- We knew that a fire had been set
at the residence of Jim DiMaggio.
- DiMaggio is suspected of setting fire to his home.
- There was a body in the garage.
That turned out to be Hannah's mother.
They assumed that he had taken Hannah with him.
- James DiMaggio is suspected of killing
a woman and abducting her 16-year-old daughter.
- Her father issued some statements
directly to DiMaggio.
- The damage is done.
I'm begging you to let my daughter go.
You've taken everything else.
- They issued an AMBER Alert throughout initially California
and then up the Pacific Northwest
as the search area grew.
Soon after the description of the car went out,
the abandoned vehicle was spotted near Cascade, Idaho.
It's a very remote area.
We had aviation assets flying around.
The pilot said there's an adult male down there
and what we think to be teenage blond-haired girl.
Somebody who finds themselves in this horrible set
of circumstances through no fault of their own,
my job is to go there and get her back.
And then I hear a small-caliber firearm discharge.
[gunshots pop]
[dramatic music]
- In the FBI, we make a lot of headlines.
♪
Drug busts,
mob stings,
terrorist takedowns.
- Get down! Get down!
- We understand why people want to tell stories about us.
- Mark it.
- Freeze! - FBI.
- FBI! - Action!
- But they don't know the half of it.
[indistinct radio chatter]
What really goes down,
we save that for each other
when we're talking agent to agent.
♪
This is "FBI True."
[ominous music]
♪
- So, Chuck, I know that you were involved
with the Hannah Anderson kidnapping case.
- Yep.
- It's the end of the summer, you're in Virginia.
I know it's sticky and warm. Where are you?
What's going on?
- Kristy Kottis is a 24-year veteran of the FBI.
She worked gangs, crimes against children,
as well as human and drug trafficking.
Kottis was the supervisor
of the FBI's threat response squad,
overseeing the Bureau's response to terrorism threats
in New York City.
- It's a Friday afternoon.
My little sister and her husband and three kids were
visiting from Germany, and my mom was in town.
And my phone rang.
- Chuck Davis was a decorated Air Force vet
when he joined the FBI in 1998.
He was a bomb technician, freefall jumper,
and SWAT team leader.
He ran hostage rescue teams before retiring
as supervisory special agent in Denver.
- So got in the car and ran code from Northern Virginia
down to Richmond airport, which is where we have
our alert bird on standby.
- When you go code, that's lights and sirens.
What are you learning at this point about the case?
What do you know?
- We had heard of this case earlier in the week.
It was a kidnapping case, but it started
as an arson investigation.
We knew that a fire had been set at the residence
of Jim DiMaggio.
- DiMaggio is suspected of setting fire
to his home 65 miles east of San Diego on Sunday.
- And when the fire department responded to the residence,
there was a body in the garage.
That body turned out to be Hannah's mother,
tortured, but obvious signs of a struggle.
- The victim in that structure has been identified
as Christina Anderson.
She's a 44-year-old Lakeside resident.
And it has been determined that Ms. Anderson has been murdered.
- There was an arson investigation,
and they determined that somebody had set the house
on fire utilizing devices on timers
and they had an intact device that they could analyze.
And so that led them to believe then
that Mr. DiMaggio was a prime suspect
in the murder of Hannah's mom.
And they knew there was another body in there.
Turned out to be her brother in the house.
- Police say the charred remains found inside the home
of DiMaggio are consistent with that
of an eight-year-old boy,
the same age, of course, as young Ethan.
- DiMaggio was a close family friend
of the Andersons, right?
- That is correct.
- They called him Uncle Jim. - Yes.
They also learned that at some point before the day
of the fire, DiMaggio apparently took
Hannah and some of her friends on a trip,
and he said something to the effect that,
if you and I were the same age, Hannah, I would...
I would want to date you.
- Hm. - And so since Hannah was
last seen where Mr. DiMaggio picked her up
at cheerleading practice, they assumed that
he had taken Hannah with him.
- An intense manhunt is underway this morning
for a California man.
James DiMaggio is suspected of killing a woman and her son
and abducting her 16-year-old daughter.
- They issued an AMBER Alert throughout initially California
and then up the Pacific Northwest
as the search area grew.
- So we just learned that the AMBER Alert has
been extended to Oregon and Washington state.
- Any time there's a child involved,
it ups the ante considerably, and as a result of that,
we're super focused on getting all the guys and gals
and the whole team on the airplane
and getting on our way as quickly as we possibly can.
- Now you're really in focus.
Where was Hannah's father during all of this?
- He was away from the family in Tennessee on, like,
a three-month work trip.
But as soon as it became apparent that DiMaggio had
kidnapped Hannah, he issued some statements
directly to DiMaggio.
- Jim, I can't fathom what you were thinking.
The damage is done.
I'm begging you to let my daughter go.
You've taken everything else.
Hannah, we all love you very much.
If you have a chance, you take it.
You run.
You'll be found.
- So there were numerous sightings.
- Meanwhile, a sighting at this California border checkpoint
not far from DiMaggio's home appears to confirm
that Hannah is alive.
- A San Diego County sheriff's department spokeswoman said
the 16-year-old was photographed with suspect
James Lee DiMaggio in his Nissan Versa
at a westbound Old Highway 8 checkpoint
shortly after midnight on August 4th.
- Soon after the description of the car went out,
the abandoned vehicle was spotted near Cascade, Idaho,
by the Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness.
- San Diego officials announced a major new lead.
- The blue Nissan Versa was discovered covered in brush.
- The license plates had been removed,
and whoever parked the car there attempted to hide it.
- Local law enforcement in the area
were able to confirm through the VIN number
that the vehicle did belong to DiMaggio.
- There were a number of sightings and false leads,
but this sort of at least pinpointed that
he at least was here
and that's what got us moving in that direction.
The investigators on scene did a search of the vehicle
and found some receipts from, I believe it was a Walmart down
in San Diego, California, and they identified
the items that he had purchased.
And it was some camping supplies
to include a tent, blue tent,
and one very odd fact said a gray house cat.
And I thought to myself, why would anybody
even put that in there?
At the time, I thought it was really kind of silly,
then sometime that, either Thursday or Friday,
a group of horseback riders
were riding way back into the wilderness area
and they came across a gentleman
and a young girl who they said were ill-equipped to be
in the area where they were.
She was described as having on sweatpants and tennis shoes,
and when they returned to their house...
- Just had a gut feeling about him.
- The AMBER Alert was on the television,
and I told my wife, I said that is that girl
we seen on the mountain.
- She did appear frightened, but I thought
it was a fear of the horses.
- I have to stop you right there.
So here are these couples pony riding in the woods,
and they come across a 16-year-old girl
and basically Grandpa Monkey with her.
And, you know, how does that even happen?
- So the Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness area
is something on the order of 2.3 million acres.
It's a very remote area,
and the fact that the two of those parties crossed paths
is very fortuitous for us.
- I've had cases also like that where
it's just, like, you can't even calculate the odds of that.
- As you well know, you need a start point
into something that big.
And so I think that was the linchpin that sort of
got us involved in this case.
[dramatic music]
♪
We Landed About 11:00 at night and drove up to Cascade.
The next morning, people just start streaming in,
all the various jurisdictions, all the people that are there,
you know, to try and figure out how we're going to best
slice up this giant pie.
The chances of us in 2.3 million acres
coming across those folks is fairly slim.
Logical investigation said, OK,
he was last seen here by the hikers.
How far could two of them travel on foot?
Where might they be going?
There was a river that had river rafting,
like river guides, and so we thought, oh,
maybe he's working his way there,
and he's going to get on one of these rafts
and float down the river.
So the idea was we were going to flood the area
with as many resources as possible.
So we had other FBI tactical assets there.
We had, I believe, the San Francisco SWAT team,
Salt Lake SWAT team, and some other resources.
And so the bosses all got together,
and we just started slicing the area up
based on where the car was
and where they were last sighted.
My team, which was me and four other guys,
we were assigned an area called Morehead Lake,
and it was an Alpine lake up in the mountains
and our job was just going to be
to get up there and search the area
and see if we could find anything.
- Did we have at this point... I know you guys have all kinds
of things in your toy box, something that allows you
to have an aerial peekaboo?
- We had Bureau resources, aviation assets,
and they were just generally flying around
the River of No Return Wilderness.
And they were at Morehead Lake,
and they saw a tent on the ground.
We knew that DiMaggio had purchased a blue tent...
- Right. - At Walmart.
We asked the pilot if he could tell
what the color of the tent was, and he said,
"Yes, it's a blue tent."
Well, over the next couple of minutes,
they said there's an adult male down there
and what we think to be a teenage blond-haired girl.
Things are going really, really well,
and then the pilot comes across the radio one more time
and says, "Oh, I also see a house cat"...
a piece of information that I thought
was absolutely ridiculous...
DiMaggio, Hannah, and a gray cat.
And so now we have all those things
pointing us to that location.
That's where we need to go,
and it trips from an area search
to a deliberate hostage rescue.
- From this point forward, my team became primary
on getting to Morehead Lake and arresting Mr. DiMaggio.
[tense music]
♪
They took the five folks that were originally with me.
They gave us a canine and canine operator
and then five snipers.
So it was a total of 11 of us. - Wow.
- One small helicopter... I believe
it was an Airbus Air Star.
Four people were in that one, and the rest of us were
in a Customs and Border Patrol Black Hawk helicopter.
Immediately, the point man went and started talking
with the helicopter pilots to identify
a landing zone that we could put helicopters in.
Now that's a tricky business, you know.
You don't want to alert DiMaggio to your presence.
You know, you're going to offset considerable distance
so they don't see and preferably
don't hear the helicopters.
Everybody's just focused, hyper focused
on making sure that they have what they need
to get there and do the job.
[dramatic music]
♪
And I remember we're coming in, and the pilots
are like, OK, 30 seconds.
And we're like, OK, 30 seconds.
♪
And then we see where we were supposed to land,
and then we just keep going.
They said we can't land there.
- They just decided at that point...
- It was untenable for the large helicopter.
They couldn't get the helicopter
down onto the ground.
- Are you feeling anxious at this point?
- Absolutely, right?
We need to get moving.
We continue just to fly, and they picked a spot
on the ground somewhere else.
They landed us on a small ridge off of a summit.
♪
And for the first 45 minutes to an hour,
it was straight uphill.
Very, very difficult. We're in camouflage uniforms.
You'll have body armor, a rifle, pistol,
helmet, night vision goggles, ammunition,
and then various other types of equipment
based on what your role is.
At that time, I weighed about 200 pounds,
and with all my tactical assault kit
and I weighed about 265, so pretty hefty.
And it was warm, and in the first minute and a half,
you're just like, oh, man, this is gonna really be hard.
- Hm. - People don't understand.
It's like, well, why is HRT going out to Colorado
to the mountains to train?
Well, if I have to hike in the mountains,
I need to be in the mountains to train.
- Right.
- And so you fall back on that training.
In the end, it all falls back to the training.
And so you're like, yep, this is gonna suck.
I know it's gonna suck.
But, hey, I've trained, and I can do this.
And you just put your head down and go.
So the point man immediately calculated that we had
about three miles to move over land.
It's Now about 3:00 in the afternoon,
And we know we have till 5:00, 5:30 before it gets dark
and we can anticipate them getting
into the tent for the evening.
- Does this feel different because it's a child?
- Absolutely.
A lot of these abduction cases don't
end favorably for children.
- You have a daughter.
You have family.
What are you thinking at this point?
- My job is to go there and get her back.
And as a parent, I think of my daughter.
And I was like, well, you know, I'd want someone
to come help find my daughter if she
was in a situation like this.
So, yeah, it becomes personal.
There's a time and a place
when you think about your family,
but you've gotta keep your world small.
You have to focus on the task at hand.
Bottom line is there's only a few things that I can control.
That's my thoughts, my words, and my actions,
and everything else is superfluous.
So we establish what's called the ORP,
an objective rally point.
That's the last position that, collectively,
we were all together prior to moving to the crisis site.
- And were you getting updates? - Yep.
So the airplane's still overhead
providing us with that sort of
real-time tactical intelligence.
- So can you see the plane? You?
- Oh, yeah. - OK.
So do you think they can see the plane?
Are you wondering? - Yeah.
Yeah, I'm pretty sure. Yes.
- What kind of things are they telling you?
- They're telling us, like, where the tent is on the lake,
what DiMaggio is doing,
what Hannah's doing, sort of like,
OK, he's down by the lake
and Hannah's next to him at the lake.
And then he's back at the tent,
and just painting a picture for us to better understand
what we're coming into when we get to the crisis site.
[ominous music]
The sniper team leader and I kind of
developed a hasty plan.
So the snipers were gonna move to the west side
of the lake and see if they could establish
sniper observer positions on the west side of the lake
looking back across the lake to the north,
to give them line of sight to provide intelligence.
And then my group, we were going
to continue moving east below the lake and then move
from south to north, up to the lake.
There is nothing like a guy on a sniper scope
that's covering your advance to the target, right?
So if there's a threat to Hannah at this point,
or a threat to one of us... - Mm-hmm.
- They can solve that problem very, very easily.
If you were going to devise
the worst possible hostage rescue,
this would be a good contender because it was daylight,
uphill,
to a potentially armed and dangerous subject.
We'd covered maybe 100 meters or so,
and then I heard over the radio,
"Freeze, freeze, freeze."
If you're in mid-step, you don't even finish that step.
The sniper team leader is relaying to me over the radio
that, hey, DiMaggio is away from the campsite.
He looks like he's collecting firewood.
And so we stop what we're doing.
We all take positions of cover.
30 meters through the trees and through the underbrush,
I can see this movement where DiMaggio is.
And then he's off back towards the campsite.
So then, the airplane overhead, he says,
"Oh, he's back at the campsite,"
and then we can see smoke coming up through the trees.
So now we know, OK, that's where the tent is,
and that's where we need to go.
And then the pilots came over the radio and said,
Hannah is down by the lake.
She's as far away from DiMaggio as we've seen her from him.
[dramatic music]
So that was the impetus behind us saying,
OK, now is the time.
So I gave a command... execute, execute, execute,
and all four of the guys in front got up
and we just started advancing on the crisis site.
And then I hear small caliber firearm discharge.
[gunshots pop]
- What's that sound like?
- Sounds like bundle of sticks snapping.
That's DiMaggio opening fire,
and then immediately, I hear return fire
that I know is our guys.
[gunshots pop]
I immediately just start running
as fast as I possibly can
straight towards the crisis site.
Probably covered 20 or 30 meters,
and I popped out into sort of a clearing
and I could see the lake.
And off to my right, I heard Hannah screaming.
But our first priority obviously
is to deal with the subject.
So I turn to my left, close that distance down,
and come upon DiMaggio who is at the campsite
laying on his back.
He was dead.
So he had been shot numerous times.
Told the guys there, hey, secure him
so we're going to handcuff him regardless,
you know, just part of the procedure.
And I said, let's begin securing the crime scene.
And I ran back over to Hannah.
[tense music]
♪
By this time, the other two guys that were with us were
providing medical aid.
I said, hey, how is she,
and they're like, we think she's fine.
So no visible injuries.
And she was incredibly, incredibly agitated.
I took a very hard look at the subject,
and I was not quite sure that it was DiMaggio.
- Why is that?
- So his face was very gaunt.
We've seen this in the past with folks that are
suffering from mental issues.
It made me question whether it was him.
And I looked and I looked and I looked and I said OK.
So I ran back, and I said, "Hannah, who is that?"
She goes, "That's Jim DiMaggio.
Well, how is he?"
I said, "Don't worry about him.
He's not gonna hurt you anymore."
So one of the things that you have
to understand in these situations
is the bad guy has a say and...
- Absolutely.
- He chose, and he chose poorly.
- What about Hannah?
What is she doing at this point?
- She visibly started to calm down.
And I said, "Hey, Hannah, we're gonna get you
"out of here really quickly.
"Is there anything here that's yours
that you wanna take with you?"
And she says, oh, yes, there's a pair of jeans over there.
And so one of the guys crawls in the tent,
and he's like, these?
So I grab them, and I said, Hannah, are these yours?
And she goes no, no, no, these are my mom's.
How's my mom and my brother?
- Mm.
I mean, here's this young woman who's just been
through this crazy ordeal.
These, you know, guys pop out of the woods,
and they get in a gunfight.
He was dead. - Right.
- And, you know, she's trying to process all this
and all she wants to do is get the jeans
so she can give them back to her mom, right?
- When she was saying that about her mom,
what were you feeling at that point?
- Just I felt...
I was crushed.
I said, hey, Hannah, we'll figure out
about your mom and your brother further down the line.
Our goal is to get you off this mountain as safely
and as quickly as we possibly can.
Radioed back to the operation center, helicopter's en route,
and it comes in.
And I said, "Hey, Hannah, have you ever been
on a helicopter before?"
She said no.
I said, "OK, make sure you look around.
It's pretty cool."
And, you know, she visibly got excited and, you know,
actually saw a smile on her face.
That made me feel good.
The helicopter comes in.
We run up there and get her strapped in.
And helicopter takes off, and that's the last time
I saw Hannah Anderson.
- What happened to the kitty?
- Sure enough, that night,
they were securing the crime scene.
The cat wandered back into the tent,
and they rescued the cat as well.
[somber music]
♪
- Chuck, you've worked all kinds of cases.
What makes this case stand out
amongst all the cases that you've done?
- When you have the ability to save somebody
who finds themselves in this horrible set of circumstances
through no fault of their own,
it's a tremendously rewarding experience.
Nothing prepares you for that elation.
When I put her on that helicopter
and that helicopter flew away, I mean,
I was overwhelmed, overwhelmed with positive emotion
and you successfully accomplished the mission.
And the idea that as horrible as this circumstance was,
we gave Hannah at least a future.