Amazing Racer Honors Slain Friend
CBS) As Kelly McCorkle was finishing third in "Amazing Race 7" this past season, she struggled with the knowledge that her best friend had been brutally stabbed to death on Halloween night.
McCorkle and Leslie Mazzara met when they were 14, in South Carolina, and hit it off instantly.
Mazzara eventually moved to California's posh Napa Valley, where tragedy struck.
On Halloween night, someone broke into the home Mazzara, 26, shared with two roommates and brutally stabbed Mazzara and Adriane Insogna to death. The third roommate managed to escape, and called 911.
The slayings remain unsolved, reports 48 Hours correspondent Bill Lagatutta.
He says Napa's been called one of the prettiest places on earth. It's where billionaires buy mansions and movie moguls such as "The Godfather" director Francis Ford Coppola buy vineyards. And every day, tourists arrive to soak up the local flavor.
It's hard, says Lagatutta, to imagine a more unlikely setting for murder. But what happened there sounds more like the plot of a grisly slasher film than the true tragedy it is.
"We've seen all those horror movies," says Mazzara's mother, Kathy Mazzara. "And this is worse than a horror movie. This is real."
Leslie Mazzara, a beauty pageant winner and a marketing executive for the Coppola winery, and roommate Insogna, a civil engineer raised in Napa Valley, handed out candy to neighborhood children on Halloween night.
A few hours later, tired, the girls turned in. That, says Lagatutta, is when the man came into their home while they were sleeping, and stabbed them both.
"I have nightmares about what her last moment must have been like (for Mazzara)," says McCorkle, "and, you know, how scary it must have been."
McCorkle speculates a cult might have been involved, since the stabbings took place on Halloween.
Police discount that theory, says Lagatutta, but still haven't nailed down a motive.
"We never did find a murder weapon at the crime scene," says homicide detective Dan Longeren, who came out of retirement to try to solve the crime.
He says evidence shows the killer got into the house through an unlocked window or door.
Then, continues Longeren, "He goes upstairs and attacks one of the females, and then is possibly confronted by the other female upstairs. Both the females were dead with multiple stab wounds."
Police discovered the killer's DNA at the scene, adds Lagatutta, but have yet to make a match, leaving the community and two families wondering if they can ever find the kind of peace so many others have sought and found in Napa.
Says Insogna's mother, Arlene Allen: "I don't even know what happened to my child. I mean, I know she was stabbed to death. But that's not very much, when you think about it. …I hope that someone will see this broadcast and realize that they know something significant, and come forward and give the police a new lead."
McCorkle is working with Mazzara's family to keep her memory alive, and to help police find her killer.
"Police are still working hard on it," she told The Early Show co-anchor Julie Chen Tuesday. "And they have a lot of leads. They're just not going anywhere."
She says police think Mazzara was targeted for death by someone who knew her.
The last time McCorkle spoke to Mazzara was in mid-October, by phone, as McCorkle was preparing to compete in "Amazing Race 7."
Nothing seemed amiss, McCorkle says, and Mazzara loved living in Napa.
This weekend, McCorkle is helping stage an event dubbed "The Amazing Raise" in Mazzara's hometown of Anderson, S.C. It's a two-day affair patterned after "Amazing Race."
Organizers hope to raise $500,000 to build a new cottage and name it after Mazzara at The Calvary Home for Children, which fights child abuse and which Mazzara passionately believed in.
Numerous "Amazing Race" teams will take part.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/08/09/earlyshow/main767277.shtml
