NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- Channel 4 broke the news just before Christmas, that DNA from Jerome Barrett matched evidence in the 1970s unsolved death of 9-year-old Marcia Trimble.

Video: Childhood Friend Recalls Marcia Trimble's Disappearance

Monday is the 33rd anniversary of the night the young girl disappeared, and some said the city changed forever.

For the first time, Marcia's best neighborhood friend talked about that night and the many sleepless nights that followed.

What's haunted her most for years, she said, is that she was supposed to be with Trimble the day she was killed.

Meredith Harris was a 6-year-old Brownie and her best friend in the neighborhood was Trimble, a Girl Scout who lived across the street.

“She was nine. She was the big girl. She knew how things worked, and she’d explain these things. You know, gravity was, we would spin around, you’d get dizzy and you’d lie down. She told us that it was God holding you in his hand, holding you to the planet,” Harris said.

Harris said her world the Trimbles’ world and the neighborhood changed forever on Feb. 25, 1975.

"I had gone around with her helping sell Girl Scout cookies and learning to do it. We had taken the orders, and it was time to deliver the cookies, but I had been sick that day. I had been sick, home from school,” said Harris.

She said when she saw Marcia's dog, Princess, on the Trimble’s front porch, she ran over to the house.

"Popcorn and Princess were both on the stairs. So, we thought she was home, and we ran up and Mrs. Trimble said, 'Oh girls, have you seen Marcia? Is she with you?’ Isn't she home? ‘No, she should have been home by now,’” said Harris.

After the investigation and discovery of Marcia's body, all of a sudden Harris said she couldn’t walk to school anymore. Children were pulled out of class to talk to police or look at mug shots without parents’ knowledge. Children were asked to think carefully and told they may be the one who saw something important that could solve the mystery of the disappearance.

"They had these dogs that were straining at the leashes. I remember the cold air and the smell of coffee and cigarettes. ... and there were police cordons and big heavy 70s cars parked on the sides. The media, searchers and volunteers parked all over. We weren't allowed outside to play,” Harris said.

“The questions kept coming, and it kept not being answered, and the questions got more strident. ‘Somebody must have seen something. The neighborhood is too small. In this neighborhood, everybody knows each other. So, if somebody saw something, no one was talking then somebody was hiding something,’" said Harris.

In fact, the little girls in that neighborhood already had a secret of sorts. Almost two months before Trimble disappeared they were trying out the roller skates they had all gotten for Christmas.

"We were coming down the hill, and there was a car parked, and there was a man in it, a pervert," said Harris. “I didn't see what he was doing, but the other girls saw what he was doing and, Marcia in this big voice, take charge voice, said, 'Mom's got cookies, let’s all go inside.' And she grabbed my hand, and the girls are all going like, ‘What?’ So, we clatter up the stairs of this house on the corner, and the car peels out, drives away. So, because that had happened so soon before she disappeared, the police asked me a lot of questions.”

Harris has four children now, and her youngest recently turned nine.

“Having been a little girl, having been supposed to be with her that day, would it have been different if I had been there? I mean, would something awful had happened to me, too?” Harris said.

Harris has more unique insight into the case that the public has never heard about. On Tuesday at 6 p.m., Channel 4 will have more about the investigation, what people did and didn't tell the children back then.