In some families, the birth of a child can change everything.
I wouldn't have cared if we had a boy or a girl, but it was going to be nice to have a little boy.
Dana Eros was over the moon when her first grandchild was born.
Dean Robert Springstube came into this world on September 26 2005 weighing 7 pounds, stretching out to 20 and a half inches.
He was beautiful.
I was madly in love with him. her husband Roy felt the same way.
You were charmed.
I was absolutely charmed, yes.
The baby's mother, Dana's daughter, Tori Veneau, was just 21 and not ready for the challenges of parenthood.
But as baby Dean grew from a newborn into a happy infant with a sweet smile, Tori grew as well.
He was something that we didn't know we were missing until he came.
And he was one big fat ball of love.
And he opened up my daughter.
It's like you could just see her heart go...
Huge.
It was a beautiful sight to see, watching her become a mom.
I think every mom should be able to see that with their child.
All of that joy turned to horror on the evening of July 26, 2006.
My sister was moving.
And I know what happened to her.
And I just... Okay, take a deep breath.
Take a deep breath so I can understand.
I don't know.
I don't know.
I don't know.
We tell a lot of sad stories here on Dateline.
And while this one isn't easy to tell, it might make you think about the relationship you have with your kids or your parents.
What happened in San Diego turned a happy mother and grandmother into a fighter who now wants the world to know what happened to her family.
Because, she says, there are lessons here.
They're about life, about trust, and they're about the choices we make.
And what she's learned might be a gift to someone else's family.
Before we go ahead here, I want to ask you something.
Are you sure you want to do this?
Yes.
Yes.
Because this isn't going to be pleasant.
But I think it's important.
I think it's important to do.
Tori could have been any girl.
But of course, she wasn't any girl.
She was Dana's.
Tori was the perfect daughter for me.
She wasn't perfect, but she was perfect for me.
And from the minute she was born, we were two peas in a pod.
She was perfectly flawed, I believe.
Most mothers probably would argue that their daughters don't have any flaws.
They're perfect.
No, she had flaws.
Dana says Tori would get so focused on a goal that she sometimes ignored signs of problems along the way.
Stubborn.
Yeah.
And it doesn't seem as if she always made the best choices in men.
No.
There's a flaw.
There.
Tori's best friend, Daniel Moen, remembers how Tori always seemed to fall for the wrong guy.
What kind of guys was she going out with?
To me, they weren't stable guys.
Bad boys?
Kind of, yeah.
Maybe that shouldn't be a surprise, given that our relationships as adults often reflect the ones we witness as children.
Tori was barely two when her father left and cut all ties with her and Dana.
And though stepdad Roy filled his shoes later on and certainly loved her, Tori spent years dealing with her mother's issues.
I'll say this from the jump.
I'm a recovering alcoholic.
And up until she was 16, her life was... fairly normal, and then I crashed.
I think I've always been an alcoholic, but it came to a head at this point.
Although you were drinking, you were functioning.
I was functioning.
But then I could no longer function.
And then what?
And then I just couldn't stop.
I woke up and I had a drink.
And I take my daughter to school.
Drunk?
Yeah.
As many children of alcoholics do, Tori helped her mother cover up the drinking hiding bottles, denying there was a problem.
And for a while that worked.
But at 16, Tori felt she couldn't take it anymore.
Tori said, I love you, but I hate you when you drink.
And I will not watch you destroy your life.
And I found a place for you to interview for a recovery home.
And you get one shot.
And if you fail at this, I'm not coming back.
I need my mom back.
That had to feel good, knowing that, whatever mistakes you might have made, you would raise the daughter who had that kind of backbone.
I was very proud of her.
And so Dana went off to rehab for nearly a year.
Roy moved away to deal with the family's collapse in his own way.
And Tori, still in high school, lived with friends, worked as a waitress.
When Dana emerged nine and a half months later, dry and sober, it was Tori's turn to be proud.
I wanted her to see that you could stand back up when you fall and you could get your life back together, put our marriage back together, put our family back together.
Over the next few years, Tori and Dana became closer than ever.
Then one day, Tori came home with some news of her own.
She came to the house and she said, I need to talk to you.
She kept hemming and hawing and I said, just spit it out and tell me and we'll deal with whatever it is.
And she said, I'm pregnant.
It should have been the beginning of a happy new chapter in the lives of both mother and daughter.
But sometimes, as we told you earlier, the birth of a child can change everything.
When she became pregnant, Tori was living with her boyfriend, Neil Springstube.
Also under the same roof, Tori's best friend, Daniel Mullen.
When Tori brought baby Dean home, these three 20-something roommates shared the parenting.
They took different shifts.
One worked one shift, someone else worked another and Daniel always was carrying him in the baby pouch, where normally the mom is carrying the baby in the baby pouch.
No, Daniel would be doing that.
You were pretty taken with that baby from the beginning.
Yeah, he was my little buddy, my little friend.
Most times he was my best friend.
Really?
Yeah, I mean, I watched him every day while everyone was at work.
So that means doctor's appointments, visits somewhere, going to the store.
He was my right-hand man at that time.
Dana was amazed and amused by the three-way childcare that Tori had figured out.
The three of them were comical, and Dean was just filled with love.
But by the summer of 2006, when baby Dean was 10 months old, Tori and Neil had broken up.
Daniel had moved home with his mom, though he continued to help out daily with Dean's care.
Mother and baby were living in low-income housing in a rough part of San Diego.
But even so, Grandma Dana still thought life was good.
The last time you saw them, you were on the pool together?
She had gotten into a bikini.
She was very proud of that.
She lost the baby weight.
And Daniel was in the pool with Dean.
And Roy was in the pool with Dean.
And Dean had learned... how to splash.
He realized it was his hand that was making the water splash.
And he would just roar with laughter and thought it was just the funniest thing.
And I said, isn't our life perfect?
We've come full circle.
Doesn't that sound like music from heaven when he laughs?
That was what day?
That was Sunday, the 23rd of July.
Three days later, on a Wednesday night, Dana was struck by a news story about a mother and her baby.
That night I saw on the news that I think they said a mother that was 27 and a child that was 8 months had been murdered.
One of the roommates came home to the South Crest complex just before 9 and found the.
I said a prayer for that family.
I thought, that is horrible.
Went to bed, thought nothing more of it.
But the next day, Dana got a call from Tori's workplace.
She hadn't shown up.
She called daycare.
Baby Dean wasn't there.
So she called Daniel Mullen, who was with Tori and Dean nearly every day.
And Daniel, in an almost matter-of-fact way, told Dana the worst news she'd ever heard.
He said, haven't the police contacted you?
And I said, why would the police be calling me?
And he said, the mother and child on the news last night was Tori and Dean.
It was too terrible to hear.
I was engulfed in heat.
And I know when I went back to the phone, the line was dead.
Dana called police to find out more.
They confirmed the news that both her daughter and grandson were dead.
They held back the details because it was a gruesome crime.
But soon enough, Dana would hear it on the news.
Tori had been beaten.
Both she and 10-month-old baby Dean had been strangled.
Dean was still in his crib.
I called the sergeant and said, please tell me that this isn't true.
He said, I can't tell you that.
And then the nightmare began.
By the time Dana had learned what had happened to her baby grandson and her daughter, police had already gone through the apartment dusting for prints, searching for DNA, looking for anything that might explain this double murder.
First of all, what could you tell from the crime scene?
Just that it appeared to be a violent assault.
Lieutenant Kevin Rooney supervised the San Diego Police Homicide Unit.
There was no forced entry into the apartment, but it wasn't uncommon for Tori and her two roommates to leave the door unlocked.
Sexual assault?
Robbery?
What do you guys think?
She was clad with a bra, but there were some tears to her clothing.
So at the beginning yeah, we were open to the possibility that maybe it was an intruder who had attempted to rape her.
But if this is an attempted rape that went wrong, why kill a 10-month-old child who isn't going to be able to testify?
Exactly.
I mean, a 10-month-old boy who doesn't speak.
Right away, the cops started bringing in Torrey's friends.
You didn't kill her, did you?
No.
Wednesday night you talked to her?
I talked to her Wednesday night, yes.
Tori's best friend Daniel, the one who had taken such good care of baby Dean, was also brought downtown.
That's your typical interrogation, little tiny room?
Yeah, little tiny room, light on me, talking.
What did police ask you?
They asked me where I was.
Take your fingerprints?
Yes.
Confiscate your cell phone?
Yes.
Do you feel like a suspect?
I didn't feel like a suspect the first night, no.
That changed?
That changed big time, yeah.
Tori and Dean were gone.
San Diego detectives were piecing together Tori's life.
Her mother, Dana, was planning a double final farewell.
How do you get through a funeral for your only child and her brand new baby?
In a daze.
In a daze.
Did you think about drinking again?
Never.
Because it seems like that would be a time when you would think about it.
I would never dishonor her that way.
I made mistakes when she was growing up with my drinking.
I wasn't going to make them in death.
But Dana was aching.
She bought 43 books on grieving, hoping in vain that one would yield a clue to living through the brutal murder of a daughter and grandson.
She also looked for answers from the San Diego police, but didn't find them there either.
They told her they were working the case, but nothing more, which is typical police procedure.
Frustrating?
Extremely.
And that made you angry?
I was angry from probably week two.
I felt that they were sweeping Tori and Dean under the carpet.
So this grieving mother and grandmother decided she had to do something.
Maybe what she did was a form of therapy.
Or maybe it was just that she needed to scream something at someone at the top of her lungs.
We're not going away.
We're just getting bigger and we're getting louder.
She organized candlelight vigils.
She worked with groups like Crime Stoppers and put out playing cards with Tori and Dean's photos.
Cards that said, please call if you know anything.
And, in frustration, Dana held a press conference right in front of the headquarters of the San Diego police.
Nobody deserves to die this way, and certainly not an infant who could not get away.
He couldn't speak.
He was a baby.
All along, she kept calling Lieutenant Kevin Rooney, asking for details.
And he wasn't giving up anything.
When we're investigating a murder, there are many details of progress that we won't reveal.
Dana was very angry, and I understand it.
And she feels like you guys are getting nowhere.
Oh, she was very upfront about that.
Of course police were making progress.
But progress in a real homicide rarely happens as quickly as it does in a TV crime drama.
Subpoenas have to be issued for things like cell phone records and computer hard drives.
And all of that would take weeks, if not months, to come in.
What police did learn quickly about Tori was that she didn't seem to have any enemies.
She did, however, lead a very complicated life.
Tori was juggling not just work and motherhood, but also three men her boyfriend Neil Springstube, her pal Daniel Moen and an old boyfriend, Dennis Potts.
The cops quickly established that Neil was in Florida at the time of the murders.
So that left two.
Just give me a brief sort of capsule of each one of them.
Dennis Potts knew Tori since high school.
They attended the same high school.
They had what was described as a not exclusive relationship.
For whatever reason, they were constantly drawn back to one another and did have a sexual relationship that existed over the years since high school.
Daniel Moen never qualified as a boyfriend.
Maybe he was too nice. or just too shy.
Daniel knew her for a long time from when they had an earlier job together.
He described him as best friends, but he wanted more.
I believe he loved her and he wanted a romantic relationship with her.
And you knew that that sometimes made Daniel, if not angry, at least unhappy.
It sure seemed as though, of the three people, the three men in her life, he seemed to be the one on the outside looking in.
However, in the weeks before Tori was killed, things were beginning to change between Tori and Daniel.
She seemed open to the possibility of making their relationship more than just friends, but she wasn't sold on it.
She wasn't quite as into that whole idea as you were.
I don't think so, no.
Did that bother you?
No, not really.
I don't believe you.
I was upset that she also still talked to Dennis and other people, but I knew how she was before so I kind of had to accept her how she was.
Daniel had spent years being forgiving of Tori's weaknesses.
Despite that loyalty, Dana told detectives something didn't seem right to her about Daniel.
Specifically, how he knew so much so soon about the murders.
You had to during that time, sort of flash back to how much more Daniel was into Tori than Tori was into Daniel.
And it scared me the way that he knew that they were dead and the way that he told me they were dead.
That kind of scared me, is what I told the police.
And in turn, police made sure Daniel knew he was in their sights.
The cops start coming at you pretty hard.
Yes.
Frightening?
After they told me that I was the main suspect, yeah, a little frightening.
They said you were the main suspect.
I believe I was the only suspect at that time.
With the pressure on, Daniel told the cops he didn't do it, and he wanted to help find out who did.
He shared with them unusual text messages he received from Torrey a little before 7 p.m. that night.
Daniel said it was soon after he got back to work from a break.
It was also around the time police believed Tori and Dean were killed.
That's why I left my phone with him that night, because I said I got a lot of texts before of some scary guy.
I don't know if that has anything to do with it.
There's some scary guy standing by my car looking into my place, read one.
Daniel told the police that was odd because Tori didn't think of her shared apartment as her place.
He also told detectives about another text he thought was even stranger.
Dean was sleeping like a dead dog.
She said that Dean was sleeping like a dead dog?
Yeah.
Was that the way she talked?
No, not at all.
In an age demographic which is reduced to text messages, emotions as complex and different as love and hate, desire and friendship.
Tori's texted words to Daniel are suddenly full of mystery.
She texts you at one point, I love you, I want to be with you.
And then she says, my plans with Dennis fell through.
Why don't you come over?
Yeah, and that's funny because I never knew that they were going to meet.
Tori had told Daniel she was going to see her mom, Dana, that evening.
But in reality, she was going out to dinner with Dennis Potts, her old flame from high school.
The third man in her life.
The police investigation of the double murder of a mother and her child had focused on two men.
Tori's best friend, Daniel Moen, and her old boyfriend, Dennis Potts.
Tori had met Dennis in high school in Bonita California, a well-off enclave southeast of San Diego known for its golf course and horse trails.
They'd gone out for a few months their senior year, even though they didn't run in the same circles.
Dennis' father was a corporate executive, his mother a realtor.
Tori's father wasn't around, and her mom was in rehab.
Denise Gunter went to high school there at the same time.
It was a richy-rich school, in my opinion.
I was among the middle class, I guess, but it was definitely a middle to more wealthy high school.
In that rarefied world, Dennis Potts stood at the top.
In high school, that means money, new cars, prestige.
Tori didn't have any of those.
Tori saw the idea of somebody who was popular in school or the idea of somebody who had it well off, and maybe that's what attracted her to Dennis.
While their dating relationship didn't last, their sexual relationship did.
On again, off again.
It survived both high school and several other relationships.
How did Tori describe her relationship with Dennis Potts?
Pretty much just, I guess, friends with benefits.
They would sort of hook up, this was back in high school, and then afterward.
Yeah, high school, yeah, and then all the way through, as long as I knew her for.
He was always sort of there in the background.
Correct, yes.
He was apparently in the background when Tori was living with Neil.
In fact, once a paternity test showed that Tori's then-boyfriend, Neil Springstube, wasn't Baby Dean's father, Tori told her mother it must be Dennis.
So they did a male and paternity test to the same place that her and Neil did.
And the results came back that Dennis wasn't the father.
Did that make sense to you?
No.
So Tori asked Dennis for another test.
The results were the same.
Dennis was not the father.
And she calls me at work and she's hysterical.
And then she said, Dennis wants Neil to take another test because he thinks he falsified it.
And I said, Tori, Neal wanted nothing more than to be Dean's father.
He wouldn't falsify a paternity test.
There's something wrong with Dennis.
Dana urged Tori to go to court and have a judge order a paternity test.
But Tori was reluctant.
She didn't want to hurt anyone else.
She said, I already hurt Neil.
And I chose to have Dean.
And I don't have the right to ruin anyone else's life.
I've already ruined Neil's.
And your answer was, okay, there's somebody else who's responsible here.
Roy stepped up and said, honey, this isn't about you.
This is about Dean.
And so Tori agreed.
She'd asked Dennis Potts for a third test.
I was friends with her and after seeing it on the news, I had no idea that the child was murdered too.
That was just a big, big shocker.
Police were also talking to Dennis.
Two days after the murders, Dennis Potts came downtown to have a conversation in that same small room in which Daniel Mullen had spent so much time.
Where did Dennis Potts say he was that night?
He said that he had spent the time frame that would include the time of the murder between 5 in the afternoon and 8 in the evening at a friend's house, a fellow by the name of Max Korn.
And you checked with Max Korn?
We did.
And he backed that up?
He vouched for him.
End of story?
No.
No.
Far from it.
Cops know there aren't that many reasons why people kill.
And often it boils down to one of three things.
Love.
Pride.
Money.
To police, unrequited love looked like a possible motive for Daniel Moen.
But maybe pride or money figured into a possible motive for Dennis Potts.
Tori calls me and she's like, I think you're the father, but it shouldn't happen like this.
How old was Dean at that point?
Oh, geez. for five months.
What did Dennis Potts tell you about his paternity and the whole issue of child support?
He claimed he had only had sex with her one time during the period that she probably would have conceived the child.
He used a condom.
During that encounter, denied being the dad said he was supportive of Tori's efforts to figure out who the father was.
We did two tests.
One where I swabbed myself, swabbed the baby, and one where she swabbed me and the baby.
I opened the envelopes fresh in front of her and I sealed them up in front of her and then mailed them out.
Came back, you know, not the dad.
Did you buy that?
Well, just to be on the safe side, we asked them for a DNA sample that we could use for comparison.
Real simple.
A swab, okay.
I was expecting a nurse.
Now, if I compare this to Dean...
If I compare what we just did here to Dean, what are you gonna tell me?
What are you gonna tell me?
It should tell you the same thing that our paternity test did.
And if not, I'm gonna be surprised.
Really, sincerely surprised, yes.
Dana had long been suspicious of Dennis Potts because she believed Dennis had somehow manipulated those paternity tests.
In her frustration and hearing nothing from Lieutenant Rooney or his investigators, she went to TV station KFMB and gave them a tip, one that would become big news as soon as it ran on TV check out a guy named Dennis Potts.
Is Dennis in?
No, he isn't.
So you put Dennis' name out there?
Yes, I did.
With that information, a producer from KFMB went to the home where Dennis lived with his parents.
Where was he the night of the murders?
He was right here.
Didn't he have a date with her that night?
And the police come to see you with Aunt Rooney.
And you're thinking what?
He's going to give you a big thank you.
And what'd you get instead?
Very angry.
And you were not happy?
No.
No, not at all.
I said, I can't have these details out there.
And if it means I don't tell you another thing until this thing is resolved one way or another, that's what I'll do.
Because my obligation is to your daughter and her son.
Did she understand that?
I think she did.
They hadn't solved the case, but Rooney's crime lad did solve one issue.
Dana had been right that a test ordered by police or the courts would come out differently.
Dennis Potts' DNA proved he was the father of baby Dean.
And his DNA didn't match the DNA sample that had been sent to the mail-order paternity testing company.
The crime lab said that DNA sample came from someone else.
It was his friend, Max Korn who vouched for him being at his house during the time frame that we believe Tory was murdered.
That had to make you very suspicious.
Absolutely.
Holidays and birthdays came and went.
Dana Arrows spent time with her daughter and grandson at the cemetery.
Hi, my angel babies.
She wasn't close to being able to move on.
I'm sorry.
I'm sorry.
I didn't protect you.
But police had moved on.
Daniel Mullen was no longer a suspect.
Investigators were now focused on Dennis Potts.
The prime suspect continued to live at home with his parents and a fiancée and to spend much of his time with the man who was his alibi for the murders, Max Korn, his best friend.
They even got matching tattoos.
Lieutenant Kevin Rooney and his team kept working the case.
When the cell phone records finally came in, detectives were able to see how Torrey's last day had taken shape.
What did you learn about what Tori's plans were for that evening?
It was her belief that Dennis had made reservations at George's at the Cove, a very nice restaurant in La Jolla.
She had arranged for a babysitter that she was going to drop Dean off to.
And there was this exchange of calls and text messaging that went on, some of which we were able to recover.
All along Dennis had maintained he and Tori never did see each other that night and never intended to.
So you guys didn't have any plans per se?
Oh no, nothing set in stone.
Absolutely not. their texts told a different story.
A little before noon on the day she died, Torrey texted Dennis, Okay, I'll see you at five.
Are you bringing my surprise?
What is it?
His response isn't known.
But the texting continued.
At 1.47 she wrote, Can I be casual in jeans?
At 4.32 she wrote, You still coming?
He wrote right back, Duh, I'll be there at 5.15.
You home alone?
She seemed giddy in the words that she used, excited about going out to dinner, and that he said that he had a present for her and that it was in the car, and then, of course, asked are you alone?
In retrospect it just seems so out of left field and inappropriate to care whether she's alone at her apartment.
The homicide team also learned a little more about where Dennis was again from his cell phone records.
Dennis said that nobody else had his phone, nobody else used his phone and he was with Max Korn from 5 until 8 at night.
Was his phone at Max Korn's house?
I don't think so.
His phone moved around between 5 and 8.
There were a number of calls that were made that did not use the cell site in Bonita where Max Korn's home was.
And the last call that was made used the cell tower in National City.
That was very close to Torrey's apartment.
If Dennis had his phone and his phone pinged off a tower near Tori's apartment, then police say he couldn't have been at Max Korn's all night.
So police applied pressure to Max.
All right, now, if at any time that you ever leave here...
But maybe he left and did some things and came back and he came to you and said hey look, the cops are looking at me for something bad, but I didn't do it.
But I was somewhere I wasn't supposed to be.
Cover for me.
Put me here.
Remember.
And that never happened.
So you're absolutely positive that between five and eight, that Dennis never left the town.
Denise Gunter remembers how, in high school, Max and Dennis were well known for watching each other's backs and for not taking high school life too seriously.
Max and Dennis, I would say that overall, there wasn't a lot of accountability.
It was kind of do what you'd like and we'll deal with the consequences later.
It was at Dennis' parents' house that police finally found the break they needed.
We eventually ended up serving a search warrant on their home to recover some items a computer and some other things.
When they dug into Dennis' hard drive, they found internet searches he had done.
Searches that told them what Dennis Potts was thinking and when.
On June 24th, Dennis asks the internet for help on this topic, committing murder.
June 26th, one month to the day before the murders, Dennis searches court-ordered paternity test procedure.
Later that same day, he asks for information on how to cheat a swab paternity test.
Two days later, Dennis wants to know the best way to kill someone.
Two days after that, he's asking about getting away with murder.
July 7th, Dennis looks up information on getting out of child support.
July 19th, performing chokehold.
And later, how to kill someone.
July 25th, at 4.16 in the afternoon, Dennis searches cyberspace again.
His topics?
Knocking someone unconscious and knocking someone in the head.
The next day was July 26, 2006.
Tori and Dean were murdered.
January 16 2008, 18 months after Tori and baby Dean were murdered, a very long investigation paid off.
Dennis Potts and his best friend Max Korn were arrested.
Dennis charged with the murders.
Max charged with conspiracy to obstruct justice.
It would be another 18 months, until Dennis Potts went to trial.
His attorney, Kerry Armstrong, said his client was guilty only of not being ready to be a dad.
Mr. Potts now admits having faked those tests.
He does.
He admitted that to me near the very beginning of the case.
And actually, as you probably know by now, testified to that during the trial.
On the stand.
Dennis told the jury he thought Baby Dean looked like him and said he suspected that if he didn't do something he was going to have to deal with the obvious.
I don't want to use the term buying some time, but I needed to figure out what I was going to do here as far as raising a child or making child support payments.
Dennis tried to explain away the online searches, saying he was interested in esoteric topics like mixed martial arts that involved knocking someone unconscious.
He said he'd written a paper about euthanasia for a community college class once and thought he'd like to write one on murder next.
So he typed in how to kill someone, committing murder, and getting away with it.
The problem was that Dennis wasn't in school at the time and hadn't signed up for any sort of writing class.
On the stand, Dennis also denied being a double murderer.
I never thought about killing Tori Vannell or Dean in any sense.
It's not usually a thought that comes into anyone's head.
I mean, not any sane person.
What's wrong with the theory that Dennis Potts didn't want to be responsible for this child because it would embarrass him in front of his family and in front of his girlfriend?
And it wasn't his plan and he didn't want to spend the money and he did everything he could to fake a couple of paternity tests.
And now, when it looked like Tori was going to agitate for a test that was going to be pretty much bulletproof, it pushed him too far and he killed her.
I never disputed that that was a strong theory by the prosecution.
What I argued was that there was a stronger, reasonable suspicion that someone else actually committed the murders, and that was Daniel Moen.
Kerry Armstrong argued at trial that Daniel Moen had even more motive that he was in love with Torrey, but that she had rejected him.
Despite that, he helped her out with baby Dean, that he came over every day to bring him to daycare and used his money to buy baby supplies.
And of course, all of that was true, even the love, and maybe even the rejection.
At trial, the defense said that you did it.
I was their scapegoat.
Hard to hear?
Very hard to hear.
Except Daniel had an alibi that, unlike the one given by Dennis Potts, did not rely on the word of a close friend.
He was seen on the store security camera at work on the night of the murders and his cell phone pinged on the tower near where he worked.
So Daniel was never charged.
In the end, it was clear he was not guilty of killing both a woman and a baby he had loved.
We, the jury in the above entitled cause, find the defendant, Dennis Michael Potts, guilty of the crime of murder.
A jury believed all the guilt rested with Dennis Potts.
Dennis Potts' family has plenty of money.
Whatever child support Tori was asking for certainly wasn't going to break them.
Better to commit murder than just pay the money?
Maybe he was too smart for his own good.
Maybe he thought it was gonna work.
Maybe he really just didn't want to be attached to whether it be Tori or her son for the next 18 years.
He had a girl that was en route to becoming his fiance and it was a nice little thing to do on the side, but I think it got a lot more complicated.
And there might have been more to Dennis' plan.
Remember those strange texts Daniel received the day of the murders?
Police think that was Dennis who had already killed Tori and Dean, using Tori's phone to lure Daniel to the scene.
What would have happened if Daniel had shown up?
That's something only Dennis knows.
There's no question that they lied.
In a separate trial, Max Korn was found guilty of conspiracy to obstruct justice.
He served nearly three years behind bars.
Dennis Potts was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole, which is exactly what Tori's mother Dana, wanted.
Before this, I believed in the death penalty.
I would have been gung-ho for this guy to get the death penalty.
Not anymore.
Too easy.
Too easy.
You want him to live with this?
Absolutely.
At sentencing, Dana gave the judge a photograph of Tori and Dean together in their casket.
Dana wants to make sure that photo hangs in Dennis Potts' cell for the rest of his life.
She requested exactly that from the trial's judge.
He left the bench, came back and you could tell he'd been crying after seeing the photo, was wiping his eyes.
Said it's so ordered.
Dana Eraz says she now understands why the investigation took so long.
And she's very appreciative of everything Lieutenant Rooney and his team did.
Dana now works with families who've lost loved ones to violence, helping others understand as much as can be understood in cases like these.
When I interviewed him, Daniel Mullen had recently had a child of his own, yet he still found himself missing that first baby who came into his life.
I think about Dean a lot when I'm playing with my own daughter, to think what he could have been.
He never got to start talking or really getting out and walking and doing all those things.
So every time my daughter does something new to me, I think what would he have been like when he was getting to that age?
Dana still struggles with her own guilt after pushing her daughter to take Dennis to court for that paternity test.
She would have let that go, wouldn't she?
She would have let it go, yeah.
She'd still be here.
Mm-hmm.
Now, I know there's no way you could have known what was coming next.
She would rather believe there's a more spiritual reason for what happened.
I believe they're in heaven, and I believe that God called them home.
And I think Dean came to take his mom home. and our children are on loan to us.
I just forgot that.
Dana says she tries to remember only the happy times, the joy she experienced so briefly of being a grandmother.
How they died, she says, was just a moment.
How they lived is what she wants to remember.
