Keith Morrison

Husband Mike standing solemnly behind her, hand on a shoulder.

By no means all they did.

As spring turned to summer, Michelle's 14-foot-high smiling face began to appear on billboards in the high desert, among thousand-year-old Joshua trees.

The billboards read, I wasn't ready to die at 18.

Can you help catch my killer?

But six months after Michelle was murdered, as the desert soared past 100 degrees in the shade, the case of the girl in the blue Mustang went cold.

No chargeable suspect, no new clues, no solid leads.

Then, on October 11th, 2000, a chilly autumn day on what should have been Michelle's 19th birthday, the O'Keeffe's were clear across the country, in New York City, on the Montel Williams Show.

They put the O'Keeffe's in the audience, under a spotlight, there to bare their souls on national TV.

Pat looked down self-consciously as her husband Mike began.

A stunning black and white photo of Michelle filled the TV screen.

The camera zoomed into her smiling face.

Seated up front on the studio's main set, Montel and a psychic named Sylvia Brown leaned forward, clasping their hands as if they wanted to bring Pat and Mike closer.

Sylvia began describing Michelle's killer in a vision that had just come to her.

Lee, as in six foot two inch security guard, Raymond Lee Jennings?

A minute later, the segment was over, though to the O'Keefe's it seemed as if it had barely begun.

They could easily have filled the entire hour with their hopes and mostly their fears.

Pat and Mike told me it wasn't satisfying, but at least it was something.

Why did you go on these shows, Montel Williams, America's Most Wanted?

What drove you to do that?