Who shot Evelyn Bunte? Boyfriend speaks out in Crime Watch Daily exclusive

She was shot three times in the head, stabbed in the neck and left for dead in a house. But somehow Evelyn Bunte is still alive to identify the monster who tried to kill her.

But the problem is, the gunshot wounds to her head erased most of her memory. Now Evelyn and her family are terrified her would-be assassin will try to silence her once and for all.

Evelyn Bunte, 18, should have listened to her father Victor Raga.

Victor had raised Evelyn as a single dad since splitting with her mother when their daughter was 3 years old. And like a typical father, Victor had serious misgivings when Evelyn told him she was moving out of their Chicago home after graduating from high school last year.

But like a typical teenager, Evelyn scoffed at her father.

"And she bought a ticket and said 'I'm leaving,'" said Victor.

She flew off to Forth Worth, Texas to share a pad with some friends.

"I wanted to do something new, you know, like have some sort of new experience," said Evelyn.

Evelyn worked the night shift as a Walmart greeter.

"I think she was involved with a guy who was getting her in over her head," said Victor.

That guy is Dallas Eyerman, a 19-year-old railroad worker Evelyn had fallen for within a month of arriving in Fort Worth. After dating Dallas for just a few weeks, Evelyn moved in with him.

"I was with the person that I love so much," said Evelyn. "Like, I connected with Dallas instantly. More than I've ever connected with anybody."

But their new life together was about to be shattered by a horrific attack on Evelyn.

"I thought that I was never even going to see her again or know what happened to her," said Dallas Eyerman.

Dallas says the attack occurred while he was at work on the night of November 5, 2016. His mother was supposed to have driven Evelyn to her own night job at Walmart.

"So my mom called me at about 10 o'clock and told me that she went to the house to pick up Evelyn and that she wasn't there," said Dallas.

When Dallas couldn't reach Evelyn by phone or text after two more hours, he dashed home to find Evelyn lying on a couch in the living room.

"I thought she had just fallen asleep or something. I was like, 'Oh thank God, she's here, she's OK,'" said Dallas.

Then, as he tries to rouse her, Dallas says he sees blood.

"She's bleeding from somewhere and all I can find is the cut on her neck, and I don't even know where all this blood is coming from," said Dallas. "And then she started moaning and groaning and everything, and I, all this started to click. And I started to notice everything and I was like, What do you do when you come home to find your loved one has been shot three times in the head and stabbed in the neck? What do you -- other than calling the police, I didn't know what to do."

Dallas says he cradled Evelyn in his arms while waiting for the cops and emergency medics to arrive.

"She managed to sit up and I didn't know where she was bleeding at, so I was kind of hugging her a little bit and comfort her," said Dallas.

"The only four things she could say was, 'I don't know, I can't see, I love you, and it hurts.'"

Evelyn couldn't remember what happened. Doctors discovered she had suffered severe brain damage from the three gunshot wounds.

"It was once in the face, once in the back of the head, once in the side of the head," said Victor, Evelyn's father.

Doctors didn't expect Evelyn to survive.

"What the doctors say is that anything more than 5 millimeters into the back of the head will kill you. This wound was 7 millimeters deep," said Crime Watch Daily Investigator Billy Jensen.

Evelyn's frantic father Victor had rushed from Chicago to Fort Worth to be at his daughter's bedside, not even knowing if she would die before he arrived.

"Before I went into the room the doctors said, you know, 'We need to prepare you. She has coaxial blindness and she's very, very weak and almost paralyzed on the right side of her body,'" said Victor.

But nothing could prepare Victor for what he was about to see.

"It was like a sight out of a horror movie," said Victor. "She had a large black spot on her cheek where she had been shot. Her head was wrapped and bandaged. Her eyes were sort of going in a couple different directions.

"I fell to my knees crying, you know, as soon as I saw her. And then she called out to me when she heard me cry, and she said, 'Dad, don't cry. Don't cry. I'm still here. I'm still here,'" said Victor.

Evelyn Bunte was rushed to the hospital after being shot three times in the head and stabbed in the neck.

Her father believes her boyfriend knows more than he's saying.

In a Crime Watch Daily exclusive, that boyfriend is ready to break his silence to Ana Garcia.

What really happened inside the Texas home? That's what police are trying to determine, because the only witness to the horrible attack on Evelyn Bunte is Evelyn herself. And she can't remember any specific details.

Evelyn Bunte was living with her boyfriend Dallas Eyerman at the time of her attack.

"I lost a lot of memories but they're slowly coming back," said Evelyn.

So is some of her eyesight and the use of the right side of her body.

"The wounds suggest there was something personal involved," said Jensen.

The main person of interest has always been Evelyn's boyfriend Dallas Eyerman, who found her clinging to life on a couch in their Fort Worth home.

"Everything in me tells me that he did it in a jealous rage," said Victor Raga, Evelyn's father.

Dallas has been questioned numerous times by police.

"They thought he had something to do with it and that he knew more than he was saying, and they interrogated him and interrogated him and interrogated him. And still nothing, because he didn't do it," said Evelyn.

Dallas even agreed to take a polygraph test. But he admits he failed.

"And that was proof enough for her father to say 'This guy's hiding something. This guy had something to do with it,'" said Jensen.

"The detective told me that in all the years that he had been working cases, he'd never seen anybody fail a polygraph as bad as Dallas failed," said Victor.

Dallas insists the polygraph results were wrong.

"The science of polygraph is just pseudo-science anyways. There's a reason you can't use it in court against somebody," said Dallas.

But Evelyn's dad claims Dallas had a motive to want to kill her.

"There was a statement made by Dallas's father that he felt that Evelyn was cheating on Dallas," said Victor.

And Victor says he spoke to some of Dallas's other family members, who added weight to his theory that Evelyn's boyfriend may have attacked her in a jealous rage.

"His cousin actually produced some emails that he had sent to a former girlfriend, and in these emails he said that if she ever found out she was cheating on him he would shoot her," said Victor.

But Dallas denies he would ever harm Evelyn.

So how does he move out of this cloud of suspicion?

"I know what I know, and I know that Evelyn still loves me, and that's all I need to know," said Dallas Eyerman. "That's all I need to get over how the detectives look at me and how certain individuals look at me because of this."

And he says the reason he's breaking his public silence to speak with Crime Watch Daily is to help clear his name.

"So people could hear my side, 'cause no one's ever asked me anything. They just sit there and they'll say whatever they want to say about me," said Dallas.

So what does Dallas Eyerman want people to know?

"I didn't do it. To think that it was me is just ridiculous," Dallas said.

Evelyn thinks it's ridiculous too.

"Because he's always been there for me, ever since the beginning he's treated me so wonderfully," said Evelyn. "And through everything, through the shooting, the police accusing him, he's stuck with me right by my side."

Evelyn and Dallas have their own suspect, a man we will only identify as "Jesse."

"I think that he had something to do with it," said Evelyn.

Evelyn says she never liked Jesse.

"I always thought like it was kind of off about him," said Jesse.

Evelyn and Dallas say Jesse had come to their house to smoke pot and eat pizza earlier on the evening she was attacked.

"We hung out for a little while and then he left," said Evelyn.

Evelyn and Dallas theorize that Jesse later returned with a friend named Julio, who owns a white van like one that was seen parked near their house the night she was attacked.

"I left for work and they must have been sitting around the corner waiting for me to leave," said Dallas.

"At some point, Jesse came back over, knocked on the door, and that's when he shot me and stabbed me," said Evelyn.

Dallas says the motive may have been $700 Jesse owed him. Two guns Dallas owned were also missing from the home, one of which may be the weapon used to shoot Evelyn.

But how does trying to kill Evelyn get them out of paying back the debt to Dallas?

"It seems very likely that they're trying to frame me, and sadly it seems like they're doing a half-good job of it," said Dallas.

Police wanted to question Jesse and Julio, but they both lawyered up, and investigators are reportedly skeptical about Dallas's conspiracy theory anyway.

"It seems like a really small amount of money to shoot a woman three times in the head and stab her in the neck. It's just doesn't make any sense," said Crime Watch Daily's Billy Jensen.

"I find it strange and hard to believe that somebody owed Dallas money, and that they came and then perpetrated an act of violence against him -- it's usually the other way around," said Victor Raga.

It doesn't even make much sense to Evelyn.

Why would someone try to kill Evelyn to get to Dallas?

"I don't know. That's what I'm trying to rack my brain. I think whoever they were, were just some sick deranged people that have no concern for human life at all," said Evelyn.

But Evelyn could solve this mystery once and for all -- if she could just remember who it was.

"I really hope I remember eventually," said Evelyn.

And Evelyn is well aware that whoever attacked her could try to silence her before she does remember.

"I'm scared every day because they aren't caught yet," said Evelyn.

Evelyn was so afraid after being released from the hospital that she went into hiding with her father back in Chicago.

"For a total of three weeks," said Victor.

Her dumbfounded father says Evelyn was pining for her boyfriend so badly that she actually risked her life to return to Fort Worth to be with him.

"My dad wishes I never left," said Evelyn. "My dad blames himself for letting me go to Texas in the first place."

And to her father's further dismay, Evelyn and Dallas actually got engaged.

"I'm devastated. One-hundred-percent against it, but she's making the choices that she wants to make, and if I told her 'No, you're not marrying Dallas,' she would do it more anyway," said Victor.

He's apparently right.

"He's a very nice, wonderful person, I think," said Evelyn. "He's very wholesome, and he works hard for me and supports me, and I really love him, I think."

Dallas swears he loves Evelyn too.

"After everything happened, I kind of realized that you don't know how long you're going to -- sorry -- you don't know when your last moment is going to be," said Dallas.

But dad Victor suspects Dallas has another motive for wanting to marry his daughter.

"The closer she is to him the more likely it is that she won't be able to testify against him," said Victor.

"For any of you sleuths out there that know anything about the law, if you're married to somebody, they don't have to testify against you," said Billy Jensen.

Even if she did testify, Evelyn says it would be for the defense, not the prosecution.

"I know that Dallas didn't do it. I believe 100 percent in my heart," said Evelyn. "Maybe no one will believe me and maybe I'll be wrong or something, or somebody will say 'I told you so.' I don't care. I'll take it to the grave because I love Dallas."

And her father fears Evelyn may indeed take it to her grave.

"I live in fear and horror that that's going to happen again," said Victor. "She could be sleeping with the enemy."