Murder on the Red River

- What Rodden for justice has done

“is reached out to people that new Jennifer Harris.”

How often do you saddle up and ride once a month? - It's got a big crown. - Let's keep it safe. (upbeat music) - Something has touched the people of Fana County

about this case. - Absolutely. - Everybody in this county wants to see this case solved. - To let something like this go on, this long is uncold for it.

- Jennifer Harris was well loved here. - That's a Jennifer Harris case. Everything that's involved. This is the whole investigation right here. This is it.

- Sure, I hope you don't mind me asking, but that doesn't seem like a whole lot for 15 years. - Well, that's all we got to work with. - Doesn't get it knees here. There's not one day that I don't wake up

and think about my sister. I wish I could only have a handful of the friends that she had. She was amazing. She was the red-haired girl.

He was the goofball and durable, lovelable, Lucille Ball type. She smothered me with love. - On Mother's Day, 2002, no different than any other day you take the walk.

- That's all G. But I didn't think anything about it.

But then when it was here the second day,

you're a lot, why is that Jeep still here? - I get a phone call that her Jeep and been found. What did she do leaving her Jeep on the side of her. (dramatic music) - There was a fisherman who was fishing on the red river.

He saw a body in the water.

“- I remember going to the red river to the bridge.”

Saying that police officers of Shara. - They're more up here, y'all. - And I remember my dad being right there with them and I just let me see her, let me see her. Let me see, it's guy, is it hers?

Can't be her, it has to, why? Is it her? Is it her? - When we move, we're just gonna move right into a boat. - Is it really her?

- The body is completely naked. - Not a stitch or clothing. - Not a sock. - The way she was disposed to have like a piece of trash. She didn't deserve that.

- The medical examiner listed the cause of death as homicide or violence. - What is it? - The word is a strangled, word is a shot. Those are the things you need to know.

- Jennifer's murder impacted my wife and her family. You can't even put it in words. - Symmeterial one. - This is unlike anything that I've ever done

as a filmmaker and I thought he said in first time

we were with him finding the killer and actually being able to prove where's the physical evidence. Who the killer is? - Let's continue with the timeline.

- This is much more than a passion project because this is family. - We're gonna follow through and we're gonna get this done. - You wanna know who killed Jennifer Harris?

- Absolutely. I'm a Texas girl. I'm a Texas, I was called Texas. - In the northeastern corner of Texas with a banks of the Red River touch Oklahoma.

You'll find Fannie County and the town of Bonham. One of the oldest cities in the Lone Star State. And it's where Mark Johnson, who had just wrapped up 32 years in law enforcement decided to ditch retirement

and run for sheriff in 2016. - I met Jerry Harris, the father of the young lady, on the campaign trail. And he made a promise from one father to another to continue the investigation

into the murder of Jerry's oldest daughter. 28-year-old Jennifer Harris, a case unsolved from within 15 years. (audience applauding) - When I came here January one,

- Sure. - I demanded that case to be brought to me.

- That was the first thing you did?

- Yes, so I wanted to do it in per Harris case. - Jennifer's father, a Marine, and Vietnam veteran. - Finally, had so.

“- I think he shares about trying to solve this case.”

- This is my office. - And he's not the only one. - For the last eight years, Darrell Parker has been working with Jerry Harris to solve his daughter's murder.

and now as a private investigator.

“- Marine never meets a stranger if he meets another Marine.”

- He too was a Marine and Parker

has never charged Jerry a dime.

- I still have a lot of that Captain America just as kind of thing going on. I want Jerry and his family to find justice. - In high school, Jennifer Harris was popular and that's what it.

- Brilliant red hair, girl, bright brown eyes, played tennis and was a cheerleader. - Jennifer's younger sister, Alyssa. - She was a dreamer, she was an idealist and she knew that there was a bigger world

outside of Bonn, Texas. - Bonn is probably your prototypical small town USA. Gossip is on an epic scale. - When Jennifer Harris goes missing, how does that news play in Bonn?

- It was a bombshell because this girl was not too far removed from high school to understand that she had been murdered. It disturbed a lot of people. She was only 28 years old.

“She was just beginning to come into her own right”

when she was murdered. - The day that I came in here and looked at her cases, it opened in those boxes. I wanted to sit down and forward and cry. - That's because, after more than 15 years,

this is all they have to work with. And what do we have in each of these boxes? - These are all documentation that's in there.

You know, when she first come up missing posters,

they're looking for use paper articles, business records, and this is just some case reports. You can see that now this is what a lot of stuff got wet. They had some pods out back. They stored a lot of evidence.

They leaked, they had a lot of stuff got wet. - Can you tell me that? - Yes, some of them got destroyed. - If I was very light. The duplicates of the same paperwork

over and over and over again, it was a mess. Although the original investigators have said they did their best. Jennifer's laptop computer, and clothing, a shirt, bra, and jeans that might have been hers,

were booked into evidence. But somehow mysteriously disappeared.

“- This, just by myself, why would it be Miss Handel?”

- I honestly don't know. The only thing I can gather out of, it's lack of experience, lack of training. - It was Mother's Day, 2002. Jennifer was visiting her friend, Christy Far,

in the early evening. It gets to be close to eight o'clock. And Jennifer's like, I gotta go. - Correct.

- She never told Christy where she was going,

but Jennifer Harris never returned home that night. The next day, Jennifer's Jeep was discovered, parked just down the road from a local music spot. Oh, she was still missing. The authorities reached out to the two men in her life.

I know I'm going to give you something. - Her former boyfriend and business partner, James Hamilton, and her ex-husband, Rob Homan, both agreed to speak with investigators without a lawyer present. They had not been arrested, but both men were read

their Miranda rights. - So you have the right to meet someone. He thinks they can't move against the kitchen for long. - And both denied seeing Jennifer, the night she disappeared. I would love to know that she's okay with it.

- According to his police interview, Jennifer's former boyfriend, James Hamilton, was with a friend more than an hour away from Bonham at this McDonald's, around the time investigators believed Jennifer disappeared.

He even took and passed a lie detector test. - He had an alibi for that evening. Alibi checked out. - But ex-husband Rob Homan seemed concerned about his alibi.

- I was worried, scared, I don't know. I don't have anybody to say where I was at tonight. - Rob told investigators he had gone out that night to buy beer and visit friends. But when they weren't home, he drove around alone

for five hours on the roads of rural Fannie County. - So he went to a restaurant, he saw it. Not ex-husband, I saw it, he told him to do it. - But when the investigator pushes harder, it sounds like Rob is admitting he did see her Jeep that night.

- Where did you see it? - I was all right not dead, it stopped something. It's not really a blink of an eye. It's not turned over, but she was running me. She came up to tell you.

- By now, Jennifer had been missing for 72 hours. The search would continue for three more days. - I was getting about three or four hours sleeping night. - I spent the rest of my time searching,

- That's a hell of a thing for a father to have to do.

“And that's what I did until they found her.”

Things seemed to go in slow motion, it was very surreal. - When we moved, finding Jennifer's body six days after her disappearance. Devastated her father, Jerry. But it did little to clear up the mystery of what had happened to her. She was so badly decomposed.

The medical examiner couldn't determine the cause of death. - Jennifer was in. - But Jennifer's family believes they know the answer. Her sister Alyssa, and her filmmaker husband Barry Wernick, are on a mission to prove who killed Jennifer and why.

- In the time you've been looking into this, have you gone from, I want the facts to shape my opinion, to now having a sense of who killed Jennifer. - Absolutely. (dramatic music)

- To think about how beautiful she was, I mean, I heard her head hair and just help. (laughing) - I kind of think about how she was found. (dramatic music)

“That's what I just can't let go of until justice is done.”

- What's the problem dress? Where's that problem dress? - Filmmaker Barry Wernick, married Jennifer Harris's sister Alyssa. Eight years after Jennifer's murder.

- When Alyssa first told me about her sister's murder,

the first thing that came to my mind was who did it? Do you know who did it? All these things started going through my mind. (dramatic music) Barry and Alyssa are determined to answer those questions

by making a DACU series. - Didn't you transcribe that? - Barry and experience Filmmaker was a consultant on this broadcast. - I felt like I could use my filmmaking ability

to do our own investigating because it didn't seem like anyone was doing it. - He is working hand in hand with Darrell Parker and another private eye, Jim Holloway, re-examining everything.

“We are in a place, this is central to your theory of what happened.”

- Yes.

- The reason why Darrell Parker is so sure

this is where Jennifer died is because of a clue that lies on the river's floor. A short way down this dirt road. - She had some blue mud on the front of her, according to fishermen.

There are only two spots on the river within several miles to that mud is on the bottom. - And this is one of them. - This is that blue, moral mud that was on the body. - Not far from the river bank.

They're used to be a cottage. - This is where the original caretaker cottage was. - And it just so happened to burn down the night, the Jennifer Harris disappeared. That is a piece of melted glass from the original fire.

- Parker suspects Jennifer left her friend Christie's house and met her killer here. He believes the cottage was burned to hide the evidence. - No godly earth reason for that shack to burn at the same night, Jennifer comes up missing.

Parker hoped to find clues here. - We came here with a crew and excavated the whole thing. 15 feet that way to another 10 feet that way on either side of this foundation. - I see a well.

- We drain the well and then we dug down in the muck and probably a foot or two and we didn't come up with anything. - But years of coming up empty hasn't deterd Darrell Parker or Brian Alyssa Wernick and it hasn't shaken their conviction

of who killed Jennifer. - When I think about Jennifer, I think about Jennifer and Rob. - Rob and Jennifer were together for as long as anyone can remember.

She was a sixth grader when she began dating Rob, a fifth grader. - By high school, the teenagers were practically inseparable since Jennifer's cousin, Susan Bowen. - He was just part of our family from the time

we were growing up. Jennifer was just in love with him. She just adored everything about him. - Jennifer had big dreams. Bigger than could take flight in small town Bonna.

- Jennifer had potential to explore greater horizons and just span and county takes it. - She moved three hours away to go to college. A few years later, Rob followed her there and the couple married in 1996.

- It was gorgeous. It was meticulously planned at a very beautiful mansion outmint in the country. - Then it was too far. - One year after the wedding,

- He could tell she had learned a lot

in the few years that we lost our mother. She became an adult that was very open-minded. - In 1999, the couple bought a house in suburban Dallas, but there was friction brewing.

“- I think that my sister was growing and evolving”

and moving forward in her life and Rob stuck. And he just wasn't gonna change. - According to Jennifer's family, Rob, who was working in landscaping, preferred the slower pace of rural Bonna.

Well, she enjoyed living near a big city. Jennifer embraced a holistic lifestyle and enrolled in massage therapy school. - She transformed in front of my eyes. She said that she had met someone who was like-minded

and who wanted to start a business

that was a massage and wellness center.

- That someone was James Hamilton. - Someone she met in that massage therapy school. - He was different, but- - In one way. - Well, he was new age and-

- Touchy feeling? - A little bit. - The relationship was complicated.

“James was living with the mother of his child”

and had another on the way. Jennifer was still married to Rob. - I told her that it was not a good idea. - Then I. - How did she say? - She didn't tell me a lot after that.

- She knew where I stood. - I went up there to see what was going on in their lives. - When Jennifer's father got there, he was shocked to see holes in the wall. While no one knows for sure how they got there,

Jerry seemed certain, Rob was responsible. - He took his fist and knocked five holes in the living room wall about his biggest assault ball. - Jerry remembers the holes in the wall. Alyssa remembers something worse.

- My sister called me one night and was shaking in her voice. - She says Jennifer told her Rob came home drunk and forced himself on her.

Jennifer never reported the alleged attack,

but Rob would later tell police after her disappearance that Jennifer was the violent one in the relationship. - Not him. - For a very good voice.

- She moved her way. That way. - Sometimes I grab her, wrap her up, keep him. - Rob moved back to Bonham and Jennifer's new love interest, James Hamilton moved in with her.

They became partners in a massage therapy business in suburban Dallas, but Jennifer's infatuation with James quickly faded. - Well, James wanted to marry her and she refused to marry him.

And he was very upset about that. - The private investigator say Jennifer's relationship with Hamilton was rocked. - Real fiery just fussing and fighting at each other all the time.

- By the spring of 2002, your sister is leading one complicated life emotionally. - Jennifer had divorce Rob and her relationship with James was on the skits to add to the chaos. - The massage business had failed and Jennifer

was forced to file for bankruptcy.

“- I think that everything was catching up to her”

and she'd ever really grieved my mom's death. And I think she's exhausted. She said I'm not happy. I don't care about the business anymore. - With no job or income, Jennifer confided in cousin Susan

that she'd been back in touch with her former husband, Rob Holman, who now had a new girlfriend. And she said I still love him and she said I want him back and she said I even told him that. - In fact, Rob later admitted to police

that even though he had a girlfriend, he and Jennifer were still having sex. - Oh, about time, it's great to be here. - So Jennifer was living a little bit of a split life. - To a certain extent, but James didn't know it.

He knew nothing about it all. Then one day, Susan saw Jennifer outside her apartment with a moving truck. - I said, what are you doing? And she said I'm moving to Bonham.

I thought you're only going to Bonham because Rob's in Bonham. Okay, and with that I turned around and left and that was the last time I ever saw her. - About six weeks later, Jennifer disappeared.

On the very day she went missing, she called Rob. - Rob said she asked to see him, but he refused. - He had plans to grow wings. She got really upset, I think. Mother's day, I would come over.

- Rob agreed to take a polygraph to back up his story,

Sheriff's investigators allowed him to go home.

They had a lot more digging to do. And it centered around a secret. Jennifer had shared with her best friend Jill Wagner just weeks before she died. - You know, sorry to talk, and then she's gone.

We're not gonna believe, you know, the mess on me and she told me how, you know, that I would be pretty much again. I feel like you're pretty single. - If Jennifer was pregnant, who was the father? Was it Rob Holman or someone else?

“That question became even more important”

after the medical examiner's autopsy revealed a stunning piece of information. - And her uterus was gone. (gentle music) - What if everything you learned in history class

was only half the story?

I'm Dr. Hoony bought host of Hidden History.

Every Monday, I go where history gets mysterious. Vanish civilizations, doomsday prophecies, paranormal phenomena, and events that science do can't fully explain. On Hidden History, I treat these moments like open case files. Not miss, not superstition, just incomplete explanations,

waiting for closer look. Listen to and follow Hidden History, available now wherever you get your podcasts. (gentle music) - When they examined Jennifer Harris's body,

investigators were shocked. - There was a wound that affected some of the internal organs. Her uterus was missing. - Her death was classified as a quote violent homicide. Her uterus had somehow been removed.

- The question was, what damaged her? - What would have the motive been that she was possibly pregnant, and that the person who killed her was trying to destroy that evidence?

- In Bonham, where gossip is often taken for a gospel, people couldn't stop talking. - The public grab ahold of that information and they started concocting their own theories as to who did it and why.

- But according to the case file, there was no scientific evidence to prove Jennifer was actually pregnant at the time of her death. Still, Jennifer's best friend Jill Wagner

told investigators she had talked to Jennifer about being pregnant, and that's not all she said. - You know, she told me that it was wrong, so now it's kind of shocked. - Rob Hulman, Jennifer's ex husband.

He had revealed to detectives in his police interview that he'd met Jennifer a month before she disappeared, near a drive-in movie theater. - She told me she was pregnant. - I definitely think that she brought it up with Rob

“and in my mind, that's what led to her death.”

- Darrell Parker had long been familiar with the story of Jennifer being pregnant. Eight years after her murder, Parker then elutenant for the sheriff's department, dropped by Rob Hulman's house.

It was Sunday. Mother's Day, a calculated move by Parker. - So it was the anniversary of the crime. I had picked out a number of photographs of her in Rob. One of those being Jennifer swimming in a muddy body

of water. And when I gave him the stack of photographs,

the very first one he picked out was that one

with the muddy water. He stood there for about five or six seconds staring at that photograph. He backed the one that caught his attention. - Like that.

You know I said, well, if you want to talk, call me and I gave him my card in a left. - A few hours later, to Parker's surprise, Hulman called and wanted to talk, but Parker had wanted to record the interview.

So he suggested they meet at the sheriff's office the next day. - That's where I screwed up. I should have gone right then in there.

“I think he was ready to talk and say something”

and I should have just done it. (knocking on door) - This really has you. Still. Why so emotional, Dale?

You're really blaming yourself here. - Well, the previous investigation had failed in so many ways, but he was responding to me. He was responding to the pressure I was putting on. And I let it slip away.

- When Hulman arrived for the interview with Parker, he had a lawyer. - Did you have anything to do with death? - That's Jennifer Ash. - No.

- Jennifer's credit sheet. - Did you believe that you believe she was ready? - No. - I didn't like she was. - Did you think that she believed she was ready?

- No. - Remember there was no evidence, Jennifer was pregnant. And in fact, forensic experts in Dallas with later conclude, Jennifer's missing uterus

Instead, her uterus and other body parts

were destroyed by turtles and fish in the river. But the room was persisted, and they had plenty of company in Bonham. A year after Jennifer's murder, this man found himself in the center of the storm.

- That they were saying that I had been arrested for this murder. I mean, you hear this and what's your reaction? - What are you talking about? Where did this come from?

- That's crazy. - Crazy, because Miles Porter was also the district attorney at the time. - Over seeing the case for the record. - Did you know Jennifer Harris?

- No. - Had you ever met Jennifer Harris? - No. - Did you kill Jennifer Harris? - Absolutely not.

- Porter says locals cooked up the story because they had a grudge against him over an unrelated case he tried. - Did this cost you your job? - Yeah, no doubt.

- Miles Porter blames losing his reelection on the Jennifer Harris gossip. Now in private practice, Porter still lives with the fallout from the unfounded allegation.

- I've had on a number of occasions random people throughout the county say, "I can't be fair in this case "because you're with the lawyer

“"and I think you killed Jennifer Harris."”

- Crazy. - Fourteen, 15 years later, absolutely. - Still happens. In the court of public opinion, he was definitely a suspect. - Meanwhile, there's no shred of evidence

that he was connected at all. - None. - Darrell Parker thinks he knows who's responsible. - Now Miles Porter, not James Hamilton, not a random stranger.

In my view, the evidence points directly at up home. (upbeat music) - Filmmaker, Barry Warnick, agrees. - We were gonna let the facts take us where the facts took us.

And we would, where it brought us was to one person that it had to be. - But they haven't been able to physically connect Rob Hulman to Jennifer Harris, the night of her disappearance. - They're both hoping this woman can't.

- We need that eyewitness. - And in your view, Rhonda Fitzwater is that eyewitness. - Yes. (water running) (upbeat music)

- On this rural road in Fanning County, Texas,

“Rhonda Fitzwater could hold the key to Darrell Parker”

and Barry Warnick's theory that Rob Hulman met up with Jennifer Harris, that night. - So what do you make of this idea that somehow you saw Jennifer Harris and Rob Hulman? - I've not ever heard that until you tell me that.

- Rhonda has always insisted that all she saw that night

was Jennifer's parked Jeep. Did you see anybody following Jeep? - No, it was already parked. - Did you see Jennifer Harris? - No, not at all.

- But for years, Parker and Warnick have believed there is more at a Rhonda Fitzwater story. Only she says they are sorely mistaken. After 15 years of investigation by people closely connected to Bonham,

maybe the best thing anyone can hope for is a fresh set of eyes. - The final Dallas Texas, my job is really to look at the facts of the case, study the case. - Could the questions about a murder in Bonham

be answered by someone's 1,700 miles away in Boston? - Thank you so much for being here. - Meet Joe Moore, a private investigator and CBS news consultant. - Jennifer has been dead 15 years

by the time you're looking at the file. - Absolutely, we are. - Would you make a that collection of papers? - I thought the file was very weak, meaning that the investigation that went into

was extremely weak. - 48 hours brought more of the Texas to take a closer look at the Jennifer Harris case. - You gotta speak to people and that's what I've done.

- So you got a little time for me? - How did it? - Come on, bye.

- His first stop, Fan and County Sheriff.

Mark Johnson, I can see your frustration where you're in the job for one year. You've got the public and you know, show the family still wants to know what happened to that data. - There's no physical evidence, that's the problem.

- In fact, today the sheriff won't call either Rob Homan or James Hamilton suspects. Even though detectives did early in the investigation

“in these documents, how come you can't call them suspects?”

- You have things that lead up to them that draw your interest in the micomoperson measures, but you don't have that connection to make them a suspect where you can tie some physical evidence in to them. - Filmmaker Barry Wernick took more

at the location of the cottage, privatized parker in Holloway. It come to believe was burned to hide the evidence

- This is the shed that burnt out that night. - The stuffed gem with a burning shed.

“There's all kinds of theories about that.”

- Now, you just murdered somebody, but about 200 yards away from where the spows in the body and the river, let's light up this shed and fire attract people. - Makes no sense.

- Absolutely not. It certainly can't tie to this case, but people are trying to make it to tie in. - Wernick also brought him to the bank of the Red River where he believes his sister-in-law's body was dumped.

- There's nothing on the records of this case, or any eyewitnesses, they'll tell you that, this is where her body was disposed to. - Right.

- So, which is here basically guessing.

- More are sat down with the private eyes who had been working the case for nearly a decade. - To me, I think it boils down to who had the most to lose by killing her, or not killing her.

The late 18 years of child support, maybe. Maybe not. - Well, I don't think that we need to speculate

“about Rob Homan's motive because he made it clear”

that she was applying pressure to him. And there could be no more intense pressure than I'm about to have a baby, and you're the father. - That's right. - You have to consider it.

- However, he disbelieves her. In the admits that in the interviews, yeah, she said it, but I don't believe it. I don't think she is pregnant. - Did you believe she was pregnant?

- No. - I didn't think she was pregnant. - For his part, moral was surprised authorities seemed to quickly disregard James Hamilton. The ex-boyfriend who wanted to marry Jennifer,

before she left him when their business failed. - She covered all the finances for the business. She's the one to put her name on the loans. Jennifer's father, Jerry, made notes that two months after Jennifer's death,

Hamilton called him, asking about her life insurance policy. - In my experience, money, insurance is, all that stuff is a big deal. Money creates a lot of motive for a lot of people.

- What's more, he believes investigators bought Hamilton's alibi. And he was with a friend at that McDonald's more than 50 miles away without thoroughly vetting it. - And I'm not so thrilled about the checking

they did on that alibi. The one thing is you go check with the alibi's. In the next thing you look at, these alibi's lying to me. So you got to go check that out.

That was never done. Why? - To Joe Moro, the investigation was flawed from the outset and had authorities approached it differently. They may have gotten more from their interviews.

Here's what bothers me about the situation.

It's a missing person that calling people and talking to people about a missing person is the first thing they do to read your Miranda warnings. - You have the right to read the one. - Now that is unheard of.

You're saying that sure Rob said I don't have an alibi and that might be incriminating. - That was after you already signed the Miranda warning. So he's already nervous and he's already saying, oh, I'm being tired.

God, I don't have an alibi. Of course he was nervous. - Most people would get up, but at the end of the day, the man who's been working this case for years see it very differently than the man with the fresh set of eyes.

- Certainly, there is a lot of evidence in the case. It is all circumstantial.

“- But Darrell, I think me and you are a little confused”

in reference to circumstantial. I'm saying to you and I submit to you that there's very little circumstantial evidence. Okay, well, I have to agree to this agree. Well, because I'm asking you to give me the facts

of what your circumstantial evidence says. Sure, it is based on theory. There we ain't gonna cut it. - Like Darrell Parker's theory about Rhonda Fitzwater, knowing more.

Everybody's putting all the weight on this woman and she has nothing to offer to the case. Only that yeah, that cheap was there. Well, we know the cheap was there. - But what Joe Moore does find interesting in the case file

is one of the least examined parts of the story. One year after Jennifer's murder, this woman, Deborah Lambert, who had seen a news report about the unsolved case, told detective she saw something

when she was driving across the Red River Bridge on Mother's Day. - It was three guys out there and a girl. She and she guys had the girl bother her elbows and it was a lot she was trying to get away from him

and they were first trying in her. - The girl she says she saw had reddish brown hair. And I made a contact with her and she was scared terrified, low-counter, but it was my mom's dinner today and she said that girls couldn't get great thank you.

- But Lambert never called police back then.

She said she was too afraid to get involved. What's more? Her story didn't fit with the investigators timeline. She put Jennifer near the bridge at five o'clock PM,

around eight PM. - Deborah Lambert saying what she saw, she saw it five o'clock. That's not a deal breaker for you. - Absolutely not.

In the real world, people are not looking at their watches and clocks all the time. She may be wrong on her time and not wrong on what she witnessed.

- Could Deborah Lambert hold the answer to who killed Jennifer Harris? (dramatic music)

“- A year and a half after Jennifer's murder,”

the Texas Rangers launched their own investigation into the case. They re-interviewed Deborah Lambert. - In the story was the same. She was very detailed, right at three guys, two were jeans, what was one of the shorts.

- Lambert was asked to look at a photo lineup to see if she recognized any of the men the woman was with. She did. She was very clear that one of the men she saw

was Rob Hommen. - Maybe Mrs. Lambert is believable. Now, the situation is, I worry about how was that lineup done? How many photographs do they show?

In other words, they have a good old boy, Texan boy there with his baseball cap on and then they had three Mexican photos next to him. Okay, those are the things I worry about. The way that the lineup was conducted.

We don't know anything about it.

- No, and that's crucial.

But more I can't be confident

“because there are no details in the case file”

about how the lineup was done. Still, more considers Deborah Lambert a missed opportunity to potentially solve Jennifer's murder. - There's an open leave here that I feel was enclosed. Therefore, until that leave is closed,

it's problematic to say, "I'm gonna disregard what this woman saw, and I'm still gonna focus on Rob in James." - Rob Hommen, on the advice of his attorney back then, declined to speak with the Texas Rangers. After working the case for a year,

they suspended their investigation. We wanted to know why, but they wouldn't comment on an unsolved case. The conclusion to their report, no physical evidence, specific cause of death,

or credible witnesses, link any particular person as a suspect. No one can actually follow up with Deborah Lambert. She and her mother have both passed away, but Alyssa and Barry Wernick now cling to Lambert's story.

- In my mind, I always just believe

that she got in the truck with Rob and it was just the two of 'em. This change is everything. There are other people that know,

“there are other people that can possibly speak up.”

- Now, knowing that there were two other people involved, oh yeah, there's Wernut Hope. The problem here I suppose is that Deborah Lambert's dead. She's dead, but her interview isn't. She's alive, you can see what she said.

(gentle piano music) - Neither James Hamilton nor Rob Hommen have ever been arrested or charged with any crime related to Jennifer's murder. During a reporting of this case,

we made several attempts to contact both men. - James, if this is your number, I'm calling to follow up on a letter. I sent you recently. - We got no response.

(phone ringing) - Rob, I can't put your toll right now. - We sent you a letter a couple of weeks ago. So on one of our trips to Texas, we went to Rob Hommen's home.

- No way, Mr. Hommen, Jim Axe, where I would see BS news. - Jim at all. - Will you talk to me if I turn that camera off? - You also need to turn it off. - Hommen told us off camera.

He never saw Jennifer that night,

and he's been advised by his attorney not to talk to anyone. His attorney provided this statement to 48 hours. - Robbered Hommen has neither been arrested nor charged with any criminal conduct as it relates to this investigation.

This notwithstanding, Mr. Hommen has from the inception of the investigation, been treated by law enforcement as a suspect. Mr. Hommen has maintained his innocence from the very beginning, and his position has not wavered.

(dramatic music) With no resolution in sight, filmmaker Barry Wernick has a new plan. - Barry wants to raise $50,000 under the theory that reward money could shake someone loose.

- No shot, you can't put money out there in thinking that that's gonna create evidence for you. - Joe Morris said as much to this sheriff, this isn't their call case. This is a frozen case, it's done, it's over.

he would never bring this case to trial.

He has absolutely nothing on this case.

“But sheriff Mark Johnson is not giving up.”

Well, I want to solve the case.

I want it solved, and I want it done right.

Neither is private eye, Darrell Parker. - When Mr. Harris came to the sheriff's office and he got me involved, I told him

“that I would get results, and I can't put it down.”

Until I'm sure that either the person is held accountable,

or I can't do anything more, I have to carry it. - And if it takes another 15 years, if it takes another 15 years. - The saddest is we all have kids,

“we all have family members, and I have a daughter,”

it's devastating to not know. (gentle music) - I don't know how she was killed, I wish I did, I want closure. I'm gonna do everything I can to bring justice for Jennifer.

For my dad, he needs to see some justice done. (gentle music) - To have walked in my shoes for the last 15, half years hadn't been easy, we miss her every day, we miss Jennifer not being here.

I still have high hopes that justice will prevail. - If you have any information about the Jennifer Harris case, contact the Fan & County Sheriff's Office at 903-583-2143.