"Maternal Instinct"

Dean MacGuigan told the police that he had last heard from Pati when she called him from the Del Mar. She was scared and suspected she was being set up. Dean said he hadn't gone to the motel to help Pati because he didn't have any money for a cab, nor did he know where the Del Mar was. Later, when she didn't come home, he started calling hospitals trying to find her, something detectives later confirmed through Dean's telephone records.

Dean told the detectives that Pati had been with her friend, Diana Hironaga. He also said he suspected that his stepfather had been involved in Pati's death.

When investigators questioned Hironaga, she claimed to have last seen Pati at the Hilton Hotel, and said she didn't know where Pati had gone after that. But when detectives checked at the Del Mar, they found Diana's name printed in her own hand in the motel's register.

Diana decided to confess.

She also gave detectives the detailed notes she had kept about Operation Dean, as well as the faxes she had traded with Christopher Moseley. She also gave up her boyfriend, Ricardo Murillo, and his sidekick, Joseph Balignasa.

Although not a suspect, Dean MacGuigan agreed to cooperate with the investigation. At the request of the detectives, he recorded two telephone conversations with his stepfather about the murder, and although Moseley implicated himself in the plot, his comments didn't give prosecutors enough to file charges against him.

"We took our shot," Detective David Mesinar said. "We really didn't get anything."

So with nothing to lose, Mesinar and FBI Special Agent Brett Shields flew to Delaware to see Moseley in person.