Dateline NBC: The Footprint at the Lake

Tonight on Dave Lye.

The last thing I said to her,

I'll see you later.

And it just tears me up.

Because I didn't tell her goodnight.

I didn't tell her I love her.

This is a sinister scene.

It is.

We see footprint and blood on the floor.

We see hand prints.

It was pretty evident that there was some type of struggle.

She's a beloved teacher.

And now she's been murdered.

We had no idea what was happening.

Three people in this family were within the household

while this murder was going on.

Somebody would have heard something.

Nobody knew.

How could you not hear screaming if she's being attacked?

Asked what everybody thought.

They fingerprinted us.

Did you have anything to do with your mom?

Did you kill your mom?

I mean, they asked my siblings that.

Obviously asked my dad that.

They said,

I did not hurt my wife.

I was waiting for the cuffs to come out.

Somebody came in.

They knew what they were after.

Somebody out of control in a rage.

Never seen anything like it or never heard of anything like it.

A mother and teacher murdered in a crime no one heard,

no one saw.

With a twist, no one could predict.

I'm Lester Holt.

And this is Dateline.

Here's Andrea Canning with The Footprint at the Lake.

Like most small towns in North Texas,

the people of Alney spend their Fridays

cheering on the high school football team.

And the Alney Cubs need all the help they can get.

At one point we were ranked number three in the state

for the longest losing streak.

But win or lose, there was one cheerleader

who never gave up on them.

Teacher, Manuela Allen.

Do you remember Mrs. Allen in the stands with her cowbell?

I would hear that over the band sometimes.

Morgan Wilk was on the team.

Yeah, everyone loved Mrs. Allen.

That's why what happened to Mrs. Allen

was so devastating, so bewildering.

It was Sunday, July 7th, 2019.

Manuela's husband Peter, also a teacher,

says he was awake surfing the web

in the living room with the TV on.

A little before 9 a.m.,

his teenage daughter Chiara popped into the room.

Chiara comes to me and says,

Dad, where's mom?

I'm like, well, where do you think she's in the bedroom?

Probably.

Well, she says, Dad, the door's locked.

So I was like, well, go through the garage and check on her.

Their house has an unusual layout.

There's a second door to the bedroom

that's attached to the garage by way of a small laundry room.

Chiara went around to check.

And she goes, yeah, there's blood all over the place.

Blood?

A lot of it, but no Manuela.

So what are you thinking?

Nothing.

My mind was blank because I had no idea

what could have possibly occurred.

Not only was Manuela gone, so was her car.

Peter says the only thing that made sense

in that confusing moment was that maybe his wife

had driven herself to the emergency room.

Did she cut herself really badly?

And what in this room could she possibly have cut herself on?

So you're thinking she's been injured?

Yes, she somehow injured herself.

And she's driven herself to the hospital?

Yes.

Peter and his daughter raced to the local hospital.

Manuela wasn't there.

Once back home, he called the police.

911, where's your emergency?

I don't know.

I don't know how to describe it.

My wife is missing, and there's blood all over her bedroom.

Minutes later, an officer from the Alney Police Department

arrived, body cam rolling.

Morning, Mr. Allen.

Good morning.

What's going on this morning?

I have no idea.

My wife's gone.

Her car is gone.

My daughter comes and says, hey, Dad, where's Mom?

And I go, well, this in the room is sleeping.

And she goes, well, no, the door's locked.

I slept on the couch.

The car's gone, so she goes through there and locks it.

She comes up and says, Dad, there's blood all over the place.

OK.

And I have no idea.

You have your ID with you, Mr. Allen?

Yeah.

I don't know.

The officer followed Peter inside.

OK.

Go ahead and step out here.

Go ahead and come out here.

Usually, your keys are hanging right there.

OK.

Let's go ahead and go out to the living room.

And you said you looked in the garage and the car's gone.

Well, the car would be parked right in front.

Yeah.

It shows to be a white Arcadia.

Pass the information along for our officers to look for it.

Are you in full panic mode?

No.

That's not my personality.

But there's blood in the bedroom.

Your wife's missing.

Her car's gone.

Absolutely.

Aren't you thinking something really terrible has happened?

Of course.

But I don't freeze up.

I don't lock up.

I stop and try to reason through the situation.

Peter Allen served in the military, dealt with explosives.

He's not one to panic.

Patrol Sergeant Dan Burbach of the Young County Sheriff's Office

was next to arrive.

Hey.

What's going on?

This is him.

This is his daughter.

I make contact with Mr. Allen, who's in the living room with his daughter, Kira.

I asked them to step outside, to get him outside of the house.

And then I find out that their son Darien is still upstairs in his bedroom.

I need y'all to go ahead and step out here on the porch.

And I proceed upstairs to go get Darien.

What's Darien doing when you get upstairs?

He's on his video game with set of headphones on, still playing a video game.

He has no idea.

No idea.

What's happening in the floor beneath him.

Right.

Darien was almost 20 at the time.

The Sergeant told him to head downstairs.

I was like, why?

And the Sheriff was like, well, we can't answer any questions right now.

And I was like, well, can I at least get dressed?

Put on some clothes.

They were like, no, you gotta get out of the house.

Just have a seat.

Your mom's missing, okay?

They were like, yeah, we can't get hold of her either.

Like her phone's just off.

Don't know where she is.

And we've tried looking around.

When was the last time you saw her?

Last night.

Probably about nine o'clock.

Hey, can you ping a phone?

We're already attempting to locate her.

So I've checked both hospitals here.

I didn't find anything.

Peter, the military guy who said he had nerves of steel

and had been a green beret, was now on the verge of cracking.

Oh, worry didn't work for him.

One of the few times in my life I've ever been actually scared.

One of the only few times.

But I can't let that fear grip me.

Because I've got to find my wife.

What on earth had happened to Manuela Allen?

There are drag marks through the garage,

where she was dragged out the back door.

Lieutenant David Wilk happened to be driving

through the tiny town of Alney that Sunday morning.

You're probably thinking to yourself,

this is just going to be a, you know, a slow day, typical.

Yes, that's what I'd like to have on a Sunday.

He worked for a neighboring county,

so he hadn't heard about the police activity

at the Allen residence.

I came through only and saw the crime scene

tape up around Mr. and Mrs. Allen's house.

So I pulled over and talked to one of the city officers

that I know and asked him what was going on.

Is everything okay with the kids?

What are you told?

I'm told at the time that Mrs. Allen was missing

and it doesn't look good.

The news was upsetting and personal.

He knew Mrs. Allen, knew the entire Allen family.

Mr. and Mrs. Allen were both teachers

in the school district,

and the kids we knew, I knew them through my children.

Lieutenant Wilk's son is Morgan,

the student and football player from Alney High School.

Morgan thought the world of Mrs. Allen.

She was always laughing.

I've never seen her have like a bad day.

Manu, as she was called,

grew up in a Bavarian village in southern Germany.

In college, she came to the United States to study English,

and that's when she met Peter.

My wife was strikingly gorgeous, just beautiful.

I seen her walking up the stairs,

and even though that was almost 30 years ago,

I can tell you she had a red t-shirt on

with biker shorts that were multi-colored, beautiful blonde hair.

You two fell in love in this short period of time,

and it was enough for her to uproot her life

and move to America.

God grace me. God bless me.

Yes.

Manu encouraged him to become a teacher.

He taught math.

She taught German and English.

They rounded each other out at home and at school.

If you wanted the truth, the hard cold truth,

you came to Mr. Allen.

If you wanted the hard cold truth

told you in a very gentle and loving way,

you went to Mrs. Allen.

There was this one kid, every day, give her a hug, every day.

Aw, she's one of those teachers.

Yes, every day, she would always have a smile on her face.

Your mom sounds very playful, sense of humor.

Oh, yeah.

You could usually hear her on the other side of the hallway

in between classes, just cracking up with other kids.

She was loud.

But she was also very caring.

In addition to caring for the kids at school,

Manu and Peter had four children of their own,

Chiara and Dearyon,

and also Melanie, a recent high school graduate,

and William, the eldest.

Manu liked looking out for the teenagers

who seemed to need it the most.

She was accepting of all people.

Viral Wolverton is a family friend.

And, you know, you get one kid that was maybe, you know,

on the outside.

She would bring a man, help him succeed.

Whatever they needed.

That included students like her daughter Melanie's boyfriend,

a football player who struggled at school and at home.

Peter remembers a time the boyfriend

showed up at his door in the middle of the night.

My wife is the one who said, yeah, let him stay.

So we had taken him in when he needed it.

She cheered him on the same way

she rooted for the rest of the Olney Cubs.

One story that I absolutely love

is Manu cheering them on with her cowbell.

I hate that.

I love it.

You weren't the one sitting next to her going,

I lost half my hearing because of that.

Because both of the Allens were teachers,

they had summers off.

And in the summer of 2019, Peter, Manu,

and their daughters had spent three weeks

visiting Manu's family in Germany.

They'd been home for a few days.

And then it was that Saturday night.

Peter says he had some drinks and laid down on the couch.

She came in, gave me a kiss goodnight,

said goodnight, went to bed.

Now it was morning and Manu was gone.

In her place, blood.

And investigators were trying to make sense

of what they were hearing from the family.

If you'll stay here, I'm going to just kind of walk around.

As we enter into the kitchen,

we see footprint and blood on the floor.

And then as we start working our way towards the bedroom,

we see handprints that appear that the person holding on

to the door jam was drugged back towards the bedroom.

It was pretty evident that there was some type of struggle.

Across the hallway, there was blood on the carpet.

There was more blood on the door.

We get into the bedroom,

and we see a large pooling of blood at that location.

He noticed that Manu's bed was bare

and the sheets were missing.

And in the adjacent laundry room,

there was a clue on the floor, bloody streaks.

There are drag marks through the garage

where she was drugged out the back door.

Like a body's being dragged?

Like a body's being dragged, yes.

As he surveyed the scene and spoke to the family,

the investigator just knew

this missing person's case was not likely to end well.

And everyone in that house

was going to have to start answering questions.

I'm gonna tell you if something sinister happened

and there's somebody involved in it.

Manu Allen was missing

and her home was a crime scene.

It looks like somebody had been killed in the bedroom.

They have tracks going along the side of the house here

like somebody pulled around and loaded her in.

The Alney Police Department needed help,

and it came by way of Michael Schraub of the Texas Rangers.

I was actually at church

and I received a call regarding a missing person.

Any other details or just please come on over here?

I was told there was a whole lot of blood at the scene.

They just felt it was a very suspicious circumstance.

While other Rangers went to assist the sergeant at the house,

Ranger Schraub headed to the sheriff's office to meet the family.

I just wanted to get a baseline story from everybody

so that we would know where to go

after we investigated the scene itself.

Manu's daughter, Kiara, was just one day shy of her 16th birthday.

In a near whisper, she told the Ranger about the night before.

She said she'd come home late from her boyfriend's house.

Peter actually opened the door, let her in,

and then she went to her bedroom and then started FaceTiming

with her boyfriend that she had just left

and she described just basically falling asleep with FaceTime running.

And I just got ready to go to the gym

and I went to go put my clothes in the washing machine

and go to my home's room because I have to go there to get to it.

And the door was locked when I tried to go in there

and I mean, usually it's not locked.

So I went and asked my dad where she was

and he looked really confused

and he just told me to go check her out to the garage.

Then Kiara explained how she went through the other bedroom door

and saw the bloody mess.

She also saw a knife.

So what had happened in that bedroom?

Kiara said she had no idea.

She hadn't heard a thing.

That was very odd to me because her bedroom

literally shared a wall with the master bedroom.

Does seem like if there was a violent struggle

someone would hear something.

The only thing I could think of on that is

I don't know how Kiara was

but I know a lot of teenagers can sleep through anything.

But what about the husband whose own story put him right down the hall?

At the sheriff's office,

Peter repeated what he told arriving officers.

How he'd spent the night on the couch.

He said that was normal for them.

And like his daughter,

Peter said he didn't hear anything unusual

coming from the bedroom all night.

The living room couch where he slept

is down the hall from the bedroom.

You would think in that situation

somebody would have heard something.

Nobody did.

By this time, District Attorney D.P.V.

and Assistant DA Philip Gregory

had been out to look at the scene.

There was so much blood you had to have heard something

and it was just concerning to everybody involved.

Where Mr. Allen was sleeping on the couch

was within 20, 25 feet of a major crime scene.

This is not a large house.

It was completely taken aback by that.

I really did not know how to take that at the time,

but facts were unfolding.

The story sounded far-fetched.

So naturally, the ranger started asking questions

about the state of Peter and Manu's marriage.

Is she involved with anybody else?

Did you suspect that?

Or were you involved with anybody else?

Did you suspect that?

My wife is a Roman old-school Roman Catholic.

Okay.

From Germany in the Barrier.

That's where we just worked for the 30 weeks.

You go to the church every Sunday?

No.

Okay.

And me, I'm a man, so I'm a dog.

I look, but I don't touch.

I'm married.

No.

He also asked about Manu's relationship

with their four children.

Any particular conflict with any of the kids?

Me and my children?

Yeah, your children?

My children will never touch my wife.

Okay.

And my wife, I want this to sound right,

that she's now built like a tank.

She's a big, big tank.

Somebody, if she...

If somebody came in, I don't know what happened.

But if somebody came in,

she could have a fight.

I'll tell you that.

But before the Ranger could probe any deeper,

there was a knock at the door.

There'd been a discovery.

Archicannon share, stop it.

Hey, this is going to be the one he's looking for.

What?

After learning his friend Manu was missing,

the lieutenant from the county next door,

David Wilk, joined the search.

He was asked to check a popular swimming hole

north of Alney called Lake Cooper.

Why Lake Cooper?

Maybe because that's where folks would go

to get away from town.

That's the only thing I can come up with.

Right as he pulled up to the lake,

he spotted something.

Oh, look at that.

That's the one.

As soon as I came on to the lake,

I could see it across over here,

parked right about here to my left.

So the SUV was here.

Could you tell if she was in the SUV?

At first, no.

I had to get out and check.

Wilk switched on his body cam.

Walked up there,

and there was nobody in or around the vehicle.

Does anything look suspicious with the vehicle?

The way it's parked, the damage it had,

the damage it had, the damage it had,

the damage it had, the damage it had,

the damage it had.

The damage it had, and how it's high-centered.

And then there was a brown smear on the left side

of the vehicle that looked like dried blood.

This was a surprise to the lieutenant.

He hadn't been told about all the blood back at the house.

Now you're thinking this could be a crime scene?

Crime scene, yes, man.

Somebody got hurt or whatever.

So I call in the tag number.

20 is going to be Texas Lincoln Sam Victor.

Verify it with our dispatch in Archer County.

That it is...

It is the one.

The one they were looking for, yes, ma'am.

Do you just start looking around?

Like, is she somewhere in the vicinity?

Yes, ma'am, that's what I'm thinking.

Maybe somebody, maybe there was a medical issue

or something, so I start looking around.

And over here, between these trees,

I see what looks like material cloth, sheets.

And I walked down this little path right here

up to the barbed wire fence,

made a left, and that's where I found Mrs. Allen.

Oh, my gosh.

Underneath those trees.

Manuela Allen was dead.

Her body wrapped in her own bloodstained bedsheets.

You know, Mrs. Allen, how chilling is this

that you're now seeing a body

that you know in your heart is her?

At this point, I'm more concerned.

First, I got to protect the crime scene.

Archer County Sheriff's Office.

Hey, this is going to be the one he's looking for.

He's not dead.

It's just heartbreaking because you know what's next.

You know that what the family doesn't know,

they're about to know.

Yes.

And the kids are about to have their hearts broken.

All the hope they had is gone.

Within minutes, Texas Rangers were on the scene,

as was Sergeant Burbeck.

What had been a missing person's case that morning

was by afternoon, a homicide.

This investigation is rapidly unfolding.

Very rapidly.

We have two crime scenes now.

Manu had been stabbed and shot.

Her body partially covered.

The killer took the time to take plants or yucca plants

and cover her face with them.

Investigators also noticed this,

a footprint in the mud next to their victim's vehicle.

And a few feet away, another clue.

One of the investigators came across a bicycle track

in the dirt leading away from where the car was parked.

Your killer could have left on a bicycle.

Correct.

Find that bicycle, find your killer.

Correct.

Down at the sheriff's office

where Manu's husband was being interviewed,

Ranger Schraub was asked to step out of the room.

I'm going to get you a bottle of water

to let your man begin thirsty.

That's when the ranger learned Manu's body had been found.

How does the interview change then

when you now have this information

and you have to walk back in to see Peter and continue?

At this point, I had to tell him,

my wife had been murdered,

but at the same time I didn't know if he was the one that did it.

So it's a delicate situation

because are you dealing with a victim in this situation

or are you dealing with a murderer?

Um, they have found her vehicle.

Where?

Um, to the neighboring county

and there's a body next to it.

A dead body?

Yeah.

But we haven't confirmed

100% that it's her

but considering the circumstances,

we believe it is.

We have people,

I think there's going to be a criminal investigation.

Yeah.

No sh**.

We're on the road.

So your house is going to be part of the crime scene.

Of course, Manu's children had to be told as well.

Schraub offered to do it,

but Peter said he wanted to break the news himself.

Also, I don't respect that.

Maybe crime, but I haven't made it up.

By now, the Allen's son William

and daughter Melanie,

who'd been out of town,

had joined Darian and Chiara.

They were waiting in a room down the hall.

I walked in there,

I had them all,

I had called them all,

my kids over,

I gave them all a hug,

I held them,

we all held each other

and I said,

you just told me your mother is dead.

Manu is dead.

That's the most difficult thing a father would ever have to do.

Yeah, it wasn't easy.

But,

it wasn't easy.

Ranger Schraub was watching the scene unfold.

I kept the video running

because I wanted to be able to look at those reactions.

Interesting.

Because we didn't know who was responsible for this.

Now they broke into the house.

They'd attack your mother while she was asleep.

They'd find the crime in front of your mother.

They'd have that positive idea.

They all started crying.

My youngest daughter Chiara

kind of collapsed on the floor.

Did you see any of the family members

acting unusual or anything that struck you from that video?

It did.

I immediately noticed that

her son was kind of

away from everybody else.

Darian, the son police had found playing video games in his room.

What would his story be?

In the very beginning of the interview,

he was visibly shaking,

which concerned me.

Darian Allen remembers it like it was yesterday.

The moment his father told him and his siblings

their mother had been murdered.

I was so crushed that I

didn't know how to emotionally react.

I didn't start crying.

I just

didn't know how to emotionally react.

I didn't start crying.

I just

stopped

doing anything, really.

Like this isn't happening?

Yeah, it was just like

all the air just got sucked out of me

and just there's nothing.

It's like this is not real.

Darian sat alone on the floor

while his dad and siblings comforted one another.

I definitely thought it was odd.

At the time, it was something that I noted

to myself personally.

I thought it was strange.

I considered a suspect at all,

a person of interest.

Yeah, at that point,

everybody in the house

is definitely a person of interest.

He would have been one of them,

along with Kiara and Peter.

Ranger Schraub pulled Darian aside

to talk in another room.

His body camera still rolling.

In the very beginning of the interview,

he was visibly shaking,

which concerned me that he may have something to do with it.

Why?

Just that reaction,

I have to then decide

whether he was visibly shaking

because his mother was murdered that day

and the emotional stress and everything

or is it because he had something to do with it?

He asked Darian where he'd been the night before.

Darian told us the same story he told the Ranger.

He got home from a friend's around 11.30.

He couldn't sleep and spent the entire night

awake in his room.

What are you doing in your room?

I was just playing video games,

just hopping from one to the other,

take a break, eat a snack,

try to fall asleep.

Just a little cycle of play,

eat, attempt to sleep.

What was going on that night that you...

Honestly, couldn't tell you.

I just couldn't sleep.

I just felt off.

He says he heard a rustling coming from the kitchen,

sometime between 3 and 5 a.m.

I thought it was my dad,

like, rifling through this silverware.

It was just kind of like the clanking of metal

and I was like, well, he's awake,

getting himself a snack,

I don't think anything of it.

Was that the only thing you heard?

Yeah, that was it.

If there was a violent struggle

in that small house,

you would think that you would hear something.

Yeah, you would think in that situation

somebody would have heard something,

never seen anything like it

or never heard of anything like it.

Darian told the investigator

he and his mom were close,

but they didn't exactly see

eye-to-eye on his future.

She's on to you about getting a job

or really just...

No, she was just helping me out.

She's kind of a little disagreement,

because I don't want to go to college,

but I just want to go to college.

The ranger noticed a mark on Darian's hand.

What did you do to your hand right there?

This?

Not that.

The blister.

Mow in the yard.

He described the blister as from mowing the yard

and so forth,

which I guess could be understandable,

but a blister could also be left

from stabbing somebody,

potentially from the knife rubbing

on the inside of your hand.

Do you have anything to do with your mother's?

No.

Do you know who it is?

The ranger also spoke to the other Allen kids.

21-year-old William was on his own,

no longer living in the house.

Any idea who may be responsible for this?

No, no, I wish I didn't.

I don't know anyone who didn't want to hurt him.

Okay.

He also spoke to Melanie.

She was 18 years old

and had just graduated from high school.

You're in college?

I'm about to school.

Okay.

Melanie was away for the weekend with friends

the night of the murder.

Who would you think that might be responsible for it?

I obviously have no idea

because everyone only loves my parents.

I don't know who would do something like that.

It was late in the day

when the whole family

was allowed to leave the sheriff's office.

Their house was still a crime scene.

They had nowhere to go.

Their whole world in pieces.

Everything got just not even flipped upside down.

It was like just shoved in a box,

box shaken,

and then just thrown it everywhere.

And you're just left to kind of pick up the pieces

and try to put it back how it was.

But some pieces are missing,

some are destroyed,

and you just,

you're not giving a guide on how to do it.

The family spent the night at a friend's Airbnb.

By the next morning,

Manu's murder was rocking the town of Olney

and all the kids who'd loved her as a teacher.

It was just like,

almost like a tornado went through only.

Everyone was all confused.

We don't know what's going on.

Was everyone instantly scared?

Scared and shocked.

Like, why would we go for Miss Allen?

Students, parents, football fans,

everyone in law enforcement

knew their town would never be the same.

It hit you more in a small community

when something happens.

Because if you don't know that person,

you know someone that does know that person.

It just has a ripple effect.

Olney is small-town America.

You know, you've got the potential of a killer

still running around in the streets.

So you're filling the external pressure

from the community to get it done.

And then you have the internal pressure

as an investigator or a prosecutor

to make sure it's done right.

And the more they looked at the evidence,

the more convinced they were that Manu's killer

was someone close to her.

There was no sign of forced entry.

Someone was either inside

or they knew how to get into that house.

Correct.

Yeah, somebody knew what they were doing

and where they were going.

They even knew where Manu kept her car keys.

Usually, her keys are hanging right there.

Investigators saw a trail of bloody footprints

that led right from the bedroom

to those keys in the kitchen.

The keys were always kept by the refrigerator,

and that would have been something

that would have been known to the family.

The day after the murder,

the medical examiner performed the autopsy.

She had been stabbed like 47 times.

There had been strangulation involved.

She had also received stab wounds to the back of the head,

which just seemed very, very violent.

So she's been stabbed dozens of times, strangled,

shot in the face.

Forgive my choice of words.

Why the overkill?

It's personal.

Whoever did this was very angry.

The clues at the lake where her body was dumped

reinforced that idea.

Manu knew her killer.

The effort that was taken at the scene

where she was covered and then plants were put on her,

that all took time.

And typically, somebody that has no vested interest

in the victim is not going to take that time

to do those types of things.

So who would do that?

Investigators thought they had a pretty good idea

because back at the house,

the evidence seemed to be pointing toward one person.

Okay, why would somebody put on your socks

and kill your wife?

I have no idea.

From the moment they set foot on the Allen's property,

investigators had a hunch about who was responsible

for what happened there.

The husband.

I actually pulled Officer Clark to the side and told him,

I said, I think that we might be dealing with our suspect.

Peter?

Yes.

He's probably going to be our number one suspect.

Why did you feel that way?

From experience and dealing with different crime scenes

in the past.

It felt like the information that he was giving us

was trying to throw us in a different direction

than what had actually occurred.

The coroner let investigators know

that Manu had defensive wounds on her hands.

This had not been a quick struggle.

How could you not hear your wife screaming

if she's being attacked?

Sounds crazy.

Asked what everybody thought.

Five days in, investigators asked Peter

to come back down to the sheriff's office.

Let's start the interview by Jason Sherry.

That was Peter.

Going into this second interview,

did you think Peter was probably guilty?

I thought it was a good possibility, yeah, absolutely.

What is the strategy this time?

We tried to just put a little more pressure on him.

Another ranger actually did that interview at my request.

The goal there was to see what type of reaction he gave.

I feel a lot better.

The conversation was friendly at first.

Peter opened up about how hard things had been

since the murder.

You're going to do some clinics?

Are you good?

I've been crying for five days.

Sometimes I cry, sometimes I'm so pissed.

Sometimes I'm so outraged.

And he made it clear he wanted whoever was responsible to pay.

I want to talk to him.

I want to see if I'm dead.

The ranger walked him through his whole story again.

When was the last time you saw your wife?

Well, I didn't want to leave that.

They talked for hours.

I said, well, just go around through the garage.

I had one drink during the day.

I slept on a couch.

I never thought something like this could happen.

And then?

I don't be honest with you, Peter.

And we've been sitting here for probably four or five hours

right now talking.

I think there's more to it than what you're telling me.

I didn't do this.

Just listen to me.

There were so many details the ranger thought were suspicious,

starting with Peter's assumption that his wife had cut herself

and driven off to the hospital.

We hauled ass to the emergency room at Oldie.

Normally a person, I thought, would have called 911

and reported the scene that they found.

But no, it did not make sense.

Yeah, because like, you must be thinking,

I mean, wouldn't she wake up her husband and say,

I've hurt myself.

I need help.

Can you drive me to the hospital?

Or can you call 911?

Yeah.

You knew whoever left that blood was not a wife

because that is too much blood.

It was even more far-fetched because Peter said

he was a green beret who'd seen fatal injuries.

You knew that, too, because of your training.

I didn't know that, too.

I thought my wife was hurt, and I was hoping and praying

she was hurt.

Nobody wants to think that their wife has been murdered

in their house while they sit in the living room.

What kind of man do you think it makes me feel like

knowing that I was sitting in there

while some a** was in there killing my wife?

As Peter went over the details of that night,

there was something else that didn't make sense.

I heard it start up, and then all of a sudden

I didn't hear anything more.

He said that morning around 5 a.m.

he heard his wife's car.

I was thinking maybe my wife went to Halstead

to get some coffee or something.

I don't know.

Did she usually get up at 5 and go check go get coffee?

Well, every once in a while she would get up

and go get milk, but that didn't make sense,

but we had just been shot in the day before.

Right.

None of this makes sense to me.

None of it.

Why would Peter hear that and not a violent

murder in progress?

In this second interview, Peter did recall

hearing something in the house that night after all.

A thump.

I heard a little thump, and I thought

my son coming down from upstairs,

and that was it.

Thump, and I'm like, whatever has got to be daring.

They also pressed him about some other details,

like the footprints leading straight

from the bedroom to the kitchen.

Peter would know where his wife kept her car keys.

People don't go straight in the house

and know exactly where your keys are at

to take the keys either.

I know, that doesn't make sense either.

And then, there in the interview room,

the Ranger had a surprise for Peter.

They had found a sock in the bedroom covered in blood

and thought that sock matched some

of the killer's footprints.

Turns out, it was a specific kind

of compression sock Peter wore.

The person who did this

did not break into your house

and put on your socks and kill your wife.

It didn't happen.

Hey, Peter.

I did not hurt my wife.

I don't, I cannot explain this.

I don't know what happened.

Okay, why would somebody put on your socks

and kill your wife?

I have no idea.

Wearing your socks?

Yeah, wearing my socks, it makes no sense.

It didn't make any sense they sneak into your room,

put on your socks, kill your wife,

go get the keys where nobody knew,

except for you and your kids

and leave without letting anybody

without anybody hearing it.

It makes no sense at all.

I have no idea.

I did not harm my wife.

What do you make of Peter and his answers

and his demeanor with the pressure

that's being put on him?

Peter often brought up, you know,

past military training,

so I wasn't sure if he was just covering up

what he had done,

was able to stay calm

and collected as he had been trained to do

in stressful situations

or if he was an innocent party.

When this thing comes to the head

and a jury believes

you stabbed your wife 46 times,

they're going to put you in the electric chair.

I did not do it.

Did you feel like his denials,

his answers seemed genuine?

I did not know at that point.

I'm innocent and I know it

and my kids know it.

And if I lose,

I lose.

If you put me in an electric chair,

I lose my kids, my kids lose their father,

but at least I go down

knowing

that I didn't do this

and had nothing to do with this.

After more than five hours,

Peter was free to leave.

You let him go.

Your judicial system is

if you don't have enough,

then you have to let him go.

So that's what we did

and we kept digging

and kept going forward

with the investigation.

Turns out someone else

close to Peter

was going to do some investigating, too.

I sat on the couch

and I had Darien going in the back

into his mother's bedroom.

I said, scream at me.

Scream as loud as you can.

Manu Allen had been dead

for five days

when her husband Peter

walked out of his second marathon

interview with police.

Are you feeling like

I'm suspect number one here?

Yeah.

I was waiting for the cuffs to come out.

They're just turning up the heat on you.

Oh, yeah.

They tried.

I didn't care if they thought I was a suspect.

Because

I expected them

to think I was a suspect.

It only made sense.

The one who it usually is

is the spouse.

So I fully expected that.

Word spreads that your dad might have done this.

How were you all dealing with that?

It was very, very irritating

because there was just

all over Facebook

and social media people

saying I was husband

or daughter.

Hell, there was people

I know

and had worked part-time jobs with

who were saying it was me.

Why were people saying you did it?

I don't know. I really don't.

The one I remember is hearing a friend

tell me one of his co-workers said

that it was me.

I guess I always gave him a weird vibe

or something.

But it wasn't just town gossips

making wild guesses.

Peter's close friend,

is a former police chief who knows a thing

or two about homicide investigations.

And like Peter,

he's retired military.

He knows what kind of training Peter's had.

He has certain capabilities.

You're thinking he might have done this?

I'm thinking maybe something might happen.

In my line of work, I've seen people

that have very devoted to each other

suddenly have problems.

Burl drove down from Arkansas

to help the family.

He found Peter on the front porch.

He was just talking about how they took her from me.

You know, how I failed.

I mean, he was into

his shame.

Feeling the way you're feeling.

Did you ask him?

Did you have anything to do with this?

The next day, I said, Peter,

you're my friend, I'll support you.

You know, I love your wife, I love your kids.

And I said, I got to know.

And what did he say?

He was face to face with me.

He says, I did not do this.

Like the Rangers investigating the case,

Burl had a hard time believing

that Manu was killed in the house

and no one in the family heard a thing.

The house has two stories.

Five bedrooms and two bathrooms

packed into just 2,000 square feet.

He decided to run a test

and asked Darian to help.

I sat on the couch and I had Darian

going to the back to his mother's bedroom

and I said, scream at me.

I yelled as loud as I could.

They were in the living room.

I didn't hear anything.

At best, they just heard like a little bit.

And then we switched it around

and I mean, I'm 30 years younger than them

and I have a little better hearing

and it wasn't loud.

I wanted to hear it for myself.

First, Burl showed me the bedroom.

You're actually standing where Manu failed.

So this is where the blood was right here?

Then I went down the hall.

About 20 steps later, I was in the living room.

This is Peter and Manu's living room

and back then the couch was situated right here.

We've also set the TV

to the exact volume that it was

in those early morning hours when this happened.

Then Burl, still in the bedroom,

yelled my name over and over again.

Andrea.

Not hearing anything?

Andrea.

Nothing.

Not even a peak.

I was a little skeptical because this is not

such a big house and I figured

you would definitely be able to hear

if somebody was screaming.

It's very quiet back here.

You've got to understand the construction of the house.

This is a board on board construction

and the layout of the house

makes it just nearly impossible

to communicate through those rooms.

So, thinking like a former police chief,

Burl now wondered if not Peter, then who?

Burl agreed with the investigators

that the attack was personal.

You're thinking this is targeted.

Whoever did this knows this family.

Somebody came in,

somebody knew the family

and knew what they were after

and they completed their mission.

That's what was very disturbing about it.

And something in the blood trail

caught Burl's eye.

To him, it seemed the killer had paused

for a moment outside of one of the kids' bedrooms.

Melonies.

I'm going, okay.

Melanie knew these people.

They went to her door.

Melonies knew these people

because they went to her door.

Burl urged Peter to be patient with the investigation.

His question was,

why aren't they looking for this person?

And I said, look, they have to go through a process.

There's a process that must be maintained

for the integrity of the case.

I said, if you're going to get it right,

you have to be looked at.

You know your dad better than anyone.

Was there any part of you that was thinking,

could my dad have done this?

Not for a second.

I thought it was him.

In fact, Darian and his father

were leaning on each other

for support and protection.

Locked the doors,

sleep with the gun.

You're kind of always a little paranoid.

Was there that feeling that like,

what if this person comes back

or they want our whole family?

Yeah, there was always that feeling.

From the very first day,

as soon as we got back to the house,

we made sure every window was secure.

We put three inch crews

through the wooden window trim

into the sills.

Made it into a fortress.

Things for the Allen family

were either about to get much worse

or much better.

Because investigators had found a new witness,

someone who'd been on his way

to Lake Cooper the morning

Manu was killed.

He just asked the worker, hey,

have you seen anything unusual this morning?

The worker actually said,

matter of fact, I did.

Darian Allen plays it over and over again

in his mind, the last time

he spoke to his mother, Manu.

The last thing I said to her

was, I'm gonna go.

I'm gonna go.

I'm gonna go to my friend's house.

I'll see you later.

And it just tears me up.

Because I didn't tell her good night.

I didn't tell her I love her.

Yeah.

Well, you don't need to say it.

She knew it.

Right?

And I'm sure you'd said it a million times.

No, yeah.

Now, it was up to Texas Ranger

Michael Schwab to figure out who killed her.

I often tell people, you know,

it's like a thousand-piece puzzle.

You're never gonna get the puzzle all the way completed.

But you have to put enough of it together

to where you know what's in the picture.

Evidence from the house was still being tested.

Fingerprints, footprints,

and possible DNA.

What I felt like at that point

was that if Peter had something to do with it,

then something would come up

as far as the physical evidence go

confirming that he had something to do with it.

And don't forget, there was evidence

from the other crime scene as well.

Remember that bike track at the lake

next to Manu's car?

Investigators talked to a witness

who had been by Lake Cooper that very morning.

He just asked the worker,

hey, have you seen anything unusual this morning?

And the worker actually said,

you know, matter of fact, I did.

While I was out here this morning,

I saw a bicycle go by on the road.

I never see bicycles out here

at that time on Sunday morning.

This is potentially a really lucky break here.

Oh, potentially, yes.

Did your witness get a good look

at who was on the bicycle?

No, they just had a bicycle

going down the road at a distance.

The rangers' next move

was to check the bikes in the Allen family's garage.

The tires look like they even matched

what was found at the scene,

so we didn't believe that any of those bicycles

had anything to do with it.

As suspicious as they'd found the stories

from the people in the house that night,

investigators had to consider

a different scenario.

It had to do with something everyone in town

knew about the Allens.

Peter is a gun collector.

Did you think to yourself,

maybe given Peter's extensive gun collection

that people know about,

maybe this was some type of burglary gone bad?

Absolutely.

When you looked at all the guns

and everything, that's often

a target of thefts

and burglaries is people still in guns.

And I don't think he was shy

about talking about his gun collection either.

It could be worth a lot of money to someone

if they broke in and stole a bunch of guns.

It could be.

The ranger knew the family was just back

from summer vacation in Germany.

Maybe a burglar thought they were still away.

Then they discovered, oh my, you know,

she's here.

And Manuela, you know, startled them

and the violence started

at that point and they killed her.

This could in fact be a stranger

despite the level of rage.

Absolutely. I mean, you have to leave everything

or keep an open mind.

In fact, there had been a gun burglary

in town just that summer.

My friend's dad,

his house got broken into

and a couple of his firearms and some money

had gotten stolen.

So this could be a target?

Yeah. Everybody knows that he's kind of a collector

The sheriff's office started sifting

through leads related to that break-in

and a name popped up.

Corey Taylor.

Who is he?

He's a troubled young man.

He's got some run-ins with the law.

Just small town,

struggling kid.

This is a video investigators pulled

from Corey's Snapchat account.

Corey was 17 and went to Ulney High School.

What can you tell us about Corey Taylor?

So we had

kind of like athletes

banned and then

other kids.

He wasn't in football. He wasn't in ban.

So he's kind of off on his own

and he was kind of quiet.

Was he known to be a troublemaker?

Maybe a little troublemaker. He was one of those kids.

Like, I'm not going to do my homework.

I don't need to be in school type stuff.

I was contacted by the investigators

and asked to go to Ulney

and pick up Mr. Taylor

to the sheriff's office for an interview.

Sergeant Burbeck

drove to an apartment building where Corey was staying.

As he approached the stairwell

something caught his eye.

Underneath the stairs is a little storage area

and I see a

a bicycle that

is stored in that little cubby hole.

The tread on the bicycle

looked like it could have

created the impressions that were at the lake.

Now lots of people have bikes, but...

It was a long shot.

I mean, I looked at it and it just kind of...

the light bulb went off.

Yeah, you're feeling something here.

Possible, yes.

Find that bicycle.

Find your killer.

Was this the bike investigators had been looking for?

Sergeant

Dan Burbeck

arrived to pick up Corey Taylor.

The teenager investigators

thought might be involved in that gun burglary

in town.

So I go ahead and knock on the door

and Corey comes to the door.

Does he look surprised?

Or is he acting funny?

Nervous, but not

nervous.

I don't know.

I don't know.

Nervous, but not

surprised.

Of course, the first thing the sergeant wanted to know about

was that bike he'd seen under the stairwell.

I asked him who it belonged to.

And it was it his?

No, it gave me the name of Julius Mullins.

And who's Julius Mullins?

To me, at that time, I had no idea.

I didn't know him.

The sergeant may not have known that name,

but if you went to the Olney football games,

you'd know number three, Julius Mullins

was a running back on the Cubs.

Was he the kind of guy that you wanted on your team?

Yes.

That you knew he was going to give it his all and back you up?

Yes, he would always have your back

and he would run every play you asked him to.

He would get it done.

Did you go to all the games?

Oh, yeah.

I played varsity football on that same field

and to go there and watch him

was definitely a proud moment.

A proud moment says Julius' dad Adrian

for a kid who'd had plenty of struggles.

He was super hyper.

I mean, I know a lot of people say

their children have ADHD

and just his focus on stuff.

It was almost none, you know.

It was kind of just flying everywhere.

Adrian says he and his wife made every effort

to get Julius' help.

He says they got a mental health treatment.

But in middle school, Julius got in trouble

and spent time in juvenile detention.

By sophomore year,

he was struggling with his grades

but was excelling on the football field.

He also had a girlfriend.

Remember, Manu and Peter's daughter

dated a football player?

That was Julius Mullins.

That same kid Manu Allen

had taken under her wing at school.

She definitely was in his corner

and wanted to help him any way she could.

She was definitely a good influence for him.

His dad recalls the relationship

with Melanie was an intense first love.

I think you might have been too caught up

in the relationship.

As young, young love,

that will happen.

After about a year of dating,

they broke up.

Kids at school recall that was intense too.

Did he take it hard?

I think so.

Because at the beginning of the year,

super nice, you know,

set up, would always talk.

Towards the end of the year,

he kind of sat back in his chair,

had a hood up, kind of more quiet.

And I was like, that's different.

After that, he's just kind of

hung out with wrong people.

He started drinking?

He started drinking.

I knew he was smoking marijuana.

He was skipping school a lot.

And it got worse.

He had gotten

charged with

marijuana possession

and I told him that

I couldn't have that around other kids.

His dad gave him an ultimatum.

Straighten your life out and go to school

or find a new place to live.

I'm going to be on the law now.

Right. I tried to

focus him on

how he could, you know, keep on track.

But

he wasn't taking, he didn't

adhere to my advice, you know.

So Julius crashed where he could,

sometimes sleeping in the high school gym,

sometimes staying with Corey.

Now, Sergeant Burbeck was looking at his

bicycle under the stairs

and reporting back to the Rangers.

I call investigators

and tell them about the bike

and they said,

yes, absolutely go get him.

And so I went back.

I asked him to accompany me to the sheriff's office.

The Rangers

were about to talk to both Julius and

Corey.

First, Corey told

police that he knew nothing

about the murder.

Said he'd never even been inside

the Allen House.

You've never been in there?

No.

By this time,

the Rangers knew Corey's friend Julius was

Melanie's ex, knew he had a connection

to the Allen family.

So the conversation quickly turned to Julius.

So what has he told

you about

Ms. Allen going missing?

He hasn't really said anything

to me, but

it's weird to have it like he didn't

even cry or nothing.

He supposedly was real close with

me.

I would cry if I was any closer

because

she was really nice to me in the hall.

Then

Corey said something that really got their attention.

They started bringing guns

in my house.

And he scared me in my grandma.

How did he scare you?

He just had a little iffy.

Corey ends up telling me

he had brought guns

to his house.

I don't know if this is a potential

could have been a suspect in this

trying to steal Peter's guns.

Do you think Julius had anything to do with it?

He might have something to do with it

because

he's been in their house.

He knows what it looks like.

He probably knows where everything's at.

That was the story from one teenager.

Maybe his friend did it.

What would the other one have to say?

I still love you.

I would never do something like that to you.

I would always love you.

I would insist.

I would love to see you.

I would love to.

Julius Mullins had been close

with the Allen family,

I have rules in my house."

Truth be told, Peter wasn't crazy about Julius as a boyfriend.

We both thought he was a very nice, seemed like a decent enough, nice enough young man,

but an idiot.

But if you try to break up your children's relationship with somebody that you know is

not right with them, it just pushes them together.

And this is, so we just pull back and stay out of it, let her figure out this on her own.

Darian remembers that after the breakup, Julius had been trying to get back together with

Melanie.

She said she'd received some weird messages from Julius.

They were just basically along the lines of him begging her to take him back and wanting

to talk to her and still be with her and whatnot, but she just didn't answer him.

Then after Manu's murder, Julius reached out again.

He was trying to be the one to comfort her, but I mean, she wasn't going for it at all.

She found it odd.

Odd, because Melanie had a bad feeling about her ex.

She'd initially told police she had no idea who could have killed her mother.

I don't know.

I love my hair.

I don't know who would do something like that.

But the next day she went back to police to tell them she did have an idea.

Maybe it was Julius.

She wanted investigators to know her ex-boyfriend claimed he'd been in a gang and that he had

an obsession with knives.

Melanie actually suggested that he may have had something to do with it as well.

But again, we're talking about an ex-boyfriend situation and you don't know how much weight

to put into that.

Peter had also mentioned Julius to investigators.

If you get mad at my older dogs and they can break them up, so I'm not saying he's

such a...

I'm saying that that's who you know.

But in those early days of the investigation, they were looking hard at Peter.

Despite those two tips, they hadn't gotten around to tracking Julius down for an interview.

But now, after investigators found his bike, Julius was in an interrogation room and the

Rangers had plenty of questions.

Tell me about Miss Allen.

She's probably one of the people that's actually helped me the most.

She was like basically coming by their mom because she like helped me out with stuff.

She told me to get my s*** together.

She was a really nice lady.

But when it came to Melanie's father, Julius knew Peter didn't like him much.

Was there a unique type of beef between you and her parents at all?

No.

The beef...

The only type of beef I think was just between me and her dad because I was dating her.

So how long did you and Melanie date?

I think about a year and a couple months.

Why don't you break up?

She said she wanted a break and then I was like, okay, I'll file with that.

Julius conceded the breakup had been hard and he admitted he wasn't completely over

it by the time he and Melanie texted about her mother's murder.

She was like, my mom was murdered and I was like, what do you mean?

And she said, my mother's blood flowed through her ankle and I was like, I was shocked.

Like he hit me like hard.

He told the Rangers he was aware that Melanie was suspicious of him.

She'd already lashed out by text.

She was like a murderous bastard killing my mother and then she was like, she was like

she said all these other things like towards me and she was like, was it you?

Was it you and a friend?

He's like, is y'all planning this?

But I like, I wanted to like look at her and be like, are you serious?

Who do you think did this?

But they don't know.

Is there a daughter or a daughter pretty bad?

You want me to be honest with you, Julia?

They think you did it.

Yeah, she texted me and she thought that I did it and I told her I was like, Melanie,

Melanie, I still love you, I'll never do something like that to you.

But like the investigators, Melanie knew the killer had to be someone familiar with their

home and family.

That stood out to the DA when she saw their text exchanges.

Melanie, the sharp little girl, because she inquired of him, hey, did you do this?

Because you knew where my mom's car keys were and the footprints that went into the kitchen,

the bloody footprints went straight to the car keys and out the door to the car.

So what we'll do here in a minute is I'll get your DNA.

Julius willingly gave up his DNA and the Rangers released him.

But it turns out they wouldn't have to wait for the forensic test to come back from the

crime.

That very afternoon, Ranger Schraub went to collect the bicycle and ran into Julius.

I asked him to let me see the bottom of his shoe and then I was like, that looks like

that shoe matches the footprint that was out at the lake as well.

They quickly determined the footprint at the lake matched Julius' shoe and the tire track,

it matched his bike.

With all that, I felt like I had enough and I wanted to present this information to a

judge and see if they agreed with me.

The judge did.

Julius was placed under arrest and brought back to the interview room, this time in handcuffs.

Do you just go into this hoping for a confession?

Oh, I always want a confession as long as it's true.

Yeah, I absolutely went in and hoping that Julius would confess to me on what he did

and tell me the truth about all the circumstances surrounding it.

We know that you were out there, but not only that, but we know your shoes were out there.

And not only that, but we know your bicepals were out there.

But everything's already starting to point towards you.

Julius was quiet at first.

Why are you not giving us a little more information?

I don't know.

You want to talk about this somewhere else besides this room?

Is the camera keeping you from talking?

Just tell me how that happened and how you got involved.

After 30 minutes, Julius wanted a break.

I think if you watched the interview where he pulled Julius outside so Julius could smoke

a cigarette outside and you could tell that that point in time Julius was at a breaking point.

Sure enough, after a cigarette, they sat down with Julius in the police break room,

and he began to confess.

They killed the a** in law.

How does he go from, you know, denying to, I did it?

I think he realized that he was caught at that point, and he just didn't have anywhere else to go.

What time did you go to the house when you actually killed her?

2 a.m.

Someone you went in there with she asleep?

Yeah.

Julius described how he used a knife to stab Manu over and over again.

She screamed a lot.

She got up.

Then what happened?

She slammed her on the ground.

You slammed her on the ground?

Where at?

She went for the door.

I walked in the kitchen.

I went in there, grabbed the keys.

Then he said he dragged her out of the house into her car and drove her to the lake.

How did you get her to her final spot?

I had a driver.

You had a driver? How did you do that?

I put a blanket underneath there and carried the blanket.

So you shot her right there?

I didn't even know if I had her and I just pulled the trigger and it ran.

What did you cover her up with?

I don't know what they call it.

Two little spanky plans.

Julius was formally charged with Manu's murder and booked into the county jail.

I had my man right there.

But the biggest question was, why?

It turns out Julius had an answer for that.

And what he had to say brought investigators right back to where they started.

He told me here's what's going to happen.

Adrian Mullins had just come home from work when his son Julius called with alarming news.

He was being questioned by investigators.

What's going through your mind?

It was just like my stomach was in my chest, you know?

It was hard to breathe.

What are you thinking it's about?

I assumed it had to do with Manuela, but I don't know to what extent.

The extent would soon become clear.

I didn't know that he had confessed until he got a lawyer.

And then he told you?

Yeah.

18-year-old Julius Mullins is charged in connection with the murder of the mother of four.

When Peter Allen learned that Julius had confessed to Manu's murder,

he says all he could think about was revenge.

You were going to go into that jail and kill Julius?

Oh, yes.

That's intense.

It's the truth.

And my youngest daughter said to me, Dad, don't do anything that will get you taken away from us.

We've already lost mom.

We can't lose you, too.

And I realized that she was right.

Even though Melanie had raised the alarm about Julius early on,

her brother still had a hard time absorbing the news.

I was very shocked, very surprised.

I only really remember being around him once at the house.

How did Melanie take this, that this was her ex-boyfriend that she had broken up with?

She took it very, very hard.

It was really hard on her.

The last person I would have thought really was Julius.

I was like, why? Why Miss Allen? Why Julius? Why just a bunch of whys?

He's the guy that, you know, backed you up on the football field.

Yeah, it all didn't make sense.

But investigators had a theory that might make sense of it.

All along, they'd suspected that more than one person had been involved that night.

I thought it was improbable or not likely that a single person could move Miss Allen away from that house

with her family asleep in the house, and nobody knew.

So from the moment they brought Julius into the room in handcuffs,

they repeatedly suggested he hadn't acted alone.

I think they've been helping somebody out.

They asked him again.

Are you just the old person responsible for this?

And again.

I don't think you're the old person responsible for this.

Julius, who else is involved? Who else is involved, Julius?

Eventually, Julius told them someone else was involved.

A name that didn't surprise the ranger at all.

He ended up claiming that Peter Allen put him up to it.

Peter, Manu's husband, the initial suspect.

Yep.

How did Peter find you to get you involved?

Tell us at Alsup's.

Alsup's, the town convenience store, right down the street from the Allen house.

Julius said he ran into Peter there hours before the murder.

He told me to get in the car.

So I was like, all right, we have to go.

He pulled out a gun.

Locked the doors.

Right here in my gate.

He told me he was like, I'm really going to tell you this once.

And he said, if you tell anybody else,

I'm going to kill your entire family.

He claimed that when he sat down in the car that Peter pulled him close to him

and stuck a gun up to him.

And told him you're going to kill my wife.

He told me he left that, he unlocked that window.

And he told me, here's what's going to happen.

You're going to go in there.

You're doing what's right.

What did he tell you to do after you got in there?

He told me he left a butterfly knife.

On the counter.

I thought that's what I would have to use to kill her.

He told me exactly what to do.

He told me to go for her head.

And Peter, he was awake.

He was just sitting on the couch.

He watched me do it.

He couldn't see you from there, right?

In the bedroom you were there.

So Mr. Allen just sat in the living room the whole time?

He held me, take her and put her in the car.

Did he say why Peter wanted him to kill his wife

given that everyone said that they had a good relationship?

Peter didn't tell him.

He just told him to do it.

You made a bad decision.

You couldn't make a better decision.

You would wake her up and tell her that her husband

was just going to be killed.

I don't know.

I wish you would have called us.

He said he was going to kill my family if I did that.

I don't believe him.

He's a green beret.

Toward the end of the interview,

the ranger took Julius outside for another cigarette

and went over parts of the story again.

Let me make sure I got this right.

So after he made contact with you and all sorts,

you left all sorts.

Went to the car, stayed there for like,

honestly, except they're not thinking of ways

that I could not do it.

Because I wanted to believe that he was wrong

if he wouldn't do what he said he was going to do to my family.

But me knowing him and how many guns he had.

Investigators had this story

and it seemed the husband may have been involved after all.

Just one problem.

I did not believe Julius' story at all.

We got a chance to ask Julius ourselves.

I feel like there's something you're not saying.

I feel like there's more to this story.

Melanie's ex-boyfriend had admitted it was him.

He was the person who'd sneaked into the Allen House,

stabbed Manu to death,

and dumped her body by the lake.

He'd also implicated Manu's husband, Peter, in the plot.

Investigators didn't make that part of the confession public right away.

Instead, they worked to nail it down.

I told Julius, I said,

if you're telling me the truth,

then I'm going to be able to prove it.

I'm going to find the evidence to prove it.

There was plenty of evidence to prove Julius was the killer.

Julius' fingerprints and DNA were in the house and in Manu's car.

They also found surveillance video from a bank,

and there was Julius on that bike coming home from the lake early that morning.

But prosecutor D.P.V. saw problems right away

with the teenager's explanation for why he did it.

It seemed just like he had been caught and he was grabbing at straws.

Did you have any involvement in your wife's murder?

Did you threaten Julius and tell him to kill your wife?

I had nothing to do whatsoever with my wife ever being touched,

ever being harmed, anything.

My wife was my soulmate.

She's the one who gave me a heart.

He's the one who took it away.

Sure enough, a little investigating proved Julius' story about Peter was riddled with holes.

There was no evidence to support it.

No surveillance video of a meeting outside the convenience store.

No telephone calls or social media communication between the two of them.

Remember that bloody compression sock that investigators hammered Peter about?

Turns out it had Julius' DNA on it.

But didn't Julius need help moving the body?

Maybe not.

I did know that he had been a football player,

and I know that a dribbling can play a role in these sorts of things.

When all the lab reports came in, the results seemed clear to the investigators.

With regard to Peter Allen's involvement, there was no physical evidence whatsoever

that linked him to this murder.

The only person that really tried to link him to this murder was Julius Mullins.

Why would Julius say you're involved if you weren't involved,

if he's already admitted to doing the killing?

One thing about the human condition, we always try to make excuses for what we've done.

Very few people will actually take responsibility.

Investigators spent months trying to figure out if anyone else helped Julius and came up empty.

They found no evidence that Corey Taylor was involved,

but he and Julius did admit to committing that gun burglary at another house.

Manu's murder case never went to trial.

Julius pleaded guilty to murder and was given a 55-year sentence.

As part of the deal, he promised to tell the truth about what happened.

He agreed to tell us the story as well.

Why did you want to do this interview?

To try to give the family and people who have questions about why it happened, some closure.

I've interviewed the Allen family. I've interviewed your father.

He loves you unconditionally.

They're all in so much pain.

And the biggest question that they have, Julius, is why?

Why did you do this to Manu?

I got scared when I'd went into their house.

It wasn't with the intent to hurt anybody.

He had guns and that's what I was going there to get.

What you're saying is the why is a burglary gone bad?

Yes, ma'am.

Other people believe that this was revenge,

that for the breakup with Melanie, that you were trying to get back at her.

I wouldn't do something like that to try to get revenge because I had already made my peace with that.

It would never be and that's kind of where I left it.

Take us through that night. What exactly happened?

I rode on my bike and I went through the garage window.

Then I started looking for guns.

I found one in the bedroom, in the cabinet.

By the time that I had gotten it out, I had jarred the desk a little bit.

I woke up Miss Allen and she sees me and I was kind of frozen for a minute.

I saw a butterfly knife on the dresser and I got scared.

I jumped on top of her and I just started stabbing her.

Why grab a knife just because she saw you?

She knows you.

This is not a really bad scenario if she finds you in her room.

It's not great, but if you haven't done anything, why pick up a knife?

I didn't know. I don't know really why I did that.

I got scared and thinking about being in my other placements, I just didn't want to go back.

He's referring to the time he spent in juvenile detention.

You're thinking in that moment, in that split second, I'm going to pay for this.

They're going to send me away somewhere.

Yeah, adrenaline took over and I just, I don't know.

This is a woman who cared about you, who welcomed you into her family.

Where's that rage coming from?

I'm not sure. Yeah, I just made the wrong choice.

It's one thing to say I made the wrong choice, but this is stabbing a woman 47 times.

I mean, this is evil.

Yeah, I agree with you.

Julius admitted the whole story about Peter's involvement was a lie.

I was alone. It was just me.

Even after the fact, no one helped you dispose of the body?

No, ma'am.

Why did you blame Peter in the beginning and tell that story that Peter threatened your family

and that you did this because you were afraid for your family's lives?

I have no comment.

Are you sure you want to leave this interview on that note that you're saying no comment to anything involving Peter?

I guess I will say this then. I was trying to get a lesser case, a lesser time.

By implicating Peter, you were trying to get a deal?

Are you sure that's it?

Yep. Peter, I'm sorry for making you seem like the bad guy throughout the situation.

What do you want to say to the Allen family? You have destroyed their lives.

Yes, I did.

There's no amount of apology that can change or bring her back.

She did not deserve what I did to her, and I'm sorry that I ripped y'all's family apart.

And you can look me in the eye and say that you've told me the truth today and there's nothing more to this?

Yes, ma'am, I can. I would give my life to bring her back.

Julius' dad said that not a day goes by that he doesn't wonder if he could have done more.

And as painful as it's been for him, he's well aware that there's another family whose grief is far worse.

There was no way for me to say I'm sorry.

Did you try? Did you say sorry?

I did. I had the florists get some flowers that were German flowers.

In the mornings, when I was on my way to work, I would stop out front and I would just bring one up and put it on her porch.

How did they feel about that?

They didn't like it. And I stopped immediately.

But I just wanted them to know that I was thinking about her and thinking about them and their loss.

Manu's family lives with that loss every day.

You still have your days when you hurt really bad inside.

And you can't tell your kids because you're dead and you have to keep that.

You can't put that stress on your kids.

For the most part, I think all of us are healing. Melanie is just struggling.

Do you all try to tell her this is not your fault?

I've told her many, many times. I've hugged her while she's crying.

Just told her that Melanie is not your fault. None of this is on you.

She doesn't deserve any of the blame. She doesn't deserve all of the guilt that she's feeling.

For Peter, the guilt can be overwhelming too.

I'll never move on. I can move forward.

And the best thing I can do is learn to forgive myself for failing as a husband.

Why do you think you failed your wife, though, if you didn't even know what was happening?

Because it's my house and that's my job. Did I know it was happening? No.

Well, the other part of me inside says you failed as a husband as a man.

I have to learn to forgive myself for that or I won't be able to help my children.

And right now my children are my biggest priority.

Children were always Manu's priority too, whether as a mom, a teacher, or their biggest cheerleader.

And these days she would be especially proud of her all-need cubs.

After her death, the hapless football team started to do something unprecedented.

I was still here at Cal Bell, so maybe it was a real Cal Bell or maybe it was just imagination of hearing a Cal Bell.

But I was still here at Cal Bell.

I love it.

Because it means she's still there.

My wife is still there. She's still there.

That's all for this edition of Dateline.

We'll see you again Thursday at 10-9 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.

Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.