00:00In the summer of 1970, in the quiet town of Price, Utah, a four-year-old girl named Heidi Jones
00:06stood
00:06on her tiptoes, pressing her face against her bedroom door. Through the cold metal of a keyhole,
00:12she watched the unthinkable. Loretta Jones was a vibrant, loving, 23-year-old single mother.
00:19But on the morning of July 31, the laughter in their home stopped. Four-year-old Heidi walked
00:25out of her bedroom and into the living room. There, on the floor, she found her mother.
00:30Loretta had been brutally beaten and stabbed to death. When the police arrived, the traumatized
00:36toddler kept repeating three words. Over and over again. Tom did it. Tom did it. Police immediately
00:44knew who Tom was. Thomas Edward Egley had briefly dated Loretta. And on the very night of the murder,
00:51he had been arrested for attempting to kidnap a 10-year-old girl in Loretta's neighborhood.
00:56It seemed like an open-and-shut case. But Egley had a card to play. He married his girlfriend
01:02shortly after the murder, ensuring she couldn't testify against him. With a lack of physical
01:07evidence, the judge dismissed the murder charges. Thomas Egley walked out of the courtroom a free
01:13man. And just like that, the world moved on. Heidi was adopted by her grandparents.
01:19To protect her from the agonizing grief, her family stopped speaking about the murder.
01:25Over time, Heidi blocked out the memories. She survived by pretending her mother had never
01:31existed, trading her identity as an orphaned-only child for a quiet life with her cousins-turned
01:36siblings. But you can't bury the truth forever. And deep down, Heidi never forgot the keyhole.
01:43In 1989, living in California, Heidi saw a television show about unsolved mysteries.
01:49The spark was reignited. She wrote to the show. She wrote to law enforcement. But she hit wall after
01:57wall. No one wanted to dig up a ghost from 1970. Fast forward to 2009. Heidi, now back in Utah,
02:06had her car stolen over a holiday weekend. She posted about it on Facebook. Among the comments was a
02:12name she recognized. David Brewer, a high school friend who was now a detective with the Carbon
02:18County Sheriff's Office. Heidi didn't just ask David to find her car. She sat down with him and asked him
02:24to do the impossible, find her mother's killer. As Detective Brewer opened the dusty 1970 file,
02:31he discovered a horrifying, heartbreaking detail that had been kept from the public.
02:36On the night of her death, as Loretta Jones lay dying on the floor,
02:39she had used her final ounce of strength to do something incredible. With her own finger,
02:45in her own blood, Loretta had written two letters on the floor, T and O. She was dying,
02:51but she was still trying to protect her daughter. She was naming her killer.
02:55Armed with new determination, Detective Brewer and Detective Wally Hendricks tracked Thomas
03:00Eggly to Rocky Ford, Colorado. But they needed more than a 40-year-old bloodstain.
03:06They needed a confession. In a brilliant piece of police work, detectives enlisted the help of
03:12Eggly's neighbor, Lisa Carter. Working with law enforcement, she helped draw out the truth from
03:18the aging suspect. Then, in 2016, came the most painful step of all. To secure the forensic nail
03:25in the coffin, Loretta's body had to be exhumed. Heidi had waited until her grandmother passed away in
03:312015 to do this, knowing the sight of her daughter's casket being raised would have killed her.
03:37Forty-six years after she was laid to rest, Loretta Jones returned to the light to finish what she
03:43started. In 2016, Thomas Eggly finally pleaded guilty to the murder of Loretta Jones. He was
03:50sentenced to ten years to life. In the hallway outside the courtroom, Heidi stood face to face with
03:56the monster of her childhood nightmares. She looked at Detective Brewer and whispered,
04:01He's not the boogeyman. Brewer looked at her and replied, Even the boogeyman gets old.
04:06At the sentencing, Heidi turned to face Eggly directly. Heidi, I wanted to make sure he heard
04:13every single word I was trying to drive into his heart. He took my mother. But he did not take
04:19my hope.
04:20When a family feels hopeless, you can't give up. As long as you have hope, you have a chance.
04:26Believe. Believe. Believe. Believe.
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