Up next, a community reels
after the senseless m*rder
of a young woman.
It's very difficult to
let a mom and a dad know
that their daughter
has been k*lled.
It was a horrendous tear
in the fabric of our life.
The victim has no known enemies.
Her m*rder defies explanation.
There was really
no context for it.
It was really
a complete mystery.
Hundreds of suspects emerge,
but for years,
there are no arrests.
Nothing about this case
was another day at the office.
It was complex.
It was challenging.
Ultimately,
old-fashioned detective work
and a little bit of art expose
a k*ller hiding in plain sight.
Science was there.
Science was there
from the beginning.
Most residents of
Agawam, Massachusetts will tell you
it's an ideal place
to raise a family.
The community
has always been great.
Great schools,
great activities for the kids.
A warm place.
A warm place with
wonderful people.
The Zeigert family raised
three girls
and a boy in the town.
Their second child, Lisa,
was determined to follow
in her parents' footsteps,
and once married, planned to
raise a family close to home.
She could have changed her mind,
but she loved being close enough
to be able to pop in
and say, "Hey, mom,
can I borrow your shoes?"
You know,
or something like that,
or "Can I do some wash?"
You know?
I think she loved the closeness,
yet the independence.
Lisa had a degree in education
and was working
as a teacher's aide.
To make some extra money,
she took a job at a card shop
called Brittany's
in a local strip mall.
She loved it
because she loved people.
Lisa worked nights and weekends,
and her hours meant
she almost always worked alone.
Four days before Easter in 1992,
she was working her usual
when a customer entered
the store to find it empty,
but with the door open
and all the lights on.
Police say the customer
called out and got no answer.
The next morning, a worker
found the store unlocked.
It hadn't been closed up
from the night before.
At 9:00 am, the door
was open. Lights were on.
Lisa's car was in the front,
in the parking lot,
and all of her
personal belongings
were still inside
of Brittany's card shop.
Lisa was too responsible.
She would have never left
that store unsecured.
She would have never
left until 9:00.
Officers searched the premises
and were alarmed
by what they found.
We went into the back room,
and there was boxes on the floor
that had been obviously
pressed down,
like somebody had been
on top of them.
Slight blood spattering
on some of those boxes.
There was also blood spattering
on a few of the greeting cards
that were on a stand
just outside the door
to that particular closet
or back room.
The signs were ominous.
All that was missing
from the store was Lisa.
Investigators searched
the surrounding area
and found nothing.
Everyone had fingers crossed.
The community would
organize searches,
you know, for her.
If you didn't live under a rock,
everyone heard about
the Lisa Zeigert disappearance.
There was never a time
that they weren't out
looking for her,
searching for her,
and we had faith
that we would find her
and she would be okay.
Days passed.
Lisa's deeply Catholic
family hoped for the best
and prepared for the worst.
Easter Sunday arrived,
and still there was
no sign of her.
We went to Mass at
our church, where we attended every Sunday.
The whole family and
a large group of friends
came with us to Mass.
It was good to be there.
It was good to be there.
It was a peace.
But any hopes
for Lisa's safe delivery
were dashed a few hours later.
Her body was found
in a wooded area
about three miles from the store
where she was last seen.
I'm trying to think of the best
way to say the word "dead,"
and I got there and walked up
and Dee was waiting at the door,
and I explained it to her
and just went from there.
Wayne Macey,
our wonderful, dear,
wonderful friend Wayne Macey,
came to the door by himself.
I went to the door
and I looked at him,
and I said, just by his face,
"You found her, didn't you?"
And he went, "Yeah. We did."
And I said,
"She's dead, isn't she?"
The tragedy stunned
this normally quiet, peaceful town,
and as details
of Lisa's m*rder emerge,
outrage gave way
to outright terror.
In my 20 years of being
a crime reporter,
it was one of the most
savage, depraved,
almost bestial assaults
that I've covered.
Because she had
clearly struggled for her life,
the scene of
Lisa Zeigert's m*rder
was littered with evidence.
She was found partially clad.
Her upper body clothes
had been pulled down,
and she had
numerous s*ab wounds,
the major one being
across her neck.
Police had, really,
a trove of information.
Forensic material was found,
you know, spread out,
maybe by 20 or 30 or 40 yards
in this area,
so police really had a large
scene with which to work.
But no m*rder w*apon,
apparently a Kn*fe, was found.
Even in 1992,
investigators understood
that genetic evidence
from this scene
and from Lisa's r*pe kit
would be key.
In Massachusetts, DNA evidence
wasn't even admissible
in court for years,
but investigators knew
that day was coming.
Even though we couldn't
put a name to that DNA,
we felt that eventually,
the individual that had
committed this crime,
that his DNA
would eventually match
with the sample that we had.
In 1992, DNA criminal
databases didn't even exist,
so detectives turned
to old-fashioned police work
to expose who their
DNA profile might belong to.
First off, they had
a rock-solid timeframe
for when Lisa was kidnapped
from the card shop.
The last person in the store
was there at 8:20.
A purchase was made,
and she left.
Another witness
entered the store around 9:00
to find the lights on
and no one there,
so the abduction
almost certainly happened
within that 40-minute window.
Another possible lead...
a fresh set of tire tracks
found near Lisa's body.
The officers made a mold
of the tire tracks.
We took those back to the lab
to be analyzed.
They were Cooper tires.
The combination of tires on this
vehicle was so distinctive,
detectives were able to
comb through sales records
at local dealerships and track
down the driver of the vehicle.
We brought him in
for questioning,
and he went home
and brought back with him
pictures of that vehicle
at the crime scene three days
prior to Lisa being k*lled,
where he was four-wheeling
with his friends,
and that particular lead turned
out to be of no significance.
Another witness said
they remembered
seeing a Bronco S.U.V. in the
area where the body was found
around the time
of Lisa's m*rder.
This prompted a local woman
to contact police.
A woman called and said,
"My then-boyfriend,
who is ex-m*llitary,
has a fixation with knives
and has a Bronco,"
or a type of vehicle like that,
that they were looking for.
Moreover, he came home around
the time of the m*rder
and there was blood
on the inside of his truck,
and the dashboard
had been kicked in.
Detectives tracked him down.
He said he'd sold the vehicle.
To see if this was true, it was
traced halfway around the world.
And it ended up
going to New York City,
and then from New York City,
a car dealer there sold it
to somebody in
Saint Petersburg, Russia.
European countries
do a big business
in four-wheel drive vehicles
that are exported
from our country.
Investigators in Massachusetts
reached out to analysts overseas
to have the S.U.V. examined.
We got in touch with INTERPOL,
and they went over the car
as best they could
and did not come up
with anything.
Detectives found themselves
taking some
unconventional approaches,
even employing psychics
and hypnotizing people,
like this woman,
who may have seen something
connected to the m*rder.
Investigators really
turned over every stone,
and over the years,
tried every possible tactic.
But traditional
and non-traditional methods
turned up nothing.
The case went cold...
not for lack of evidence,
but because no match
could be made
to the high-quality DNA
profile from the crime scene.
But a troubled marriage
ended up solving that problem.
To this day, nearly
every long-term resident
of Agawam, Massachusetts,
remembers the shock
of Lisa Zeigert's m*rder.
Lisa Zeigert's
m*rder, abduction, and r*pe
threw the entire town
for a loop.
Some of the young waitresses,
their parents wouldn't
let them go to work.
There were gyms that offering
self-defense classes for women.
It just completely
preoccupied the town.
Anthony Gulluni,
the area's
future district attorney
who would help put the case
on the front burner in 2016,
vividly recalls
how it affected the town.
So, in 1992, around
the time of Lisa's m*rder,
I was 12 years old.
Agawam was gripped by
this awful tragedy
that involved
an innocent, beautiful,
talented,
intelligent young woman.
All this attention
was both good news
and bad news for investigators.
Everyone wanted to help.
Tips poured in.
Some were viable. Many were not.
These people actually
thought they were helping us,
so therefore,
"I think I know something.
I'm gonna call the police.
I'm gonna give them a tip.
My cousin, my ex-boyfriend,
my ex-father-in-law."
Whatever it may be.
In reviewing the
files, detectives looked at,
among many others,
a tip from 1993.
A woman said she was sure
her ex-husband did it.
She was accusing him
because he seemed
to be preoccupied with the TV
whenever the news would come on,
and he would be watching it
and talking about it
with his friends all the time.
His name was Gary Schara.
He still lived in Agawam,
and when he heard
that his ex-wife called police,
he called them, too.
He stated that he
had heard from his wife
and a number of other people
that he was a suspect
in the Lisa Zeigert homicide,
and he wanted to know
if that true,
and I told him I don't talk
about those things on the phone,
but I'd like to speak with him.
But on the advice of his lawyer,
Schara stopped contact
with police,
and Schara's accuser
had her own issues
which threw doubt on this tip.
Gary's wife was an alcoholic.
She was depressed.
Just so many things
going on with her.
This turned out to be
just one of hundreds of potential leads
that went into a file
that got bigger by the year.
At one point, they were
focused in on a man
because he had been kidnapping
and raping women
in gift and card shops in states
including Virginia
and Pennsylvania
and I think Maryland,
and they thought
they had the guy,
because how many times
are you gonna get
a serial r*pist and kidnapper
who focuses in on
women who work in card shops?
No suspects panned out,
but investigators still had
their key piece of evidence...
a full genetic profile
of Lisa Zeigert's k*ller.
When this crime occurred
in 1992,
there was no such thing
as a national DNA database
or a local DNA database.
Basically, this case spans
the history of DNA testing.
The DNA profile
was repeatedly entered into
state, national, and even
international databases,
which grew larger
and larger every year.
Prosecutors estimated
that worldwide,
the DNA from the Zeigert case
was tested against more
than 16 million profiles...
but still no matches.
That led me to looking at
people who may have d*ed,
somebody who never had
to provide a DNA sample.
Or Lisa's k*ller
could still be alive
and never repeated this crime,
something very unusual
for a sexually motivated k*ller.
No one had an explanation,
and as the years ticked by,
even the most optimistic
investigators feared
Lisa Zeigert's k*ller would
never be brought to justice.
This was a particularly
brutal and egregious crime.
How could somebody commit
a crime like this
and have done it only once?
After more than 20 years,
teams of detectives could not
put a face to the DNA profile
from Lisa Zeigert's m*rder.
It was frustrating, frightening.
I worried for my other children,
of course.
That's your first concern.
You have two other daughters.
You worried for them.
With nothing panning
out, investigators turn to
a newly developed
cutting-edge way to use DNA,
developed by a company
called Parabon Nanolabs.
These forensic pioneers
harnessed the power of computers
to the vast DNA databases
growing worldwide.
They've developed a program
they call Snapshot.
We think of Snapshot
as a genetic witness.
So, it's essentially stepping in
when there isn't a human witness
to give the detective
a description.
Snapshot isolates a host of
observable genetic characteristics
called phenotypes...
things like ethnicity,
even hair and eye color.
A phenotype is just a trait,
so a person's eye color
phenotype could be blue
or something like that.
So, we have an unknown person.
We have their DNA.
Can we predict what
their eye color should be
based on their DNA?
The problem in this case
was that so much time had passed,
and it's here that science
and art came together.
Age is not encoded in the DNA.
Snapshot predicts someone's
appearance at age 25.
We do have a forensic artist
on staff,
a certified forensic artist.
Parabon released two images.
The first approximated
what Lisa's k*ller
looked like in 1992.
The second was a forensic
artist's educated guess
at what he'd look like
more than 20 years later.
It really proved to be, I think,
a turning point for our case.
It was also a turning point
in the forensic history
of the case.
One suspect on
the narrowed-down list of suspects
was Gary Schara.
He was one of 11 men, all of
whom, for a variety of reasons,
refused to surrender
any genetic material.
We are not allowed to force
somebody to give us their DNA.
It's their constitutional
right to refuse it.
Gary Schara actually told me
that he was afraid of cloning.
He was adamant.
He refused to give us his DNA.
Gary Schara
also seemed well aware
of the power of DNA evidence.
In 2008, detectives recorded
their third encounter with him.
He stayed a noticeable
difference away from the table,
wouldn't put his hands
on the table,
wouldn't take a drink out
of the bottle of water
they provided for him.
In retrospect,
it looks pretty sketchy.
Sketchy for sure,
but still not enough
to force Schara
or any suspect to surrender DNA,
so prosecutors sought help
from the courts.
We decided that we
were gonna take a chance
on an infrequently used
legal tactic
by way of
a grand jury investigation,
and ultimately
present the information
we had to the grand jury,
and then get the court's
authorization to
compel that person to
provide a DNA profile.
The court ruled there
was enough probable cause
with these 11 men to force them
to provide their DNA.
Trooper Noah Pack went
to tell Gary Schara
of the court's decision.
Schara wasn't home.
I asked Gary's roommate
to let Gary Schara know
that the state police
had some important paperwork
to serve him.
I gave his roommate a copy
of my business card and I said,
"Have him call me."
Schara was found
in a nearby hospital
after a failed su1c1de attempt.
His DNA matched the DNA
recovered from
Lisa Zeigert's crime scene.
I thought, "You're married.
You have a child, and you
do this to another young woman?
What kind of a monster are you?"
Forensic technology
had progressed a lot
during this case.
One of the images
created by Parabon bore
a remarkable resemblance
to old photos of Gary Schara.
And when his photo
came up on my computer,
I thought, "Well, look at that."
I thought the likeness
was pretty stunning.
In 2019, Schara pled guilty
and was sentenced to
life without parole.
Investigators believe
he'd become fixated with Lisa
after buying a music box
from the card store...
an item later found
with his belongings
more than 20 years later.
Knowing Lisa worked alone,
prosecutors believe he waited
until no one else
was in the store,
forced her into a back room,
and overpowered her.
He got her into his car
and took her to the woods,
where he assaulted
and then k*lled her.
In a twist that still
baffles investigators,
he apparently never
committed another act
of criminal v*olence.
But alert detectives knew
Lisa's k*ller had
left his genetic
calling card behind
and made sure that the vital DNA
evidence was not destroyed.
So even 20-plus years
after the collection of this material
and the discovery
of Lisa's body,
we really had a lot
to work with.
I am hoping that Lisa's
case will convince people
that this is the way to go.
This is the way that you can
solve this case.
Please, you know, use it,
and please remember
this adorable, 5'2",
eyes of blue,
curly brown hair young woman
who wanted to make a difference
in this world.
Bright, beautiful,
loving human being
who made our lives better
and continues to.