Nightmare In Napa

Newly-Released Evidence Helps Cops Crack Halloween Double-Murder

(CBS) 
Police also thought Leslie was the killer’s intended target.

“The blood evidence really speaks volumes what happened there. You’re able to start to get a picture in your mind of where these girls were and how they fought back the last moments of their life,” says Detective Todd Schulman.

Schulman is convinced the killer knew his target and where she slept, and says the killer went right for the stairs and headed to the bedrooms.

Looking at the wounds on her body, Detective Dan Lonergan thought Leslie was the killer’s likely target, certainly his first victim. “I would say that she was possibly attacked while she was sleeping,” he says.

Detective Lonergan says Adriane may have been awoken by the noise and tried to go to the rescue. “The evidence shows something of that nature,” he says.

“I went to the viewing of her body, says Lily. “Looks like she fought pretty hard. She had a lot of bruising. A lot of cuts on her hands. And Adriane hated turtlenecks. Hated them, would not wear them. But she was wearing one in the casket for obvious reasons.”

The killer was hurt during the attacks and left drops of blood, crucial DNA evidence.

Police also had a valuable witness, Lauren, the surviving roommate.

“I was in my bed and just opened up my eyes and realized something is not quite right. And then I heard a scream,” recalls Lauren. “I remember thinking, I need to get out. There was a person up there that may come for me.”

Lauren, 28, is still terrified, fearing the man who murdered her roommates will now come after her. When she agreed to be interviewed by “America’s Most Wanted,” she asked that her face be hidden.

What she saw and heard that Halloween night still haunts her. “I just kept saying ‘Oh my God. Oh my God,’” recalls Lauren.

Lauren says she jumped out of bed and stood outside her bedroom door, listening.

Suddenly she heard the killer running down the stairs. “I was terrified. My gut told me to go out the back. I mean, it was the closest way anyway. I remember thinking, ‘I’m opening up the door for this guy to follow me out,’” remembers Lauren.

Lauren hid in the backyard and never saw the killer or heard his voice. She only heard him leaving through a kitchen window in front of the house. After that, the only sounds she remembers were the cries for help from her friends.

Lauren started to panic. With her cell phone, she got in her car and drove away. She then called the police (audio).

As police questioned Lauren about what she heard and saw, they began to firm up their theory that it was Leslie who was the killer’s primary target.

Why Leslie? When they began to look at her life, they began to find a young woman who had an effect on a lot of people.

Although Leslie had lived in California for just seven months, she was already incredibly popular. “Whenever Leslie walked into a room, everybody stopped and looked,” remembers Vanessa Schnurr, who had traveled from South Carolina to Napa with her friend Katie Norris to visit Leslie a few weeks before the murders.

Leslie dated a number of men while she was in Napa. At the time of her murder, Vanessa and Katie say she was seeing two guys, an older man who they won’t name, and Beau (sp), who they say Leslie was getting serious with.

Katie and Vanessa recall that the older man saw some flowers Beau (sp) had sent Leslie and was furious. “He had this very dark, evil gaze. I’ll never forget his eyes. Ever,” says Katie.

“He was jealous. I said, you know, ‘Get rid of him,’” recalls Amy Brown, Leslie’s oldest friend.

Amy says Leslie was “drop-dead beautiful” and had a certain aura. “Everybody that I’ve met through her will come up to me and say: ‘You know Leslie was my best friend.’ It’s just how they felt about her. That’s how she made me feel.”

Napa police wanted to talk to every man Leslie had ever been involved with and see if they could match any of them to the DNA the killer left behind. Detective Lonergan thinks it’s a possibility that someone Leslie came in contact with may have become obsessed with her.

“I would say Leslie is a heartbreaker. She never did it on purpose, but I think that there were lots of people out there that would have loved to have won her over, claimed her as their girlfriend,” says Leslie’s friend Kelly.

Napa police searched through Leslie’s computer and found an e-mail that interested them, from an old boyfriend she had met in Alaska when she was just 20.

“She was the perfect woman. I mean, she’s everything I was looking for, and then some,” says Aaron Davis. He proposed, but Leslie turned him down. And although she broke up with him more than five years ago, Aaron had recently tried to contact her.

“I was going to marry that girl. There’s other women out there, but there’s not another Leslie,” says Aaron.

Amy Brown says a lot of men fell hard for Leslie. “Guys just loved Leslie and even if they weren’t dating they would buy her things. And she never asked for anything. It was just like they would give the world to her. I mean this was the woman they were going marry. They just loved her to death.”

Amy says one boyfriend’s family sent Leslie on a cruise, while another man even bought her a car. “She had no idea that these men, or guys, would think that they were the one who was going to be with Leslie. She was just dating to find the right person for her.”

A month before she was murdered, Leslie went back to South Carolina for Amy’s wedding, carrying new luggage another guy had bought her.

Amy says she felt “queasy” that guys were buying gifts for her friend. And there was something else that bothered Amy.

She learned that on the night of her best friend’s murder, the father of one of men Leslie had broken up with tried repeatedly to reach her on the phone. “It gives me chills when I first heard that,” says Amy. “I’ve never had an ex-boyfriend’s father call me… I think it’s very weird.”