Facing a Monster at Trial

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1:52So, Captain, just where are we? What is this place? So we're in the town of Kingsbury at the bridge that goes over the canal on New Swamp Road. July 24th, 2005, investigators are called out here. What brought them out here? So we had a report that a fisherman had been going by. He saw what he thought to be a toolbox that goes in the back of a pickup truck floating. What did investigators find inside that toolbox? They found a woman's body that was duct taped and handcuffed and wrapped in a comforter. It was terrible. It was a terrible thing to see.

2:29In January of 1996, I just finished my first semester of college in upstate New York. My ex-boyfriend, Sean Doyle, and I had been broken up for approximately four months. My name is Cece Opinowski. My mother was going away for the weekend, so I had this whole big house to myself. And my friend Shannon and I, we were very close. I said, well, let's stay at my house because there's no one around. It was just a girls' night. We just wanted to chill out. You know, it's winter, it's cold, we built a fire. My parents had a great stereo system, so, you know, we put on some music and danced around and, you know, just did girl stuff.

3:07We both went to Sage Junior College of Albany. I'm really introverted, and she was very bubbly and happy and chipper, and she just, she brought me out of my shell. When you were first meeting her, was Sean Doyle around at the time? Yes, he was obnoxious. She would argue with him a lot on the phone. And then in January is when this incident happens at her house? We were having a good time. It was just the two of us. But he keeps calling. Mm-hmm. Wanting to know what we're doing, wanting to know if he can come over. She had a cell phone, and I was like, just turn it off. Like, she's like, no, because if I turn it off, he's going to come here.

3:48We finally wake up, and all we wanted was coffee. I had the mindset, I'm like, oh, I can't go out in public looking like I'm a mess. Let me go home and get dressed. So Shannon leaves, and I get up and go around the house doing whatever, watching TV, you know, being a lazy teenager. And I get a knock at the door, and I open it, and it's him. And he said, I just want to talk to you. And once he was inside, things got much different. He pushed me onto the couch, started, you know, holding me down and restraining me, you know, yelling at me. And he picked me up and pushed me against the French doors and kept banging me against the French doors.

4:32After I got done out of the shower and getting ready, I called. Nobody answered. My hair was in a ponytail and he picked me up, held me up, and cut my hair off. It was gone, just all of it. He had already been choking me, and I thought he was going to stab me. I called her back a half an hour later. She still didn't answer. And that's when my eyebrows kind of went up. I'm in complete shock. I can't believe it's happening, and I have to figure out how to get out of it. But during this time, the phone continues to ring. I waited a couple minutes, and I called her back. I explained to him, if I don't answer this phone, my mother will call the police.

5:15So I do pick up the phone and it's Shannon. I said, hey, are you okay? And I don't know why I did this, but I started unloading the dishwasher. And I'm saying to her, no, no, yeah, everything's fine. No, no. And no kept coming out of my mouth. And he didn't pick up on it, but she sure did. And that's when she said, is he there? And I said, yes. and I hung up the phone and then I called the cops. Believe me, I do realize how lucky I am. Investigators are continuing to piece the case together now that they found Laurie Leonard. Gagged and bound with duct tape. And a pickup toolbox was found floating in a toolbox.

5:54I'm fortunate that it could have been much, much worse.

6:04Anne-Marie Green reports. Facing a monster.

6:10I can tell you that I knew nothing was ever going to be the same. And it was going to change the way I looked and everything. For Cece Opinowski, it has taken almost 30 years to talk about the day her former high school boyfriend, Sean Doyle, attacked her in her family's home in Hudson Falls, New York, and then used scissors to cut off her ponytail. What was it like to have your hair cut off in this way? Demeaning. Demeaning. Think that's why he did it? Probably. Just to make sure he could knock me down somewhere. On that day, January 27th, 1996, as Doyle went in and out of violent rages, at one point holding the scissors to her throat, Cece says she wasn't sure she would make it out alive.

7:03Until she says her college roommate, Shannon McAuliffe, Cold. When she finally picks up the phone, what did you hear in her voice? Fear. Shannon says she knew that Doyle had been harassing Cece. So when Cece told her Doyle was there, Shannon notified police and then rushed over to Cece's house. I pulled onto her street and I parked. And then I saw the police officers and everything. So I kind of went in after the fact. She looked terrified. And angry. and sad. Cece says she thought when police arrived, they would make her feel safe. But that's not exactly what happened. They do not put him in handcuffs.

7:51And they put us in the back of the same police car. Mind you, all of this time, I clearly look like I've been assaulted. My hair is completely cut off. And when they arrived at the police station... I was like, why are we here? Why is he not, why are we in the same room? Cece says instead of separating them, police questioned them together. And they made it seem like it was some fight between two young kids that turned, you know, slightly dark. When 48 Hours reached out to the Hudson Falls Police Department, they acknowledged that law enforcement's response to domestic violence has evolved over the past several decades to better work with and support victims.

8:36Police arrested Doyle and charged him with menacing harassment and trespassing. Looking at it and you're saying, did this really happen to me? You know, how could this happen to me?

8:53Cece Opinowski and Sean Doyle grew up in the small town of Hudson Falls, located in upstate New York. To protect Cece's privacy, we chose not to show the actual house where she lived. He was nice to me. He was really nice. When Cece started dating Sean Doyle, she was just 15 years old, a sophomore in high school. Doyle was one year older. You know, we would go and do lots of things together. We just hung out all the time. Cece says Doyle had troubles at home. During his junior year, Doyle told her his parents kicked him out. So Cece begged her parents to let him move in with them. Did you feel sorry for him?

9:36Definitely. Soon after he moved into Cece's family home, she says she saw a change in Doyle's behavior. Cece says he became jealous and would secretly follow her around, something she says she didn't think at the time was a big deal. When you're a 16, 17-year-old girl and, you know, you're looking at, No jealousy, you know, he must love me so much and that's why he's doing this. Or he followed me home, he's so worried about me. But is that really what the case is? When you look back as an adult and someone with experience, you know, you think that's probably not okay. And Doyle showed even more possessive behavior that Cece found troubling.

10:22He at one point did get a tattoo. It was a heart on his arm. And I had my name in the middle. What did you say? Why would you do that? And his response? I love you. Was it a red flag? Definitely. During his senior year, Cece says Doyle dropped out of high school and was working odd jobs that he couldn't keep. And this is where things start to get darker. You know, he doesn't have any prospects. He knows that I'm getting ready to go away to school. and to him, his whole life is about to completely change. But Cece says she stuck by him, writing in her senior yearbook, I Love You Sean. And in the summer of 1995, when she left to attend what is now Russell Sage College in Albany, they agreed to stay together and see each other on weekends.

11:17But at the end of September, Remember, things took a scary turn when Cece told Doyle she would not be coming home every weekend to see him. Doyle showed up at her dorm. He stood outside basically threatening that he was going to kill me. And now he's threatening not just you, but anyone around you. Basically anyone around me. So he was arrested. Doyle was charged with harassment and trespassing. It was the final straw for Cece, who says she broke it off with Doyle for good, and he moved out of her parents' house. Later that winter, that's when Sean Doyle showed up and viciously attacked her at her home.

11:57I know he threatened a lot, but did you ever believe that Sean Doyle would have physically hurt you? Not until that day. Not in that way. After the attack, Cece returned to college and finished up her freshman year. But Shannon says her friend had changed. I think it had a profound impact on her life. You know, I was always looking over my shoulder. I bought myself a Swiss Army knife. I'm having night terrors. You know, waking up crying, waking up screaming, not being able to sleep. Awful, awful. So eight months after the attack, when it was time to take the case to trial, Cece, who was still just a teenager at 19 years old, told prosecutors she couldn't go through with it.

12:48She says she was too traumatized and scared. I didn't want to have to face him in court. I didn't want to be going over this over and over and over again. I really wanted it to go away. Doyle was offered a deal. He pleaded guilty to menacing in the second degree and was sentenced to just three years probation. Cece transferred colleges and moved hours away from Hudson Falls, New York. I needed peace, and I didn't know how to get it. Cece tried to forget her past, but she says she was haunted by a conversation she had with the prosecutor. She said, you know, based on what I see here, he is going to do this again to another person.

13:34And that has for the past 28 years stuck in my head.

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15:24Nine years after Cece Opinowski left upstate New York for a new life, far away from Sean Doyle, 33-year-old Lori Leonard disappeared. Say hi, Lori. Say hi. Lori Leonard was a single mom who lived with her two sons, Austin, who was nine at the time, and Zachary, five, in Chittanango, a small town outside Syracuse, New York. She was a very caring mother. The memories of her, just us always being happy together, spending time, kind of always the three of us. Say hi. It was just a lot of love and affection. Her dream was to have a home, a father figure for her kids, and for them to be happy. She wanted the white picket fence.

16:15Jennifer Leonard was Lori's older sister. We were good friends, but I was a little bit of a bossy mother to her. I had been through a lot of things already in my life and my relationships, and I was very, I would say, overprotective. In 2003, Lori met a man on a dating website, Cupid.com. His name? Sean Doyle. Online dating was new back then, so Jennifer was skeptical about him. He was not charismatic. He was not social. He was like a piece of furniture that you just walked around. But she says Lori didn't agree. She only saw the good in people. She would say, you know, he's misunderstood or he's shy.

17:00Jennifer says Lori told her very little about Doyle, except that he lived three hours away in Hudson Falls, New York, and worked at an ice cream factory. She also mentioned that Doyle was on probation. She told me that he was a boxer, that he was protecting a woman at a bar and was arrested because he used some of his professional boxing moves. Did you ever see any sort of evidence of his professional boxing? I mean, did he, do you think he was even a boxer ever? I didn't buy the stories that he was selling her. It sounded like he was trying to be something that he was not. Jennifer says after her sister met Doyle, Lori became distant.

17:43I would talk to Lori three times a day. And then when Sean came into the picture? It was a little quiet. And things only got worse. I had called her one night, and he was over there, and all I could hear in the background was him yelling at her. And I was like, what is this? And she's like, you know, I'll call you back. It's not a big deal. But I think what scared me more than anything was when he was caught yelling at her, it stopped. The kind of guys that, you know, don't want anyone else to see what happens behind closed doors. He was sneaky. Soon after this incident, Lori ended her romantic relationship with Doyle.

18:22Lori told Jennifer they agreed to be just friends and that he was fine with it. And I was like, no, he's not. Nope. People like that aren't just okay with being friends. Despite the breakup, Doyle would still drive three hours from Hudson Falls to visit Lori, oftentimes hanging out at the bar where she waitressed late at night. Sean always called me, and he'd call me to get advice. Dorothy Tucker lived down the street from Doyle in Hudson Falls and considered him a close friend. I saw a sweet guy who would bend over backwards if I asked him to. However, after the relationship with Lori ended, she says Doyle told her he had followed Lori and watched her as she went out on a date.

19:12I was like, Sean, you can't do that. She does not want to be with you. Were you starting to get concerned about him and his behavior at that point? No, no, because he agreed with me. I didn't see the monster that he really was. He hid it quite well. On Friday, April 29, 2005, Lori, who was living with Jennifer, moved to a new rental apartment. Usually people are miserable when they're moving. She was just happy. Lori's nephew, Dustin Dellator, who was 15 at the time, helped with the move. She wanted her own place. She saw her future in that day. Also helping with the move was Sean Doyle, who offered up use of his truck.

19:56She had asked a couple other people before that, so he was a last resort. He was still playing the I'm your friend. What was Sean like that day? Standoffish, just, I mean, quiet. Jennifer says the move went smoothly until Doyle decided to hang around and stayed with Lori in her new place for days. It was starting to get on her nerves now. Five days after the move, Jennifer says Lori told her Doyle was finally leaving because Lori had plans to go to Albany for the afternoon. She was supposed to go pick up the tickets. Tickets to a Yankees game, a gift from someone she had met at work. Were you concerned at all about her going to pick up tickets from a stranger?

20:40Yes, yes. But that was how she was. She was very trusting. On Wednesday, May 4th, Jennifer called Lori in the afternoon, hoping to catch her while she was heading to Albany. And it kept going straight to voicemail. Was that weird? Oh, her phone never went straight to voicemail. It was never off. At first, Jennifer thought she may have gotten lost on the drive or that her phone battery had died. It wasn't a thought at the time that something bad happened, just that, you know, where is she? 24 hours later, when Lori never called or returned home, Jennifer notified the Chittanango police. Patrol started looking into her whereabouts at that time.

21:22Lead investigator Wade Irwin searched Lori's rental apartment. She had just moved into the home. There were still lots of boxes, items being unpacked. Didn't appear that there was any signs of a break-in or a crime that occurred at the home. But her car was there. And he said there was something else unsettling about the scene. There was one shoe in the center of the bed. That was odd. Investigator Erwin says he was determined to speak to one person. The last person that we were able to determine that saw her was Sean Doyle. But before investigators could reach out to Doyle, Jennifer says she tracked down Doyle's number and called him herself.

22:08Sean, have you talked to Lori? And he goes, no, I haven't talked to her in a couple of days. Wasn't she supposed to get tickets the other night? And I'm like, yeah, she was. We haven't heard from her since. I'm like, you know, if she calls you, let us know because the phone's off. And he's like, oh, yeah, definitely. Like, you know. When I hung up, I was like, I had chills. And I'm like, he's full of it. He knows something.

22:44As the days went by, Chinanango investigators reached out to everyone who had contact with Lori Leonard prior to her disappearance, including the man she was supposed to get Yankees tickets from in Albany. He was an executive for a company. We were able to track him down. He was interviewed. Detective Wade Irwin says the executive waited for Lori in Albany, and when she never showed up, he called her and even left a message. He was calling with concern of where she was. We're supposed to meet up. I got the tickets. I'm here. Are you okay? I hope an accident didn't happen. His alibi checked out, but Lori's phone records would reveal a lot more about another person who hadn't called.

23:29What became concerning for myself as a person that cared about her, supposedly. Sean Doyle. Sean Doyle. Never called, never left a message. When Chittanango police went to interview Lori's former boyfriend, he told them that on the day she disappeared, he left her apartment about 3 p.m. and then drove three hours home to Hudson Falls. He just always had said all along that he left her and she was alive at the apartment. When they checked out his alibi, Detective Irwin says they couldn't clear him. Yet Doyle was cooperative and even allowed investigators to search his truck and take photos. When they searched Doyle's glove compartment, they found something curious.

24:18There was a key with a serial number on it. As investigators kept an eye out on Doyle and continued to search for Lori. Jennifer says her family struggled to explain Lori's disappearance to her two young sons. After several days to several weeks, you know something's up. Your mother's not home. But the question is, where is she? What's she doing? We would say things like, she got lost. You know, we'll get her. We'll find her. To make matters worse, Austin and Zachary were now separated, staying with their fathers and only seeing each other on weekends. We lived together our whole lives. That was obviously different, you know, waking up every day with, one, your mom's not there, but two, now your brother isn't.

25:03We were suffering. And every day, our family was doing something to find her. We were looking for her. We were a well-oiled machine. Jennifer suspected Shawn Doyle had something to do with her sister's disappearance. So weeks after Lori vanished, she headed to Hudson Falls and held a demonstration, hoping someone there would know something about Doyle that could help investigators. We had posters. We had signs. We had Sean's name up on signs. If anybody will speak to us. Dorothy Tucker says when she heard Lori's family was in town, she immediately called Doyle. I was like, Sean, what's going on?

25:46You know, did you do something? I didn't do anything to her. She's probably off on a beach somewhere with some guy. but you believe sean at the time oh definitely later that day when dorothy passed laurie's family rallying on the streets she says she did something she has come to deeply regret like an idiot i yelled out the window telling them to go home sean didn't do anything and they needed to leave as months passed with no sign of laurie the family's hopes began to dwindle i made a promise to find a resolution to this for them and give them the closure and answers that they needed. It was disheartening because every night I'd call them and give them an update regardless of whether there was positive or negative information.