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This Saturday's NBC Dateline episode, titled The Music Box, covered the horrendous abduction and murder of Lisa Ziegert in Massachusetts in 1992. The case remained cold for 25 years until a confession letter and a DNA match confirmed Gary Schara to be the killer.
NBC Dateline featured an in-depth exploration of the case through interviews with friends, family members, and investigators involved. The newsmagazine show blends journalistic examination with emotional aspects of a case to provide a holistic picture to viewers.
This episode of NBC Dateline aired on July 9, 2022 at 9pm ET and was about the gruesome case that took over two decades to solve.
NBC Dateline: Lisa Ziegert's body was discovered four days after she disappeared
In April 1992, 24-year-old Lisa Ziegert, a teacher's assistant by day and a Brittany's Card and Gift Shoppe employee at night, went missing from her night job. The once sleepy town of Agawam, 100 miles southwest of Boston, Massachusetts, suddenly became known for all the wrong reasons.
Four days after her disappearance, on Easter Sunday that year, Ziegert's partially clothed body was found in a wooded area. She had seven stab wounds to her neck, shoulders, and left leg. An autopsy revealed that she had been s*xually assaulted and then murdered in a stabbing.
The news of the murder horrified the town's residents, and girls began taking up self-defense classes in addition to being escorted to their cars at night. However, no other murders were committed after that, and the fear slowly died down, but Lisa's killer remained at large for 25 years.
NBC Dateline: How was Gary Schara identified as the killer in the Lisa Ziegert case?
In 2016, the case was picked up again when police began revisiting cold cases and opening up investigations. By then, advancements in investigative technologies such as DNA fingerprinting and digital compositing was being used to crack unsolved cases like Lisa's.
State Trooper Noah Pack and Detective Sergeant Mark Pfau, who had been involved in the case since the beginning, once again began going through case files. They narrowed their list of suspects down to 11 based on the digital composite image of the killer that had been generated by piecing together the specimens that were found on Lisa's body.
District Attorney Anthony Gulluni then sought court permission allowing him to force any unwilling suspect to provide a DNA sample. However, the investigators did not have to knock on too many doors.
On September 14, 2017, Noelle DesLauriers, Gary Schara's then girlfriend, walked into the police station with three letters in hand. The letters, written by Gary, included a confession, a last will and testament, and an apology to the Ziegerts.
An excerpt from the letter Gary wrote to DesLauriers read:
"I've never really been or even felt normal. From a very young age I was fascinated by abduction and bondage. I could never keep it too far from my mind for long. On that fateful day, I let myself do something terrible. I've never forgiven myself and that is only right. I also never did anything of the like again. I hated what happened. I despised myself. I thought of turning myself in hundreds of times over the years, but I truly am a coward."
After writing the letters, Schara tried to kill himself to escape prison but ended up in the emergency room where he was saved. His DNA sample revealed that it was he who had abducted and killed Lisa Ziegert in 1992. Investigators confirmed that he didn't have any criminal record before or after Ziegert's murder.
On December 8, 2017, a Hampden County Grand Jury charged Schara with first-degree murder, aggravated kidnapping, and aggravated r*pe. However, the r*pe and kidnapping charges were dropped because of the statute of limitations surrounding those charges.
In 2019, Schara was given a life sentence which is to be served at MCI Norfolk, without a possibility of parole. The judge also ordered him to cease all communication with Noelle DesLauriers.
The NBC Dateline episode revealed that even after Schara's confession and incarceration, the biggest question that looms large is why he targeted Ziegert. He provided no explanation for his crime in his letter and never revealed a reason behind it.
