tonight on Dateline.
To be betrayed like that.
It feels like somebody's stabbing you through the heart and stabbing you in the back at the same time.
My brother's killers would pay for this.
We haven't been able to get a hold of her boyfriend.
And we walked upstairs.
He's lying on the ground.
He won't believe it.
She was such a mess.
She falls against the door screaming.
You see it.
You feel sorry for these girls.
They're all traumatized.
I ran down the street yelling, Ricky.
I just was like, oh my God.
Did you shoot yourself?
No.
Who did it?
We didn't know who did this, you know.
Is this a robbery?
Did he owe anybody money?
I think they were at a loss.
Fingers were pointed everywhere at everybody.
I started putting things together, you know, like, oh my gosh, the boy that was in the house.
They started investigating the girls.
What were they doing, those girls?
Do you know?
Only thing I knew that they were doing that night was trying to hide out.
We all made our choices.
We all did what we did.
If it's somebody in our circle, something's wrong.
Ruthless was obviously a good performance. teenagers tangled up in a murder mystery.
Who was behind it?
I'm Lester Holt, and this is Dateline.
Here's Keith Morrison with Killing Time.
Where is the line beyond which redemption is not possible?
Does it even exist or does it move?
Does it shift as time goes by?
She is the master manipulator of this whole case.
She wanted my brother to spoil her.
This is a story about a murder.
And it's also about ugly stupidity, calculating evil, and maybe official absolution.
It's not fair.
How often do you think about it?
Every day.
Pretty much.
Of course she does.
Shailene Cowles has struggled with it.
More than half her life has suffered under the weight of loss and the question that has tormented her.
Was there something she could have, should have done?
Mm-hmm.
It was a scorching day in the middle of August.
The year was 1997.
Shae Lynn's big brother, Ricky Cowles, had gone to work early at Edwards Air Force Base up in the high desert northeast of LA, where their family's electric company helped maintain the power grid.
Ricky hoped to knock off early, too.
Finally spent some much-needed time alone with his living girlfriend, Amy Priesmeier.
But plans don't always go just the way you'd expect.
Here are Shae Lynn and Ricky's parents, Debbie and Rick Sr.
Didn't you guys do two jobs that day, one at Edwards and then went over to the fairground?
We volunteered a lot of our time with the fairgrounds, hooking up their installations and stuff.
We had to wait till dark to make sure the lights would turn on automatically, which wouldn't happen until a little before eight that night.
Ricky would be late.
Across town, his girlfriend, Amy Priestmeyer, was waiting impatiently.
Ricky had promised they could spend the evening together alone, and Amy had prepared.
Even dropped by the McDonald's where Shailene worked to tell her.
Amy said don't come by tonight because me and your brother are going to try to talk things out and stuff.
Now Ricky was late and Amy wanted someone to hang out with, so she called up her pal, Sarah Chapin, and they drove around killing time.
Two different cars.
Amy's vehicle and my vehicle.
There was just a bunch of chasing around.
We finally ended up in the same complex that Amy and Ricky had lived on.
Somebody's house right around the corner.
Amy used the phone there to see if Ricky was home yet.
He wasn't.
After that, she said, well, I'm hungry.
So we went to Burger King.
Back at the fairgrounds, the sun finally set and the Cowles' father and son finished their work.
And then Ricky bolted and quickly stopped back at his parents' house to pick up his car.
I said, stay, let's have dinner.
And he goes, no, I got to go.
I'm supposed to be home right now, you know, and I got to leave.
Bye, Mom.
I love you.
See you later.
Just before 10, Amy, with Sarah in tow, headed home to see if Ricky was finally there.
But when they arrived, was he home or not?
Ricky always locked the door behind him when he got in, always.
But when the girls tried the door, it was open.
We both had to go to the bathroom.
I let her go first.
And she said, well, why don't you go upstairs and see if Ricky's up there?
Sarah headed upstairs.
So I took about two steps up and I smelled something horrible.
Smell what?
It just was a rotten smell.
I don't know what that is, but I'm not going up there.
She said, oh, don't be a baby.
And she shoved me aside.
She goes pounding up the stairs.
She turns on the light in the bedroom.
She stands there for a second.
And then she looks down. and falls against the door screaming.
And I go running up the stairs.
Someone was lying on the floor, a twisted, bloody mess, badly injured, but still alive.
It was Ricky.
911, what's your emergency?
Oh, yeah.
She dialed 911 and she was such a mess.
And I grabbed the phone from her.
And I'm like, hello?
What's going on?
Can you tell me what's happening?
We just got back into the apartment and we've been calling all night long and we haven't been able to get a hold of her boyfriend.
And we walked upstairs.
He's lying on the ground.
He's all bleeding.
He's bleeding?
He's not moving or anything.
By then, another close friend had arrived, Jennifer Kellogg.
And Jennifer kept saying, I want to see Ricky.
And I'm like, why?
You don't need to see this.
Sarah tried to keep everybody calm and as far away from the bloody scene upstairs as possible.
Get downstairs now.
Amy, you don't need to say this, honey.
I can't even stand to look at it.
Get downstairs.
Okay, how's he doing now?
He's twitching and convulsing a little bit.
It looks like something went through his head. paramedics and law enforcement showed up quickly.
And they carried him downstairs on his bed sheet and worked on him in the living room.
A sheriff's camera was rolling as they tried to find out what exactly had happened to 21-year-old Ricky Cowles.
They came in the house, and next thing you know, they're shoving all of us into the kitchen.
Amazingly, Ricky could talk.
Did you shoot yourself?
No.
Who did it?
My nephew.
Who did it?
My nephew.
It was a scene out of hell.
Paramedics trying to keep Ricky alive.
The best friends struggling with hysteria as they talked to the police.
A deputy asked the girls to call Ricky's parents.
They said, well, one of you is going to have to call them.
Amy couldn't talk, so they handed the phone to me.
And I said, something's happened to Ricky.
You need to come down here.
Seven miles away, it never took so long.
Police were there, ambulances, all this stuff.
And I ran down the street yelling, Ricky!
I just was like, oh my God.
And when I got there, they had already brought him downstairs and he was laying there.
And I just looked at him and I just was like.
The paramedics said they'd take him to a local hospital in an ambulance.
Ricky's parents begged them to fly their son to an L.A. trauma center, and fast.
My dad was saying, you know, he was saying...
We can't, he's not going to make it if we have to transmit him to the hospital.
So we need to get a helicopter here right now.
They got one and Rick Sr. rode with his son.
He couldn't really speak.
He couldn't say what happened or anything.
But he squeezed his dad's hand.
So his dad kept talking.
At the hospital, they stayed by his bed as the doctors worked, and they prayed he'd survive.
And they waited and waited and waited.
I don't even think our family even ate anything for those days we were in the hospital.
You are just in shock.
And you're just trying to figure out if the doctors, you know, can help him.
Help him and find out what happened to him in that condo.
From the helicopter, Ricky Cowles, barely clinging to life, was rushed into the OR.
By the time I got there, he was already in surgery.
The first of two surgeries.
The cows held a vigil at the hospital.
Ricky's girlfriend Amy was there too.
Georgia and Larry are Amy's parents.
Did you folks go to the hospital?
I did.
I was the one who went inside.
Larry stayed outside, and I went inside because they had said that Amy was hysterical.
Shailene was very upset, too.
Did you get to see him?
That was hard.
He was suffering.
He'd been shot through the forehead and his skull had been smashed by some blunt object.
The doctors fought for days to save his life.
When someone has such a bad brain injury, the pressure in your brain, you go through so much.
The surgeries he went through, just trying to get him maybe to know we're there, you know.
They told us to go into his room and talk to him about stuff about the past and about how much we loved him, and sing the songs that he liked and all that and to try to maybe jog him a little bit.
But Still he hung on as his family tried to understand who could have done this to him and why Ricky didn't have an enemy in the world.
Hi, Rickaroo.
Ricky had grown up in Colorado until the Cowles moved to California when he was in high school.
The Cowles had always been so close.
But then Amy came along.
At first it all seemed very sweet innocent, if a little naive at least.
As Sarah Chapin saw it back then early 1997, when she and Jennifer Kellogg and Amy Priesmeier, her high school buddies, were up for anything.
A high school in Lancaster, California, what's that like?
Just like any high school anywhere in America.
A bunch of teenagers running crazy.
Good evening.
My name is Sarah Chapin.
Back then, Sarah Chapin was a local beauty pageant queen.
You were a pretty popular kid in high school.
I wasn't really popular, but I was a cheerleader.
Which helps.
Yes.
Yes.
Her friend Amy Priesmeier, 16 at the time, was popular too.
Amy was more the goofy, fun one.
She always wanted to go out dancing or she actually got me into church again.
Like you're talking about two different things.
She got you into church, but she was a fun one.
She was fun.
I mean, fun, like innocent fun in the beginning.
Their friend Jennifer Kellogg was 17 then, wasn't quite as innocent maybe.
She was the one your parents warned you about?
Yes.
Jennifer was the wild child.
She was on the dance team in high school and she was the bolder one of any of us and she was always there for you if you needed her and especially if you got in trouble.
She helped you get in trouble.
Just after New Year's 1997, Amy's parents went out of town and, well, you know what happened next.
The besties threw a house party.
And so Amy said, let's just invite some people over, have a good time.
Here they were that night.
There was a little drinking, a little smoking, and some general rowdiness.
Shailene Cowles was there too, 16 at the time.
She remembers Amy from back then.
What was she like?
She was a party girl, you know.
One of the people at that party was almost a grown-up.
That was Ricky, then 20, Shailene's big brother.
By then he was done with school and working full-time at his family's electricity business, and though he still lived at home, he was mature for his years.
But that part of it didn't matter a bit to the girls at the house party.
To them, he was tall and good-looking.
What else mattered?
Amy and one of our other friends were kind of fighting over him.
They both had a little thing for him.
And I guess Amy won.
But right away, boom, she wanted him.
Well, when you're a teenage girl and you see a cute guy, of course, everything falls into place.
How did it progress?
It progressed pretty quickly.
They got together and everything just started going really fast.
They were together from that very first night.
It didn't seem to matter to Ricky that Amy was still in high school, was just 16 years old.
I remember he took her to her prom.
He took her away on trips, bought her lots of gifts.
Shailene said Ricky even helped out Amy's friends.
Anything those girls needed, when my brother went to the mall with her, they went too.
He gave them money.
He did anything for her.
But Ricky's mother, Debbie, wasn't so enamored with young Amy.
It was just a feeling.
But it was a strong feeling.
I told him, Junior, you got to just find a new girlfriend.
She's too young for you.
She's 16.
Young love.
So intoxicating.
So blind.
Ricky Cowles just couldn't see what his mother saw or what was coming.
The spark that was lit when Amy met Ricky back at the start of 1997 was white hot by springtime.
Cold water from Ricky's parents had no effect whatsoever, even though they certainly tried.
She was only 16, they kept saying, as if to a brick wall.
We warned him she could charge you with rape.
But think about this.
You know, she wouldn't do that.
I mean, we had many, many conversations.
It didn't make a difference.
It was true love.
In March of 1997, after three months of bliss, Ricky turned 21.
His parents had planned a celebration in Las Vegas.
And Amy wasn't about to miss a party.
She always found a way to do whatever she wanted.
Even though she was only 16, she had to go.
So he was out with his friends, 21.
I don't know what she did.
I never saw her the whole time, I don't think.
I don't remember seeing her.
Do you?
No.
But she was there.
Debbie and Rick Sr were convinced this relationship wasn't going to end well.
So Debbie called Amy's parents looking for allies.
They were anything but.
Her parents didn't care.
They let her do whatever she wanted.
She, you know, was doing whatever she wanted, whenever she wanted.
They had no control over.
There's a whole different kind of parenting style in the two families.
Oh, oh yeah.
Amy's parents, Georgia and Larry Priestmeyer, told us they had a very different perspective on their relationship, and for a good reason.
I was 17 when I met Larry.
How old were you, Larry?
24.
So there was six years difference.
And that worked out?
So the age difference didn't worry them.
And they liked Ricky.
He was good to their daughter.
Anyway, they said they couldn't do much about it.
She had made up her mind.
She always pushed him.
Amy pushed the envelope.
Always.
There was no stopping Amy.
Well, we told him he lived in this little house that we had on our property at that time.
And we said, we will not have her stay here.
Gave her all these rules and all that.
It didn't matter.
She still came around.
Finally, Ricky's parents said, that is enough.
I said, we can't have her doing this anymore.
You know, this isn't right.
So did Ricky tell Amy to stay away?
No, he did not.
Instead, he moved out, rented his own place.
Later, Debbie wondered if that had been Amy's plan all along.
Within a week, Amy was living there too.
Her parents said that didn't make them happy, but they had no choice.
We did not want her to move out.
Didn't want them to move in together?
No.
But Amy said, too bad, you know, I'm leaving.
I'm going to go and I'm going to move in with Ricky.
And Ricky promised.
He says, he says, Georgia, I know you're not happy with this.
He says, but I swear I'll take care of her.
I love her.
So the happy couple set up house.
But then Amy's two best friends moved in, Sarah and Jennifer.
Her friends didn't want to live with their parents anymore either, so they were like you know.
She wanted to move her friends in.
So that's what she did.
Make that the constant party house.
Yeah.
It was summer by then, no school.
Amy's mother thought Amy just wanted her friends around to keep her from being lonely.
Ricky worked long hours and she didn't like to be at home alone.
Amy was the type of child that always had to have somebody to play with and always, you know, needed people to be with her.
But Amy was now a teenager living unparented with two best friends, one of whom was a notorious wild child.
Jennifer was the troublemaker.
She was bringing her party friends over.
She was in and out at all hours of the night.
With Jennifer came drugs.
Was she dealing?
Was she using and selling?
At the time, yes.
What was it, do you know?
I know she was at least helping to deal pot.
But she herself was on methamphetamines.
That's how Sarah remembered it, which was not exactly what Ricky had in mind when Amy moved in with him.
But then, a lot of things were not exactly what either one of them had in mind.
What did they fight about?
They fought like any other couple would fight about stupid things about, you know, maybe the house not being cleaned or spending too much time with her friends not being home enough.
And pretty soon, he grew tired of Amy's friends and all that came with them.
Ricky decided that he was done, that he needed them gone.
Amy herself was torn.
This love thing was a little more complicated than she bargained for.
I know that Amy had said he was upset that they were there and that she didn't want to break her friendships.
Eventually, Amy told Sarah and Jennifer they had to go.
Amy had originally come to me. and said that Ricky would like for us to leave.
And then after that, Ricky approached me and he said, you didn't do anything wrong.
I'm fine with you.
I just wanted Jennifer out of the house.
He didn't want Jennifer around.
He did not want Jennifer around.
And he had asked her numerous times to move all our stuff out.
And she hadn't done it.
She had taken little bits here and there, but the guest bedroom still had her stuff in it.
Jennifer was one of those gifts that kept on giving, huh?
Yes.
Sarah took her things home anyway, but still hung around with Amy.
And the young couple?
Their romance once burned so fast and so hot, and now seemed to be cooling rapidly.
At least that's what Debbie hoped.
But then Ricky told her there was something else, and she wasn't going to be happy about it.
He was smart.
He was good looking.
Why would you want to get in a situation?
Quite a situation.
Now what would Ricky do?
What could he do?
In the summer of 1997, Ricky Cowles was up before the sun every workday.
He and his dad had a big project at the base.
We had about 60 poles to put in, plus a cable to put up.
It was hot, always.
But Ricky was good with all that.
He liked the job.
It's hard work, too, huh?
It's hard work.
Dangerous work.
Yeah, he loved it.
He worked with his dad since he was 12 years old every summer.
At the end of every day he'd drop off his work truck at his parents' house and before heading home he'd spend a little time with his mother.
Debbie told us way back first time we met that one of those evenings Ricky came to her all serious and said he had news.
Something big.
Something difficult.
He was really serious, and I'm thinking it's some really bad thing, you know.
And he tells me, well, Amy's pregnant.
And I said, no, no, no.
It was just what Debbie had feared.
Even Amy's more permissive parents were thrown by it.
I was disappointed, to be honest with you, because my kids knew about contraceptives.
They knew that, if they wanted, if they thought at all that they were going to be sexually active, even though they were raised not to be abstinent until they were married.
Amy's friend Sarah was concerned too, but for quite different reasons.
It shocked me the most that number one.
She was 16 and she was always very outgoing and liked having her independence as not being a mom.
Well, a party girl becoming pregnant, it's kinda hard, because everything stops.
Especially when you're 16, you're still in high school.
You're not grown up yet.
But Ricky said he was ready.
He'd welcome the baby.
And all that came with that.
Ricky was happy.
Ricky really was looking forward to being a daddy.
Because you know a lot of guys 20 or 21 years old who just met a girl and got her pregnant right away would not be reacting that way.
No, but Ricky was a little different from everybody.
He seemed more grown up in that aspect.
He had had a lot of fun in his younger years.
He'd already done his... He'd already got it done and over with.
But he was worried, if not about the baby.
It was Amy, he told his parents.
He could see now she might not be quite right for him.
He says but I just need a way to tell Amy that I want to take care of the baby, but we can't be what she wants us to be.
I need a way to tell her.
And I said, well, you have to figure that out.
We can't be what she wants us to be.
She wanted to be with him.
She wanted to be married.
He didn't want to do that.
Now you have this big problem.
Just the problem you worried about all along.
And then it turned out Ricky wasn't the only one whose passions were cooling.
Amy told Sarah all about it.
What once seemed perfect just wasn't anymore.
There was a point where she had told me that she was not very happy and that they'd been fighting a lot.
She just broke down and cried and said, I don't know what to do.
The second weekend of August 1997, Ricky and his parents headed to Lake Havasu where they had a boat.
Ricky invited Amy to come too, but she said no.
Amy couldn't be on the boat because she was so far pregnant that... She was showing by this stage.
Yeah, she was showing.
Okay.
And she couldn't go on the boat.
It just wasn't good to be jostled around like that.
So she said she would stay home.
Meaning no Amy.
Which didn't keep Ricky from having fun.
We went to gamble, he won $1,000.
Had the great week and we went on the boat.
Did Amy sit home alone?
No.
What happened that weekend while he was away?
She had called one of her ex-boyfriends to come down from Covina.
I mean, was she still playing the field or what?
I couldn't understand why she wanted him to come down.
We all just joked around.
It was just like old times, but Amy's now pregnant and lives with her fiancé.
Would he have been happy about that situation?
Did she tell him about it?
Nope.
Nobody would be happy with that in any relationship.
Would Ricky have been happy with any of it?
Jennifer showed up, along with a friend, a party boy.
She was handing out acid to anyone who wanted it.
Shae Lynn had skipped the Lake Havasu trip, so she popped in too.
But despite all that, when Ricky returned from his weekend away, it looked like everything was going to be all right.
So maybe time apart was just what they needed.
The day Ricky came back, I went over there and I sat on the porch with him and we had a beer and a cigarette and he said you know, I really needed this trip.
I'm so excited for our life now.
And I've just thought about everything and everything's just going to be fine.
We're going to make it work.
Amy had a change of heart too.
She said, I'm going to make this work.
It's worth making work.
I want my daughter to grow up with her daddy here.
Amy and Ricky decided they needed to spend time together alone, if they wanted their relationship to work.
And that was the plan the night Ricky had to work late hooking up lights at the fairgrounds.
The night, Amy came home to find him writhing on the floor in a pool of blood, a gunshot to his head and one small piece of evidence.
We found a shell casing.
Who would shoot Ricky Cowles?
Ricky Cowles was in and out of surgeries.
Do you think he knew that you were there?
Yeah, I think he knew we were there with him.
Yeah, I do.
Until finally it was clear there was no saving him.
He was comatose now.
Only the machines kept him alive.
His family went to his bedside to say their goodbyes.
Rick and I would not let anybody in to see Ricky, but our family.
That's it, because I didn't want anybody to disturb him in any way or say anything that would make him not wake up at all.
But finally, when they told us that he was not with us anymore, Amy said can I go in and talk to him?
She was beside herself, Amy was.
Just had to talk to him.
She goes in and tells him, why did you have to die?
You know, you promised you'd buy me a car for my birthday and all this.
And I just Promised you'd buy me a car for my birthday.
I lost it.
I just started crying.
I just could not believe she said that.
Especially when Ricky's loved ones, mom, dad, sister, were saying their last goodbyes.
At 11.35 on the morning of August 14th, they let Ricky go.
His heart, kidneys, liver were donated to people in need.
Five people lived because of him.
For Ricky's family, time had been standing still at the hospital.
But outside, law enforcement had been busy trying to figure out who attacked Ricky.
It was a murder case now.
We found a shell casing.
25 auto, I believe.
Okay.
There wasn't much evidence in Ricky's condo, just that shell casing.
No fingerprints, no useful DNA, nothing missing from the place.
And police weren't finding out anything about Ricky Cowles that would make him an obvious murder target.
Ricky didn't seem to lead the kind of life which would lead to his being, you know, killed by a gang or something, did he?
No.
He was a hard-working kid with his father.
Retired Los Angeles Sheriff's Detective Larry Brandenburg.
Ricky wasn't involved in criminal activity.
I mean, he drank a little beer and maybe smoked a little pot, but I think that was the extent of it.
The detectives were stumped.
But at Amy's high school and around town everyone seemed to be talking about those girls who were always at Ricky's apartment.
From the beginning, it was finger-pointing here and here and here.
Well, Jennifer's all, well, Shaylin's involved.
She was pissed at her brother.
Or Amy was involved, or somebody else was involved, or it was this, or it was a home invasion.
It just, fingers were pointed everywhere at everybody.
By?
Everybody else.
Rumors were flying where Shaylynn went to school, too.
I was still in high school, so everyone was saying a lot of things anyway.
You know, who they thought did it and everything.
Who did people suspect?
The main person that I always heard was Jennifer Kellogg's brother.
That would be Brian Kellogg, a young man with a reputation, not a good one.
He'd been in trouble with the law before and would be again.
But if investigators did look at him, they got nowhere.
Lots of rumors, but maybe that's all they were.
And as the months passed with no arrest, a killer still out there.
The triumvirate of happy-go-lucky best friends.
Frayed.
Pretty soon Amy wasn't talking to Jennifer and Jennifer wasn't talking to Sarah.
They had been inseparable and then suddenly they couldn't be far enough apart from each other.
They couldn't be far enough apart from each other.
Or so she heard.
Ricky's parents weren't in touch with any of them.
Until there was something Debbie wanted from Amy.
So she made a phone call and she asked to meet.
Amy.
She had his picture taken, professionally taken, and she had the picture blown up into like an 18 by 20 and framed.
Debbie met up with Amy and her mother.
I gave him the money for the picture, and I said, well, what are your plans?
What are your plans?
Are you going to have this baby?
Are you going to have an abortion?
I mean, Ricky's not here anymore.
I just didn't know.
And her mother blew up and said, our family does not believe in abortion.
Didn't even give me a chance to say we don't either, but I didn't know her enough to know if she would or not.
And that was the last Ricky's family heard from Amy.
So she just disappeared out of your life?
Yeah.
With Amy went their grandchild.
Come January a friend was at the hospital and she called me and she said I think your baby's going to be born today.
Her name's on the board and she's in the maternity ward.
I resolved myself to, this is my first grandchild, but I'm never going to see it.
The birth of a baby is supposed to be a moment of unbridled joy, but Debbie and Rick Cowles just felt loss.
And Amy's family, they had a different emotion, fear.
There was still a killer on the loose.
I'm at the hospital guarding the door.
Five months after Ricky Cowles breathed his last and they pulled the plug and let him slip away, his daughter was born.
Amy's best friend, Sarah, was there.
What was that like?
It was just amazing, because One life had been taken and another life was coming back into the world, and she looked just like him.
It just kind of made my heart melt that at least we'll see him again in her face.
Amy's parents, Georgia and Larry, embraced being grandparents.
She became our life then.
As the little one.
To just love her and nurture her and be the best grandparents that we could be for her.
And Amy needed them.
She was still frightened, they said, scared of the hospital, scared when she went to give birth.
Not really a surprise.
Somebody killed Ricky, and that person was still unknown and out there somewhere.
I'm at the hospital guarding the door.
Because I still don't know anything.
Or who has done this thing.
Exactly.
And she's still afraid that somebody is going to come after her.
And now she's afraid that somebody's going to come after her little girl.
Ricky's parents weren't invited to meet their new granddaughter.
Anyway, Rick Sr. and Debbie were fully occupied trying to figure out who killed their son.
I was on a mission.
We had one mission.
When we lost him, that last time we spoke with him we said we will not have one day that we do not try to seek and find the truth.
They paid for billboards, one of them right near Ricky's old condo, asking for help. and they made flyers announcing a reward for information leading to Ricky's killer.
Shaylynn went all over town delivering those flyers, door to door.
We just passed out the flyers and we're just hoping for the best.
And then one day, Shaylynn and her flyer showed up at Amy's parents' door.
And Larry Priesmeier invited her in to meet her niece for the first time.
That broke the ice.
I just called my mom instantly and just told her, you know, that I'm holding your little grandbaby.
She was just precious.
And so Debbie and Rick went to the Priesmeier's house, and they saw the baby.
And just like that, they found a way to coexist.
The first time we both held her, we couldn't even talk.
We just cried the whole time because she looked like Ricky.
She was so sweet, so precious.
So that was the beginning of having a family again.
We started over again.
Go, go!
From then on, the baby spent time with Grandma Debbie and Grandpa Rick.
For Ricky's family, there was joy again, though they could hardly put aside their loss.
Anyway, it was the baby's loss, too.
I'm wondering if you contemplate sometimes what he might have done for his daughter, for this family.
He would have been the best father to his daughter, took the best care of her.
She would have went without nothing.
And he would have given her the most love ever.
And she missed out on that.
Spring arrived.
It was eight months since Ricky died.
By then, Amy had finished high school and Shaylin and her family were still looking over their shoulders.
I didn't really go anywhere for the first year.
No, I'm sorry.
We didn't know who did this, you know.
And then cops investigating a burglary arrested a guy, small-time crook.
And maybe the guy was hoping for some kind of break.
He told those cops he might know something about the murder of Ricky Cowles.
And he mentioned a name.
Somebody who wasn't even on the cops' radar.
The detective called and asked you to look in the yearbook?
Yes.
I said, oh my gosh, it was the boy that was in the house.
It was one of the party boys who showed up at Ricky's condo the weekend Ricky was away in Havasu.
Just a kid, really, who lived right down the street.
Time to talk to the party guy.
A burglar busted in Lancaster, California, had given detectives a name.
Just maybe the guy who killed Ricky Cowles.
That name was Billy Hoffman.
He was 19 years old and lived right down the street from Ricky's condo.
But was he in hiding?
He was not.
In fact, Billy Hoffman couldn't keep his mouth shut about the murder.
He said it right out.
It was him.
He killed Ricky.
He was proud of it.
He actually told people.
Though it would be many months before police heard about it.
Retired Los Angeles Sheriff's Detective Tom Harris said Billy Hoffman started bragging right away.
There was a girl that he would carpool with, for instance, to go to work at Kmart.
And she picked him up, and he told her that he did this last night.
And he said, you saw those helicopters that were over there?
She goes, that was me.
He says, I did that.
She was skeptical.
So when they carpooled home at the end of the day he showed her proof a hammer he said he used in the murder.
He actually gave her the hammer and said, get rid of this for me.
Which she did.
But when police took Billy in for questioning, he said, no, he didn't do it.
So he denied it to the authorities, but he had already told, what, numbers, several people?
Several people.
He would tell people that he did this, I mean, which obviously was his demise.
Billy Hoffman didn't have a record.
He didn't know the victim.
He didn't steal anything.
So why would he do it?
What was his motive to commit this murder?
It was to get him fame in his little drug business, his little drug world.
Murder?
Just for street cred?
It was a paper-thin motive.
But with all that blabbing about it, Billy had talked himself into being a suspect, so they arrested him.
After the arrest, a detective called and asked you to look in the yearbook?
Mm-hmm.
Look up William Hoffman?
Do you remember that?
Yes.
When I saw it, I knew that I had met him.
Billy?
Yes.
It hit her like a slap.
She'd seen him that weekend when Ricky was away at the lake, the weekend before he was killed, the weekend Jennifer and Amy had friends coming and going.
Billy was there.
That broke my heart to know that he was in the same house that I was at.
And though the Cowles were relieved someone had finally been arrested for killing Ricky, they felt there had to be more involved than just this kid Billy.
Ricky didn't even know Billy, and Billy didn't know Ricky.
But they had someone in common, and that someone was Jennifer Kellogg.
Detectives found this photo of Jennifer and Billy smoking pot two months before the murder, confirming they knew each other.
And Jennifer?
She already had a reputation.
Yeah, Jennifer, she just liked being a gangster.
She would say to people, you know, if you need something done, I'll take care of it, you know.
She was known as a girl that would beat anybody up or, you know, she's a scary girl.
So Ricky's family tried to piece together what Jennifer and Amy got up to the day Ricky was attacked.
Did any of their behaviors seem different with hindsight?
Like when Jennifer and Amy stopped by to see Shailene at work a few hours before the murder.
Amy told Shailene something that sounded fine at the time.
But now?
Don't come by tonight because me and your brother are going to try to talk things out and stuff.
And I thought, oh, okay, you know, they really need to talk.
So stay away.
And then Ricky's dad, Rick Sr, remembered how often Amy called Ricky at work that day to remind him be home by nine.
She kept bugging him to make sure what time he was going to get home.
So trying to make him hurry up and go home.
Yep.
And Debbie remembered when, out of the blue, a few days before he died, Ricky told her Amy wanted him to get life insurance.
I agreed with it.
I said, when the baby gets here, I will.
I will get the insurance.
And he goes, well, she's bugging me about it.
I said, just tell her that I did it.
It's taken care of.
But what did all that mean?
To Debbie, it meant Amy and Jennifer seemed guilty of something.
The way they acted didn't make any sense otherwise.
But to the investigators, the Cowell's suspicions, though interesting, weren't enough.
Anyway, they had Billy, who quickly went on trial.
Witnesses put the gun in his hand and the hammer and talked about his bragging.
Even Jennifer testified about that.
And then, when it was Amy's turn, Debbie watched in shock as Amy told stories that didn't line up with reality, such as that she and Jennifer had never really been close friends and that it was Shae Lynn who brought Jennifer around.
Amy also said Billy was never at Ricky's condo, even though Shaylin had seen him there.
First of all, why would Amy lie?
Billy took the stand in his own defense and said the burglar framed him to get a deal.
He didn't kill Ricky.
Then the jury got the case.
And four hours later, the Cowles were told, hurry back to court for the verdict.
We had certain days we had the baby in the afternoon and the jury came in, so we had to take her with us.
The cows were relieved.
Billy Hoffman was convicted.
But then, said Debbie, she heard from Amy, who was angry that they had brought the baby to court.
She said, you're not going to see the baby anymore.
I'm just going to cut it off right now.
You're not going to see her.
And I said, well, that breaks my heart.
And that's when Debbie put Amy on notice.
It was just her opinion mind, but she was pretty sure she was right.
Billy Hoffman would not be the only one going to prison for Ricky Cowell's murder.
You know Amy, all that does is just give me more time every day to try to find everyone that was involved in this murder, because Billy didn't do it by himself.
It was an empty threat, really.
Even Debbie knew there wasn't enough evidence to prove it.
Yet, anyway.
And then one day, years later, in 2002...
Debbie went to the mailbox and there was a letter that would change everything.
Billy Hoffman had been convicted for Ricky Cowell's murder.
And Amy and Jennifer were still under suspicion, but the case didn't seem to go anywhere after that.
And years went by.
Rookie's parents did get to see the baby.
Amy didn't stick with her threat to keep her away.
Billy Hoffman, of course, was in prison.
He was a few years into his sentence when he decided to write a letter to the cows.
Debbie, quite unprepared, saw it first.
What was that like, getting that letter?
It's surreal.
I was at home by myself when I got it, actually.
She opened it, heart racing, and saw that it was a confession for his part in the murder.
His part?
When their shock subsided, Rick and Debbie knew what they had to do.
We took it to the district attorney.
Manna from heaven.
Billy Hoffman's letter was all law enforcement needed to re-energize a dormant investigation.
Why don't you tell me from the beginning how that thing happened?
So detectives went to the prison to talk to Billy.
Now, the reason I am here is because we know there was more than yourself involved in the crime.
Is that correct?
Yeah.
And now he has talked to us, too.
Marker.
All right.
Billy Hoffman was 21 when they sent him away for life.
LWOP, they call it.
Life without parole.
There was absolutely no thought that I'd ever have a hope of going home.
You know, what I did was...
And month after month, he sat inside that cell with really no hope of ever changing his fate.
Until, finally, it dawned on him.
There was one thing he could change.
Himself.
You got to know a chaplain in there?
Yeah, several over the years that played a role in just helping see things differently, showing my value as a human, as a child of God.
Seeing others as precious.
Once he grasped that idea, he felt compelled to send that letter.
And he did try to understand what made him behave the way he did back in that summer of 97.
It's a story that's hard to hear, even harder to comprehend.
He was 19 then, very insecure, he told us, and was trying to look cool.
Talk a little bit about what the for want of a better word lifestyle of that group was that summer.
A party lifestyle.
We just lived...
In the moment, our whole life revolved around that, the having fun, supposedly, in quotes, drugs.
And he got the idea that if he could become a tough guy, he'd have it made in that crowd.
I wanted to be the person I listened to in the music, the rap music I was listening to at the time.
Killing somebody was... not like this horrible thought, which it should have been.
The people in my circle I was in.
If there was somebody that's rumored to have been a murderer, that person was like, feared and like oh, that's the guy.
Billy had never committed a violent act in his life, but to be known as a killer to be feared.
He liked that idea.
And then an opportunity presented itself.
His friend, Jennifer, came to him with a terrible request.
A terrible but somehow exciting request.
She asked me if I would kill somebody.
You didn't hesitate.
You said yes.
I did say yes.
It was that easy.
I can't say I really understood the consequences of doing it.
Jennifer and Amy later told him the person they wanted dead was Amy's boyfriend, Ricky.
What were those women thinking?
Jennifer and Amy, I mean, did they really want him killed?
They really wanted him dead?
They did.
I don't know what they were thinking or why that was a solution to whatever they felt the problem was, but I think it's harder to explain that than my own actions.
She didn't say why she wanted him killed?
No.
Just that she wanted him killed?
Yes.
Didn't you think to ask?
I didn't.
I know how it sounds.
I know it didn't come up.
Whatever the reason, Billy didn't care.
He had a purpose now.
So the girls laid it all out for him.
Amy brought him a photo so he'd recognize Ricky.
I was given a picture.
They brought him to the condo.
I was giving him like a tour of the house, showing the layout, planned where I would wait.
They told him to hide behind the bedroom door.
They said, be prepared, he'll fight back, bring more than just a gun.
In the end, I took a hammer.
I had a knife with me as well.
And so on the appointed date, Billy dutifully returned to the condo.
I remember feeling anxious and just waiting and kind of going through what I would do in my mind.
Then it was taking too long.
Billy got restless.
Remember, Ricky was much later than usual because he'd gone to help his dad at the fairgrounds.
And so at some point I just said, I'm leaving.
It wasn't a sense of, I don't want to do this.
No.
I'm having some sort of moral crisis.
No.
No, I wish.
Billy headed out the front door, but he didn't get very far.
The girls were on him right away.
As I crossed that intersection, Amy and Jennifer pulled up.
They're like, where are you going?
He's almost home.
Just go back.
And I did.
So, apparently without any moral qualms at all, Billy Hoffman went right back inside and up the stairs to his hiding place.
And it wasn't too long before Ricky came home and headed upstairs too.
No idea.
There was a man waiting there to kill him.
He came in and I struck him with a hammer.
He turned around and yelled at me and I pulled the gun and fired and I shot him.
I'm so sorry to say it, but at the time I was worried that I hadn't killed him.
I was afraid to shoot him again because of the sound of the gunshot.
And so I struck him again with the hammer.
And it was over.
So then what did you do, run away?
Yeah, I didn't run.
I left the house and walked home.
He walked like nothing had happened.
When he got home, he sent a code to Jennifer Kellogg's pager that meant it was done.
And then Amy grabbed Sarah and said, let's go see if Ricky's home.
Sarah, who didn't know the horror she was being dragged into.
Of course, Billy Hoffman's misguided aspirations to be a big man didn't turn out the way he wanted.
All his bragging brought on the cops.
They surrounded the house, a bunch of cop cars, and I feel like I remember being excited.
Like all this is for me.
Hard to understand?
Of course it is.
There's no rationale to it.
And all I can say, it's how I thought.
It's how I perceive things.
And it's crazy.
And what I would give to go back with the mind I have now...
If it seems like the obvious next steps would have been arresting Amy and Jennifer, you'd be wrong.
After detectives heard Billy's story, they concluded it wasn't enough.
They needed more than the word of a convicted killer.
They needed corroboration.
They needed to look back at Amy.
Would anyone remember something, anything investigators could use?
You didn't think it was too strange?
I thought it was strange.
In the case of the murder of Ricky Cowles, justice ground very, very slow.
In spite of Billy Hoffman's story, the story of the young women who, for a moment in time, he said were his puppet masters.
Years ticked by.
Amy got engaged to a guy who worked in his family's construction business.
Jennifer was being Jennifer.
She did not become a choir girl.
Meanwhile, Ricky's sister, Shay Lynn, graduated from high school, became a hairdresser and soon realized people getting their hair done like to talk.
I actually did Amy's hair for a while just trying to figure out.
You know, like maybe someone will say something you know in her friend's group or something.
You know, I did all her friend's hair and everything.
You were a spy.
Mm-hmm.
You were being very sneaky.
Well, I had a niece that I had to protect.
And you wanted to know what they were saying to each other.
Yep.
But for all her eavesdropping, Shailene did not hear anything that would help make a case against Amy.
And her parents, focused on their grandchild, tried not to think about Amy, the woman who dropped that little girl off, the woman they believed conspired to kill their son.
She would bring us the baby.
We'd take the baby on vacations.
We had her every Tuesday and Thursday.
We'd have them weekends.
We never talked about anything but the baby.
They held their tongues about everything else.
The baby was the most important thing.
She superseded all that because I wanted her to have a happy life.
In the background, a case was being put together against Amy and Jennifer, and Jennifer somehow got wind of it.
She actually came to my house because my son was dating her sister.
Oh, my.
Her sister asked me if she could come over.
She wanted to talk to me.
She might have some information on a murder case.
Ricky Cowell's murder case.
She was fishing to see what was going on with it.
I mean, I wonder if she's just trying to plant some information to throw people off the scent.
It could be.
She's pretty sophisticated when it comes to the police and how they work and operate.
She was pretty knowledgeable about how we do things.
Needless to say, Brandenburg was a seasoned homicide detective and Jennifer didn't catch any fish.
If anything, it all seemed very suspicious.
But there were issues.
When Jennifer testified at Billy's trial, she had asked for immunity and got it, which meant You can't use any of the statements that she made or any leads derived from those or anything to build a case on her later to prosecute her.
We lost all those.
So we had to build a case independent of any of her testimony or anything that she was asked back then.
But Amy didn't have any such deal, and they knew Amy had lied when she testified at Billy's trial.
She told the jury.
Billy Hoffman was never in the condo, but Shae Lynn had seen him there with her own eyes.
And they could see Amy did not exactly mourn for her murdered boyfriend, the father of her baby.
Amy's actions after Ricky's death really went to show her lack of concern.
For instance, ten days after the murder, the Antelope Valley Fair opened and Amy was there flirting.
She did come to the fair and was hanging out with a group of cowboys and was laughing and having a good time.
You didn't think it was too strange?
I thought it was strange, but I wasn't going to harass her about it because I figured she was already going through enough.
And there was Amy's behavior the night of the murder, pestering Ricky to come home for their alone time and then making sure she wasn't home.
And when she finally did go back there, bringing a witness who could say she was with Amy all night.
They used you.
You were their useful fool.
The person who was to discover the body.
And be the alibi.
Yeah.
And be used and scarred for the rest of my life.
As for Jennifer, in addition to what Billy told them, they knew that she and Billy were connected, they knew she and Amy were connected and they knew she and Amy both had gone together to tell Shae Lynn to stay away that night.
Finally, three years after Billy sent his letter, detectives had gathered enough evidence to indict both Amy and Jennifer.
Debbie and Rick, who desperately wanted them arrested, knew they needed to protect their granddaughter when the moment came.
All we ever told them was...
If it comes to the point we're going to arrest Amy, please let us know because I don't want that in her little brain the rest of her life that her mother's taken away by the police.
It was March of 2005.
And we were going to have her the whole week for Easter break.
And they arrested her during that week.
With that, the Cowles went to family court.
We had had an attorney.
We called in and said we need to go tomorrow and get custody of this little girl because her mom's in jail.
And that was the first salvo in a war between two sets of grandparents that would last four years.
There was so, so much turmoil between our families that we couldn't agree on anything at all.
They blamed us for everything and... They blamed you?
They blamed us for it that if we hadn't been persistent... That Amy wouldn't have been arrested.
The Priesmeyers, who stand behind their daughter, told us her arrest was a shock.
Was there some expectation this was going to happen?
No, none at all.
Complete surprise.
Oh, yeah.
In fact, Amy was to be married in two weeks.
We planned this wedding and everything was ready to go.
They came and arrested her.
Then they were hit with the custody hearing.
We got that surprise, too.
See, all these surprises hit us at one shot, and we're going, what's this?
What's that?
What's this?
The family court judge gave the cows temporary custody, and Amy and Jennifer went to jail.
But then, Billy Hoffman started to get cold feet, worried...
He'd be seen as a snitch.
Testifying against somebody, like that's a death sentence.
Billy Hoffman was supposed to be the star witness, the centerpiece of the trial.
Everything else was to shore him up.
So what in heaven's name could happen without him?
Amy Friesmeier and Jennifer Kellogg were behind bars.
Hearings in preparation for their trial were scheduled.
The machinery of justice was humming along.
And that's when it happened, the problem, a big one.
Billy Hoffman, contrite, cooperative Billy, was suddenly refusing to testify.
For one thing, Billy felt ignored by the detectives handling the case.
He was also hyper-aware that prisoners who testify take a risk, sometimes a big one.
So that's when Larry Brandenburg was brought in.
Billy felt disrespected by the detectives because no one had come to the prison to talk to him about his testimony.
Which he was putting a lot on the line to do that, being in prison.
Yeah, sure.
But Detective Larry Brandenburg was well aware that without Billy, the case against Amy and Jennifer could fall apart, which is why the detective went about becoming Billy's best friend.
And then over the next period of time a year or two, whatever it was before we went to trial kind of developed a relationship with Billy, keeping in contact, visiting him, just trying to keep him on board that testifying was the right thing for him to do.
Investigators also kept a close eye on the girls as they awaited trial at the local jail.
You put Amy and Jennifer together in a cell for a time?
They were in our county jail.
I think for going on a year or so.
We had them completely separated.
Let's make a ruse why they got to bring them down to IRC for additional fingerprinting or whatever.
And we put them in a cell that was wired up.
And Jennifer didn't say hardly a word.
She was pretty street smart.
But Amy couldn't help herself.
She just couldn't help herself.
It's hard to hear, but that's Amy talking about putting a hit on Billy.
She called him a bunch of things I can't repeat here.
I hate yourself.
He can't stay in protective custody forever.
My people will get to him.
But if Amy actually had people, they never did get to Billy.
And in June of 2007, nearly 10 years after Ricky was killed, Amy went on trial for murder.
By then, Billy had come around and was ready to testify.
My responsibility didn't end with confessing what I'd done.
Billy was the state's main witness against Amy.
I do believe people need to be held accountable for what they do but, at the same time, being in prison and understanding like yeah, that wasn't easy, but we all made our choices.
We all... did what we did.
Were the cows there when you testified?
Yes.
One of the hard things about testifying and anytime I share these like have to recount what I did.
I always think about them because I know that they're going to be hearing it as well.
And I was Felt like I was victimizing them again, making them hear it again.
And it's always hard.
The prosecution put on witnesses who could corroborate his story.
Like the woman he carpooled with to work.
Billy bragged to her on the morning after the murder about killing someone.
When she asked him why, he said he did it for the girlfriend of the victim.
An old friend of Billy's testified he saw Amy and Jennifer at Billy's apartment before the murder and saw that picture of Ricky the girls gave to Billy so he could recognize him.
Shailene told the jury about meeting Billy at Ricky's condo when Ricky was conveniently away at Lake Havasu with his parents.
And Sarah testified about that night how Amy used her as an alibi by driving around with her as the murder was happening and then sent her upstairs to find Ricky in the bedroom dying.
What was it like to testify against particularly Amy?
It was scary.
Because I'm looking at somebody who used to be this happy, go-lucky, outgoing person.
So, you know, sweet and innocent.
And now I'm looking at somebody who's been in jail, who's hardened up and no remorse on the face.
As for Amy's defense?
The idea that the murder was committed because Amy asked Billy to kill Ricky really makes no sense.
Her attorney, Angeline Gates, argued that charges against Amy were completely without merit.
Amy was a 16-year-old girl at the time and pregnant.
I mean, there was no money involved.
Remember Debbie's story about Amy pestering Ricky for life insurance?
I thought, did I kill my own son?
Because she thought that policy was in force.
Ricky never did buy the insurance.
And the judge ruled the story was hearsay anyway.
So the jury never heard it.
There was no actual reason for it.
So it just really, it just seemed without motive.
And, according to Gates, the star witness in this case, Ricky's killer Billy Hoffman, was inconsistent not to be believed.
The problem with Billy Hoffman's credibility is that in the very beginning he denied being the person who murdered Ricky Cowles, and he maintained his innocence the entire way through his trial, all the way through his appellate rights.
Gates also had an explanation for Amy's so-called threats about taking Billy's life if he testified.
She knows she's facing life without the possibility of parole case.
She has a daughter now who's going to be taken away from her.
And the fact that they would say all kinds of things hateful threatening bitter nasty, angry things for being put in that position should not be surprising to anybody.
A mental health professional also testified that Amy had an anxiety disorder that came from finding her boyfriend dying on the floor.
So the jury got to hear that Amy at the time was showing symptoms of trauma which logically, you would think that a person who was mature enough, cunning enough, smart enough to actually ask someone to go kill their fiancé wouldn't then have had that reaction.
Despite the defense's arguments, when the jury got the case, the prosecutors and investigators were pretty confident.
At first, that is.
We felt good until I think they were out 11 or 13 days and then we were in a panic.
Day after day, Amy Priestmeyer, on trial for murder, waited for the jury.
The longer the jury deliberates, the better it usually is for the defendant.
And every day, Ricky's parents left for the courthouse knowing it could be the last day they'd spend with their beloved granddaughter.
That would certainly add to the attention of those days.
Because you knew you were facing more than just a verdict.
And the day the verdict came in, she was at our house here with our daughters being babysat.
The stakes?
If the jury voted not guilty, Debbie believed Amy would take their grandchild away and they might never see her again.
Now they assembled in the courtroom, and the clerk read the verdict.
Guilty.
What was it like to hear that?
Just quiet crying, just every emotion.
You want to scream it, you can't.
So we just quietly cried to ourselves.
Like Billy, Amy got life without the possibility of parole.
Jennifer never went to trial.
We just thought that Debbie Carls couldn't take another one, physically and mentally.
We conferred with Rick and I think Debbie didn't agree with it, but I think it was the best thing for her that Jennifer was allowed to plead.
Pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter and solicitation to commit murder in exchange for a sentence of 17 years.
The Cowles hoped there would be some sort of peace once the girls were locked up.
But murder doesn't work like that.
Being a victim ruins everything, everyone around you.
My poor son died and everyone around him was affected by it.
They watched their daughter, Shaylynn, suffer.
She was 16 years old when this happened.
Her and Ricky were best friends.
Shailene thought about the day of the murder, when Amy stopped by the McDonald's, told her she wanted to talk to Ricky alone that night.
She thought about all those parties when she'd cozied up to the girls.
Thought about how she failed to protect her brother from girls she thought were her friends.
It's a horrible feeling to know that, that you know I couldn't have done something or known in my mind.
You know they're going to hurt Ricky.
The guilt, I don't even know.
I can't even fathom that kind of guilt that she's had.
She doesn't have it because we think she did anything wrong.
No, of course not.
But emotions are tricky.
So in 2018, when they got the chance to talk to Billy Hoffman in prison and ask him anything they wanted, they took it, hoping it would help Shailene feel better.
I needed to hear out of his mouth about the girls.
Amy, what she did, and Jennifer.
And I wanted to know exactly what happened.
So there'll always be lies with those girls.
So hopefully he's telling us the truth.
But it was hard.
Shay and I had both cried about thinking, I don't know if we can stand to see him.
Can we do this?
They were ushered into a room, surrounded by guards, and then Billy came in.
He looked a lot different.
So you wouldn't have recognized him?
I would have recognized him because I see his face in my mind every day.
He's the one that killed my brother.
Billy was anxious about the meeting, too.
It was scary.
I have to look at these people I've hurt so irreversibly.
Were they angry at you in that meeting or upset with you?
At points, I think.
I remember Ricky's sister...
Shaylin asking, like, why I did it.
Did someone make me do it?
Did I do it because I was afraid or did I just do it because I wanted to?
When she was asking that, like, she was hurt.
She was angry.
You know, I murdered her brother, and there was no reason why I did it besides I wanted to.
Did it feel like the truth when it came out of his mouth?
It did.
Yes.
Reason, logic, some sense they can hang on to.
People crave those things.
Certainly the Cowles did.
But it wasn't to be had.
Billy didn't understand it himself.
I really knew nothing about him.
I knew he was Amy's boyfriend, but I never was given a motive.
At the end of their time together, Debbie handed Billy a hand-sewn cross And he said he cried.
He loved the gift.
It wasn't actually a gift, but it was my telling him hopefully, that when you looked at the cross in your Bible that you read every day, you'll think about what you did.
Did that conversation help Shailene, who I know was feeling a lot of guilt?
Oh, 100%.
A hundred percent, yeah.
I felt better, kind of closure then.
And they left feeling a weight had been lifted, a little.
Things were clearer now, even if there was no rational answer.
And Billy himself went back to his cell to resume the life he'd made for himself in prison.
To life without parole.
And far, far away from that prison cell, times were changing.
Times and attitudes and science and Supreme Court rulings.
Which is why, one day, the Cowles got a phone call quite out of the blue.
We were actually in shock when Larry Brandenburg called us up on our 48th anniversary.
It was on your anniversary you got that call?
Yes.
He says, you better sit down.
I need to talk to you guys.
Go get Deb.
When Billy Hoffman was sentenced to life in prison without parole for the murder of Ricky Cowles back in 1999, he understood the terms very well.
Any life sentence was a death sentence.
The 90s were a tough on crime, three strikes you're out era in California.
But while Billy adjusted to a life behind bars, the world outside his cell was changing.
In the U.S.
Supreme Court and courts across the country.
There was new thinking about juvenile justice rooted in science, evidence about the teenage brain and criminal behavior.
The frontal lobe isn't fully developed until about age 26 in most people.
Heidi Rummel is a professor at the University of Southern California Gould School of Law, where she directs the Post-Conviction Justice Project.
Children fundamentally think and act differently from adults.
It's totally different from knowing right and wrong.
It's having less capacity to understand risks and consequences, acting recklessly, acting impulsively, being very susceptible to peer pressure.
And politically, the pendulum swung.
Prisoners in California quickly learned that for young offenders life without parole or LWOP didn't mean LWOP anymore, if you qualify it.
It felt like a long shot, but I knew I was a different person.
I knew I'm not the same person I was.
So, yeah, I applied.
It was 2018 when he applied for commutation.
Ask the governor to change his sentence and allow him at least the chance to make his case before a parole board.
I would hope that it was just evident that I'm not the person I was when I was 19, that I experienced remorse.
I lived remorse.
For months, he waited for an answer, no idea what it might be.
And then they told him, yes, he'd get a hearing.
He could make his case.
But at that hearing, something was missing.
Were the cows there?
They were not.
Was Detective Brandenburg or the other detectives who you worked with, were they there?
No.
What about the prosecutor?
Tried you.
Was he there?
Not the one that tried me.
They had a district attorney there.
Yeah.
In other words, none of the people associated with your actual case were in that parole hearing.
No.
Did that seem strange to you at the time?
It did.
So, did the Cowles intentionally stay away?
Not at all.
Though victims' families have the right to speak up at parole hearings, no one told the Cowles anything about it, nor were they told that the board decided in Billy's favor.
And in January 2020, Billy was released from prison on parole.
The cows were in the dark until they got that call.
It was on your anniversary you got that call?
Yes.
It was Detective Brandenburg on the line.
You just heard from Billy himself.
He says, you better sit down.
I need to talk to you guys.
Go get Deb.
And then he told us that Billy's been let out almost a year before that and he didn't know about it until, I think, that day.
We cried and cried, and every emotion in one minute.
There will be lots of people who will look at the television screen and will say that guy killed somebody.
He was convicted by a jury.
He was sent away for life without parole and that's what they meant.
Life without parole for what he did.
What the hell is he doing out here free talking to this guy?
I definitely understand that and appreciate that.
I'm sure you've heard that a time or two actually.
No one to my face, no one said that to me directly, but I've said it to myself just in trying to empathize with how others would feel.
Billy's exemplary behavior in prison, his work to improve himself, his embrace of religion did not, could never erase what he did to their son, said the Cowles.
The idea that he would get a do-over doesn't sit well with you at all.
No.
So you're good in prison, but you're a whole-blooded killer.
He committed a heinous crime, and he executed our son.
Billy knows how fortunate he is.
He's getting to do the things to live the life he denied his victim.
He's married now to a woman who began writing him in prison.
And he's found work in the Children's Rights Division of Human Rights Watch.
Which might have been the end of our story, but for this.
No surprise, really.
Amy Priestmeyer wants out too.
If the person who actually committed the murder is not in jail anymore or prison, then why should Amy be?
Amy was just 16 when she conspired to kill Ricky.
Now by law in California, criminals who were under the age of 26 at the time of their offense may be eligible for a parole hearing, and that includes Amy.
So we're having to go back to court again and go through the whole thing again.
And it's just, I don't know how much two people can take.
As for Jennifer, she was released on parole in 2019, but not for long.
She went back to prison, convicted on a domestic violence charge.
She's out now.
But the thought of Amy getting out is unthinkable for the Cowles.
I do not think she will get out.
Nope.
My whole heart.
She is the master manipulator of this whole case.
I hope the judicial system, I can't even barely talk about it, I'm so upset.
I hope they do the right thing.
Amy is a far cry from model prisoner.
She was convicted for drug possession in prison in 2016.
Still, the Cowles are determined to attend any and every hearing to attempt to block Amy's release, no matter how difficult.
It's a long way to the court from where we live.
It's not the drive, it's the fact that you have to relive everything.
Who wants to relive the death of their child a hundred times?
Once is enough.
The cows did arrange, end of 2022, to talk to Amy via video chat.
They wanted to know why.
Why did she want their son dead?
Her answer, utterly banal, was because they'd been fighting.
Still, meeting her, even on a screen, helped somehow.
As they deal even now, day by day, with the loss of that young man who loved so much and died too soon.
How do you feel, Rick, when you go past those places and you see the places he worked on?
Makes me cry.
There is a memorial for Ricky at Edwards Air Force Base, right beside the substation where he and his dad worked together for the last time.
We love you.
We loved him.
He was a great guy.
Didn't deserve this.
That's all for this edition of Dateline.
We'll see you again Sunday at 7, 6 Central.
And of course, I'll see you each weeknight for NBC Nightly News.
I'm Lester Holt.
For all of us at NBC News, good night.
