with a steel-toed boot.
[eerie music playing]
[Todd] And Mr. Cornelius said, unequivocally,
"That's what killed Natasha Atchley."
Anthony's statement gave investigators
enough evidence to arrest Jim and Cindy
for aggravated assault.
They denied having any part in what happened to Natasha.
They said they left the party
and took a friend home.
When I found out Jim and Cindy
had been arrested for assault,
I was relieved
because we were finally gonna have an explanation
as to what happened.
[Darla] There was a sense of relief
that someone was brave enough to come forward.
There was a sense of sadness,
because nobody wanted to believe
Cindy and Jim did that.
And then there was, like, that anger.
Like, "What the heck?"
You know, like, "What were they thinking?"
[eerie music playing]
[Darla] I'm not really sure why he waited seven months
to come forward.
[Valerie] Was it guilt?
Had he been thinking about this for seven months,
and it finally drove him to tell the story,
or was he trading to get out
of some sort of other problem?
In my opinion, I think Anthony probably waited
to come forward because he was fearful.
Fearful of the people that were involved.
I think he was fearful of retaliation.
[Valerie] And then we get to the next piece
of the puzzle.
These two teenagers didn't seem to have
the knowledge to be able to get the drip gas
from the well near that property.
So who stepped in and started the fire?
Before we can get the answers,
a few months later, the case hits another snag.
While Cindy and Jim are sitting in jail in 1993,
suddenly Anthony Cornelius recants his story.
He says that none of this was true.
[eerie music playing]
When I found out, I thought, "Oh, my God.
How did this happen?
Why would he recant that?"
[Darla] It shocks everyone.
It shocks the community
because we had what we thought was a done deal.
Jim and Cindy were in jail.
We had what we thought was a credible witness,
and he passed the polygraph test.
With no witness,
they have to drop the charges against Jim and Cindy.
[Chad] My mom was floored when she found out
that they were released.
You think you're moving forward,
and then you're just right back to peg one.
[Valerie] Anthony never really gave an explanation
for why he recanted.
So we really don't know why.
But after all that time, coming forward
and giving a statement
and then a few months later taking it back,
makes it very suspicious.
The word could have gotten out to him
that he needed to keep his mouth shut.
[Keisha] In my opinion,
he was probably threatened
by a person of authority.
You know, "The same thing that happened to Natasha
can happen to you or someone in your family."
To me, they would have to have had some kind of power
for that threat to be taken seriously.
[Keisha] Jim nor Cindy came from money.
They would not have had anybody in higher places
to protect them.
But there were kids of powerful people,
influential members of our community
at that party that were told
not to talk about it.
You know, "If you have to say you were there,
say you left before it happened,
because my career could be destroyed."
The allegations of this pressure on Anthony
kind of drives a lot of theories into overdrive.
[upbeat music playing]
[indistinct chatter]
There was a girl that came to us
and told us that they were inside the house,
and she said she went to the bathroom.
She heard a ruckus in one of the bedrooms,
looked in and saw Natasha being sexually assaulted.
And that Natasha went outside
to go get in her car, talking about,
"I'm gonna squeal on all you, mfers."
And the kids that were outside were told to stop her.
Natasha is physically stopped
and then at some point ends up on the ground,
and that's where allegedly
Jim Morton kicked her in the head.
[intense music playing]
And then after that,
that's when the cover-up began.
There were allegations
that possibly Natasha was sexually assaulted.
That Natasha was ultimately killed,
because she had been raped by a family member
of a high official in Polk County.
[indistinct cheering]
I believe that some higher power
wanted Jim and Cindy to be out,
because if you're looking at a life sentence yourself,
what's most likely you're gonna do?
You're gonna tell the whole story.
So if I'm gonna go down, you're gonna go down too.
It's important to understand
that for several years
prior to this in San Jacinto County,
there were several cases involving public corruption.
So when the Natasha Atchley case happens
just several years afterwards,
and that there are family members
of public officials involved in this,
the first thing that comes to people's mind
is corruption.
So months go by
and nobody seems to be held accountable
for Natasha's death.
[Valerie] Investigators say they're re-interviewing
the same suspects,
were just circling back through the same folks,
and nothing is changing.
Natasha's case has gone cold.
[melancholy music playing]
[Chad] After about the first decade,
you start to come to the realization
that you may never know what happened for real.
At the 20 to 30-year mark,
you've pretty much given up all hope.
There may have never be justice.
I just want to know what happened to my sister.
In 2022, San Jacinto County decided
to take another look at some cold cases,
and they went back through Natasha's case.
I was appointed district attorney
in May of 2022,
and this case was an unsolved murder
of a young 19-year-old cheerleader.
It was a big deal,
so I believe that we needed to bring out people
who were not involved in the case whatsoever
to have a completely fresh set of eyes
looked at this case.
I was so excited
because I thought, "Oh, fantastic.
You know, something is finally gonna come of this."
Then the San Jacinto County District Attorney's Office
made a statement that was just unbelievable.
[Todd] So I grew up in, we call it Shepherd America.
We're about 15 minutes just across Lake Livingston
from the city of Livingston.
I grew up hearing all these rumors
about Natasha Atchley.
And so, when I actually came to work
for San Jacinto County,
and when I looked at the case,
I was very surprised
to see a very, very different story
in the physical evidence and the interviews.
[suspenseful music playing]
The reason that we never found
the murderer of Natasha
is because she was never murdered.
[birds chirping]
After all these years
of listening to the rumor mill,
after hearing that this was a politically
motivated cover-up murder,
we actually started to unpack the evidence
and look at this in the light
of, was this really a homicide?
We looked at where are all the witnesses today,
and we went all across the country
interviewing these people.
And the remarkable thing is they still tell us
a story that's consistent with what they said in 1992.
Going back to the very first deputies responding report
and the photographs that he took
show that Natasha's vehicle,
the rear wheels were stuck in a mud hole.
We think it's very possible
Natasha may have traveled out to that spot in error.
She leaves a place after she's been taking drugs,
after she's been drinking at 3:30 in the morning
in a very dark neighborhood,
makes a wrong turn
in a Camaro with low ground clearance
on a muddy hunting track
and gets stuck.
We went as far as to bringing the same year model vehicle
and placing it in the same spot,
and based on the weather conditions,
even the tow truck driver said
that he had a hard time getting traction.
Those Camaros, that year model,
had a very, very low door height.
The door was so low
in fact that if you did get the car bogged down or buried,
you may have been prevented from opening the door.
At that point, Natasha could have
basically sank her car down to the frame
where the exhaust was crushed
and started a fire underneath her car.
So based on all the evidence,
we believe that this was an accident.
We believe that this was a horrible,
sad, tragic accident.
[Keisha] No.
No, that's bull [bleep].
This was clearly not an accident.
The only part of this that could have been accidental
was they got into a fight,
and they didn't really mean to kill her.
If it's so wet and so muddy that she's stuck,
how did it catch on fire?
Why didn't she kick on that door
until the mud moved out of the way?
If she couldn't open the door,
could she not roll down the window?
If she couldn't roll down the window,
could she not bust out or kick out the window?
[Chad] Why was she crawled in the back?
She knew it's a Camaro. There's no release.
I mean, there's too many things there
that won't allow me to accept that.
[Valerie] In 30 years of being a journalist,
I've seen a lot of people trapped in vehicles
and burned intensely,
but they are still a recognizable human form
and Natasha wasn't.
If they're trying to say that the fire was caused
by Natasha spinning her wheels
or some other ignition point
that was fueled by the gas in her car,
where did the drip gas come from?
Mmm-hmm.
I still cannot account
for the presence of drip gas
inside the vehicle.
What we do know
is that we don't have any evidence
at this point to say that this was a homicide.
I believe that it's completely rational
for Natasha's friends and families
to feel that she's murdered,
that somebody did something to take Natasha from them,
because it's difficult to accept
that this was a tragic, horrible accident,
and I just don't have any evidence to support it.
[Keisha] There was a murder and there was a cover-up.
It's been said that this will never be solved,
because too many people will lose their retirements.
Thirty years later,
there was a message that came through
our Justice for Natasha Facebook page.
This was on September the 12th, 2022,
and it said,
"The investigators had it wrong from the beginning.
We all know who did this,
and their money is still paying off the system."
All it's gonna take is one person
with enough gumption and courage
to stand up against all the others
and say, "Look, I was there.
I can tell you what happened."
As her friend,
I can't let people forget what happened to her.
I just don't want people to quit talking about her
in hopes that maybe one day it will happen.
[Darla] By keeping Natasha's story alive,
I hope that those people
that hold those things deep down inside
can have a moment to say,
"Hey, I know what really happened,
and I know that my community will eventually back me,"
and more people will be able to come forward,
and we can all finally have closure.
I will fight for justice for my sister
as long as I'm here,
not until I get a... An answer.
It's just important for me that people remember Natasha
for the bubbling personality that she was.
The no fear, "go get 'em" cheerleader.
I mean, that's what she was in life
and what she was in high school.
[dramatic music playing]
♪
Once kick off happens you hear that first pop,
you know it's game time.
Friday night football is everything.
Announcer: Touchdown Lakeland Patriots!
That's the great part of high school football...
[sirens]
...but it can lead to very ugly moments in time.
Friday night lights could put a target on your back.
A lot of people come back for the homecoming game.
We did wonder if there was somebody
targeting the cheerleaders.
He was intensely competetive.
♪
I didn't think that it could have been anybody
I knew that would have stabbed me.
It was a cover up. The school knew the violence was going on.
By the fall, the two biggest topics in town
are football and murder.
This is football and people are crazy.