She came in with the sob story. I'm going through a divorce. I have a horse that I have to take care of. She has a little daughter.

Larry was in love with this girl and it was all a lie.

He left me for her after two months of knowing her.

They say a woman by the name of Elisa McNabney murdered her husband.

What did you just say? Oh, my God. What's happening? Larry, are you okay?

He had a dark side to him. We all have demons and he had demons.

He grabbed me like this and he just kept squeezing. Where was your mom? Who was she with?

This is their Thelma and Louise moment, baby. Where's Larry McNabney?

Where's Larry? Where can we find him? Who knows?

Who doesn't ask why the refrigerator is.

Wrapped in duck tape? The hungry milk tots. I was horrified.

How do you know what to believe? You just go. Really? Really. Life is a crapshoot. What do you do?

This is crazy. I'm hell on heels, sugar daddy. I'm coming for you. I've been riding for almost as long as I've been walking. And it was one of the things that kind of gave me reprieve from the things that I didn't like to think about dealing with, the things that were hard. Anytime that you spend time around horses, you know that you have to introduce yourself. It shows him I'm not a threat. I spent a significant portion of my life being known as Elisa McNabney's daughter. I have previously refused to talk just because I didn't want to have to deal with it anymore. I can reflect back on it. It didn't happen to me. I lived through it.

Haley's mother, the central figure in this saga, grew up in Brooksville, Florida, part of a prominent family that had lived there for generations.

We are in Brooksville, where I currently reside and spent a good portion of my childhood.

I mean, this was Mayberry, baby. It was smaller than Mayberry.

I can't go anywhere without running into someone that either knows me or my family. For my mom, horses, it was always something that made her happy and she enjoyed and she wanted to be around them.

I think she was Tom Petty's american girl growing up. Without a doubt, she was an american girl raised on promises.

She couldn't help thinking that there was a little more life somewhere else.

And she was a good student, honor.

Roll student, super intelligent, just amazingly smart.

What happened to her was she had a boyfriend and she was pregnant and had a child and dropped out of school.

My parents ran away together and got married. Divorced before I was born. When she had me, she was nine days past her 19th birthday.

I believe that she was, in her own way, a good mother for Haley. But on the other hand, she was a very fragile person who had very little self confidence. And Haley felt many times that the mother daughter relationship was reversed.

I learned how to make broccoli cheddar soup on the stove out of a can. I mean, like, don't be too impressed. I don't think she knew how to put my needs before her wants.

She got in some minor trouble early on. It was always checks, or she had shoplifted some hair coloring. It was always petty things, nothing really serious. But she stayed in trouble all the time. Was a problem at 145 IQ, but she did not grasp balancing a checkbook. Haley kept the family accounts, managed the checkbook, and kept the checks from bouncing.

For her, it was about fun until it was not until it was about, you know, waking up in the middle of the night and saying, hey, we have to leave, because rent hadn't been paid or she was being evicted.

I think to her, that was normal. This is what mom and I do. We move once a year, every six months. Then there was one specific incident at Christmas that started a snowball effect. Haley's mom's new boyfriend was going through a bitter divorce. She had purchased Christmas presents for his children and had them delivered to the home in an effort to allow him to see the kids on Christmas. But the gesture didn't work. And when the wife said, no, that's not going to happen, she went back in the house, got the presents, and she got caught. I think at worst, it was a trespass, but she got charged and got put on felony probation and then violated her parole. And her parole officer was at the game that she went to. She was terrified of going to jail and being confined. And that began the cavalcade that began the avalanche.

She said, hayley, I have to go away, and I'm not coming back. I can leave you here with grandma and grandpa, or you can come with me, but I want it to be your choice. I was eight. I didn't even hesitate. I just said, I'm going with you. It felt like life or death. I knew something. I didn't know what was chasing us, but something bad was chasing us. We went to Texas mainly because it's centered around horses. For her, that was always. And for me as well, I loved it because she loved it. It goes back to her kind of always living in that teenage world.

But Haley says her mom ran into trouble with the law again after she was caught trying to shoplift, and they.

Took her into custody, and I was hysterical, but she bonded out. So when the situation in Texas didn't work out, her next thought was, well, I'm halfway there. May as well just go to Vegas. And that was it. We left again.

Haley pulls into town with her mom, who's going by the name of Elisa, and they rent an apartment in a nice area of Vegas. But of course, she didn't have enough money for, you know, furniture, so they're sleeping on a pallet. Mother and daughter. Elisa was described by people who knew her or met her as a very striking, even beautiful woman who dressed professionally. She gave off an air of classiness. Elisa had already gone through a series of difficult relationships in her life. And in Vegas, she finds yet another new boyfriend. She meets Ken, and he's got an up and coming business. She ingratiates herself with him. Pretty soon, she's living with him.

He was wonderful, very kind, and he adored my mother. And my mom was an easy person to love.

Then pretty soon, he finds out there's charges on his credit card. She had stolen the credit card. Eh, I'll marry her. It's this blind spot that men had to her. If you've been hurt in an accident, the smart thing to do is to hire a lawyer who can take care of business. I can do that. I'm Larry McNabney. Call me.

And she got a job in a law office. She had been there maybe a month before. She was telling me that the lawyer that she worked for wanted to take her to dinner.

And that was the beginning of the end of Larry McNabney.

When we got to Las Vegas, my mom got a job in a law office. She had been there maybe a month before. The lawyer that she worked for wanted to take her to dinner. And he's so smart, and he just makes me feel so special.

While Elisa was a somewhat mysterious figure in Vegas, everyone seemed to know Larry. Larry McNabney cut a striking figure. Six foot tall, about 200 pounds, but very fit, and women loved him. If we were at a bar and you needed to talk to some girls, we'd just send Larry. Like the Pied Piper. They'd come. You couldn't be around Larry and not laugh and smile. Your money's no good here. That was the common refrain when you went out to lunch with Larry. He would take care of everything. He lived life at full throttle. Larry had a great expression. You can't put a price on a good time. His childhood would have been similar to mine. Reno was a sort of upper middle class, wealthy town. Biggest little city in the world. Reno, as most towns in the west, were poor until they invented the quickie divorce trademark. Nevada had a very short window for residency, so Reno became the divorced capital of the world. All kinds of fancy people would come to Reno, live in a dude ranch. This dude ranch business brings us plenty of money. Boom. Get their divorce. As soon as they got their divorce, one of the traditions was they walk over to the bridge, throw their ring in the river, and celebrate the movie.

The misfits was essentially Clark Gable was a dude who went to the railroad station and saw Marilyn Monroe and was going to go and party with her while she was here getting a divorce.

If you throw in your ring, you'll never get another divorce.

He had good relationships with women until he got married. They dearly loved him and I'm sure would be very frustrated with some of the things he would do. Larry met his first wife quite young, had a daughter, Kristen.

Larry and my mom were high school sweethearts and got married out of high school in 1967. I've got his cheeks, squinty eyes, the wave in my hair like him. They were divorced in 1970. Larry continued law school and graduated in 1974, and he moved back to Reno.

We were both practicing in the public defender's office, and Larry kind of took me under his arm and we decided to start a law practice. The evidence will show Larry McNabney on his worst day was better than 99% of the trial lawyers on their best day. He just had a 6th sense on how to try a case. He would tell people it's the publicity that matters. In those days, the Nevada Bar association wouldn't let you advertise. I remember him yelling, think ink. Think ink. As long as the press is talking about us, our name is getting out there. As much as Larry loved the spotlight, he had a habit of periodically disappearing from it. He'd disappear for a period of time, and fortunately, we could cover for him. And when he came back, he was full throttle. Larry's drinking was Ron, and eventually he couldn't take it anymore. We all have demons, and he had demons, and he took those demons on and off, on and off. Over the years, their partnership broke up, and then along the way, Larry got married again and had two more kids. I spoke to his daughter Tavia in 2002 when I first reported on this story.

This is my half sister, Krista Becker, and myself. We wore matching dresses to mom and.

Dad'S wedding, what was he like as a father?

Always there for me. He was just there if I ever needed him.

But while his kids say he may have been a loving dad, Larry's demons may have prevented him from being a great husband. Larry was mentally abusive to women because of his drinking. And then Cheryl Tangent came along.

What a beautiful boy. Wyatt, we do have a wonderful Wrangler with us today because these guys are 2000 pounds and they can be extremely dangerous. My name is Cheryl Tangent and I grew up in Reno. I'm an artist and I was with Larry for seven years. He was so instantly likable. Two weeks after I met him, I knew I was in love with him.

They were a very good couple because Cheryl was understanding enough to want to do different things with Larry.

When I met him, he had just gotten out of rehab. I think it was his third time. And he was clean and sober and he was wonderful with Cheryl. I think he was the most stable and sober and grounded that he ever was. We meditated every morning and we loved it.

They had joined this cult where they had tried to find inner peace. He was trying to center himself.

Some people might have called it a cult, but it was the best thing that could have happened to Larry. He was so happy.

But then I think they began to want him to get involved more. And Larry wasn't going to follow anybody else's drum. He was going to beat his own.

Larry was a chameleon and he would get bored with a lifestyle. When he decided he was sick of living up there, he wanted to kind of get back and do lob. And I think the pull to his addictions started then.

This would have been probably in 1991. He came back and business went off the hook.

He wanted to change his image. He wanted to be on tv. And Larry said, I can do this and I can make a lot of money. I met Larry McNabney for lunch and he said, well, what are you going to do? So I gave it some thought and started getting that tone going with him in his western hat and western clothes.

The smart thing to do is to hire a lawyer who can take care of business.

You know, you could tell he was a true cowboy, almost like the Marlboro man.

If you've been hurt in an accident, if you've been hurt in an accident, if you've been injured, if you've been injured in an accident, call me.

It worked because people immediately connected to him on that level.

You've made the important decision to hire a lawyer.

The success of it was instant. When the spots run, the phones would ring. He was making like 300,000 a month, paying cash for houses and cars, etcetera. He got so caught up in money and appearances. This was not the same Larry. It got really, really scary. It was about a year when he decided to go down to Las Vegas and open an office down there. And I'm thinking, Vegas and Larry, not a good idea. Not a good idea.

I asked him, why are you going to go down there? And he said, I can make twice the money down there that I can make here. Larry was going to need to hire someone for his Vegas office. And a single mom with a young daughter, Haley, would see that ad in the paper.

He decided, I'm doing Vegas. I want to go Veg. I want to go big. I want to go Vegas. And I went down there, and the whole time I was down there, I went, something is way wrong. This is really wrong. I'm gonna bring me a million hearts. And that was the beginning of Elisa. I'm hell on heels, sugar daddy, I'm coming for you.

It's the summer of 1994, and in Sin City, Las Vegas, paths of Larry and Elisa are about to fatefully collide.

Larry decided to open his office down in Las Vegas. That time is when Elisa came into the picture. She had responded to an ad in the paper needing a receptionist, and she showed up, and she came in with the sob story. I'm going through a divorce. I have a horse that I have to take care of. It was all, poor me. They said, well, I will hire you for doing the insurance. Lisa was classy, carried herself very well, very intelligent. She kind of welcomed you with open arms. He was ecstatic about her. He said, she is going to help me put this Las Vegas office together. Elisa was a drug. She just charmed and seduced him. And he had a big heart. Let me help you.

She was good looking, for one thing, and they ended up romantically involved. Shortly after she became employed, Larry hired.

Her in June, and he left me for her. After two months of knowing her. I said, you don't know what you're doing. That went one that went in one ear and out the other.

He had been convinced by her that she was bright, smart, sassy, all the things he needed in a secretary. Elisa is a quick study. She earned Larry's trust and affection. She took control of office finances and client trust accounts. Fueled by the lucrative law practice, Larry and Elisa are living the high life.

They went back and forth on private jets. They were like movie stars coming down the ramp. And my mom, I am sure, was swept up in all of these lavish and generous things that he was trying to do for her.

While Elisa seemed smitten, Haley, who was still living with her mom's previous husband, Ken, didn't have a good feeling at all about the new boyfriend.

I met him, and he's trying to hug me, and I could tell he was drunk. I could smell it. I was very uncomfortable.

Well, I don't think Larry ever got along with Hailey like Hailey got along with Ken. Ken saw her as a surrogate daughter, and Larry didn't. Larry called her a bitch and was not friendly with her.

Larry tried to separate us initially on purpose. He very much enjoyed having 100% of my mom's focus. Being on him and having a small child made that very difficult. So what's the easiest way to do that? Get rid of the kid.

Haley was devastated after finding out that her mother married Larry without telling her. And she was moving Haley into his home in Reno with them.

Kenny came home one day and said, your mom wants you to go to Reno to visit. You know, I thought I was coming back, and I didn't ever go back. I'm sorry.

Meanwhile, Larry's loved ones feared Elisa was isolated him from them and enabling his addictions. She was facilitating it. His drinking and drug use had reached a different stage than I ever knew. He wasn't enjoyable. He wasn't charismatic.

I would challenge that. Larry was not one to have a woman come in and take over and push him around. Nobody incapacitated Larry except for Larry. He became very paranoid that people were out to get him. And Elisa and Larry started fighting a lot. I think the relationship of these two was extremely destructive. How much can I hurt you? It was this back and forth, push pull kind of deal. One night, I heard Larry tell her, I'm gonna kill Hailey in front of you, and then I'm gonna tell the police that you did it. She would take off often, and he didn't know where she was, and that drove him crazy. She did try to leave a couple of times, actually. He tracked us down and said if she didn't agree to come home and live with him, that he would kill both of us and then kill himself.

While Hailey says her mom temporarily separated from Larry, she eventually got back together with him. But then Haley says there was another abusive incident.

He grabbed me like this, and he just kept squeezing. I was terrified. I had never had anyone try to hurt me before. That's when she started sending me away for my safety.

The couple's toxic relationship extended to Larry's business. The Nevada Bar association reprimanded Larry after they found he had allowed his chief operating officer, Elisa, to misappropriate just over $74,000 from his client's trust account. He was really upset about that because he still considered her the critical employee. So that's when he decided, all right, fine, we'll just close the office. We'll move to Sacramento, start anew. Larry and Elisa move into an upscale suburb of Sacramento and set up a new law office. Despite their tumultuous relationship, Elisa encourages him to spend more time on the road with her and her first love, horses.

My mother and Larry had gotten further into horse culture, and they were starting to show, and he had the best horses. He was very much into the halters and the quarter horse scene. Our circuit champion. Congratulations. Entry number 371.

A halter competition is basically, it's a beauty contest. You want to showcase them standing up and flexing and showing off their muscles.

You could tell he was loving this life that he was living.

Their mutual love of the horse world seems to bring stability for this volatile couple. But soon a young art student will dramatically change that dynamic and their lives forever.

Elise is always hanging around this woman named Sarah and the stories that started coming out. She's got this baby face, but she's not as nice as she comes across.

Sarah was just a gargoyle on lisa's shoulder.

Hey, I'm Andy Mitchell, a New York Times bestselling author. And I'm Sabrina Kohlberg, a morning television producer. We're moms of toddlers and best friends of 20 years, and we both love to talk about being parents, yes, but also pop culture. So we're combining our two interests by talking to celebrities, writers, and fellow scholars of tv and movies, cinema, really, about what we all can learn from the fictional moms we love to watch from ABC audio and Good Morning America. Pop culture moms is out now. Wherever you listen to podcasts.

Larry McNabney became a star on the quarter horse circuit. He was showcased on video, proudly displaying his horses in shows around the country. Larry McNabbie, Sacramento, California. He had a good trainer. He had good horses. He had a good eye for horses. He put a lot of love and time and attention into it. There's no doubt that Larry McNabney loved the limelight.

This was one of the awards that Larry had gotten from one of the horse shows that he did. He was a grand champion in Oregon, one of many trophies that he won along the way with his horse showing, he was leading the nation in his division. He was excited and really wanted to win it. So he was talking about really going for it. My mother and Larry had gotten further and further into horse culture. They seemed happy.

They would travel all over the country with their horse. It was kind of an adventure around America. Elisa wanted to be known throughout the horse show circuit.

She was just very personable and warm. She drew you in.

As the McNabneys established the law practice here in Sacramento, they needed help. If you've been injured in an accident, call me. I'm Larry McNabney. The McNabney's put out a help wanted ad for an office assistant. And in comes a young woman who would dramatically change their lives. She's an art student from Sacramento State University named Sarah Dutra. Elisa interviewed Sarah for the job, and they formed a quick, close connection in her yearbook. Sarah Dutra was a bright, cheerful looking student at Vacaville High School in the nineties. She was a real go getter. Somebody that you knew was very driven. President of her senior class, was an athlete. Her teacher spoke well of her. Young men were enamored of her. Sarah was super smart, tall, blonde, cute. You know, the girl you wanted to know. Elisa, I think, saw something of herself in Sarah. Sarah quickly became Elisa's ally. They hit it off from the beginning. Pretty soon, inseparable friends the of they go out to restaurants together. They did a lot of shopping. Elisa's daughter Haley, who was 15 at the time, resented her mom's new best friend.

My mom would say, well, we have fun. And I said, okay, well, can you not spend time with me like that? I didn't understand why my mom was planning trips and spending all this time with this. This girl. I didn't get it.

Money was no object for Elisa and Sarah. Elisa, Lisa's a shiny red jaguar. They'd go on these extravagant shopping sprees.

Everywhere they went, there was Sarah. And after a while, Larry got sick of it and confronted Elisa and said, I don't want her around.

Larry McNabney told Elisa point blank to fire Sarah. And of course, she didn't. What she did do was isolate Larry even more, bring in Sarah closer to her, and the business began to suffer. After Sarah was hired, Larry became increasingly disengaged from his practice. Larry sometimes was on the horse circuit. Sometimes he was on the golf course. Larry was sometimes drinking. That allowed Alicia to take a stronger role in the daily operations of the office.

Alisa led him down the path let me keep you happy with your wine and your drugs, and I will take care of everything for you. He didn't want to talk to anybody. He didn't want to have anything to do with anybody. He was just by himself in his own world. He was going off the rails. He was losing control of himself. I knew it got really bad when my mom looked at me and said, oh, I got you a job training horses in Maine. And I packed up and left.

In early September 2001, the McNabneys and their trainer loaded up a horse trailer, headed south to the city of Industry in Los Angeles county for a big show, the Pacific quarter horse classic. So the night they go for dinner, sarah shows up, and Larry didn't like her showing up. He said something smart to her about leaving, and she turned to him and said, you, Larry? To her boss. The dinner became extremely awkward. Larry goes up to his room to pass out, and it's at this point that Elisa begins to carry out a truly twisted plan. This is a moment where, you know, they crossed the rubicon. That was the line in the sand.

We went down to my trainer's truck, and I got the medicine bag out, and I got the, I got the tranquilizer out of it, so I should put him right. And he stuck his ceramic in there and filled it up, and then he was sleeping on his back, and then I put, like, three drops in his mouth, and then I got all three towels with Sarah, put some in there.

The next day, the competition continues. But Larry's disoriented shirt isn't tucked in. He can barely stand, barely walk. You know, he'd been such a proud performer, so meticulous, and he couldn't pull it off that day. So that night, Larry skipped dinner altogether. After he falls asleep, Larry is given more drops of the tranquilizer.

Next morning, I wake Sarah up.

So now they have a problem of a guy who's still alive but incoherent what to do with this guy. The next day was September 11.

We just got a report in that there's been some sort of explosion at the World Trade center in New York City.

The world was distracted by, you know, the tragedy in New York City.

So we went down the street and rented a wheelchair, and I got him dressed and put him in the wheelchair, and I rolled him out to my truck, our truck, and put him in the back of the truck, and we drove. I was like, this is crazy. You just can't imagine these two petite ladies doing this. It's unreal. We were just freaking out at that point. So we got home to my house.

But soon a question begins reverberating around the Sacramento area. Just where in the world is Larry McNabney?

Larry didn't come home. And it's like, well, where's Larry?

I knew something was wrong. I was thinking, he's dead somewhere. Elisa and Sarah are gone so often they have to hire a third secretary. And that's Ginger Miller.

Yep, this is the office. Brings back a lot of memories. This is where the nightmare began. I was supposed to work for Elisa, and what I was going to do is be answering phones, typing up documents, mostly taking calls and working with some of the clients.

So Ginger Miller joins the practice as a secretary, and she takes an instant liking to the two women.

When Ginger first came in, I could kind of tell that she wanted to be one of the girls. We actually started all to be friends. We were going out together. We went shopping. We were pretty much like gal pals. Elisa used to say she's Charlie's angels. And she was Charlie.

Good morning, angels.

Good morning, Charlie. Why does it always have to be on the phone? Why can't we ever see Charlie? And she liked the fact that everyone in the office was young and attractive and female.

I'm Larry McNabney. Call me. And ginger right away. She notices that the guy whose name is on the door isn't around. It's a Larry McNabney law firm. Where's Larry?

Larry's office had a lot of his awards for horse shows. A lot of pictures of him at the horse shows. I thought he looked like a good guy, but it was still a mystery. When am I going to get to meet him?

Elisa initially tells Ginger that Larry had suddenly taken off after that horse show in southern California.

I was told he was at an alcohol rehab in Oregon. Then I was told that he ran away from the rehab and joined a 1212 month long rehab so we wouldn't be hearing from him for a long time. But then sometimes she said, oh, Larry popped in the office. He left again. Oh, Larry was just here. You just missed him.

Larry's friends say it wasn't odd that he had temporarily gone awol. After all, it had happened before.

I call them runners. He just left. Left the office, left everybody in there and took off.

He could be gone for a week or two, but never longer than that.

I'm alone with Elisa in the office. She looks me in the eye and she says, I want to talk to you about Larry. We're going to separate. And she says, and we're going to continue to run the office as if Larry was here. It wasn't the first time he had taken off, and she had kept the business afloat while he was gone before.

Elisa didn't like to show up in the office until the crack of noon. She'd show up and act like Captain Kirk on the bridge. Let's answer that call. Let's move over there. Let's dodge this phone call. I'm not answering that. I need money. Trying to hustle money from others where she could get it.

Did Ginger see a chaotic situation? Yeah, but it wasn't chaotic to me because I'd been there when Larry was gone before. Ginger Miller noticed a lot of suspicious activity when she was hired. I mean, she's seeing, you know, Sarah and Elisa forge Larry's signature, you know, spend money that wasn't theirs. So Elisa would write checks in my name, have me cash them out for one to $3,000, and then I would bring her the cash in an envelope, and they would use that as her spending money. Boots, vacations, trips out of town, horse show stuff.

Meanwhile, the weeks go by, and there's no sign of Larry. His family grows increasingly concerned. Where's Pop? Where's Larry? We've been told three times now. He's at rehab or at a golf tournament.

Joe and Tavia, Larry's kids, started asking, where's our dad? Like, where is he? Why can't we reach him? Joe was Larry's son, and he started calling Elisa up all the time because he was very, very worried.

Or when did you become suspicious?

Before his birthday. Her commenting that he was depressed about his birthday wasn't a characteristic of our dad.

That didn't sound like your father.

Mm mm. We were thinking that maybe they had separated or maybe things had gotten bad, and so he left.

Finally, in late November, 2 months after Larry was last seen, the situation comes to a head. Ginger has had enough of the constant lying and deception. And there was one other problem.

The money started to run out, and I didn't get paid. I said, well, you know, lisa, I know a lot that's going on right now. And I could go to the police if I wanted to because there's a lot of suspicious things. And don't forget that a hungry mouth talks. November 30, I go to the police department. I walked in. I was pretty nervous. I walked over to this window, and they handed me a small piece of paper, and I wrote on it, my boss is missing, and I think he's dead. And I'm pretty sure the secretary and his wife did it. And I stood and just waited for them to call me. And it literally was less than five minutes. And they came and got me. That was when everything opened up like a can of worms. So you're working there through September. What are you doing about Larry? Yeah, the first week I started, he said that Larry was gone. They start calling other people and trying to do their homework to find him.

Based on the information provided by Ginger sheriff's investigators contact Alyssa. Elisa feels the walls closing in, and.

I turned to say, okay, what's wrong? She turned to me and she said, they found us. And she says, it's time to go.

She said, could you kill somebody with this? And I said, you mean a horse? She says, no, a person. The guy whose name is on the door isn't around. It's a Larry McNabney law firm. Where's Larry?

I wrote on it, my boss is missing, and I think he's dead.

Say, that looks like a leg. And I took a closer look myself and had to agree with him. He looked like Larry McNamney. So now investigators have a body. What they're looking for is a suspect.

I watched the countenance of my mom's face change. She said, it's time to go.

Why did they flee? What were they running from?

You live the way that I lived, and you have these not so imaginary monsters that are chasing you. You're always prepared to flee.

It's a big game of cat and mouse, is what it is.

Lisa has always lived in a fantasy world, so to her, it's almost like the next act in her movie. But how do you go from being a thief to being a killer? What did you just say?

Larry McDabney, the attorney from Sacramento, is missing. He'd been missing since September 10 in southern California at a horse show.

A lot of the witnesses at the horse show remember seeing him in a wheelchair. The last sight of Larry was, he didn't look well.

He was married to Elisa McNabney.

Lisa McNabney was kind of running the show at the law firm, and then also Sarah Dutro was an assistant there.

They were thick as thieves. They were best friends.

Larry was nowhere to be found, but yet they were signing his check, forging his name. The kids are saying, have you heard from Larry? And then people are calling me his friends. Where is he? Where is Larry? And nobody knew.

The weeks turned into months, and the suspicions grew until November, when a secretary in Larry's law firm decides to take action Ginger Miller was the one who first reported Larry missing. Chief Arnie says, that's enough. And she contacted the Sacramento sheriff's office.

I felt deep in my heart that something had happened to him. I reported Larry missing. Then they came and got me. That's when the tape recorders came out. I always miss him by five minutes or he was supposed to come and something happened, but never for whatever.

After Ginger comes forward, cops talk to Elisa to question her about Larry's whereabouts. She was very intelligent and was able to very much answer any of the questions without any major concern that she was being mistruthful. Elisa feels the walls closing in. She goes to Ginger, who helps her pack her Jaguar.

She said she had to move immediately. And so we packed up Elisa's Jaguar and we made three trips out today. This horse trailer storage. I'm on the phone with the police in my car. I'm like, we're packing. She's skipping town.

Ginger tips off the police, who then try to intercept Elisa as she's skipping town.

I pull out thinking that Lisa would get arrested and everything was going to go accordingly. It didn't, because she outsmarted them as well. The police pull in, and she acts out the back gate in the nick of time.

She picks up her daughter Haley and leaves town.

There was a horse show in Arizona, and she asked me to go with her, which gave me pause because I hadn't been invited to anything like that in years.

Now Elisa's on the run, and she's nowhere to be found. So investigators go to the next person who might be able to help. And that's Sarah.

And your last name? Dutra. Okay, Dutra. And your first name is. Sarah.

She walked in dressed in pink with her tiny little dog, munchy, to take questions.

Where's Larry? Have you searched with him? And she says, oh, he'll call sometimes and hang up on me. But you still have no contact with Larry?

Sarah tells investigators that she not only hasn't seen Larry, it also has been a while since she's heard from her close friend Elisa.

When is the last time you saw talk to Lisa? She was leaving to air someone, and I was going to fly down the next day, and she told me the number to get. And so I went to the airport, and they said your ticket sign was shirt. So I went to call her, and it was no longer a number.

They know she's lying when they first talked to her, but they don't know where Larry is, no more than they knew before they started talking to her. On February 5, it's a day laborer who's walking down the vineyard row, taping up the vines. The farmer said that he had seen some buzzards that were circling in the area, so he went to check. He had uncovered what he believes to be a partially buried body in one of the great vineyards here in San Joaquin county. We followed the farmer. He drove us directly to the end of this road. As far as you can see, there's a grape vineyard that's there. We could see something protruding from the dirt in between the grapevines. As we got closer, we could see that it was a human floor. We preserved the location and assisted with the excavation of the body.

The next day, I went out to the scene. We progressively cleaned the dirt, then away from the sides of the body very slowly and meticulously. His body was actually in a pretty good state of preservation.

Ready to go. The body was found buried in a shallow grave in eastern San Joaquin county near Linden. A couple of days later, the body was identified by fingerprints as Larry McNabney.

We were notified on February 7 they had found a body. We can't have justice. We can't. We can't let everything go with our dad. We just ask for your help. That was a very shocking day. It was around this time, probably 20 years ago. I was in my office at work in Reno and got a phone call that he would have been found. Just surreal.

There was no blunt force injury, no projectiles, no laceration, nothing.

He's been dead for months. But this body is in really good condition. Something happened in that timeframe such that his body stayed relatively well preserved. After performing the autopsy, I had no idea what his cause of death was.

The police were facing an uphill battle. They don't know what killed him. Speculation was rampant.

When we got the toxicology results, they said, you know, we think we've identified something here that's kind of unusual. They identified xylazine.

Xylazine is a horse tranquilizer. Xylazine is the stuff they give to horses to knock their asses down. So now investigators have a body. What they're looking for is a suspect. It was time to talk to Elyse McNamney. The FBI is asking for help in finding a woman they say is a cold blooded killer.

I watched my mom's face change, and I turned to say, okay, what's wrong? She turned to me and she said, they found us. And she says, it's time to go.

This was their Thelma and Louise moment, baby. Off we go into the wild. Blue yonder. After Larry McNabney's body is found in a vineyard, Sarah Dutra is quickly brought in for another interview, this time with detectives from San Joaquin county. The scope of the questions changed towards Sarah Dutra. At that point, she was denying any knowledge or information. It was so non believable that turned it from an interview to an interrogation.

I'm sick right now to think that Larry McNabney is dead. And who would do that to Larry? Who you think is. I don't know. Who would do that? What makes the most sense, Tara? Come on, Elisa. I mean, that's the only person I could think that would do that.

Meanwhile, Elisa has taken Haley with her down to Arizona for a horse show. It's there that she learns Larry's body has been discovered and cops are looking for her.

She said, they found us. It had been six years since we'd had to up and disappear. You live the way that I lived, and you have these not so imaginary monsters that are chasing you, so you're always prepared to flee. I didn't even question it. She says it's time to go. So, okay.

Elise is now gone. We can't find her. There's not a trace of her. There's a nationwide search. The FBI is asking for help in finding a woman they say is a cold blooded killer. And there's information that she may have gone to Denver, she might have been to Vegas. They said that there was ties in Florida. The police go. Well, let's just pull up who this is. Oh, wait a minute. Does anybody have a Social Security number on her? How about a driver's license? No, they don't have a clue.

And we drove all night to Colorado Springs, and we're driving this obnoxious car. I mean, you cannot ask for more attention than with a red sports car, especially in mountainous country in the middle of winter. I thought, we're gonna slide off the road and we're gonna die.

Haley says after driving 22 hours straight from Arizona, her mother dozed off at the wheel and the car swerved. She was startled awake by a police siren pulling them over.

If you had spent the better part of a decade running from the possibility of your mom going to jail, that's the most terrifying thing you can see.

Hayley says her mom apologized, and she worked her charm enough for the officer to let them go, no questions asked.

So it kind of became Mister Toad's wild ride. After that, it was a two week drive, and she kept going to these tourist locations like Denver, New Orleans, mobile, she's explaining to me why it's easy to disappear into a town that's based on tourism.

They say a woman by the name of Elisa McNabney murdered her husband, a California attorney. Authorities are looking for her and for her daughter. Meanwhile, investigators take a deep dive into Elisa McNabney's background, and they make a startling discovery. Elisa isn't who they think she is. Her real name is Lorenzo Simms. From the police perspective, at first, they didn't know who the criminal was, and they sure didn't know who Lauren Simms was. Lauren Sims, born in Florida, raised in Florida, jailed in Florida, and during a term in prison, takes her fellow inmate's name, which is Elizabeth, takes her Social Security security number, shortens Elizabeth to Elisa, and that's her new name. The person we know as Elisa McNabney. She's used at least eleven different names. You finally discovered her rap sheet. How long was it? 113 pages long. 113 pages. They found the mother of two had a rap sheet for bad checks and theft going back to 1987, plus outstanding warrants. After skipping town on that felony probation for those Christmas presents she took all those years ago, remember, she thought doing that would help her boyfriend see his kids. She actually served time for that, which is surprising.

Elisa McNabney, aka Lauren Simms, had been on the run for nine years. Her parents, her family, they didn't know what happened, happened to her and seen her.

The one thing that was so evident for the entire time was how devastating it was for her to leave my brother. She would have tears in her eyes. And she said that it's one of the best things I ever did, was leave him there so he could be okay.

As the days go by, Haley starts to realize life on the run with her mom would mean her own life didn't count.

At this point, I still had no idea what was happening in Sacramento, but the prolonged flight from Arizona had really just reinforced to me this was going to be my life, to continue protecting my mom from whatever is chasing her. We can't. We can't let everything go with our dad until we know that she's been found.

But as mother and daughter continue to drive across the country, it begins to take a toll.

She was just trying to find somewhere she felt like it was safe to settle, to stop. She was starting to get more anxious than I had ever seen her. And, you know, just tired. We were both tired. We briefly stayed in Biloxi, and she met a gentleman that had a timeshare in destiny. He said, well, why don't you just come stay at my timeshare? Elisa has always lived in a fantasy world. She's built it and she lives in it. So to her, it's almost like the next act in her movie.

And that next act would bring an end to the wild ride in a small Florida town and a shocking revelation from mother to daughter.

She said, I need to tell you this, but I need you to know, not freak out. Destin, Florida, is a beautiful destination. It is a beach town.

The sands are sugar white, and of course, the waters are an emerald green. Destin is also the world's luckiest fishing village. That's their schtick. And trying her luck in Destin was Loren Simms, aka Elisa McNabney. After weeks on the run, she had a chance encounter at a golf tournament in Biloxi, Mississippi. And that's where she met the guy who had a condominium at the Pelican beach resort in Destin. And she finagled her way into a beachfront luxury condominium where she could stay free of charge.

We got it to Destin maybe like the second week of January. She said, oh, yes, I think this is the place. We can try to stay here for a while.

She takes a job waiting tables at a upscale steakhouse. Later, she goes to work at a law firm, another attorney's office, as a secretary. With no id, no background, she said.

We have to change both of our names. I was confused because she had never asked me to do that before. And I picked the name Penelope.

To the people of Destin, Elisa McNabney was known as Shane Ivaroni.

I never met Alisa McNabney. I met Shane Ivaroni. She was really sweet, well spoken, and she knew how to make people like her. That's what I got from it.

She's got a new name, a new identity, and a new place to live, but she just can't seem to stay out of trouble. And that's when the walls start to close in on her. This guy was letting her stay at his condo, and then he found out that she had been using his credit cards and had been ripping him off. And so he called the lawyer's office and said, hey, I think something's wrong with her. They decided to run her license plates, and that's when they discovered that she wasn't Shane Ivaroni and that she was wanted for murder out of San Joaquin. We were looking for a white female who had killed her husband. And we knew that she was driving a red jaguar, which is a vehicle that stands out. For some reason, Elisa gets a feeling that the law is closing in. And she makes a quick date with a guy she had met. She spends the night at his house, takes the keys to his pickup truck and $600. And she's gone. She takes the truck and leaves him the jaguar with a tan top. Then she went to another friend's house where her daughter had been staying.

Picked up the daughter at, like, six or 07:00 in the morning.

My initial reaction was, why are you here? And she said, they found us. And I said, okay, where are we going now?

Haley says her mom took her north up the coast. And after about a day and a half on the road, they arrived in Charleston, south Carolina, to start over yet again.

We drove around, and we were coming back across the bridge, going back into Charleston, and I had enough. I'd had enough. I had started coming to the realization that I was never going to have, like, a real life. I'm gonna have to live that clandestine life. And I said, I can't do this anymore. I cannot continue running like this. She was visibly shaken and had to pull over. And she laid her head down on the steering wheel for a minute and she said, all right, but before I take you back, I need to take. Tell you everything, because you need to be prepared.

Haley says her mom takes her back to their hotel, and it's there that she finally tells her what happened to Larry.

She said, I need to tell you this, but I need you to not freak out. I said, okay. And she said, we killed him. And it kind of felt like everything just white noise. I couldn't think. I couldn't. I didn't see anything around me. I was horrified.

She finally confessed to her daughter what she had done. And like that, it's over. All the running, all the lying, all the hiding is finally done.

I had never seen her look so empty after that. The next morning, we got up early, and she drove me back to Destin.

Hailey says her mom dropped her off and then left, worried about. About what her mom might do next. She says she then turned to the police for help. She seemed very concerned for her mother. She said that she thought that her mother might hurt herself. So we put a BOLO out for the vehicle again on the air so that the destiny units would be looking. And we looked at the bars, we looked at the hotels in the area, and then we started putting people on the beach. I got a call that the car was in the parking lot over here at the Winn Dixie. So I started heading that way. The truck turns up in the parking lot across the street from the beach. The witness says, yeah, I saw her walking in that direction towards the beach. She sees a cop on the beach walking towards her. And before the cop can say anything, she goes, yeah, it's me you're looking for. And she just kind of looked at me and went like, it's me. Hi. So I cuffed her, and she wasn't making any effort to escape. She was talking to her daughter on the phone.

I was both incredibly relieved that she was okay and horrified that I had contributed to her worst nightmare happening.

After they pick her up on the beach, they take her to the sheriff's office for an interrogation. We were really kind of surprised because she just opened up one of those.

Onions that you peel away. The more you peel away, the more shocked you are. How long was it in the refrigerator? Three months. Three months in the refrigerator.

Some call this the prettiest spot on the entire Gulf coast. And this is where the hunt for Lauren Simms came to an end. They arrested her up there on the pool deck. How you doing?

There's relief. There's finally a little bit of closure. There's still a lot of anger and hatred.

After her arrest, Loren Simms is brought into the destined police department to answer questions about what happened to her husband, Larry.

What I'm going to start out with is just getting background information just to confirm what. Who you are. Okay?

She was very sad, very quiet. She wanted to talk. She was ready to get everything off her chest.

I knew that something needed to happen. I needed to put a bullet in my head or I needed to deal with it. And did I kill my husband? Yes, I killed my husband.

Loren claimed that in the weeks before she killed him, her husband had become increasingly violent and erratic from substance abuse.

I would wake up and he would choke at me. And it was the drug that wasn't him. I would be freaked out and scared. She was backed into a corner, and she had no other choice. It was the only out she saw. He wasn't an abuser. Was he a perfect husband? Probably not, but he wasn't an abuser.

In September of 2001, Loren tells investigators how she and Sarah tried to kill Larry in that hotel room in the city of industry.

I put like three drops in the knob, and then I got all three towels with Sarah, put some in there.

She explains how they used wheelchair to. To sneak Larry's incapacitated body out of the hotel.

And we thought he was going to die in the car.

They drive in Larry's pickup truck to Yosemite National park, which was a favorite destination for Sarah as a child, and they intended to bury Larry's body. They expected him to be dead by the time they got there.

And I was freaking out. What did you tell her? Would you stretch them in there? And he's alive. You can't do that.

So they took him back out to the house, and then in the morning, they came out and he was dead.

So what do you do with him at that point? In my garage, he had this wine refrigerator. So basically, Larry's body was in really good condition. The reason was because Elisa put them in a refrigerator. Sarah told me that she went back out and refrigerator and especially have the full humor and wrap the cupcake all the way around. And what blows my mind is that they had house parties, they had dinner parties, and Larry's in the fridge.

Loren tells investigators that it wasn't until Sarah learned that Larry had been reported missing to the authorities that the two women were finally forced to act.

Yeah. You have to do something with the body. Yes.

So Elisa and Sarah drive to Vegas because Larry loved Vegas. Let's bury him in Vegas. That will do him honor. Anybody who's been to the strip in Las Vegas knows the bellagio, the beautiful fountains. And of course, that's where Elisa and Sarah chose to stay.

And we pulled into the village and we pulled up to the parking garage and there was a trophy by the can. You pop your trunk?

And Sarah, who was driving, pops a button for the trunk.

What was Sarah thinking? So you get out and you plug the trunk? Yeah, I got out and close the trunk and pulled lady. I was just looking for garage. And she said, you turn right here.

How do you forget there's a dead body in your trunk? And then they pull out of the Bellagio because they figure out, just in case maybe we won't stay here. The two women find another hotel in Las Vegas, and Elisa goes out on her own to try to bury Larry. And that's when she discovered that desert soil is very, very hard. She was unable to dig a hole, let alone a grave.

And so I come back to the hotel. It's not good.

The next stop on this bizarre road trip would bring the final revelation about what happened to Larry's body. And now that Loren has told her version of the events to the cops, how would Sarah respond?

Talk to me about trusted and be fruitful. Damn it.

Lorenz Simms has just confessed to a twisted tape of how she tried and failed to bury Larry McNabney's body in the desert outside of Las Vegas. After the episode in Las Vegas, it's back to Woodbridge. With Larry still in the trunk of the Jag. Elisa decides that she will bury Larry without Sarah's head help. Elisa says that she alone drove out to a vineyard.

How deeper. What did you do? Not get the.

Larry ended up in a shallow grave in a vineyard. Elisa buried him in a place that represented a product that he loved, wine.

She definitely implicated Sarah with him in the trunk. And he would like this. And you can watch me. She said Sarah was her accomplice, that Sarah helped her the whole step of the way from feeding Larry the horse tranquilizer to stuffing him in the refrigerator. I'm sick right now. To think that Larry McNabney is dead. And who would do that?

She had been in several times, and each time she minimized her involvement. I don't know what you're talking about. I have no idea.

I had nothing to do.

She was not forthcoming. It's obvious that she's not telling the truth. But after Loren's confession, police bring in Sarah for questioning again. And this time she tearfully admits to helping get rid of of Larry's body.

Talk to me about truth of a. Oh, my goodness. Doing.

Sarah claimed that she was under the spell of Elisa, that she was afraid of Elisa, that she did things unwillingly because she was afraid of Elisa.

She has talked about not wanting to go around anymore, and she said no.

Sarah claimed she didn't think Elisa was serious about killing Larry and denied she had helped poison him with the horse tranquilizer. She also claimed she had no part in putting or keeping his body in that refrigerator. And she blames everything on Elisa. Her performance is not convincing as far as the detectives are concerned. And so they arrest her on a murder charge as well. Meanwhile, Loren is transferred to the county jail in her hometown for an extradition hearing to return to California to face murder charges. But that never happens. On Easter Sunday, her years on the run finally come to an end. Inside her jail cell, she decided to end her life. She devised a way to take the bed sheets and tie them into a knot and hang herself in her jail cell.

I think that as she was writing her own story, she decided when the finale was going to be, what she was going to do. My world ended with her. I didn't know what to do. What do you do when your whole life has revolved around protecting this person and you can't protect them anymore? And you could. Couldn't even protect them from themself.

While Loren's journey has ended, Sarah still has to face justice for her part in Larry's death. Sarah Dutron, is that your correct name? I just saw her being arraigned on television, my class president, and I'm just thinking, holy smokes. Like, how? Why? What? You're charged on September 11 of last year with murder. The maximum penalty is death. Do you understand the charges? Dutra was in tears after the arraignment, her attorney making her seem anything but an accused killer. Little baby that you just want to grab a baby blanket and put it around. She is such a helpless little thing. Sarah Dutra's murder trial began January 6, 2002, about a year after she had been arrested. If Elisa McNabney is to be believed, Sarah Dutra was a full and willing partner in the death of Larry McNabney. Sarah Dutra's main defense the entire time was that she was an unwilling participant and she was terrified of Elisa. And the night when the murderer murder occurred, she was as surprised as anyone that the murder had occurred. It seems like a classic instance of, you know, evil sort of wrapping around a sweet, young little baby.

Everything she did was for her motive and for her gain. And I think if Sarah wasn't here, my dad would be.

One of the prosecution's key witnesses was Ginger Miller. She had a firsthand view of the suspicious activities in Larry's office after he went missing. Ginger Mueller testified that Sarah Ducha practiced, you know, forging Larry's signature and testified that she did a lot of illegal things. This is evidence of a woman who was best friends, co hearts and co conspirators in the murder of Larry McNabney with his wife, Elisa. Sarah apparently found a friendly juror, one holdout that might have saved her from a murder conviction and got her a far more lenient conviction. Voluntary manslaughter, accessory to murder. Eleven years in state prison. But even with Sarah's conviction and Loren's death, this story isn't over yet. There's a final message from mother to daughter, one that will reverberate for years to come.

This was a memorial that we had put together for him. Larry may not have been a perfect man, but he was a good man and he was one of a kind. He's smiling down on us right now because we're sitting here talking about him.

Sarah was paroled in 2011. She served roughly eight years of an eleven year term. Sarah Dutra is now living back in her hometown of Vacaville. A lot of folks when things are rough, they go back home. And so she did come back home. Loren Simms made it all the way back home, too. But before taking her own life in a Florida prison, she left a final message behind. In the end, she wrote a beautiful letter to her daughter. Loren writes, I am so sorry for dragging you through the life I took you through. I hope that you can make your life good. If I am out of your life, you have a better chance of making it. She acknowledged all that she did wrong and wanted her daughter to have a good life. And I'm telling you, that's one touching letter. I mean, it really is.

Initially, after everything happened, I just wanted to be left alone. My entire world ended when my mother died. There you go. Come here. Hi. I know. Stranger danger. There you go. I know. I didn't know anybody. I came home to the town that I was born and raised in, but I hadn't seen my family in almost a decade. And I didn't know what to do because the only thing I had ever done was make sure that my mom was okay.

Haley decided to make something of herself. She got a master's degree in nursing, and she's been working for the last eight years as a critical care nurse with an exemplary record.

Unfortunately, my marriage did not pan out. So I was a single mom with two children that I needed to support. I didn't want them to grow up with the kind of fear and anxiety that I had. I think that I came out on the other side and everything. I thought I would never have a career, an education, kids, I have.

I'm very proud of her. No matter what else Lauren Simms left behind in her wake, she also left behind Haley Jordan. To me, Haley is the silver lining.

You never have to stay in a situation that you don't feel safe or in a situation that you in question. You have a right to feel safe, and you have a right to whatever future you're willing to make.

After years of nursing, Haley now says she wants to go to law school.

She also tells us, David, that she wants to open a center for abused women. That's our program for tonight. Thanks so much for watching. I'm Deborah Roberts.

And I'm David Muir. From all of us here at 2020 and ABC News, good night.