"48 Hours" uncovers missing escort Shannan Gilbert's final minutes
"There's nothing I can add that the police don't already know," said Dr. C. Peter Hackett, an Oak Beach resident and retired emergency services doctor who curiously inserted himself in the middle of the mystery - by calling Shannan's mother on May 3, 2010, two days after Shannan went missing.
"Peter Hackett told me that Shannan was at his house, that he ran a halfway house for people who wanted to get off the street and that Shannan was there," said Mari Gilbert.
Mari says during that phone call on May 3, Dr. Hackett told her that Shannan had left his house with her driver and that he was worried about her. But when Shannan's sisters went out to Oak Beach, they got a different story.
"He denied calling my mother," said Sherre Gilbert.
"Had he seen Shannan?" Erin Moriarty asked.
"He said he never saw Shannan before," she replied.
"What did you think?" Moriarty asked.
"I thought that he was a liar and I still think he's a liar," Sherre said.
"You didn't think your mom could be mistaken?"
"I was there when my mother received the phone call, so there's no way."
Dr. Hackett later admitted in letters to "48 Hours" that he had called Shannan's mother, but he said it was later in the week and he did so at the request of friends who were searching for Shannan to be "supportive." But he went on to say that "at no time ... did I suggest I had ever met her or render medical care of any sort to her."
Dr. Hackett has steadfastly denied ever seeing Shannan to the press.
And when Mari Gilbert confronted him with a friend's camera rolling, he denied it again:
Mari Gilbert [Cell phone video]: Firsthand what happened? Did you ever see her? What did you hear?
Dr. Hackett: I never saw her, I never met her. ... All this stuff about a rehab or something I don't have a rehab, I don't do rehab.
Mari Gilbert: Why would you say that to me?
Dr. Hackett: I didn't.
"Could Shannan Gilbert's mother invent this even if she wanted to? It doesn't seem plausible," said Kolker.
"48 Hours" has since recently obtained phone records from Shannon's mother that confirm Hackett actually did make a call to Mari Gilbert exactly when she said he did on May 3.
"You called Mari on your wife's cell phone on the third on that Monday when Mari said you called," Moriarty told Hackett.
"Yeah, I'm sure I did. When you give ... look let me not get into it," he said.
Just weeks ago, "48 Hours" went to Dr. Hackett's house to try to get answers.
"So why would you call her mother? That's what was odd. So you inserted yourself. And then you keep changing your story," said Moriarty.
"... because I couldn't remember my story. Seriously, a person gets a lot of phone calls," he said.
