[tense music]
[music intensifies]
[tense music]
[phone rings]
- Gabe would always come in super early to work
and she never missed a day,
so when she didn't show up, everyone kind of knew,
like, we all had a pit in our stomach, like something's wrong.
Gabe's not here.
- Alec would lock her in a room
and wouldn't let her out,
or break her stuff,
and he'd like dump alcohol on her stuff
and pee on her stuff.
It was scary to think about
her being around someone that treated her like that,
'cause you don't know what else he's capable of.
[phone rings]
- [Automated Voicemail] I'm sorry,
the person you were trying to reach has a voicemail box
that has not been set.
[crickets chirping]
- Lisa Davis basically bluffed him
and lied to him and said, well I was there,
I saw her leave with you.
And when he was confronted with that information,
he changed his story.
- Lisa told us that even though
Alec and Gabe were still married,
CJ had been dating her,
and Gabe had confided in him
about her relationship with Alec.
[indistinct chatter]
- CJ confirmed what Lisa herself had seen or received.
- He told us that Alec
had reached out to him on Facebook,
and had made some threatening statements to him.
He had also told us
that Alec had kind of randomly sent
naked pictures of Gabe to him.
- At this point in time,
I was really trying to be optimistic;
but if you're dealing with a missing person,
time is of the essence.
We didn't know for sure
what had happened to her or where she was,
and we needed to try and speed things up and get answers.
[sad music]
- Gabe was a bubbly person.
She was just always happy.
When I first started working with her, I was very shy,
but she always a comfort person for me to go and talk to.
She definitely tried to see the good in everyone,
always giving people chances
to be confident in themselves.
When I first met Gabe,
she would talk highly of Alec.
And then it seemed like once they got married,
things started to go super wrong.
He was super controlling.
She was just a beautiful person inside and out
and we just wanted her to be safe and protected from him.
[tense music]
- He was very cooperative,
but for still being married to Gabe,
he did not show any type of concern for her wellbeing.
This seemed all very routine to him,
which seemed very odd.
[tense music]
- Alec said that he dropped Gabe off
shortly after leaving the residence in Shelby.
However, her phone is pinging essentially at his work.
- At that point, Shelby PD responded
out to where Mr. Blair works,
to attempt to make contact with him
and figure out what had happened.
[radio chatter]
[car lock honks]
[Alec speaks indistinctly]
- Deputy Frazier and I began looking inside the vehicle.
A short time later, Deputy Frazier indicated to me
that he saw cleaning product on the floor of the vehicle.
- And the vehicle appeared to be wiped down, quickly.
[tense music crescendos]
[brooding music]
[suspenseful music]
After I placed Alec in the back of my cruiser,
I walked over to Alec's vehicle
and immediately noticed the large amount of blood
along the frame of the seat.
- [Officer Reed] And then the stitching in the vehicle.
[suspenseful music]
- It was very clear that that was not the case.
There's more blood in the vehicle
than what would be consistent with a nosebleed.
I think he was in such a panic mode
that he couldn't think of anything to say
other than things that made no sense.
[suspenseful music]
At that point in time,
I asked Alec if he would go to the Shelby Police Department
to continue to be asked questions about Gabe
and he agreed.
[pensive music]
- We didn't have a lot of time.
We still didn't know where Gabe was.
There's was the possibility
that she was somewhere alive, but harmed.
So we wanted to get in there
and get as much information out of Alec as we could
as fast as we could.
[suspenseful music]
I knew that he was lying,
but you do have to kind of have your poker face on,
because I wanted to portray to Alec
that I was the good guy, that I was his friend
and almost like a therapist.
[brooding music]
- He was smiling and he showed absolutely no emotions
that matched with what he was saying.
He seemed happy to talk to us
and happy to give us information.
[suspenseful music]
- About 10 minutes into that interview,
just his demeanor and the way he answered questions
and said things,
I just immediately felt that something was very wrong
and that he had done something to her
and we needed to figure out what it was.
[suspenseful music]
[pensive music]
- Alec had a lot of behavioral characteristics
that are indicative of somebody who's very nervous
and who may not be telling the truth.
[brooding music]
I was looking him in the eyes,
but he'd avert his gaze and, you know, he'd look down.
He had his arms folded, so I can tell he was trying
to protect himself from my questions.
[suspenseful music]
- At that point in time,
I felt like I had a perfect opening.
Let's tell him how easily we can prove him a liar.
[suspenseful music]
[camera clicking]
[suspenseful music]
- And we were calling him out on his inconsistencies
and then he gave us a little bit more.
He was actually telling us that the blood was Gabe's.
[suspenseful music]
Unknown to me, my sergeants and the Chief of Police
and the supervisor from the Sheriff's Department
were watching it and realized
that the recording had stopped.
[suspenseful music]
- I was notified that the recording had stopped.
I was pretty irritated.
It stopped right at that crucial point of the interview
where he's really starting to give us more information.
I thought we were about to get the full confession.
So my job at that point was to go back in
and have him kind of re-tell me everything
that he had been telling me.
My body language was intentional.
Generally, when somebody has their hands behind their head,
they're relaxed, but I was nervous,
because I was afraid that it had thrown off
the flow of the interview
and so I didn't know if he was gonna continue talking or not
at that point.
[suspenseful music]
- He was giving us a little bit,
but something about his story just didn't add up.
It's really apparent that he's hiding more
than he's leading on.
[suspenseful music]
- Did he just beat her unconscious and left her lay?
Or was there more to it
and did he kill her before he left?
I thought, "Okay, well, I'm gonna tell you
what I think happened, what my summary of this is
and you correct me if I'm not right."
And I laid how it seemed to at point in time.
[suspenseful music]
- In my mind, I'm thinking,
"Okay, maybe there's a chance she is still alive."
If there was the slightest chance at that point in time,
the highest priority needs to be
where is she at. We need to get to her
and help her before the situation becomes worse.
[suspenseful music]
[pensive music]
[suspenseful music]
[pensive music]
- We'll do one thing at a time, okay?
Just spread your legs for me a little bit.
- He's our easiest avenue to being able to find her quickly,
so he was secured in a cruiser at that point in time
and several of us hit the road
with basically the intention of,
okay, show us. Where is she?
[suspenseful music]
[tense music]
- You have the obvious challenges
of the weather and your visibility, you can't see much.
It's cold, you don't wanna accidentally contaminate
a crime scene by stumbling through it.
You wanna find what you're looking for,
but don't wanna mess up what you're looking for either.
- I had separated off from the rest of the officers
that were with me.
[tense music]
And I kinda went down into a ditch.
I was kind of scanning with my flashlight
and then I found her.
[suspenseful music]
- We did discover Miss Clevenger's body
and at that point in time, she was deceased.
[somber music]
Her body was turned over
and one of the first things I noticed
was that she had a wound in the side of her neck
as if it had been cut.
And I could also see there appeared to be cut marks
on the jacket that she was wearing.
So that immediately led me to the conclusion
that she had been stabbed to death.
[suspenseful music]
This is horrible that it has to come to that.
We've gone from checking the welfare of someone
and now this is what it's come to.
[ominous music]
- When they found Gabe, I just lost it.
Like, we all knew something bad happened,
but we weren't sure what had happened.
[somber music]
I would always say I love her,
but the last time I saw her, I didn't get to say it
and it...
Sorry.
[somber music]
But I still think about that,
that I didn't get to say I love her
the last day I'd seen her.
[somber music]
[suspenseful music]
- We cordoned off the area
and the state crime lab came in.
[suspenseful music]
We learned that she had been stabbed 14 times.
It explained the amount of blood
that we found in the car.
It kinda helped to paint a more clear picture
of what actually happened.
- Obviously, Alec wasn't truthful about the manner
in which she was killed.
This killing was a lot more brutal
than he led it on to be in the first place.
[pensive music]
We did find in a trashcan out in front of the house,
a bloody knife and rag.
And there were other bloody clothes that were found
in Alec Blair's bedroom.
[suspenseful music]
- This small backpack appears to have blood on it.
- Miss Clevenger's phone was found in a bag
of personal possessions belonging to her.
So the next step is we're gonna go back to him
and we want him to say,
"Yeah, this is what I did.
This is where I did it."
[suspenseful music]
- We don't want shades of gray,
we want the complete truth
and we want the puzzle completed for us.
[suspenseful music]
- It's essential to at least try
and get some sort of answer and closure
so that can be given to family at a later time.
- We don't want the defense attorney to come back at it
and pick your case apart
and say, "Well, he said that he just beat her
and smothered it, it couldn't have been him.
He didn't even tell you how she died."
So we needed him to tell us what happened,
because then that closes the case.
[brooding music]
[suspenseful music]
This is the culmination of everything we've had so far
and we've gotten him to confirm it
with the magic words, "I did it, I stabbed her to death."
[pensive music]
[clock ticking]
He's gonna be an old man
by the time he's even eligible for parole.
He is off the streets and out of everybody's lives.
[suspenseful music]
- I was happy that we came to the resolution
of the case we did,
but at the end of the day, it's still a tragedy
that a young woman who had her whole life ahead of her
was just viciously murdered.
I think that Gabe was a very loving person,
that she was a good friend
and a good daughter, a good sister,
that she lived her life to the fullest
and that she really cared about other people
and those around her.
[somber music]
- When I think of Gabe,
I just think of how many people loved her
and how many people cared about her
and if Gabe were here right now,
I would start by saying I love her.
And that we all miss her.
And that we're sorry that she had to go through that.
[somber music]