KATHY: You had to have the looks,
the personality, and it also
depended on who you were friends with.
DEBRA: She was crowned Dairy Princess.
It would be easy to see where someone could be jealous.
The problem in a small town is, if you go out with somebody
and you break up, he's gonna go out with somebody you know.
JENNIFER: She did thrive in that drama.
I felt like I was being brought into a soap opera that I really
didn't want to watch.
What really stood out was anger.
So she was number one in everything she did, even crime.
It's brutal.
[theme music playing]
CLARK: I was the manager at a full-service hotel.
I was still at home, ready to come to work,
[phone ringing]
and the phone rang,
and it was our maintenance engineer,
and he said, "Clark, you gotta get here now."
And I said, "Why, what's up?" He says, "Just get here."
It's about a 15-minute drive.
The back side of the hotel was where the employees parked.
So I pulled in there, and right away, you could see
the confusion, all the squad cars and the activity going on.
And one of the detectives came over to me right away and says,
"I need for you right now to go look in her car."
So I looked in the driver's side, and Lisa's body was laying
in there between the seats. I was shocked.
She'd been murdered.
NARRATOR: Lisa Cihaski was born
into a family of farmers in Marathon County,
a place where cows outnumber people.
LOUISE: In Marathon County, everybody knows
who you are -- their business
is as important as your business.
That's the rules.
JENNIFER: If somebody gets married,
everybody in that community
goes to that wedding.
People, in my opinion,
had nothing else to talk about than other people's stuff.
NARRATOR: And no one loves to gossip more
than the town's teenage girls.
LOUISE: It was the '80s.
We were just like people portrayed in the movies.
Drank with our friends. We partied in the woods.
People had cool cars.
It took a lot to keep your hair looking the way that it did
when you were damaging it with perms in the '80s.
In a town where everybody knows each other,
Lisa went to a consolidated high school.
There were nine buses that took the kids from these
little tiny towns.
And in total, there were 300 kids, 9th to 12th grade.
But even in a school that small, there are cliques.
There were cliques for sports,
cliques for smart kids,
agriculture groups.
I was one of the kids with the jean jacket.
And we'd always go out in the back and smoke.
Of course, you had the jocks.
LOUISE: There was always the high school bully,
mean girl, whatever you want to call it.
They were conceited and self-centered.
You know, that's what you got.
NARRATOR: But you don't always have to be mean to be popular.
KATHY: Lisa was a very popular girl,
very friendly, very pretty, always dressed very nicely.
Lisa was in student council, and she was a cheerleader.
She didn't really like studying, but she made
the National Honor Society.
You know, everything came easy to her.
NARRATOR: And she walked the hallways
with a crown on her head, literally.
DEBRA: When she was crowned Homecoming Queen,
she seemed right in her place, like she fit there.
If you think of The Breakfast Club , Lisa would probably
have been Molly Ringwald.
It would be easy to see where someone could be jealous.
NARRATOR: Especially when she's captured
the heart of the most eligible farmer in town,
Bill Buss.
GINI: In high school, they started dating.
He was cute.
He had blue eyes, he had dark hair, he was tall.
He's not like other guys around here.
He doesn't drink.
You just know he would treat a girl right.
He was a serious farmer,
very serious about his farm.
Farming is a dedicated job.
It's a strict schedule -- milk in the morning,
milk in the evening,
365 days a year.
GINI: Lisa helped him forget his problems.
He felt like he could let loose with her and relax.
NARRATOR: It may seem like Lisa is living a teenage dream,
but heavy is the head that wears the tiara,
especially in a town where the glory days end
with high school.
And in June of 1986, Lisa is at a crossroads.
LOUISE: In Marathon County, you don't leave your territory.
You go to school, get married, buy a house, have some kids.
It's kind of how the process works.
Lisa wasn't sure it's what she wanted.
So many women, you know, think about that.
Is this something really I'm cut out for?
Is this going to be my life?
Do I want to just sit back and just have babies?
I think Lisa wanted to do more with her life.
Exploring the world is where she was at.
Lisa wanted to go to somewhere warm,
because it's always cold in Wisconsin.
We talked about going lots of places.
You dream of that nice blue water and palm trees.
NARRATOR: But leaving town means
she'll have to part ways with Bill.
GINI: It was more Lisa's idea to break up.
She was just like, okay, I'm graduating high school,
I need to kind of experience something besides us.
But they remained great friends.
NARRATOR: In the fall, Lisa enrolls in
Dakota County Technical College,
three hours away from Marathon County.
She had gone away to school in Minnesota to be a travel agent,
you know, trying to find herself.
NARRATOR: Lisa was a talented and beautiful young woman
with big dreams,
the kind other girls want to see fail.
DEBRA: In Marathon County, there's a little bit of snark
from girls about kids who leave.
It's, we'll see how well she does out in the world.
Like, oh, you're going there?
Oh, well, I would never go there.
NARRATOR: But after completing her program in six months,
Lisa finds the place she most wants to go to is back home.
GINI: She decided she didn't want to move.
God bless these people, a lot of them don't move away.
A lot of kids in Birnamwood live with
their parents by choice. That's what Lisa did.
SCOTT: On the morning of September 21st, 1989,
I was off duty.
And as I drove past the parking lot of this hotel complex,
I noticed a lot of commotion taking place.
I made contact with the lieutenant on the scene,
who told me to go home, put on a suit,
because we have a homicide.
Lisa Cihaski was in her 20s.
She was employed by one of the local hotels
in Marathon County.
LOUISE: Lisa worked at the front desk.
We were the people who checked you in.
My initial thought was
maybe it was somebody from the hotel.
I think some of the detectives were thinking that right away,
because they wanted all the hotel records and all
garbages from rooms and who's checked out already.
And then one of the detectives, he said to me too, he says,
"Are you willing to be fingerprinted
and give a hair sample?"
Because realistically, you're a murder suspect,
as is all the employees here.
If you didn't agree to it, you're gonna go high on
the list of suspicion.
The interviews started right away.
I told detectives I worked that day, September 20th.
It was busy, Wednesdays are always a busy day.
I left probably around 5:30, 6 at night.
There was still light outside, and I remember seeing Lisa.
I said, "I'm calling it a day."
And she said, "I'll see you tomorrow."
And that was the last that I seen her that night.
GINI: That evening, after Lisa's shift ended, about 8:30,
she went, and she changed her clothes
into jeans and sneakers.
She said good night to people, went out the door.
There was a problem with the car, like a light was going
on or something, and she was concerned about it.
CLARK: She had just bought that car.
But I remember her saying, once in a while, something was
acting up on it.
GINI: That night, Lisa didn't arrive home.
She didn't call. She didn't say she'd be late.
And this was highly unusual.
Mrs. Cihaski started calling around.
And she called the hotel.
She called friends of hers, and nobody had seen her.
Her mom really started to worry.
The next morning, no word from Lisa.
So her mother gets up, she drives the road going by
the hotel, and she looks, and she sees her daughter's car
still in the lot.
So she parks, and she gets out, and she looks through
the window, and her daughter is lying
slumped over.
And she reaches in, and she touches her daughter.
And she's cold.
DEBRA: She was such a genuine...
She was such an innocent person.
I don't know why this had to happen to her.
SCOTT: You could see that Lisa Cihaski's body was seated
in the driver's seat.
There was a smudge of some sort on the driver's side mirror.
She was either trying to fend off her attacker or trying to
save her own life.
It was obvious that she had suffered a strangulation injury
due to ligature marks around her neck.
What really stood out, as far as motive, was anger.
To do a strangulation death where someone is trying to
struggle against you, you have to have a lot of anger
to continue doing that.
SCOTT: We wanted to focus on
the first 72 hours, definitely,
on a homicide where you try to task as many people as
you can to it.
The sheriff's office was not as large as what it is today.
And the pool of detectives available would have been
less than seven.
And the pool of potential suspects was huge.
We were trying to determine individuals that would have
a suspicious background from that particular hotel complex.
We had to take a look at
the number of guests that were present.
Then you have the open parking lot next to a restaurant that
is very popular.
And could someone have been waiting out there?
REPORTER: The initial shock surged
through this area September 20th,
when Lisa Cihaski was found in her car
strangled to death. -She's a very nice person.
I can't imagine anyone wanting to hurt Lisa.
KATHY: When I heard about Lisa's death, I was at home.
My mom and I were in the living room watching the noon news.
And my mom and I just looked at each other, and we were just
like, oh my god, how could this have happened and who would
have done such a thing?
SCOTT: When you're talking about a young female killed in
a parking lot that's well lit, that does cause a lot of
individuals to be concerned about themselves
or their loved ones.
We changed our security procedures.
All the female employees were walked out
by a night manager or the chef.
They made sure they got in the car,
started the car, and waved goodbye.
We didn't have a clue yet who did this.
The whole town was speculating
what happened.
Was it a drifter from the hotel?
Was it just some guy from the neighborhood?
Was it a couple guys?
So the speculation was running real high.
I mean, we worked in a hotel.
You see strange things.
There were a lot of men that flirted with the staff members,
people at the front desk and bar.
We had a box of lost and found wedding rings in the safe.
I remember the detectives asking me, do you know
who could have done it? No. I couldn't imagine who.
It had to be a stranger.
NARRATOR: That same day, a hotel employee
gives investigators their first big break.
They learned that someone who had worked with Lisa had
seen her in the car after work.
While she was pulling out, her headlights went
into Lisa's car.
She saw somebody in there with Lisa, who she thought was
a man -- she said they had a halo of blonde hair.
So they put out a sketch based on her description, and then
they put it in all the media.
NARRATOR: Twenty-four hours after Lisa's body is discovered,
a tip comes in close to home.
GINI: The bartender said there was one individual named George
who would hang out at the bar.
He was there for a sales training, who was kind of
a partier, hung out at the bar all day, flirted with all
the girls and the staff.
He actually had a date the same night that Lisa died.
But he left abruptly. He stood the date up.
The next morning, he checked out
really early and vanished. I think he was like 5' 6".
His hair was a little shaggy.
So maybe that's the individual she saw in the car with Lisa.
We had to take a look at if there was any opportunity for
Lisa Cihaski to have had contact with that particular
guest, because maybe they had some type of confrontation.
GINI: So when they get ahold of George, George said,
"I had partied so much that I fell asleep.
"I didn't go to my date because I was just
"sleeping from partying.
"And the next day, I got up and thought, I don't need to be
here for the training anymore. It's over, so I left."
NARRATOR: It's not the most convincing story,
but his manager is able to corroborate his alibi.
CLARK: At that time, the detectives started looking
at hotel employees and seeing if there's any surprising names
from warrants or other police departments.
And then they interviewed a few guys from the kitchen.
There was an individual who she had known from high school,
his name was Mark, who wound up working as a dishwasher.
And he would pinch her on the arm and say,
"You're a pretty little thing."
KATHY: He was a year younger than me.
It was kind of a rough upbringing for him.
I remember him being on drugs in school.
Lisa was wary of strangers and wouldn't have let
a stranger in the car.
But perhaps if Mark asked for a ride, she might have let
him in the car -- maybe he fit the description.
So they brought this guy Mark in for questioning.
And the police asked him, "Where were you that night?"
And he said, "I was in Milwaukee with my dad."
And they go, "Well, do you have proof of that?"
And he goes, "Yeah, I got a speeding ticket."
So he was able to show that, so he was written off.
None of the investigation came out with an obvious person
who would have a motive to kill her.
So I think there was a lot of frustration to try to figure
out who it was.
People were freaked out because they thought it was a person
who probably was traveling through, had stopped in
the hotel, and followed her out and killed her.
DEBRA: It was at a point where everybody was worried because
there was some crazed killer on the loose.
NARRATOR: With hotel employees and guests written off
as potential suspects,
detectives dig deeper into Lisa's personal life.
You do start to take a look at relationships that
the individual would be involved with and how those
relationships could have impacted what occurred on
that particular day.
You have to think, well, it could have been
someone inside her circle.
It's very seldom that it's a whodunit.
On most homicide investigations,
the perpetrator is someone that is a spouse
or a significant other who killed in a fit of anger.
NARRATOR: All eyes turn to Lisa's old high school
boyfriend, Bill Buss.
Lisa told me she was getting back with Bill when I met
her at the Howard Johnson restaurant.
The breakup after high school was traumatic.
I do believe that she wanted to be a farmer's wife.
She just needed to explore a little bit more.
When she moved back, she definitely wanted to get
back with Bill.
NARRATOR: Police learn that Lisa's been back in Bill's arms
for the past three months.
Now he's a suspect in her murder.
So they brought Bill in for questioning.
When police asked Bill about his whereabouts that night,
he had explained to them that earlier in the evening,
he called Lisa at work.
He said, "Okay, I'm going to go play darts till 11.
I'll talk to you later."
And they were able to confirm that Bill, through one of
his friends that was indeed playing darts.
And the police ruled out Bill pretty quickly.
And they didn't feel that he had anything to do with it.
Bill seemed so distraught.
NARRATOR: But they soon learn that Bill and Lisa's
relationship is more complicated than meets the eye.
The problem in a small town is if you go out with somebody
and you break up, he's gonna go out with somebody you know.
And so Bill told police that he was dating Lisa.
But prior to that, he had dated Lori Esker for about a year.
Bill had met Lori just like he met Lisa in high school.
Lisa was older than Lori.
They had lockers near each other, and they were friends
with each other.
Lisa and Lori's moms knew each other from school.
After Bill and Lisa broke up and Lisa was at college,
Bill almost immediately started dating Lori.
She was smitten with him.
Bill had loved Lori.
LOUISE: That was an uncomfortable situation
for Lisa -- Lisa didn't like he was dating someone else.
It hurt, I'm sure.
NARRATOR: Turns out Farmer Bill has a type.
GINI: Both of these girls were popular.
And both of these girls had won contests.
Lisa was the Homecoming Queen of Birnamwood.
And Lori Esker was crowned Dairy Princess in June of 1989.
NARRATOR: In Marathon County, a Dairy Princess
outranks a Homecoming Queen.
DEBRA: So a Dairy Princess is someone who is very involved in
agriculture and have a real desire of
staying in the industry,
and it also means that you're very popular.
It's a county award, so she was representing
all the dairy farms of Marathon County.
Here you guys go! You get another cow!
They go to a lot of different functions and try to get other
young ladies to get involved in the agricultural business.
To be a Dairy Princess would be an absolute honor.
NARRATOR: Every farmer's daughter
would do anything to wear that crown and sash.
The person who won would become a spokesperson for the industry.
I mean, Lori was perfect for it, she was a shoe-in.
It symbolized her as an icon of the industry.
There's some true legitimacy to whoever holds the title,
you know, a real honor.
NARRATOR: The Dairy Princess and the Homecoming Queen.
GINI: There was overlap between the two women.
Bill was kind of walking a tightrope.
NARRATOR: How could Farmer Bill possibly choose?
It seems he didn't have to.
Lori and Lisa were people who were former
friends, they were wholesome and well-liked.
NARRATOR: After learning about Farmer Bill Buss's
ex-girlfriend, Lori Esker,
investigators take a closer look into her background.
KATHY: Lori was a pretty girl,
always looked nice, had hair done, makeup on, dressed nice.
Lori and I got closer senior year.
We sat next to each other in class.
To be popular in our school, you had to have the looks,
you had to have personality and friendliness, and it also
depended on who you were friends with.
NARRATOR: Lisa may have been queen of the cool kids,
but Lori ruled
her own circle of friends, the Agriculture Club.
KATHY: At that time, we called them Dirts.
I was a Dirt.
All of us farm kids, you had to go home after school and do
your chores, so Lori had to go home and help on the farm.
DEBRA: Lori definitely was a hard-working farm girl,
expected to be able to carry two pails of milk.
She was very strong, she was really,
really into agriculture.
Lori was in 4-H, Future Farmers of America.
She was good at what she did. She was determined.
She won awards for these groups that weren't just local,
they were district or statewide contests.
In school, she was student council president.
She was used to being a winner.
Lori wasn't conceited,
but she was self-centered.
She talked nonstop, and the subject of the conversation
was usually Lori.
Her friends called her Ratchet Jaw, because
it would never stop -- she was known for exaggeration.
Some might call it lying.
I'm gonna get a new truck, I'm gonna have the best farm.
Everybody thought Lori kind of told tall tales.
NARRATOR: With looks, brains, and brawn, Lori makes an ideal
Dairy Princess of Marathon County, a title she wins after
graduating high school in June of 1989.
When I saw Lori in the paper for being the Dairy Princess,
I thought, oh my God, good for her.
She was so into it.
So she was a perfect candidate in that position.
I remember her having a great big smile on
her face, big accomplishment.
NARRATOR: But Lori has already won the greatest prize,
the hand of farmer Bill Buss,
whose heart had been broken when Lisa
left for college.
GINI: Lori wanted to be a farmer,
and Bill wanted to be a farmer.
He was kind of perfect for her.
He represented everything she wanted.
I went to college at UW-River Falls, and its nickname was
Moo U, because there were a lot of agriculture students there.
My roommate Anne and I had a three-bedroom apartment,
and Lori ended up living with us.
She was going to school for agriculture and journalism.
NARRATOR: It's the perfect university
for a Dairy Princess and just
a two-hour drive from Marathon County.
Lori did talk about the fact that she was the Dairy Princess
for Marathon County.
I felt that Lori was honored and felt that it was exciting
and an accomplishment for her, but I had never heard
about a Dairy Princess.
NARRATOR: Lori works hard, not just at her studies,
but also at maintaining her new relationship with
the farmer of her dreams.
GINI: While Lori was at college, she called Bill
multiple times a week.
She wrote him letters, and she came home every weekend.
JENNIFER: She was very obsessive and fixated on Bill,
on the fact that they were together.
She talked and talked and talked about Bill and how
Bill could give her certain things.
Lori was going to basically get her MRS degree and marry Bill.
NARRATOR: But sometimes dreams don't come true,
even when you're a princess.
Bill didn't think they were getting along, and he tried to
break up with her several times, and she'd go,
"We'll work it out."
Then the summer between freshman and sophomore year,
Lori went home to see Bill, and he told her that it was
over, that he was breaking up with her.
For Lori, she basically lost
everything she believed she deserved.
He went home, and she decided,
no, I've got to go speak to him.
So Lori drives towards Bill's farm.
NARRATOR: And that's where Lori gets the shock of her life.
Lori gets out, sees Lisa with Bill,
and Lori could see she'd been replaced.
She could not accept the fact that she was a loser
in this situation.
And Lori comes marching toward Lisa and yells, "You bitch!"
Lori had confronted Lisa in front of Bill.
They were yelling at each other.
DEBRA: Lori was very strong, and she could lift
two pails of milk.
Just her strength and her capabilities would have not
been a close mark to what Lisa could produce.
And Bill said to her, "It's not just that I'm with
Lisa, it's that we're not meant to be together."
You know, Lisa said, "I'm sorry that this happened,"
and managed to calm her down. Lori's like, "Okay,
I accept this."
By the end of it, they were hugging,
like they were able to calm each other down.
So it ended okay.
Lori went back to school in River Falls that fall.
SCOTT: At that time, we had detectives
taking a look at Lori Esker.
I knew for sure that Lisa Cihaski was
killed by strangulation.
In my mind, it was a fit of anger.
This was only, like, three months after the breakup.
When detectives came to talk with Lori and asked her about
her relationship with Lisa and Bill, she was honest.
She said, "Yeah, I went out with him.
"It was very hard for me.
We had words with each other, but I've accepted it."
The detective wanted to establish where she was when,
so they asked her for the timeline of that evening,
and she said she had gone to the college library to study
until about 9:30.
So she had an alibi, but when they checked it out,
they found nobody remembered seeing Lori.
JENNIFER: You know, back in the late '80s,
it would be easy to go to the library,
not check in and just go there and do their thing.
I know that I did that a number of times where I would just go
in, do my thing, and find a quiet corner
to go study.
NARRATOR: And police find someone who vouches for Lori's
whereabouts on the night of the murder.
Lori said she called her friend back home, Scott,
and they were able to verify that.
They had a record of the phone call.
They found that she had indeed called him from the library.
Lori's alibi checked out.
SCOTT: Lori Esker was always cooperative with the detectives
and was always willing to talk.
GINI: Bill told police, "She's not violent,"
and he didn't think Lori did it.
Lisa's mom didn't think she did it.
They thought that she was obsessed,
but there was nothing about her that made you think
this is an evil murderer.
JENNIFER: She was attractive.
I thought she would meet somebody else.
You know, I had guy friends in other circles
that, you know, may be a good match or,
you know, a connection for her, a good distraction.
I didn't think she would've gone home midweek to murder
somebody over Bill.
NARRATOR: Investigators may have let Lori off the hook,
but the small town rumor mill keeps turning.
KATHY: People in the area were starting to point fingers,
and with the triangle of the three,
and to find out it had gotten heated at one point before,
I think that's where people started coming up with that
they thought it was Lori.
NARRATOR: The women of Marathon County
know that Lori hasn't quite
told police the whole truth about her and Bill and Lisa.
I really don't think she could conceive why he would choose
Lisa over her.
And she didn't believe Lisa would stick with the farm.
It's a lifestyle with borders and limits.
You know, you can't travel with cows.
JENNIFER: Lori wanted to become the Dairy Princess,
to become Bill's wife, to become Bill's children's
mother, the farming wife, the queen of the community.
Those goals were shattered by Bill and Lisa.
Lori's world fell apart.
NARRATOR: After the fight with Lisa,
Lori starts a whisper campaign
to make certain Bill sees things her way.
GINI: She was very good
at making people feel sorry for her.
Lori told everybody, "Lisa is gonna marry him,
divorce him, and take half."
Lori had said that Lisa was pregnant
and she was going to marry Bill for that reason.
LOUISE: I don't believe Lisa was pregnant.
She's trying to get Bill back and get everyone on her side.
I think it's just who Lori was.
It was like, okay, there she goes again.
Lori did thrive in that drama.
I felt like I was being brought into a soap opera
that I really didn't want to watch.
NARRATOR: Investigators turn back to Bill Buss
to ask about Lori's behavior after their breakup.
GINI: Bill told police Lori knew how to get into Bill's bedroom.
And she was found in the house sometimes when nobody was home.
She had come on two separate occasions to try to seduce him.
She let herself in, crawled into bed, got on top of him,
and she was wearing a blue teddy, and then one other time,
she was wearing a red teddy.
And he tried to be as kind as he could and dissuade her.
It would be easy to say to Lori, "Why are you putting
yourself through this?"
As pretty as she was, in my opinion, she may have
lacked that self-esteem.
It was just like, well, why do you want a guy that
doesn't want you?
NARRATOR: Detectives are no longer buying
Lori's story that she made up with Lisa.
Five days after her first interview with police,
she's called in a second time.
GINI: The detective asked her,
"Have you ever been in Lisa's car?"
She denied being in Lisa's car repeatedly.
And then she stops, and she goes, "Well, one time, I was
"at Bill's house, I saw the car there.
"So I know this doesn't sound so great,
but I opened the door and looked in."
NARRATOR: Detectives know a red flag when they see one.
They ask Lori to take a polygraph test,
and the Dairy Princess agrees.
On the way to the room, they walked her down a hallway.
And in one of the rooms, Bill was hooked up to
a polygraph machine so that when she walked by,
she would see him, and it might unsettle her.
It was a ploy to have her react.
They hook her up to the machine.
They ask her the questions,
and she fails.
So they let her have another test,
and they ask her questions,
and she fails.
And at that point, the detective said,
sometimes people do terrible things by mistake.
And Lori decided to go ahead and talk.
GINI: After she failed the polygraph test two times,
Lori started crying.
It had to be terrible carrying that around.
I think that she got backed into a corner
and had to confess.
The night of the murder,
Lori was looking for some type of closure, because Bill made
the decision to be with Lisa.
She knew that Lisa was at work.
However, Lori did not have a vehicle.
GINI: That was the other reason why nobody particularly
suspected Lori was she didn't have a car at school.
She was carpooling with people back and forth.
So they didn't have any reason to think she had driven there.
But she confessed to renting a car.
NARRATOR: Detectives run the mileage on the rental,
and it backs up Lori's confession
that she drove two hours each way.
If you'd have taken the mileage from where Lori Esker was
residing at school on the western side of the state,
driving it to the hotel and back, the mileage
is almost perfect.
GINI: As she drove into town, she saw Lisa coming
out from her job.
Lisa seems a little surprised to see her.
CLARK: And Lisa, having known her,
must have let her in the car
where they could hash this thing out.
GINI: Lori got very upset.
Lori said she was shaking her and yelling at her
and calling her names.
And she saw a belt in the back seat, which was Lisa's belt
from work, and put it around her neck.
It's hard to believe a woman would kill another
woman by strangulation.
It's a long time you have to strangle them
for them to die -- a long time.
It's brutal.
SCOTT: Lori Esker was charged with first-degree intentional
homicide as a result of that interview.
GINI: She became the first woman in Marathon County history
to be charged with first-degree murder.
So she was number one in everything she did, even crime.
LOUISE: I was happy they found the person.
So the community would have peace.
NARRATOR: News of Lori's arrest becomes a national sensation.
The title became the Homecoming Queen
was murdered by the Dairy Princess.
GINI: There was even a bumper sticker
that someone made that said,
"Wisconsin, if the cholesterol doesn't get you,
the Dairy Princess will." She had a tiara.
She had her sash and a big smile.
And from there, she went on trial for murder.
NARRATOR: The trial begins in June 1990.
The defendant indicated to her that she still had very
strong feelings for Bill.
It was overwhelming to go to Wausau and testify
in that trial.
I was looking around at Bill and Lori and just
really overwhelmed and shocked.
How is it somebody that lives in the same house
as I do would murder somebody?
It was difficult for me and challenging.
And all along, I had hoped that it was in self-defense.
NARRATOR: After 7 and 1/2 hours of deliberations,
the jury reaches a verdict.
The jury in the Esker case found her guilty
of first-degree intentional homicide.
There is elation whenever you can successfully close
a particular case, because you do give closure to that
family and also hold someone accountable that elected to
steal someone else's life.
NARRATOR: Lori is sentenced to life in prison with
the possibility of parole.
I felt that she got the sentence that was
coming to her.
When I see Lori's parents in church or at a family function
with my brother, I feel for them.
They're innocent.
JENNIFER: Why anybody would go that far
to murder somebody over a stupid guy, you know?
No offense to Bill, but what brings somebody to
that level where they would want to do that?
GINI: The prosecutor argued that Lori
had been an overachiever.
She had this dream that she was going to be a successful
farmer, that she was going to be married
to a successful farmer.
She had basically been awarded everything she ever went after
and that she had a dream, and she felt it was destroyed.
KATHY: There's no winners. Each family lost a child.
Both families lost a daughter.
But one is still here, and one is not.
LOUISE: I would love to hear where Lisa would have traveled.
I wish all of those things could have happened.
Lisa told me, "When I die, I hope I'm a little old lady
with lots of grandkids."
She didn't get her dream.
[crying quietly]
♪
On the next Mean Girl Murders...
They both straight A students.
They both wanted the same things.
She's got one up on her.
They was just toxic going back and forth.
Failure was not an option.
It just threw me off
how much hatred was coming through in the voice.
♪