Young Server Vanishes at Bonefish Grill

-Jack, rule 9-1-1, what's the location of the emergency? -Oh, I'm at bone fish grill. -What's going on there? -I don't know what's going on, and I'm really very worried. -In August of 2017, 21-year-old Savannah Gold goes to work at a restaurant near her home in Jacksonville, Florida. But never clocks in. -How about 30 minutes? Strange checks, but that she is running off to marry someone and not to worry. I mean, it's completely strange. The texts were off. It wasn't like Savannah. -Her car is still in the lot. Her purse is in the back seat, but one tire has been deliberately slashed. -That's something that was done on purpose. Someone made sure that car wasn't going somewhere. -What I knew was she didn't leave her own free-acord. -You weren't even in the parking lot. Not me. Last time that we talked, like, via text, was probably three weeks ago or so? -She never got out of your back seat. Video camera was told why. -So Mandarin is a neighborhood on the south side of Jacksonville, Florida. It's along the St. John's River. This is a relatively quiet community. It's filled with strip malls and family-friendly restaurants. It's not exactly the kind of place where young women vanish in broad daylight. -There's not a lot of crime there. You typically would feel safe there. I can't think of a time where I covered another murder in Mandarin, but this one was pretty unusual. -Savanna Gold was a young lady. It was 21-years-old, vibrant, full of life, outgoing, and all the family photos, videos that the family showed me. She had a larger-than-life personality and smile. -Family and friends describe Savannah as very caring and empath, artistic, and she was always there for anyone in need. -Her mom and dad, in particular, especially her mom. They just had such a great relationship. In high school, she played lacrosse. She water-skied. She was always on the water. Their family was really, really inseparable. -Just a few months earlier, Savannah had been accepted to one of the most prestigious art schools in the country. Her bags were packed. But then her mom got sick. -She had got accepted to aptly name the Savannah School of Art and Design. And she was on her way there. Her mom got sick. She had diagnosed with cancer, unfortunately. So Savannah put her own desires, her own artistic movement in life, on hold, that schooling on hold, to stay at home and be around. So she started working full-time at the Bonefish Grill. On August the 2nd of 2017, Savannah left home and drove just a few miles away to the Bonefish Grill because she was scheduled to work. So she leaves home about 5.30 roughly. She parks in the parking lot. And then her mom doesn't hear from her. Savannah always, when she goes to work, texts mom or dad, "Hey, I'm at work now. I love you. See you later." -Like clockwork, Savannah texts her mom and brother. But this time it's not to say, "I love you. It's something far stranger." -Even at 21 years old, she's not typing in emojis or just a few letters. She actually is typing in sentences. The texts that they get are completely broken English. There's like one or two words, there's misspelled words. There's their fragments. And there's no punctuation. And she says, "In essence, met someone, the love of my life, my boyfriend, we're running away together. I'll let you know when we get there. I can't deal with this anymore." -The text messages raised a huge flag for family members. They said Savannah would never just up and leave. She wouldn't leave without the knowing. -I always tell people, listen to the family. Listen to the family. The family is not just in denial. They know these people. They know how they talk. They know how they work things. They know what they would or would not ever say. So when a family looks at a message and says, "Oh, that's not her. That is evidence. And in my experience, the family is almost always right about that." -Yes, Savannah's mother doesn't buy the mystery boyfriend theory for a second. So she jumps in the car immediately drives to the restaurant to try to find her daughter. -She finds Savannah's car there. Her mom notices that she has a flat tire. Her purse is in the car in the back seat. She goes inside and Savannah never shows up for work. -While all of this is unfolding in the parking lot, Savannah's co-workers are trying desperately to reach her as well, but with no luck. So they decide to call police. -Do you want to report our missing? -I do, yeah. Okay. It's Savannah Gold. Do you know what color clothing she has today? Like, we'll call her Shardin. -Yeah. She had a white chef's coat that had the bone fist belt name on it. Black dance. Black juice. The white undershirt. So the text we received one evening didn't sound like her. -There's no sign of foul play. We have an adult who isn't where they're supposed to be. She could be in a lot of places, but that doesn't make it criminal that she didn't tell her parents where she was going and that she didn't go to work. -But as the hours tick by and Savannah doesn't check in, the concern over her absence magnifies tenfold. -So at about nine, 15, my spidey senses were going off that, okay, something has happened, and if we don't jump on this quickly, if she's been abducted, and we're not involved, it could be a very tragic case. I went straight to her parent's house, to her house, and interviewed her family, and she's on a drug user. She doesn't have a history, she's not a habitual runaway. All of that together just didn't sit right with me. -And that's when Savannah's brother remembers something that he never thought to tell the responding officers. -He gave us an even narrower timeline because he was also scheduled to work that day. And so one of the things that he said is, it was really weird because when I pulled into the parking lot, I saw one of the managers cars there, backed in, and his name was Lee Road Darte. He was sitting in his car, but Lee wasn't scheduled to work that day. He realized that his sister's car was parked in the area within a spot or two from where he thought he saw Lee Road Darte's car parked, and none of that had been reported or told to the police early. So that immediately told me, wait a minute. I kept thinking in my mind, she's alive somewhere. Time was of the essence to me, and you have nothing. We're trying to pull video from that shopping center. There's a bank right there in an ATM, like right precisely in front of Savannah's car. And we were like, this is going to be gold. This is Bingo, we've got something here. And so we pulled a video, and it is a phenomenal picture of a bush. -The camera option, which is always a best option because you're looking at it. You can't deny what happened if you're looking at it on camera. But if that option is taken off the table and you do not have video evidence, you're going to also look at the cell phone. The cell phone is a story in itself because it can tell you everywhere they've been, what they've done. -Her phone leaves the bonefish grill, drives out onto Claire Road, then onto San Jose Boulevard, and then up to the interstate, and then it goes silent. So something happened to the phone that either got shut off or something, but we know that it leaves there. I knew that Leroy Darty was someone that I needed to talk to because Savannah's brother. He believed it was him that was in that parking lot. Again, not insinuating that it had anything to do with it, but maybe he had seen her or seen something. And so I knew coming back when he was available would be more prudent. I can just talk to everyone at one time. -So Ray Reeves does just that and interviews each employee one by one. -Today is August the 4th, currently at the bonefish grill located in Mandarin. -Maybe there's a secret life to Savannah that maybe her parents don't know of, right? Maybe the co-workers are going to say, "Man, yeah, she was unhinged. She was, you know, rude. She was doing drugs." -And it doesn't take long for Reeves to uncover his first viable lead. -I'm a guy in a suit in a bow tie. I mean, that's me. I wear a bow tie. That's just what I do. And so when the guy in the bow tie walks in, most people, they're put a little bit at ease. -I really, really suggest that you guys thought that gosh, they have been picking out, picking the one-out things and texting. Savannah's young and the guy's around here, pretty much to the bandages, so make a picture. -Yeah. -She's looking for a picture. Um, there was a gentleman here where he's not here anymore, so later she started messing around with him. His girlfriend found out she has been up here looking for Savannah before. In my opinion, there's no way in the world. And she did not go with somebody. She had a four o'clock in the afternoon and that car is right there. And before she walks in and go, you mean it somebody? He starts bringing up that Savannah is linked to other guys. And this raises the question, are there more suspects out there? I didn't know what had happened to Savannah, but deep down I was really hoping that she was alive somewhere, but I felt like Lee knew he was the key. This is a non-custodial interview with Lee, Ro Darte, 11-05-PM. All workers described Lee Ro Darte as reserved, a little standoffish. They knew that he and Savannah had previously dated, and that Lee was trying to get Savannah back, but she didn't want to continue that relationship. Strategically, I did not interview Lee first or last. I made sure that he was just in the mix. So I asked him a few fundamental questions that I already know the answers to, and then I can easily slide into something that I know is not true to pull to see what a baseline is for him. I guess I've known her since she started here. Okay. A couple of years ago. Oh, okay. So, I've been here for, it'll be five years of December. I'm the culinary manager, the last time I saw her, I think she worked over the weekend. Were you here Wednesday? I know you didn't work, but were you here at all Wednesday? I'm in the area. Okay. You weren't even in the parking lot. Not me. Last time that we talked, I could be a text, was probably three weeks ago or something? I was there two or three weeks ago. I've heard a couple different things that she ran away with a boy or something like that. And then I've heard that there was some bad blood between a guy she was seeing, his girlfriend, I guess. A guy that used to work here. Okay. His name is Andrew. You know that she used to use drugs pretty habitually. Okay. And I know that she's been to rehab and stuff like that, but she was using, I believe she was using heroin at one point and then some prescription medication and stuff like that. Lee Rudardy appears to be very calm and confident with his side of the story saying that Savannah must be linked to other guys and has a possible drug problem. He tells me something about Andrew, who is something that she knows. And he said that Savannah is a big drug user. She was doing all these drugs, which are completely inconsistent from what her parents say, what our criminal history in the Sheriff's Office show and anyone else. I don't have any record of anywhere of this drug user that he's insinuating. No one else says that. The only person that says that is Lee. We hung out for a while some months ago. We never really defined it as dating, but we hung out, you know, but now like officially like dating like a boyfriend, do you have girlfriend? Yeah. I mean, we weren't dating. We hung out a couple of times here and then we kind of realized that, you know, maybe we shouldn't adjust for work purposes, maybe being a manager. When you are interviewing somebody, if it's somebody, they still have feelings for some sort and you bring that up, they won't look directly at you when they're answering that question. A lot of times they'll shift in their chair. They'll either cross their leg and cross their leg, they'll start doing something with their hands or tapping like their behavior shifts because they're stress levels going up and their autonomic nervous system is reacting whether they want to or not. I got a little bit of a pulse on the side of his neck and his carotid. I've got a scratch on the side of his neck that looked fresh and I've got some dilated eyes and then I've got, I've got lies. The trouble is police still don't have the actual proof that a crime even occurred. Just because he was in the parking lot doesn't mean he's guilty. Really at this point detectives could only take what his word at face value. When someone's that eager, especially with things that is going to point you away from them, then that's kind of something you notice. There's plenty of innocent people that talk too much that's innocent, but their stories are usually very consistent. The truth just naturally comes out. The guilty don't run, sometimes they just walk right up and start telling you things. I knew he was lying, I knew he had seen her, I didn't have enough to detain him and I wanted to leave him with that of saying, thank you, you've been helpful. I don't think I need to ask anything else. These girls gonna show up, she'll turn up somewhere, whatever, we get these all the time. And then he's got nothing to worry about. And then Reeves goes back to the office and this is where he learns about a development that might break this whole case wide open. I started to say, hey I need you to come here I want you to look at something. So in 2017 the city of Jacksonville was tearing out its red light cameras because the data showed it wasn't actually preventing any accidents. So by December they would all be gone. Fortunately though, there was still one running outside of the restaurant, which is about to give investigators their biggest clue yet. This was the last case that was used at the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office for a red light camera. There was one at the intersection where the bonefish grill was at Clare Road and San Jose Boulevard. So I look at the video and it's a distance away but what I can see is there is a car that is backed in by the bank that is the same making model that Leroy Darte drove and it was parked there. So that really gave credence to what her. Savannah's brother told me and then I saw Savannah's car pull in. I could tell you it was a white female with blonde hair who drove in same year make model car parked next to Leroy Darte's car. I saw that female get out of her car walk over to Leroy Darte's car, Leigh gets out of his car, Savannah and Leigh have a quick few word conversation. There's no audio so I don't know but they're facing each other. They both get into the back seat of Leigh's car. When I see just a few minutes later the rear passenger side door that Savannah got into it what I call violently opens and shuts three times. I see that car rock and then I don't see Savannah get out. Leroy Darte at one point gets out of his car, goes over to Savannah's car and slashes her tire then eventually drives off and Savannah is never seeing going inside the restaurant. That was pretty brazen to essentially abduct her in broad daylight especially right outside the bonefish grill where there are clearly a lot of surveillance cameras. Without the footage you might have a missing person and no way to ever figure out what happened to her in that family may never get closure. You know there's intent involved now. We have to figure out what that purpose was. Based on the evidence, based on the video and seeing that struggle, it's hard to tell if he actually planned this out or this was a hit or the moment type situation. The fact that we were already slashed Savannah's car was a clue to investigators that maybe he was trying to prevent her from leaving and getting away. Leigh doesn't know that I have video of him so him telling me I wasn't there, he believes honestly that I believe him. Savannah's disappearance was unsuddling to the entire community. There was a lot of people rallying behind her hoping that she would be found safe. Many people gathered to pass out flyers when she was missing. She had a lot going for her, she was so young at the time that you wouldn't think this would happen to a girl like her. While Savannah was missing, Leigh Werdarde was checking in with her family, he even was passing out flyers with her family members and loved ones. It was almost like he was trying to deflect that maybe he could be a suspect in this case. And this is also sometimes when people will start showing up on the scene and trying to help the police because they're trying to figure out what do the police know because they're trying to see how well are they covering their tracks. When we have a deceased person, when we have a body, I've got time, right? Because they're not, and I don't mean this in any calis way, but they're not going to get more deceased. I've got nobody. As a matter of fact, Rey believes that she's alive, so I don't have time. And so it's a risky decision, but ultimately it's a lead investigator. My sergeant said it's your call. This is your case, your lead. Do you give it another few hours? Do you give it another day or do we go now? So I told them I want to go now. But the clock ticking reads heads back to the restaurant and he tries to lure lead to police headquarters without making a scene. In researching him, I know that he's got an outstanding bench warrant for driving on a suspended license. So if I need to talk to him and I can't, I walk straight into the back and into the back where Lee was cooking. He was behind a grill at a knife in his hand. I just walked up to him. I just put my hand on his hand and said, put the knife down. Hey, man, come over here. The officers are here. You have a warrant. I'm not going to embarrass you here in front of people at work, the people that are out there eating in the restaurant. And he's like, yep, let's do that. I'll go with you. I wanted to question him more. I was in his house, which I do okay in, but I do incredibly well in my house. And if you come to my home, I'm going to own you. So I want to tell you about something really big happening here at Long Crime. If you haven't checked it out yet, we have the Long Crime Plus app and this is where you You can stream your favorite long. crime and core TV shows completely commercial free. And now, Long Crime Plus subscribers, they can watch new episodes of Prime Crime a week early before they premiere on YouTube. And right now, we've got a special offer with my promo code PrimeFall. You get your first three months of Long Crime Plus for just $2.99 a month. That is 50% off the regular monthly price. So with that in mind, subscribe today. In downtown, we were friends. I need him. I need something from him. And the best way to get that is for him to be willing to talk to me. So when I'm talking to Lee, he doesn't know. I mean, we had just gotten the red light camera video, and I think I eventually led in with, I didn't say red light camera, but I have a video that shows you were there. Like, did you just forget that? Again, very nonchalant, not in your face. How dare you, anything like that. And so we just began that, hey, can you just pick up there? Like, what, what, what was happening? What's going on? And he did. And I think even before, if I remember correctly, even with that interview, before even was able to fully articulate that I'm questioning that in him, he said, hey, I got to tell you something. I didn't tell you the truth when we talked about the fish. OK, last time I saw her was Wednesday afternoon. OK, I heard that she has been basically telling a lot of people at work that we hooked up, a bunch, like a couple of days before that, and that she was going to like tell about the whole situation. You know, try to get me fired. Why would that get you fired? Well, I'm a manager and she's an employee, so I was a little upset. So, I met her in the parking lot at Bonefish Wednesday afternoon. Is that how she was working that night? I didn't. This time, Leroy Darte admits that he drove to work on his day off because he knew Savannah would be there. I pulled in the parking lot, she pulled in a little bit after me. I parked and I said, hey, kind of talked to you for a second. I was like, I heard you've been saying some things about me and you. She asked me, she said, can I come sit in the car because I just did some heroin and I'm a little paranoid. And I explained to her the situation. I told her that servers at Bonefish were coming to me and telling me that you're telling people that we're seven, six. And I said, I need you to stop because for one, it's jeopardizing my job. At that point, I got out and I punched her with the hole on the tire. And she said, you know, you're a piece of ****. And I said, don't do it again. Or next time it's going to be worse, it's going to be your windows. Which tire did you punch her on her car? Try her side. Front. I had a small kitchen knife that I used, as Philip says, who driver one time. It was like a small parry knife. I guess she was a parry knife. And then did you cut it, puncture it? Something else. Saturday, like a puncture. And she got out. And it looked like she was either texting or calling somebody. And I was saying, older model Ford pickup. Green drove past me and around. And she got in. The truck had fairly tinted windows. I saw a baseball cap. Yeah. Okay. You see a guy, girl, like black? I couldn't really tell if it was a guy or a girl. How do you think it was between the time that she got out and started using her phone for that green truck pulled up? Maybe five minutes. Okay. So wow. So if she calls somebody, they got there in five minutes to pick her up. We let Lee just talk and let him talk. Because what he's doing is he's coming up even now. He's coming up with even more stories. He's fabricating more things. I say he's backing himself into a corner. And so I let him do that. And at a certain point, I chip away at a few of those things. That was self-intensive, actually. Why? I just have been having kind of a hard time. What did you use? A knife. What did you do then? Some time in July? You did that in July. It's still bloody. Well, I kind of peeled a scab here and there at work. Anything and all stuff like that, I peeled it last night working. I'm still not convinced that she's dead. I believe that she's alive. And that maybe if I can break down a story from him, he'll tell me where she is. You know, maybe he's done something with her and put her somewhere. But I have no proof. All I know is that they got in the car together. That is all that I can actually prove. I want to find this girl. I need to find her. I don't really care about your feelings. What I care about is finding her. So where is she? I don't know where she is. That's not true because we have proof. We have we have proof. And that's why we're sitting here, Lee. She never got out of your back seat. Lee. Video cameras don't lie. How do you think I know this information, Lee? I wasn't there. But a video camera caught it. You can't deny video. They realize you already have the truth. The lies, they stop protecting him at that point because they know you know the truth. That usually will make them break. There's something in his eyes that says he cares about Savannah. And so we began to try to play it that. That's why I'm so passionate about this. This is someone's child. You might not have kids. But damn it, is she someone's kid? That's how fair her mom would stage for a cancer. Once all she wants to know is where her daughter is. There's a raw emotion in this interview from Michelle from my partner that connects with her because her daughter was the same age as Savannah at the time. And her daughter played lacrosse with Savannah in high school. I'm begging you, Lee, please. Please tell us. Please don't make us waste her any more of our time. Just tell us. I'm begging you, I know you're not evil. This tell us where she is. Please tell us. Lee, please. I'm begging you. For her family. There was this moment that he wants to tell. And I want to talk. And I bit my tongue. And I just let there be just an agonizing quiet space. Just a silence in the room. She tried to set me. I slapped her. She went to get out. I grabbed her on her waist and said, "Where are you going?" And she tried to set me again. And then, you know, if I was still holding her, we'd talk and we'd left. Why would she leave with you after that? Why would she want to say this? Thanks for slashing my tires. Thanks for grabbing me. Thanks for trying to slap me. Cool of y'all, I want to hang out with you tonight. When a suspect keeps changing their story or revising details about their story, they're actually building the story, not remembering the story. The truth doesn't need three versions. They're one version to the truth. And they're going to remember it because it's what really happened. It's what they're going to say. She was hit in me. I just, she wouldn't stop. And I just squeezed back. There's just a f*cking you. She slapped me and grabbed me. Okay. I tried to pull her arms off. But she wouldn't let go. So I grabbed her. Layward already tells investigators that while he and Savannah were in the car, she starts slapping him in the face. He grabs her by the neck and then he hears a pop. I thought my hands were around her shoulders. And then when I went to push her down onto the seat. Okay. But my hands were like, okay, I thought I had them right here. You thought you had her up here? Yeah, I thought I had them like, like right here. Yeah, and I ended up coming down. Okay, this was a pop. Okay, you heard a pop sound. Could you feel a pop? Yeah. Okay, where did you feel? I just heard it and then it felt like some more in here. Okay. And when you're after you heard the pop. What, what happened to that one? Do you remember? It is disturbing because how does someone's neck just pop? I don't know, I don't know. I have the faintest idea I have. what goes, what's supposed to happen after that. So, I go home, and I don't know what to do, so I can't find it. And I put it there. Was she just put in the fire pit, or did she burn her or what? Um, I do a whole put her there, okay? I don't know why, I thought I'd do it too. Sorry, the bomb fire. Did she get burned at all or you just tried or what? I tried, okay. And in what is truly a disturbing twist, police learn that while Savannah's body is laying on this fire pit, Lee has company over. Another girl that he was seeing who knew nothing about this, she's completely innocent. He had her come over, they watched Netflix in order to pizza, unbeknownst to her, Savannah's dead in the backyard in this fire pit. They hang out together, she leaves. He tries to burn Savannah's body, tries to light her on fire gasoline and, you know, as an, as an accelerant. What was up with the text to her family? I just freaked out. Okay. I got scared. Who, who'd you send the text to? Her dad. Okay, anybody else? Her dad and your brother you sent to? Do you remember kind of what it said? She's running off with a boyfriend. Where's her phone, man? Let's do another one, no. Tell me where you threw them. I'm 295. Now we know why that phone stops pinging. Where is she now? Please tell us who she is. You got the hearts part out. I understand that. Okay. You're doing good, buddy. It's gone. I'm always sad. Club, club, club do clay. Club do clay. It's a neighborhood. It's over on the west side of Jacksonville. It's a nice neighbor. It's very quiet, very peaceful. Part of me was thinking she's going to be out there tied up someplace. Maybe she'll be alive or we'll get there and he lied. And then she's not there at all because he's been lying all night long. There's no reason that he wouldn't just say another lie. Where Leewardardi took Savannah's body is off club do clay road and this specific spot where he disposed her body is isolated. So you really have to know that area in order to find it. There's a pond that's down there. It had been overgrown, stagnant water. It was literally a swamp. It was absolutely overgrown with weeds, trees, bushes, algae covering the entire surface of the pond. It was dark, no lights. It was like some haunted pond or something. I remember when the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office went out to search that pond. They didn't immediately say who they were looking for but we all had a hunch that it could be Savannah gold. It turns out that Leewardardi actually used to live just down the street from that location so it was very familiar to him. Our dive team went out and they put on full complete suits and waiters to get in this. This isn't your typical river ocean dive. They find something that appears to be a human form that's wrapped up in some blankets, comforters, a shower curtain and then duct taped together. Right away it's clear. This time Lee is telling the truth. The body they find is 21 year old, Savannah gold. If Lee doesn't tell us where she is, I'm not sure that we ever find her quite honestly. If he doesn't tell us, I'm very thankful for that. No one deserves to go out like that. No one deserves to be treated like that. They take her to the medical examiner and they can tell it was some type of a strangulation point but they can't pinpoint, you know, like they would say a stab wound or a gunshot wound. That specific because of the decay and because of her body's condition but they do classify it a violent homicide and that matches up with the evidence from the autopsy from what Lee says. We also do a search warrant at the residence, his residence and we find that in the backyard is this burn pit. There's dirt in there that does eventually match what's in the back of Lee's car because we do a search warrant on his car as well. We do know that there's one of Savannah's hair fibers in his car. In the backyard there's a shovel, there's gas, there's gloves, there's bleach from the cleanup, attempted cleanup, the comforters that he had wrapped Savannah up matched pillowcases or shams in his house. It was a set. So we knew that they came from there. Knowing that 75% of her body was burned showed that this was a violent murder. It was heartbreaking for her family and friends because there was still hope that maybe she'd be found alive. There's just not a lot of words to describe it really. One of the other things that we do is when we leave the interview room, we're hoping that they're going to keep talking. Right, and in this case Lee did, I think the fullness started coming on down on him and it wasn't remorse, it wasn't I feel bad for what I did, but if they I got caught, they got me. On August 5, 2017, just three days after Savannah gold vanished, Lee Rodarte is arrested and then later charged with second-degree murder, tampering with evidence and abuse of a dead body. People love to say it just came out of nowhere. I mean this was such a good person and while of course that's possible, it's almost never the case. There's usually some sort of pattern that maybe people have overlooked or maybe they noticed and didn't realize what it was. He lost quite a bit and he doesn't really follow the rules. Maybe he has a clean record because he just didn't get caught yet. In talking with other people about him, he's arrogant, he's cocky, he was a manager there and so managers were not supposed to date the other employees, but he knew that and he did that. He was using girls and so she just, Savannah was like, you know, that's not what I'm looking for, part ways. He went out there to talk to her because he was mad that she had told people and that she had cut it off and that she didn't want to have a relationship anymore and that's why he got furious with her and this happened. After Savannah Gold was found, loved ones held a vigil out in a park and this park was very significant to Savannah because this is where she would go to let loose. For her mind and she always felt at peace. They made art, they played games. It was really just a place where people could go, mingle and honor Savannah in a lighthearted way after such a tragedy happened just days before. For nearly two years, this case moves towards trial and then just days before a jury is set to be seated, Liro Darte plays the only card that he has left. In 2019, Liro Darte comes out with a standard ground claim saying that he was acting in self defense when he killed Savannah Gold. If Florida standard ground protects you, if you are in a position where you are in fear for your life and resort to using deadly force because you feel like deadly force is being used on you, he claims that she was slapping them in the face and he claims that he was protecting himself. It was really bizarre. If a person does not tell you in the very beginning, hey, this is self defense, I was trying to defend myself more than likely that is not going to be the truth because if you could easily say to the police, hey, I was defending myself. This is exactly what happened all the evidence is here, but instead you choose to build this elaborate story and start sending text messages from someone's phone, whatever it is that you choose to do to try to cover up what happened. And you wait several years and then you say, it was self defense. More than likely, they're probably grasping at straws like, okay, this is terrible. How can I get out of this? If you look at Savannah Gold compared to Liro Darte, he is just under six feet tall, about 160 something pounds. Savannah is not even 100 pounds. She's 90 something pounds and five feet tall. That doesn't seem like a fair fight. Believer Darte forgot something two years earlier at the very end of his interrogation. A detective came back into the room to close that very same loophole that he's now trying to exploit. It definitely seemed like a stall tactic used to buy him some time to delay the trial. One of the things I wanted to find about thank you is y'all argued in the car initially first. Did was she starting to stringle you or put her hands on you in any way before you got out and did that to her tire? Was that only after you got back in the car after? After, okay, so none of that happened before it was just basically you telling her to leave you alone and she was just going back and forth. Okay, okay, okay, all right, okay, thank you very much. I just want to clarify that. When he put her hands on her, I believe that's when she was fighting back. Sometimes that car door opens violently and it's slam shut. I believe she was fighting back when all of her might in the back of that car. She's trying to escape. In the end, a judge denies Lee Rodarte's standard ground claim. And Rodarte reaches a plea deal with the state where he agrees to a 40-year sentence for Savannah's murder. And as part of the deal, the tampering with evidence and abuse of a dead body charges are dropped. Even the trial phase, we get down to the wire. We're going and her mom is sick now. Her mom is not doing well with her cancer. She held on. She had a fight in her and she held on until this. In March of 2021, Savannah's family finally faces her killer in open court. And her mother stands up and talks about a number. The victim impact statement Savannah Gold's family read during Lee Rodarte's sentence saying were very emotional. Her mother talked about the significance of the number 21. Savannah was 21 years old. 21 was the number she always had in sports. She had 21 tattooed on her arm. And 2021 was the year her family saw her killer go to prison. And this is one of the most memorable to me because typically on homicide you respond out to the scene you got to call out because someone's dead. We didn't have a crime scene really. We had no proof that a crime occurred and we had a missing person. We had no body. But all of that together culminated in being thankful that we had the one and only crime that was ever caught on a red light camera. We got rid of those. So there was a first for the city and a last for the city on a homicide. What I'll always remember about this case is just how brazen it was and vicious to happen in broad daylight. That this 21 year old woman was just an in on and off again relationship with her coworker. And she didn't want to continue her relationship. And instead of just going their separate ways, he kills her. We have a 21 year old girl who never got to experience the rest of her life who's on an upward trajectory who loves her family, who stays in town to take care of her mom, puts her own career on pause. Just vibrant, happy, outgoing, loving person who never gets to enjoy and contribute to the society. And to me, what's most memorable about this is being in that interview and getting the truth to come out for Savannah. Sometimes in the interviews, I can picture. Sorry, I remembered distinctly. There was a moment when Lee told me after he told me where she was and he was talking about it. I kind of tuned him out for a minute and I and I pictured envisioned Savannah smiling. Like we we did it and you and you did this for me. I love this job, but I love it because they let me help people who don't get a voice anymore. And so I'm thankful for the agency that lets me do this job and I get an opportunity for for the Savannahs that are out there.