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The Hunt with John Walsh

Fighting For Life. Aired 8-9p ET

Aired August 30, 2015 - 20:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[20:00:15] JOHN WALSH, CNN HOST: Back in 1981, I had the American dream, the beautiful wife, the house in the suburbs and a beautiful 6- year-old son. One day I went to work, kissed my son good-bye and never saw him again. In two weeks, I became the parent of a murdered child. And I will always be the parent of a murdered child. I still have the heartache. I still have the rage. I waited years for justice. I know what it's like to be there waiting for some answers.

And over those years, I learned to do something well and that's how to catch these bastards and bring them back to justice. I've become a man hunter. I'm out there looking for bad guys.

(MUSIC)

(BEGIN AUDIO FEED)

UNIDENTIFIED UNCLE: Lori was not expected to live. They told us maybe at the longest until 5 years of age. She had issues with her heart. She had issues with her esophagus. The esophagus, for example, she needed to have it replaced as she grew. And so when I first saw her, I really knew that if this child would have, she was going to be a fighter.

AGGIE MEJIA, LORI MEJIA'S SISTER: We grew up without a father. Our father was killed in a car wreck so we grew up with my mom and my grandmother and all my aunts and uncles.

ELIZABETH BURT, LORI MEJIA'S BEST FRIEND: Lori was very close to her Uncle Syl. He was a big role model in her life. He was the father figure in her life.

I was Lori's best friend for many years. She just had a really sweet personality. Just real caring. And I just saw her passion for her family and her friends and that drew me close to her.

MEJIA: Lori was a very sociable, intelligent person. People would open up to her.

UNIDENTIFIED UNCLE: Lori was in and out of school due to surgeries. She graduated from high school at the age of 21. Instead of giving up, to her and to us, that was the pride of starting a goal, setting your mind and not stopping until you get there.

BURT: I graduated in 1994. Lori graduated in 95. So around 95, 96, we had moved to Denton. Denton, to us, was a bigger city. You know, bigger things.

UNIDENTIFIED UNCLE: When she moved to Denton, I was really happy because she was making her own money. She was becoming a young independent person.

WALSH: Lori was a fighter. Lori was a survivor. And Lori wanted and tried very hard to shape her own destiny. What she wanted and what she got were polar opposites.

[20:05:006] BURT: When Lori and I were living together in Denton, she started seeing this guy. She moved in with him, and I just never heard from her.

MALFORD MAX MINTER, LORI MEJIA'S BOYFRIEND: Me and Lori had been dating and everything was going OK, so we moved in and got a small apartment.

MEJIA: Their lifestyle was partying and having people in and out of the home. I think that she was just really in love with him that she thought it was just going to be them two and it wasn't. He had a whole list of women on the side or in the home.

MINTER: I was with Jennifer first, and then I met Lori and then destiny came along. So it went from me and Lori, to me and her, to me, her, her, to me, her, her, her and her, and before you know it, there was at least 15 people there. I'm not going to lie. I pretty much slept with all of them at one time or another.

UNIDENTIFIED UNCLE: Lori introduced Max to me like she thought she had met the man of her dreams. I felt I just met a man that I would not trust to be near my children.

MEJIA: Her life was changing. She was doing things that wasn't Lori.

MINTER: Everything was all party, party, party, fun, fun, fun. I would always be the runner, you know. I would go and get whatever the girls wanted. And it wasn't the real thing. It wasn't just marijuana. It was X pills and cocaine. And then liquor.

And they would come around and kick it and hang out over there and get stoned and get blazed out.

It wasn't the lifestyle Lori was drawn to, it was me. She wanted to be with me. And I knew that, but I just, at the time I wasn't ready for -- to be monogamous with anybody.

UNIDENTIFIED UNCLE: The sign said Lori was beginning to distance herself from me were gradual. Not communicating. Not calling as often.

BURT: You know, I would call and check on her and she would be real quick, you know, like she's not supposed to be talking to me.

WALSH: I think in periods of sobriety, she must have looked around and said what happened to my life? And she's thinking where am I going to go now? UNIDENTIFIED UNCLE: I believe that Lori got into a position where she didn't know how to get out. BURT: Just to watch somebody just turn her inside out like this, it just was not her.

I had received a phone call from Lori and I hadn't heard from her in quite sometime. She said, Beth, you know, she starts breaking down crying. I said please come to my house. I said we can have a girls' weekend like we used to, watch movies. I said, just please get out of there. And I said, you know, it will be just like old times. She's like seriously? I said yes. I said, just come, come with me. But I never heard from her.

LARRY KISH, LIEUTENANT SHERIFF OFFICE: Something very violent happened very quickly. It was a horrific murder.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[20:12:37] BURT: I had received a phone call from Lori and I hadn't spoken to her in sometime. And she seemed really quiet at first. And then she said, Beth, you know, she starts breaking down crying. So, I'm like, Lori, you know, you got to get out of there. You know, come stay with me. Stay as long as you need to. And she's like, OK. I'll see you Friday. But I never heard from her.

TRACY MURPHREE, FORMER TEXAS RANGER: I received a call from the chief of police in Pilot Point and basically what they tell me is we have a homicide and this is the location.

KISH: Mario's garage also with Castillo's garage is a mechanic shop. It's in the north part of Denton County. It's in the city of Pilot Point. But at this place, they worked on cars during the day and they had parties at night.

MURPHREE: When we first arrived, Mario took us out back. There was a Suburban with a back door open and side doors open.

KISH: Then Mario showed us from a distance he pointed towards the deceased. The victim was laying on her back. She was wearing little ankle socks, little white ankle socks. Her bra was pulled up over her breast and she had some serious injuries.

Something very violent happened very quickly. It was a horrific murder. This lady was violently traumatized prior to her death and even after her death. And we learned that it was Lori Mejia.

MURPHREE: After talking to Mario for quite some time, we began to put some pieces together that we needed.

So that night they were having a party. Several of Mario's friends were there and then they had invited a couple of ladies over. Very quickly after Lori got there, she left with a male person and left the garage and went outside.

[20:15:20] He was a friend of Mario's. He was only known to Mario and some other people at the time as vampire.

Vampire had two front teeth missing and the other teeth kind of extended a little far out of his mouth and so the nickname. And the name that most of the people who were around him knew him as was Vampire. About an hour later, there was a knock on the back door. Mario answers the door and Vampire is there.

Vampire has blood on his clothes. He looks at Mario and tells him, I killed her. And that's the last time that any of the witnesses tell us that they saw Vampire.

There is all sorts of questions on why Lori is there. What was her relationship with the killer? Why would she go outside with this guy?

KISH: Something wasn't adding up. Mario was holding something back.

MURPHREE: Mario finally came around and said she was there for prostitution purposes.

He had known Lori for quite a while. He had made a call to Lori and gave her an opportunity to come out and make money.

KISH: And he admitted that he actually negotiated the price with her for his customers at the party. The fee was $100.

I think that they got into the Suburban with the intent of him paying her for sex. And something went horribly wrong.

MURPHREE: At some point he snapped. After learning that Lori's purpose of being there, we found out she had a boyfriend. That's, you know, when we started finding out that she was trying to move out. She was trying to move in with a friend to get away from him.

KISH: And through the investigation, we kind of felt that Max might be the real person behind Lori's services as a prostitute.

MINTER: It wasn't that kind of set-up. I wasn't a pimp. I didn't orchestrate or plan or tell anybody to sell themselves. That had nothing to do with Max. I've got sisters, mothers, nieces, and aunts, and cousins. And one thing I have been taught is to respect women in that form of (INAUDIBLE).

Now I'm not going to say that if she go out and sell herself to try to get me money, I'm not going to take it. Yes, I'm going to take it. I'm a man, I'm human, you know, and I got problems and needs, you know. But wasn't nobody going out selling themselves and bringing money to me.

BURT: I didn't get to her in time. You know, I could have helped her. You know, I could have.

MEJIA: Of course, I didn't believe it. I didn't want to believe that about my sister, you know. That wasn't, that wasn't Lori. Just never really hit me, I guess, the severity of it. How far of that road she had taken. BURT: People make mistakes but what happened to her, it's just uncalled for. Nobody deserves that. Nobody deserves to leave this world that way.

KISH: Lori deserves the same justice as anybody else as a homicide victim would deserved. We did not focus on her being a prostitute. We focused on finding this man named Vampire with no teeth that had just brutally killed a lady.

Mario recalled he had a friend named Joe. He may know the real identity of Vampire. Joe tells us, hey, look here, his name Maldonado and he lives right over there. And he points to a house in close proximity, which we learn later on is Maldonado's 84-year-old girlfriend.

MURPHREE: Maldonado had been described to us in his early 30s. And to have an 84-year-old girlfriend was shocking in and of itself. She talked to us about how Maldonado had beat her and in the same breath she would tell us that she loved him and he was her companion and she didn't want anything to happen to him. But she did provide us with our next best piece of information, which was some photographs.

[20:20:09] WALSH: He's exploiting and beating an 84-year-old woman. That's bad enough. Now you allegedly brutally murdered a young woman. You're capable of anything. He has crossed the line. He's going to get -- keep going until somebody drives that stake through his heart.

MURPHREE: After getting the pictures and speaking with her, we actually got a pretty big break.

KISH: We had a girlfriend of someone who is at the party. For whatever reason she didn't like him, didn't feel comfortable with him. And she had wrote down the license plate number of the vehicle that he normally drove. So now we have something to go with.

We get a hit immediately and said, this vehicle had been in contact with Plano Police Department and they had actually arrested a Hispanic male for DWI.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KISH: We had a lead. We had a girlfriend of someone who was at the party who felt that a vehicle that Maldonado had been driving before might help us in this case. We get our stuff entered into the computer. We get a hit immediately that says this vehicle has been in contact with the Plano Police Department a couple of hours ago and they had actually arrested a Hispanic male for DWI.

The person that was arrested gave a false name. The problem was by the time we're on the phone with them, hey, who do you have in jail, they said nobody. He's already bonded out. So we get a book-in photo from Plano Police Department, we get the identifiers on the person that was arrested and we quickly learned that is Maldonado, the same person we are looking for. And we had just missed him like within the hour. MURPHREE: Maldonado's brother and other relatives were able to scrape up bond money and he was eventually tucked into Dallas to put on a bus to Mexico.

KISH: We had him. He slipped through our fingers. He disappeared. He's out there somewhere.

MURPHREE: 12 years later, it still bothers me having been that close and not been able to bring justice to this family. It's work left undone and something that I don't want to leave undone.

UNIDENTIFIED UNCLE: I felt that Lori was not being listened to. And I believe in my heart that if we had listened, we -- I could have helped avoid this early on before she got there.

MEJIA: I watched my mom's life just go downhill after that. I don't know what that feels like to lose a child but I pray I never do. But mom was never the same after that. It was her baby. You know, that was her first born. The one that wasn't supposed to survive, who had survived all these years to just have her life taken away.

BURT: I want to get this guy off the streets before he hurts someone else and someone else has to deal with the pain we're living. It's just not fair.

WALSH: Herbert Maldonado has a large mole on the left side of his face near his nose. His front teeth are missing and other teeth protrude. He has tattoos on both his left and right upper arms. He has worked on sod farm in the past and might be working a similar job somewhere in the U.S.

If you have seen Herbert Maldonado or have any information as to his whereabouts, please make the call 1-866-TheHunt or go online to CNN.com/TheHunt. We'll pass your tip on to the proper authorities and if requested, we will not reveal your name.

It's always the most charming guy. It's always the guy that everybody loves that hides that one big dangerous dark secret. There is everything wrong with Bruce Sawhill. He crossed all those boundaries. The boundaries that normal human beings don't cross. And I'll tell you what, he is still out there doing it. I would bet my life on it.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[20:33:29] KEN GRIFFIN, KATIE'S FATHER: I first met Bruce Sawhill towards the end of high school years. I was maybe 15, 16 years old. I'm talking late 60s, early 70s, you know? It was kind of a wild time.

Bruce was involved in growing marijuana for a long, long time. Before a lot of people even attempted it, Bruce was already successful at it. He was very outgoing. Easy to get along with. I felt Bruce and I had a very, very close friendship and that I could trust him in every way and manner. Bruce got married after I did.

When Bruce and Kenie Jo first got married, they bought a piece of property only about a mile away from us out in High Ridge and built a house there. They're like neighbors.

JANET GRIFFIN, KATIE'S MOTHER: Bruce and Kenie Jo were together all the time. I don't remember them having any other friends after they got together except for, you know, when they would come to our house. They loved each other. She was crazy about him. He seemed to be the same way about her.

K. GRIFFIN: Janet and I and Bruce and Kenie Jo were good friends. Did a lot of things together. Saw each other quite frequently. Had dinner at each other's houses.

[20:35:05] J. GRIFFIN: Bruce was always really funny, you know? He would laugh at everything. He just thought everything was funny, especially what he said was really funny. You know, but, I mean, he was just, he would do anything for you. Just, you know, the kind of friend you would want to have.

WALSH: It's always the most charming guy. It's always the guy that's the most fun. It's always the guy that everybody loves that hides that one big dangerous dark secret.

K. GRIFFIN: Janet and I ended up having two little girls. Tara, the first and Katie, the second.

J. GRIFFIN: Katie was a wonderful child. She was fun. She was bright. You know, all the kids would be outside playing and you could hear Katie over all of them laughing, having fun. And she was just a beautiful little girl.

K. GRIFFIN: She was a character. I mean very independent, strong- willed. Did not want to do what she's told. And she went through a phase where she called me, Ken. It was funny and cute, kind of. But at the same time, it was like, no Katie, I'm your dad. You know, call me dad or father. OK, Ken.

J. GRIFFIN: Ken and I got divorced when Kate was probably 5. I had took custody of the kids, but any time he wanted to see them, it was fine. They could go out there and they normally went out there like every other weekend. They would go to Ken's house.

K. GRIFFIN: From time to time, I would end up, you know, with something to do and Bruce and Kenie Jo would actually baby sit for me. They did not watch Katie very often. It wasn't even a monthly thing. But I guess off and on from time to time, over maybe a two-year period, something like that.

J. GRIFFIN: Katie got to the point where she didn't really want to go to her dad's house anymore. And I wasn't sure if it is because she just wanted to stay home and do her own thing or you know if she was having problems. And, you know, I would still encourage her to go to her dad's. But then one night she called me and she goes mom, you got to come. You got to come right now. You have to come and pick me up. I can't stay here anymore.

So I drove out there and picked her up, and I could tell she was just really upset. I don't know why, but I just knew. I said has somebody hurt you? Has anybody done anything to you? She goes yes.

I said who was it? And she said it was Bruce. She said he's been touching me and making me touch him and I just can't go there anymore.

K. GRIFFIN: When Janet called me and told me about this, my immediate reaction was fury. I drove over there, banged on the front door, and when he answered the door, I just decked him. Kenie Jo stood there with me and we were both questioning him and he admitted what he had done. J. GRIFFIN: Kenie Jo knew that it was going on because she said Bruce, I told you Katie was off limits, you were never to touch Katie.

WALSH: I will never be able to figure out how a woman can stay involved with a sexual predator, and in many, many ways be a co- conspirator and to say something so ludicrous and painful that I told you Katie was off limits, implying that every other child is OK. I will put up with that behavior as long as you didn't molest our best friend's daughter.

[20:40:10] K. GRIFFIN: I walk in the courtroom and the courtroom was empty.

J. GRIFFIN: She acted fine. You know? And she said she was fine but she really wasn't.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

DOC COOMBS, LIEUTENANT SHERIFF'S OFFICE: Ken and Janet contacted the sheriff's office and filed a report that Bruce Sawhill sexually abused Katelyn (ph), their daughter. She was about 10 years old at the time.

K. GRIFFIN: It's hard to describe that kind of betrayal. I mean, I don't -- I can't think of any other instance in my life where I felt that betrayed. You know, somebody that I had known and trusted for so long to do something like that to my daughter, I mean couldn't he realize how he was hurting her, her trust and, you know, faith in him as a person. It was just -- it was devastating.

[20:45:29] COOMBS: Investigators ran a criminal history for Mr. Sawhill and found that he was a registered sex offender. The sexual abuse conviction in St. Louis County involved a 13-year-old girl.

J. GRIFFIN: He was in prison after he met Kenie Jo, and he kept telling us it was for marijuana charges and we knew that that is what he did for a living.

K. GRIFFIN: I never questioned that because it sounded like pretty reasonable thing that would have happened to him. How do you know these things? They don't wear it on their sleeves or not written on their forehead, you know, I'm a molester.

COOMBS: Mr. Sawhill was charged with two counts of sodomy and first degree. He was released on a $50,000 bond and a court date was set for his appearance. Katelyn (ph) Griffin decided that she would testify in court. K. GRIFFIN: Going to court can be a very intimidating thing for a healthy confident adult. And for a little 10-year-old, 11-year-old little girl to get on the stand and testify, it's a pretty gutsy move, you know?

J. GRIFFIN: Katie told me that she wanted everybody to know what Bruce did. She wasn't ashamed of it. She just thought everybody should know what he was like, what he did to her. She was so worried that he may do it to another child.

Katie was going to counseling. And she went there for quite a while. She really didn't seem like it was bothering her, you know. I just think she was covering it up pretty well.

K. GRIFFIN: When I went up to court, I walk into the courtroom and the courtroom was empty. I thought, well, this is strange. Court can't be over. And I heard voices coming from back over in like the corner of the courtroom and I said I'm here for the trial. And he said there's not going to be a trial. Mr. Sawhill failed to appear, which I knew immediately Mr. Sawhill didn't appear and has no intention of ever appearing.

COOMBS: At that point in time, investigators would go to any location that they were aware of that Mr. Sawhill might be located. They could not find Bruce Sawhill or his wife, Kenie Jo Sawhill. They were both missing.

DAVE WILBURN, SENIOR INSPECTOR, U.S. MARSHAL'S SERVICE: They cut all ties with their family. Essentially, they abandoned all aspects of their former life and have created a new one.

WALSH: For Kenie Jo to put up with it, seeing these little vulnerable, beautiful people like Katie violated and destroyed that she could be the enabler, that children weren't more important to her than staying with her dirtbag husband, to keep him out there, to keep him on the road doing whatever, the right thing to do would have been to turn him in. The right thing would have said, you know what? You did the crime multiple times, now you're going to do the time.

J. GRIFFIN: Katie was very upset that Bruce left, that he wasn't going to have to pay for what he did.

We were going to be moving soon from where we lived. And we just decided that Katie could go to Colorado and stay with her sister for a while. Her older sister, Pam, lived in Colorado.

PAM HANSEN, KATIE'S SISTER: Katie wanted to come live with me. She wanted to get away to hide, to run away from Missouri. Mom worked nights. She wasn't home. I didn't have anything to do at night, you know, and just be with our family and my daughters and Katie were extremely close.

J. GRIFFIN: Pam said she's doing good. We would call her almost every day and talk with her.

HANSEN: She acted fine, you know? And then she said she was fine. That she got passed it all. And I don't know if she just got past it all really because she's strong or if she was hiding it.

[20:50:23] WALSH: She was desperate for help. She was desperate for justice. She was desperate to see this guy off the streets, but she never got any of that.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

J. GRIFFIN: Katie seemed to do very well in Colorado. She went to school. She started making friends right away, but after about a month, I could tell she was starting to get a little homesick. She kind of wanted to come back home. HANSEN: The last day at school, she called me at work and she said, I'm walking home.

Katie was home alone and she made herself some raviolis, and then she called me and she goes, I'm here, you know. I made it OK. I ate.

[20:55:20] My daughter walked in first and I walked in right behind them and I could smell the smell. It was so thick and so strong. And it was horrible and I still didn't know what it was.

I'm opening the windows, while the girls are all looking in all the rooms. They were looking all over for Katie. They combed the upstairs first. And finally somebody went down in the basement and said she's down here.

She was purple. You know, she was cold. She had a big towel and she had a little spray paint all over her face and it was gold. When the ambulance and staff got there, they said that she was probably dead two hours before we got home. And then I had to call my mom. And tell her. That is the hardest thing I've ever had to do in my life, is to call my mom and say I failed watching my little sister. I promised you she would be OK and she wasn't. She was never OK again.

J. GRIFFIN: Pam said she walked in the house. And she found Katie in the basement and she had a can of spray paint and she had been spray (INAUDIBLE). I could smell it.

WALSH: Huffing is a terrible way to get high that kids look at the Internet and see how to do it. It's the inhalation of the fumes that are in a paint can. It's a cheap way to do it without having to buy drugs, get in trouble but it also can kill you. And 22 percent of people who huff die on their first try. This poor girl, I think, was just looking for a way to mediate her pain.

J. GRIFFIN: Kate was 12 when she died. And I was just shocked. It was the most horrible thing in the world. I don't know why she did it.

K. GRIFFIN: I should have paid much, much more attention to what was going on with her. But, you know, I failed my little girl. (INAUDIBLE). I failed that child. And I can't take it back. I can't do anything about it. It's horrible.

WALSH: Bruce Sawhill wears a set of upper dentures. He's known to enjoy casual drinking and to be very sociable in bars. He has a distinctive loud laugh and likes to laugh at his own jokes. He's worked cultivating marijuana in the past. He's also a skilled dry waller, plaster and painter. If you see Bruce Sawhill or have any information as to his whereabouts, please call 1-866-THE-HUNT, or go online to CNN.com/TheHunt. We'll pass your tip on to the proper authorities and if requested, we will not reveal your name.

HANSEN: I blame Bruce for taking her innocence away, for making her grow up faster than she had to. Just not letting her be a little girl.

K. GRIFFIN: I think he set into motion events that led up to Katie's death. I have no doubt in my mind about that. WALSH: He shouldn't be breathing the same air we're breathing. He's been out there for a dozen years, and I tell you what, he's still out there doing it. I would bet my life on it.

WILBURN: Bruce Sawhill, he's a predator. He's the guy that is next door that we think is our friend. And all along, I think he's just trying to get close to your child. He's the guy that, unfortunately, will never be cured of his sickness. And the only thing that we can do is lock him up, protect society.