Alex Kotlowitz

Carla ordinarily didn't back down easily, but she'd been dismissed often before.

In seventh grade, she went to a guidance counselor about her dad's alleged abuse, and all the counselor did was go tell her parents.

Then remember the time she ended up in the emergency room?

Well, she told a doctor there that her father had punched her.

Nothing came of that either.

So when the detectives disregarded what she had to say, it felt familiar, like this was how it was always going to be.

Her dad would elude any responsibility for what he'd done.

She wasn't about to confront her father, who she feared would physically hurt her if she did.

The thing was, though, she couldn't keep it buried, at least emotionally.

She thought about it all the time, that her father had in all likelihood accidentally or purposefully killed someone, and that she hadn't done enough about it.

Can you remember a particular moment?

There was the Ringler family, of course, but there was also someone else, this 27-year-old truck driver named Larry Suter.

The tape you just heard is a tape police interview of Larry, a wiry, built man with a charming smile who liked to party.

And while he didn't live in White Cloud, the night of Ringler's death, he had been visiting a friend there.

Larry met a woman at the lamplight.

It was Christy Ringler.

They caught each other's eye, and when Larry and his friend went to party down the road, there was Christy as well.

Larry, who had a good deal to drink, says he offered to try to find her a ride, but she insisted she'd be all right.

The last time Larry saw her, she was walking down the dark two-lane road by herself.

Two days after Ringler's death, the police asked Larry to come down to the station for this questioning.