(gentle music) - My mom was everything
you could dream of. Sometimes I get told, "You know, you look like Lisa," and "You act like Lisa." She was an amazing mom, amazing daughter,
amazing sister. She was just an
all-around amazing person. I don't think my life
will ever be normal with everything that
has happened in my life. I think I'll always question if I'm safe and if
I can trust people. There was 13 years where
this case was not solved. I would love people
to understand, in a situation like this, that there is a light at
the end of the tunnel. This whole story, it is just too crazy. None of it could be real
because it's too crazy. (dramatic music) (gentle music) - [Narrator] For Army
recruits at Fort Lee, this day will shape the
rest of their lives. They're about to begin
officer training school. Among the trainees
is Lisa Gaudenzi. The 30-year-old has big plans. - [Nancy] Lisa
wanted to be a judge. They only take the brightest
people out of the class, and she was happy that she was going
into the service. - [Narrator] By mid-morning, all the new officer trainees have reported to their barracks. All except one. - Lisa did not show up for
officer training school. The Army immediately
classified her as AWOL. Being trained in
officer training school would give her the opportunity to go to law school
through the military and be an officer
in a JAG Corps. It was her dream come true. - [Nancy] She wanted to do
her time in officers training. For us not to hear
anything, nothing, we knew something
happened at that point. I was Lisa's stepmother. I was married to
her father, Joseph. I treated Lisa like
she was my daughter. She was the daughter
I never had. She grew up in New Jersey. Lisa grew up in an
influential family, very well-to-do. Her father Joe was very
well-off with businesses. Joe had great
factories in Europe and multiple beauty shops
across the United States. Had them for quite a few years. Lisa was very smart. Her and her sister
went to Montessori. They went to school
in a Rolls Royce. That's how Lisa was
raised until the divorce. I don't think Lisa or her sister were happy with the divorce. They used to come
to Atlantic City and visit their father
in the summertime. Joe was a very doting father. Joe had told me they had a
big pool in the backyard, and Lisa used to love to swim. At the age of three,
she jumped in this pool and she starts swimming. She was outgoing when I
met her years earlier, when she was 10. The older she got, the
more ambitious Lisa got. But once she had
the car accident, she became very self-conscious. - [Rachel] As a result
of that accident, she needed a special
porcelain dental plate, and she had a lot of
scarring on her face. - [Nancy] She went
through the windshield. And at the age of 16, going
to high school, you know, that's not good for your ego, going to school with new scars or bandages on your face and no teeth in the
bottom of your mouth. (gentle music) When Lisa graduated
from high school, she moved down to West Palm to be with her mother
and her sister. They were living down
in Florida at the time. She wound up getting a
job in an auto body shop. Most women couldn't be bothered, but it didn't bother Lisa to get down and dirty, paint
the car, sand the car down. She had no problem doing that. Lisa's working in
the auto body shop and who's working in
there also is Jim. Jim was her boss. They started to date and
one thing led to another. - [Narrator] After
a whirlwind romance, 21-year-old Lisa and
24-year-old Jim Burdette get married in 1985. They welcome a baby girl
named Lea a year later. - [Nancy] Lea was born
with cystic fibrosis. It's a lung disease
that's incurable. Your lungs are
filled with fluid. When Lea was diagnosed
with it back then, they gave her a four- to
five-year span of living. Over the years, though,
with her medications, her span of life is
a lot longer now. - [Rachel] It caused
a lot of difficulties in the relationship
between Lisa and Jim. All of her energy
and her attention was focused on Lea
and her education, and the marriage was over. They were not functioning
as a married couple for a long time before they ultimately
did get divorced in 1989. - [Narrator] Lisa and
Lea move to Virginia, and that's when Lisa meets tow truck driver
Lawrence Gaudenzi. - [Nancy] She thought
he was good-looking. He took her out to dinner. Lisa was, you know, smitten. - [Rachel] Lawrence
was very involved in the Mormon Church and
they moved in together into a house that
was rented to them by the bishop of that church. So it was a very quiet,
religious, rural area. - [Narrator] Once
again, Lisa falls hard. - [Nancy] Lisa said
to me, "Guess what?" And I knew what
she was gonna say. That she was pregnant. She was ecstatic. - [Narrator] Lisa and Lawrence
name their daughter Shelby. They marry shortly after. - [Nancy] Lawrence was thrilled. He wanted a little boy, but she was a little girl and he was tickled pink. Lisa was over the moon. She's a mother again. Now she has her two children. She's extremely happy. - [Narrator] Despite
having two kids, Lisa enlists in
the Army in 1994. It was the first step
towards her dream job. - [Rachel] Lisa's goal was
to be a lawyer and a judge. She was going to make that
work by joining the Army, going to school, and
becoming a JAG judge. - [Narrator] The
schedule is so demanding that Lisa sends
eight-year-old Lea to Florida to live with her grandmother. Lawrence stays in Virginia
with their daughter, two-year-old Shelby. - Lisa's goal was to
be a wife and a mother. She was gonna make that
work with Lawrence Gaudenzi. - [Narrator] The Gaudenzis
rent out their basement. Their tenant helps out with
the cooking and cleaning while Lisa works and studies. (dramatic music) - [Narrator] A day passes, and there's still
no sign of Lisa. Military police at Fort Lee start a search for
the missing mom. - [Nancy] The MPs showed
up at Lawrence's house and they also showed up at her
mother's house in The Keys, looking for Lisa. - [Rachel] Lawrence filed
a missing persons report on Lisa with the Caroline
County Sheriff's Department. He told them that he
had dropped Lisa off at the bus station in Richmond to go to officer training school and that was the
last time he saw her. - [Narrator] When deputies
search Lisa's belongings, they find something that might explain
her disappearance. Love letters, not addressed to Lawrence, but to a man named Israel. - It appears from their letters that there was a budding romance between Lisa and Israel. - [Woman's voice] "Israel, you
are still always on my mind. I look forward to
sharing my life with you. But it is really
hard having to wait. I have waited so
long for happiness, and now I have finally
found the man for me and I can't be with him. I know we will have plenty
of time to be together, but I hate wasting four
months of my life without you. I have already wasted 30 years. Every night before
I fall asleep, I think about
laying in your arms. I miss going to sleep
with you next to me. I don't ever want
to be away from you for such a long time again. Goodnight my love, Lisa." (pensive music) - [Tad] She didn't
show up for training. Did she meet someone
along the way? The police really have
to keep their minds open for all possibilities. She was seemingly moving
forward in her life, possibly without Lawrence. It was something she
clearly wanted to do. - That's the way Lisa was. She got very swept
up in the romance and the idea of being in love. - [Tad] That was a big red flag for the investigators
on this case. (gentle music) - [Tad] Any romantic interest is going to be a person
of interest to the police when someone goes missing. What was that relationship? Was it a relationship
that was kept secret? (dramatic music) - [Narrator] The Caroline
County Sheriff's Department may be one step closer
to finding Lisa Gaudenzi. Love letters suggest that Lisa is having an affair with a man named Israel. - [Doc] It became obvious that Lisa had met an
individual down in Florida. She met him on a
break that she had from her military training. They used to go dancing
and things like that, which kind of made you wonder that maybe she had
run off with Israel. - [Woman's voice]
"Israel, I can't sleep. Probably because all I have done for the past four days is sleep. Also, because I lay
awake thinking of things I want to ask you and of things I want
to talk to you about and thinking about us. I don't care where we live, or even if we have
to sleep on a couch, as long as we can
sleep together." - [Rachel] Lisa wrote
to Israel several times, very lengthy letters,
about missing him and future plans they might make and how wonderful life would be. - [Woman's voice] "So
what do you want to do when I come down
for the weekend? I would love to just
lock ourselves in a room for a few days! But I do want to
make plans for us to do something with Lea. Until then, love Lisa." - [Narrator] Two days
after Lisa vanished, police find Israel at
his home in Florida. - [Doc] When Israel
was interviewed, it was evident that
he had no knowledge or no part of Lisa's
disappearance. - [Rachel] The police determined that this was not that
serious of a relationship, that he had been in Florida and had nothing to do with Lisa since she had been
there for Christmas, other than receiving
her letters. (dramatic music) - [Narrator] Back in Virginia,
the Sheriff's Department interviews the Gaudenzis'
basement tenant. - [Rachel] The basement
tenant was there the last evening that Lawrence
and Lisa were together in the home. The basement tenant backed
Lawrence's story up, that they were,
indeed, home together, and that Lawrence
had left with Lisa to take her to officer
training school. The Sheriff's Department accepted the basement
tenant's word and viewed it more as
a missing persons case than something that needed
further investigating. - [Narrator] Lisa's family fears this might be more than
a missing persons case. Neighbors aren't so sure. (gentle music) - [Rachel] When this
case first began, it was really more
about the community wrapping itself around Lawrence, who was the victim of this woman who ran off and broke his heart and left him as a single parent. - [Narrator] News of
Lisa's disappearance quickly reaches her
first husband, Jim. - [Tony] Two days
after Lisa disappeared, Jim Burdette comes
to Caroline County to visit with Lawrence. Lawrence made it
clear to Jim Burdette that he believed that Lisa was going to take
their daughter Shelby with her, like she had done taking
Lea from Jim Burdette. - [Rachel] I think that
Lawrence and Jim Burdette established some kind of bond over their shared dismay of having a broken
relationship with Lisa Marto. - [Nancy] Those two go to court for custody of the girls, and we hired an attorney. (gentle music) We fought for both girls, and we got actual
physical custody of Lea and only phone
visitation with Shelby. That's what we wind up with. We were just amazed
that this was happening. - [Narrator]
Lawrence starts over with his daughter
Shelby, and without Lisa. Meanwhile, the search for
the missing mom stalls. - [Rachel] Joe and Nancy Marto called that Sheriff's
Department quite a bit and begged and begged and
begged them to investigate. And Joe and Nancy Marto were really met
with a brick wall. (gentle music) - [Nancy] The Sheriff's
Department in Caroline County told us there's not
much they can do. She's over 18. She can do what she wants. We talked a lot. She's done this before. Well, yeah, she did it before, but everybody knew
where she was. It wasn't like she disappeared
off the face of the earth. - [Tony] Joe Marto was
mounting a campaign, hired his own
private investigator, posted signs all
over Caroline County, all near the bus
station in Richmond. "Have you seen this woman?" He was actively trying
to investigate the matter and was very frustrated that the Sheriff's Office
wasn't doing anything. - [Nancy] We wanted
to know something. It just wasn't
moving fast enough. We weren't getting any answers from the Sheriff's Department. The private investigator, he put up "missing"
pictures of her. They talked to
different neighbors. The private investigator said that the house
should be searched, but they don't have
enough probable cause. The grounds should be searched, but they don't have
enough probable cause. We never became
complacent about it. At night, we'd go to sleep, we'd have a pen and
paper on our nightstand in case we thought of something in the middle of the night. It just never left. It never went away. (gentle music) - [Rachel] She would
have never run off and abandoned those two girls. - [Tad] The Army ended up
dishonorably discharging Lisa because she didn't
show up for training. And that can be an example
of the police saying, "Well, the Army is treating it as if she didn't show up. So how do we know what really
happened in this case?" - [Narrator] Soon, there's
more bad news for the Martos. (phone calling) - [Nancy] We tried calling
Lawrence to talk to him and he changed his phone number. - [Automated voice] The
number you have reached is not in service. - [Nancy] Changed
the phone number, changed the name on the account. That's when the ball
started to roll. - [Rachel] Joe and Nancy
Marto pushed so hard that the Sheriff's
Department finally conceded and said they would
bring Lawrence Gaudenzi in for a polygraph test. They contacted Lawrence
Gaudenzi, who said, "No problem. I will come
in for a polygraph test." They scheduled it. - At first, he agreed. He didn't show up. His excuse was he was sick. What ended up occurring
is he left town. Nobody knew where he went. No forwarding address. - [Nancy] He disappeared
off the face of the earth and took our
granddaughter with him. (dramatic music) (gentle music) - [Rachel] Caroline County
is a very rural small area with a small police department, and they just did not have
the resources to investigate and now look for
Lawrence and Shelby. So they decided,
ultimately, to turn it over to the State Police. (dramatic music) - [Rachel] There was
enough information to take a fresh
look at this case. Joe and Nancy Marto had established a
really good relationship with the detectives who were
investigating this case. They took Joe and
Nancy very seriously, and they really began
investigating from scratch. - [Tony] The State Police, in investigating the
disappearance of Lisa Gaudenzi, found that a lot of
what Lawrence was saying in his original version, about dropping her
off the bus station, didn't make sense. - [Narrator] When
Lisa disappeared, investigators didn't focus
on Lawrence or his story. Now that he's also vanished, they take a second look. - [Tony] He dropped her off
at a bus station in Richmond to take a bus to Fort Lee. The problem with that story is it's a 45-minute drive from where Lawrence was living to the bus station in Richmond. It was only another 30
minutes to Fort Lee. Why would you drive someone
45 minutes to a bus station to take a half-hour bus trip? - [Narrator] State
Police are determined to question the elusive
Lawrence Gaudenzi and find his missing
daughter Shelby. (dramatic music) - [Rachel] The State
Police made a deal with a news station in
Richmond to run this story and to show a picture
of Lawrence Gaudenzi and ask the public for their
assistance with any leads. They almost
immediately got a tip, and the tipster who called said that they definitely
recognized this person, but that was not
Lawrence Gaudenzi. They knew him as Randy Evans. (dramatic music) - [Narrator] Randy
Evans is a local man who lives on the streets. Police find him at
a shopping center. - [Doc] The agents said,
"Are you Lawrence Gaudenzi?" He said, "No. My name
is Randy Lee Evans." - [Tony] He had a beard that looked very much
like Randy Evans'. He had a brace on his hand, just like Randy
Evans had always had. Lawrence has a tattoo, a very distinctive
tattoo on his chest. And he asked this
man he's talking to, "Can you take your shirt off so I can see if you
have any tattoos?" And sure enough,
there's the tattoo that Lawrence Gaudenzi had. This was Lawrence Gaudenzi
posing as Randy Evans. - [Doc] Lawrence's story was
that he gave Randy Evans a car. I think it was a Chevelle
or maybe a Mustang, and $10,000 for
his identification. That's how he got all of this
information on Randy Evans. You know, it's kind of funny that Randy Evans was
never seen again either. He's gone. (dramatic music) - [Rachel] It became clear that Lawrence had
established a new life and a new identity for himself. Lawrence Gaudenzi
told the police that he had become Randy Evans because he thought Joe Marto
had put a hit out on him. When Joe and Nancy
Marto were told that Lawrence Gaudenzi was informing police
and investigators that they had put
a hit out on him, they laughed and found
it utterly ridiculous. - [Nancy] Lawrence was nuts. We were just amazed
that this was happening. (dramatic music) - [Narrator] Police arrest a
now-remarried Lawrence Gaudenzi for identity theft and for
violating his probation on a weapons charge. - [Nancy] When we heard
that he started a new life and he had a new wife, we were livid. Absolutely livid. I got on the computer. I pulled up all
this information. We got a marriage
license on him, under the name of
Randy Lee Evans. He married Linda May. - [Narrator] Police
also wanna know about his four-year-old
daughter, Shelby. - He changed Shelby's
name to Logan Evans, and the three of them were
living not that far away from where he left. About one county over
in Rockingham County. - My name is Logan Derenzo, and I am the daughter
of Lisa and Lawrence. (dramatic music) When my dad went to jail, Linda May sat me down and said, "I'm not your birth mother. Your birth mother
is Lisa Marto." It wasn't weird
for me to find out Linda May was not
my birth mother. I didn't look like her. I didn't act like her. It kind of made me love her more because she chose to love me. I was really confused. I didn't understand how
Lisa could have left me. I didn't like her as a person. I hated her for abandoning me, 'cause that's all I knew. When Linda May told
me all of this, she definitely said it in a way that she knew what was going on, but she didn't
really wanna tell me, and it was very scary to her. She seemed scared as she's
telling me all of this. - [Rachel] Lawrence Gaudenzi could be very charming
and cooperative and present himself as a
very quiet, pious family man. But there was definitely another
side to Lawrence Gaudenzi. (dramatic music) (gentle music) - [Doc] Lawrence's new
wife was interviewed by State Police agents and was asked what she knew
about Lisa's disappearance. She related to them that Lawrence had told her that she had run off
with somebody else. (dramatic music) - [Narrator] As
Linda May and Logan detailed their
life with Lawrence, a disturbing picture emerges. - [Logan] From day to day, you never knew what kind of mood my dad was going to be in. He had a temper that
is second to none. When I was in second grade, I cut my hair to my ears because that's the
way I wanted it. When I came home, my
dad completely lost it. He tried to tear down
the bedroom door. I loved the way I looked. I thought it was fun. And for him to just completely
break me down over it killed me. - [Narrator] Patterns
of Lawrence's behavior extend back to his
previous marriage to Lisa. - [Rachel] Shortly before
the actual wedding ceremony, Nancy Marto and
Lisa were together, and Nancy saw that Lisa had
some significant bruises on her legs. - [Nancy] I said to her, "If
Lawrence is beatin' on you, you and the two
girls pack your bags and you come home
with Joe and I." And she said, "Oh no,
Lawrence wouldn't allow it." We didn't know how bad it was. (gentle music) - [Narrator] Lawrence
Gaudenzi pleads guilty to forgery and is sentenced
to two years in prison. He's released in 2004. Police can't charge Lawrence in connection to
Lisa's disappearance. With no new leads or evidence, the case of the missing
mom goes as cold as an old Virginia coal mine. (dramatic music) - Going through those years, not knowing what
happened, was hard. Her birthday wasn't
easy for Joe, but we trudged through. A lot of crying. A lot of upset. I put a website up for Lisa. I did an interview
on the internet. We wrote to John Walsh, America's Most Wanted,
numerous times. The same letter came back. They didn't wanna pick it up. We had a psychic
from New Jersey. I even wrote to the President
of the United States at the time, asking
for his help. We left no stone unturned. We knew Lisa was dead. We knew Lawrence killed her. (gentle music) - [Doc] We had no evidence,
no forensics, nothing. Nobody wanted to tackle anything until Spencer got elected. (gentle music) - I was the elected
Commonwealths Attorney of Caroline County, beginning on January 1, 2008. I had a lot on my plate. I was new to the job. I got a phone call from
a man named Joe Marto. I am a believer that
a good prosecutor will not shy away
from tough cases. We set up a meeting with
Joe Marto and his wife, and by the time that
meeting was over, I was convinced
that this was a case that I was interested in having
investigated and prosecuted. (dramatic music) - [Tad] It seems highly unlikely that a woman about to embark
on a career in the military is going to leave her husband, without a divorce,
for another man, going to leave two
children behind, is going to basically
give up what is sort of a lifelong dream, to just disappear. - [Doc] What I found
in my investigation was that Lisa was a
highly-intelligent young lady. She wanted to better herself, and we knew something was wrong. - [T.C.] She hasn't renewed
her driver's license. She hasn't renewed
her insurance. She hasn't done anything else that normal people
do in the daily life. None of that occurred.
It just stopped. Sometimes nothing is something. (dramatic music) - [Nancy] Lisa just
didn't disappear, fall off the face of the earth. Her life revolved around
those two little girls. Lisa had a plan, and the plan wasn't
to disappear. (dramatic music) - [Tad] This is not someone
who is probably missing. This is someone
who was murdered. (dramatic music) (gentle music) - [Tony] Everything about
Lisa's life stopped. Looks like we may have the facts to be able to prove
a murder here. (dramatic music) - [Tad] When police and
prosecutors don't have a body, they don't have any information. So police and prosecutors then have to rely on
other types of evidence. - [Tony] They came up with
a team of five investigators and they fanned out. They went to Georgia,
South Carolina, Florida, Maine, Texas, Virginia, and re-interviewed everybody, and heard wildly
different versions of what Lawrence had told them had happened to Lisa. Lawrence said Lisa had run off with a truck driver
from Indiana. In another version, Lawrence said that
she had run off with a man in Florida. - [Doc] The only
thing that we had was a history of
Lawrence's lies. The lies that he had
told over the years about what happened to Lisa. We've got an uphill battle here. (dramatic music) - [Narrator] Agents in Florida want to talk to
Lisa's first husband, Jim Burdette,
who's now homeless. - [T.C.] I traveled
to the last known area that Jim Burdette
could have been at. We went to the
drive-through McDonald's and got him a meal and went back to the
Sheriff's Office. We sit there in a
conference room. He has this briefcase. I am so curious of
what's in that briefcase. Why would this homeless man be carrying around a briefcase in 104 degrees on a road
in the middle of nowhere? So I open it up. What do I find? I find a plethora of tape. (dramatic music) - [Tony] Jim Burdette
recorded his conversations with anybody that had
anything to do with Lisa, hoping there might
be something in there that he could use in
his custody battle. One of 'em was a cassette of Lawrence talking
to Jim Burdette two days after Lisa disappeared. And it's fascinating. Lawrence is
explaining, yet again, another version
of what happened. "She didn't wanna
stay with me anymore. She wanted to go to Fort Lee." You can hear him
trying his stories out. You can hear him trying
to dig information out of Jim Burdette
that he can use. It was a critical piece
of evidence in the case. When you have this audiotape
of Lawrence Gaudenzi's voice in January of 1995,
talking about it, you can't argue with that. - [Narrator] Looking
to bolster their case, investigators interview Diane, who used to babysit the
Gaudenzis' daughter Shelby back in Virginia. Lisa and Lawrence
called Diane to babysit the weekend before Lisa was
supposed to report to Fort Lee. - [T.C.] Lawrence was
excited for her to come home. So they took Shelby
over to the babysitter. During that time, Diane and
Lisa have a conversation, and Lisa tells her that she wants to get a
divorce from Lawrence. - [Tony] I believe that Lawrence heard Lisa
tell the babysitter, Diane, that she was going
to leave Lawrence, that Lawrence was afraid that Lisa was going to
take Shelby away from him, just like she had taken
Lea away from Jim Burdette. - [Tad] We have a
classic triggering event. He's going to lose
control of his wife, but more importantly, he's going to lose control over the most important
thing in his life, which is his daughter. - [T.C.] You start putting
circumstances together, and it all starts going
down the same road, that Lawrence, more than likely, killed Lisa. (dramatic music) - [Narrator] With a
possible motive established, they look for evidence at the home Lawrence
and Lisa once shared. - [T.C.] I go in
the closet door, and I notice the drywall. There's been some type
of work done there. I had pulled the carpet up, and there was just a
gigantic red stain. It looked like blood. So I conducted a Luminol. It looked like the biggest
blue light you've ever seen. I swabbed it. We brought it to a lab. They said, "We can't
say it's blood. But what we can tell you is there's a whole
lot of Clorox there." (dramatic music) - [Doc] Agent Collins
goes down to Georgia and locates the
downstairs tenant that was living in the basement at the time of
Lisa's disappearance. - [Tony] Early on, they did
interview the basement tenant. The woman who lived
in the basement essentially said that she
hadn't seen anything unusual. - [T.C.] They say
people's memories fade. That's true. But if it's a event that
occurred in their life that's very dramatic, they remember details for
years and years and years. So we were looking to
pull out those details. (dramatic music) - [T.C.] She's
sitting on the couch. She has her head down, and she starts to rock. It gets to the point where she is rocking
almost uncontrollably. And I said, "What's wrong?" She said, "I'm afraid that Lawrence will come
and try to kill me." (dramatic music) (gentle music) - [Tony] I was at
home, taking a shower. The phone rings, and I look, and I see that
it's T.C. Collins. So I answer it. I'll never forget T.C. saying,
"I've got the smoking gun." (dramatic music) - [Narrator] Lawrence
Gaudenzi's former tenant tells Agent Collins about the
night before Lisa vanished. (dramatic music) - [T.C.] She says that
the ground was frozen. It was, been cold for several days. She was out there
smoking a cigarette. Lawrence didn't know that she had seen him come
out of the top floor deck and carrying a big green bag that he could hardly carry. He went out for about 10
minutes into the woods and came back and didn't
have the bag with him. - [Narrator] The tenant
says Lawrence left the house in a hurry. Once he was gone, she went inside and
noticed a trail of dirt leading to a bedroom upstairs. - [T.C.] She had a friend
with her at the time. They come in the bedroom and they see all of
Lisa's military gear, all laid out. They walk into the bathroom and all they see is
a bunch of blood. They are scared to death. So they lock the door
and go back downstairs. She was still so petrified,
all these years later. - [Doc] She was
afraid of Lawrence. I don't know what he told her, but I do know that
this fear was real, and that's why she hadn't
come forward before. - [Tony] This is the
part that we needed. And I remember thinking, "That pretty much
seals this case." (phone ringing) - [Nancy] It was around
1:00 in the afternoon and the phone rings, and I looked at the clock, and I says - my intuition - I said, "It's Spencer." And sure enough, it was. "Nancy, we just
arrested Lawrence for the murder of Lisa." (Nancy sighs) I jumped up and down. I was so happy that we would have some
type of closure to this. - [T.C.] We decided to
indict him for murder. And the police went
and arrested him. - He was in shackles and we sat right there
and we looked right... He seen us, he didn't
know what to do. He knew, we wanted him to know, it was us that was involved
and brought him down. (dramatic music) - [Rachel] The Caroline
County prosecutor had a tremendous amount of
circumstantial evidence. - [Narrator] Jim
Burdette's tapes and the basement
tenant's eyewitness account proved damning. Just two days into the trial, Lawrence pleads guilty
to second-degree murder and is sentenced to
25 years in prison. The mystery surrounding the
disappearance of the drifter, Randy Evans, remains
an open investigation. - Joe and I were relieved that Lawrence finally
was found guilty. We weren't happy that we didn't know where
Lisa's remains were. - [Tony] We still wanted to
know, "What happened to Lisa? What happened to her body?" So Doc Lyons and T.C. Collins went to see Lawrence
in prison and said, "Look, if you can tell
us where Lisa's body is, we might be able to
convince the prosecutor to agree to a
sentence reduction." What Lawrence said happened was that he and Lisa
had been arguing at the top of the steps and that he had grabbed Lisa. She pulled away from him, and fell down the steps
and broke her neck. He was afraid he would
be charged with murder, and so he just decided instead to just get rid of the body and pretend that she
had gone missing. - [Logan] I do not believe
that Lisa was killed the way Lawrence likes to
paint the pretty picture of, "It was an accident." I've seen my dad angry, and I just don't believe it. (dramatic music) - [Doc] Well, he had told us that when he dropped
her off in this field, he put her in a 50-gallon
drum with muriatic acid. - [TV reporter] After 15 years, the remains of Lisa Gaudenzi
have finally been found. Just one year into his
25-year jail sentence, Lawrence Gaudenzi is
talking for the first time, leading police here to
Spotsylvania County. (dramatic music) - [Doc] So we pull
down in this field, where we find what looks like
a lot of synthetic material that comes out of
a sleeping bag. (camera shutter clicks) - [T.C.] I look
off to the right, and literally, there is three
bottles of muriatic acid that's been there
for 15, 20 years. - [Narrator] Not far
from the acid bottles, investigators find
something telling. (camera shutter clicks) - [Tony] There was Lisa
Marto's dental bridge. And it's the only human
remains of Lisa that there are. But they were at least
able to find some remains, and give the family
some closure. - We have done the best
we could to provide them, "At least we know where the resting place
of their daughter is." - [TV reporter] State
Police say Lawrence Gaudenzi had hoped his cooperation would help reduce his
25-year jail sentence. But it won't. (gentle music) - [Nancy] We had a memorial at the military cemetery
and they had gun salute, they had a flyover, they had a minister there. Beautiful service.
Absolutely beautiful. We were happy that
we got the partial. We were happy that we were
able to put it to a headstone. We lobbied the Army to change her name back
to her maiden name. (gentle music) - We were free. I lived with a
murderer for 13 years. I will never have
the relationship I should have with my sister, of growing up and
driving her crazy and all of the things. It definitely
changed everything. (gentle music) - [Nancy] Through
the whole process, we grieved a lot. Not just when it was over. This was a big part
of our life every day. Nobody should have
to go through this.
