Dateline: Secrets Uncovered - What happened to Lynsie Ekelund?

The decomposed remains of Lynsie Ekelund, a 20-year-old Fullerton College student who went missing in February 2001, were found in a Santa Clarita hillside nearly a decade later after her killer confessed to strangling her and led authorities to the gravesite. The area was once a construction site, where a four-foot grave was found with the victim's clothes and bones.

Reports state that Ekelund disappeared after going to a San Diego nightclub with Christopher McAmis and two other girls. McAmis was the last person to have seen her alive and initially claimed that he had dropped her off near her house in Orange County. McAmis remained a suspect for nearly ten years until his arrest and confession in 2010.

An upcoming episode of Dateline: Secrets Uncovered is slated to revisit Lynsie Ekelund's disappearance and murder this Tuesday. The episode, titled The Night Lynsie Disappeared, airs on Oxygen at 6:00 pm ET on June 13, 2023. Here's what the synopsis states:

"It was a mystery that stumped investigators for years; a college student disappears after a night out clubbing; her mother thought she was at a sleepover with friends and it takes an eagle-eyed detective to find the truth buried in a pile of lies."

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Lynsie Ekelund, a Fullerton College student, disappeared after goind to a nightclub in February 2001

On the evening of February 16, 2001, Lynsie Ekelund was picked up from her family's Placentia home in Orange County by Christopher McAmis. The duo then picked up Ekelund's two other female friends before driving to a nightclub in San Diego.

The following morning, McAmis dropped off the two girls at their homes and headed to Whittier with Ekelund. He claimed to have dropped off the Fullerton College journalism student near her family home, where she resided with her mother. However, Ekelund never made it home, and the 20-year-old was reported missing by her mother a few days later.

According to the Los Angeles Times, there was no possibility that Ekelund, who was partially paralyzed in a car accident when she was a kid, would have run away, given the nature of her disabilities.

Since Christopher McAmis was the last person to have seen her alive, detectives suspected his involvement in Lynsie Ekelund's disappearance, and he was a person of interest from the beginning.

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After nearly a decade, enhanced CCTV camera footage was used to arrest Lynsie Ekelund's killer

NBC reports that after years of denials, prolonged investigations, and unsuccessful polygraph tests, an enhanced CCTV camera footage from an ATM disputed the claims made by Christopher McAmis during the initial stages of the investigation.

The evidence, which was acquired by Placentia police with the help a special cold case unit at the Orange County DA office, suggested that McAmis lied about driving up to Rose Drive in Placentia, where he dropped off Lynsie Ekelund and then drove home. He was arrested while living in Fullerton on October 29, 2010.

McAmis, a 31-year-old construction worker and a married father-of-one, was confronted with new and incriminating evidence on November 3 of that same year, following which, he confessed to the murder. He confessed to strangling Ekelund at his Whittier apartment in an attempt to r*pe her back in February 2001.

According to a San Gabriel Valley Tribune report, McAmis then led detectives to a hillside area in the 29000 block of Bouquet Canyon Road in Santa Clarita, where he claimed to have buried Ekelund's body.

In a four-foot-deep grave, detectives found the victim's skeletal remains and clothes. The area was a construction site back in the day where McAmis worked. He entered a guilty plea in connection with the murder in April 2022.

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Learn more about Lynsie Ekelund's disappearance and murder on Dateline: Secrets Uncovered this Tuesday, June 13.