Beth Shelburne

Yolanda became a witness for detectives, avoiding jail time during Hardy's murder investigation, but entered a pattern of exploitation that may have led to her murder.

LaTanya became a defendant for telling the truth.

She didn't have any information to give, and detectives sent her to jail.

Both Yolanda and LaTanya ended up traumatized and hurt.

And as I think through how detectives treated these witnesses and the suspects of Hardy's murder, I keep coming back to this one thing that Tony Richardson said.

Now, that's really interesting coming from a retired detective.

To be in what we really thought was a revolution.

On June 11th, 1998, a deputy from the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department went missing.

Is this the story of a man who just got lost in the desert?

Or of a cover-up inside the nation's largest sheriff's department?

Detectives are moving ahead with the theory of the crime that Yolanda Chambers gives them in her interrogations, even though the theory isn't supported by what hotel witnesses saw and heard the night of the murder.

So what were detectives missing?

What evidence was available?

And was there anything else they should have looked at but didn't because they decided to stick with Yolanda as their key witness?

Let's back up to the moment Hardy was shot.

We know officers began their investigation by talking to hotel guests, actual confirmed witnesses who were staying at the Crown-Sterling Suites.

Several people heard the shots and looked out their window right after it happened, like Marshall Kelly Cummings, the Keebler cookie guy.

This interview was recorded about two and a half hours after Hardy was shot.

Cummings says he saw someone get into a car and drive away from the hotel right after he heard the shots fired.

Cummings says he saw the person close the driver's side door.