Chapter 1: What happened to Kelsey Schelling?
This is the 2020 True Crime Vault. World. I want to leave you better. I want my life to matter. What could make me crumble, you know, she would be strong enough to, you know, to stand up to.
I watched the news on TV.
Kelsey Schelling's face is on billboards in Pueblo, and volunteers have come through the area she was last seen. And now, since she's gone, you know, I've had to turn into a fighter.
she's the strongest mom i know i mean who fights for their kid like this it was like maybe she'll call maybe she's out there you know the pregnant woman who vanished kelsey was eight weeks pregnant last seen in pueblo visiting her boyfriend
Friends and family would get text replies back, but they said that it just didn't quite sound like Kelsey. I did have a sinking feeling in my stomach. This unknown man is seen walking to Kelsey Shelley's car and is seen driving away with the car. I mean, we're trying everything. It breaks my heart.
Almost two years after Kelsey's disappearance, a mysterious message giving everyone hope comes through that Help Find Kelsey Facebook page. It was saying, if I have information about Kelsey, can I remain anonymous? When Laura responds, a man emails her saying, ma'am, please, your daughter is not dead. It was just the fear of what if he is still out there somewhere? What if?
I mean, it was just what if? What if? Kelsey Schelling grew up in the tiny farm town of Holyoke, Colorado. Holyoke is around two and a half to three hours away from Denver. It's quiet. Just kind of have your own way. Perfect place to raise a family. Yeah, real good place. Safe. You're hoping anyway, you know. Holyoke is definitely agricultural. There's only one stoplight.
And if you want to go to a Walmart, you've got to head west to Sterling. That's 50 miles away. In the early 90s, Kelsey's parents, Doug and Laura, owned the local grocery store in Holyoke. Kelsey and her brother, Colby, seemed to be living out the American dream. I first met Laura Saxton back in 2016, when 2020 was first looking into Kelsey's story.
You know, she's just always been a little firecracker. Hi, Cal. Hi, Coco Bean. Kelsey. Kelsey. She wasn't a kid that wanted to stay up till midnight, you know, where you usually have to fight your kids to go to bed like at 8.30. That's when she wanted to go to bed. She'd go into her room and pull back her covers and each animal had to be in a certain place and everything had to be just perfect.
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Chapter 2: How did Kelsey's family react to her disappearance?
I was her coach, yeah. Here she is right here. Wow. Is she the point guard? When we were still in elementary school, her dad took us out and let us drive on the dirt roads, which is pretty common around here. Kelsey could just laugh about things like that, and her laugh made us laugh. She'd start to giggle, then you would start to giggle, and so that's what made being around Kelsey so special.
Kelsey was a tiny little thing, you know, shorter than me. The Kelsey that I knew didn't take a lot of crap off her classmates. You know, she wasn't afraid to stand her ground. But as Kelsey enters her teens, the Schelling family is rocked when Doug and Lara decide to divorce. Going through a divorce is really hard as a kid. Yeah, the split of our parents certainly had an impact on both of us.
Colby. Colby lived with me and Kelsey lived with her mom. It was a real dark time for the whole family. It was a rough age. You know, after her dad and I got divorced, it was just she and I together alone for a lot of years. She was in a bad emotional place, and I don't think that was due to her character and nature. I think that was circumstantial.
When Laura and I was going through a divorce, she was on antidepressant pills, and she ended up taking like three of them or something. She ended up in the hospital for several days, and it was pretty scary. I mean, I thought we were going to lose her at that point. She was in a coma? She was. I felt like it was a turning point.
I mean, when any young school-aged kid has parents who are splitting up, that's a lot to take on. She actually stopped doing all of the sports and activities. It seemed like she was more removed. I think Kelsey was just looking. She was looking for a change. She wanted to figure out what was her niche. Kelsey was... Always, I think, working through, how do I be better? How do I grow?
How do I move past this? Our senior year, she was the prom queen. You don't get that without showing people kindness and respect and truly being embraced by your peers, you know?
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Chapter 3: What were the circumstances surrounding Kelsey's last known whereabouts?
Kelsey taught me. She taught me perseverance. Eventually, she moves on. She goes to Northeastern Junior College. What did she want to do with her life? She wanted to get a degree in psychology. I think in her heart, she wanted to work with children. We officially became roommates January of 2011.
If all of us were bored at 3 o'clock in the morning, she'd be the one to say, let's go cause problems, I guess. Not bad problems. She was just, you know, out for a good time. She loved to have fun. That was her thing to do. And for a while, carefree Kelsey is back. And then she meets Dante Lucas. He's about to change her life forever. It was a big deal that she was dating Dante.
He was part of the basketball team. They were kind of the popular kids and everything. By the time Kelsey got to know him, she felt proud that she knew who he was because he was somebody to know. He had dreams of making it big in the NBA. Kelsey thought she met the man of her dreams.
Marker. Please say your full name and give us your title.
Lisa Wayne, attorney at law. Well, I had the privilege of being down in Pueblo in the 80s, and I was a public defender.
Pueblo's a small town in southern Colorado. It used to be a steel mill town. The steel mills shut down in the 80s. Pueblo was founded and built by people that came from all over the world. We're the home of the Pueblo chili. Everyone that lives there is so proud of this town. Kelsey's love interest, Dante Lucas, lives in Pueblo.
Sarah Lucas, Dante's mother, is raising all four kids on her own in this Colorado town set on what's called the front range of the Rocky Mountains. In the town of Pueblo, a six foot seven star athlete stands out. I coach Dante Lucas in youth football. He was a coach's dream. He was a real polite kid, wanted to learn the game of football and just really quiet.
Dante Lucas was super close with his mother, Sarah. On the football field, she was one of the most supportive parents. For Dante, football wasn't his sport. I'd say he's a better basketball player, which happened later in his career through high school here in Pueblo. Dante Lucas was a very well-known basketball player. He was going to be the one who made it out of Pueblo.
He had dreams of making it big in the NBA. It was obvious that he wanted to pursue it, but the family spoke more about it than he did. We were told by Dante's mom, Sarah, that he was getting contacted from North Carolina and Kentucky. Their dream was that he was going to make the NBA and make a good life for himself. When I first met Dante, he was a freshman here at Central High School.
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Chapter 4: How did Kelsey and Dante's relationship impact the investigation?
Normally, if someone was going to go away for a few days, they'd take their car with them. So we are now leaning towards foul play. So we accelerate the case.
Police start working backwards. They start going through surveillance video. And what they find is pretty surprising. Less than 12 hours after she would have arrived in Pueblo, surveillance video shows Dante in her car at an ATM in Pueblo. He's driving, and he takes $400 out of Kelsey's bank account.
Is it suspicious for you that he uses that card after the date where you pinpoint Kelsey was missing? It is part of the suspicious activity, yes. Because Dante withdraws money from Kelsey's account without her in the car, Dante is brought in for a second time by Pueblo police. This is the second time I've talked to you. These detectives had a wealth of information to go at him.
Why'd you get the money? The money? Mm-hmm. The what? The level 39 at the bank. You're on video, dude. In her car, with her credit card. The detective moves on to another topic, talking about why there's no record of Kelsey ever showing up at the hospital. That's... So it's like a lie, I'm just saying. Now here's the thing.
Instead of pressing Dante on these contradictions, they move on to an unrelated topic. When you dropped off, when she dropped you off at Walmart, where were you right then? I mean, like, apparently you guys know, so, like, I don't understand why you, like, I told you one time, like, I don't, that's all I can say about it. When she dropped you off at, what was that again?
I speak to lawyers with this stuff. You guys keep asking the same question over and over. Once he requests a lawyer, all questions come to a halt. Unfortunately, this is a very poorly executed interview. I think it's a tremendous missed opportunity. Once he shut down, our avenues of trying to talk to him end. How did you read that? As the possibility that he knows something.
at the bank that day. But those charges were later dropped when investigators found out that Kelsey did, on occasion, give him permission to use her bank card. How do you prove she did not or did give him permission at that time? And since you had permission to do it before, it makes it a very difficult case to prosecute.
He's released. He's, you know, living his life.
Do we suspect foul play? Yes. Have we come up with a body? No. Dante is a person of interest in the fact that she's missing. Hoping to get Dante to talk, police bring in the person who knows him better than anyone. Mysterious disappearance. The disappearance of Kelsey Schellig. Missing pregnant woman and her unborn baby. World... As journalists, these are the stories that keep us up at night.
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Chapter 5: What evidence was found after Kelsey's car was discovered?
He comes off as very cocky, I feel like. He feels like he's just the man and he's just, he can't do no wrong. Just as she'd planned, Lauren says she got Dante to open up, to trust her enough. The time finally seemed right to ask him about Kelsey. There was only a certain amount of period of time that he would talk about it.
One minute he had no involvement, he had nothing to do with it, and then he would just shut down and start crying hysterically and get really upset. But Lauren says something very unexpected happened with Dante. Her undercover relationship with him blossomed into romance.
i felt like he did genuinely develop feelings for me and did genuinely fall in love with me it has this way about him that makes you just feel so sorry for him in the back of my mind i always kept that he is potentially a murderer lauren says her relationship with dante continued for about a year but then something happened there was an incident outside his house that made her realize she was in way over her head
He's like, I want you to marry me. And he showed me the ring. I took the ring. At that point, I was kind of like done because I didn't want to get in any deeper than I had already gotten into. Despite all the efforts of this clandestine girlfriend, her work doesn't seem to be paying off. And the clock just keeps ticking for Laura Saxton.
She's not any closer to knowing the truth about what happened to Kelsey. I wasn't happy at all with how things were going. And I mean, that's One big reason why I wanted to do the first story with you guys was I was hoping that that would somehow bring something out into the light. Tonight on 2020, when do you stop looking for a pregnant daughter who's vanished?
In May of 2016, our first 2020 program on the Kelsey Schelling case hits the airwaves. The very day of our broadcast, there's a big announcement regarding the investigation into Kelsey's disappearance. The Colorado Bureau of Investigation was going to join the case. That was news to me, so I was kind of like, oh my God, this is awesome.
I think once that 2020 special aired, it really turned up the heat on Pueblo Police and on this case. Taking over the case, Pueblo Police Department Commander Eric Bravo and CBI Agent Kevin Torres. Working together, they move fast, turning it from a missing persons case into a full-blown criminal investigation.
It was a homicide investigation in our eyes, so I immediately started working on setting a plan into motion how we wanted to proceed.
Police got a tip that led them to believe Schelling's body might be in Dante's backyard.
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