College student Anita Knutson is found stabbed to death. The case took years and the unwavering commitment of loved ones and investigators to reach a resolution. Blayne Alexander reports. Blayne Alexander and Josh Mankiewicz go behind the scenes of the making of this episode in ‘Talking Dateline’ Listen on Apple: https://apple.co/3EJjQgzListen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/5xo5SlFMzFme4mG876Vbyh
Chapter 1: What happened to Anita Knutson?
Your mind just goes everywhere. Like, who could do this?
Tyler Schmaltz was kind of infatuated with her.
She kind of friend-zoned him pretty quickly.
Yes. Nicole Rice's name came up.
I overheard Nicole's mom asking, how could you think my daughter did this? It wasn't me.
We were dispatched to a call of someone entering an apartment. There was a male. He had a knife.
If there's a chance that you crawled in the window and killed this girl, you know I can't, bro.
There were many possible suspects.
If someone told you you were at a party and you said you killed him, would they be lying?
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Chapter 2: Who were the key suspects in Anita's murder?
Yes, that's the front and only door going into apartment number five.
The bedroom window caught his eye. What did you notice about her window? I noticed that the screen was gone. An important detail that remained to be seen. As police began processing the crime scene, Anita's father, Gordon, had begun the grim duty of telling his family. Anita's 15-year-old sister, Anna, got the news from her brother.
Daniel comes to pick me up and I get in the car and I could tell he'd been crying. Like something was very wrong. And I was like, well, what's going on? And he's like, and I can't tell you.
Finally, he spoke the words. Anita was dead.
This is, of course, my first time with any type of grief at this level. But I learned about myself in that moment. Like, I don't want people around. I don't want people coming in to ask me if I'm okay every five seconds, especially people that don't know me.
Daniel was also taking it hard. I understand that Daniel and Anita had a very special relationship. They did. They were very close. Gordon and his wife Sharon adopted the three siblings when they were all very young. They spent their early childhood in sunny Southern California.
It was a fun little childhood, yeah.
Lauren Lessig and Anita became forever friends in kindergarten. What was it about Anita that just really drew you to her?
She was just positive and happy and just... the best. I mean, she always did what was right. She never, like, wavered in that."
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