"My Dad's Killer": A daughter's journey for justice

Editor's note: In April 2018, the Supreme Court of Kansas reversed Dana Chandler's murder convictions on grounds of prosecutorial misconduct.  In closing arguments, prosecutors claimed Mike Sisco had gotten an order of protection against Chandler, and that she had violated it.  There was no such order.

A new trial for Chandler is scheduled for August 2022.

Produced by Lourdes Aguiar and Sara Ely Hulse

[This story was first broadcast on Sept. 29, 2012. It was updated on May, 4, 2013]

"48 Hours" has pursued this case for five years ... turning up the heat on a cold case and a murder suspect.

It's taken 10 years to get Hailey Sisco's mother, Dana Chandler, into a Topeka courtroom to face trial for murdering Hailey's father, Mike Sisco, and his fiancee, Karen Harkness.

"She's being held accountable for what she's done - and I - I hate that that's the truth, but it is," an emotional Hailey Sisco told "48 Hours." "Your mom did kill your dad. That's - that's the fact."

Hailey was just 17 and her brother, Dustin, was 15 at the time of the murders.

"I know mom did it," Dustin told "48 Hours" correspondent Richard Schlesinger.

"And you've known that for 10 years?" Schlesinger asked.

"Yeah."

"Lord knows I don't want it to be her," Hailey said. "If it wasn't I would be on cloud nine."

The question is, will prosecutors be able to convince the jury that Dana Chandler is a murderess?

"Convict her. Because she killed Mike Sisco, she killed Karen Harkness and she robbed her own children of their father and his fiancee," prosecutor Jacqie Sprading told the court.

But here's the problem with the case. There's absolutely no physical evidence - no DNA, no fingerprints and no witnesses; Almost no way at all to place Dana Chandler at the crime scene.

Video: Det. Volle and Richard Schlesinger at the crime scene

"48 Hours" first reported on this story in 2009, with our late colleague Harold Dow. It was a cold case then:

Harold Dow: "Did you know anything about the death of Michael and Karen?"

Dana Chandler: "I have no idea what happened to Mike and Karen."

Harold Dow: "There are some people out here that think you had something to do with it."

Dana Chandler: "I know that."

"48 Hours" was first to publicly name Dana Chandler as the prime suspect.

She sure seemed like the perfect suspect. Dana and Mike were married for 16 years, but went through a long and especially ugly divorce. She lost custody of Hailey and Dustin when the court ruled that Mike was the more stable parent.

"My dad was really my life growing up," Dustin explained. "He was really my hero."

Mike, 47, sold welding equipment.

"He had a wonderful sense of humor. He kept his humor no matter how he felt inside," Carol Sisco said of her son. "I see the pain in my grandchildren's hearts with him gone. And we just - we just miss him so much."

Mike had been dating Karen Harkness for four years. She was 53, also divorced, and the mother of two grown children.

"They were extremely happy, you could just see that. You know, everything they did was for each other," said Harold Worswick, Karen's father.

On July 7, 2002, Worswick and his wife, along with Carol Sisco, were meeting the couple at Karen's house expecting an announcement - that she and Mike were finally engaged.

"And I rang the doorbell and knocked on the glass and couldn't raise anybody. I thought, 'this is strange,'" said Worswick.

They went around back and found the sliding glass door open. Inside, there was no sign of either Mike or Karen - at first. Then Harold Worswick went downstairs to the couple's bedroom.

"Just as I got to the foot of the stairs, I could see Karen," Worswick said. "And I said, 'Oh, Christ.' I knew she was dead ... And then I found Mike on the outside of the bed."

Mike and Karen had been shot 11 times.

"The number of shots was the particular important thing there I felt, that it was overkill," lead detective Richard Volle explained. "It told me that there was some emotion involved in it."

Police were able to quickly rule out robbery as a motive, because they found cash along with Mike's Rolex and Karen's jewelry untouched.

"There was no profit motive in this. This was pure revenge," said Det. Volle.

Investigators started looking for someone with a grudge against one or both of the victims.

"We began looking at the victim's families," Det. Volle explained. "They were interviewed and ... they cooperated fully in the investigation."

Asked who did that leave him with, Det. Volle told Schlesinger, "That left us with Dana Chandler."

Mike's sister, Cathy, and her husband, Mark Boots, have a lot of experience with Chandler. They say Dana stalked Mike.

"She is truly evil," said Cathy Boots.

"I think she became obsessed with the fact that Mike was moving on with his life. And she was not seeing the fulfillment in her own life for whatever reason," said Mark Boots.

Sometimes the stalking was just annoying and sometimes it was more. Cathy still remembers one night years ago when she was staying with Mike during the divorce.

"The kids were upstairs in their rooms," she recalled. "And - we heard a noise and there she was in the middle of the night ... Jumping on a trampoline in the backyard of Mike's home."

"Was she saying anything while she was jumping on the trampoline?" Schlesinger asked.

"Just laughing," Cathy replied.

"Just laughing?"

"Yeah, just laughing."

"And then when Karen entered the picture, that's when things really started, I think, escalating," said Mark.

Dana's surprise appearances became so frequent that Mike started keeping track in a journal:

July 28, 1998: Dana stalking neighborhood at 8:30, caught her she left.
Nov. 12, 1998: Dana came in house while I was at Karen's from 7 to 11, went through stuff, caught her walking out back door when I came in, called police.

"All this harassment and -- stalking had come to the point that Mike told me that he and Karen now feared for their lives," said Mark.

The last time she showed up was one month before the murders. Mike found Dana inside his house drinking a cup of coffee.

"She said, 'The kids are getting older. ...They're havin' different issues with themselves now. They need both parents. I think I should move back in and we should parent together," Cathy told Schlesinger.

"And he said?"

"'Are you f---ing crazy? I'm marrying Karen,'" she said.

"Was that the first time he told her that he was marrying Karen?"

"I think it was," replied Cathy.

"We think it might have been," added Mark.

Mike's family believes that final rejection pushed Dana over the edge. But at the time she was living eight hours away in Denver and Topeka police still had no evidence linking her to the murders. Then Detective Volle talked to Dana. It wasn't what she told him ... it's what she didn't tell him.

"She didn't tell me about the gas cans, because she didn't want me to know about the gas cans," he said. "So my assumption is, that there's something about the gas cans that is important."

"I mean just like, who else could've done this? It's gotta be somebody else. You know, I -- I just can't believe it was my mom-- my mom-- my mom?" said Hailey Sisco.

But Hailey's mother, Dana Chandler, was now the main suspect and Det. Richard Volle interrogated her about where she was around the time of the murders.

"She said she'd been at home -- Saturday morning, that's July 6th ... and then made a couple of errand stops." said Det. Volle.

Chandler said she had bought cigarettes, snacks, a coffee thermos and a replacement cigarette lighter at various stores around Denver before filling up her car with gas and returning home around 3 p.m.

"She said that she'd stayed at her apartment by herself. Didn't have any visitors," said Volle. "And the next day got up and went for a drive in the mountains at 10:00 in the morning."

But there was no trace of her; no way to prove where she was after her errands until hours after the killings.

"What we found was there was a 27-hour window where her phone wasn't used and there were no credit card transactions," said Volle.

That is a key point for Chandler's one time brother-in-law, Mark Boots.

"And I knew that was highly unusual with her. She used her cell phone ... almost continuously," he said.

And police became even more interested in Dana Chandler's movements when they learned she neglected to mention - in her detailed statement to them - one purchase detectives thought was very curious.

"... she'd...bought two 5-gallon gas cans, as well," Volle told Schlesinger.

"What'd you make of that?"

"That was very strange," he replied. "And, also, very strange that she neglected to tell me that she'd bought two 5-gallon gas cans."

Volle now suspected Chandler had bought all those supplies for a road trip and that she had spent Saturday night driving from Denver to Topeka - 542 miles - to murder Mike and Karen.

"I thought that she had used the gas cans to avoid making a stop in Kansas," Volle explained, "... and not have to use a gas station at all."

But if Chandler made the drive on the night of the murders, Det. Volle needed to find someone who saw her.

"So I sent two detectives driving I-70 west towards Denver looking for any convenience stores that had video surveillance," he said.

It was at a truck stop in WaKeeney, Kansas, that police got their first big break. They didn't have surveillance cameras, but they did have one eagle-eyed clerk named Patty Williams. She told police she was 70 percent certain that Dana Chandler stopped here the night of the murders to use the restroom and look at some self-help books, including one titled, "Overcoming Hurts and Anger".

"That lady described Dana Chandler down to the crease in the corner of her mouth on the right side that she called the scar," said Volle.

"Bull's-eye."

"Bull's-eye."

Volle thought he had enough to arrest Chandler and went to the district attorney at the time, Bob Hecht.

"And he said, 'But you can't put her in Kansas.' And I said, 'We have Patty Williams that puts her in Kansas.' And he said, 'But that's only a 70 percent ID.' And I said that's true ... and that was essentially the end of the story," he said.

A reluctant district attorney meant the Sisco-Harkness murder case went cold. So the Sisco family started their own investigation looking for evidence the police might have missed.

"I put her picture up everywhere," Cathy Boots said. "'Have you seen this person?'"

Cathy and her mother, Carol, who was then 65 years old, hit the road searching for clues in dumpsters and in rest stop bathrooms.

"We thought, you know, maybe she threw the gun somewhere," Cathy explained. "So I

would stand on a toilet and try and push a tile up. Mom and I would take, this is awful, manholes up and, you know, pry 'em up and try and see down in there. ...And I just kept thinkin', "'There's somethin' we're missing.'"

"You took that upon yourself?" Schlesinger asked.

"Yes."

Not surprisingly, Cathy and Carol found nothing. But then Hailey joined in the investigation. For years, she secretly tape recorded her own mother, hoping Dana would reveal something Hailey could use against her one day:

Hailey Sisco: "... I think that the only way I can really move on with a relationship with you is ... if you can just tell me yourself that you did it."

Dana Chandler: "Well number one, I didn't do it ... and number two, I don't know what happened, Hailey."

Asked if that was hard to do, Hailey told Schlesinger, "I don't wanna believe that my mom ... that's the last person (her voice cracks) and every time I talk to her it was more and more apparent that she was hiding something, that she was hiding the truth."

Hailey Sisco: "You had plenty of time to get to Kansas by Saturday night at midnight."

Dana Chandler: "Hailey, I was not in Kansas on Saturday night at midnight. I was not in Kansas at all that weekend."

"I just obviously wish I could've got her to confess," Hailey told Schlesinger.

But, after years of investigation -- both amateur and professional -- there was finally a turning point and it came in a local pizza parlor called Glory Days.

"What happened in this pizza parlor?" Schlesinger asked Volle.

"This is where I met Chad Taylor ... as he was candidate Taylor then for D.A.," he replied.

"He was running for D.A.?"

"Running for D.A. I'd never met the man before ... And then I started pitching some of the things I was interested in ... this case in particular," Volle explained.

"Dana Chandler?"

"Yes."

"He said, 'You know, when you win the D.A.'s race ... I wanna sit down and talk with you about this case because I think it's a fileable case. I think it's a winnable case. We need somebody to work it.' And that's kinda how it started from there," said Chad Taylor.

Taylor won that election and took office in 2009. The murders became a priority again and Taylor took a hard look at the circumstantial case with Chief Deputy D.A. Jacqie Spradling.

"A strong circumstantial case is never as good as a strong scientific case," said Spradling.

They worked it for over two years and finally decided even though the case had problems, it was time to move.

"This gets no better ... this case is never gonna get better than it is. It's right now. Today," said Taylor.

Ten years after the murders, and eight months after Dana Chandler's dramatic arrest, the case was finally going to trial.

Video: The report that helped change the Harkness-Sisco case

Read the report by homicide and forensics consultant Vernon Geberth

Asked if she was ready, Hailey told Schlesinger, "I've been ready since ... years. Many, many years."

She'd better be ready for anything because Hailey will have to help prosecutors paint the ugliest possible portrait of her mother.

"The woman's a nut job," Spradling told Schlesinger

"If she's a bad mother, if she's -- ... a crazy person, doesn't necessarily make her a killer," he noted.

"This hag killed two people and the reason we know that is because everything she said she was doin' instead of the killing was a lie."

District Attorney Chad Taylor had Dana Chandler in his cross-hairs.

In March 2012, Chandler's trial was about to begin and putting her behind bars would not be easy.

"It was pretty clearly evident, I think, to everyone. .. who did this, the issue was, could it be proven?" said Taylor.

But the case is strong enough for the families of Karen Harkness and Mike Sisco.

"I would rather try and see ... what happens at trial than to never know," said Hailey Sisco.

In opening statements, Deputy D.A. Jacqie Spradling gets right down to business.

"'I could kill him. I thought about killing him.'" These are the words of this defendant about her ex-husband, Mike Sisco..." Spradling addressed the court.

The defense case is simple and pretty obvious.

"There's no evidence that places Dana Chandler in or near the Harkness residence on July 6 or 7, 2002," Mark Bennett, Chandler's lawyer, told the court.

Bennett argues the reason there is no forensic evidence linking Chandler to the crime is she didn't do it. Period. End of story.

"I believed her. I still believe her," Bennett told "48 Hours".

But the prosecution hopes to convict Dana Chandler largely with her own words. Where was she the night of the murders? For 27 hours, she was unaccounted for.

"Her lack of an alibi is huge," said Hailey.

As it turns out, Chandler told two different stories; one to police and one to a friend and both versions seemed fishy. Dana first told Detective Volle that story about spending the night of the murders at home and the next day driving through Rocky Mountain National Park. But there's a problem with that story.

"Law enforcement watched countless hours of video from the cameras going into and out of Rocky Mountain State Park. She wasn't there," said Taylor.

Shortly after that statement to police, Dana gave a friend, Jeff Bailey, a different story.

"She told me that the story she was giving me was the truth. And the story that she'd given to the law enforcements was not the truth," Bailey testified in court.

Chandler told Bailey she had gone camping and had slept in her car on the night of the murders. And here's the problem with that story.

Along the route Dana said she took back in 2002, there were historic fires blackening Colorado. But she told Bailey she saw nothing.

"In your view, what did this landscape look like when she was-- driving through there?" Schlesinger asked Spradling.

"Black, charred and just nubs that used to be the trees," she said. "... it's simply unimaginable to drive through acres of burnt forest ... and not know that the thing had been burnt up."

Wherever Dana was for those 27 hours, the authorities know the Sunday after the murders she ended up in Loveland, Colorado, 57 miles north of Denver. She bought gas and went to Walmart for some new clothes.

"Why do you think she bought clothes in Loveland?" Schlesinger asked.

"Because she threw away the clothes that she used when she was doing the killing," Spradling replied.

And prosecutors have an interesting theory to explain how she got to Loveland.

"The escape for her is not back tracking the entire route but to get out of Kansas, go directly up to Nebraska and avoid the Kansas authorities," Spradling explained.

Spradling believes Chandler used those two gas cans to get her out of Kansas after the murders without a trace.

"It would have taken that extra ten gallons to get her out of Kansas," she said.

The problem is prosecutors have absolutely no evidence that she was ever in Nebraska.

"You can't prove that she did any of this," Schlesinger commented to Spradling.

"I can't prove that she went into Nebraska. You're absolutely right. But also don't forget Patty Williams, who was the woman in WaKeeney that did see the defendant and her car," she replied.

But Patty Williams, the clerk at the truck stop who was 70 percent sure that she had seen Dana the night of the murders, would not be able to say anything to help prosecutors at trial. In 2006, she died.

"That was gonna be a problem. That was our best evidence that she was in the state," said Det. Volle.

So now prosecutors had no eyewitness and no forensic evidence. All they had was a defendant with a weak alibi and a very strong motive.

"The defendant was pushed over the edge, realizing that she would never get Mike back and that he was gonna marry Karen," Spradling told "48 Hours".

One by one, prosecution witnesses describe what they call Dana's stalking:

Cathy Boots, Mike's sister:"I heard a sound and I looked out and she was on the trampoline jumping ... Dana."

Tim Sisco, Mike's brother: "2001 we had a family get-together out at -- Karen and -- Mike's property. ... And -- I actually saw Dana drive by...At the time she was living in Colorado."

Video: Tim Sisco on Dana Chandler's behavior

And other witnesses say Mike and Karen lived in terror before they were murdered:

Linda B.: "Usually it was incessant phone calls, harassment, all hours of the night."

"She called as often as you can dial the phone, just hit "repeat" or "redial" over and over, sometimes a minute apart, sometimes three minutes apart," said Spradling.

Mark Bennett says Dana was just being a good mother.

"I think there were many calls that she made to talk to the children," he said.

But Hailey says her mother never asked about her or her brother, Dustin.

"Every time she'd call, she would ask me, 'What's your dad doin'? Where is he at? What's he doin'?' She would not let me off the phone," said Hailey.

And there's more evidence that Dana Chandler was not just a stalker ... she was becoming dangerous.

"When I saw the look on Mike's face, he was distraught," said Mark Boots.

For the last 10 years, Mark has been haunted by the last conversation he had with Mike on a fishing trip just the week before the murders.

"He turned to me and said, 'Mark, you're gonna -- you're gonna wake up and find me dead. And I want you to know who did it, Dana Chandler,'" he told Schlesinger.

Mark thinks, if he can tell that to the jurors, it could be powerful enough to assure a conviction:

Jacqie Spradling: Was he talking to you about some recent events that were disturbing?

Mark Boots: "Yes."

Jacqie Spradling: "Will you tell us what they were, please?"

Mark Bennett: "Judge, can we approach, please?"

Mark Bennett objects. He says that statement is hearsay; the judge agrees. So the jury will not be allowed to hear that Mike predicted his own death at the hands of his ex-wife.

"I think it's a travesty that they can't hear that," he said. "Mike told it directly to me. And I believe I should -- should be able to tell the jury. Mike sure can't."

But there are still two more witnesses with devastating, firsthand testimony. Dana's own children will face their mother in court:

Jacqie Spradling: "Do you know the defendant in this case, Dana Chandler?"

Dustin Sisco: "Yea, she's my mom."

"I know it's gonna be very hard ... it hurts a lot to face what's really happening," an emotional Hailey Sisco tells Richard Schlesinger.

"But you can do this?"

"I can do this."

It's hard to know if Hailey and Dustin Sisco are looking forward to this moment or dreading it. Ten years after their father and Karen Harkness were murdered, they are about to become star witnesses against their mother.

"I've built so much anger ... anger towards her ... she doesn't even realize what she's put me and my brother through," Hailey Sisco told "48 Hours".

"I wanna know why. Why'd you do it?" said Dustin.

Dustin is up first. The prosecutors want him to tell the jury how his mother used visitations with her children to stalk their father:

Dustin Sisco:"She took me and my sister with her to go spy on my dad. ... And so we were -- in the car, and she told us, you know, we were just gonna be her little helpers."

"My mom and my sister got out of the car to go peek out of a wind-- or peek into a window," he testified.

"And how old are you at the time, roughly?" Schlesinger asked Dustin.

"Twelve, maybe," he replied. "At the time I didn't know it was strange. I thought it was just a game, you know?"

Dustin appears unemotional through his testimony, until Jacqie Spradling asks him how he found out his father had been murdered. Dustin was away on a canoe trip:

Dustin Sisco: "My grandma and my sister -- showed up, and I told them that -- (takes a deep breath) that my dad was gonna pick me up in the morning..."

Dustin pauses, overcome with emotion.

Jacqie Spradling: "Do you want a break, Dustin? It'll be OK, if you want one."

Dustin Sisco: "And they, and they told me that - he -- my grandma sat me down and told me that he was murdered."

It's hard to watch Dustin relive that moment -- even for the prosecutor, who has seen more than her share of tragedy:

Jacqie Spradling: (Voice cracks) "I'm almost done. Did your dad have trouble with anybody but the defendant? "

Dustin Sisco: "No."

Jacqie Spradling: "Did Karen have trouble with anybody but the Defendant?

Dustin Sisco: "No."

Jacqie Spradling: "That's all I have."

And then it was Hailey's turn:

"Right when I walked through that door, the whole world is about my dad's been killed and my mom shot him," Hailey told "48 Hours."

"She was -- was really just obsessed," she testified.

Hailey is not just another witness. Remember, for years she helped investigators by secretly recording her mother ... and prosecutors are about to play those tapes in court:

Dana Chandler: "You want to know what happened to your dad. I don't blame you. I want to know what happened to your dad so that I can get off the hook 'cause I'm sick of being on the hook for it."

It was during that recording that Dana, who is a recovering alcoholic, for the first time tried to explain why she bought those gas cans:

Dana Chandler: "I ran into a girl that had run out of gas at an AA meeting and so I went and got gas for her. She asked me for money and we don't give people money at AA."

But over the years, Dana has never named that woman:

Hailey Sisco: "What was her name? Can we get a hold of her? I mean, if she could say that, that would just be awesome."

Dana Chandler: "Hailey, I have no idea."

"You don't know? Wh -- what?" Just as I thought. It really wasn't a surprise," Hailey told Schlesinger of the recording. " -- the G, the U, the I, the LTY, it just -- it started getting bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger every conversation."

Like her brother, Hailey could only remain composed for so long as she testified against her mother.

"We caught eyes a few times and just real hatred -- just hatred," she recalled. "She's just burning me -- at a stake, pretty much."

Then, during a break in the testimony, her mother seemed to mouth silently across the courtroom, "I still love you." "It's OK ... I'll always love you." Hailey broke down.

And a few moments later, Dana also seemed to mouth, "you're my baby girl."

"I'd like to think it was coming out of love, but right after that, after 'bout 10 minutes, it was right back to the glaring," said Hailey.

But Mark Bennett insists his client loves her children ... even now.

"She doesn't bear them any ill will. She loves them and this isn't gonna change that," he said.

And Bennett presents evidence that he says raises more than just reasonable doubt. He calls a series of officers who investigated break-ins not far from Karen Harkness' home that Bennett says had striking similarities to this case: like the sliding glass door that was found open at the crime scene:

Officer Obergon: "I was dispatched there for a past burglary."

Officer Soden: "It would be to the east - half a mile."

Mark Bennett : "The sliding glass door was found open?"

Officer Yancy: "Correct."

In at least one of those burglaries, blank checks were stolen. And after the murders, Bennett says two men -- Walt Rogers and Terry Tignor -- were in possession of one of Mike's checks.

"I mean, they got two people out there, Terry Tignor and Walt Rogers, that are bad, bad people," Bennett said. "They've got long rap sheets and a lotta convictions."

Prosecutors dispute that theory. The police determined the check was not taken from the murder scene. It was forged and made out for just $30 dollars and whoever committed the murders left behind that watch and the jewelry and the cash. Still, Bennett argues the police ignored other suspects.

"I think they had made up their mind who the likely suspect was," he said.

And they did that, Bennett argues, even though there is nothing concrete linking Dana Chandler to the murder. He used lead Detective Richard Volle to make that point in court:

Mark Bennett: "Was there any physical evidence, hairs, fibers-- receipts, anything ... that placed her in Topeka, Kansas or the state of Kansas?"

Det. Richard Volle: "There were no hair or fibers that linked her to the state of Kansas."

It turned out when this case was reopened ... there was one tiny piece of what could be physical evidence. It was a human hair on one of the shell casings.

"Physical evidence carries greater weight than circumstantial evidence ... they had physical evidence," said Bennett.

The hair didn't match Dana or either of the victims. And authorities did not test it any further:

Mark Bennett: "Can you tell this jury that those hairs and that DNA that was unidentified did not match Terry Tignor's?"

Det. Richard Volle: "No."

Mark Bennett: "Same thing true of -- Mr. Rogers?"

Det. Richard Volle: "It was not checked."

Bennett argues the hair could belong to the real killer.

"They should've explored all the potential physical evidence that they had," he said.

And now the Sisco family is afraid that the jurors will see holes in this case ... that they'll find reasonable doubt, that Dana Chandler will be set free.

"If justice is not served and she's released that it's gonna be a life-changing event for - for -- for all of our family," Mark Boots said. "We're gonna have to-- relook at how we're gonna live our lives because we -- truly are afraid -- of her -- of Dana Chandler."

After all the tears and all the testimony, the toughest part of this trial is about to begin -- closing arguments and the wait for a verdict.

Once again, Deputy D.A. Jacqie Spradling relies on evidence gathered by Hailey Sisco, including an instant message Dana sent to Hailey about Hailey's father: "I cannot continue to have that bastard in my life anymore."

In an email to her then 14-year-old daughter, Dana slams Karen Harkness too: "I know she is tramp, and I pray to God you never go there."

"Demonstrates to you the level that the defendant hated Mike Sisco, demonstrates to you the level the defendant hated Karen Harkness," Spradling addressed jurors.

"Where's the evidence? Where's the evidence?" Mark Bennett emphatically asked the court.

It's a familiar refrain and the crux of Bennett's case.

"All this time, they've been tryin' to put her in Kansas when this happened. And for nine-and-a -half years, they've come up dry," he told the court.

Except for Patty Williams, the truck stop clerk who told police she was almost certain she saw Dana Chandler in Kansas the night of the murders. Even though she's dead, she still could be a major factor in this case. Shortly before the trial started, the prosecution got their hands on jailhouse phone recordings between Chandler and her sister, Shirley:

Dana Chandler: "I'll be wanting to talk about that Patty Williams ... she's dead."

Shirley: "I know. That's huge for you, yes. That's huge for you."

Dana Chandler: "...because that, you know, little piece of information could potentially put me in Kansas. But that's the only thing."

"The defendant is celebrating with -- right alongside Shirley-- the fact that ... the person who could put her in Kansas is dead and cannot come and testify against her," Spradling told Schlesinger.

Shirley: "I am feelin' -- today was such a good day."

"This defendant is guilty," Spradling continued in court.

Finally, Spradling urges the jury to end the 10-year ordeal for the victims' families.

"You're the end of this story," she continued. " Come back to us and tell us the word we all want to hear. Tell us guilty."

And with that the case goes to the jury at 2:37 p.m. Despite a courtroom filled with circumstantial evidence, prosecutors are still filled with worry.

"Do we have the right jury? And are they going to allow this to happen without that smoking gun or that fingerprint," D.A. Chad Taylor wondered.

They wouldn't have to wait long for an answer. At 4 p.m., there's a verdict. The jury's been out just 83 minutes.

"This could go either way, what are you feeling?" Richard Schlesinger asked Mark Boots.

"Is it -- that quick, does that mean it's gonna be guilty? Or does that mean they didn't buy into any of this," he replied.

The last few minutes waiting for the jury to announce its verdict were agonizing as the victims families fight to keep their composure.

The jury finds Dana Chandler guilty of two counts of first-degree murder. She barely has a reaction; her children are overwhelmed with emotion.

Video: Jury members on how they reached their verdict

Hailey has been fighting for this moment for almost 10 years; A daughter forced to pursue her own mother.

"I don't feel victorious. I don't think there's any winners at all. There's justice but that's about it," she said of the verdict. "You know, my dad's not coming back and neither is Karen ... and that's the truth, that's the bottom line" (Hailey's voice sort of cracking here)

And here's the last great irony in this case. Even though Patty Williams never lived to tell the jury what she saw, the jury believed her story and it was all because of Dana Chandler's chat with her sister, Shirley.

"So in the end, it was the defendant's own statements that got in what we otherwise could not have," Spradling told Schlesinger.

Five months after the jury's verdict, Hailey and Dustin will have to see their mother at least one more time at her sentencing. This time Dana Chandler arrives in shackles representing herself:

"I absolutely deny I ever stalked Mike or Karen. And there's been no evidence presented that I did," Dana told the judge. "But most importantly, I deny that I murdered Mike or Karen. I am innocent. I did not murder Mike or Karen."

Video: Dana Chandler addresses the judge

Six members of Mike and Karen's families want to tell Dana what she did to them and ask the judge to give her a life sentence:

"Dana, your murdered my brother and my friend," an emotional Cathy Boots said. "And I will not allow you to take one more second of my time. Not one more second!"

But it's Hailey, speaking for herself and her brother, who has the last word for the Sisco family:

"We each have a deep scar on our souls from what this monster has done. But I will stand here today and tell you that we are survivors ... we will live the fullest lives that we can because that's what my dad woulda wanted for us. Dana could care less about us and our struggles. But my dad wants us to flourish while we're on this earth. And that's what we're gonna do ... for you Dad," she says in tears, looking to the sky.

Video: Hailey's victim impact statement

Dana Chandler is given two life sentences; one for killing Mike Sisco and one for killing Karen Harkness.

And with Dana Chandler locked away, the Siscos are finally free.

"So five years from now, what do you think you'll be doing?" Schlesinger asked Hailey.

"Married and with a family and doing well," she replied.

"You wanna be a mom?"

"I do very bad," she said, choking up. "I wanna be everything my mom wasn't."

Hailey Sisco is engaged to be married.

Dana Chandler must serve 100 years before she can ask for parole.