Police Needed Therapy After Witnessing This Crime Scene | SHE WAS JUST 17 | True Crime Documentary

This is my statement. I also did recklessly cause the death of McKenzie Cal by strangulation and by stabbing her with a knife. Uh, Mr. Wilson, is that your statement?  Yes.  And are are those the things that you did?  Yes.  Near WACI for a missing 17-year-old girl. It’s been 72 hours since Mackenzie Cal was last seen leaving beauty school in Waci.

 We begin tonight with breaking news out of Douglas County where the body of 17-year-old McKenzie Cal has been found on the shore of the Columbia River.  Investigators are keeping quiet about what was found at the scene and in this home 30 yard from the body.  Suspect is a 29year-old man who went to beauty school with McKenzie.

 [music]  [music]  February 9th, 2010. Wachi, Washington. Reed is setting the table for a father-daughter dinner with his 17-year-old McKenzie. She never walks through the door. No call, no text, just silence. By nightfall, police are standing in a remote canyon, staring at her car, abandoned, locked. Her purse and closed still sitting inside, but her phone, her keys, her bank cards gone.

One set of footprints cuts through the snow and disappears. For 4 days, an entire town holds its breath, praying she’ll come home. What they find instead will stop this community cold. This is a true crime documentary about a girl who had everything ahead of her. And the investigation, and that would take years to finally crack wide open.

 Stick around because the piece of evidence that broke this case open is one you will not see coming. Before we get into it, drop a comment and let us know where you’re watching from tonight. And if you’re new here, go ahead and hit subscribe for more true crime documentaries just like this one.

 McKenzie grew up splitting time between her mom and dad in Wacci, Washington. She was a senior just months from graduation and already deep into cosmetology school, training to become a hair stylist. She had rhythm, too, dancing with her school’s team, the Appallets, showing up in parades and festivals all over town. Everyone who knew her said the same thing.

 Sweet, chatty. Family always came first. That confidence hadn’t come easy, though. McKenzie had an underbite, and for years, kids gave her grief over it. She was saving up for corrective surgery. Her reverend put it plainly. The teasing never let up, but it never broke her either. If anything, it made her tougher.

 Her dad, Reed, used to marvel at her schedule. Up before 6:00 a.m., and she wouldn’t stop for another 12 hours. School, dance, modeling gigs, then straight to the Wanachi Academy of Hair Design for extra credits. That kind of drive in a kid her age was rare. She had a boyfriend too, Wimbasano. He was smitten and the two were inseparable.

 By February 2010, life for Mackenzie Cowell was finally clicking into place. Then came February 9th. That evening, Reed was expecting McKenzie home for the dinner he’d planned. The academy let out at 5, and normally she’d call to say she was on her way. This time, nothing. 40 minutes went by, so he tried her cell.

It rang once, then dropped straight to voicemail. He said his stomach dropped with it. Another hour passed, then another. By 8:00, the family was minutes from calling the police themselves when the police called first. They’d found his car on no in the one Mackenzie drove most days now, parked out at Pitcher Canyon, miles from the school.

 No sign of her anywhere. Reed got in his car and drove straight there. The night was bitter cold, pitch black, snow just starting to fall. It was the kind of spot nobody ends up at by accident. Long winding roads cutting through the hills, no street lights for miles. Whoever left that car there wanted it hidden.

 Reed said he saw the flashing lights from the police cruisers before he saw anything else. And that’s when it hit him just how serious this was. The car was locked. Inside, they could see Mackenzie’s purse and some of her clothes, but her keys, her phone, her bank cards, all gone. In the snow, just one set of footprints led away from the vehicle.

 Whoever left it there, it looked like they’d been alone. Reed would later call it the longest, darkest night of his life. Detectives in Chalan County need your help tonight, finding a missing 17-year-old. McKenzie Cowell was last seen Tuesday in Wacci as she left beauty school. Her car was found several hours later, 40 miles from her home.

KXY4’s Annie Bishop is live in our studio with information on the search. Annie, and it has been an exhaustive search. They’ve searched the steep terrain where her car was found with blood hounds by air and on foot several times and still nothing. And that is why it is so important for you to take a good look at her photo tonight.

Investigators hope you have seen McKenzie and can help bring her home. McKenzie’s 2000 Pontiac Grand Prix was found abandoned off Pitcher Canyon Road around 7:00 Tuesday night, 40 miles from her home in Arondo. Inside her car, detectives found her purse and clothes, but her debit card was missing. The Washington State Crime Lab processed that car and found nothing out of the ordinary.

 McKenzie has been listed as an endangered missing person. The criteria surrounding her disappearance does not meet Amber Alert standards. As of tonight, five FBI agents and seven detectives are trying to figure out what happened to McKenzie. Well, it’s unusual for the caliber of this kid from what we’re getting from McKenzie’s past. She’s not a troubled kid.

 She’s a good student. She’s a smart kid. She’s involved in a lot of community functions. And when she just doesn’t have a a violent abduction of children, crime rate at all.  And McKenzie is 5’8, 110 lbs with brown eyes and brown hair. She has braces and both ears pierced. If you have any information, you’re asked to call this tip line at 509-6676848.

Now, an FBI profiler, we’re told, is on his way from Washington DC to help put together a profile for McKenzie and also a profile for a potential suspect. Right now, they do not have a suspect. Moore told me uh that parents in the area should be concerned until they know what happened to McKenzie.

 Reporting live, Annie Bishop, KXLY4 HD. Investigators went straight to the beauty academy the next morning. Classmates said McKenzie had mentioned stepping out for a quick 15-minute break and even asked if she needed to sign out. Surveillance footage backed it up. 300 p.m. Walking out the back door alone.

 She hadn’t told anyone where she was headed, but nobody thought twice about it at the time. At 3:42, her boyfriend’s phone buzzed. A text from McKenzie. Just a, “Hey, what’s up?” He wrote back. She replied once more, casual as ever, then nothing. That was the last time anyone heard from her phone. Her debit card had maybe $20 on it, so she barely used it for anything beyond small purchases.

 In the days that followed, it sat completely untouched. Meanwhile, three separate residents came forward, all describing the same man. Tall, slim, white, dark hair, a long dark coat, walking away from the road where her car had been dumped. They placed him there sometime between 4:30 and 5:30 that afternoon. Detectives pulled over a thousand pages of Mackenzie’s phone records and got warrants for her Facebook and MySpace.

One local reporter covering the case said something felt off from the very beginning. Police never once called this a runaway case. Everyone working had already suspected something far worse had happened to Mackenzie Cowell.  The search intensifies near Wanachi for a missing 17-year-old girl.

 It’s been 72 hours since Mackenzie Cal was last seen leaving Beauty School in Wanachi.  And for the fourth time this week, FBI agents and local detectives have searched the area where McKenzie’s abandoned car was found and still have not come up with anything to to lead them to McKenzie or what happened. Flyers have been posted everywhere in Wanachi, hoping someone will recognize McKenzie or her car.

 Four days, that’s how long McKenzie’s family and an entire community held on to hope. Then everyone’s worst fear became reality.  We begin tonight [music] with breaking news out of Douglas County where the body of 17-year-old Mackenzie Cal has been found on the shore of the Columbia River.  Investigators are keeping quiet about what was found at the scene and in this home 30 yard from the body.

 We don’t know where she was killed. Uh we are hoping that the autopsy and the crime scene investigation that’s going to occur tomorrow at the hospital will hopefully lead us to some conclusions on that.  The sheriff is not calling what was found evidence, just clues in their search. A search that so far has no suspects.

She was found still dressed in her school uniform and the injuries told investigators this had been a deliberate violent attack. The autopsy ruled out drugs or alcohol in her system and confirmed she hadn’t been sexually assaulted. But there was something else, something investigators couldn’t explain yet.

 There were signs someone had tried to alter the body after death. And physical evidence, including a weapon and duct tape, was recovered at the scene.  Kenzie Kell found dead in the Columbia River this morning.  As text messages spread among Wanachi High School students,  pray that her killer is found. Investigators spread out across two eastern Washington counties searching for clues.

 Detectives searched through McKenzie’s cell phone records today, but couldn’t find anything substantial. Police knew right away this one wasn’t going to be simple, but the hunt for Mackenzie’s killer had officially begun. Nearly 1,00 to 800 people showed up to a memorial service to honor her. With the case growing heavier by the day, detectives brought in the FBI and formed the Mackenzie Cowell task force, pulling resources from across the region.

Investigators always start close to home, so they looked hard at the people nearest to McKenzie, her boyfriend, Whim, and her mother’s boyfriend, Joey. Her parents themselves were never considered suspects. Joey agreed to take a polygraph and by his own account failed one specific question, whether he knew who killed McKenzie.

 He said police kept telling him he’d failed it, but he insisted he had no idea, not even a hunch. He’d reportedly argued with Mackenzie the day before she disappeared, which only turned up the heat on him. In the end, both Whim and Joey were cleared, and investigators had no choice but to widen the net. After a handful of promising leads went nowhere, investigators got a call that seemed to crack the case wide open.

 A police informant with a troubled past, Liz Reed, came forward with a story that stopped everyone in their tracks. She named two men, Sam and Emanuel, and claimed to have witnessed evidence connected to the murder. According to Liz, the teen had been killed in a horrifying case of mistaken identity. She said Sam had admitted to silencing Mackenzie by force, using almost those exact words.

 She even described specific details about the crime, details that hadn’t been made public yet, and handed police a ring she said belonged to McKenzie, claiming Emanuel sent her to a separate location to retrieve it after the murder. It should have been the break the case needed, except nobody in Mackenzie’s life recognized that ring. Investigators dug into Sam and Emanuel anyway, but phone records and employer statements cleared them both.

 Emanuel said he’d spent years turning his life around to raise his son, and this accusation set him back in ways that weren’t fair. Police searched everywhere for the footage Liz described. It didn’t exist. Not one trace of it. As her credibility crumbled, Liz eventually walked back her entire statement, though she continued to insist she’d seen something.

 She later said she only withdrew because she feared police were about to charge her with murder, even though investigators say that was never on the table. With that lid dead, the case went cold for seven long months. Detectives chased down hundreds of tips and interviewed more than 800 people. It was slow, grinding work, but Reed said he never lost faith in the team, believing they were leaving no stone unturned to find the person responsible.

On 11 at 11, a local mother breaks her silence about the unsolved murder of her teenage daughter.  For more than three months now, the mysterious murder of 17-year-old McKenzie Cowell has tormented her city with fear, frustrated detectives, and broken the heart of McKenzie Cow’s mother.

 So, tonight, she’s calling out for justice. I know that you out there know who did this and it’s important to my family and I for you to bring that person forward. We were asked from the very beginning to not speak about the case. We didn’t want to wreck the integrity of the investigation and the only thing worse than losing a child is having the perpetrator not caught.

But now, the same week police publicly declared no member of the Cowell family is under investigation, detectives urged McKenzie’s mother to talk to Cairo 7 in hopes that what she has to say will bring new witnesses forward.  Even if it’s a silly tip, it could be the answer that they’re looking for. They have a lot of evidence.

 They just don’t have the right tip.  Police have followed 750 tips. They’ve interviewed hundreds of people and taken DNA samples from dozens. None of that has led to the killer and the hope is tonight’s interview with McKenzie’s mom will lead to a break in the case.  We have to honor that person that she was and the person that she would have become because I never get to see that.

Never get to be the grandma. Her brothers don’t get to be uncles and it’s important that people call that tip line.  Then out of nowhere, another informant changed everything. Theo Keys, writing from behind bars, sent detectives a letter that would crack the case wide open. In it, he gave them a name, Christopher Wilson, 29 years old, a former friend of his.

 Theo told police that Chris had once physically attacked a mutual friend at a party, unprovoked, then let go and carried on like nothing happened. He also knew something else. Chris had studied at the same beauty academy as McKenzie and lived just a couple of blocks from the building. The deeper detectives dug, the stranger things got.

 Chris had a deep unsettling fascination with death and true crime. He had a tattoo of Hannibal Lectar and was obsessed with the show Dexter. He’d worked at several funeral homes around the area, and one fellow student at the academy recalled him making disturbing comments about the work he did there. Another woman claimed he’d once told her about physically restraining a hotel guest in a way that alarmed her.

 His mother pushed back hard, saying being different doesn’t make someone a bad person. His best friend agreed, calling him kind, generous, not perfect, but good. People who knew him said the real reason Chris stood out wasn’t anything sinister. It was the dyed jet black hair, the tattoos, the clothes that didn’t match anyone else in town.

 He looked different. That was it. Except the eyewitness description, a slim man in a dark coat near where Mackenzie’s car was dumped, lined up with Chris almost perfectly. and records showed he’d been at the beauty school the exact same day Mackenzie disappeared, walking out the same back door less than 2 minutes behind her.

 After that, his whereabouts went dark. A few texts to his ex-girlfriend and nothing else. No one saw him, no alibi for the rest of that day. But Chris had zero criminal record. Nothing. And for a moment, investigators wondered if this lead to was about to go nowhere. Chris denied everything from the start. He told investigators McKenzie wasn’t even a friend, just someone who happened to study at the same school.

 Said he barely knew her. He even volunteered to give a DNA swab, seemingly confident it would clear his name. That confidence didn’t last. His DNA came back as a match to the duct tape found at the scene. Given how remote and hard to reach that location was, investigators knew this wasn’t a coincidence. They gave him one more chance to explain, asking if he’d ever been out that way. He said no.

 flat out no reason to be there. But once detectives told him about the DNA match, Chris asked for a lawyer on the spot, and the interview ended right there. Investigators started connecting other pieces, too. His obsession with Dexter took on a much darker meaning. Now, the show’s killer disposes of his victims at sea after concealing their identities, and the crime scene details lined up disturbingly well with that premise.

 It was hard to ignore. That was enough. Detectives placed Christopher Wilson under arrest on suspicion of seconddegree murder. When they told him, witnesses said he just stared back, blank, saying nothing at all.  And is under arrest for the murder of 17-year-old [music] Mackenzie Cowell.  And that suspect is a 29-year-old man who went to beauty school with McKenzie.

Police say this man, Christopher Wilson, left school at the same time as McKenzie on the last day she was seen alive. KXY4’s Tory Brunetti is in Wanachi tonight with what finally cracked this case. For eight months, the community and her family had no idea who killed her. Few developments, few clues, and hundreds of leads that came up short until a DNA match came through last month.

 And today, police say they arrested her killer. Earlier today, the Mackenzie Cow task force arrested 29-year-old Christopher Scott Wilson from his home beneath this hair salon behind me. They say DNA evidence found on a duct tape, where they recovered Cal’s body, is what led them to this arrest. Investigators say Wilson went to the Academy of Hair Design at the same time as Cal.

 But friends of Cal say she was not friends with Wilson. People who knew both Cal and Wilson say he seemed like a normal nice guy. He even went to Cal’s memorial and was comforting her close friends. Friends and family say they are very relieved that an arrest has been made, but they are shocked it was Wilson.

 Task force says they have a lot of work ahead of them right now. They’re really focusing on trying to determine a motive in Wanachi. Troy Bernetti, KXY4 HD News.  With Chris now under arrest, investigators turned their attention to his old apartment and every device he owned. Tucked into the carpet, they found a dark, stained patch.

 Chris had an explanation ready. He said he dropped a bong and spilled water everywhere. Testing told a different story. It was McKenzie’s blood. For police, this confirmed something critical. McKenzie had been killed inside that apartment. What actually happened between the two of them that day still isn’t fully known.

 They didn’t appear connected on social media in any way. Reed always maintained his daughter wouldn’t have gone anywhere with someone she didn’t trust. So, had they crossed paths more than anyone realized? Was she lured there or forced? Even now, that piece of the story remains a mystery.  WACI police have made a second arrest in connection with the Mackenzie Cowell murder case.

 Now, 22-year-old Tessa Maria Skylamman was arrested in connection with this case. Just when it seemed the case couldn’t take another turn, police announced a second arrest. This time, it was 22-year-old Tessa Skylon, a friend of Chris’s, taken into custody on suspicion of first-degree rendering criminal assistance and obstructing a public officer.

 Detectives had found photos on Chris’s computer, showing Tessa posing on the exact spot in his apartment where the earlier evidence had been found. Tessa insisted she had no idea she was standing there when Chris took the pictures. Investigators also uncovered a video filmed the day Chris moved out. In it, he can be heard asking Tessa if the place looked clean.

 Video of me just get away. Is it clean? Does it look clean?  Clean for for what happening? Clean considering.  Yeah, it’s clean considering.  She answers him and the camera pans right across the stained section of carpet. Chris later claimed the video was harmless, just proof for his landlord that he’d cleaned well enough to get his security deposit back.

 The Wachi Police Department arrested the 22-year-old last night, charging her with rendering criminal assistance and obstructing the investigation into McKenzie’s murder. Detectives found pictures of her posing as a dead person on the floor of Wilson’s apartment where McKenzie was killed and in the exact spot where detectives would later find the teen’s blood.

 A search warrant also uncovered two cell phone videos of Skylman walking through the same apartment, zooming in on areas where detectives found McKenzie’s DNA. Skylman claimed to have no knowledge of what happened to the Wachi team. Detectives say she has posted bond.  In the end, despite the arrest, Tessa was never formally charged.

 Chris, meanwhile, was held on a million-dollar bond and entered a plea of not guilty. The man accused of killing a 17-year-old Wache girl faced a judge in a packed courtroom today and said he’s not guilty.  Charge your son is murdered second degree. How do you think not?  When Christopher Wilson walked into a Chalan County courtroom this morning, his mother started to cry.

 She’s not the only one standing by his side.  He’s innocent. He didn’t I don’t believe he did it. This friend of Wilson who didn’t want to be identified is one of many young women who believe in his innocence.  I don’t understand why he’s getting accused of this.  Robin Jones, a close friend of McKenzie Cowl, doesn’t understand how people who went to school with both Cal and Wilson are so willing to believe he’s not guilty.

 McKenzie is the victim. McKenzie didn’t ask to be abducted. She didn’t ask to be brutally murdered. She didn’t ask to be dropped off on the banks of the Columbia River. Um, she was 17 years old. She was an innocent, vibrant, exciting young woman.  We still have evidence at the crime lab that’s being analyzed.

 We continue to submit evidence to the crime lab for analysis. We continue to interview people uh who were involved with Mr. Wilson.  What investigators don’t have is a motive. Something Cal’s friends can only wonder.  I don’t think it had anything to do with McKenzie. It was somebody who was sick and deviant, and she was easy prey.

 As the case moved toward trial, Chris’s legal team fought to keep certain details from ever reaching a jury. It worked, at least partially. A judge ruled prosecutors couldn’t bring up his years working at funeral homes or the Hannibal Lecter tattoo on his arm. Leading that defense was a heavy hitter, attorney John Henry Brown, whose past clients included the barefoot bandit Colton Harris Moore and serial killer Ted Bundy.

 Brown’s team didn’t hold back. They floated the idea that law enforcement itself may have planted Mackenzie’s blood on the carpet, pointing the finger right back at Sam and Emanuel, the same two men Liz had accused months earlier. Chris’s mother echoed the sentiment, saying she believed her son was being framed. The defense also leaned on a key gap in the evidence.

 Chris’s DNA was nowhere to be found, not in Mackenzie’s car, and not on the weapon recovered at the scene. Then there was the ring. The defense claimed the one Liz had handed over matched a piece of jewelry Mackenzie was seen wearing in a photograph. Prosecutors pushed back hard, saying the photo was too low quality to prove anything and that no one close to McKenzie had ever recognized that ring in the first place.

 Despite the defense’s efforts, prosecutors felt confident. They upgraded the charge against Chris to first-degree murder, arguing his actions showed clear premeditation. He was now staring down a possible 26 years behind bars. In April 2011, prosecutors offered him a deal just 6 years for manslaughter. Chris turned it down, stunning people following the case.

 By most standards, it was an extraordinarily generous offer given what he was facing. Then, right as his trial was about to begin, everything shifted again. Chris changed his mind, asking for that same six-year deal he’d rejected months earlier. He still maintained his innocence, but pointed to jury surveys showing most of the pool already believed he was guilty before a single piece of evidence had been presented.

 In his eyes, that made a fair trial impossible. But by now, that original offer was gone. Before moving forward, Mackenzie’s family made one request. They wanted Chris to write a statement in court acknowledging what he’d done. He agreed, but later claimed the words didn’t reflect the truth.  This is my statement. I also did recklessly cause the death of McKenzie Cal by strangulation and by stabbing her with a knife. Uh, Mr.

 Wilson, is that your statement?  Yes. And are are those the things that you did?  Yes.  He said he wrote it only to fulfill the terms of the deal, still insisting he’d been set up from the very beginning. Chris ultimately pleaded guilty to first-degree manslaughter, first-degree robbery for taking Mackenzie’s phone, and a separate assault charge unrelated to her case.

 With the original six-year offer long gone, he was sentenced in May 2012 to just over 14 years, with credit for time already served. What happened next surprised almost everyone. Outside the courtroom, Mackenzie’s family and Chris’s family embraced, exchanging apologies with one another. Both families had lost so much that day, and the grace shown between them left a lasting impression on everyone who witnessed it.

 Chris later tried to withdraw his guilty plea, taking his case to the Washington Court of Appeals. The attempt failed. Fast forward to late 2023. Christopher Scott Wilson, now 43, walked free after serving just over 11 years. 17 is no age at all. But even then, Mackenzie’s drive and work ethic already set her apart, and she was ready to take on whatever came next.

 To this day, her bedroom looks almost exactly as it did the morning she left it. Walking inside feels like stepping back to a simpler time, back to an ordinary day when McKenzie would wake up and do what she always did. Study, work, talk to her boyfriend, catch up with her parents. Reed keeps a windchime outside his home.

He says every time it moves, he hears his daughter’s voice like she’s still right there with them. You are my special gift from God, he said. You will never leave my heart. I can’t believe how much I miss you. If this story moved you, take a second to like this video, drop a comment, and subscribe for more true crime documentaries.

 It genuinely helps us keep telling stories like McKenzie’s.