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Killer Relationship with Faith Jenkins Season 4 Episode 5 br Trust me Not
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00:00My mom loved caring for people, just showing love to everyone.
00:12Michelle wanted someone to share life with her, to cherish her.
00:17A hopeless romantic vanishes.
00:19It felt like the entire world came crashing down on me.
00:23And a nightmare comes true.
00:25It made you sick to know that one human being can treat another one like that.
00:29Hidden identities.
00:31Rocky Switzer was supposed to be one of her old friends from high school.
00:36I'm starting to wonder if Rocky Switzer even exists.
00:39Jilted lovers.
00:41She was in a very heated state of mind.
00:44And revenge.
00:46Jealousy and scorn, not a great combination.
00:49All lead up to a killer relationship.
00:53She's expecting to meet Romeo, and she meets the Grim Reaper.
00:5938-year-old newly single mother of two, Michelle Ryder, is looking for love and someone to share it with during this next chapter of her life.
01:18Her teenage children want their mom's next boyfriend to be someone worthy of her affections.
01:24So on September 10, 2012, when Michelle tells her roommate Denny that she's off to meet a new prospect, a man she met on Facebook named Rocky Switzer, Michelle's hopes are high for the perfect match.
01:37Michelle was excited about meeting Rocky in person and kind of exciting feeling it out.
01:46Was this somebody that maybe something could go a little bit further with?
01:49Michelle had already told me she would be home by 11 because she had to go to work in the morning.
01:56And she said, OK, I'll see you in a little bit.
01:59And I said, OK.
02:02And that was my last words.
02:07I came home about 11.30 and Michelle's car still wasn't there.
02:13I texted her and I said, hey, how's it going?
02:17And I didn't hear nothing back.
02:20Denny isn't the only one waiting on her.
02:23Michelle's children live with their dad, but are in constant communication with Michelle.
02:27And her son Ty's birthday is just around the corner.
02:31I was texting my mom about gifts for my birthday, about getting me a black felt cowboy hat.
02:36And those are kind of pricey.
02:38She was kind of giving me a hard time back.
02:40And then she just stopped texting me, which was really odd for my mom.
02:45At about 4 o'clock in the morning, she still wasn't home.
02:49And the final time I woke up about 7, I said, OK, I'm worried.
02:55I'm calling the police.
02:57While Denny speaks with a patrol officer,
03:00Michelle's ex-husband Steve Ryder and her two kids feel a sense of dread.
03:06Ty and my dad woke me up and they were like, we can't get a hold of your mom.
03:12She didn't call. She's missing.
03:14I thought I was in a weird dream.
03:17If you knew Michelle, like I knew Michelle, I knew something happened.
03:30Michelle Monique Rivera is born in upstate New York in 1973 and is the oldest of three.
03:36Money is tight, so everyone has to chip in and help out.
03:40My mom learned how to become a mom because she helped raise her two siblings.
03:45She was tough as nails.
03:47She was very outgoing, very funny.
03:50She had a good group of friends growing up.
03:53She loved pets. She loved animals.
03:55My mom wanted to get her nursing license.
03:58She loved caring for the people, just showing love to everyone.
04:04But before she even graduates high school, Michelle starts dating an older guy named Steve Ryder, who works in construction.
04:11My parents met when my mom was 16 and my dad was 24, 25.
04:18My father was a fun guy.
04:20Everyone was either his friend or they were laughing with him.
04:23My dad loved her more than anything.
04:28At 19, Michelle discovers she's pregnant.
04:32Steve has family in Texas, so they move to a tiny town just outside Abilene called Trenton to start a new life.
04:39In August of 1993, Ty is born.
04:43My mother and I, it felt like we kind of grew up together sometimes because we used to joke around and kind of horse playing.
04:51I was the only child until I was about five or six.
04:55Everyone else had a sibling but me.
04:57And I was like, I want a sibling.
04:59When Ty is seven years old, he finally gets his wish when Michelle and Steven welcome their baby girl, Alexis, into the world.
05:07When Alexis was born, it was probably one of the most exciting moments in my life.
05:12I have a photo of him holding me for the first time.
05:16His face is like pure joy but also pure terror.
05:21Sadly, the love between married couples sometimes fades.
05:26When Ty is 15 and Alexis 9, cracks start to show in Michelle and Steven's relationship.
05:33My parents fought a lot.
05:36Michelle told me that they just got to where they just weren't getting along.
05:40They were having a lot of difficulties.
05:43They just ended up, you know, deciding that divorce was the best route to go.
05:52Michelle quickly meets a new love interest, 49-year-old long-haul trucker Lanny Bush.
05:58Michelle finds him rugged and charming.
06:01My mother kind of immediately moved in with Lanny after the divorce.
06:05It was a pretty sudden thing.
06:07My dad was hurt with the divorce.
06:10But they both came to the agreement that me and Ty should not be separated and that we would be better with our dad.
06:18It was tough on Michelle to be away from her kids, but she felt it was better for them to stay in the area where they had grown up, they had gone to school, they had friends.
06:31My mom didn't want to just, like, rip us away from all these roots that we had built.
06:37Over the next few years, the family adjusts to their new reality.
06:41The kids lived with their dad in Trenton during the school week and with their mom and Lanny on weekends, two hours away in Brownwood.
06:49When Lanny and Michelle first moved into the trailer, she was excited they were going to be fixing it up and she was excited to have her own little space.
07:01From the outside, it looks like Michelle is rebuilding her life.
07:05She's in a new relationship and she has a good job at Home Depot.
07:09But a few months after moving into the trailer, her friends noticed traces of sadness.
07:14Things were not good all the time.
07:17I think there was a lot more going on behind closed doors that Michelle wasn't letting on.
07:24Michelle had invited me out to their house for dinner.
07:27Lanny needed to be part of the conversation all the time.
07:30Like, he, it needed to be about him.
07:33I just did not get a comfortable feeling with him.
07:37She would talk to me about certain situations where she felt like he was trying to control her too much.
07:44I think she just got to a point where, like, she just finally was done.
07:49In the summer of 2012, after four years together, Michelle and Lanny part ways.
07:55I told Michelle, come stay with me. We'll get it worked out. It's all good.
07:59Michelle is a woman who hasn't been on her own since she was a teenager and she wants to explore the dating scene.
08:09But the town where she lives is so small, her options are limited.
08:13So when a new man named Rocky reaches out on Facebook, Michelle is eager to pursue the opportunity.
08:20One night, Michelle was in her room.
08:23She's got all her yearbooks laid out on the bed and I'm like, what are you doing?
08:27And she said, well, this guy friended me on my new Facebook.
08:33He says he went to high school with me.
08:35She said, but I can't find him anywhere here in my yearbooks.
08:41Then the next day, she's like, oh, hey, I figured out who that guy is.
08:46He was in my sister's class.
08:49He messaged me and we were talking.
08:51He remembered Steve.
08:53She's like, yeah, I'm pretty sure he's a good guy.
08:57It seemed like they had a lot in common.
09:00But he didn't have a profile picture.
09:03I don't know if I can put my finger on it.
09:05There was just something about it that just didn't sound right.
09:12It's been 36 hours since Michelle left to go on a date with the man she met on Facebook.
09:17Michelle's family and friends are so insistent that something's wrong.
09:22Brownwood PD assigns the case to Detective Brian Tompkins.
09:27Officers were able to find out on the initial interview with Denny that Michelle had a red rosebud tattooed on the back of her right shoulder.
09:37And that she was wearing a black and white blouse, blue jeans and black slip on shoes when she left for the date.
09:44The first steps I began this investigation was contacting local emergency rooms.
09:52I was not able to locate her in any of the local hospitals or funeral homes.
09:58Detective Tompkins requests the logs for Michelle's cell phone.
10:02But when he contacts the steakhouse where Denny told them Michelle was going on her date, he's in for a surprise.
10:09I was explained that they were closed on the night in question.
10:13And there would have been no way they would have went there on a date to eat dinner.
10:17Alarmed, the detectives returned to Denny Worrell to learn everything they can about Rocky.
10:22I went to pull up the profile to show the officer who she had gone on a date with.
10:29And the profile was gone.
10:31I was thinking, why would he delete it?
10:35Why would he cancel his Facebook site?
10:37That didn't sit right with me.
10:41My father tried to tell her multiple times, this is not who you think it is.
10:45I learned that Michelle was also seeing another subject in Brownwood by the name of Kemper Croft.
10:52She didn't label it a relationship.
10:55They were just running around together.
10:57And now we're involving intimate relationships with married people.
11:02That's one thing about the truth, is it never changes.
11:06But lies are like dominoes.
11:08I mean, my red flag meter was just going up and up and up.
11:16It's been 48 hours since Michelle Ryder vanished after connecting with a potential love interest on Facebook named Rocky Switzer.
11:28He claimed they went to high school together.
11:31But when detectives discover that Rocky's Facebook profile has mysteriously disappeared, they pushed the investigation into high gear.
11:39I reached out to Michelle's sister Melanie in New York and spoke to her about Rocky.
11:47And she explained to me that she could not remember anybody with that name or anything about it through high school.
11:54The only person Melanie knows who might be able to tell them more is Michelle's ex-husband, Steve Ryder, who she divorced four years earlier.
12:03Michelle and Steve had a good relationship with each other.
12:07They were, you know, co-parenting two kids.
12:10I asked Steven of his whereabouts on the night in question, September 10th.
12:15And he explained that he was in home with his children.
12:18He did show signs he was worried for the mother of his kids and what had happened to her.
12:24Steven was also aware of Rocky from conversations he had with Michelle.
12:29Rocky Switzer was supposed to be one of her, like, old friends from high school.
12:36But he didn't remember the exact high school they went to.
12:40My father had tried to tell her multiple times, this is not who you think it is.
12:45Steve tells Detective Tompkins that Michelle said Rocky worked as an airplane mechanic in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.
12:53I started making some phone calls to the local airports.
12:57In other words, nobody advised they employed anybody by the name of Rocky Switzer.
13:03At this point in the investigation, I'm starting to wonder if Rocky Switzer even exists.
13:09Convinced that Steve Ryder harbors no ill will for Michelle, Detective Tompkins rules him out and goes to speak with Michelle's coworkers at Home Depot.
13:18While none of them are able to provide any leads on Rocky, Michelle's manager reveals something that points Tompkins in a new direction.
13:29Michelle was also seeing another subject in Brownwood by the name of Kemper Croft.
13:36Michelle met Kemper through work.
13:38He would come into her place of employment to purchase things.
13:43She didn't label it a relationship.
13:47They were, you know, just running around together.
13:50Michelle's coworkers confirmed that Michelle had been seeing Kemper Croft for a few weeks, but there was one hitch.
13:57I learned that Kemper Croft was a married man and he was married to Susan Croft.
14:05And I also learned that she had contacted Michelle on the 10th at work the day Michelle went missing.
14:13Highly upset, accusing Michelle of having an affair with Kemper.
14:17Jealousy and scorn, not a great combination.
14:23Susan was in a very heated state of mind.
14:26If you look at the particulars on that communication between Susan Croft and Michelle Ryder, that actually happened on the day that Michelle had went missing.
14:36You can't ignore the timing, the coincidence of that.
14:41Michelle was under the impression that they were separated.
14:44Michelle didn't want to hurt anybody.
14:48The situation was just not good.
14:51Michelle was done with Kemper at that point.
14:54So now I've got many red flags.
14:57I've got one, Rocky Switzer.
15:00I still haven't been able to identify him.
15:02And now we're involving intimate relationships with married people.
15:09Detectives asked Kemper Croft to come down to the station to talk.
15:12And he admits that he and Michelle were having a relationship.
15:17He really didn't seem nervous.
15:19He showed some worry about Michelle being missing.
15:22But he was just more upset that his wife had found out.
15:27Kemper explained that Michelle would come hang out at barbecue competitions that Kemper cooked at.
15:33He explained that he didn't feel like it was the affair that Susan believed it was.
15:40When they asked him, you know, were you having a sexual relationship with her?
15:44You know, well, I tried but I couldn't get it up kind of thing.
15:47I think it was pretty clear that there had been a more intense relationship than what he was letting on.
15:53Also during this interview, I asked Kemper if he knew who Rocky Switzer was and he didn't have any idea who he was.
16:04Kemper claims the last time he spoke with Michelle was either Saturday, September 8th or Sunday the 9th.
16:09And when I asked him his whereabouts on September the 10th, when Michelle went missing, Kemper Croft explained that he was at home with his wife, Susan.
16:20Now I need to talk to Susan.
16:22After hearing that Susan has Parkinson's disease and witnessing her physical limitations, Detective Tompkins downgrades her as a possible suspect and then asks her how she learned about the affair.
16:37She explained that this unknown man that knocked on her door introduced himself as Michelle's ex-boyfriend, Lanny Bush.
16:48When Susan told me this information, it was a big bombshell.
16:55And at this point, now I have added another person to this equation and that person is Lanny Bush.
17:0838-year-old mom Michelle Ryder has been missing for close to 60 hours.
17:13And as the investigators start unearthing the layers of Michelle's love life, they find several potential suspects.
17:20A lover, Kemper Croft, and a mysterious Facebook date, Rocky Switzer.
17:26So far, these pieces appeared separate, but investigators are starting to think there may be a common thread.
17:33The ex-boyfriend, Lanny Bush.
17:35It definitely heightened my interest in why Lanny would be talking to Susan on the day Michelle went missing.
17:46I then started looking into the relationship between Michelle and Lanny.
17:52Detective Tompkins digs into court records and discovers a warrant for Michelle's arrest over a domestic dispute.
17:59Michelle's friend, Denny, tells him what she thinks happened.
18:05She still had quite a bit at her and Lanny's trailer.
18:09So Lanny had finally told her, OK, you can come get your stuff.
18:17Well, Michelle didn't come home that night from going to pick her stuff up.
18:20I'm like, what's going on?
18:23Lanny called 911 and said that she was abusing him, that she was hitting him, that she was throwing things at him.
18:32Denny tells Detective Tompkins that after Lanny showed police scratches on his face, they charged Michelle with domestic assault and locked her up in jail for the night.
18:42I knew immediately that this was not right.
18:46Michelle was not a violent person.
18:48I knew that she had not hit him.
18:51She had not done anything.
18:56Detective Tompkins learns that protective orders were put in place to keep Michelle and Lanny apart.
19:02He also discovers that Lanny Bush has a long police record of petty crimes dating back to the 1970s.
19:11Nothing showed that he had been arrested for any domestic violence.
19:15But I need to talk to Lanny and figure out his whereabouts on that question.
19:21According to Denny, shortly after Michelle left, Lanny moved in with a new girlfriend in San Angelo, 100 miles away.
19:30I contacted an investigator for Tom Green Sheriff's Office by the name of Billy Bloom that I have worked with many times in the past.
19:37I knew of Lanny mostly by reputation.
19:41I had worked cases, drug investigations concerning some of his family members.
19:47Investigator Billy Bloom and his partner, Gary Cole, go to Lanny's girlfriend's house.
19:53He opened the door and I said, hey, Billy Bloom, Tom Green County Sheriff's Office, my partner Gary Cole.
20:02Hey, Billy. Yeah. Hey, thanks, man. I know you. Yeah, man. Lanny, you know?
20:07I said, yeah, Lanny, I come to talk to you, man.
20:10He goes, yeah, sure, sure. Come on in.
20:13So we went in and also gave us an opportunity to look around to see if Ms. Ryder was in the residence.
20:21I told him why we were there.
20:23Lanny was very nice. He was very cordial.
20:26He seemed really shocked that, oh, she's missing. Like, well, what do you mean she's missing?
20:31He said that they had dated for several years and recently broke up.
20:38The way Lanny told us that it was not unusual for her to disappear on occasions.
20:44And then proceeded to put out that maybe she was very promiscuous.
20:51First, she was seeing a married man.
20:54And then he brought up that she was talking to some other guy that, you know, was a truck driver.
21:01He just kept talking and talking.
21:05He was just overly excited to talk to us.
21:08I mean, my red flag meter was just going up and up and up.
21:11I did ask when the last time he saw her.
21:15And he said that he was supposed to have met up with her the date that she went missing.
21:20He said, Billy, I never met with her.
21:22She called the meeting off.
21:25I believe that Lanny was withholding information.
21:28I did immediately call Detective Tompkins, advise him he needed to get to San Angelo and have an interview with Lanny Bush.
21:35But before he leaves, he gets a call.
21:38We had a big break in the case.
21:42We located Michelle's abandoned vehicle at the Burt Massey Sports Complex in Brownwood, Texas.
21:49It didn't appear that there was any type of foul play.
21:53Everything seemed in place.
21:54I located Michelle's driver's license, her visa card and a business card of Kemper Croft in the center console of the vehicle.
22:04The question is, if Michelle left town of her own volition, why would she leave her credit card behind?
22:11And what is the significance of Kemper Croft's business card?
22:14The things I didn't locate that worried me, too, was the fact that I didn't locate a purse or her cell phone in the vehicle, which is normally taken when somebody leaves.
22:26When they found her car, that's when my hopes started going down a little bit.
22:36By the next day, word of the discovery has gotten out and rumors start circulating around town about who might be responsible for Michelle's disappearance.
22:48Soon, those rumors find their way to Lanny Bush.
22:51Lanny called me at my house.
22:56He was upset because he had just gone off the phone with his daughter.
22:59And she had advised her father, Lanny, that Lanny was a suspect in the Michelle Ryder's disappearance.
23:06I'm like, calm down, Lanny.
23:08And he asked me if I could come by.
23:11He wasn't completely honest in our first interview.
23:14And I said, sure.
23:16I immediately called Detective Tompkins.
23:18Investigators go to Lanny's girlfriend's residence.
23:21And that's when Lanny drops a bomb about the identity of the man Michelle was supposed to have a date with the night she went missing.
23:30Suddenly, Lanny then explained to me that Rocky Switzer was not a true person.
23:37He made him up that he was Rocky.
23:51Four and a half days after Michelle Ryder goes missing, her ex-boyfriend, Lanny Bush, makes a bombshell confession to investigators.
24:01He is Rocky Switzer, the man Michelle thought she was meeting for dinner the night she disappeared.
24:07The reason he said that he was using an alias through Facebook was that neither one of them were supposed to be communicated with each other.
24:17Lanny tells detectives that shortly after he initially contacted Michelle as Rocky, he revealed his true identity to her.
24:25The way he just said it was, we were just talking, trying to repair, but we didn't want to get in trouble because of these protective orders because if we did, both of us would get arrested.
24:35I was like, you were the last one to talk to her, it sounds like. And he was just, no, no, no. And then he even said, like, are they going to pin this on me? And we're like, pin what?
24:47At this point in the interview, Lanny started shedding tears, talking about how scary he was, how much he missed her, how he hoped nothing was wrong with her.
24:58Lanny said that Michelle was the love of his life. And the thing that came to my mind was, no one can have her but Lanny. I'm thinking, there's a motive.
25:09When we got back to the truck, we all looked at each other and we were like, holy crap, he is involved.
25:20The problem is, the investigators have no proof that Lanny did anything. And despite waiting for days for Michelle's phone records, they still don't have them. That means there's no way to track Michelle's movements on the night she went missing.
25:34At this point, I felt like something major had happened to Michelle. So I requested the assistance of the Texas Rangers.
25:45First thing I want to do is get familiar with the case and absorb all the details.
25:50We had Kemper Croft, who was potentially a suspect because he was having a relationship with Michelle.
25:54I had talked to the investigators and they were confident that it wasn't Kemper. He had an alibi. His wife didn't fit the bill. So my focus was Lanny Bush.
26:06Texas Rangers have reached that local agencies don't. So they're able to expedite not only Michelle's cell records, but also Lanny's.
26:15At this point in the investigation, I was able to obtain the GPS coordinates for the cell phones of Lanny Bush and Michelle Ryder.
26:24I next provided an investigator with the Brown County Sheriff's Office with the GPS coordinates and he was able to plot both phones on the same map of their location on the night Michelle went missing.
26:38What they can tell is that on September 10th, both cell phones were pinging off towers near the softball field where Michelle's car was found.
26:49The two phones traveled together all the way to an area near Highway 67. After that, Michelle's phone goes silent.
26:58With that data in hand, investigators launch a massive search party looking for any signs of Michelle.
27:05The whole area that we were searching was several thousand acres of wooded farm fields. In Texas, we have an issue with feral hogs and they're devastating. The worry was feral hogs will eat anything.
27:24With the specific search area underway, Ranger Hannah brings Lanny in for questioning.
27:29The approach is always to start getting information and locking them down to a story. That's one thing about the truth is it never changes. But lies are like dominoes.
27:42I appreciate you coming down here to visit with us. Let's try to get this mess straightened down. I think it's been weighing on you pretty heavy.
27:52I haven't been able to eat her sleep. I didn't know her. Tell me about her. I mean, any guy that has Michelle as his wife is the luckiest man alive.
28:02Yes, sir. He don't work for nothing. She makes you feel like you're on top of the world. I mean, I know some stuff I did was bull .
28:11Yeah. I mean, why do you want to do that? Just the the the the life. That's why I set up that date with her.
28:17Why? You know, I mean, Rocky set that date up with her. Just the the the world, you know?
28:21The best thing I ever had in my life is left me.
28:24Yeah, I understand. Yeah.
28:26Yeah.
28:27Lanny tells Ranger Hannah that Michelle agreed to meet him on September 10, even though she knew Rocky wasn't real.
28:35What time are you going to meet her at Riverside Park?
28:383 o'clock.
28:39At 3 p.m.?
28:40Right.
28:41Okay. She didn't show.
28:43About 3.45, she texted me and told me she was like, I can't meet you. I've got way too much going on.
28:50Ranger Hannah knows he's lying because the GPS cell data tells a different story. So he presses Lanny harder.
28:58So Lanny initially denied seeing Michelle at all, but we displayed to him the evidence says otherwise.
29:04Then he did acknowledge that they had seen each other.
29:07And in fact, not only had they seen each other, but they had engaged in sex inside his truck.
29:12We had some great sex I've ever had in my life.
29:15Yeah. Yeah. Pretty passionate.
29:17Very passionate.
29:18Yeah. What time are you heading home now? 7? 7.30?
29:21Yeah, something like that. Probably somewhere around here.
29:24You remember what time he got home?
29:26It was about...
29:28See, he said it was like 10, 30, 11.
29:30We know between Brownwood and San Angelo, probably an hour and 45 minutes.
29:35And he didn't arrive home until maybe closer to 11.
29:39What accounts for this time difference?
29:41Because I was having trouble with my truck.
29:44What kind of truck?
29:45What kind of truck?
29:46Do you know how Ford has the clip running thing on the fuel pump?
29:50He stated that he had had trouble with the fuel filter on his truck.
29:55He said the clips kept popping off.
29:57Every time I get 15, 20 miles down the road, you build it fresh and pump it off.
30:02I grew up selling auto parts, so I know what a fuel filter looks like that's been taken off.
30:07When you handle it, the grease and the grime will be smudged, the clips will be broken.
30:11So it was really a matter of just crawling underneath this truck and examining the fuel filter.
30:17This was pristine.
30:19It hadn't been touched.
30:20And so we were able to discount that pretty quickly.
30:23Lanny was the most confident idiot I've ever met.
30:27He felt that anything he could tell us,
30:30if he said it with enough conviction that somehow that made it true.
30:34I feel like y'all looked at me more like a suspect.
30:37And that scared .
30:38Lanny ends the interview by asking for a lawyer.
30:42But since he's already confessed to creating the fake Facebook identity,
30:46the Rangers are able to arrest him on a felony charge of false impersonation.
30:51But they won't be able to hold him indefinitely.
30:54And despite days of searching, there's still no sign of Michelle.
30:58I think people often underestimate how hard it is to find a body.
31:04Then, five days after Lanny Bush is arrested, Detective Tompkins finally gets a call.
31:11They found something about 30 miles from Brownwood.
31:14I responded to the second bridge underneath it in a dry creek bed of Farm to Market 1026.
31:23I could smell the faint odor of decomp coming from this area.
31:27Texas Rangers team arrived and started photographing the scene.
31:32And then we started seeing portions of fingers sticking out.
31:37And at this time, we knew we had found a human body.
31:40My mom was supposed to be going on a date.
31:45I was like, what happened from here to there?
31:49He became obsessed.
31:51As far as DNA or some biological evidence, you realize the chances are pretty slim.
31:57On September 24th, 2012, two weeks after Michelle Ryder disappeared, the Rangers unearthed a shallow grave in a remote area near where her phone last registered off a cell tower.
32:18The further we got into removing the dirt, we were able to see a rose tattoo on her right shoulder.
32:31And at that time, I knew it was Michelle.
32:34There had been a significant amount of decomposition, which had occurred.
32:39It was still pretty hot in September in Texas.
32:41Due to the condition of the body, the coroner can't immediately determine a cause of death.
32:48Was there a bullet hole we missed or was there some trauma to the trachea that indicates that she was choked?
32:55But in the case of this one, we did not have those answers.
32:59With no apparent cause of death, investigators still can't tie Lanny to the murder, so they asked for a more extensive autopsy.
33:08The results could take months.
33:10Now, after an agonizing 14 days with their loved one missing, the detectives have the grim task of reaching out to Michelle's family members.
33:20They called me, and it said they found her body.
33:24And it felt like the entire world came crashing down on me.
33:29I didn't understand what happened.
33:33Cause like, my mom was supposed to be going on a date.
33:37They find my mom's body in a ditch.
33:40I just, I was like, what, what happened from here to there?
33:47I desperately wanted things to be different.
33:51The two seconds at the doorway, where she said, I'll see you later.
33:58And I said, okay.
34:01And she walked out my door.
34:04I desperately wanted those two seconds back.
34:12With Lanny still in jail on an increased bail bond of $200,000 for the impersonation charge, the investigators have some breathing room to find more evidence against him.
34:26A murder is a different animal.
34:29It can't be impulsive.
34:31You've got to be on a firm foundation when you make that charge.
34:34I obtained a search warrant for, for Lanny's truck.
34:37In the bed of the truck, one item of interest we found was a wooden handle shovel.
34:42The shovel itself had a kind of a rust line, kind of some rust on it.
34:47We believed it had been used recently because the rust was disturbed towards the tip of the shovel.
34:52In light of the totality of the circumstances, very likely the shovel was used in the, uh, concealing the body of Michelle.
35:00In the glove box, they find a receipt from an outdoor supply business in Brownwood called the Sportsman.
35:08It's dated the day Michelle disappeared.
35:13We were able to pull some video from the Sportsman.
35:17And although the frame was a little bit pixelated, we could tell from the color scheme on the box, we could tell about the size and the shape.
35:25We found that he bought Remington 32-calorie ammunition.
35:29Next, the investigators searched Lanny's girlfriend's house, where they find the computer he used to catfish Michelle.
35:37He had a list of different searches, you know, leading up to this time period that were just highly suspicious.
35:44He had looked at homemade knockout drops, can putting bisine in somebody's drink, knock them out?
35:51What's the missing person protocol?
35:54The searches that normal people don't make, especially considering the significant other disappears a few days later.
36:01But the Google searches, ammunition receipt, shovel, and phone records are all circumstantial evidence.
36:08None of it proves that Lanny killed Michelle.
36:11In fact, without a cause of death, they may not be able to prove she was murdered.
36:16For five grueling months, investigators stand by for word from the coroner.
36:23While Lanny Bush waits patiently in jail, confident they don't have enough evidence to charge him.
36:29And then, finally, the wait is over.
36:32The autopsy report showed that the cause of death was undetermined.
36:38They stated they couldn't rule out suffocation or overlay of the nose and mouth.
36:44The detectives are at a loss.
36:47If they charge Lanny now, they risk exposing the jury to reasonable doubt.
36:52My perspective on juries, they're lay people.
36:55They don't do this for a living.
36:57As far as an investigator, Lanny never gave an account that, for me personally, was believable.
37:02But you never know about a juror.
37:08In a disappointing blow, the final autopsy report is consistent with the coroner's initial findings.
37:18Michelle Ryder's cause of death is inconclusive.
37:21At this point, investigators don't feel confident charging Lanny Bush with her murder.
37:27But they're not giving up.
37:29I don't like people that hurt other people.
37:33I'm not even really a fighter.
37:35But when you get somebody that does that, it's your natural instinct that, like, you know what?
37:41I'm going to make sure that you're held accountable and brought to justice.
37:46Because of the mountain of circumstantial evidence, the investigators believe they know what happened.
37:51It all started when Lanny found out about Michelle's affair with Kemper Croft.
37:57He became obsessed.
37:59If she was not going to be in his life and he could not control her, he was going to make her miserable.
38:07And he was going to take everything he could away from her.
38:11He takes on this persona of Rocky Switzer and she's expecting to meet Romeo and she meets the Grim Reaper, you know?
38:19If you go back to September the 10th of 2012, Michelle had a date that was planned with Rocky Switzer.
38:26And she was planning on meeting him at a restaurant in Santa Ana, Texas.
38:30And then prior to that, that she had planned on meeting her ex, Lanny Bush.
38:37Lanny and her was set to meet at 6 o'clock or 6.30, somewhere around that time period.
38:45They had met up at a park.
38:49What we think happened is that Lanny Bush, while at the park, using a pistol, took her at gunpoint and made her get into a vehicle with him.
39:00We learned that a .32 caliber handgun had been stolen from Lanny's grandmother's residence.
39:06Two or three days later, we determined Lanny was buying .32 ammunition at the Sportsman in Brownwood.
39:14He then drove her through the back roads, out to the Valera area, where he then either used knockout drops or some other method to incapacitate her.
39:27After Lanny had killed her, he had buried her into a shallow grave and left her body there for dead.
39:34The purchase of the ammunition, the theft of the gun a couple days before, along with all the Facebook and texting communications, this is all part of a plan orchestrated by Lanny for the murder of Michelle Ryder.
39:49With this narrative in hand, prosecutors are ready to charge Lanny Bush with capital murder.
40:01Nearly one year after Michelle's death, Lanny Bush stands trial in Coleman, Texas.
40:08He pleads not guilty.
40:09A key piece of evidence in the prosecution's case is Lanny's phone.
40:15In this case, there was a definitive tracking ability from when Lanny and Michelle came together on that day all the way to the grave where Michelle was found buried.
40:29That evidence spoke volumes in and of itself.
40:34The trial takes five days and the jury deliberates for only a few hours before they're back with a verdict.
40:42They announced that the defendant was in fact guilty and responsible for the capital murder for the death of Michelle Ryder and held him accountable.
40:50The judge proceeded to sentence him to life without the possibility of parole.
40:56Lanny thought he had us fooled, but in the end he fooled himself.
41:01He's smart enough to literally take over somebody's Facebook, but he was too stupid to figure out that even in 2012 they could follow you step by step by step by step on your phone as to where you were going and what you were doing.
41:16And he thought that he was smart enough to pull it over on law enforcement.
41:22And we're not that smart, but we figured it out.
41:25Lanny thinks he's big and bad, but I mean the cops made sure.
41:32They struck down that ego real quick, I will say that.
41:37After everything that happened with my mom, I feel like she didn't get to live how she wanted to live and do what she wanted to do.
41:44So a part of me wants to make my mom proud by doing the things that she never got to do.
41:51Like I work in health care and I get to care for people and I love it every single day.
41:58I just hope nobody has to go through what our family has to go through.
42:03Hopefully this helps someone realize that they're in a bad situation and they need to get help.
42:09I think Michelle's message would be leave when you feel like you should leave.
42:16If something is not right, it's okay to walk away from it. Be strong.
42:22Michelle Ryder was a loving mother and cherished friend who took a chance on love, but was met with deadly betrayal instead.
42:34All because of a man who thought he was too clever to get caught.
42:37All because of a killer relationship.
42:41All because of a man who knows how you would do the human in need.
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