Captions: (L-R) Detective Lisa Schoneman, Amy Hurst and Wendy Huggy

CLICK HERE FOR A PREVIEW

Susan Spencer and 48 HOURS go inside the investigation led by a determined detective to solve a 30-year-old cold case involving two missing young women and the trail to a possible killer in “Fateful Connection,” to be broadcast Saturday, March 15, 2014 (10:00 PM, ET/PT) on the CBS Television Network.

Three decades ago, two women went missing in Florida. The women were not friends, nor were their families, but were they linked by a serial killer stalking the area at the time with a penchant for dropping live victims into the ocean with a cement block tied to their feet?

“This is one of those cases that haunts you,” says Pasco County (Fla.) Sheriff’s Office Detective Lisa Schoneman.  

In 1982, Amy Hurst and her husband, Bill, moved to Florida. She suddenly disappeared. Amy left behind two young children. “When I was 9 years old, my mother left. And I always wondered why,” says her son, Jeff Earley. She was never heard from again.

Wendy Huggy was 16 years old in 1982 when she headed to Florida to live with her grandparents. One night she went to a party and never returned home.  

Then in September 1982, a fisherman spotted a body floating in the Gulf of Mexico, weighted down with one cement block, and wrapped in a homemade afghan. There was no recognizable face on the body making identification difficult.  

Amy Hurst’s husband was immediately viewed as a suspect in her disappearance. He agreed to take a lie detector test, but when police showed up at his house the next day, he was gone. Police tracked him for a while, but the investigation trailed off. The investigation into what happened to Wendy Huggy stalled before it started because of a clerical issue.

The cases sat unsolved for decades until Schoneman, a member of the cold-case unit, stepped in and began sifting through the evidence. “Two women missing for 30 years, where do you start?” says Schoneman, who allowed 48 HOURS and Spencer to follow her as the investigation unfolded.

Schoneman tells Spencer she likes cold cases because they’re the hardest to crack. “They’re the toughest,” she says. “When I bring closure to a family – there’s nothing better than that.”

Getting closure for the Hurst and Huggy families became Schoneman’s mission. Schoneman’s investigation would lock in on the afghan found on the floating body from 1982, which was initially tied to Huggy’s disappearance. Some three decades after it was found, the afghan brought Schoneman on the trail of a killer. It was a trail that took her from Florida to Michigan and finally Kentucky, where the suspect was aware she is on the way. The suspect had a gun. “And he told his friend that if I had pushed him any further that he was going to take the gun out and shoot,” Schoneman says.

But can she bring the suspect to trial and get justice for either Hurst or Huggy’s loved ones?

“Someone thinks they got away with murder,” Schoneman says. “No way.”

Spencer and 48 HOURS tell the stories about the disappearances of Wendy Huggy and Amy Hurst through interviews with family members, friends and investigators and Schoneman. 48 HOURS: “Fateful Connection” is produced by Tom Seligson. Charlotte Fuller is the field producer. Peter Henderson is the development producer. Michael Vele is the producer/editor.Peter Schweitzer is the senior producer.  Susan Zirinsky is the senior executive producer.

Chat with members of the 48 HOURS team during the broadcast on Twitter and Facebook.

# # #

Press Contact:  Richard Huff      212-975-3328    huffr@cbsnews.com