[suspenseful music playing]
[narrator] A young woman embarks on what should be
the trip of a lifetime.
Of course I was concerned about her hitchhiking.
I knew that she was not the best judge of character.
Nobody knew we wouldn't see her again.
Life on the road promises freedom.
[Iris] She said she felt like she was accepted to be herself.
But there's a darker edge too.
[Rob] We have incredibly low rates of violence,
but, like, there are other things like stabbings.
[Mark] I can certainly understand giving someone a ride,
but to then take them to their house.
[Rob] You know, some people have
anger management problems. Right?
She's on an unpredictable journey.
There's something wrong.
People aren't who they seem.
Everybody has a different idea of what
the Rainbow Gathering is. [laughing]
Why are there so many people missing from this event?
[Mark] Something unthinkable and unfathomable had happened.
Who's the last person that heard from Amber?
And safety and danger blur with every passing mile.
This is one of the most brutal cases that I've ever witnessed.
[waves breaking softly]
[audience cheering]
Amber Robinson struts across her high-school stage in 2018,
clutching her diploma
like it's a one-way ticket to freedom.
It's that feeling everyone knows at that age --
invincibility.
And Amber? Her first big move?
A solo cross-country trip to California, 3,000 miles away
to visit her mother and sister.
Amber was very interested in seeing Iris,
her older sister, and her mother after she turned 18.
She talked a lot about going to meet up with them,
traveling a bit with them.
She hadn't seen my mom since she'd been put in foster care.
Nothing but the open road, a little bit of optimism,
and the sense that life is just getting started.
Or so she thought.
[Iris] When Amber and I were kids, our lives were very chaotic.
I think they were -- had like nine different schools
that they had been in over like a 10-year period of their time.
My dad was...
addicted to pretty much everything.
He was just addicted to being high, you know?
He was always trying to bully Amber to try to drink
and smoke weed with him.
Yeah, it was definitely like my dad was
like extremely abusive
in like all the ways that a person can be abusive,
including sexually abusive to me specifically.
The dad was arrested for...
they called it indecency with the child,
but in our state, we called it child molestation.
[Iris] Yeah, he ended up going to prison for that,
and he's no longer in prison,
but I don't communicate with him.
[Amy] The children were living with Mom,
and Mom struggled with addiction.
They were very bonded with their mother,
but she wasn't able to care for them
in a way that the state deemed as safe,
and so, they were all removed from their mother's care.
Amber and her older sister, Iris, spend the next
five years lost in a revolving door of foster homes,
each one a mix of temporary affection and neglect.
Foster care was, uh... a very --
that was scarier to me than any of the other things
that I went through, even, um,
the sexual abuse that I endured from my dad.
I knew what to expect from him, but when I went to foster care,
I had no idea, like, what was going to happen,
and I'd never had to been, like,
separated from Amber.
In 2017, Amber is living in a group home for teens
when she meets Amy Elliott-Villegas.
Amy makes a choice that will ripple through Amber's life
in ways no one could've seen coming.
[Amy] In the group home,
I rarely saw an occasion where I thought
that I could adopt one of the girls.
But Amber is one that I remember clearly
watching her tie her shoes one day,
and just thinking about how precious she was
and thinking "I could take her into my home."
She was expressing, she's like, "I'm so happy.
"You know, I get to get out of here,
"get to get out of the foster care system,
and I get to go live with Miss Amy."
So, she was very excited about it.
[Amy] When Amber came to us at the group home, she was 15,
and then I had her until almost before her 18th birthday.
While Amber's settling into life at home with Amy,
Iris slips into adulthood with little fanfare.
At 18, finally free from the state,
she's determined to live a nomadic existence
on her terms.
So I had just like actively chosen to become homeless
because I had aged out of foster care
and there was just a lot of things
that occur in foster care that made me
just even more distressful about society.
And, you know, eventually I just started being like...
man, like everything that I'm, like, working towards, like,
going to college -- just kind of realizing that, like,
there's other choices.
You know, you only get one life so you might as well actually do
whatever would genuinely make you happy.
Despite the miles between them, Amber and Iris remain close.
Their lives play out through Facebook messages,
daily check-ins that keep their connection alive.
Yeah, we were extremely open with each other
and extremely close. Keeping each other up
till 4 o'clock in the morning,
talking to each other all night long.
[Stephen] Amber looked up to her big sister.
She was like a role model. She saw the things that
her big sister, Iris, was doing
and how happy she was and how free she was.
[Iris] Nashville, Tennessee was, like, there was,
like, a massive, like, homeless encampment there,
and it was, like, easy to be homeless there and stuff.
And so that's when I actually discovered the culture
around travelers, train hoppers, you know, people,
van lifers, and everything like that.
I met other people who actively, like, wanted
to be homeless, and they told me about the Rainbow Gathering.
[all] Om.
[rhythmic drumming]
The Rainbow Gathering is basically a big camping trip,
you know, involving people who all have the same
collective idea that we're all one
and that we're all connected.
[conch shell humming steadily]
[all] Om.
In 1972, the first Rainbow Gathering
was held in Colorado.
[rhythmic drums and cymbals playing]
After this meeting, we want to gather
with spirits
to share
the body,
the mind,
soul,
divine.
I have been going to Rainbow Gatherings
since 1980, almost every year ever since all over the country.
A lot of the early Rainbows were returning Vietnam vets
mixed with peace activists.
Everybody has a different idea of what
the Rainbow Gathering is. [laughing]
They all blend at the Rainbow Gathering.
Everything happens and nothing happens.
[Rob] They get together all these diverse countercultural groups,
everything from bikers, hobos, you know,
Rainbows, conservative people, like whatever, right?
-[man] Loving you. -Loving you.
-You got a belly button?
-[woman] Can I see it? -[woman #2] Yeah.
Yeah?
Guess what? You're welcome here.
The invitation's to everyone.
Feels very magical for me to, like,
for lack of a better words, describe, like, discovering,
like, the culture, um,
and all of the, like, just amazing people
and all their skills, how talented they were.
Like, magic is real.
And so I go and I dance around this fire,
and there's a woman who shows up all of a sudden.
She's dressed in animal pelts she, like, has this massive horn
and she blows it and then starts singing.
[inhales deeply] [exhales]
♪ Oooh, oooh, oooh ♪
[Iris rhythmically vocalizes]
I help people heal their trauma and work through, like,
repressed emotions by using their voice.
I first discovered the ability within myself to sing like that
at a Rainbow Gathering, um,
when I was 18.
[suspenseful music playing]
Before college starts in the fall,
Amber decides to follow in her big sister's footsteps.
She wants to get a feel for her life on the road.
Her destination?
California, where their mother is now living.
Amber did talk about her mom quite often.
I remember when Amber got her learner's permit,
she started driving, and immediately she said,
"I wish my mom could see me now."
Amber, you know, hadn't seen my mom in a long time,
you know, since we got put in foster care
and everything like that.
[Amy] And she heard that her mom was clean,
and so she was hopeful but also skeptical, I guess.
She just wanted everything to be OK.
When Amber's friends and family hear about her plan
to swing by the annual rainbow family gathering
on her way out west, no one is surprised.
It's classic Amber,
chasing after her sister's shadow.
But maybe more than that,
she's looking for something else,
a place to feel like she belongs.
[Rob] I think it's really common to get a lot of young people,
you know, just graduated high school.
They come to a gathering where people hug you
and take care of you and are, you know, supportive.
[man #2] It took me a lot of pain to rid things out of my body
that I was attached to, that I'd grown accustomed to
and gotten into habits with.
But now, through the love, I mean, here,
people surround me with enough love
and knowledge to heal myself.
And nowhere else on this face of the universe have I gone
and found that for free and with love
and with such a high energy happening around it
that my whole total being gets healed.
[Amy] I was concerned about
the drug use at the Rainbow Festivals,
but I felt Amber had a really strong foundation
in her decisions about drugs and alcohol.
It really wasn't her thing.
Everyone who cares about Amber
says they support her independence.
But when she casually drops the news
that she's planning to hitchhike,
there's a moment, a collective anxious pause.
So, of course, I was concerned about her talking
about potentially hitchhiking.
Any parent, I think, would be concerned.
I used to do a lot of hitchhiking back in the '70s.
[chortles]
But I think over time, it's not quite as safe
as it used to be.
[Iris] Typically with hitchhiking, it's really best to have
a really keen intuition and stuff,
which is why I never really suggest it for Amber.
I knew that she was not the best judge of character.
I think that she was willing to trust and forgive everybody.
She's extremely innocent.
On June 19th, Amber Robinson sets off on her journey,
full of bold determination.
[Kalyn] She really didn't pack a whole lot.
She had, like, a backpack with, like, the essentials.
[Kalyn] She had her ukulele.
Very, very minimal, to be honest.
I gave her one last hug and sent her on her way,
like it was nothing, like it was just any other day, um,
because it was at the time.
[Stephen] That was between her and God what was gonna happen.
Nobody knew we wouldn't see her again.
[dramatic chord strike]
[suspenseful music playing]
Amber Robinson,
fresh off celebrating her 18th birthday,
is headed to the annual Rainbow Family Gathering
in rural Georgia.
She's almost made it, with a quick detour in Atlanta,
where she's hoping to finally meet 20-year-old
Joseph Capstraw, a Facebook friend
who feels like he could be more.
Amber was very involved on social media,
and Joseph and Amber first connected online.
[cellphone trilling]
It almost feels like fate.
Joseph just happens to be passing through Atlanta
at the same time as Amber.
She's never actually met him before,
but when he agrees to meet up in person,
she's thrilled.
They click instantly, and soon enough,
they're making plans to trek the 80 miles together
to the Rainbow Family Gathering
in the Chattahoochee-Oconee National Forest.
[Amy] I know her well enough to know that...
she always needs someone with her.
To hear that she was with Joseph Capstraw,
I just felt like they would be safe together.
I was upset because I was like, "You met him online,
you don't really know him" and stuff, you know.
And she's like, "Yeah, well, you know, I need somebody
to protect me." He made her feel safer.
[Mark] He was approximately 6-foot-three,
about 190, had what I would call an athletic build,
probably what some folks might call handsome young man.
Joseph always carried himself politely, very deferential.
Joseph never seemed to stay anywhere too long,
seemed very transient, going to different festivals.
[Iris] The first time Amber ever told me about him,
she was referring to him by the name "Shaggy,"
which immediately I already didn't like that
'cause all the travelers that I've met
that call themselves "Shaggy"
are usually like really gross dudes.
It's a weird archetype thing that I witnessed on the road.
[Amy] She began to call him on social media her "road dog,"
which is like...
my understanding is like a person who travels with you
when you're hitchhiking and going different places.
[Mark] Joseph was an abused child.
He was food-deprived, abused,
in and out of foster care.
In fact, he and Amber were kindred spirits in that sense.
[Amy] I think that the idea of the trauma bond
between Joseph and Amber is real.
She cared about people deeply,
and she would have opened up to someone who had been through
the same things as her.
[Iris] He just looked to me like somebody
who does drugs, you know?
So that kind of sketched me out.
She was like, "Oh, no, that's not the case.
"He's so awesome when he plays guitar
and he's this and that."
[Kalyn] I remember messaging with Amber.
I was like, "OK, I'm glad you at least found someone
to travel with."
I was like, "I miss you."
And she was like, "I love you." Like, "Miss you too."
[acoustic guitar playing]
Joseph and Amber show up at the gathering
a full six days before the official start.
The early crowd calls this prelude Seed Camp,
a week where they spread out across hundreds of acres,
slowly transforming the land into their version of paradise,
setting the stage for whatever comes next.
[Rob] And so Seed Camp basically is that week or so
before the gathering.
We only gather national forest land.
Our taxpayer money has bought these public lands, right?
And it's written into our Constitution, right?
The right for peaceful assembly
is written into the Constitution.
The biggest problem is there's
a lot of pregathering propaganda
put out by federal law enforcement agencies.
So a lot of times they get their locals
really freaked out. Bad.
Like, just as Seed Camp is kicking in.
When I first went, I was very overwhelmed
because I didn't know a lot of their, like, rules.
Like, I remember there was one point where I wanted to pee,
and, you know, I'm, like, in the woods already,
so I'm just, like, I'm just trying to pee, and they're like,
"No, you can't pee right here." And I'm like, "Oh, OK. All right."
Like, I don't know where any of this were.
Like, I just felt really socially anxious.
And I was like,
"What in the world is going on here?"
There's really nobody in charge and so what makes --
it's a self-organizing event.
And like our kitchen is completely self-funded,
we pass a hat around and then that money
goes into people that will drive out of the gathering
every day, buy food.
[man] What you got cooking?
[man #2] We got cooking here millet with oatmeal
and we're gonna put bananas and raisins and honey in it.
That's pretty good, yeah.
[man] Sounds great, this is breakfast?
[man #2] Yeah this is gonna be breakfast a little late,
but it's coming together.
This is the first time I've been here.
They're two hours late today, though.
I was out there doing tai chi, and they said, "If somebody
"doesn't come do some kitchen help,
there's not gonna be any breakfast," so...
doing it. -Food's really good.
Yeah, they put a lot of love into it.
I've been working in the kitchen every now and then.
It's really nice.
[Rob] A good kitchen at a Rainbow Gathering
can easily feed 1,500 people,
and there'll be about 30 people working in the kitchen
at any given moment, day and night.
Six days after Amber and Joseph settle in,
the annual Rainbow Family Gathering
kicks off on July 1st.
It's everything you'd expect.
5,000 people pouring in, the energy,
a mix of chaotic joy and free-spirited optimism.
[rhythmic drumming]
Freedom!
[drumming continues]
[drumming fades]
[fire crackles]
[Iris] She told me that she loved the gathering
because people were kind.
She said she felt like she was accepted to be herself.
And she's like, "Everybody's saying they love me
and saying welcome home. It's so cool."
[Amy] I had a lot of concerns for Amber because Amber quickly,
quickly saw what was good in people.
She would notice red flags and take action
on those red flags too late.
[Rob] We have incredibly low rates of violence.
It's a really kind of a peaceful focus.
But you know, some people have anger management problems.
Right?
Despite Amber's newfound calm and sense of belonging,
the 2018 Rainbow Gathering grabs headlines
for all the wrong reasons.
Today we posted this story on our Facebook page
about another missing man from the Rainbow Gathering
up in Lumpkin County.
And we had a lot of comments like this one asking
"Why are there so many people missing from this event?"
Suddenly, Utopia doesn't feel quite so peaceful anymore.
We were all talking, figuring out, like,
"Hey, we haven't heard from Amber in a few days."
Like, "Hey, have you heard from Amber?"
Like, who's the last person that heard from Amber?
I text her, and I'm like, "Bro, you know,
"you can't just disappear.
You gotta let someone know you're OK."
[Iris] I was telling her, I'm like, "No, I don't trust Shaggy.
You literally just met him."
All I did was worry.
[suspenseful chord strike]
[suspenseful music playing]
Amber Robinson has taken an unexpected detour
on her cross-country trip to California, heading to
the Rainbow Family Gathering, a counterculture festival deep
in the Chattahoochee-Oconee National Forest.
But now, her friends are starting to worry.
It's been nearly a week,
and no one's heard a word from her.
Well, I messaged her a few times.
I bugged her. I was like, you know
"You gotta let me know what you're up to."
And I'm just already, like, freaking out.
[Amy] When Amber wanted to go to the Rainbow Festival, I was
concerned about the behaviors of other people there.
Amy's concerns aren't exactly unfounded.
Beneath all the peace signs and good vibes,
something unsettling is brewing.
C.J. Elliott, along with another man,
vanished into thin air.
[Alice Elliot] He is my world.
I just want to know that he's OK.
[reporter] Alice Elliott has spent the past six days
searching the forest. -I want my son back.
Every minute that goes by, I'm more concerned with this.
This isn't the first time darkness has found its way
to the Rainbow Gathering.
Back in 1980, two women were shot and killed while
hitchhiking to the festival in West Virginia.
[Rob] The two women who got shot, it affected us very heavily.
But there are other occasional things like stabbings.
In 2014, Leilani Novak-Garcia stabbed a man during
a gathering in Utah's Uinta National Forest.
Then came 2015, when things took another deadly turn
with a fatal shooting at a Florida event.
No one can say for sure what Amber knew or didn't know
about the darker side of the festival.
What we do know is this --
for reasons no one can quite pin down,
Amber and Joseph Capstraw, the guy she showed up with,
make a quiet exit
before the Rainbow Gathering even finishes.
I texted her again, sent her a little smiley face,
you know, "Thinking about you." Like, "Let me know something."
And she still didn't text me back.
For another 24 and some odd hours,
she texted me the next day. She told me that she was safe.
Amber's friends and family can't shake the worry.
She's hitchhiking across the country
with a man she barely knows.
But hearing from her gives some comfort.
Still, they're left in the dark about what's next,
and that uncertainty lingers.
[Kalyn] She said, "We left Rainbow to head to Cali."
And then she was going to Nashville,
which never really made sense to me.
[Iris] She told me that he wanted to go to Nashville.
I do remember her telling me
that she doesn't want to leave him all alone,
you know, that he doesn't have a family
and, like, he has nobody that cares about him.
And, you know, she cares about him.
And, you know, I remember just being, like,
frustrated, you know, like,
just do whatever is good for you.
[dramatic chord strike]
[Kalyn] I didn't hear from her again until after she was in Nashville
and I said, "Don't put yourself in a bad situation.
Just be safe."
[Iris] Amber was definitely nervous.
She's really upset because she's like, "We don't have any food,
what are we supposed to do?" And I'm like, "For one you could
have food at the gathering, why did you leave the gathering?"
I'm like, "OK whatever", I'm like really upset and then
I'm telling her, like, "OK, set up with your ukulele and play
and busk," you know, which is just a term for playing music
or performing to make money.
[Kalyn] She said, "Homeless people are everywhere.
There's no way we can make money by playing our music."
She said, "I'm stuck here in the city
"sleeping on the ground
because there's no place to camp."
[Iris] She's like, "Please try to get me money for a bus ticket."
And I'm like, "I don't have any money."
And then, yeah, the next day,
you know, she messages me saying, "OK, no,
we're just both," like, "me and him,
me and Shaggy are hitchhiking,"
you know, "to Kentucky."
And I'm like, "OK."
What no one's telling Amber is that they all harbor
serious doubts about the stranger
she's traveling with.
This laid-back peace and love routine?
It all seems too good to be true.
The question is --
who is the man Amber is traveling with really?
Joseph had an incident
in Florida, where he was involved in an altercation
with another man.
He was charged with attempted murder.
[Mark] But ultimately,
it turned out that that case was dismissed
because there were multiple witnesses
that stated that Joseph had been himself assaulted first
and was in the act of defending himself.
[Jeff] Joseph and Amber were hitchhiking on Dixie Highway,
which is a road that you can take
from Nashville to Louisville.
[Mark] They were given a ride by Jacob Barnes.
Jacob Barnes took them in his car
to his house in Elizabethtown.
[Jeff] And the next day they were gonna be taken
to Interstate 65.
Or they could continue their trip
to wherever they were going.
Jacob Barnes might seem like a Good Samaritan to Amber,
but there's a darker side to the stranger
offering them a ride.
His past is littered with drug-related offenses,
a trail of trouble with the law.
What does he really want with this young couple?
[Mark] I can certainly understand somebody giving someone a ride.
We've all -- I've been there.
But to then take them to their house.
And that's when I felt like...
there's something wrong.
I'm just like, that is not where you should be at all.
And I felt really sick to my stomach and, like, worried.
Like, you need to get out of there.
[suspenseful music playing]
Amber Robinson and Joseph Capstraw
didn't think twice about accepting a ride
from a stranger on an empty Kentucky highway.
They had no idea, of course, just how quickly
things were about to spiral out of control.
Joseph had gone to a neighbor's house,
feverishly looking and banging on doors,
screaming, yelling, "I need help."
[Jeff] Police in Elizabethtown
responded to a call from a neighbor.
[sirens wailing]
When they got there,
they found Joseph covered in blood.
[sirens wailing]
[dramatic chord strike]
Not long after settling in at Jacob Barnes' place,
Amber and Joseph finally let their guard down.
It's a relief, really.
A desperately needed pause after hitchhiking nearly
130 miles from Nashville.
Jacob invites a couple of friends over,
eager to introduce them to the so-called travelers.
They were playing music. They were drinking alcohol.
[Iris] You know, she's like, "These people,"
you know, "they seem really nice.
They're just smoking weed with us."
You know, "They seem so cool."
Eventually, she ends up messaging me again, though,
saying that they were doing hard drugs.
[Stephen] She doesn't like to be around hard drugs.
Amber has seen how drugs can change people.
She's seen how drugs can...
tear families apart.
She just remembered, like, all the times of growing up
around drugs, specifically with my dad,
trying to pressure her to do drugs.
And, like, selling our toys, like, literally trading
our things for drugs.
And so that was, like, a very deep,
like, you know, vicious wound for her to just be like,
"The man in my life who I'm like wanting to protect me is now
"over here doing drugs and like trying to get me to do them
when I don't want to."
So it's like literally a direct reminder of my dad
trying to pressure her to do drugs
and her witnessing him doing it to me.
[cellphone trilling]
She said, "They're paranoid because I'm not doing it
and they're mad at me," you know,
I'm like, "That sounds awful."
Like, "You need to get out of there."
But she was very anxious, obviously, and scared.
She's still just asking me,
like, "Please try to get me money
for a bus ticket now from here in Kentucky."
At this point, my mind was really --
"I'm gonna have to ask somebody
to give me money to get her a bus ticket."
[sobbing] The last thing she -- she had said to me was
she just wanted to -- she wanted to leave,
and I never heard from her again.
[Amy] I have known Amber.
When something goes wrong in a situation,
she gets out of the situation. She was ready to leave.
All her stuff was packed up by the door.
She was ready to get out of there.
But Amber would never leave.
On July 7th, police answer a 911 call
that leads them straight to Jacob Barnes' front door.
The scene tells its own story.
The room was covered in blood. Joseph was covered in blood.
Ms. Robinson had been beaten to a pulp.
[exhales deeply] Amber was beaten so badly that she couldn't be identified.
The police, they said that...
[sniffles]
there was a -- a body of a girl
they had, and they thought that she was Amber.
And that because I was the last person to see her,
they asked me to describe her.
Her face, her hair,
her nose piercing.
[Amy] I had taken Amber to the dentist sometime in 2017.
Those dental records from that appointment
are what allowed the police to finally, um...
determine it was Amber Robinson that they had.
[reporter] The teen was from Florida,
with only grandparents and a sister in other states,
given the bad news.
This is one of the most brutal cases that I've ever witnessed.
These cases always take a little bit of your heart
and your soul out of you.
But I think the real question was,
who killed Ms. Robinson and why?
[dramatic chord strike]
[birds chirping]
18-year-old Amber Robinson is dead.
The story behind the gruesome scene
is anything but simple.
Now the police are questioning everyone who was
at Jacob Barnes' house that night, including the one person
who should've been looking out for her, Joseph Capstraw,
the man she'd been traveling with.
When Elizabethtown police arrived at the crime scene,
he was outside, frantic, covered in blood.
Not long after police arrived, they talked to Joseph
and took him down to the police station
for questioning.
Visibly shaken, Joseph recounts the events to investigators,
unraveling a story no one is prepared to hear.
[Mark] It was about 1 AM,
when everything kicked off.
[rain pattering]
[Jeff] He said they were playing music, they were singing,
and then Jacob
and another person decided to go to Louisville on a drug run.
And that left Amber and Joseph at the home by themselves.
[Mark] At some point, Amber became...
for lack of a better term, disillusioned, disappointed
that they had gone to purchase illegal narcotics.
They were going to pick up drugs,
and that infuriated her.
[Mark] Joseph became upset with that.
Joseph thought that she was unfairly judging these folks
who had given them a chance to, I'm going to use the term,
"crash at their place."
And from there, it appeared that an argument ensued.
[Jeff] She and Joseph got into an altercation.
Joseph was yelling and screaming.
He said she attacked him with a knife,
and he ended up having some cuts on his arm.
One thing led to another, and Amber was -- was killed.
She was beaten to death by the hands of Joseph Capstraw.
He said he was defending himself in the altercation.
[Amy] He said it was self-defense, but forensic experts said
the wounds on his arm couldn't have possibly come from Amber.
[Jeff] That was the only defense, that he was attacked by Amber,
when, in fact, the cuts on his arm were self-induced.
He cut himself.
[Amy] The medical examiner's office said
he also stomped on her face and her skull with his feet.
Just brutal.
That was not an act of self-defense.
It was monstrous.
[suspenseful music swells and ends]
It was just a brutal attack by a gentleman who was 6'3",
190 pounds, on a young lady who was 5'3", and 90 pounds.
And he...
beat her relentlessly with his hands.
I'll never be able to understand a lot of the whys.
[Andrew] There's a friend of ours, friend of the family.
Her name is Linda.
She's been a part of the kids' lives
ever since they were born.
I was at home, and Linda gives me a call.
[melancholic music playing]
She just basically ripped the bandage off
to start with and said, "Amber's been murdered."
[Iris] I mean, I was just in denial at first.
I was like...
"No, that can't be true," you know?
And I was just like, "That literally can't be true."
I didn't...
want to believe that it was real.
I hate that she's not here experiencing
the rest of her life with the rest of us.
[Amy] You know, I couldn't wrap my mind around
Amber being harmed.
And I...
screamed.
Just one of the most gut-wrenching screams.
I've never felt so much pain at the thought
that she had been murdered.
[Jeff] Joseph was indicted. He was charged with the murder.
He pled not guilty to the charges.
Fast-forward almost a year and a half
to February 2020.
Joseph Capstraw is finally on trial.
When he steps up to the stand, his story shifts.
It's a twist of words, just enough to make it seem
like he didn't mean for any of it to happen.
[Mark] Joseph testified that he loved Amber,
thought the world of Amber,
didn't remember any of this. He blacked out.
And when he came to immediately realize that something
terrible, terrible, unthinkable
and unfathomable had happened.
[Amy] I didn't believe him at all.
I can't imagine someone caring for her
and doing what he did.
[Mark] The jury, after hearing the evidence,
after deliberating,
they found Joseph guilty of murder.
There were no winners or losers on this case.
Everybody lost.
Amber Robinson has justice,
but -- but that doesn't make her family any more whole.
I just...
think we all could've done better
by these young people.
Joseph Capstraw's sentenced to 50 years in prison.
Just to think that the person that she'd entrusted herself to,
I think was so evil,
really makes -- makes me sad.
But despite her decisions
to hitchhike or to be with Joseph Capstraw
or to go to the Rainbow Festival,
there is nothing that Amber did or chose to do
that...
deserves to be murdered.
[Rob] These things upset us a lot, especially as peaceful people.
We hope that we have an influence on people
that when they leave the gathering,
they don't have that urge for acts of violence,
but, you know, some people, that's their natural...
state of being, I hate to say. It's a shame.
We hope that those people can learn from Gatherings.
If I would've known everything that I know now,
I mean...
I would have just tried harder to buy Amber a bus ticket.
If I could change reality, like, that's what I would do.
[Kalyn] She was
truly a remarkable soul in this world, and it is a shame
that she is not here.
Her physical body is no longer here,
but she is not a victim to this dude.
She's magical and empowered and beautiful, and I wish
that I would have told her that.
This is an excerpt from a letter that Amber had written
that was never mailed, saying, "Trust me, I want to be happy
"I want to be something and have kids
"and make their childhood better than mine has been.
"And that will happen.
Life can be so great if you let it be."