The Footprint at the Lake

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Tonight on Dateline, the last thing I said to her, Uh, I'll see you later, and it just tears me up. Because I didn't tell her goodnight, I didn't tell her I love her.

This is a sinister scene, it is. We see footprint and blood on the floor, we see hand prints. It was pretty evident that there was some type of struggle.

She's a beloved teacher and now she's been murdered. We had no idea what was happening. Three people in this family were within the household while this murder was going on. Somebody would have heard something.

Nobody did. How could you not hear screaming if she's being attacked? That's what everybody thought. They fingerprinted us. Did you have anything to do with your mom?

Did you kill your mom? They asked my siblings, that obviously asked my dad that I did not hurt my wife. I was waiting for the cuffs to come out.

Somebody came in, they knew what they were after, somebody out of control, in a rage. Never seen anything like it or never heard of anything like it.

A mother and teacher murdered in a crime no one heard, no one saw. With a twist, no one could predict. I'm Lester Holt and this is dateline.

Here's Andrea Canning with the footprint at the lake.

Like most small towns in north Texas, the people of Alney spend their Fridays cheering on the high school football team.

And the Alney Cubs need all the help they can get. At one point, we were ranked number three in the state for the longest losing streak.

But win or lose, there was one cheerleader who never gave up on them. Teacher Manuela Allen Do you remember Mrs. Allen in the stands with her cowbell? I would hear that over the band sometimes.

Morgan Wilk was on the team. Yeah, everyone loved Mrs. Allen.

That's why what happened to Mrs Allen was so devastating, so bewildering. It was Sunday, July 7, 2019. Manuela's husband Peter, also a teacher, says he was awake, surfing the web in the living room with the TV on. A little before 9 a..m, his teenage daughter Kiara popped into the room.

Kiara comes to me and says, Dad, where's mom? I'm like, Well, what do you think? she's in the bedroom? Probably. Well, she says. Dad, the door's locked. So I was like, Well, go through the garage and check on her.

Their house has an unusual layout there's a second door to the bedroom that's attached to the garage by way of a small laundry room. Kiara went around to check and she goes, Yeah, there's blood all over the place, blood.

A lot of it, but no. Manuela, So what are you thinking? Nothing. My mind was blank because I had no idea what could have possibly occurred.

Not only was Manuela gone, so was her car, Peter says. The only thing that made sense in that confusing moment was that maybe his wife had driven herself to the emergency room. Did she cut herself really badly? and what in this room could she possibly have cut herself on? So you're thinking she's been injured?

She somehow injured herself and cut herself, and she's driven herself to the hospital. Yes, Peter and his daughter raced to the local hospital. Manuela wasn't there.

Once back home, he called the police 911. Where's your emergency?

I don't know how to describe it, my wife is missing and there's blood all over her bedroom. Minutes later, an officer from the Alney Police Department arrived. Body cam rolling morning, Mr. Allen.

The car's gone, so she goes through there and locks it, comes up and says, Dad, there's blood all over the place. Okay, and I have no idea.

You have your ID with you, Mr. Allen? Yeah. The officer followed Peter inside. Okay, go ahead and step out here.

Pass the information along for our officer to look for it. Are you in full panic mode? No, that's not my personality, but there's blood in the bedroom.

Your wife's missing, her car's gone. absolutely. aren't you thinking something really terrible has happened?

Of course, but I don't freeze up, I don't lock up, I stop and try to reason through the situation. Peter Allen, served in the military, dealt with explosives.

He's not one to panic. Patrol Sergeant Dan Burback of the Young County Sheriff's Office was next to arrive. Hey, what's going on? This is him.

This is his daughter. I make contact with Mr. Allen, who's in the living room with his daughter Kira. I ask them to step outside to get him outside of the house, and then I find out that their son, Darian, is still upstairs in his bedroom.

I need you all to go ahead and step out here on the porch. And I proceed upstairs to go get Darian. What's Darian doing when you get upstairs? He's on his video game, with a set of headphones on, still playing a video game. He has no idea what's happening in the floor beneath him.

Right? Darian was almost 20 at the time. The sergeant told him to head downstairs. I was like, why?

And the sheriff was like, Well, we can't answer any questions right now? And I was like, Well, can I at least get dressed? Put on some clothes? They were like, No, you got to get out of the house.

They were like, Yeah, we can't get a hold of her either, like her phone's just off, don't know where she is, and we've tried looking around.

Hey, can you ping a phone? We're already attempting to locate her, so I checked both hospitals here, I didn't find anything.

Peter, the military guy who said he had nerves of steel and had been a green beret, was now on the verge of cracking. Oh, worried ain't the word for it. One of the few times in my life I've ever been actually scared, one of the only few times. But I can't let that fear grip me.

Because I've got to find my wife. What on earth had happened to Manuela Allen? There are drag marks through the garage pushing the drug out the back door.

Lieutenant David Wilk happened to be driving through the tiny town of Olney that Sunday morning. You're probably thinking to yourself, This is just going to be a slow day. Typical. Yes, that's what I'd like to have on a Sunday. He worked for a neighboring county, so he hadn't heard about the police activity at the Allen residence.

I came through Olney and saw the crime scene tape up around Mr and Mrs Allen's house. So I pulled over and talked to one of the city officers that I know and asked him what was going on. Is everything okay with the kids?

What are you told? I'm told at the time that Mrs. Allen was missing and it doesn't look good. The news was upsetting and personal. He knew Mrs.

Allen knew the entire Allen family. Mr. and Mrs. Allen were both teachers in the school district, and the kids we knew. I knew them through my children.

Lieutenant Wilk's son is Morgan, the student and football player from Olney High School. Morgan thought the world of Mrs. Allen. She was always laughing. I've never seen her have a bad day.

Manu, as she was called, grew up in a Bavarian village in southern Germany. In college, she came to the United States to study English, and that's when she met Peter. My wife was strikingly gorgeous, just beautiful, I seen her walking up the stairs. And even though that was almost 30 years ago, I can tell you. She had a red t-shirt on with biker shorts that were multicolored, beautiful blonde hair.

You two fell in love in this short period of time, and it was enough for her to uproot her life and move to America. God graced me, God blessed me. Yes, Manu encouraged him to become a teacher.

He taught math, she taught German and English. They rounded each other out at home and at school. If you wanted the truth, the hard, cold truth, you came to, Mr. Allen.

If you wanted the hard, cold truth told to you in a very gentle and loving way, you went to Mrs. Allen. There was this one kid every day, give her a hug every day, she's one of those teachers.

Yes, every day she would always have a smile on her face. Your mom sounds very playful. Sense of humor. Oh yeah. You could usually hear her on the other side of the hallway in between classes, just cracking up with other kids.

She was loud, but she was also very caring, in addition to caring for the kids at school. Manu and Peter had four children of their own, Kiara and Darian, and also Melanie, a recent high school graduate, and William, the eldest. Manu liked looking out for the teenagers who seemed to need it the most.

She was accepting of all people. Verl Wolverton is a family friend. And, you know, you get one kid that was maybe, you know, on the outside. She would bring them in, help them succeed whatever they needed.

That included students like her daughter, Melanie's boyfriend, a football player, who struggled at school and at home. Peter remembers a time the boyfriend showed up at his door in the middle of the night. My wife is the one who said, Yeah, let him stay, so we had taken him in when he needed it. She cheered him on the same way she rooted for the rest of the Olney Cubs.

One story that I absolutely love is Manu cheering them on with her cowbell. I hate that, I love it. You weren't the one sitting next to her, going, Ow, I lost half my hearing because of that.

Because both of the Allens were teachers, they had summers off. And in the summer of 2019, Peter, Manu and their daughters had spent three weeks visiting Manu's family in Germany. They'd been home for a few days, and then it was that Saturday night, Peter says he had some drinks and laid down on the couch.

She came in, gave me a kiss, goodnight, said goodnight and went to bed. Now it was morning and Manu was gone in her place. Blood and investigators were trying to make sense of what they were hearing from the family. If you'll stay here, I'm going to just kind of walk around.

As we enter into the kitchen, we see footprint and blood on the floor. And then, as we start working our way towards the bedroom, we see handprints that appear that the person holding onto the doorjamb was drugged back towards the bedroom. It was pretty evident that there was some type of struggle across the hallway, there was blood on the carpet, there was more blood on the door.

We get into the bedroom and we see a large pooling of blood at that location. He noticed that Manu's bed was bare and the sheets were missing, and in the adjacent laundry room, there was a clue on the floor. Bloody streaks. There are drag marks through the garage where she was drugged out the back door.

Like a body's being dragged, like a body's being dragged, yes. As he surveyed the scene and spoke to the family, the investigator just knew this missing person's case was not likely to end well. And everyone in that house was going to have to start answering questions. Something sinister happened, and there's somebody involved in it.

Manu Allen was missing and her home was a crime scene, so it looks like she might have been killed in the bedroom. We have tracks going along the side of the house here, like somebody pulled around and loaded her in. The Alney Police Department needed help and it came by way of Michael Schraub of the Texas Rangers. I was actually at church and I received a call regarding a missing person.

Any other details, or just please come on over here. I was told there was a whole lot of blood at the scene, they just felt it was a very suspicious circumstance. While other rangers went to assist the sergeant at the house, Ranger Schraub headed to the sheriff's office to meet the family. I just wanted to get a baseline story from everybody so that we would know where to go after we investigated the scene itself.

Manu's daughter Kiara was just one day shy of her 16th birthday. In a near whisper, she told the Ranger about the night before, she said she'd come home late from her boyfriend's house.

Okay, so 11 and 50 or so? You were home? Who was at home when you got home? My dad was here and my mom was in her room. Did you see both of them?

I just saw my dad Peter actually opened the door, let her in. And then she went to her bedroom. And then started facetiming with her boyfriend that she had just left, and she described just basically falling asleep with Facetime running. I woke up at 8.45 and I just got ready to go to the gym. And I went to go put my clothes in the washing machine and go to my mom's room because I have to go up there to get to it.

And the door was locked when I tried to go in there, and usually it's not locked. So I went and asked my dad where she was, and he looked really confused and he just told me to go check around through the garage. Then Kiara explained how she went through the other bedroom door and saw the bloody mess. She also saw a knife. I picked up a pocket knife on the ground to see if there was blood on it.

From the investigation standpoint, of course, you're like, don't pick it up, of course it's the last thing you want to do. Any movie anyone's watching, you scream at the TV, don't touch the knife. It was the information I needed to have.

So what had happened in that bedroom? Kiara said she had no idea. She hadn't heard a thing. That was very odd to me because her bedroom literally shared a wall with the master bedroom. It does seem like if there was a violent struggle, someone would hear something.

The only thing I could think of on that is I don't know how Kiara was, but I know a lot of teenagers can sleep through anything. We're just trying to figure out the circumstances surrounding your wife, that's weird. But what about the husband whose own story put him right? Down the hall? At the sheriff's office, Peter repeated what he'd told arriving officers.

How he'd spent the night on the couch, he said, that was normal for them.

And, like his daughter, Peter said, he didn't hear anything unusual coming from the bedroom all night. The living room couch where he slept is down the hall from the bedroom. You would think in that situation, somebody would have heard something nobody did by this time. District Attorney D.

Peavy and Assistant D.

A Phillip Gregory had been out to look at the scene. There was so much blood you had to have heard something and it was just concerning to everybody involved. Where Mr. Allen was sleeping on the couch was within 20 25 feet of a major crime scene.

This is not a large house. I was just completely taken aback by that. I really did not know how to take that at the time. But facts were unfolding. The story sounded far-fetched, so, naturally, the ranger started asking questions about the state of Peter and Manu's marriage.

Was she involved with anybody else? Did you suspect that? or were you involved with anybody else?

Any particular conflict with any of the kids? You mean, my children? Yeah, your children, my children would never touch my wife and my wife. I don't know if this is sound right, but she's now built like a tank.

She's a big, big tank. If somebody came in, I don't know what happened, but if somebody came in, she put up one hell of a fight, I'll tell you that. But before the Ranger could probe any deeper, there was a knock at the door. There'd been a discovery. Archicana Sheriff's Office.

Hey, this is going to be the one he's looking for, what?

As Democrats unite around Vice President Harris, they'll gather in Chicago to endorse their presidential ticket. A new era is here. It is go time. Stay with MSNBC for insights and analysis. The race is going to be close.

Everybody should prepare themselves for that. Plus, reporting on the ground from the convention hall, extraordinary levels of enthusiasm from Democrats for the fight ahead the Democratic National Convention. Special coverage this week on MSNBC.

The air hung heavy in the courtroom, the people pressed shoulder to shoulder. They'd heard the gossip and the whispers about a family teeming with passion and hate, about a mysterious disappearance and a pile of bones found burning in a lime pit. And now they wanted to know what really happened.

But even they were not prepared for the story that came, spilling out the secrets, the lies, the confessions and the ending so unimaginable. And now you will hear it, too. The Dead Alive on Morrison Mysteries, a true story that became a classic novel starting August 26th.

Wherever you get your podcasts, they are the families of the missing in America, and they're desperately searching for answers. Somebody knows something? I'm Josh Bankels.

Join me for season 3 of Missing in America. Listen carefully, because just one small detail might allow you to solve a mystery. We have seen miracles happen. Dateline Missing in America.

All episodes available now, wherever you get your podcasts.

After learning his friend Manu was missing, the lieutenant from the county next door, David Wilk, joined the search. He was asked to check a popular swimming hole north of Olney called Lake Cooper. Why Lake Cooper? Maybe because that's where folks would go to get away from town. That's the only thing I can come up with.

Right as he pulled up to the lake, he spotted something, a white SUV, the same type of car as Manu's. As soon as I came onto the lake, I could see it across over here, parked right about here to my left.

So the SUV was here. Could you tell if she was in the SUV? At first? No, I had to get out and check. Wilk switched on his body cam.

Walked up there and there was nobody in or around the vehicle. Does anything look suspicious with the vehicle, the way it's parked, the damage it had, and how it's high-centered? And then there was a brown smear on the left side of the vehicle that looked like dry blood. This was a surprise to the lieutenant. he hadn't been told about all the blood back at the house.

Now you're thinking this could be a crime scene, crime scene. Yes, ma'am, somebody got hurt or whatever, so I call in the tag number.

28 is going to be Texas. Lincoln, Sam Victor. Verify it with our dispatch in Archer County that it is, it is the one, it is her car.

The one they were looking for, Yes, ma'am. do you just start looking around, like, is she somewhere in the vicinity? Yes, ma'am?

That's what I'm thinking, maybe somebody, maybe there was a medical issue or something. So I start looking around and over here, between these trees, I see what looks like material cloth sheets.

And I walked down this little path right here, up to the barbed wire fence, made a left, and that's where I found Mrs Allen. Oh my gosh, underneath those trees. Manuela Allen was dead, her body wrapped in her own blood-stained bed sheets.

You know, Mrs Allen? Yes, ma'am, how chilling is this that you're now seeing a body that, you know in your heart is her? At this point, I'm more concerned.

First, I've got to protect a crime scene.

Hey, this is going to be the one he's looking for.

Within minutes, Texas Rangers were on the scene, as was Sergeant Burbeck. What had been a missing persons case that morning was, by afternoon, a homicide. This investigation is rapidly, unfolding, very rapidly. We have two crime scenes now.

Manu had been stabbed and shot, her body partially covered. The killer took the time to take plants or yucca plants and cover her face with them. Investigators also noticed this a footprint in the mud next to their victim's vehicle and a few feet away. Another clue One of the investigators came across a bicycle track in the dirt leading away from where the car was parked.

Your killer could have left on a bicycle, correct? Find that bicycle, find your killer correct. Down at the sheriff's office, where Manu's husband was being interviewed, Ranger Schraub was asked to step out of the room.

I'll go get you a bottle of water because I know you're about to be getting thirsty. That's when the ranger learned Manu's body had been found. How does the interview change then, when you now have this information and you have to walk back in to see Peter and continue? At this point, I had to tell him his wife had been murdered, but at the same time I didn't know if he was the one that did it. So it's a delicate situation because are you dealing with a victim in this situation, or are you dealing with a murderer?

They have found her vehicle where it's in the neighboring county, and there's a body next to it, dead body.

We have people. I think there's going to be a criminal investigation. Yeah, oh s**t, I'm wrong. So your house is going to be part of the crime scene.

Of course, Manu's children had to be told as well. Schraub offered to do it, but Peter said he wanted to break the news himself. I'll go.

You made me cry, but I got to make it up.

Yeah, it wasn't easy.

It wasn't easy.

Ranger Schraub was watching the scene unfold. I kept the video running because I wanted to be able to look at those reactions because we didn't know who was responsible for this. They broke into the house and attacked your mother while she was asleep.

They found the car, they found your mother, they never had a positive idea.

They all started crying, my youngest daughter, Kiara, kind of collapsed on the floor.

Did you see any of the family members acting unusual or anything that struck you from that video? It did? I immediately noticed that her son was kind of away from everybody else, Darian, the son police had found playing video games in his room.

What would his story be? In the very beginning of the interview, he was visibly shaking, which concerned me.

Darian Allen remembers it like it was yesterday, the moment his father told him and his siblings their mother had been murdered.

I was so crushed that I didn't know how to emotionally react. I didn't start crying, I just stopped doing anything really like this isn't happening. Yeah, it was just like, I'm done.

All the air just got sucked out of me and just there's nothing. It's like, this is not real.

Darian sat alone on the floor while his dad and siblings comforted one another. I definitely thought it was odd at the time, it was something that I noted to myself personally, that I thought was strange. Was he considered a suspect at all? A person of interest? Yeah, at that point, everybody in the house was definitely a person of interest.

He would have been one of them. Along with Kiara and Peter Ranger. Schraub pulled Darian aside to talk in another room.

His body camera still rolling in the very beginning of the interview, he was visibly shaking, which concerned me that he may have something to do with it. Why just that reaction? I have to then decide. Is he visibly shaking?

Because his mother was murdered that day and the emotional stress and everything. Or is it because he had something to do with it? He asked Darian where he'd been the night before. Darian told us the same story. He told the Ranger He got home from a friend's around 11.30..

He couldn't sleep and spent the entire night awake in his room. What are you doing in your room? I was just playing video games, just hopping from one to the other. Take a break, eat a snack, try to fall asleep. Just kept going back in a little cycle of play, eat, attempt to sleep. What was going on that night that you...?

I honestly couldn't tell you, I just couldn't sleep, I just felt off, he says. He heard a rustling coming from the kitchen sometime between 3 and 5 a.m. I thought it was my dad like rifling through the silverware.

It was just kind of like the clanking of metal. I was like, Well, he's awake, getting himself a snack, so didn't think anything of it. Was that the only thing you heard? Yeah, that was it.

If there was a violent struggle in that small house, you would think that you would hear something. Yeah, you would think in that situation, somebody would have heard something. Never seen anything like it, or never heard of anything like it. Darian told the investigator he and his mom were close, but they didn't exactly see eye to eye on his future. Was she yawning to you about getting a job?

No, she was just helping me out. We kind of had a little disagreement because I don't want to go to college.

The ranger also spoke to the other Allen kids. 21-year-old William was on his own, no longer living in the house. Any idea who might be responsible for this?

Okay, Melanie was away for the weekend with friends the night of the murder.

It was late in the day when the whole family was allowed to leave the sheriff's office. Their house was still a crime scene. They had nowhere to go, their whole world in pieces. Everything got just not even flipped upside down. It was like just shoved in a box, box, shaken, and then just thrown it everywhere.

And you're just left to kind of pick up the pieces and try to put it back how it was. But some pieces are missing, some are destroyed, and you just you're not given a guide on how to do it. The family spent the night at a friend's Airbnb. By the next morning, Manu's murder was rocking the town of Alneen and all the kids who'd loved her as a teacher. It was just like, almost like a tornado went through Alneen.

Everyone was all confused. We don't know what's going on, was everyone instantly scared, scared, in shock, like, why would we go for Miss Allen? Students, parents, football fans, everyone in law enforcement knew their town would never be the same.

It hits you more in a small community when something happens. Because if you don't know that person, you know someone that does know that person. It just has a ripple effect.

Alneen is small-town America. You know, you've got the potential of a killer still running around in the streets. So you're feeling the external pressure from the community to get it done. And then you have the internal pressure as an investigator or a prosecutor to make sure it's done right. And the more they looked at the evidence, the more convinced they were that Manu's killer was someone close to her. There was no sign of forced entry, someone was either inside or they knew how to get into that house.

Correct, Yeah. Somebody knew what they were doing and where they were going. They even knew where Manu kept her car keys. Usually, your keys are hanging right there. Investigators saw a trail of bloody footprints that led right from the bedroom to those keys in the kitchen.

The keys were always kept by the refrigerator and that would have been something that would have been known to the family. The day after the murder, the medical examiner performed the autopsy. She had been stabbed like 47 times, There had been strangulation involved. She had also received stab wounds to the back of the head, which just seemed very, very violent.

So she's been stabbed dozens of times, strangled, shot in the face. Forgive my choice of words, Why the overkill? It's personal. Whoever did this was very angry.

The clues at the lake where her body was dumped reinforced that idea Manu knew her killer, the effort that was taken at the scene, where she was covered and then plants were put on her. That all took time. And typically, somebody that has no vested interest in the victim is not going to take that time to do those types of things. So who would do that?

Investigators thought they had a pretty good idea because back at the house, the evidence seemed to be pointing toward one person. Okay, why would somebody put on your socks and kill your wife? I have no idea.

From the moment they set foot on the Allens property, investigators had a hunch about who was responsible for what happened there. The husband.

I actually pulled Officer Clark to the side and told him. I said, I think that we might be dealing with our suspect. Peter. Yes, he's probably going to be our number one suspect. Why did you feel that?

Way from experience and dealing with different crime scenes in the past. It felt like the information that he was giving us was trying to throw us in a different direction than what had actually occurred. The coroner let investigators know that Manu had defensive wounds on her hands. This had not been a quick struggle. How could you not hear your wife screaming if she's being attacked?

Sounds crazy. That's what everybody thought. Five days in, investigators asked Peter to come back down to the sheriff's office. I started the interview by basing it on the story of Peter Allens. Going into this second interview. Did you think Peter was probably guilty?

I thought it was a good possibility. Yeah, absolutely. What is the strategy? This time? We tried to just put a little more pressure on him. Another ranger actually did that interview at my request. The goal there was to see what type of reaction he gave.

I feel a lot better. The conversation was friendly. At first, Peter opened up about how hard things had been since the murder.

I've been crying for five days, which is a little more. Sometimes I cry, sometimes I'm so pissed, sometimes I'm so outraged. And he made it clear he wanted whoever was responsible to pay. I want him caught. Oh, and that's the end of you, too.

Honestly, I want him dead. The ranger walked him through his whole story again. When was the last time you saw your wife? I went to sleep at night, they talked for hours.

I said, Well, just go around through the garage. I had one drink during the day, I slept on the couch. I never thought something like this could happen. And then....

I'll be honest with you, Peter, and we've been sitting here for probably four or five hours right now, talking.

Yeah, because, like, you must be thinking, I mean, wouldn't she wake up her husband and say, I've hurt myself? I need help? Can you drive me to the hospital or can you call 911? Yeah.

It was even more far-fetched because Peter said he was a green beret who'd seen fatal injuries.

While they sit in the living room.

As Peter went over the details of that night, there was something else that didn't make sense.

He said that morning, around 5 a.

M.

He heard his wife's car.

They also pressed him about some other details, like the footprints leading straight from the bedroom to the kitchen. Peter would know where his wife kept her car keys.

And then, there in the interview room, the ranger had a surprise for Peter. They had found a sock in the bedroom covered in blood and thought that sock matched some of the killer's footprints. Turns out, it was a specific kind of compression sock Peter wore.

I don't know what happened.

I have no idea.

If you're wearing my socks, it makes no sense.

It makes no sense at all, I have no idea.

I did not harm my wife. What do you make of Peter and his answers and his demeanor with the pressure that's being put on him? Peter often brought up past military training, so wasn't sure if he was just covering up. What he had done. Was able to stay calm and collected as he had been trained to do in stressful situations, or if he was an innocent party.

Did you feel like his denials? His answers seemed genuine. I did not know at that point.

After more than five hours, Peter was free to leave. You let him go. Part of our judicial system is if you don't have enough, then you have to let him go. So that's what we did, and we kept digging and kept going forward with the investigation.

Turns out someone else close to Peter was going to do some investigating, too. I sat on the couch and I had Darian go into the back to his mother's bedroom. And I said, Scream at me, scream as loud as you can.

Manu Allen had been dead for five days when her husband Peter walked out of his second marathon interview with police. Are you feeling like I'm suspect number one here? Yeah, I was waiting for the cuffs to come out. They're just turning up the heat on you.

Oh, yeah, they tried. I didn't care if they thought I was a suspect because I expected them to think I was a suspect.

It only made sense. The one who it usually is is the spouse. So I fully expected that word spreads that your dad might have done this. How were you all dealing with that?

It was very, very irritating because it was just all over Facebook and social media, people saying I was husband's daughter. Hell. There was people I know and had worked part-time jobs with who were saying it was me. Why were people saying you did it?

Peter's close friend, Verl Wolverton, is a former police chief who knows a thing or two about homicide investigations. And like Peter, he's retired military, he knows what kind of training Peter's had. He has certain capabilities. You're thinking he might have done this?

I'm thinking, maybe something happened in my line of work. I've seen people that are very devoted to each other suddenly have problems. Verl drove down from Arkansas to help the family. He found Peter on the front porch. He was just talking about how they took her from me.

You know how I failed. I mean, he was into his shame. Feeling the way you're feeling. Did you ask him, Did you have anything to do with this? The next day, I said, Peter, you're my friend.

I'll support you, you know, I love your wife, I love your kids, and I said, I've got to know. And what did he say?

He was face-to-face with me and he says, I did not do this. Like the Rangers. Investigating the case, Verl had a hard time believing that Manu was killed in the house and no one in the family heard a thing. The house is two stories, five bedrooms and two bathrooms, packed into just 2,000 square feet. He decided to run a test and asked Darian to help.

I sat on the couch and I had Darian go into the back, into his mother's bedroom, and I said, Scream at me. I yelled as loud as I could. They were in the living room, they didn't hear anything at best, they just heard, like, a little bit.

And then we switched it around. And I mean, I'm 30 years younger than them and I have a little better hearing. And it wasn't loud. I wanted to hear it for myself. First, Verl showed me the bedroom. You're actually standing where Manu fell, so this is where the blood was right here.

Then I went down the hall, about 20 steps later, I was in the living room. This is Peter and Manu's living room, and back then the couch was situated right here. We've also set the TV to the exact volume that it was in those early morning hours when this happened. Then Verl, still in the bedroom, yelled my name over and over again.

Andrea.

Not hearing anything.

So, thinking like a former police chief, Verl now wondered, if not Peter, then who Verl agreed with the investigators that the attack was personal. You're thinking this is targeted? Yeah, I'm thinking that somebody whoever did this knows this family.

Somebody came in, somebody knew the family, they knew what they were after, and they completed their mission. That's what was very disturbing about it. And something in the blood trail caught Verl's eye to him. It seemed the killer had paused for a moment outside of one of the kids bedrooms. Melanie's, I'm going okay, Melanie knew these people.

Went right past Kara's door. Melanie knew these people because they went to her door. Verl urged Peter to be patient with the investigation. His question was, why aren't they looking for this person? and I said, Look, they have to go through a process.

There's a process that must be maintained for the integrity of the case. I said, if you're going to get it right, you have to be looked at. You know your dad better than anyone. Was there any part of you that was thinking, Could my dad have done this? I never once, not for a second thought, it was him.

In fact, Darian and his father were leaning on each other for support and protection. Lock the doors, sleep with a gun. You're kind of always a little paranoid. Was there that feeling that like, what if this person comes back? Or they want our whole family? Yeah, there was always that feeling.

From the very first day. As soon as we got back to the house, my dad and I went and made sure every window was secure. We put three-inch screws through the wooden window trim into the sills. Made it into a fortress. Yeah, made it into a fortress. Things for the Allen family were either about to get much worse or much better. Because investigators had found a new witness, someone who'd been on his way to Lake Cooper the morning.

Manu was killed. He just asked the worker, Hey, have you seen anything unusual this morning? and the worker actually said, You know, matter of fact, I did.

Darian Allen plays it over and over again in his mind the last time he spoke to his mother, Manu.

The last thing I said to her was, I'm going to go.

I'm going to go to my friend's house, I'll see you later. And it just tears me up because I didn't tell her goodnight, I didn't tell her I love her, yeah.

Well, you don't need to say it. She knew it right, and I'm sure you've said it a million times. Oh yeah.

Now it was up to Texas Ranger Michael Schraub to figure out who killed her. I often tell people, you know, it's like a thousand-piece puzzle. You're never going to get the puzzle all the way completed. But you have to put enough of it together to where you know what's in the picture? Evidence from the House was still being tested fingerprints, footprints and possible DNA. What I felt like at that point was that if Peter had something to do with it, then something would come up as far as the physical evidence go, confirming that he had something to do with it.

And don't forget there was evidence from the other crime scene as well. Remember that bike track at the lake next to Manu's car? Investigators talked to a witness who had been by Lake Cooper that very morning. He just asked the worker, Hey, have you seen anything unusual this morning? and the worker actually said, You know, matter of fact, I did.

While I was out here this morning, I saw a bicycle go by on the road and he said, I never see bicycles out here at that time. On Sunday morning. This is potentially a really lucky break here. Oh, potentially, yes. Did your witness get a good look at who was on the bicycle?

No, they just had a bicycle going down the road at a distance. The Rangers next move was to check the bikes in the Allen family's garage. None of the tires looked like they even matched what was found at the scene, so we didn't believe that any of those bicycles had anything to do with it. As suspicious as they'd found the stories from the people in the house that night, investigators had to consider a different scenario.

It had to do with something everyone in town knew about the Allens. Peter is a gun collector. Did you think to yourself? Maybe, given Peter's extensive gun collection that people know about? Maybe this was some type of burglary gone bad? Absolutely, when you looked at all the guns he had and everything. That's often a target of thefts and burglaries is people stealing guns.

And I don't think he was shy about talking about his gun collection either. It could be worth a lot of money to someone if they broke in and stole a bunch of guns, it could be. The ranger knew the family was just back from summer vacation in Germany, maybe a burglar thought they were still away.

Then they discovered, Oh, you know, she's here, and Manuela, you know, startled them, and you know, the violence started at that point and they killed her. This could, in fact, be a stranger, despite the level of rage.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you have to leave everything or keep an open mind. In fact, there'd been a gun burglary in town just that summer. My friend's dad, his house got broken into and a couple of his firearms and some money had gotten stolen. So this could be a target.

Yeah, I mean, everybody knows that he's kind of a collector of firearms. The sheriff's office started sifting through leads related to that break-in, and a name popped up Corey Taylor. Who is he? He's a troubled young man.

He's got some run-ins with the law. Just a small-town, struggling kid.

This is a video investigators pulled from Corey's Snapchat account. Corey was 17 and went to Olney High School. What can you tell us about Corey Taylor? So we had kind of like, athletes, band and then other kids. He wasn't in football.

He wasn't in band, so he's kind of off on his own and he was kind of quiet. Was he known to be a troublemaker? maybe a little troublemaker?

He was one of those kids like, I'm not going to do my homework, I don't need to be in school type stuff. I was contacted by the investigators and asked to go to Olney and pick up Mr Taylor and bring him to the sheriff's office for an interview. Sergeant Burback drove to an apartment building where Corey was staying.

As he approached the stairwell, something caught his eye. Underneath the stairs is a little storage area and I see a bicycle that is stored in that little cubby hole. The tread on the bicycle looked like it could have created the impressions that were at the lake. Now, lots of people have bikes, but it was a long shot.

I mean, I looked at it and it just kind of the light bulb went off. Yeah, there's something you're feeling, something here possible, yes, find that bicycle, find your killer.

Was this the bike investigators had been looking for?

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Sergeant Dan Burback arrived to pick up Corey Taylor, the teenager investigators thought might be involved in that gun burglary in town. So I go ahead and knock on the door and Corey comes to the door. Does he look surprised, or is he acting funny, nervous, but not surprised?

Of course, the first thing the sergeant wanted to know about was that bike he'd seen under the stairwell. I asked him who it belonged to and was it his No. It gave me the name of Julius Mullins and Who's Julius Mullins?

To me, at that time, I had no idea, I didn't know him. The sergeant may not have known that name, but if you went to the Alney Football Games, you'd know. Number three Julius Mullins was a running back on the Cubs. Was he the kind of guy that you wanted on your team?

Yes, that you knew he was going to give it his all and back you up. Yes, he would always have your back and he would run every play you asked him to, he would get it done. Did you go to all the games?

Oh yeah, I played varsity football on that same field and to go there and watch him was definitely a proud moment. A proud moment, says Julius dad Adrian. For a kid who'd had plenty of struggles, he was super hyper.

I mean, I know a lot of people say their children have ADHD. And just his focus on stuff. It was almost none, you know, it was kind of just flying everywhere, Adrian says. He and his wife made every effort to get Julius help. He says. They got a mental health treatment.

But in middle school, Julius got in trouble and spent time in juvenile detention. By sophomore year, he was struggling with his grades but was excelling on the football field. He also had a girlfriend. Remember, Manu and Peter's daughter dated a football player that was Julius Mullins, that same kid Manu Allen had taken under her wing at school?

She definitely was in his corner and wanted to help him any way she could. She was definitely a good influence for him. His dad recalls The relationship with Melanie was an intense first love. I think he might have been too caught up in the relationship as young love. That will happen.

Right after about a year of dating, they broke up. Kids at school recall that was intense, too. Did he take it hard? I think so, because at the beginning of the year, super nice, you know, sat up, would always talk.

Towards the end of the year, he kind of sat back in his chair, had a hood up, kind of more quiet, and I was just like, that's different. After that, he just kind of hung out with the wrong people, he started drinking, he started drinking.

I knew he was smoking marijuana, he was skipping school a lot and it got worse. He had gotten charged with marijuana possession and I told him that I couldn't have that around other kids. His dad gave him an ultimatum straighten your life out and go to school or find a new place to live.

You're laying down the law now. I tried to focus him on how he could keep on track, but he didn't adhere to my advice, so Julius crashed where he could, sometimes sleeping in the high school gym, sometimes staying with Corey. Now, Sergeant Burback was looking at his bicycle under the stairs and reporting back to the Rangers. I call investigators and ask them if they want me to bring Mullins in with Corey and tell them about the bike.

And they said, Yes, absolutely, go get him, and so I went back. I asked him to accompany me to the sheriff's office. The Rangers were about to talk to both Julius and Corey. First of all, you understand you're not under arrest or anything like that.

First, Corey told police that he knew nothing about the murder, said he'd never even been inside the Allen house. You've never been in there.

By this time, the Rangers knew Corey's friend Julius was Melanie's ex, knew he had a connection to the Allen family, so the conversation quickly turned to Julius.

So I mean, I would cry if I was any closer, because she was real nice to me in the hall. Then, Corey said something that really got their attention. They started bringing guns in my house. He scared me and my grandma.

Corey ends up telling me he had brought guns to his house and so that that piqued our interest. As a potential, you know, could have been a suspect in this trying to steal Peter's guns. Do you think Julius had anything to do with it? He might have something to do with it, because, I mean, he's been in the house, he knows what it looks like.

He probably knows where everything's at. That was the story from one teenager. Maybe his friend did it. What would the other one have to say?

Truth be told, Peter wasn't crazy about Julius as a boyfriend. We both thought he was very nice. Seemed like a decent enough, nice enough young man, but an idiot.

But if you try to break up your children's relationships with somebody that you know is not right with them, it just pushes them together.

So we just pulled back and stayed out of it. Let her figure out this on her own. Darian remembers that after the breakup, Julius had been trying to get back together with Melanie. She said she'd received some weird messages from Julius. They were just basically along the lines of him, begging her to take him back and wanting to talk to her and still be with her and whatnot. But she just didn't answer him.

Then, after Manu's murder, Julius reached out again. He was trying to be the one to comfort her, but she wasn't going for it at all. She found it odd, odd because Melanie had a bad feeling about her ex. She'd initially told police she had no idea who could have killed her mother.

Everyone at home loves my parents.

I don't know who would do something like that. But the next day, she went back to police to tell them she did have an idea, maybe it was Julius. She wanted investigators to know her ex-boyfriend claimed he'd been in a gang and that he had an obsession with knives.

Melanie actually suggested that he may have had something to do with it as well. But, you know, again, we're talking about an ex-boyfriend situation and you don't know how much weight to put into that. Peter had also mentioned Julius to investigators.

But in those early days of the investigation, they were looking hard at Peter. Despite those two tips, they hadn't gotten around to tracking Julius down for an interview. But now, after investigators found his bike, Julius was in an interrogation room. And the Rangers had plenty of questions. Tell me about Madeleine.

But when it came to Melanie's father, Julius knew Peter didn't like him much.

The only time I think it was just between me and her dad because I was dating her. So how long did you and Melanie date?

Uh, I think about a year and a couple months.

Why'd you break up? She said. She wanted a break, and then I was like, Okay, I'm fine with that. Julius conceded the breakup had been hard and he admitted he wasn't completely over it by the time he and Melanie texted about her mother's murder.

He told the Rangers he was aware that Melanie was suspicious of him. She'd already lashed out by text.

She was like, she said, all these other things, like towards me, she was like, Was it you? was it you and Fred, huh? He was like, Did y'all plan this?

But I like, I wanted to, like, look at her and be like, Are you serious? Who do you think did this?

Melanie's a sharp little girl because she queried of him. Hey, did you do this? Because you knew where my mom's car keys were? And the footprints that went into the kitchen, the bloody footprints went straight to the car keys and out the door to the car. So what we'll do here in a minute is I want your DNA. Julius willingly gave up his DNA and the Rangers released him. But it turns out they wouldn't have to wait for the forensic test to come back from the lab.

That very afternoon, Ranger Schraub went to collect the bicycle and ran into Julius. I asked him to let me see the bottom of his shoe, and then I was like, that looks like that shoe. Matches the footprint that was out at the lake as well. They quickly determined the footprint at the lake matched Julius's shoe and the tire track it matched his bike.

With all that, I felt like I had enough. And I wanted to present this information to a judge and see if they agreed with me, The judge did. Julius was placed under arrest and brought back to the interview room, this time in handcuffs. Do you just go into this hoping for a confession? Oh, I always want a confession, as long as it's true.

Yeah, I absolutely went in and hoping that Julius would confess to me on what he did and tell me the truth about all the circumstances surrounding it.

Julius was quiet at first.

Give us a little more information. I don't know you want to talk about this somewhere else besides this room? Is the camera keeping you from talking?

Just tell me how it happened and how you got involved in it. After 30 minutes, Julius wanted a break. Can I approach you real quick?

How does he go from, you know, denying to I did it? I think he realized that he was caught at that point and he just didn't have anywhere else to go. What time did you go to the house when you actually killed her?

Like 2.

2 a..m. So when you went in there, was she asleep.

Then what happened?

She went for the door, I walked in the kitchen, I went in there, grabbed the keys. Then, he said, he dragged her out of the house, into her car and drove her to the lake.

How did you get her to her final spot? I had to drag her, you had to drag her. How did you do that? Put a blanket underneath her and carried the blanket.

So you shot her right there. I didn't even know if I hit her or not. I just pulled the trigger and I ran, Yeah, what'd you cover her up with?

I don't know what they're called, they're little, spiky plants. Julius was formally charged with Manu's murder and booked into the county jail. I had my man right there, but the biggest question was why.

It turns out Julius had an answer for that, and what he had to say brought investigators right back to where they started. They told me, Here's what's going to happen.

I don't know, I don't know.

It was hard to breathe. What are you thinking it's about? I assumed it had to do with Manuela, but I don't know to what extent the extent would soon become clear. I didn't know that he had confessed until he got a lawyer.

And then he told you, Yeah. Eighteen-year-old Julius Mullins is charged in connection with the murder of the mother of four. When Peter Allen learned that Julius had confessed to Manu's murder, he says all he could think about was revenge. You were going to go into that jail and kill Julius.

Oh, yes, that's intense. It's the truth. And my youngest daughter said to me, Dad, don't do anything that will get you taken away from us. We've already lost mom.

We can't lose you, too. And I realized that she was right. Even though Melanie had raised the alarm about Julius early on, her brother still had a hard time absorbing the news. I was very shocked, very surprised. I only really remember being around him once at the house.

How did Melanie take this, that this was her ex-boyfriend that she had broken up with? She took it very, very hard, It was really hard on her. The last person I thought really was Julius. I was like, why?

Why Miss Allen? Why Julius? why? just a bunch of whys? He's the guy that, you know, backed you up on the football field. It all didn't make sense.

But investigators had a theory that might make sense of it all along they'd suspected that more than one person had been involved that night. I thought it was improbable or not likely that a single person could move Miss Allen away from that house with her family asleep in the house. And nobody know. So. From the moment they brought Julius into the room in handcuffs, they repeatedly suggested he hadn't acted alone.

They asked him again.

And again?

Eventually, Julius told them someone else was involved, a name that didn't surprise the Ranger at all. He ended up claiming that Peter Allen put him up to it. Peter Manu's husband, the initial suspect How did Peter find you to get you involved?

Allsups, the town convenience store, right down the street from the Allen House. Julius said he ran into Peter there hours before the murder.

He told me he was like, I'm only going to tell you this once.

And he said, If you tell anybody else, I'm going to kill your entire family.

He claimed that when he sat down in the car, that Peter pulled him close to him and stuck a gun up to him. And told him, You're going to kill my wife. He told me he left that, he unlocked that window and he told me, Here's what's going to happen, you're going to go in there.

He told me he left a butterfly knife on the counter and that that's what I would have to use to kill her. He told me exactly what to do, He told me to go for her head. And Peter, he was awake, he was just sitting there on the couch.

He watched me do it, he couldn't see you from there, right in the bedroom. He knew I was there. So Mr.

Allen just sat in the living room the whole time.

He helped me take her and put her into the car. Did he say why? Peter wanted him to kill his wife? Given that everyone said that they had a good relationship? Peter didn't tell him, he just told him to do it. You made a bad decision.

You couldn't make a better decision, like what? Wake her up and tell her that her husband just put a big damn gun to my chest and told me to kill her. I don't know.

I wish he would have called us, he said. He was going to kill my family if I did that, and I believe him. He's a green beret. Toward the end of the interview, the ranger took Julius outside for another cigarette and went over parts of the story again.

Let me make sure I got this right. So after he made contact with you at Allsup's, you left Allsup's, went to the car, stayed there for like,....

Honestly, I sat there and I was thinking of ways that I could not do it because I wanted to believe that he was wrong. And he wouldn't do what he said he was going to do to my family.

But me knowing him and how many guns he had.

Investigators have the story and it seemed the husband may have been involved. After all. Just one problem I did not believe Julius story at all. We got a chance to ask Julius ourselves.

I feel like there's something you're not saying, I feel like there's more to the story.

Melanie's ex-boyfriend had admitted it was him. He was the person who'd sneaked into the Allen house, stabbed Manu to death and dumped her body by the lake. He'd also implicated Manu's husband, Peter, in the plot. Investigators didn't make that part of the confession public right away, instead, they worked to nail it down.

I told Julius, I said, If you're telling me the truth, then I'm going to be able to prove it. I'm going to find the evidence to prove it. There was plenty of evidence to prove Julius was the killer. Julius fingerprints and DNA were in the house and in Manu's car.

They also found surveillance video from a bank. And there was Julius on that bike coming home from the lake early that morning. But prosecutor D. Peavy saw problems right away with the teenager's explanation for why he did it. It seemed just like he had been caught and he was grabbing at straws.

Did you have any involvement in your wife's murder? Did you threaten Julius and tell him to kill your wife? It had nothing to do whatsoever with my wife ever being touched, ever being harmed, anything. My wife was my soulmate, she's the one who gave me a heart.

He's the one who took it away. Sure enough, a little investigating proved Julius story about Peter was riddled with holes. There was no evidence to support it. No surveillance video of a meeting outside the convenience store.

No telephone calls or social media communication between the two of them. Remember that bloody compression sock that investigators hammered Peter about? Turns out it had Julius DNA on it, but didn't Julius need help moving the body? Maybe not.

I did know that he had been a football player and I know that adrenaline can play a role in these sorts of things. When all the lab reports came in, the results seemed clear to the investigators with regard to Peter Allen's involvement. There was no physical evidence whatsoever that linked him to this murder. The only person that really tried to link him to this murder was Julius Mullins. Why would Julius say you're involved if you weren't involved, if he's already admitted to doing the killing?

One thing about the human condition, we always try to make excuses for what we've done. Very few people will actually take responsibility.

Investigators spent months trying to figure out if anyone else helped Julius and came up empty. They found no evidence that Corey Taylor was involved, but he and Julius did admit to committing that gun burglary at another house. Manu's murder case never went to trial. Julius pleaded guilty to murder and was given a 55-year sentence.

As part of the deal, he promised to tell the truth about what happened. He agreed to tell us the story as well. Why did you want to do this interview? To try to give the family and people who have questions about why it happened some closure? I've interviewed the Allen family.

I've interviewed your father, he loves you unconditionally. They're all in so much pain.

And the biggest question that they have, Julius, is, why? why did you do this to Manu?

I got scared when I went into their house. It wasn't with the intent to hurt anybody, he had guns and that's what I was going there to get. What you're saying is the why has the burglary gone bad? Yes, ma'am.

Other people believe that this was revenge for the breakup with Melanie, that you were trying to get back at her. I wouldn't do something like that to try to get revenge because I had already made my peace with it.

It would never be, and that's kind of where I left. It take us through that night. What exactly happened? I rode on my bike and I went through the garage window, then I started looking for guns.

I found one in the bedroom, in the cabinet. By the time that I had gotten it out, I had jarred the desk a little bit. I woke up, Ms. Allen.

She sees you, Yes, she sees me. I was kind of frozen for a minute, I saw a butterfly knife on the dresser.

I got scared and I jumped on top of her and I just started stabbing her. Why grab a knife just because she saw you? She knows you. This is not a really bad scenario if she finds you in her room.

It's not great, but if you haven't done anything, why pick up a knife? I didn't know, I don't know really why I did that. I got scared and thinking about being in my other placements, I just didn't want to go back. He's referring to the time he spent in juvenile detention.

You're thinking, in that moment, in that split second, I'm going to pay for this, they're going to send me away somewhere. Yeah, adrenaline took over and I just.

I don't know. This is a woman who cared about you, who welcomed you into her family. Where's that rage coming from? I'm not sure.

Yeah, I just made the wrong choice. I mean, you know, it's one thing to say, I made the wrong choice. But this is stabbing a woman 47 times. I mean, this is evil. Yeah, I agree with you. Julius admitted the whole story about Peter's involvement was a lie.

I was alone, it was just me, and even after the fact, no one helped you dispose of the body.

Lesser time by implicating Peter, you were trying to get a deal.

Are you sure that's it? Yep, Peter, I'm sorry for making you seem like the bad guy throughout the situation. What do you want to say to the Allen family? You have destroyed their lives?

Yes, I did.

There's no amount of apology that can change or bring her back.

She did not deserve what I did to her, and I'm sorry that I ripped y'all's family apart. And you can look me in the eye and say that you've told me the truth today, and there's nothing more to this. Yes, Ma'am, I can. I would give my life to bring her back.

Julius dad said that not a day goes by that. He doesn't wonder if he could have done more. And as painful as it's been for him, he's well aware that there's another family whose grief is far worse. There was no way for me to say, I'm sorry. Did you try? Did you say sorry?

I did, I had the florist get some flowers that were German flowers. In the mornings, when I was on my way to work, I would stop out front and I would just bring one up and put it on her porch. How did they feel about that?

They didn't like it.

And I stopped immediately. But I just wanted them to know that I was thinking about her and thinking about them and their loss. Manu's family lives with that loss every day. You still have your days when you hurt really bad inside and you can't tell your kids because you're dead and you have to keep that. You can't put that stress on your kids.

For the most part, I think all of us are healing. Melanie is just struggling. Do you all try to tell her this is not your fault? I've told her many, many times I've hugged her while she's crying.

I've told her that Melanie, it's not your fault, none of this is on you. She doesn't deserve any of the blame, she doesn't deserve all of the guilt that she's feeling. For Peter, the guilt can be overwhelming, too.

I'll never move on, I can move forward and the best thing I can do is learn to forgive myself. For failing. As a husband, why do you think you failed your wife, though, if you didn't even know what was happening? Because it's my house and that's my job.

Did I know what was happening? No, well, the other part of me inside says, You failed. As a husband and as a man, I have to learn to forgive myself for that, or I won't be able to help my children.

And right now, my children are my biggest priority. Children were always Manu's priority, too, whether as a mom, a teacher or their biggest cheerleader. And these days, she would be especially proud of her. Alne Cubs. After her death, the hapless football team started to do something unprecedented when?

I was still here at Cowbell, so maybe it was a real cowbell, or maybe it was just imagination of hearing a cowbell, but I was still here at Cowbell. I love it because it means she's still there.

My wife is still there, she's still there.

That's all for this edition of Dateline. We'll see you again Thursday at 10 9 Central, and, of course, I'll see you each weeknight for NBC Nightly News. I'm Lester Holt for all of us at NBC News. Good Night.

As Democrats unite around Vice President Harris, they'll gather in Chicago to endorse their presidential ticket. A new era is here. It is go time. Stay with MSNBC for insights and analysis. The race is going to be close.

Everybody should prepare themselves for that. Plus, reporting on the ground from the convention hall, extraordinary levels of enthusiasm from Democrats for the fight ahead the Democratic National Convention. Special coverage this week on MSNBC.