Andrea Canning
Appearances
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: Deadly Obsession
Yeah, I mean, if you're looking for fingerprints or a witness or DNA or that she sort of even vaguely confessed or something... It just didn't have any of those things. You know, no one saw her in Topeka. There was one gas station clerk who thinks they said 70 percent sure it was her halfway between Denver and Topeka.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: Deadly Obsession
Thank you, Lucy. And Keith, can we just say quickly, congratulations to UConn Ladies Basketball for winning the national championship. Congrats to them. Yes.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: Deadly Obsession
I saw just highlights, but I don't blame Lucy for going back and forth.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: Deadly Obsession
It's a big deal. And yeah, it's like what you talked about, Keith.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: Deadly Obsession
Yeah. I agree with that. I think they like to have fun. They met at a bar. From what I was told, you know, they like to go out. They like to go to the casino. They like to camp and fish. And I think that this was a new beginning for them. You know, they'd been together for a little while, and I think they were excited, really excited about the future.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: Deadly Obsession
Can I just, it's so funny that he just asked that because I was on a different story and I asked that question just three days ago.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: Deadly Obsession
And I said, are they talking into that? And that's what it is. They're just repeating everything. It's over their mouth, repeating every word. And I was like, oh, I don't think I would want that job. That sounds very difficult.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: Deadly Obsession
And even at the very least, just to calm your nerves and have someone there just for you, you know, even if you're innocent, like just have that peace of mind.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: Deadly Obsession
Oh, that's so nice. Well, we had a great team on this one.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: Deadly Obsession
Completely agree with that. And, you know, her dad's gone. Her mom's in prison. But Haley has an amazing family. And that's what she needs to focus on is the wonderful family that she does have that loves her.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: Deadly Obsession
I mean, I think that was the crux of this, right? For the defense was reasonable doubt.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: Deadly Obsession
Yeah, it was quick. Her alibi was that she was in Rocky Mountain National Park. So it was eight hours. They think that she drove the straight shot from Denver to Topeka. And then I don't think we got into this— In very much detail, but they think afterwards she went into Nebraska, I believe it was, and then like came around in a weird way to go home.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: Deadly Obsession
No, there was nothing in her car. And also, I mean, there's other things, too, that's 2002. You know, they made a lot out of that. Her phone was turned off for 27 hours. But then if you think about 2002, we didn't have Internet on our phones. We weren't looking for the latest headlines every five minutes. We weren't texting people all day long.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: Deadly Obsession
Yeah. I mean, back then, you know, that especially if she's saying she was hiking in the mountains and maybe you're not getting service in the mountains. Maybe, you know, there's any number of reasons you wouldn't be on your phone if that was true. If they don't actually believe she was in the mountains.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: Deadly Obsession
They don't know, but the interesting thing was, though, that she's saying she was camping and there were big forest fires going on.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: Deadly Obsession
I think the thought was that she was close enough that that smoke would be, you know, in her vicinity. And let's not forget, she gave two different accounts of where she was that night. Initially, she said she slept in her apartment. Right. And she was alone. Then she told her friend Jeff, this man that she tried to get to help her with her legal – her defense. She told him that she had slept –
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: Deadly Obsession
in her car while she was camping. So we have two different stories about where she was.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: Deadly Obsession
And you know, and that's like the beginning of the end a lot of times for people, right, is these, the conflicting stories.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: Deadly Obsession
We don't know that, obviously, but some people criticized the crime scene texts and how that was done. But her friend had just been with her before the July 4th holiday. They spent that day in the mountains, and she said she was doing great. Dana was happy. They had fun. She didn't even talk about her ex. And then that's what was so weird.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: Deadly Obsession
And then, what, she's just going to suddenly snap like that? But the detective did say... That there was a phone call that Friday between Dana and Mike. And there's speculation that he might have told her, you know what, I'm marrying Karen.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: Deadly Obsession
I think the way that they would see it, the prosecutor, the detective, they would see it of this obsession of hers and this jealousy and rage, and that pushed her over. And it's not about anything logical. They would say it's the obsession.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: Deadly Obsession
Yeah, I don't think Dana... I don't think Dana liked that. Well, she was already, even before the murder, she was driving them crazy.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: Deadly Obsession
With the phone call, the hundreds of phone calls and the emails and the showing up, like she's on the trampoline.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: Deadly Obsession
I mean, for me, the trampoline was the moment of the story. That was the Glenn Close, if you will, fatal attraction moment of everything, right? It could be the bunny moment almost, except for not as violent. There was a custody hearing and Mike's sister, Sure. And in the middle of the night, they hear this bounce, bounce, boing, boing, the springs, right?
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: Deadly Obsession
Boing, boing. And they're like, what is that? And they look out the blinds and there's Dana jumping on the trampoline in the backyard laughing hysterically. I mean, that's a Bonnie Boiler type moment. I mean, it's the problem for Dana is Is that it's so hard to get around all that erratic behavior. Yeah. I'm not saying she's crazy, but, you know, that's the terminology that you heard.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: Deadly Obsession
She hated Karen and she was jealous and obsessed and full of rage. And that was driving the train.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: Deadly Obsession
I mean, it's hard to say because she would have had that really good defense team again. Yeah. And, you know, I think what you said at the very beginning of this talking dateline, reasonable doubt, and they were very effective, obviously, in that second trial. And so who's to say that they wouldn't have been effective again?
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: Deadly Obsession
You decided to use playing cards as a way to vote guilty or not guilty? Yes.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: Deadly Obsession
Not guilty. Where do you go from there when it's split, 6-6?
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: Deadly Obsession
Nothing put, in your eyes, Dana Chandler in Topeka, Kansas?
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: Deadly Obsession
The people who felt she was guilty, what was convincing them?
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: Deadly Obsession
When you realize that you're split, is that kind of like, guys, I think we're done?
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: Deadly Obsession
Did that help at all, hearing everyone finally, you know, openly give their decision?
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: Deadly Obsession
Yeah, it did. I mean, you know, we don't get that very often, three trials.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: Deadly Obsession
And he talked about everything you and I talked about. Yes, sure. The motive versus the circumstantial evidence, the motive versus the lack of evidence.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: Deadly Obsession
Juries, we know this, juries like motives, but you don't need a motive.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: Deadly Obsession
I think in this case, it was motive plus circumstantial evidence. You know, motive driving the whole thing. And then she really, gosh, she hit that home run for them in that third trial, you know, with going to motive because she showed how kind of out there they were. she can be. Yeah, she did not do herself any favors by representing herself. And, you know, it's a cautionary tale.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: Deadly Obsession
Yeah, that's really when the DA is bold and they're like, we're not giving up.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: Deadly Obsession
I think most defendants should absolutely not be playing the role of lawyer.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: Deadly Obsession
Because she was, it's like for Haley, she didn't have that resolution. Hmm. It was like she was always hanging in the balance. Like, what is going on? Did my mom do this? Didn't my mom do this? I need to know. Because you can just imagine that living like that every day, like that groundhog day of uncertainty and, you know, lack of resolution.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: Deadly Obsession
And at one point, so Haley moves to Colorado just for a fresh start, you know, with her boyfriend. And Dana shows up and has somehow found her address. Yeah. And she was kind of freaked out by that. Why is she here? And, you know, I think that was part of what propelled her to say, like, I need to do something here. You know, my mom's reaching out to me.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: Deadly Obsession
So she starts recording their phone calls just on her own.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: Deadly Obsession
I think she's, I miss you, you know, wanted to see her.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: Deadly Obsession
The mom would say, I want a relationship. I love you. I care about you. What was her true motive? You know, I don't know, but that's what she would say to Haley.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: Deadly Obsession
We touched upon some of the things she'd show up at soccer games. Yelling and screaming at Mike. You know, she was unhinged at times. And how embarrassing for a child. I mean, they did have some good times. They went on camping trips. They went fishing.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: Deadly Obsession
Yeah, that's what it sounds like. Poor Haley. It just sounds like she just didn't get a fair shake. The one thing I will say about Haley is... She actually just had a baby not too long ago. She has other children as well, but she's such a great mom, like just from the little interaction I had with her. But we did the interview in her aunt and uncle's house, the brother-in-law and the sister.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: Deadly Obsession
And so it was a more intimate setting. You know, we weren't, we did part of the interview there. So we weren't just off in some, you know, warehouse doing an interview. And you got to see the family in their natural environment. And I just, it made me so happy to see what a great mom.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: The Devil Wore White
That was a great question. No, I can absolutely tell you that they are friends and they love rubbing each other and they love getting into these conversations with each other. And I've been around them so many times and I have never seen anything but love between those two.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: Poison Twist
Yeah. I mean, they certainly make for good alternate suspects, you know, for for defense attorneys. But again, the police and the prosecution felt that everything pointed in one direction, and that was at Katie based on the evidence.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: Poison Twist
Which would be really hard in this case. Since it came off of Katie's phone.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: Poison Twist
So if Katie texted the poison information to someone else. They could potentially then look at that other person's phone and say this came from Katie's phone.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: Poison Twist
Danny, would it be too late then if they, let's say she searched the poison on a website, can they go to that website and say, can you see who was searching, what IP addresses or what phones? I mean, would it be far too late for that since this was so long ago?
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: Poison Twist
Yes, yes. I mean, the one thing that's a little tricky is the poison being in his Jeep. And then he goes to the police department. I mean, I've wrestled with why would he keep that in his Jeep? You know, if you killed your mom.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: Poison Twist
Absolutely. Remember, there are people who think Katie Conley is innocent. So a lot of them. There's different perspectives on this one. And, you know, yes, Melissa was happy she got Katie out. I mean, why wouldn't she be? That's that's her job. But it doesn't mean that Melissa is celebrating death. It means Melissa is celebrating the release of a client.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: Poison Twist
Right, right. Juries want motives. They want to understand why they're putting someone away potentially for the rest of their life.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: Poison Twist
Thank you. Yeah, it's been a long time, this one, you know, 10 years. And Kim Krawitz was the producer on this one. She did an amazing job.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: Poison Twist
It seems to me that you would want to get rid of that as soon as possible.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: Poison Twist
And there you have it, folks. Full circle. Back to Josh Mankiewicz.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: Poison Twist
There you go, folks. You know, most people use colchicine for gout. It's synthetic or it can come from the plant autumn crocus. So this was one of my favorite moments in all of my datelines was that this poison control woman, Gina Maroffa, they had one sample left of blood. They were only able to do one more test. And this poison control expert-
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: Poison Twist
made this call, you know, kind of let's try for colchicine. And lo and behold, it's positive for colchicine. And now, Josh, because colchicine has now been used in other murders, it is now in a lot of places on the standard tox screen, which it was not before. If they had not tested that blood, that one last sample for colchicine. Sounds like no one would ever have been tried for this.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: Poison Twist
None of this would have, none of it. We can say none of this would have happened. It was pretty remarkable.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: Poison Twist
Yes. Katie's DNA is on the bottle. The explanation for that is that she handles everything in the office. So her DNA is on a lot of deliveries to the office.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: Poison Twist
I didn't hear anything. I mean, by all accounts, everyone says that Katie liked Mary. Yeah. I mean, that's the weird thing. You know, was it... Could it be revenge on Adam because he broke up with her? I'm going to take your mom from you? Like... They're outlandish motives. I mean, maybe not to the prosecution. They're not.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: Poison Twist
But when you say them out loud, they seem, as we discussed, a little hard to believe.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: Poison Twist
I don't know. I mean, that's another question. Did Mary know and she was upset with Katie? But Katie's still working there. So how bad could it be if she's still employed? I mean, wouldn't you fire her?
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: Poison Twist
Right. She could just let her go if she was upset with her.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: Poison Twist
Oh my gosh, I don't know. I mean, some might speculate that she was going to talk about her husband and her sister, her other sister.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: Poison Twist
Yeah, I know. The office manager is trying to kill me doesn't seem like the conversation she would have had. But again, we don't know.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: Poison Twist
I mean, if you're on the road, Josh, there's not going to be some fancy steakhouse to stop at. On the road, there are no rules, as you know. But she had a long drive from Bedford Hills back to Utica. So, yeah, I would probably go to McDonald's if I'm in the car and I've got a long drive home. And then I would love to have a home-cooked meal or somewhere really nice.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: Poison Twist
Oh, yeah, definitely. I love a medium diet Coke and a hamburger and sometimes an ice cream cone.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: Poison Twist
I was just there on assignment in Kansas eating McDonald's at night, you know, the glamorous life of a Dateline correspondent.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: Poison Twist
What's really interesting is that Melissa Swartz, the attorney that you mentioned, this is the second Dateline case. that I've done updates with her. She handles appeals, and some of our listeners may remember Remy Ramsaran in upstate New York. I do. He was accused of killing his wife, and he also was eligible for a new trial, didn't end up taking it. He took a plea, but...
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: Poison Twist
That was also ineffective assistance of counsel. And I rarely give shout outs to attorneys, but I have to say Melissa Swartz is, she is a really good attorney and she's a fellow Canadian. And I picked up on her accent immediately during our interview. She was saying a boat and she's from Niagara Falls. I just having worked with her now on these couple of cases, it just,
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: Poison Twist
It's so nice to see that in the justice system that, you know, people have such good representation. And, you know, she's one of those attorneys who's fighting for her clients, as so many do.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: Poison Twist
I feel like I have that radar. I mean, I can pick out anybody pretty much instantaneously. As soon as like, you know, I just need a few words, choice words, and then we're good.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: Poison Twist
What's that like when you're attacking or questioning their strategy and who they are as attorneys? I mean, that they didn't do a good job. What is that like when you bring them up?
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: Poison Twist
Yeah. And I thought Melissa. That was nice of her, you know, to not throw these attorneys under the bus. And remember, she that's her job. She picks apart cases. She's looking for any little thing to get someone off. So it's a different role that you're playing and it's a different perspective.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: Poison Twist
There will be those people. Her family has stuck by her. They strongly believe she's innocent. And also family members of Mary, sisters who believe that Katie's innocent.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: Poison Twist
Yeah. I was literally just thinking about that seconds before you said it, Josh, about will they go after Katie Conley again?
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: Poison Twist
Yeah, they don't believe Katie did this. You know, they're still pointing the finger, some people, at Mary's husband. People think he was having an affair with her sister, even though he says they didn't get together until after she died. But I don't think it's been totally put to bed for some people, you know, but he completely denies having anything to do with his wife's death.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: Poison Twist
Unless he slipped in and no one saw him. But I don't think the office was that big.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: Poison Twist
No, no. Bill, nor has the sister that he was with. I don't know if he's still with her. They declined to speak with us.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: Poison Twist
Yeah, I mean, when it has your defendant searching for poison, I mean, that doesn't look good. Why are you searching for poison? Although they say that Adam had access to all of her electronics. But still, it's not something that you want a jury hearing if you're the defense.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: Poison Twist
Yeah, it was new to me. I always say, Josh, we learn something new every day on Dateline.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: Poison Twist
Yeah, no, you're right. I think the state was so confident that Katie is the killer that that probably doesn't bother them because they don't think that Adam or Bill are the killers or one of them is the killer. So, you know, it's easy to give, I guess, immunity when you strongly believe what you believe, because there are no plans to go after, as far as I know, to go after Adam or Bill.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: A Walk Through the Woods
Think about, right, that that could happen. It's just so hard to imagine that someone could do that to two teenage girls, but he did. Like the worst thing is when, and Blaine, your kids aren't old enough yet, but like when you try to reach your child and they're not answering their phone or their phone goes straight to voicemail.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: A Walk Through the Woods
And you try them more times and then you're like, what, you know, what's going on? Why is it going straight to voicemail? Is it, did the battery die? Yeah. Like, are they okay? Like, you know, and in this case, this was the nightmare, you know, where they're calling and nobody's answering.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: A Walk Through the Woods
And then the hours start to tick by and then it gets dark and then there's still no, they don't know where they are. And like, you just would do anything to know where that child is.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: A Walk Through the Woods
Thank you. And I don't want to scare my daughters, but I want to say to them, be so grateful for what you have. I believe it was Mike Patti. He said, hug your children and don't take them for granted. And just appreciate every moment. Because... even though, you know, bad things aren't going to happen to everyone's children, they will grow up too.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: A Walk Through the Woods
Yeah. goes back to the conservation officer that unfortunately just didn't have that spidey sense that maybe a detective might have. You know, like, I don't know. I haven't talked to this man. I know that law enforcement was, every time I would bring him up, they were careful to sort of protect him a little bit too.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: A Walk Through the Woods
No, but there was no, you know, saying he did the wrong thing or anything like that.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: A Walk Through the Woods
When you're standing up there, it feels even higher.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: A Walk Through the Woods
Nothing. That was what was so strange about the whole thing is like suddenly he snaps, you know, it just didn't make any sense.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: A Walk Through the Woods
That's the million dollar question, which we, you know, we did raise that in the show. You know, you don't need a motive in court. You don't need a motive as a prosecutor to try a case. But juries like them because they want to know why. You know, well, why'd this guy do it? And that was the one thing that nobody seemed to have an answer for.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: A Walk Through the Woods
Yeah, that was what surprised me. Now it's been turned into kind of like a recreation place. But before the bridge, there's railings. You know, you can go out there and look out at the wilderness and the creek and everything. But the bridge is still there. You know, the dangerous ties, people, if you wanted to go out on it, you could find a way.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: A Walk Through the Woods
It was hard. I was on the verge of tears a few times. Mike and Becky were so nice. And I commended them because there's a lot of grandparents who end up taking in their grandchildren as their own because of issues going on in the family. And I always think how incredible family grandparents can be when they are so selfless. And they said they wouldn't have it any other way.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: A Walk Through the Woods
And I think they truly enjoyed having the girls there. And something that was not in the show was something that Becky said to me. She said they had a Disney World vacation planned. Of course, the girls died. And she said the hardest thing, because it was months later, and they decided to go on the trip. And she said she had to call And take Libby off of the reservation.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: A Walk Through the Woods
You know, just broke her when she had to do that because it just felt, you know, so real and they were so excited about the trip.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: A Walk Through the Woods
So Marianne O'Donnell, who's the producer on this story, the lead producer, she was in court every single day, including Saturdays. The court was on Saturdays, too. So she got to know everyone. And Abby's family, they did not do a whole lot there with the media. They were not particularly outspoken about everything, which is understandable. Completely. Given what they...
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: A Walk Through the Woods
Yeah, I mean, I said that to the prosecutor. I said it was like Libby helped solve her own crime and the crime of her best friend. I don't think I've ever covered a story where someone has the wherewithal to pull out their phone feeling something's not right here and just hitting record. So- You know, hats off to Libby, who, by the way, was a big fan of crime dramas.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: A Walk Through the Woods
You know, she loves like CSI and she loved the show Body of Proof. And also, you know, I'll say to Mike Patty, her grandfather, he also really instilled, you know, safety in her and everything. And we know how tweens and teens are with their phones. I guess all those factors came together and she just had that instinct to pull out her phone.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: A Walk Through the Woods
Yeah. 43 seconds of audio and video. And, you know, I knew viewers would wonder why didn't they release the whole video. We never got a straight answer really of why they didn't. I think they also felt like Seeing the images, seeing the snippet of him walking was enough.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: A Walk Through the Woods
I mean, I think they had to. You know, that happened. Sure, people were pointing fingers at each other and, you know, everyone was a suspect. But, you know, they had to release that video, right? I mean, how could you not? Sure. Because someone might have recognized something and, you know, the killer...
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: A Walk Through the Woods
His wife had seen the story on the news and said, hey, you were out there that day around that time. You know, the police are saying, come talk to us, you know, if you were out there on the trails. And so he did. You know, Richard Allen went to the police. Unfortunately, he didn't get with a detective. He got with a conservation officer.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: A Walk Through the Woods
Like, I know the now sheriff who was a detective said he didn't even know about Richard Allen. Like, it never even got to him.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: A Walk Through the Woods
That was like a really big time red herring.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: A Walk Through the Woods
I know. I don't think I've ever done it. I don't know what was going on there, but I don't think I've interviewed any people like that on a like who are working out.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: A Walk Through the Woods
That was so funny. Yeah. I know. So funny. And it was so funny to think that he was a model and now he's like a police officer in Alaska. He's like, wait a second. Why am I getting dragged into this murder investigation?
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: A Walk Through the Woods
Yeah. I think they kept thinking that. I mean, they thought it was going to be solved within a week.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: A Walk Through the Woods
Everybody was just fearful. Delphi is just a tiny... you know, little community. And you can only imagine like you're there to raise your family and, you know, have kids and like where they feel safe and where you can drop them off at the trails for the afternoon and not think twice.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: A Walk Through the Woods
Are you next to me at the stoplight? Yeah, exactly. And you know, I was, um, everyone is so nice there. Hmm. I was actually rear-ended. I was in a rental, yeah. And like a service type van, like just crashes right into the back of me. And he's like, meet me over at the fire. There was a fire station like right there. And so I went and he was so nice. He's like, I'm so sorry. That was my fault.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: A Walk Through the Woods
I feel like if I was in New York, they'd be like, you know, why did you stop at a stop sign? Exactly. First, they wouldn't have told you to meet anyone over anywhere.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: A Walk Through the Woods
But it was funny, though, because it was like it just showed you just how nice. Yeah. Like, you know, like there was no animosity, no fighting, no like denying, no just. I'm so sorry. I'm sure you were on your way to an interview or something. Oh, I was. We had to start late. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: A Walk Through the Woods
It was like the fireworks really happened pre-trial more than in trial. So if you watch the episode, you know, to our listeners, the defense team took me out to the woods and, you know, demonstrated how the sticks were placed on the bodies and the blood spatter on the tree.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: A Walk Through the Woods
Yeah, I mean, they were convinced that it was, you know, a ritualistic killing, whereas the sheriff, who was the former detective, said that he just felt like the sticks were kind of just, like, haphazardly thrown on the girls to try to cover them. But, I mean... One thing is that there were not, it was a very bad attempt.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: A Walk Through the Woods
I mean, if he wanted to cover them up, it certainly didn't accomplish that.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: A Walk Through the Woods
Yeah. Well, and they weren't allowed any, like, other suspects. So it was just, they just had to find what they could, like, to defend Richard Allen. I mean, the defense went hard on the, his, you know, confessions, which they said were under extreme duress. That that's what happens when, you know, someone is, you know, placed in solitary like that for months.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: A Walk Through the Woods
So Richard Allen was actually, you know, most of our viewers at this point, I feel like, and listeners know the difference between jail and prison, right? Jail is if you've been charged with murder, you will go to a jail until your trial and throughout your trial. And then if you're convicted, then you'll be, you know, carted off to a state prison somewhere or a federal prison.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: A Walk Through the Woods
In this case, they actually sent Richard Allen to prison.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: A Walk Through the Woods
They said it was for his own safety. I was in the jail in Delphi, and I did talk to the sheriff about the jail. And he said that they were understaffed. Richard Allen would have ended up with other people. It's just too small. So they said that's why they just made this decision to send him to the prison. And then why he goes into solitary, they say is for his own safety.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: A Walk Through the Woods
But there were stories of him like doing things with his feces and that he's in his underwear and he's like, you know, the defense made it sound like he basically was like losing his mind in there. So they kind of call them like almost like false confessions.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: A Walk Through the Woods
Well, the defense would say that he doesn't match, that, you know, there were differences in height and, you know, that the prosecutor we pointed out never actually had that moment, that Perry Mason moment in court, you know, point the killer out. The man you saw, like, they didn't even do that. Also, we should mention, too, that we have an extra clip that you did not see in the show.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: A Walk Through the Woods
Come back in Monday morning, the verdict is read and it is guilty. What is that moment like for your team, you thinking about the family, all the hard work that you've put into this?
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: A Walk Through the Woods
There were people who were very concerned about a hung jury because even though it didn't look good for Richard Allen, there was still a lot of circumstantial evidence.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: A Walk Through the Woods
It really was. It was, having been out there, it's very high up. It's old. It's dilapidated. It's, you know, the ties are kind of far apart. A lot of people would go out on it. But, I mean, you're really playing with fire out on this bridge. Like, if you fall, you're dead. I mean, I said to the sheriff, I was like, you would not catch me ever on that bridge. It was just so scary.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: A Walk Through the Woods
I mean, yeah. Well, it's like, you know, I... Of course, didn't talk to like tons of people in town. I know law enforcement, of course, believes they have the right man. The families 100% believe they have the right man. But there's some people that just, you know, that there's still lingering questions or, you know, the defense truly believes Richard Allen is innocent.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: A Walk Through the Woods
I mean, they have a job to do, but they also believe he's innocent.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: A Walk Through the Woods
Yeah, I mean, it just really, like I was just fighting back tears. It was really sad for me because I always say like, you know, the closest you can get to these people and their feelings, and it's not very close, but is to imagine that these are your kids. These are your daughters. You know, how would you feel? And as soon as you do that, you just kind of like, oh, like it's hard to,
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: A Little Patch of Perfect
Yeah. I hate to break it to her, though, but I'm guessing Melody probably is angry with her.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: A Little Patch of Perfect
Yeah. It's funny, though. Martha says, well, she's not 100% bad, but, you know, she murdered her husband.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: A Little Patch of Perfect
I mean, one of them said, I was afraid of my mom growing up.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: A Little Patch of Perfect
Oh my gosh, I was dying when she said that.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: A Little Patch of Perfect
Thanks so much, Keith. Okay, after the break, I'll be joined by one of the producers of this episode, Keith Greenberg, to answer some of your questions from social media. All right. We're going to go from one Keith to another with Keith Greenberg, producer of this episode. Hey, Keith.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: A Little Patch of Perfect
All right. So this is one of my favorite parts of Talking Dateline is hearing what the viewers think after the show's air. Lawana Gilbert at KGirl8, Lawana. She had a question that I actually had when I was watching the show that I never got the chance to ask Keith Morrison. So I'm going to ask you, Keith. Okay.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: A Little Patch of Perfect
It was so unusual that after a murder, the brothers would be talking to law enforcement together. I would think it's like Detective 101. You separate anyone who, you know, might have had a reason to do this or whatever. So you they don't influence each other.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: A Little Patch of Perfect
I was wondering though, when did that interview happen? Was that the first interview? Was that later?
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: A Little Patch of Perfect
Makes sense. Our next comment is from Sable Genius at WorkRightCom. So we know Gary did not have a will despite being a lawyer, which is interesting, despite having children and a wife. Sable wants to know if there were any secrets or otherwise life insurance policies, despite Melody's claim that Gary didn't have any? Because we know that life insurance is always such a big motive in these cases.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: A Little Patch of Perfect
This question from Jamal at jzel216. This is another question that I have. See, we're just on the same wavelength as our viewers. The murder could have been planned, Jamal feels, that around the time of the fireworks, right? You know, because it certainly gave Melody something to say. I, you know, there were fireworks going off.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: A Little Patch of Perfect
I don't know if it was, you know, I was hearing gunshots or fireworks. You know, so that's one part of Jamal's comments. And then also it would take a lot to get a dead body of a man that size all the way out to the burn pit, which was really a big part of the episode.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: A Little Patch of Perfect
All right. Linda Mitchell on Facebook says, If Gary thought he was being poisoned, why didn't he tell his doctors at the hospital when he first took ill? I wonder if anything showed up in his lab work.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: A Little Patch of Perfect
You, at one point, Keith, compared it to, was it Agatha Christie?
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: A Little Patch of Perfect
Okay. Nikki Rogers on Facebook. Will there be an appeal?
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: A Little Patch of Perfect
Okay, Keith, thank you for diving into this with us and answering our viewers. Very, very good questions. I'll say it again. Very good questions. Thank you, Keith.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: A Little Patch of Perfect
Absolutely. Well, that is this edition of Talking Dateline. Remember, if you have any questions for us about stories or about Dateline, you can reach us 24-7 on social media at Dateline NBC. You can also record your questions as an audio message and send it to us over social media. And of course, we will see you Fridays on Dateline on NBC. Thank you for listening.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: A Little Patch of Perfect
Good. So if you haven't seen A Little Patch of Perfect, it's the episode right below this one on your Dateline podcast feed. So go there and listen to it or stream it on Peacock and then come back here. But first, a quick recap.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: A Little Patch of Perfect
Yes. And one thing that seemed very clear about this family was money was at the center for some of the family members. And Big Daddy, or Gary, he certainly seemed to use money as, you know— maybe a controlling thing with some of the family members, but he was also generous at the same time.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: A Little Patch of Perfect
You know, it's funny. I also thought of like how he gives money to the kids. And I was thinking how that starts at such a young age, right? That dance with your children about what do you give them? And they're always asking you for something. And like, when do you say yes? And when do you say no? And when are you generous? And when are you not?
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: A Little Patch of Perfect
And like, yeah, so it's and I'm sure, you know, you having adult children, then it changes when they become adults. Well.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: A Little Patch of Perfect
No. How do you handle that with your kids, Keith? I know they're, you know, they're getting on their own now and stuff, but like, you know, it's that delicate, the delicate balance though. Yeah, that's good. Well, because you raised them well, right? Yeah.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: A Little Patch of Perfect
When wealthy Atlanta lawyer Gary Ferris was found dead in a burn pile on his estate in 2018, police wondered if he had fainted from the heat and fallen into the fire while tending to it. But a further investigation revealed a family full of secrets and grudges and that Gary had been killed by one of his own.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: A Little Patch of Perfect
No. And Melody was spending like crazy. So-
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: A Little Patch of Perfect
One thing about Gary was I couldn't believe his health. Like, I mean, this guy is taking blood pressure medicine. He's drinking a 12-pack of Mountain Dew a day and two packs of cigarettes?
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: A Little Patch of Perfect
Yeah, he definitely had some health issues there. And the CPAP being used as a clue. So we've heard about Fitbits and, you know, different Apple Watches and stuff. That's a new one for me, hearing that the CPAP came into the investigation.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: A Little Patch of Perfect
Hi, everyone. I'm Andrea Canning, and we are Talking Dateline. Today, I'm joined by Keith Morrison to discuss his latest episode, A Little Patch of Perfect. Hey, Keith.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: A Little Patch of Perfect
Yeah, the CPAP timeline. And are you interested in what CPAP stands for?
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: A Little Patch of Perfect
You learn something new every day on Talking Dateline.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: A Little Patch of Perfect
Right. So I want to talk about the timing of this because Melody, when they were asking her, you know, did you hear any gunshots? And she's saying, well, it was so hard to tell because, you know, there were fireworks.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: A Little Patch of Perfect
For this episode, Keith is going to share an extra clip from an interview with Martha Jane Barton, the woman whose last-minute testimony surprised the courtroom. And later, one of the producers of this episode, Keith Greenberg, will be on to answer your questions about the show from social media. Okay, Keith, let's talk Dateline.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: A Little Patch of Perfect
And I was wondering if that was just very convenient for her to be able to say that, you know, fireworks were going off.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: A Little Patch of Perfect
There had been... things going on between Melody and Gary for a while. And one of the things that jumped out at me was when Gary said, you'll know what to tell Dateline if I die mysteriously.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: A Little Patch of Perfect
Yeah, and one of the ways that he thought she might be trying to poison him was through the cast iron skillet with the chocolate chip cookies, which is like, oh my gosh, really? You're going to do it like through a cookie like that?
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: A Little Patch of Perfect
I feel like there have just been so many poisonings lately. Like, does it feel like more to you than in the past? Yeah.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: A Little Patch of Perfect
Oh, my gosh. OK, we're going to take a quick break. When we come back, Keith has a podcast exclusive clip from an interview with a surprise witness that shook up Melody's trial. One thing that really surprises me sometimes is these are these prosecutors who who are willing to take cases that are not easy and go to trial.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: A Little Patch of Perfect
And I feel like this is one of those ones where you're really rolling the dice with how much evidence you have. I mean, it looks bad for Melody, but there's possible alternate suspects. There's not a lot of physical evidence tying her to the crime.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: A Little Patch of Perfect
So, okay, a little patch of perfect. You know, those drone shots looking at that beautiful piece of property, beautiful house, beautiful land. It does look like a little patch of perfect, but it wasn't so perfect, was it?
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: A Little Patch of Perfect
That's why that trial was so interesting when the defense attorney hauls out bags of rock salt.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: A Little Patch of Perfect
Wasn't it that they thought she might have put the body on his body on a tractor?
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: A Little Patch of Perfect
You know, the one thing about, what was her lover's name?
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: A Little Patch of Perfect
Rusty. He gave her a second cell phone. Then on his phone, he deleted her contact or changed the name, right, to XO.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: A Little Patch of Perfect
Do people not know that law enforcement can see that you've done something to your phone?
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: A Little Patch of Perfect
So it was interesting, yeah, the, you know, how she tried to spin that tattoo, the XO, you know, we all think hugs and kisses and that this was our fresh start, you know, with the farm and Gary and I love him so much. And well, it turns out XO is also a beverage.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: A Little Patch of Perfect
It's like Melody wanted the best of both worlds. You know, she wanted the farm. She liked the money. She probably felt comfortable, I guess, with Gary. They'd been together for so long. But then she had this lust, this desire to have, you know, romance and stray.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: A Little Patch of Perfect
Let's talk about Martha, maybe my favorite person in the show.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: A Little Patch of Perfect
We had this mid-trial surprise, the Perry Mason moment.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: A Little Patch of Perfect
It was. And I loved how she searched everywhere for that gun in her house because she didn't want to get it wrong. You know, she wasn't looking to get these people in trouble. She wanted to get it right. And they tried to use that argument that...
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: A Little Patch of Perfect
Martha was upset because she didn't want to be embarrassed, you know, that they were having this relationship and she couldn't show her face in town and all that. And I did not get that sense at all. I got the sense from Martha that she just wanted to do the right thing.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: A Little Patch of Perfect
And Keith, we have a clip from Martha that did not air on the show that we'd love to play for our listeners.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: The Man of Many Faces
There were a lot of questions about the photo of Nicholas in the hospital while he's in a coma. Why was he wearing glasses? Yeah. If he was in a coma.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: The Man of Many Faces
Okay, okay. Okay. PsyProfessor23 on Facebook said, wife Miranda obstructing justice and harboring a fugitive to name a few. Those are, okay, that's this user's allegation. She has not been arrested. convicted of a crime or charged with a crime. This user's husband said, she's Scotland's problem now. So the question is, will Miranda face any charges? I don't think so.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: The Man of Many Faces
The U.S. is your problem. You know, there's a good chance she probably did know if he was doing this on purpose to save his life, as he says, that people were after him. He probably would tell his wife, right?
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: The Man of Many Faces
Right. And again, we don't know this. We're speculating. We have absolutely no idea. This is just sort of based on covering the story for a long time together. Right. Cynthia Perna Tulin on Facebook said about Nicholas, should have used his smarts for good and not the evil he unleashed on everyone.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: The Man of Many Faces
He does talk. He talks and talks and talks a lot. Yeah. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but he does talk a lot. This story, the con man stories, you and I really enjoy doing them. Not to say like we feel obviously very bad for the victims of these stories. Yeah. Because it's awful what people are put through by con men. But at the same time, they are fascinating to look into them.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: The Man of Many Faces
So the prosecutor in Utah has offered him a plea deal. He's been given some time to think it over. If he decides to go to trial, there could be two trials. Lynn, do we know the maximum sentence he's facing? It's five to life. That's what it is. Oh, wow. Okay.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: The Man of Many Faces
Okay. Okay. So this plea deal sounds like... a no-brainer unless he wants to roll the dice with a judge or a jury.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: The Man of Many Faces
Lynn, thank you so much for this kind of special edition of Talking Dateline. Thanks for having me. Yeah, it was fun talking with you since we've been on this journey together, this bizarre journey. So look forward to continuing to follow this story in 2025 as we see how it unfolds and, you know, what happens to Nicholas and getting another interview. I was thinking the same thing.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: The Man of Many Faces
Are you listening? Are you listening? Thank you. That's it for Talking Dateline this week. Remember, if you have any questions for us about stories or about Dateline, you can reach us 24-7 on social media at DatelineNBC. And be sure to check out Josh's new original podcast, Deadly Mirage.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: The Man of Many Faces
Episodes 1 to 5 are out now, and the final episode will be released Thursday for those who have been waiting to binge the series. Dateline Premium subscribers can listen to all six episodes now, ad-free. And of course, we'll see you Fridays on Dateline on NBC. Thanks for listening.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: The Man of Many Faces
We don't do them as much on Dateline. We usually stick to traditional murder investigations.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: The Man of Many Faces
I was going to say the same thing. In this case, now Nicholas Rossi is behind bars. He's pleaded not guilty to all of the criminal charges he's facing, but... You know, there was a time where he wasn't behind bars. And these women said, look, we're speaking out because we want to prevent this from happening to anybody else.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: The Man of Many Faces
You know, this interview came about, I mean, I honestly didn't think he wouldn't show up. We disclose in our show that we did that interview remotely. I was in New York and Nicholas Arthur was in Scotland. We did that interview in my basement. And, you know, a lot of people said, like, how did you keep a straight face? And the reality is I didn't.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: The Man of Many Faces
Like when he stands up and, you know, falls over in that kind of, dare I say, iconic moment, that triggered me. you know, to start laughing. It was, it's one of those moments where, you know, when you're in school and you're not like, you're not allowed to laugh. And then you, then you just, you laugh more. It was kind of that.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: The Man of Many Faces
And so I lift up the, my notes and I, and Arthur, are you laughing at me? Are you laughing at me? And I put the notes in front of my face and, Because I felt so bad. I was like, no, and I'm trying to make up excuses, but there's no, there's no excuses. Like, it's just, it's happening.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: The Man of Many Faces
So go there and listen to it or stream it on Peacock and then come back here. For this Talking Dateline, we have an extra clip from an interview with a pub owner in Scotland who came face-to-face with the man of many faces. But to recap, hoping to evade law enforcement and a slew of criminal charges against him, an American man, Nicholas Aliverdian, faked his own death and fled the country.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: The Man of Many Faces
Yeah. And he would say he wasn't faking, that he really has these issues from COVID, you know, and he really, truly was in the hospital, right?
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: The Man of Many Faces
Yeah. I mean, I think a lot of people would probably agree with that. So, yeah, we're trying to book another interview with him. And we've been going back and forth. And the jail has said no to allowing us physically inside the jail. So we were trying to do either a video interview over a video conference or a phone interview.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: The Man of Many Faces
And we've been just going back and forth, back and forth, and did not get him to agree by the deadline of our updated story.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: The Man of Many Faces
I would love to do an interview with him again. I mean, so I hope he accepts, you know, at some point to do another interview with us.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: The Man of Many Faces
I don't know. That's a good question. I mean, certainly, you know, to see if he would reveal. So when he was in court this year in Utah, what was his line about, you know, he had to fake it because they were trying to kill him because of his work. With Department of Children and Youth Services in Rhode Island that, you know, they were after him. So he had to like essentially what go into hiding.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: The Man of Many Faces
And he made that comment about if you what was it if you give a mouse a piece of cheese or whatever. Break that down for us, Lynn.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: The Man of Many Faces
But there are real victims in this, some alleged, some victims. But, I mean, he is accused of rape, violent rape. And that is no laughing matter. And so he's kind of a weird dichotomy. It's one of those ones you're sort of confused how you should react to this man, right, and how you should talk about him. It's very – like I've never really encountered –
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: The Man of Many Faces
someone like him that uh reporter in scotland that you interviewed she said i've been a journalist for 30 years i've never met anyone like him yeah so it's across the board we're all feeling the same and and it goes to the title of the show the man of of many faces right so maybe there is one man that you laugh at and then there's one man that you're scared of and you know it's and one man you feel sorry for because he had a terrible upbringing a terrible childhood you know absolutely hard
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: The Man of Many Faces
Investigators and our Dateline team tracked down the elusive fugitive to Scotland before he was extradited back to the United States to face justice. and to tell one more surprising story about who he really is. Okay, let's talk Dateline. Linda, big question is, and because it's going back now, is how did we get, you and I both just became very interested in this story together.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: The Man of Many Faces
When we get back, a bonus clip with a local pub owner who saw the con man from behind the bar. What do you think about his voice? Do you think the like talking like that, do you think that that could be real, that that's a side effect of COVID? Or do you think that that's a put on voice and that the moment the cameras go away, he talks to Miranda normally?
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: The Man of Many Faces
Yeah, it's, you know, when we talk about this man of many faces and, you know, he had to really keep up the accents and like, you know, his profession and all like different people that he spoke to, maybe he was different things. We have a clip. with a pub owner we sat down with in Glasgow who shared an Arthur Knight story. Let's take a listen to what he had to say.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: The Man of Many Faces
most people from this area would know, or Great Britain.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: The Man of Many Faces
So you had his name slipped, his American accent would occasionally slip, and he didn't know what Coronation Chicken was. Correct. And the case is cracked. With the pub owner.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: The Man of Many Faces
That sounds kind of good, actually. It does. And it was trivia here for all our listeners who saw the episode. Where was the other chicken mentioned? Quick, think about it. Think about it. Champagne chicken. Champagne chicken. Miranda served it to Jane McSorley, the reporter. The reporter, yeah. The champagne chicken. So there you go. Two chicken references in one dateline.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: The Man of Many Faces
So before we get to the social media comments and questions, you know, I wanted to point out how just how strong Mary was, you know, for coming to Utah from Ohio to she was planning to face him. And we were told he was going to be in court and his name was even on the door in the, you know, the docket listing as in person. And then he was unfortunately over video recording.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: The Man of Many Faces
But, you know, good for Mary for coming to face him. And unfortunately, Catherine Heckendoran would have come as well, but she had just given birth to a baby. So, like, I know you were impressed, Lynn, by Mary and her, you know, her talking, approaching the prosecutor and saying, I'm here if you need anything, if there's a sentencing phase or anything like that.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: The Man of Many Faces
Well, she didn't back down. And then, of course, that's the whole reason that this international manhunt was sparked because... She because of what she did, he had to register as a sex offender. He had to give up his DNA. And then the prosecutor in Utah, David Levitt, testing the rape kits. There you go. There's a hit. There's a hit in Ohio. And that is all because of Mary. Yeah.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: The Man of Many Faces
Hey, everyone. It's Andrea Canning, and we are talking Dateline. Today is a special treat. I'm joined by Dateline producer Lynn Keller, who worked with me on the episode we're going to be talking about. Hey, Lynn. Hey, Andrea. So this episode is called The Man of Many Faces. If you haven't seen it, it's the episode right below this one on your Dateline podcast feed.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: The Man of Many Faces
And it was like nine or 10 years later. Yeah. And that it happened. Right. So kudos to Mary. Kudos to Catherine, who survived and is doing great. And also David Levitt, the former prosecutor, for wanting to test those rape kits on the podcast. I do Dateline True Crime Weekly, the other podcast. We hear about all these untested rape kits all over the country.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: The Man of Many Faces
And it's sad because each one of those kits represents – a woman who says that she was sexually assaulted. And why is it not having its due? Why are we not bringing these attackers to justice? So, you know, it certainly sparked one of the most unusual stories we've ever done. But also, you know, just to talk about untested rape kits, it is such a big deal in this country.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: The Man of Many Faces
And so hopefully, you know, that discussion will continue and more departments around the country will, you know, pay more attention to that and take that seriously. If he did, in fact, commit these rape crimes in Utah, then sometimes being convicted for another person's crime can speak for all.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: The Man of Many Faces
If he is sentenced to prison, maybe it's not perfect justice, but we see these in datelines where the victims say, look, I just want him to be behind bars. I just want it so he can't hurt anyone else. And that's what I hope, you know, if he is convicted of these crimes, that that's what will give her some peace. All right. Up next, your questions from social media. We are back.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: The Man of Many Faces
And one of the biggest questions from social media was why didn't the Scottish courts test Nicholas's DNA to confirm his identity? We heard that over and over again. Yes.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: The Man of Many Faces
Well, even when we were in Scotland, remember we went to the hearing and he was a no-show because he was becoming increasingly difficult to get him out of the cell and like into the transport van or whatever to get him to the courthouse. That became a real problem.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: The Man of Many Faces
And back to the DNA. So when Nicholas got back to the U.S., the prosecutor was finally able to test the DNA, and it was, in fact, Nicholas. It was a match, they say.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: Lori Vallow Daybell - The Jailhouse Interview
I can't believe you know all this.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: Lori Vallow Daybell - The Jailhouse Interview
Well, as someone who's done a few prison makeovers in my time at Dateline, I was definitely interested in that. So thank you, Kat Kay, for bringing that up. So mini PR and X, will there be another interview? Will there be a round two with Lori?
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: Lori Vallow Daybell - The Jailhouse Interview
Usually it's about an hour.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: Lori Vallow Daybell - The Jailhouse Interview
Keith, we have an audio question from a fellow Canadian named Angela. Let's listen to Angela.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: Lori Vallow Daybell - The Jailhouse Interview
Well, yeah, I mean, it just seemed so inappropriate, so not the tone, you know, for what she's about to talk about with you.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: Lori Vallow Daybell - The Jailhouse Interview
I did notice those blue handcuffs. I'd never seen that color before.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: Lori Vallow Daybell - The Jailhouse Interview
Now we have another audio question from Jacqueline Marino Perez.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: Lori Vallow Daybell - The Jailhouse Interview
Yeah, exactly. Okay. This is a question from a viewer named Leanne.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: Lori Vallow Daybell - The Jailhouse Interview
All of it. I knew we were going to be in for a ride after that wink. And yes, I was right. Yeah. Okay, so first of all, Keith, I was really shocked at just the layers of what this woman is accused of. She is deeply, deeply disturbed. Yeah.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: Lori Vallow Daybell - The Jailhouse Interview
Really, I mean, she showed America and the world who she is, I think. So we will end, Keith, with a final audio question from Melanie Ann 236 on X.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: Lori Vallow Daybell - The Jailhouse Interview
Anything, Keith, you would do differently if you interviewed her again, knowing what you were up against when she walked in that room?
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: Lori Vallow Daybell - The Jailhouse Interview
Well, this one was one of the most interesting, fascinating, unique, outlandish, quirky prison interviews I've seen in a long time. So thank you, Keith, for bringing us that sort of exclamation mark on the end of this five years of covering this story.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: Lori Vallow Daybell - The Jailhouse Interview
Definitely. And we do have a dot, dot, dot, because it's not over. There's still more court proceedings.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: Lori Vallow Daybell - The Jailhouse Interview
It's never ending with her, is it? Keith, thank you so much for your time. And I know our viewers and listeners are, this was definitely one that they wanted to hear your thoughts on. So thank you.
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Talking Dateline: Lori Vallow Daybell - The Jailhouse Interview
And that is it for Talking Dateline this week. Remember, if you have any questions for us about stories or about Dateline, you can reach us 24-7 on social media at DatelineNBC. Have a question for Talking Dateline? Leave it for us in a voicemail at 212-413-5252. Thank you so much for having me.
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Talking Dateline: Lori Vallow Daybell - The Jailhouse Interview
From the mountains of Idaho to the shores of Kauai and beyond, it's a haunting story of death, devastation, and doomsday beliefs that captivated the nation. And coming up this Friday on Dateline, Blaine has an all-new two-hour episode. When a home alarm is tripped late at night in Yakima, Washington, police expect a robbery. But when they arrive at the scene, they find a woman shot to death.
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Talking Dateline: Lori Vallow Daybell - The Jailhouse Interview
An investigation reveals a tangled web of friendships and affairs. But who among them could be the killer? Thanks for listening and see you Fridays on Dateline on NBC.
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Talking Dateline: Lori Vallow Daybell - The Jailhouse Interview
Yeah. And when I say deeply disturbed, just I should note, I'm not diagnosing her. This is just as if you were saying she appears deeply disturbed based on the allegations, based on the convictions. Sure. You know, the other thing that was just so odd about her was and I'm curious about. how much she knows about your episodes. Cause you've done this a lot. She was so casual with you.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: Lori Vallow Daybell - The Jailhouse Interview
How is she so familiar with you?
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: Lori Vallow Daybell - The Jailhouse Interview
To recap, Keith brings us the first television interview with one of the most infamous women in America, one whose story he's been covering for the last five years, Lori Vallow Daybell, the woman convicted of murdering two of her children and conspiring to murder her husband's former wife.
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Talking Dateline: Lori Vallow Daybell - The Jailhouse Interview
Why did she finally agree to do it?
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: Lori Vallow Daybell - The Jailhouse Interview
This is the one with her brother?
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: Lori Vallow Daybell - The Jailhouse Interview
Hi, everyone. I'm Andrea Canning, and we are Talking Dateline. Today, I'm joined by Keith Morrison to discuss his latest episode, Lori Vallow Daybell, The Jailhouse Interview. If you haven't seen it, it's the episode right below this one on your Dateline podcast feed. So go there and listen to it or stream it on Peacock and then come on back here.
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Talking Dateline: Lori Vallow Daybell - The Jailhouse Interview
After covering her for so long, what was that like for you, finally sitting across from her?
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Talking Dateline: Lori Vallow Daybell - The Jailhouse Interview
As it often does, right?
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: Lori Vallow Daybell - The Jailhouse Interview
No, and that was what was so frustrating. You know, why sit down and do this interview if you're not going to answer questions? Yeah.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: Lori Vallow Daybell - The Jailhouse Interview
As she sits in an Arizona jail cell awaiting yet another murder trial, one in which she'll be representing herself, Keith asks her the hard questions we've all wanted answers to, and Lori doesn't hold back. For this Talking Dateline, we have an extra clip from Keith and Lori's bombshell interview, so stay tuned for that. And with that, I say, okay, let's talk Dateline.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: Lori Vallow Daybell - The Jailhouse Interview
Yeah, it's like you've got a ticking clock.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: Lori Vallow Daybell - The Jailhouse Interview
And at one point she says, she yells at you kind of like a raised voice, like, get your facts straight, you know, Keith. And like, you don't. Like, you've been covering this story for five years. And then she says, you know, rumors. And she like elongates rumors. And then she starts singing, rumor has it. And then she says to you, I thought we were going to be friends.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: Lori Vallow Daybell - The Jailhouse Interview
And then you say, I thought we are friends, aren't we? Like, was that sort of part of your story? tactic with her?
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: Lori Vallow Daybell - The Jailhouse Interview
Yes. There was definitely a moment where I saw kind of like... stern Keith come out, like answer the, you know, darn question. And you, you certainly were not her friend in that moment when you were trying to, you know, finally get her to give you some, like a real answer. When we get back, we have an extra podcast exclusive clip from Keith's jailhouse interview with Lori.
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Talking Dateline: Lori Vallow Daybell - The Jailhouse Interview
But why kill your children, though, if it's about money, lust, and power?
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Talking Dateline: Lori Vallow Daybell - The Jailhouse Interview
With the children then. That's how they saw the children.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: Lori Vallow Daybell - The Jailhouse Interview
The weather's perking up here.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: Lori Vallow Daybell - The Jailhouse Interview
And Keith, we actually have some extra sound from Laurie talking about Chad, if we want to take a listen to that.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: Lori Vallow Daybell - The Jailhouse Interview
Yes, exactly. So in getting into this episode, I'm going to start with the first 15 seconds of this show. Something that was extremely disturbing to me. Was Lori Vallow winking at the camera as she's walking through the hall to your interview? What the heck is up with that?
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: Lori Vallow Daybell - The Jailhouse Interview
So do Lori and Chad still speak, whether it's by phone or mail, or is there some communication there?
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: Lori Vallow Daybell - The Jailhouse Interview
Did she mention what kind of conversations they have outside?
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: Lori Vallow Daybell - The Jailhouse Interview
I don't know about that one. I don't know. She may have some wishful thinking there.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: Lori Vallow Daybell - The Jailhouse Interview
It's interesting when you look back at Lori when, you know, in the days before all of this and just, you know, pretty, bubbly. I couldn't believe she was on Wheel of Fortune. Sure. And then you look at Lori now.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: Lori Vallow Daybell - The Jailhouse Interview
The beauty pageant. I mean... This woman, you know, she was poised to have a great life. And then you look at her now and you're like, what? What happened? Yeah, well...
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: Lori Vallow Daybell - The Jailhouse Interview
Yeah, and he has a family, which is so nice. And I can imagine, given what he's been through, that I don't know him, but that he'll be a great dad. And he'll just work extra hard to make sure those kids have a good life.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: Lori Vallow Daybell - The Jailhouse Interview
Yeah, I really, that was like the bright spot, you know, in all of this was just to see him surviving. Up next, your questions from social media. This one was, wow, this one was a tough one. A lot of response from our viewers.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: Lori Vallow Daybell - The Jailhouse Interview
And we are going to dive into some questions that people have. And I'd love to hear what others thought because I had a lot while I was watching it. Keith, Kat K on X, I, oh my gosh, it's so funny that she's bringing up this question that I'm about to read because I had the same question. How is she getting her hair dyed in prison? And she also had a lot of makeup on too.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: Lori Vallow Daybell - The Jailhouse Interview
And her hair was- She did. Her hair was, looked like it had been curled.
Dateline NBC
Endgame
But without autopsy results, he says there wasn't much he could do. So, less than a week after Shelley died, her family hired a private investigator. So you're not satisfied? Not at all.
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Endgame
Including things that confirmed what the family had already seen for themselves. Shelley's divorce attorney, Lance Meyer...
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Endgame
So low, in fact, that at one point during their divorce, Rod tried to undermine her at work. He called her company to report that Shelley was on drugs, unstable, and depleting their joint bank account.
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Endgame
The company determined Shelley was drug-free and found that Rod was taking much more money from their account than she was. The divorce got uglier. The two squabbled over child support. At one point, a judge told Rod he could no longer play backgammon, something he blamed on Shelly.
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Endgame
A couple of weeks after Shelly's death, her family took their private investigator over to her apartment to check out the scene. Something caught the investigator's eye. The cabinet that Shelley had supposedly grabbed as she fell, the screws had been pulled out of the wall. He thought that would have taken more force than the 5'4", 132-pound Shelley could muster.
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Endgame
But none of this was a smoking gun. The only way to know for sure how Shelly died was to exhume her body and do an autopsy. Two months after Shelly's death, at the family's urging, her body was pulled out of its grave and reexamined. Detective Rotermel was in the room with the medical examiner. What are you seeing? What are you thinking?
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Endgame
Shelly Kovlin had been found dead in her bathtub in December 2009. Investigators had long believed her husband Rod had killed her, but they didn't have enough evidence to prove it. Then, after nearly six years of slowly building a case, prosecutors finally became convinced they had enough to persuade a jury. In November 2015, Shelly's sister Eve got word from the district attorney's office.
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Endgame
It would take three more years for Rod's trial to begin. After waiting so long for justice, Eve and her husband, Mark, steeled themselves. Why was it important for you to be there?
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Endgame
It happened inside this pricey apartment building on West 68th Street. Around 7 a.m., a man named Rod Kovlin called 911 to say his 9-year-old daughter Anna found his wife Shelly unconscious in the bathtub. Rebecca Rosenberg covered the case for the New York Post and knows it inside and out.
Dateline NBC
Endgame
There's only one person. Prosecutor Matthew Bogdanos described Rod Kovlin as a cold-blooded killer determined to get his wife out of his life, take their children, and seize her assets at any cost.
Dateline NBC
Endgame
Prosecutors admitted their case wasn't a tidy one ready for CSI, but they put a lot of circumstantial evidence in front of the jury. We know it's a circumstantial case, but what do they have going for them with this jury?
Dateline NBC
Endgame
Prosecutors presented witnesses who said Rod didn't even try to hide his abuse of his wife. The family nanny told the jury that at one point, he had become enraged and violent.
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Endgame
Shelly was living in fear, prosecutors said, because her estranged husband was boiling with rage in their custody battle. Shelly's divorce attorney, Lance Meyer, took the stand to say how Rod had even used his son as a weapon.
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Endgame
Wow, so this is getting ugly. Yes. Prosecutors said those disturbing and false accusations were just one example of how Rod was becoming unhinged. He was also obsessively tracking Shelley's every move with secretly installed software on her computer. Rod told this co-worker that it enabled him to read her emails.
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Endgame
By late 2009, he was also deeply in debt, with virtually no income. Still, even with their divorce pending, he believed he would gain control of her $5 million estate if she died. But then Rod found some emails Shelly sent just two days before her death.
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Endgame
The state said that's when Rod snapped and hatched his plan. The night of December 30th, her friend Melissa Fields saw her and sensed something was wrong.
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Endgame
Later, she logged on to her online dating profile at 10.13, the last activity on any of her devices. Rod, meanwhile, was across the hall. He was usually online playing backgammon late into the night. But suddenly, his online presence stopped at 1.03 a.m. No sign of him until he popped up on that surveillance video in the lobby at 4.13 a.m. The allegation was that he wanted to be seen on camera.
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Endgame
The prosecution called the New York State Medical Examiner. In the autopsy, he had noticed those scratches on her face and that fractured bone in her neck.
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Endgame
Strangulation, not an accidental fall. And in another sinister twist, prosecutors believe that three and a half years after Shelley's death, Rod drafted a note composed from his 12-year-old daughter's email account, pretending to be her. What father does that? Who does that to a child? Right. Who basically frames a child? Right. On their own.
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Endgame
Prosecutors didn't get that note admitted into trial, but they were about to bring forward a star witness whose explosive allegations would rock the courtroom.
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Endgame
What was it like walking into that courtroom and seeing Rod Kovlin in there? Terrifying.
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Endgame
Veteran prosecutors will tell you that once they've built their case for the jury, they try to put a closer on the stand, a witness who buttons everything up with a riveting tale.
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Endgame
In the trial of Rod Kovlin, the closer turned out to be none other than Deborah Ohls, Rod's backgammon buddy and his former lover. Taking the stand, sunglasses on. What was it like walking into that courtroom and seeing Rod Kovlin in there?
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Endgame
Deborah testified that she got a late-night call from Rod on that fateful New Year's Day.
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Endgame
The EMTs arrived in minutes. They found no pulse. 47-year-old Shelly Kovlin was beyond help. The police come to the scene.
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Endgame
You're saying coincidence, like he needed money. Right. They've broken up and then she dies. So it makes Rod's life easier.
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Endgame
After that, their long-distance relationship progressed in fits and starts. They'd often play backgammon online. Deborah would drive from her home down south to tournaments, sometimes picking up Rod in New York and taking him with her. Then, one day in 2010, the police paid her a surprise visit.
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Endgame
But the monster was lurking. As Deborah told the court, over time, she began to see just how volatile Rod could be.
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Endgame
She also saw terrible fights that he had with his parents. By 2012, Rod and his children were living with his parents in a New York City suburb, and the fighting was constant.
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Endgame
Eventually, Rod's parents evicted him and kept his kids. Rod was determined to strike back. Deborah says he hatched bizarre plots to kill his parents. She told the court about one he dreamt up when Superstorm Sandy struck the East Coast.
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Endgame
Detectives found a tub full of bloody water, and Shelly wrapped in a comforter on the floor next to it. Above the tub, a cabinet with a door hanging off its hinge. They surmised Shelly had grabbed it as she fell and landed hard in the tub. And so investigators began the difficult process of deconstructing a life that had just come to a sad and mysterious end.
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Endgame
Then, she said, there was the poison plot that called for his young daughter Anna to participate.
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Endgame
By this time, Deborah had rented an apartment for herself and Rod to live in, just north of New York City. But she says she was growing weary of his anger and exasperated by his lurid schemes. One day, she testified, things came to a head.
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Endgame
Finally, Rod and Deborah split. In August 2014, she called investigators and told them everything she knew. Now, four and a half years later, she had told a jury, and she was about to get grilled by Rod Kovlin's defense attorneys. Coming up... So is it fair to say, yes or no, you were jealous?
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Endgame
Carol Kovlin sat behind her son during the long weeks of trial. Why was it so important for you to be there?
Dateline NBC
Endgame
You had to listen to your son being called a philanderer, a bum, an abuser, and a killer. How did you handle that?
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Endgame
One of the most explosive pieces of testimony was Deborah Oles alleging that Rod had wanted to kill you. And in grand fashion, we're talking arsenic, rat poison. Rod's dad, Dave, says Deborah's claims were laughable.
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Endgame
Rod's defense attorney, Robert Gottlieb, agreed. During a testy cross-examination, he tried to poke holes in Deborah's testimony, starting with her story of those plots. Were you scared?
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Endgame
The police would soon learn that Shelley Daniszewski-Kovlin was larger than life. Nobody admired her more than her sister Eve and brother-in-law Mark Karstadt.
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Endgame
Despite her denials, Gottlieb said Deborah had been crushed when the relationship ended. Her testimony, he said, was nothing more than the words of a woman scorned. So is it fair to say, yes or no, you were jealous?
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Endgame
The defense conceded Rod wasn't always a stand-up guy, but he said that didn't make him a murderer.
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Endgame
There was none, Gottlieb said. Zero evidence there'd been foul play. No signs of a struggle. He said Rod couldn't have slipped into Shelley's apartment and killed her, like the prosecution argued, because there was no evidence he even had a key. Remember, Rod said little Anna had let him in that morning.
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Endgame
No evidence either, Gottlieb said, about what had caused Shelley's injuries. He suggested one explanation, the exhumation.
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Endgame
Carol said there was nothing she heard in court that convinced her Shelley's death was anything but a tragic accident. If you see those photos, it doesn't look like she just slipped and fell. It looks like someone did something to her.
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Endgame
So where did her scratches come from then? I mean, you don't get scratches falling in a bathtub.
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Endgame
A conundrum that would never be solved, the defense argued, because of bungling by investigators.
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Endgame
Investigators hadn't dusted for fingerprints or collected DNA samples. There was a long list, Gottlieb said, of what investigators hadn't done at the scene.
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Endgame
Then, in a bold move, the defense rested without calling any witnesses. After more than eight weeks of testimony, it was up to the jury to decide. Was this an accident or a cold-blooded murder? How hard was it waiting for the verdict?
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Endgame
They didn't have to wait long. After only a day of deliberations, the jury was back.
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Endgame
Shelley eventually became a private wealth manager. The money was good. So was the prestige.
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Endgame
I've been through a lot of trials and I don't know that I've ever seen that much emotion from a family and that many hugs and that many tears. I mean, it was pretty incredible to watch your family.
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Endgame
Deborah Oles hopes she can rest now, too. The prosecution's star witness is happy the jury believed her.
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Endgame
Shelly's children are young adults now. They don't have much contact with Shelly's side of the family. Is there anything that you want the children to know about their mother and how you feel about them?
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Endgame
She's got the finance job, the style. I mean, it sounds like she kind of was the classic New York City woman.
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Endgame
In February of 1998, Shelly went to a Jewish singles mixer in Manhattan, where sparks flew with a guy she met there. His name? Rod Kovlin. She called her sister that night with an outrageous announcement.
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Endgame
Eve talked her sister out of it that night, but Shelly was serious. And so was Rod. Shelly was 11 years older than him, but that didn't seem to matter. His parents, Dave and Carol Kovlin, say he adored her right from the start.
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Endgame
A brunette back then, Shelley married Rod six months later, and reality set in as they settled down to life as a couple. It wasn't exactly bliss, because while Shelley was a stunning overachiever, Rod was, well, not in the same league. He was a stock trader of middling success.
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Endgame
How did she handle that? How did you support her? It's just such an awful thing.
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Endgame
Then in 2006, Shelly had a baby boy. She and Rod named their son Miles. But now, three years later, Shelley was dead, and the scene inside that apartment on the Upper West Side was chaos.
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Endgame
New Year's in the Big Apple is usually a happy time. Celebrations everywhere and the promise of fresh starts and new dreams. But for those who knew and loved Shelley Covlin, 2010 began with sadness. Shelley's sister Eve and her husband Mark couldn't believe the mother of two was gone. Did it kind of hit you later, the more emotional side of things, as you think about your life without her?
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Endgame
Shelley's in-laws, David and Carol Kovlin, were also in shock. Their son, Rod, called with the news.
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Endgame
The next few days were a blur. For religious reasons, the family decided not to have an autopsy performed.
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Endgame
It was only as friends and family gathered to sit shiva, the Jewish period of mourning, that they had time to think about the vibrant woman they'd just lost.
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Endgame
But what was also on their minds was dark and troubling, Shelley's rocky marriage to Rod.
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Endgame
In 2009, Shelley confessed to her sister that her marriage was in serious trouble.
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Endgame
One thing Mark and Eve say came between the couple was Rod's dramatic mood swings.
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Endgame
The Kovlins say they saw changes in Shelley too, ones they felt were equally damaging to the marriage.
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Endgame
The couple seemed to be living separate lives in what had to be a painful moment. Shelly told her sister it wasn't the backgammon or the fact that Rod wasn't pulling his weight that pushed her to separate. It was Rod's cheating.
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Endgame
By June, Rod had moved out, and he didn't go far. Shelley arranged for him to live for free in an apartment across the hall to make it easy for the kids. Her close friend, Stephanie Goldman, wasn't happy with the arrangement.
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Endgame
If you had to pick one place that screams New York City, it's usually this. Times Square is the city's heart and soul, and normally full of noise and lights and people rushing somewhere, or nowhere. Take a short walk uptown, however, maybe 25 minutes on foot, and the endless racket of tourist hotspots and commerce gives way to a quieter vibe.
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Endgame
Shelly seemed on track to make a fresh start in 2010. Until that fresh start ended in what seemed like a deadly accident.
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Endgame
And now Shelley's friends and family were wondering about the story Rod told police, that his daughter Anna called him that morning in a panic and let him into the apartment because he didn't have a key.
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Endgame
Suspicions that only deepened when Mark learned the medical examiner wasn't sure either.
Dateline NBC
Endgame
From the moment Shelley Kovlin's family heard the story of her death, a slip and fall in a bathtub full of water, they felt it just didn't make sense.
Dateline NBC
Endgame
Plus, Shelley had gotten a keratin hair straightening treatment the previous morning. She wasn't supposed to get her hair wet for several days. They say don't wash your hair for 72 hours. Yeah.
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Endgame
This is what's been sort of labeled the legally blonde moment. Yeah. That any woman who knows about a keratin treatment to straighten your hair is not going to expose your hair like that. Shelley's death didn't sit right with lead detective Carl Rotermel either. While he felt her death could have been an accident, details of the scene bothered him.
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Endgame
The way that cabinet door had been yanked down, the blood in the tub, and marks on Shelly's body.
Dateline NBC
Endgame
And what the detective would learn later cast suspicion directly on Rod. Rod told an officer that he had to pull Shelly's wet body out of the tub, yet his clothes were bone dry. Reporter Rebecca Rosenberg.
Dateline NBC
Endgame
And their doorman remembered Rod doing something early that morning that was highly unusual for him. He stopped by the front desk on his way out of the building to get a snack, even bought the doorman a Snickers bar.
Dateline NBC
Endgame
Suspicious details indeed. The detective was hoping more clues would emerge from an autopsy. But remember, Shelley's family didn't have one done for religious reasons. How did you feel about that?
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Endgame
Here, you find the tree-lined streets and cozy apartments of the Upper West Side. I started my own family here on the Upper West Side, just steps from Central Park. During the day, this neighborhood is buzzing with families. At night, it's quiet and safe. But just two blocks from where I lived, in the early morning hours of New Year's Eve 2009, something terrible touched this neighborhood.
Dateline NBC
Deadly Obsession
How many times have we seen a child is upset with the parents, kills them so, you know, they can be out of the picture and go on to live, you know, a nice life?
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Deadly Obsession
I can't even imagine the feeling when the police are looking at everyone around you, your family members, Mike's family members.
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Deadly Obsession
It wasn't to be. Your dad ends up getting full custody of you and your brother? Yeah. How did that come about?
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Deadly Obsession
What do you think it was about you and Dana that you wanted to spend more time with her?
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Deadly Obsession
What was your first impression of her? What was her demeanor like when you meet in this attorney's office?
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Deadly Obsession
You must have heard from so many people saying how much they missed your mom, how much they love your mom.
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Deadly Obsession
So she says she's sleeping in her car, but there's forest fires around the area?
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Deadly Obsession
This is the highway that you think Dana Chandler took to get to Topeka from Denver?
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Deadly Obsession
The family felt like you weren't doing enough because there's no arrest.
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Deadly Obsession
What's that like going to trial knowing that you'll be helping the prosecution try to put away your mother?
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Deadly Obsession
So this idea that this could be a murder-suicide quickly goes out the window.
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Deadly Obsession
Did you worry your mom might try to seek revenge on you, given that you testified against her the first time?
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Deadly Obsession
I think that's what makes this so complicated, is that Dana looks so bad with her behavior.
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Deadly Obsession
You've already done one, and then now two, and then now you have this lack of resolution.
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Deadly Obsession
So now she's out. You've testified against your mom twice, and now she's a free woman.
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Deadly Obsession
What could you tell as far as just how many times they'd been shot, where they'd been shot?
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Deadly Obsession
Well, they've been to law school. They've tried many cases. This is their life, their job. It's not Dana's job.
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Deadly Obsession
How did that feel when you see Dana being cuffed and led away after weeks of fighting?
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Deadly Obsession
I think your dad would be proud of you for all that you've done to fight for him.
Dateline NBC
The Premonition
Dr. Wecht believed the assailant then chased John Jelnik through the house.
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The Premonition
Dr. Wecht explained why the window by the front door was broken and covered in blood.
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The Premonition
A terrible premonition. It all happened here in the town where he grew up. John Yelnik's life story came to an end in Blairsville, Pennsylvania. It was April 13th, 2006. A little boy from next door, nine-year-old Zachary Youse, was the first to discover the awful thing that happened to the 39-year-old dentist. I know this is really hard. Why did you go over to John's house that day?
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The Premonition
John Yelnik suffered massive, possibly fatal injuries to his neck when his head was pushed through the glass. But the attack wasn't over.
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The Premonition
As a forensic scientist with more than 50 years' experience, Dr. Wecht surmised the killer had to be strong and large enough to overwhelm the nearly six-foot-tall dentist and to slash him with a knife.
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The Premonition
That was the story of John Yelnik's death. Over in Blairsville, the crime scene was also telling a story about his life.
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The Premonition
There was something on the table that was very important, very telling to what this victim was going through.
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The Premonition
John Yelnik's dreams of a Brady Bunch family had fallen apart. He and his wife Michelle were in the process of divorcing. After they cashed in the house, John moved to this modest home and set Michelle up here with the kids. That's where Janelle Lydick sent an officer to break the news to Michelle.
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The Premonition
Michelle was living in her new place with a new boyfriend, a Pennsylvania state trooper. They'd been together for nearly two years.
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The Premonition
JJ and the older two were in bed by the time police arrived at Michelle's home. She had already heard that John had died, but told police she heard it was a heart attack. They let her know he was murdered. John's friends got the news the next day.
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The Premonition
Back in his forensic lab, Cyril Wecht was saving blood samples, tissue. He collected photos and clipped Yelnik's fingernails, along with the precious DNA that might be underneath them. You sent one of your officers to the autopsy of John Yelnik? I did.
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The Premonition
That's when she did something unusual. Officer Lydek stashed them in the evidence fridge at police headquarters instead of immediately sending them to the state police lab. This may have been her first homicide investigation, but her instincts were telling her, protect the evidence and move very carefully.
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The Premonition
Zach was hoping to see John's son. They'd been such good friends. Instead, Zach saw something no child should ever have to see.
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The Premonition
The Blairsville police spent a lot of time speaking with John's friends, neighbors, and even drinking buddies, establishing alibis and checking out shoe sizes to compare against the bloody prints left in the house. They already knew the prints didn't belong to Zach, the boy who found the body. Were you certain that those footprints were the killers?
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The Premonition
It's a big clue. Yes. They started with the neighbors. And in this town, where everyone knows everyone, police learned a lot.
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The Premonition
Right. According to Jennifer Mealy, one neighbor said the sound was just awful.
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The Premonition
Another neighbor heard what sounded like an argument, a man yelling something specific. I'll never loan you money again.
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The Premonition
Correct. Interesting, since they're among John Yelnik's papers. police found a blood-spattered check from Zachary's mother, Melissa Youse, who lived next door.
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The Premonition
If the rumors of an affair were true, police had to consider the possibility that Tom Hughes, Melissa's husband and the father of the boy who found the body, was involved in the crime.
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The Premonition
Yes. Lydick also spoke with Tom Youse. And did he think that they were having an affair, his wife and John?
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The Premonition
Officer Lydic decided to keep Tom Youse on her list of possible suspects. Not that they were sharing this information with anyone. The police were playing this case pretty close to the vest.
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The Premonition
But at one point, the police did offer information to calm the public's fear.
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The Premonition
Did police know enough that they were about to catch a killer? Not in this case. Not even close.
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The Premonition
The people who lived on John Yelnik's quiet little street were startled awake by the sound of yelling, even screaming, on the night of the murder. And one of the neighbors heard a kind of argument.
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The Premonition
John Yelnik may have loaned money to Zach's parents, but police learned he also loaned money to a number of people. One of them was a cousin, Tracy Jacobs. All right, Tracy Jacobs.
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The Premonition
Jacobs told police John had never asked him to pay back the money, and police couldn't find evidence of any bad blood there. Did you have him take a polygraph? I did. And?
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The Premonition
So no Tracy Jacobs. Police question other people with financial ties to John Yelnik, including his business partner. Turns out they were talking about splitting up the practice.
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The Premonition
In the end, police cleared the business partner, but suspicions about Tom Youse seemed to linger.
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The Premonition
Melissa was worried about the toll this was taking on her family. So she launched a very different kind of investigation.
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The Premonition
Meet Suzanne and Jean Vincent, Pittsburgh's psychic sisters. How did you get involved in this case?
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The Premonition
Melissa Youse attended that tea party, and the sisters say they sensed her fear and despair. The police were looking at her husband, Tom, as a suspect or a person of interest.
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The Premonition
Melissa was so desperate to clear her husband's name, she asked the sisters for help.
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The Premonition
As they walked through the house and yard, they reported feeling warm spots, cool spots. And they said they saw a black SUV and a woman with dark hair, among other things.
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The Premonition
The psychics later made a few more visits. Eventually, the media took an interest. Even the police came along to hear what the sisters had to say.
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The Premonition
In minutes, the family was on the phone with 911. When dispatchers put out the call, first responders were mistakenly told it was a heart attack. So when Blairsville patrolman Don Isherwood pulled up, he was surprised by what he found.
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The Premonition
The psychics told Melissa they could see that her husband had nothing to do with the murder. The police were already coming to that conclusion.
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The Premonition
Police also learned that Tom Youse had a good relationship with John Yelnik. And when he passed a polygraph, he was taken off the list. So as neighbors, friends, and distant relatives fell off the radar, police started to home in on someone else. Coming up... What did you learn about John and Michelle's marriage?
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The Premonition
Blairsville police officer Janelle Lydick worked around the clock chasing down leads in the brutal slaying of John Yelnik.
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The Premonition
It was hard not to take the murder personally. You live just a few blocks from John Yelnik. I live three blocks away from him. So this murder happened in your backyard?
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The Premonition
Even more reason, Lydick was keen to make an arrest, and quickly. Still, she believed this was no random killing. The more people she talked to, the more Lydick suspected John's marriage had something to do with it. What did you learn about John and Michelle's marriage?
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The Premonition
They were just so different. Dennis says Michelle enjoyed showing off her big house with the pool and its hot tub and wine cellar. John seemed embarrassed by it until Dennis' favorite room was in the basement.
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The Premonition
Four years after their quickie wedding in Las Vegas, the marriage imploded. What was causing this battle to brew?
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The Premonition
John had a confession, too. He told Michelle he'd had a brief fling with someone in his office.
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The Premonition
So he did. The day John moved out was the day Maggie McCartan met him for the first time. Her boyfriend was John's close pal, and they went to help him pack up.
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The Premonition
After the split, John moved into that modest house in Blairsville. He saw JJ whenever he could.
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The Premonition
Which is why what happened next shocked everyone. A year and a half after they first separated, Michelle accused John of child abuse, choking the five-year-old and punching him in the face. Maggie said it couldn't be true.
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The Premonition
A judge ordered John to stay away from JJ and Michelle. Not long after, Michelle reported John for violating the order.
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The Premonition
John denied everything, but after months away from JJ, agreed to take anger management classes so he could see him again. He also got himself a hotshot divorce attorney. When Michelle tried to stop John from taking JJ on a trip to Disney World, Effie Alexander was ready to fight for him in court.
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The Premonition
John's friends say the father and son had a great time on the trip. But there was something that upset John. Hearing JJ talk about Michelle's boyfriend. the state trooper.
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The Premonition
JJ wasn't the only issue John and Michelle were battling over. They were bickering over money too. John's receptionist later told police Michelle made angry calls to the dentist asking for money.
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The Premonition
A less than attractive portrait of the beautiful Michelle was coming together for police as they talked to some of the people who knew her.
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The Premonition
which made the investigator wonder. Michelle was the beneficiary of John's will and his million-dollar life insurance policy. Of everyone around John, maybe she had the most to gain from his death.
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The Premonition
To the family, to even people watching this, they'll say, that's Detective 101.
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The Premonition
The poison in John and Michelle's broken marriage had never been more obvious to John's cousin, Mary Ann, than on the day of his funeral. Did Michelle come to the funeral? No, Michelle did not come.
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The Premonition
No. The funeral director told Marianne that Michelle, who was still John's next of kin, hadn't wanted anything to do with the body.
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The Premonition
John's friends and family told investigator Lydick how ugly the divorce had been. The incessant wrangling over money and little J.J., And then things got worse, the accusations. Yes. It was an explosive allegation. A year before the murder, Michelle said John sexually abused JJ. She reported that to the Pennsylvania State Police.
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The Premonition
Six-year-old JJ told investigators a story that backed up his mother's allegations.
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The Premonition
John was ordered yet again to stay away from JJ and was summoned to the trooper barracks to explain himself.
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The Premonition
Retired trooper Jeff Whitmer spent 15 years as a criminal investigator. He sat in on the interview as John denied everything.
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The Premonition
John agreed to take a polygraph and passed. No criminal charges were ever filed. But it was up to a judge to say whether John could see JJ again. His divorce attorney showed the judge what she considered to be proof the abuse never happened. A home video John had made the day he was supposed to have molested JJ.
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The Premonition
he knew he needed help right away. His superior, Corporal Janelle Lydic, was driving around with her kids when she got the call. And even then, the details were confusing. They said there's a cardiac arrest. Is that kind of weird that you're being requested for a cardiac arrest?
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The Premonition
The judge made a finding that there had been no abuse and dismissed the court order preventing John from seeing his son. How happy was John?
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The Premonition
Michelle denied ever coaching JJ, but John's friends were sure she had fed him the story as a way to hurt John during their bitter divorce.
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The Premonition
After so long apart, John was excited to pick up JJ for a Thanksgiving visit. Zach went with him. It didn't go well. What happened during this pickup?
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The Premonition
You can't. You can't. John was defeated. JJ didn't visit him for Christmas that year. Those presents police found in John's house after the murder were JJ's, unopened, still waiting for him. Friends say after the failed reunion, John wanted the divorce negotiations done so he could focus on repairing his relationship with JJ. In January 2006, John and Michelle finally reached an agreement.
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The Premonition
But Michelle seemed to get cold feet. During the separation, John had been paying her spousal support amounting to $2,500 a month. The divorce agreement cut that off. Michelle wasn't happy about it.
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The Premonition
Not long after, someone vandalized John's car. John's divorce attorney says this incident sparked John's extraordinary premonition about his own murder.
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The Premonition
Predicting your own murder and wanting to set aside money for the investigation, that's almost a ridiculous plot line.
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The Premonition
John Yelnik's divorce papers had been found by crime scene investigators just a few feet from his body. He'd been planning to sign them that day and finally be free of his toxic marriage.
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The Premonition
You know, to think of the divorce papers with blood on them from this murder. Literally.
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The Premonition
John's friends were sure his divorce battle with his estranged wife, Michelle, had something to do with his death. They got together after his funeral to swap theories.
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The Premonition
And that theory focused not so much on Michelle, but rather her boyfriend, Kevin Foley, who happened to be a Pennsylvania state trooper. John told friends Trooper Foley didn't seem to like him one bit.
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The Premonition
It would be Lydick's first murder investigation, and events were unfolding quickly. She and Isherwood were the only officers there, and she was afraid the killer was still nearby. Not only this is a crazy scene, but your four kids are out in the car, and your husband.
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The Premonition
After Michelle accused John of abusing JJ, he told friends the trooper got even more aggressive, making verbal threats. Maria says John was scared.
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The Premonition
Other friends say they found it hard to believe that a state trooper sworn to protect people and uphold the law could be a danger.
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The Premonition
Now John was dead, and Mary Ann was one of nearly 10 people who told the Blairsville police that Trooper Foley should be their number one suspect.
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The Premonition
In the small town of Blairsville, where local and state police often crossed paths, Trooper Foley was no stranger to police officer Janelle Lydick.
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The Premonition
Lydick says the trooper was already on her list of suspects, thanks to a patrol officer who'd seen him with Michelle after the murder.
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The Premonition
Lydek listened to the friend's stories about Foley with interest. But because of who Foley was and the pressure she says she was under, she made an unusual decision. Before she zeroed in on Foley, she says she wanted to eliminate everyone else first.
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The Premonition
Correct. Correct. When John's friends called police to ask for status updates, they heard the same thing. We're looking at this case outside in.
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The Premonition
At the end of the day, Lydick admits it was hard to think of Foley as a killer. In the past, she trusted him with her life.
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The Premonition
Remember, before he was killed, John had predicted his murder would go unsolved. Now, his friends and family worried he was right.
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The Premonition
The district attorney telling you not to interview someone who had a real issue with John Yelnik. Did you feel like it was wrong? Yes.
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The Premonition
Those close to John Yelnik thought his murder should be easy to solve. They told police on day one the prime suspect should be Michelle's boyfriend, state trooper Kevin Foley.
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The Premonition
She sent patrolman Isherwood room to room to look for the assailant, and that's where he found another horrible sight.
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The Premonition
Mary Ann Clark seethed. Michelle had custody of JJ and was living with the trooper.
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The Premonition
Trooper Whitmer worked in the same state police barracks as Kevin Foley. He agreed with the family that Foley should have been looked at harder right away. He says Foley didn't hide his dislike of the dentist.
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The Premonition
Whitmer was dispatched to the crime scene within hours of John's body being found and says colleagues were already talking about Kevin Foley.
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The Premonition
Foley was put on desk duty back at the barracks. Whitmer says it made for an awkward working environment.
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The Premonition
When an investigator went to the barracks to interview troopers about what they knew, Officer Lydick says they didn't say much.
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The Premonition
Lydick says from the beginning, she felt in over her head, and she worried what her fellow officers would think of her. How intimidating was it to be investigating a state trooper?
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The Premonition
Lydick says she and her chief hesitated to send a key piece of evidence to the state crime lab, John's fingernail clippings. You just, you wanted to be extremely careful about who was handling your evidence. Correct. And something else that didn't happen, something big. A formal interview with Kevin Foley.
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The Premonition
I think to the family, to even people watching this, they'll say, you know, that's Detective 101. Interview the strange spouse and her new boyfriend, especially when there was feuding going on.
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The Premonition
Lydick says the decision to not interview Foley right away wasn't her call. It was the decision of then-district attorney Bob Bell. I mean, that's a real head-snapper. The district attorney telling you not to interview someone who had a real issue with John Yelnik.
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The Premonition
Did you feel like it was wrong? Yes. The DA, Bob Bell, knew there were suspicions about Foley right away. Foley's supervisor in the state police called the DA that night as soon as he heard about the murder, telling him to get a search warrant for Foley's house. But he didn't. John's family and friends wondered if D.A. Bell was giving the trooper special treatment.
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The Premonition
That just tells you how gruesome it was that there was that much blood.
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The Premonition
Marianne says she heard the same thing when she spoke to Bell at the crime scene.
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The Premonition
But Bell did know Foley. They'd worked cases together. Dennis did a quick Google search and found this photo of them in the local newspaper.
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The Premonition
At about the same time, John Yelnik's cousin, Mary Ann Clark, was running some errands. Easter was just three days away.
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The Premonition
No. The former district attorney denies ever saying he didn't know Foley, but told us they were not friends. As for why he didn't immediately get a search warrant for Foley's home, he says there wasn't enough probable cause. He also told us he didn't want Officer Lydick to interview Foley because she was too inexperienced. This was a tricky investigation, given the fact that this is a small area.
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The Premonition
As for the state police, troopers from a barracks not connected to Foley stepped in to help with the investigation and later took it over. They did some things that the Blairsville police hadn't. They eventually obtained a search warrant for Foley's car, but found nothing. Ditto for the house he shared with Michelle. The investigation dragged on.
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The Premonition
Months became a year, and Marianne ran out of patience. She decided to make some noise. She organized a vigil.
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The Premonition
But their wait was about to come to an end with a big change in the case.
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The Premonition
Marianne Clark was relentless. From the beginning, she challenged and criticized the investigation into her cousin's murder.
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The Premonition
To try to make something happen, Mary Ann called Pennsylvania's attorney general, the highest law enforcement officer in the state, asking him to take over the case. Tony Krastik was the deputy AG.
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The Premonition
Mary Ann's efforts paid off. One year after John was killed, Tony Krustik took over the case and called a meeting with John Yelnik's friends and family.
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The Premonition
When the prosecutor first looked at the case, he thought it was absurd that Kevin Foley and John's wife Michelle had not been immediate targets of the investigation, despite all the ugliness that swirled around the Yelniks' broken marriage.
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The Premonition
Investigators never questioned Michelle or Kevin. And by the time Krastic took over, it was too late. Kevin Foley had lawyered up and wasn't talking.
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The Premonition
Despite that, Krastik didn't see a conspiracy to protect the trooper. In fact, he says a lot of evidence had been gathered by Blairsville PD and the state police. And he wasn't sure why D.A. Bell hadn't done more with the case.
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The Premonition
The DA told us he was being cautious, wanted more evidence, and welcomed the AG's help. In the case file, Krastik saw that investigators had gone back to interview more of Foley's fellow troopers, and the prosecutor found what they said alarming. What did they learn from them about Kevin's relationship with John?
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The Premonition
Krastic was given security camera video from the two convenience stores near John's house that showed a truck passing by at around 1 a.m., about 30 minutes before John's blood-curdling screams were heard by neighbors. An FBI specialist had tried to match the video to Foley's truck.
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The Premonition
We see his truck. Forensic pathologist Cyril Wecht had described the crime scene as one of the most violent he'd ever seen. The killer had chased John around the house and then slaughtered him, most likely using a single-edged blade.
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The Premonition
The murder weapon was never found, but Krastik was convinced Kevin Foley had the means, the motive, and the opportunity to kill John Yelnik. But still, it wasn't an airtight case. The prosecutor needed more. Remember John Yelnik's fingernail clippings? A year after the murder, they still hadn't been tested for DNA.
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The Premonition
The clippings were sent to the FBI lab. When the results came back, they pointed to Foley. But it wasn't a perfect match.
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The Premonition
That's not a slam dunk in a trial. Well, it's not a slam dunk, no. Maybe not enough for a slam dunk in a trial, but altogether enough to bring charges. On September 27, 2007, nearly a year and a half after John Yelnik was killed, Kevin Foley, a Pennsylvania state trooper, was arrested and charged with first-degree murder. DA Bell was there for the announcement, praising law enforcement.
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The Premonition
A state police commander talked about how difficult that resolution was.
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The Premonition
The murder trial of Trooper Kevin Foley started in March 2009 in the old courthouse in Indiana, Pennsylvania, a small town best known for being the birthplace of an American icon, Jimmy Stewart.
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The Premonition
that premonition about his own murder had come true. But he also predicted it would go unsolved. Would he be right?
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The Premonition
But this case was not going to be tried by some homespun country lawyers. the Deputy Attorney General of Pennsylvania had come to town with a very modern, high-tech presentation.
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The Premonition
As the trial got underway, prosecutor Tony Krastik described John Yelnik's murder in great detail, using 3D animated computer graphics to give jurors a virtual tour of the crime scene and projecting disturbing photos of John's body on the widescreens for all to see.
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The Premonition
Prastic addressed Foley's motive by calling his fellow troopers to the stand. They described how Foley would get enraged when talking about the unproven allegations of child abuse and said he hated John and wanted him to die. On the night John was killed, the prosecutor thinks that hatred may have boiled over because John was going to sign his divorce agreement the next day.
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The Premonition
Krastik methodically laid out his case for the jury. He called Terry Shallow, a director from the athletic shoe company Asics. he'd analyzed the bloody shoe prints found at the crime scene.
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The Premonition
Shallow told the jury the Gel Creed was a limited edition shoe, not sold in western Pennsylvania. But he said there was still a way for the trooper to get a pair.
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The Premonition
So Shallow checked ASICS' records, and right there in the files, he found something to connect Foley.
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The Premonition
Crastic introduced the DNA evidence from John's fingernails. Remember, the FBI analysis wasn't conclusive. They reported a ratio of 1 in 13,000. That result didn't exclude Foley, but it didn't mean the DNA was his beyond any doubt. So Krastic turned to Dr. Mark Perlin, whose bio-information company, CyberGenetics, had developed an innovative new computer technique for analyzing DNA data.
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The Premonition
Had it been used before in court, or was this the first time? It was the first time. At the time of the trial, FBI DNA analysis was still being done by agents, not a supercomputer.
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The Premonition
Perlin's computer analysis in the Foley case had come up with an astonishing result. The prosecutor thought it was the smoking gun. According to Perlin, this was definitely Foley's DNA. 189 billion to one.
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The Premonition
To defense attorneys Richard Galloway and Jeffrey Monzo, the DNA evidence was more a smoke screen than a smoking gun. You tried to discredit the science, the DNA. What was your strategy with that?
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The Premonition
Dennis Vaughn was paying close attention to the jury during the back and forth on the DNA and didn't like what he saw.
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The Premonition
Defense attorneys told the jury Kevin Foley was an innocent man, that on the night of the murder, he played hockey and then went home. They tore into the investigation, not for the reason John's friends and family complained about. They said the opposite. This was a rush to judgment.
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The Premonition
The defense pointed the finger at others, including John's neighbor, Tom Youse. And they called a different neighbor, who described hearing that argument the morning of the murder.
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The Premonition
The defense also told the jury about a convict who reportedly made a jailhouse confession that he killed John Yelnik. The state found that to be somewhat laughable.
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The Premonition
The defense called its most important witness, the defendant, Kevin Foley. The trooper acknowledged his dislike for John Yelnik, but denied any involvement in his murder. And maybe more important than what he said was the way he said it. To many, Foley seemed calm and steady on the witness stand.
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The Premonition
Michelle Yelnik, the victim's wife, the defendant's girlfriend, and the woman at the heart of the story, was conspicuously absent from the courtroom.
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The Premonition
John Yelnik feared he would be killed and predicted there would be no justice afterward. But after eight days of testimony, his murder case went to the jury. The justice system was about to speak.
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The Premonition
It had been a tense trial and Dennis Vaughn was there almost every day.
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The Premonition
The jurors deliberated for four hours and then asked to speak with the judge.
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The Premonition
While Michelle never showed up in court, Mary Ann learned she was paying close attention.
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The Premonition
Finally, after six hours, the jury returned to the courtroom with a verdict. There would be no welcome home party for Kevin Foley. The jury found him guilty of first-degree murder. What's that moment like for you?
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The Premonition
Blairsville is a little town about an hour from Pittsburgh, not a place where big news stories are a common occurrence. But a prosperous young dentist had been murdered in a horrible way, and that got people's attention. Jennifer Mealy, who was a local TV reporter in Pittsburgh, was among the first on the scene.
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The Premonition
He was. Marianne had been a passionate advocate for her cousin. For her, the verdict was an emotional release.
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The Premonition
As pleased as Marianne was about the verdict, there was something that nagged her. One person she believed still had not been held accountable, John's wife, Michelle.
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The Premonition
In fact, before the trial started, Mary Ann had filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Michelle and Foley. In a court filing, Michelle denied any involvement in John's death. She also said she was not aware of and did not fuel any alleged hostility Kevin may have had toward John. Mary Ann dropped the suit after the trial, and Michelle never faced any criminal charges.
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The Premonition
Not long after the trial, Michelle moved out of state to build a new life with JJ and her other children.
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The Premonition
Maria Takaleski has unfinished business with her friend John to relay a message to JJ.
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The Premonition
Kevin Foley was given a life sentence for murdering John Yelnik. That ended the legal case. But what happened in court here had a profound effect on the justice system. Dr. Mark Perlin's technique for DNA analysis is now considered state of the art technology and is accepted in courtrooms around the world.
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The Premonition
And in the quiet community where John Yelnik lived and died, the emotional ripple effects are still being felt.
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The Premonition
It's been years since John Yelnik was killed. But for those who loved him, the grief is still very raw.
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The Premonition
Most of the neighbors could only tell police that John Yelnik was a nice guy. John's closest friends, like Dennis Vaughn, would agree.
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The Premonition
John's friends became his family. And his real family? Well, that was pretty small.
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The Premonition
His partner was his childhood dentist, the guy who inspired him to go into family dentistry.
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The Premonition
John Yelnik dated around for a few years, but when he was in his late 20s, he met the one, Michelle Kamler, and his life would never be the same.
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The Premonition
Everyone at the party noticed John's new girlfriend, including Dennis' father.
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The Premonition
But John was moving full speed ahead. Michelle had two kids, which was fine with him. He'd always dreamed of having a big family. And when John's mother fell ill with pancreatic cancer, Michelle dropped everything to take care of her in her final months.
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The Premonition
Michelle seemed to be everything John needed, too. And in a matter of months, she had a two-carat diamond ring on her finger.
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The Premonition
John's new life as a husband and stepdad was just what he wanted. The one-time bachelor was now involved with school, sports, travel hockey. He even helped take Michelle's kids on road trips with the rest of their team. There's Michelle. John's behind the camera.
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The Premonition
JJ. Suddenly, all of John Yelnik's love and hopes were wrapped up in this little boy.
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The Premonition
They bought a big house with a pool, a bar, and a hot tub. Life was rich and full for a while. But that wasn't the house where police were standing now. This was a small house where John Yelnik was killed. What was the house telling you about the victim?
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The Premonition
And there among the shards of glass and blood-soaked floorboards, police noticed something else. With Easter just three days away, there were Christmas presents still unopened. How had it come to this? What happened to John Yelnik's carefully crafted life?
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The Premonition
At first glance, the scene of Dr. John Yelnik's murder was all blood and chaos. But investigators are trained to make sense of the chaos. And that's where a local legend, forensic pathologist Dr. Cyril Wecht, entered the case.
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The Premonition
Dr. Wecht consulted on sensational cases from the Kennedy assassination to the murder of JonBenet Ramsey. He'd done more than 20,000 autopsies And with his lab just minutes from Blairsville, the local coroner asked that he perform the autopsy on John Jelnik. Dr. Wecht also decided to visit the murder scene.
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A Walk Through the Woods
You're thinking back to interviewing him and thinking, my God, did I interview the killer?
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A Walk Through the Woods
Everyone is descending on Ron Logan's house. You see them hauling away his truck. You see them carrying out stuff. They're there five and six hours. Then we don't hear anything. Emily Longnecker had talked to Logan right after the girls were found. You're thinking back to interviewing him and thinking, my God, did I interview the killer?
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A Walk Through the Woods
Oh, yeah. Somebody called in a tip that one of my male colleagues looked like Bridge Guy. As I understand it, my boss had to sign an affidavit that said this male colleague was at work the day that Abby and Libby disappeared. Nobody was off the table. Nobody.
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A Walk Through the Woods
It took my breath away. Here is this young girl with her friend out on this bridge on a beautiful sunny day. They have no idea what's coming.
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A Walk Through the Woods
I can imagine someone studying that walk over and over and over again and saying, yeah, that looks like somebody I know.
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A Walk Through the Woods
Anthony Schatz? This male model type with his shirt off and smiling and nice pecs and good abs.
Dateline NBC
A Walk Through the Woods
To investigators, Schatz checked a lot of boxes. He was one of the last people to communicate with her before she died. People are starting to think, OK, he's communicating with Libby in the days before her death.
Dateline NBC
A Walk Through the Woods
As we're covering this, we're thinking, okay, maybe this is the guy.
Dateline NBC
A Walk Through the Woods
There was a theory that the girls were killed in a pagan ritual in the woods.
Dateline NBC
A Walk Through the Woods
People lined up, news crews from all over, tons of security. This little, quiet, sleepy town suddenly is ground zero for this trial.
Dateline NBC
A Walk Through the Woods
To watch the jury during that was... They were visibly shaken and emotional. I wish that I had never...
Dateline NBC
A Walk Through the Woods
You're hearing Abby and Libby talk. You're hearing one of them say, is he behind me?
Dateline NBC
A Walk Through the Woods
I will say about this, Jerry, They listened and took notes and leaned into every detail.
Dateline NBC
A Walk Through the Woods
In the police interviews, he's saying, I didn't do it. I didn't do it. This isn't me. And when his wife comes in, He's saying, I didn't do it. You know I couldn't do this.
Dateline NBC
A Walk Through the Woods
You didn't need positive identification from the police. You knew, and you knew it in your gut, and you saw it on the faces of everyone you encountered in that town.
Dateline NBC
The Man of Many Faces
It does. In 2008, she survived a sexual assault. Today, she'll see her attacker once again. And this time, she'll watch him face charges from another accuser. He's a danger. He's a menace. Mary's battle for justice led investigators to more women and sparked an international manhunt. He thrives on hurting people. Now she's hoping he'll finally be stopped.
Dateline NBC
The Man of Many Faces
There was something about the way Nicholas attacked her that made her feel like he'd done this before.
Dateline NBC
The Man of Many Faces
In fact, Mary learned that another woman in Ohio just 15 days earlier reported to police that Nicholas Rossi had sexually assaulted her, but she decided not to pursue it further. In Mary's case, he was charged with public indecency and sexual imposition, which means sexual contact against a person's will. What did he take from you in that moment?
Dateline NBC
The Man of Many Faces
Nicholas pleaded not guilty and the case went to trial. Mary says that's when she was victimized yet again.
Dateline NBC
The Man of Many Faces
But the attack on Mary's credibility didn't work. The judge believed her and convicted Nicholas on both charges. Mary says he showed up to his sentencing wearing a three-piece suit and holding something she'd never seen him with before.
Dateline NBC
The Man of Many Faces
And she thinks his show may have had an effect. Nicholas got no jail time. What did the judge sentence him to?
Dateline NBC
The Man of Many Faces
But that wasn't the last Mary would hear from Nicholas. A few months later, she got word that the judge was taking another look at the case. Nicholas claimed he had new evidence that would clear him.
Dateline NBC
The Man of Many Faces
It implied Mary lied and got Nick arrested because she didn't want her boyfriend to think she cheated on him with Nick.
Dateline NBC
The Man of Many Faces
The judge agreed the post was fake and closed the case, but Nicholas still wouldn't let it go.
Dateline NBC
The Man of Many Faces
So now Mary had to defend herself again against the man who sexually assaulted her. She had to borrow money from her parents to hire an attorney. What emotions are you feeling? It's pretty much fear the whole time. Fear? Yeah.
Dateline NBC
The Man of Many Faces
All the while, Nick cyberstalked her, carrying out an online smear campaign on a men's rights website called A Voice for Men, posting pictures of her and her personal information. Eventually, the case was thrown out and Nicholas was ordered to pay Mary's legal fees. But amazingly, it wasn't over.
Dateline NBC
The Man of Many Faces
not soon after litigation came and what happens this time he loses the case and i get all my lawyer fees paid back it was then that nicholas moved back to rhode island and returned to the state house apparently without anyone there knowing he had a criminal record instead at 23 years old nicholas had a new polished look and a new crusade to change the foster care system
Dateline NBC
The Man of Many Faces
And like a young Jekyll and Hyde, according to police reports, he was also terrorizing women. Nicholas has quite an alleged spree of assaults here in Rhode Island.
Dateline NBC
The Man of Many Faces
The incidents occurred between March of 2010 and May of 2011. One of them involved someone close to Nicholas, his new wife. Nicholas had gotten married, and soon after, police responded to a domestic disturbance call at their apartment.
Dateline NBC
The Man of Many Faces
Tonight, a surprising revelation from her attacker, someone Dateline has been tracking for years. To authorities, he's Nicholas Alaverdean, a convicted sex offender, a con man with multiple identities. But he told us he's an innocent Irish orphan named Arthur Knight, wrongly accused of horrific crimes. So are you saying that they've got the wrong guy?
Dateline NBC
The Man of Many Faces
Nicholas pleaded no contest to domestic abuse and received probation. The couple later divorced. As for several of his other alleged victims, they told Mooney they dropped their complaints. Do you think they were just scared of Nicholas?
Dateline NBC
The Man of Many Faces
His time in Rhode Island seemed to have run its course. He left the state again. Another reinvention was in the making. By 2015, he was 28 years old. He had a new woman in his sights, and she had no idea what was coming.
Dateline NBC
The Man of Many Faces
After his legal troubles in Rhode Island, Nicholas moved back to Dayton, Ohio. And straight out of his playbook, he appeared to dazzle local lawmakers. Here he is speaking at a city council meeting. I think the most important thing to remember here is that... He even started a nonprofit to help revitalize downtown Dayton.
Dateline NBC
The Man of Many Faces
Catherine Heckendorn had a front row seat to the new Nicholas, who had gone back to using his birth name, Aliverdian. She met him in 2015. He was 28 and had joined her church. He immediately piqued her interest.
Dateline NBC
The Man of Many Faces
She found him to be kind and caring. Catherine had just been through a traumatic experience with another man and was feeling vulnerable.
Dateline NBC
The Man of Many Faces
They started meeting for coffee and dinners. They talked about their lives. He said he'd been married once before, but it didn't work out. He told her he was a Harvard grad and shared his dreams about his nonprofit. She found herself falling for him.
Dateline NBC
The Man of Many Faces
After dating for just a few months, to her surprise, he proposed.
Dateline NBC
The Man of Many Faces
She finally gave in, and they married the very next day at City Hall. For Catherine, it was far from the dream wedding she'd always hoped for. And the day after they were married, Nick showed a dark side she'd never seen before.
Dateline NBC
The Man of Many Faces
There was one incident at their house early in their marriage when she was able to call the police.
Dateline NBC
The Man of Many Faces
She says a detective told her something frightening, that her husband was a registered sex offender.
Dateline NBC
The Man of Many Faces
Despite that, she bailed him out and withdrew her complaint. She kept hoping things would get better.
Dateline NBC
The Man of Many Faces
But he became more and more controlling. Catherine says he wouldn't allow her to have a job and forced her to cook and clean and wear skirts with pantyhose.
Dateline NBC
The Man of Many Faces
Everything seemed to be a show, even Nick's nonprofit. He told her he desperately needed an infusion of cash to keep it going. Catherine says she made the mistake of telling him she had a savings account, money her parents had put away for her from the time she was little.
Dateline NBC
The Man of Many Faces
She says the nonprofit accomplished nothing, and she discovered his business wasn't the only thing that was fake. So was his Harvard degree. He'd only taken a course at the Extension School. So he lied. He did. On top of that, he had a taste for the finer things. And Catherine says he was using her money to pay for his lifestyle.
Dateline NBC
The Man of Many Faces
The more he lived it up, the more she lived in constant fear of his explosive temper. Sometimes when they'd argue, she says he would lock her in the bathroom. How long would he leave you in there for? The longest time was about two days.
Dateline NBC
The Man of Many Faces
Yeah. She says the worst of it would come when she refused him in the bedroom.
Dateline NBC
The Man of Many Faces
Catherine knew she had to get out of the marriage, but she also knew Nicholas wouldn't make it easy. She needed proof he was abusing her. This is your big moment. You've got your phone ready to go. You're going to secretly record him. Yeah.
Dateline NBC
The Man of Many Faces
After five months of marriage, Catherine Heckendorn made a decision. She had to leave her husband. The polished church-going man was all an act, and she was going to prove it. You're going to secretly record him to try to show the world the hell that you've been living through.
Dateline NBC
The Man of Many Faces
She immediately sent the recording to her father for safekeeping. It would take two more months before she finally had the courage to walk out the door. She got on her knees and she prayed.
Dateline NBC
The Man of Many Faces
She left everything else behind, even her beloved dogs. Catherine needed to move quickly.
Dateline NBC
The Man of Many Faces
To understand how we got here, we need to go back in time to Rhode Island, the place where Nicholas Oliverdian, the man with many faces and names, was born. It was 1987, just outside of Providence.
Dateline NBC
The Man of Many Faces
Luckily, no one was hurt. She went to her parents' house and the next day called a lawyer and filed for divorce. How was Nicholas handling all this?
Dateline NBC
The Man of Many Faces
Getting a divorce finalized would be a challenge. Nicholas wouldn't show up to court. And when the court officers tried to serve him the divorce papers, it appeared he was playing tricks.
Dateline NBC
The Man of Many Faces
They eventually tracked him down. The judge ordered Nicholas to hand over the dogs and leave their house so Catherine could get her stuff.
Dateline NBC
The Man of Many Faces
Catherine says despite her claims that Nicholas abused and sexually assaulted her, she was too afraid of him to take legal action. But she soon learned powerful law enforcement agencies were investigating him for a different kind of crime.
Dateline NBC
The Man of Many Faces
Nicholas's foster father told Dateline he reported the fraud to local authorities. According to one police report, 10 credit card accounts were opened fraudulently with an estimated $200,000 in charges.
Dateline NBC
The Man of Many Faces
As the FBI was looking into Nicholas for fraud, his name popped up somewhere else. Turns out, after his failed marriage in Ohio, Nicholas had moved back to Rhode Island, which is where Detective Connor O'Donnell was doing a routine check on registered sex offenders.
Dateline NBC
The Man of Many Faces
Nicholas was in the national system for that attack on Mary in the college basement. Something in Nicholas's file caught the detective's attention.
Dateline NBC
The Man of Many Faces
Was he there? No. He had moved, but the detective didn't know where. And that was a problem. Because he was a registered sex offender, he was required to notify the state that he had a new address. He hadn't done that. So a Rhode Island judge issued a new warrant for his arrest.
Dateline NBC
The Man of Many Faces
Michael Aliverdian is Nicholas's uncle. He says behind his nephew's smile was a childhood that was anything but idyllic. What was the family dynamic like with Nicholas when he was a child?
Dateline NBC
The Man of Many Faces
Detective Connor O'Donnell says when Nicholas Rossi found out he was on Rhode Island's most wanted list for not alerting police that he'd moved, he was furious.
Dateline NBC
The Man of Many Faces
The detective was now determined to find him. He contacted the U.S. Marshals, who began a search. They checked his passport and confirmed Nicholas had left the country on a one-way ticket.
Dateline NBC
The Man of Many Faces
By 2018, Nicholas was 31 years old. He had two ex-wives with restraining orders against him, was a convicted sex offender wanted by Rhode Island State Police, and the feds were apparently looking for him too. Even though he'd left the country, his past had followed him. While overseas, he hired attorney Jeff Pine to handle the failure to register as a sex offender charge.
Dateline NBC
The Man of Many Faces
Nicholas had been right. He didn't have to register since he'd left the country. So Pine was able to get the case dismissed. But still, he was careful when dealing with his client.
Dateline NBC
The Man of Many Faces
Nicholas asked him to do one more thing, to see if there were any federal warrants with his name on them. The attorney checked, found one, and called the FBI.
Dateline NBC
The Man of Many Faces
And Nicholas had no idea yet another law enforcement agency was joining the chase.
Dateline NBC
The Man of Many Faces
In Utah, a county attorney named David Levitt was looking into old rape cases that had never been investigated.
Dateline NBC
The Man of Many Faces
It infuriated him that women had filed complaints, subjected themselves to rape exams, but police never followed up. When he took office in 2018, Levitt vowed to change that.
Dateline NBC
The Man of Many Faces
That sex offender was none other than Nicholas Rossi. His DNA was in the system from that assault on fellow college student Mary Grabinski. A detective from Utah reached out to Mary.
Dateline NBC
The Man of Many Faces
Nicholas's father was a felon, convicted of writing fraudulent checks, dealing drugs, and domestic assault. The situation at home in Cranston, a suburb of Providence, became so dangerous, Michael says Nicholas's mother got a restraining order and went into hiding with Nicholas and his younger brother and sister. The couple eventually divorced.
Dateline NBC
The Man of Many Faces
Mary was frustrated to learn the rape case in Utah happened just months after Nicholas attacked her. But that case was never investigated.
Dateline NBC
The Man of Many Faces
So 11 years later in 2019, an investigator reached out to the woman. Her story was eerily familiar. She said she met Nicholas Rossi on MySpace.
Dateline NBC
The Man of Many Faces
So she said she went over to his apartment. She wanted her money back and she wanted to end the relationship.
Dateline NBC
The Man of Many Faces
David Levitt had heard enough. He charged Nicholas with rape. Now his investigators had to find him. But arresting Nicholas Rossi wouldn't be so easy.
Dateline NBC
The Man of Many Faces
While trying to track him down, one of his investigators found Nicholas' obituary, announcing he'd died of cancer. Is that the end of the case?
Dateline NBC
The Man of Many Faces
But how would investigators prove that? That's when we began following Rossi's trail, which would lead us to a hotel in Scotland and that bizarre interview with the man who insisted he wasn't Nicholas.
Dateline NBC
The Man of Many Faces
Detectives from Utah and Rhode Island, along with the FBI, were closing in on Nicholas Rossi. And then came the stunning news. He was dead at the age of 32.
Dateline NBC
The Man of Many Faces
To prosecutor David Leavitt, that was no coincidence. So his team started digging. They subpoenaed Nicholas's financial records and noticed transactions after the day Nick had supposedly died. And they discovered activity on his social media accounts.
Dateline NBC
The Man of Many Faces
When Detective Connor O'Donnell heard of Nicholas's untimely death, his BS radar also went off. He'd been searching for Nicholas for two years. O'Donnell immediately started making calls.
Dateline NBC
The Man of Many Faces
Then a Utah investigator reached out and told him Nicholas was still alive. That was when the detective contacted Father Healy and told him to stop planning the memorial mass. Nicholas wasn't dead.
Dateline NBC
The Man of Many Faces
Detective O'Donnell asked Father Healy to cancel the service, but keep the reason a secret.
Dateline NBC
The Man of Many Faces
He said when Louise, the woman claiming to be Nicholas's widow, heard the mass was off, she did not take it well.
Dateline NBC
The Man of Many Faces
And things only got worse by the time Nicholas turned 12. His mother was unable to care for him, so he ended up in foster care, floating between different families and group homes.
Dateline NBC
The Man of Many Faces
The detective says he contacted other churches and learned Louise had been fishing for funerals all over town, asking priests to hold a memorial mass for Nicholas. You had managed to shut them all down.
Dateline NBC
The Man of Many Faces
Remarkably, O'Donnell says Louise was also reaching out to the Rhode Island State Police, trying to get Nick off their most wanted list.
Dateline NBC
The Man of Many Faces
Meanwhile, the FBI was apparently reaching out to anyone who might know Nicholas's whereabouts. Brian Coogan was in his truck when his phone rang.
Dateline NBC
The Man of Many Faces
The agent said they'd been trying to locate Nicholas through the internet with no luck.
Dateline NBC
The Man of Many Faces
But he says the agent told him Nicholas the computer whiz sent them in circles, never in the location that matched the IP address.
Dateline NBC
The Man of Many Faces
But in December 2021, about two years after Nicholas supposedly died, they finally caught a break. Law enforcement sources say the computer genius had made a mistake. He'd given up his overseas address while online. The trail led authorities to the intensive care unit at this Glasgow hospital. If they had the right man, of all things, it was a severe case of COVID that now had him trapped.
Dateline NBC
The Man of Many Faces
Tom Mooney writes for the Providence Journal and has been reporting on Nicholas for years. He's a consultant on this story. He says despite living through one trauma after the next, Nicholas was determined to make something of his life. A family court judge gave him that chance.
Dateline NBC
The Man of Many Faces
Interpol shared mugshots, photos of his tattoos and fingerprints with local police so they could make an on-the-spot ID.
Dateline NBC
The Man of Many Faces
But not so fast. The man in the hospital insisted he was not Nicholas. He said his name was Arthur Knight, a law-abiding British businessman.
Dateline NBC
The Man of Many Faces
The man calling himself Arthur Knight was determined to prove he was not American fugitive Nicholas Rossi. He insisted he was an Irish orphan and claimed to have an Irish driver's license.
Dateline NBC
The Man of Many Faces
While out on bail, Arthur, with his wife Miranda by his side, organized a press tour from his flat in Glasgow. He used a wheelchair and wore an oxygen mask, he said, because of the effects of COVID.
Dateline NBC
The Man of Many Faces
We came to Scotland to get to the bottom of this mystery. Was Arthur Knight the victim of a colossal case of mistaken identity? Or was he trying to pull off his biggest con yet? We caught up with investigative reporter Jane McSorley.
Dateline NBC
The Man of Many Faces
For her Audible podcast called I Am Not Nicholas, she got up close and personal with Arthur when he and his wife Miranda invited her over for dinner.
Dateline NBC
The Man of Many Faces
Jane knew there was one sure way to find out. After dining on Miranda's champagne chicken dinner, She asked Arthur to roll up his sleeves to see if he had the same tattoos as Nicholas Rossi.
Dateline NBC
The Man of Many Faces
Not only that, he pulled up mug shots that had Nicholas Rossi's tattooed arms on his big screen TV. Is your heart kind of just pounding, you know, as you're waiting for this moment?
Dateline NBC
The Man of Many Faces
Moment. It felt like it was, it just felt like it was slow-mo. He rolled up his left sleeve as far as his elbow. She couldn't believe what she was seeing or not seeing.
Dateline NBC
The Man of Many Faces
That was just the beginning of Jane's reporting. There was so much more to uncover. This was a roller coaster for you.
Dateline NBC
The Man of Many Faces
It was a roller coaster for us, too. Our reporting led us to a TV personality named Nafsika Antipas. She'd done business with Arthur Knight.
Dateline NBC
The Man of Many Faces
It was the perfect fit for Nicholas, and he became a fixture at Rhode Island's seat of power.
Dateline NBC
The Man of Many Faces
Although he used the name Nicholas Brown, he said his full name was... Timothy Arthur Nicholas Knight Brown. In 2020, Nafsika was looking for help marketing her vegan cheese company called Nafsika's Garden.
Dateline NBC
The Man of Many Faces
and promoting the fourth season of her A&E television show, Plant-Based, by Nafsika. She scanned through resumes on Upwork, an online marketplace for freelancers, and found Nicholas Brown. She says he was highly rated on the site. Tell us about his resume.
Dateline NBC
The Man of Many Faces
Now, Sika agreed to pay him a fee of around $7,000 a month. She was based in Montreal. He claimed to be in Ireland, so they never met in person.
Dateline NBC
The Man of Many Faces
It quickly became obvious the man she hired from Upwork was more like no work. She says he always had an excuse for why nothing was getting done.
Dateline NBC
The Man of Many Faces
At one point, he pitched an idea about creating a new company with Nefseka.
Dateline NBC
The Man of Many Faces
So she agreed, but she never gave him access to her bank accounts or credit cards. She did, however, give him a copy of her passport.
Dateline NBC
The Man of Many Faces
But again, nothing. So after paying him nearly $30,000 over four months with no work completed, Nafsika cut him off.
Dateline NBC
The Man of Many Faces
Former state representative Brian Coogan says the teenager impressed everyone with a tireless work ethic and a brilliant mind.
Dateline NBC
The Man of Many Faces
When she didn't respond, she says he sent threatening texts about a contract that she says never existed. If she didn't pay him about $40,000 or a reasonable counteroffer, he would ruin her reputation. He had created a fraud alert website using her passport photo like a mugshot and was planning to tell the world her company was a sham.
Dateline NBC
The Man of Many Faces
The threatening texts kept coming and coming Nafsika didn't give in to his scare tactics and told him he was officially fired.
Dateline NBC
The Man of Many Faces
Two years later, Nefseka found out why. She learned the man she'd been dealing with wasn't in Ireland, and he wasn't Nicholas Brown, the name she knew him by. He was living in Scotland, claiming to be Arthur Knight. He's finally been arrested. Then she got another call. It said Utah FBI on her caller ID. The agent asked for her help finding Nicholas.
Dateline NBC
The Man of Many Faces
After his arrest in the hospital, he appeared before a judge and continued to insist he was Arthur Knight, not Nicholas Rossi, the American fugitive. So now the judge had to rule first on his identity before deciding if he should be extradited.
Dateline NBC
The Man of Many Faces
Nicholas spent long days at the statehouse wowing legislators before returning home to his other life.
Dateline NBC
The Man of Many Faces
Months went by with hearing after hearing, but no ruling from the judge. How can you possibly claim not to be Nicholas Rossi now?
Dateline NBC
The Man of Many Faces
Did you kidnap anyone? Did you defraud anyone? In one of our most memorable interviews.
Dateline NBC
The Man of Many Faces
More than four months had passed since Arthur Knight's arrest in a Scottish hospital. He was still out on bail, waiting for a judge to decide if he was telling the truth about his identity. It was April 2022. Arthur, along with his wife Miranda, agreed to speak to us remotely.
Dateline NBC
The Man of Many Faces
Arthur told us he began life as an orphan in Ireland. He said he was adopted. I grew up all over. Dublin, Belfast. He said he later moved to London and through grit and determination worked his way up the corporate ladder in communications.
Dateline NBC
The Man of Many Faces
Coogan was so taken with Nicholas and everything he'd been through that he briefly considered adopting him. That didn't work out. By 19, Nicholas aged out of the system and later went to college. Five years after that, he was back at the statehouse, this time fighting to bring change to the foster care system.
Dateline NBC
The Man of Many Faces
They said they were friends at first. She was in a relationship and busy with her career.
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The Man of Many Faces
But several years later, they said they met up again. Romance blossomed.
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The Man of Many Faces
And in February of 2020, the same month that Nicholas Alliverdian supposedly died, Arthur and Miranda got married.
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The Man of Many Faces
Less than two years later, their world fell apart. It was December of 2021 when Arthur was hospitalized with COVID. Miranda said a nurse told her he probably wouldn't make it.
Dateline NBC
The Man of Many Faces
She said Arthur was in a medically induced coma and put on a ventilator. After three months, though, he woke up. So Arthur makes it through this, but your whole world has been turned upside down.
Dateline NBC
The Man of Many Faces
She heard police calling Arthur Nicholas Rossi. They said that international law enforcement agencies were trying to bring him back to the United States.
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The Man of Many Faces
To try to clear up the question of his identity, is he Arthur or is he Nicholas? I asked if I could get a better look at him.
Dateline NBC
The Man of Many Faces
He never took it off. And he didn't have answers to a lot of our questions either. Did you say you were adopted? I was, yes. At what age? I am not certain. He was also evasive when we asked him if we could see his birth certificate.
Dateline NBC
The Man of Many Faces
No, they're not. The FBI rarely comments on active investigations. But remember, several people we interviewed told us the FBI contacted and questioned them, including Nefsika Antipas.
Dateline NBC
The Man of Many Faces
When we asked Arthur about Nafsika, he seemed rattled and denied her claims that he stole from her and failed to do any work. Nafsika says that you scammed her out of tens of thousands of dollars.
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The Man of Many Faces
We found one state rep who remembers Nicholas as a young, shining star on the Hill.
Dateline NBC
The Man of Many Faces
No, no, no, no. His wife Miranda said he was 100% telling the truth. And if he was a serial rapist, she would know.
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The Man of Many Faces
In 2011, Representative Raymond Hull was newly elected when he was approached by Nicholas. He describes him as a young man with a tenacious spirit, determined to make a difference.
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The Man of Many Faces
He told us this whole misunderstanding was the handiwork of David Levitt.
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The Man of Many Faces
And he was about to go after Levitt with a vengeance. You've never been attacked like this, to this level.
Dateline NBC
The Man of Many Faces
In the spring of 2022, Arthur continued to seek media attention. He called another press conference, this time to introduce his new defense attorney, Craig Johnson, who'd flown all the way from Utah to Scotland. Do you believe...
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The Man of Many Faces
Johnson said Arthur reached out to him, probably not by coincidence, since Johnson once worked for Utah County Attorney David Leavitt. Johnson told us he left the prosecutor's office after a dispute with Levitt, but said that had nothing to do with him taking on Arthur Knight as a client. Still, he was quick to criticize his former boss.
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The Man of Many Faces
Johnson said David Levitt crossed the line speaking so openly about the allegations of rape and fake identity against his client.
Dateline NBC
The Man of Many Faces
Levitt disagrees, saying he's been careful not to discuss specifics of the case. We pressed Johnson on why he was so sure Arthur Knight was telling the truth about his identity. Has he shown you his face?
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The Man of Many Faces
He said he'd also seen what Nicholas Rossi looked like. And you believe when you see his face that that is not the same man?
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The Man of Many Faces
We decided to check with someone who knows Nicholas well. We asked Mary Grabinski if she thought Arthur was Nicholas. Have you watched the videos, the interviews with him?
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The Man of Many Faces
DCYF, the Department of Children, Youth, and Families, The agency Nicholas claimed failed to protect him as a teenager. And I was subjected to torture, beatings, assault in various forms. Nicholas sued DCYF. They denied the allegations and the case was ultimately settled.
Dateline NBC
The Man of Many Faces
But he continued to make his case, and he even tried a new tactic, sabotaging the reputation of the man who was responsible for his arrest, Utah prosecutor David Levitt.
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The Man of Many Faces
Levitt was not only working to extradite Rossi, he was also running for re-election. And just days before the polls opened, he says his campaign was sabotaged by the man calling himself Arthur Knight.
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The Man of Many Faces
Arthur posted this on his website. Breaking news, David Levitt is confirmed to be head of a criminal Utah cult. This goes deep. This is like a thriller.
Dateline NBC
The Man of Many Faces
Arthur cited the Utah County Sheriff's Office as the source of his allegations. The sheriff was a vocal critic of Levitz and backed his opponent in the prosecutor's race. The sheriff denied that he had been Arthur's source. Regardless, the story was out there. How do you defend yourself against allegations like that when someone is, you know, putting them out there like they're fact.
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The Man of Many Faces
Levitt lost his election and believes Nicholas Rossi was partly to blame.
Dateline NBC
The Man of Many Faces
Although Levitt was out of office, the case against Arthur Knight slash Nicholas Rossi kept going, and he would continue to grab headlines.
Dateline NBC
The Man of Many Faces
And a Scottish judge would finally make a ruling on his identity. Arthur Knight was back in the headlines. Instead of going to a court hearing, he checked himself into the hospital again for COVID complications. Not long after, police were called to his room. He assaulted a doctor and a nurse.
Dateline NBC
The Man of Many Faces
The details of the settlement are sealed, but the stories Nicholas told people about his experience brought him sympathy and some powerful allies.
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The Man of Many Faces
Arthur had flown into a rage when he was told he would be discharged. Several articles quoted the female doctor who said, And that was a good reason at that point to restrict his bail. He was sent to jail, and after a quick trial, he was convicted of assault. But Arthur's biggest day in court was right around the corner.
Dateline NBC
The Man of Many Faces
Almost a year after he was first arrested, a judge was hearing arguments about Arthur's identity. Was he a British businessman or an American fugitive? Reporter Jane McSorley was in the courtroom.
Dateline NBC
The Man of Many Faces
The Scottish prosecutor presented evidence showing that while Arthur's forearms were free of tattoos, his upper arms did have them and they were identical to Nicholas Rossi's. When Arthur took the stand, he had an explanation.
Dateline NBC
The Man of Many Faces
Jaws dropped in the courtroom as he told the judge they were inked on his arms while he was unconscious.
Dateline NBC
The Man of Many Faces
It's kids. And you know what? Kids are more important. Nicholas reconnected with his uncle, Michael Aliverdian. Michael says he was impressed at the man his nephew had become.
Dateline NBC
The Man of Many Faces
In the old police photos, Nicholas Rossi had tattoos on his entire left arm. Remember, Jane didn't see the upper part of his arm when she interviewed him, only his forearm, and it was free of tattoos. Shortly after that visit, she learned why.
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The Man of Many Faces
And what about a more traditional way of making an ID? Fingerprints? They were also a match, but Arthur tried to explain that away too. He said they were taken by a hospital worker without his knowledge and sent to Utah so prosecutor Levitt could claim they were Rossi's.
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The Man of Many Faces
How did that feel when you heard that the judge had ruled that you are not Arthur Knight, you are Nicholas Rossi?
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The Man of Many Faces
Finally, Nicholas Rossi could be extradited to the U.S. But he filed appeal after appeal, and despite the judge's ruling, he never stopped claiming they had the wrong man.
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The Man of Many Faces
All the while, Nicholas's wife Miranda stood by his side, even after the judge's decision. Was she lying? Jane believes so and says she has proof. While reporting for her podcast, Jane uncovered a recording of Louise, the woman who claimed to be Nicholas's widow. Louise was the one trying to arrange his funeral.
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The Man of Many Faces
Miranda hasn't been charged with anything. She was a lot less chatty than during our interview when we caught up with her at one of Nicholas's extradition hearings in Edinburgh.
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The Man of Many Faces
The legal battle to extradite Rossi continued for more than a year. It finally ended in December 2023, when he lost his last appeal. Now it's over.
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The Man of Many Faces
In the U.S., his legal troubles were just beginning, and his behavior would be no less dramatic.
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The Man of Many Faces
And he continued to do that for the next several years. But his crusade was about to be cut short. He contacted the press in Rhode Island with a tragic announcement.
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The Man of Many Faces
And things were about to get even weirder. The con man had another revelation. Big, big twist in this case.
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The Man of Many Faces
Nicholas Rossi is facing two rape charges in Utah, one here in Salt Lake County and one in Utah County. On January 5th, 2024, deputies booked Nicholas Rossi into a Utah County jail. The long saga to bring him to justice in the U.S. seemed to be entering its final phase for everyone but him.
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The Man of Many Faces
The judge denied that request. Then, months later, in a stunning turn of events, Nicholas had a revelation. It all went down in a Utah courtroom. All rise. In a hearing about one of the 2008 rape charges, Rossi asked the judge to be let out on bail. The prosecutor argued that was a bad idea.
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The Man of Many Faces
The lead detective took the stand and backed up the victim's fears. He testified about Nicholas Rossi's history of terrorizing women.
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The Man of Many Faces
And about Nicholas's attempt to evade the law by faking his death, escaping to England, and assuming a new identity.
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The Man of Many Faces
Then, the moment we'd all been waiting for, the defense called Nicholas to the stand.
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The Man of Many Faces
And less than two months later, the news was out. Nicholas Aliverdian was dead at the age of 32.
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The Man of Many Faces
After more than three years of deceiving the world about his identity, he admitted it was a big lie. Not only that, he told the court he had a
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The Man of Many Faces
He said the death threats were due to his work in Rhode Island trying to reform the Department of Children, Youth and Families. But when asked the names of the people allegedly threatening him?
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The Man of Many Faces
The judge cleared the courtroom so Rossi could reveal in secret who was after him. When the proceedings reopened, the prosecutor countered, if Nicholas was so concerned about hiding his identity, why did he create a media circus?
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The Man of Many Faces
We asked former prosecutor Levitt to weigh in on Nicholas's revelation. Big, big twist in this case.
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The Man of Many Faces
But before long, new information about Nicholas would start making its way around Rhode Island, leaving everyone wondering how well they really knew him.
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The Man of Many Faces
Levitt believes Rossi's admission is more legal strategy than change of heart. He says Nicholas had no chance of getting bail if he didn't admit his real identity.
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The Man of Many Faces
Regardless of his admission, the prosecutor argued Rossi should stay behind bars.
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The Man of Many Faces
Rossi's legal proceedings continued. Two months later, he was back in a different Utah courtroom for the other rape charge. That's when Mary came to Salt Lake City to see her attacker right where she thinks he belongs.
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The Man of Many Faces
And she knows she's the reason he's there. Because had you not pushed and then him ending up on the registry, that connection would not have been made to Utah.
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The Man of Many Faces
Getting to the bottom of what happened to Nicholas would become a game of cat and mouse, spanning three countries, involving multiple law enforcement agencies.
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The Man of Many Faces
When it came time for the hearing to begin, instead of appearing in person, Rossi was on video from jail. Not what Mary expected, but an experience she calls a win.
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The Man of Many Faces
Rossi pleaded not guilty to both rape charges. His attorney said Nicholas and his wife Miranda are still happily married.
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The Man of Many Faces
On December 3rd, Nicholas was offered a plea deal that would cover both rape charges. He has until January 7th to decide if he will accept it. Otherwise, he is expected to go to trial in April of 2025. As for David Levitt, even though the journey to prosecute Nicholas Rossi turned his life upside down, the former prosecutor says he has no regrets. And now he has something else to occupy his time.
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The Man of Many Faces
What did David Levitt do after leaving office? He bought this fixer-upper Scottish castle called Knockderry. And it just happens to be 50 miles from where Nicholas Rossi was caught. Some people here in Scotland are calling this castle your F.U. castle.
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The Man of Many Faces
Mary and Nick's ex-wife, Catherine, are relieved Rossi is behind bars. And they hope he will stay locked up for a very long time.
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The Man of Many Faces
Me? You're being looked at for kidnapping, sexual assault, fraud. Incorrect. With a conclusion stranger than fiction. Did this case just keep getting crazier and crazier?
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The Man of Many Faces
Both Mary and Catherine are now married with children, working to put Nicholas in their rearview mirror. What do you want to get across? What's the most important part of all of this?
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The Man of Many Faces
His obituary, sent out by the Office of Nicholas Aliverdian, ran in local papers in the Boston Globe. The piece lauded Nicholas as a beloved community leader, peacemaker, warrior, and Rhode Island legislators paid tribute to him.
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The Man of Many Faces
Father Bernard Healy of Our Lady of Mercy Catholic Church got a call from a woman who said she was Nicholas's widow, a woman named Louise. Louise.
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The Man of Many Faces
So she sent Nicholas's bio for the priest to reference at the mass.
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The Man of Many Faces
Oh, my gosh. He faked his own death? But why would a respected man who'd become such a positive force for change try to fool everyone? Turns out he had a darker side, and it apparently emerged early in his life.
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The Man of Many Faces
David Rossi is Nicholas's adoptive father. Nicholas was eight when David married his mom in 1996. The two fell in love in a Rhode Island nightclub where David was an Engelbert Humperdinck impersonator who mingled with his idol and sang his hit songs.
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The Man of Many Faces
That's when Nicholas Aliverdian became Nicholas Rossi. Even at a young age, David could tell he was a bright kid.
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The Man of Many Faces
Along with those threats came physical violence by Nicholas. David remembers one morning before school when Nicholas wouldn't stop hitting his mother.
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The Man of Many Faces
David says it got to the point where Nicholas's behavior was so bad they had to institutionalize him several times. But nothing seemed to work. They threw him out of there. Nobody could handle him. David admits he eventually hit a breaking point. When Nicholas was 10 years old, the family took a trip to Disney World. He says Nicholas attacked his mother again.
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The Man of Many Faces
David was arrested for assault in Florida, but Nicholas's mom asked to have the charges dropped, and the case went nowhere. Shortly after, David walked out on the family. That was about the time Nicholas ended up in foster care. It was a few years later when state rep Ryan Coogan considered adopting him. Did he straight up ask you, will you adopt me?
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The Man of Many Faces
Nicholas was 14 when he called Brian one day from the courthouse crying. He said he was about to be shipped off to yet another group home if he wasn't adopted that very day. Brian raced over to the courthouse.
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The Man of Many Faces
Since records involving children are sealed, the allegations made against Nicholas can't be verified. Coogan took the judge's advice and didn't adopt Nicholas, and maybe dodged a bullet. Veteran reporter Tom Mooney thinks so.
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The Man of Many Faces
When Nick was 18, he moved to Ohio. He was about to age out of the foster care system when a couple from Dayton agreed to take him in. In 2008, at age 21, he began attending Sinclair Community College in Dayton. That's when he first met Mary Grabinski.
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The Man of Many Faces
She told Nicholas she had a boyfriend and wasn't interested in anything romantic. He assured her it was not a problem. Soon after, they agreed to meet for lunch at the school cafeteria and she brought along a friend.
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The Man of Many Faces
Afterward, Nick asked Mary if he could walk her to her next class. Since it was the middle of the day on a busy college campus, she thought, why not? Her classroom was in the basement.
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The Man of Many Faces
But in that basement, Mary encountered a terrifying version of Nicholas Alaverdean.
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The Man of Many Faces
Mary Grabinski arrived in Salt Lake City on a mission. One that began a long time ago.
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The Man of Many Faces
In the winter of 2008 on an Ohio college campus, 21-year-old Nicholas Rossi walked Mary Grabinski to class. Once they reached the bottom of a stairwell, she says Nick suddenly turned on her.
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The Man of Many Faces
She saw another student coming down the stairs, but Mary was too paralyzed to scream.
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The Man of Many Faces
She says when her class was over, he was back. Nicholas was standing outside her classroom. When he saw her, he profusely apologized.
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The Man of Many Faces
Mary ignored him and went straight to the campus police. After starting an investigation, they sent her to the local prosecutor's office.
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Unchecked Evil
The first thing detectives noticed, burn marks on the back seat and the overwhelming stench of gasoline. What was that telling you?
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Unchecked Evil
But he obviously failed because the car was intact. Failed miserably. Inside the car, they found ATM receipts from different banks from the night Reagan disappeared. Though only $60 had been withdrawn from her account, police suspected she'd been forced to withdraw the money as part of a robbery. Also inside the car, they found cigarette butts. Do you know if Reagan smokes?
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Unchecked Evil
which made her final moments all the more incomprehensible. Terrified and alone in that darkened field.
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Unchecked Evil
So this could potentially, these butts could be the killers. And with butts come... DNA. They rushed the cigarettes off for testing. Did you find her cell phone?
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Unchecked Evil
Police started calling around to see if that can had been bought in the area. They got a hit at a Columbus gas station. Surveillance video?
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Unchecked Evil
Was this Reagan's killer? Detectives weren't sure, but that's not the only video they uncovered. Here's Reagan withdrawing money at one of those ATMs. Next to her, a shadowy figure in the passenger seat. But who was he? And most importantly, where was he? With their friend's murderer at large. Regan's roommates were too scared to return to their apartment.
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Unchecked Evil
Turns out they had good reason to be afraid. Because around Columbus, Ohio, Regan's murder wasn't the only recent act of violence.
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Unchecked Evil
It's hard to imagine the torment Reagan's parents experienced in the days after her murder. The grief, the what-ifs, the impossible question. Could they have done anything to prevent their daughter's senseless death?
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Unchecked Evil
And in Toby's mind, that included going home after working a night shift near downtown Columbus.
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Unchecked Evil
And in the weeks before Reagan's murder, vigilance was called for, especially in an around German village, a historic section of town not far from Bodega.
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Unchecked Evil
Josie Merkel, a local theater actress, was the first resident to come face-to-face with violence.
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Unchecked Evil
Evil. For Reagan's family, the way she was taken from them wasn't just heartbreaking, it was infuriating. Is this a crime that never should have happened?
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Unchecked Evil
And then, as suddenly as he appeared, the attacker was gone. And then after, he just left. Near the same neighborhood, several days later, Vanessa Edwards was on her way to work in the early morning when she noticed a man with a hoodie and a mask walking toward her.
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Unchecked Evil
And this time, the mysterious attacker was armed with more than his fists.
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Unchecked Evil
Columbus PD had a crime spree on its hands when three more people were assaulted around German Village. They increased patrols, but couldn't prevent the masked assailant from striking again. Just two days before Reagan disappeared, Julianne Beatty was taking some luggage out of the trunk of her car when she felt something against the back of her head. It was a gun.
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Unchecked Evil
The attacks, a total of seven in less than three weeks, were all over the news.
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Unchecked Evil
Now, in his fog of grief, Reagan's father didn't make any connections between the attacks and his daughter's death. But one of the victims did.
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Unchecked Evil
Were they connected? The attacks happened miles away from where Reagan's body was found, in a different police district. So maybe not. Lieutenant Davidson had been on Reagan's case nonstop for more than 30 hours when he thought about getting some rest. He'd barely been home when his phone rang at 10.30. One of his detectives was on the line.
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Unchecked Evil
Our story begins on a college campus that had long been Reagan's dream. Her dad, Toby, took her to an Ohio State football game when she was little. He and her mom, Lisa, say that was it.
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Unchecked Evil
It was a huge break, and what it revealed would stun this veteran investigator. What does he tell you?
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Unchecked Evil
Reagan's wake took place in the church where she and her family celebrated their faith. But when someone so young, so innocent, is suddenly gone, it's hard to say goodbye.
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Unchecked Evil
The journey of healing had just begun, and step one in that long, painful process was bringing Reagan's killer to justice. That was Lieutenant Davidson's job. Two days after the murder, he had a DNA hit from Reagan's car and a name. And to the lieutenant's surprise, it was a name he knew. Brian Lee Goolsbee. He put him behind bars for attempted rape and robbery six years earlier.
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Unchecked Evil
Lieutenant Davidson learned that Goolsbee was released three months before Reagan's murder and was living in a house less than a half mile from where her car was found. He sent a SWAT team to make the arrest and bring him in.
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Unchecked Evil
Investigators had Goolsbee's DNA inside Reagan's car. He quickly copped to robbing her.
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Unchecked Evil
You get him in the car with her. You get him going to the ATM with her. I mean, you're getting close. But are you getting a confession?
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Unchecked Evil
This person is not real. This person is not real. This is fictitious character that you're... Does he take the bait?
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Unchecked Evil
Reagan's dad, Toby, showed up to Goolsbee's first court appearance. How do you feel when you're there and you're seeing him, this man that did this to your daughter?
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Unchecked Evil
But what the family found out next turned their devastation and anger into unmitigated fury.
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Unchecked Evil
So this is a man out on parole with an ankle monitor and he's out committing crimes. heinous crimes.
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Unchecked Evil
In March 2018, Brian Goolsbee went on trial and was convicted for Reagan's murder.
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Unchecked Evil
Madison, Jackie, Kirsten, and Stephanie were her college roommates. She had a goofy streak to her. Oh, yeah.
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Unchecked Evil
They first learned that Goolsbee had been out of prison for just a few months. And in prison, he had a history of bad behavior. Still, by Ohio law, there was no way to extend his sentence. This man had 52 violations in prison?
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Unchecked Evil
Goolsbee, a registered sex offender, was assigned a parole officer. And what the Toks family learned next made them sick to their core. At the time of Reagan's murder, Goolsbee was wearing an ankle monitor.
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Unchecked Evil
When I hear someone has an ankle monitor, I always thought it meant like if they went outside of their zone or past their curfew, that an alarm would go off somewhere and the police would show up immediately and arrest them.
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Unchecked Evil
No. The Toks family was surprised to learn that police don't have direct access to the GPS data from ankle monitors. It's usually collected by private companies that make and sell the devices and then share the data with parole officers. The information generally isn't monitored by law enforcement in real time.
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Unchecked Evil
And sure enough, a look back at Goolsbee's GPS trail revealed he was the masked assailant who for weeks had been terrorizing Columbus.
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Unchecked Evil
So this is a man out on parole with an ankle monitor, and he's out committing heinous crimes.
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Unchecked Evil
State of Ohio Representative Kristen Boggs lives two blocks from where Goolsbee kidnapped Reagan. Could an astute detective with all the robberies have maybe looked at a list of parolees in the area and connected the dots?
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Unchecked Evil
To earn some extra cash, Reagan applied for a job at this popular Columbus restaurant called Bodega. Kirsten and Stephanie worked there too.
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Unchecked Evil
After Reagan's murder, Boggs decided to investigate, and possibly legislate. She discovered that GPS monitors can be, and sometimes are, set up to send alerts if an offender violates a curfew or moves into a restricted area. But in Goolsbee's case, Boggs says Ohio's Department of Rehabilitation and Correction, or DRC, told her this.
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Unchecked Evil
So no geographic restrictions and no curfew programmed into it. What's the point of it? Exactly. Is part of it that it's supposed to be a deterrent of some kind?
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Unchecked Evil
Martin Horn, the former commissioner of probation for New York City and a critic of GPS monitors, is not surprised by any of this. Is this a false sense of security?
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Unchecked Evil
There are no national statistics on crimes committed by people wearing GPS monitors. But we did our own search of news reports and found numerous cases over a two-year span. Armed robberies, rapes, and more than a dozen homicides. For instance, a man in Virginia murdered his cousin while wearing an ankle monitor. A similar story in Houston, where a parolee with a monitor murdered his mother.
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Unchecked Evil
And in California, a GPS-tracked sex offender pled guilty to multiple sex crimes stemming from assaults on a hiking trail.
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Unchecked Evil
By February 2017, Regan was just months away from graduation. She made a difficult decision. She and her college boyfriend broke up. She was so heartbroken that week.
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Unchecked Evil
Ohio's DRC declined our request for an interview, citing pending litigation. The Toks family sued for wrongful death, but the case was dismissed.
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Unchecked Evil
Toby and Lisa have teamed up with Kristen Boggs and other Ohio lawmakers to introduce a bill called the Reagan-Tokes Act. The law would mandate that restrictions are placed on every GPS monitor and make it easier for police to see monitor information. It would also allow the sentences of badly behaving prisoners, like Brian Goolsbee, to be extended.
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Unchecked Evil
The sentencing part of the bill was signed into law in 2018. The part that deals with GPS monitors is pending. The Ohio governor has also directed the DRC to make changes after a task force recommended many of the same reforms the family has been pushing.
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Unchecked Evil
Toby, Lisa and Mackenzie are also working hard to create a legacy for Reagan that honors her bright spirit.
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Unchecked Evil
They're promoting self-defense training for women. They want to see classes like these taught at colleges and high schools nationwide. Reagan will undoubtedly save lives.
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Unchecked Evil
I'm sure he has. And they're holding rallies and raising money for a foundation that will give annual scholarships in Reagan's name.
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Unchecked Evil
We would like to take a moment to remember... On a blue-sky spring day, the girl who wanted so badly to go to Ohio State did get to graduate. Reagan's family accepted a posthumous degree on her behalf.
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Unchecked Evil
And that spot, that lonely park where Regan lost her life, that's been transformed. It's now a tranquility garden in her memory.
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Unchecked Evil
Days later, on February 8th, she headed off for an evening shift at Bodega.
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Unchecked Evil
Like you had a million times before? Exactly. Reagan's dad expected to get a call from her after work. They spoke almost every day. But the call never came.
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Unchecked Evil
The next morning, Kirsten got an uneasy feeling too when she passed Reagan's empty room. They were supposed to walk to class together.
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Unchecked Evil
But by early afternoon, it was clear no one had heard from Reagan since she left work the night before. What are you thinking happened to her?
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Unchecked Evil
They went to the last place Reagan was seen, Bodega, and the manager called in a missing persons report. As they waited for police to arrive, Kirsten overheard two employees talking about an online news story.
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Unchecked Evil
Hours earlier, a man driving into a park in a Columbus suburb 10 miles away had spotted something.
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Unchecked Evil
Grove City Police Lieutenant Brian Davidson was on the scene within minutes.
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Unchecked Evil
Davidson thought it might be a runaway they were looking for from a neighboring county. But then he got word that an OSU student was missing. Detectives responded to Bodega. One of their first questions for Reagan's friends, did she have a tattoo? The answer was yes.
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Unchecked Evil
In Florida, where Regan's parents lived, they spent the afternoon working the phones, frantically waiting for news. All they knew was that no one had seen or heard from their daughter since the night before.
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Unchecked Evil
As sure as police were that Reagan was their victim, official identification would still have to be made by a family member. Reagan's uncle lived within driving distance.
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Unchecked Evil
Reagan was gone at just 21 years old. Now that their victim had a name, police had to figure out who killed her. Brian Davidson supervised the detective division. Any risk factors in her life? Was she into drugs? Anything that you found that could have led her down this path somehow?
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Unchecked Evil
Regan spent her free time taking mission trips with her church and was planning a career in psychology.
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Unchecked Evil
At OSU, Reagan's roommates say that she was all about making friends, not enemies.
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Unchecked Evil
So there didn't seem to be anything in Reagan's history that would help shed light on what happened to her. Yet to detectives' eyes, Regan's murder seemed personal. Is your gut telling you this is someone she knew?
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Unchecked Evil
Remember, Regan and her boyfriend had just broken up. His name was Jake. Regan's friends thought he was a sweetheart. We were just like, no, absolutely not.
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Unchecked Evil
But of course, that's not the way a detective thinks. Just the breakup alone could be a red flag.
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Unchecked Evil
The detective asked to look at Jake's phone. Something he said about Reagan after she died caught his eye.
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Unchecked Evil
But there were other leads to chase, including one from an unlikely source.
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Unchecked Evil
Reg and Tok's friends were living a nightmare. A day earlier, she'd been the beating heart of their group. Now, she was dead, ripped from their lives in such a violent way.
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Unchecked Evil
Trying to figure out who killed her was equally confusing. They felt it couldn't be Reagan's ex-boyfriend. Her disappearance had hit him hard.
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Unchecked Evil
Truth be told, their list had no promising names on it. So they traced Regan's steps that last day, starting with the moment she left her apartment for work that afternoon. Rick Forney was the lead detective on the case.
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Unchecked Evil
They also took a look at Bodega's surveillance video. Here, you can see Reagan walking out after her shift around 9.45 p.m.
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Unchecked Evil
There was no customer that was giving her a hard time or anybody who had been stalking her, following her.
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Unchecked Evil
A caring friend, a devoted daughter, she radiated life from her very first breath.
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Unchecked Evil
Police did receive a tip that a man posing as an Uber driver had been preying on intoxicated women around town. There were several attacks and even an alleged rape surrounding this man posing as a driver?
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Unchecked Evil
But that didn't seem to fit Reagan's case. She'd driven herself to work.
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Unchecked Evil
Perhaps Reagan's car was the key. No one had seen it since she was murdered. Big city, Reagan's car could literally be anywhere.
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Unchecked Evil
They entered Reagan's plates into a police database that tracks vehicles nationwide. It turned up nothing. So detectives tried another private database, one that collects information from license plate readers mounted on commercial vehicles.
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A mom's desperate search to find her daughter. Tears and fury in an Ohio courtroom. And the latest in the Karen Read case.
The judge has not ruled yet, but that could be a big deal for both sides, right? Whatever this decision is.
Dateline NBC
A mom's desperate search to find her daughter. Tears and fury in an Ohio courtroom. And the latest in the Karen Read case.
There were no words, just a pin drop sharing her location. Jasmine never came home after that. Sensing something was wrong, Jasmine's mother Katrina and her family went into investigation mode. They went to the location of the pin drop, a condo complex where the family forced open the door to an apartment.
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A mom's desperate search to find her daughter. Tears and fury in an Ohio courtroom. And the latest in the Karen Read case.
So much going on in this case. All right. For our next story, we're headed to California, the Bay Area, where there's a new development in a wild case from 2015, which we covered at Dateline. It also got a lot of attention about a year ago when Netflix put out a doc series on it. That's right.
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A mom's desperate search to find her daughter. Tears and fury in an Ohio courtroom. And the latest in the Karen Read case.
I remember this story very well. Investigators did not believe him. They thought he had killed Denise. Then two days after she went missing, Denise Huskins walked into her parents' house to say, yes, she had in fact been kidnapped and raped repeatedly.
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A mom's desperate search to find her daughter. Tears and fury in an Ohio courtroom. And the latest in the Karen Read case.
And that's when people started saying this sounds a lot like the movie Gone Girl, where the female main character fakes her own kidnapping.
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A mom's desperate search to find her daughter. Tears and fury in an Ohio courtroom. And the latest in the Karen Read case.
So, Sue, what is the development?
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A mom's desperate search to find her daughter. Tears and fury in an Ohio courtroom. And the latest in the Karen Read case.
Finally, the latest on another story we covered a lot last year. This is the double murder of two schoolgirls, Liberty German and Abigail Williams, whose bodies were found near a creek in Delphi, Indiana in 2017. In November, a local man, Richard Allen, was convicted of killing them. And just before Christmas, he was sentenced to a lot of years, Sue.
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A mom's desperate search to find her daughter. Tears and fury in an Ohio courtroom. And the latest in the Karen Read case.
Oh, yeah, to be sure. Okay. Thank you so much, Sue, for joining us for this week's Roundup. Thank you, Andrea. Well, you might have spent the first few days of 2025 thinking about all the new year has in store. Fun trips, events, new experiences. You probably haven't thought about what you might be called to do. With a new year comes new cases, new trials, and of course, new juries.
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A mom's desperate search to find her daughter. Tears and fury in an Ohio courtroom. And the latest in the Karen Read case.
Katrina took several items she found there, including Jasmine's phone, license, and credit cards, and was left with a bad feeling.
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A mom's desperate search to find her daughter. Tears and fury in an Ohio courtroom. And the latest in the Karen Read case.
So whether or not you've received your jury summons yet, we're talking with jury consultant and adjunct professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, Dr. Natalie Gordon. Hey, Natalie. Hi, Andrea. Thanks for being here. So some people, you know, they just don't want to be on juries. It feels like an inconvenience. I, on the other hand, want to do jury duty.
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A mom's desperate search to find her daughter. Tears and fury in an Ohio courtroom. And the latest in the Karen Read case.
You've, Natalie, talked to jurors after trials. I have as well. What do they usually say after they're finished with the trial?
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A mom's desperate search to find her daughter. Tears and fury in an Ohio courtroom. And the latest in the Karen Read case.
So let's run through a general overview of what being on a jury looks like. Of course, this varies case to case, courthouse to courthouse. What can you expect once the actual selection of a jury begins?
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A mom's desperate search to find her daughter. Tears and fury in an Ohio courtroom. And the latest in the Karen Read case.
I knew it wasn't good. A few days later, Jasmine's body was found stuffed in a suitcase. She'd been stabbed 60 times. Police had already zeroed in on a suspect, Jasmine's boyfriend, Jason Chen. He was charged with murder and abuse of a corpse. He has pleaded not guilty.
Dateline NBC
A mom's desperate search to find her daughter. Tears and fury in an Ohio courtroom. And the latest in the Karen Read case.
Earlier in the episode, we discussed the Jasmine Pace case and how the jurors are being brought in from another county because of concerns about pretrial publicity. They're also being sequestered in a hotel. So how does this pretrial publicity impact jury decision-making?
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A mom's desperate search to find her daughter. Tears and fury in an Ohio courtroom. And the latest in the Karen Read case.
So if you are impaneled on a jury and the trial formally begins, obviously you see the evidence, you hear witness testimony, and then you go off to deliberate. What can you expect in that deliberation room?
Dateline NBC
A mom's desperate search to find her daughter. Tears and fury in an Ohio courtroom. And the latest in the Karen Read case.
Yeah. I mean, a jury room, there's nothing like it because you have such a cross-section of people, different opinions, different ethnicities, different ages. That's what it's supposed to be, right? A cross-section of America.
Dateline NBC
A mom's desperate search to find her daughter. Tears and fury in an Ohio courtroom. And the latest in the Karen Read case.
If the jury is able to reach a unanimous verdict, you know, it's read aloud in court, your jury duty is over. Have you ever spoken to jurors who have mixed feelings about the verdict that was reached?
Dateline NBC
A mom's desperate search to find her daughter. Tears and fury in an Ohio courtroom. And the latest in the Karen Read case.
Well, Natalie, wow. Thank you so much. Maybe this is my year. We'll see. I'm still waiting for my summons.
Dateline NBC
A mom's desperate search to find her daughter. Tears and fury in an Ohio courtroom. And the latest in the Karen Read case.
I'm happy to have helped. Thank you, Andrea. Thank you. That's it for this episode of Dateline True Crime Weekly. Coming up on Dateline, we've got the TV episode that inspired Josh's hit podcast series, Deadly Mirage. It's a story about betrayal and murder in the California desert.
Dateline NBC
A mom's desperate search to find her daughter. Tears and fury in an Ohio courtroom. And the latest in the Karen Read case.
But in the more than two-year run-up to Chen's trial, the unauthorized investigation by Jasmine's desperate mother has come under heavy fire from the defense.
Dateline NBC
A mom's desperate search to find her daughter. Tears and fury in an Ohio courtroom. And the latest in the Karen Read case.
And a young couple who seemed to have it all until the husband ended up dead and investigators uncovered a web of dark secrets.
Dateline NBC
A mom's desperate search to find her daughter. Tears and fury in an Ohio courtroom. And the latest in the Karen Read case.
everything watch josh's story deadly mirage airing friday on nbc at 9 8 central or stream it on peacock and for dateline premium subscribers out there check out our latest episode of after the verdict when keith morrison catches up with susan altman a woman who pushed investigators to take a closer look at the mysterious death of her sister resulting in the conviction of her sister's husband
Dateline NBC
A mom's desperate search to find her daughter. Tears and fury in an Ohio courtroom. And the latest in the Karen Read case.
Susan talks about her work trying to raise awareness around domestic violence. And to get ad free listening for all of our podcasts, subscribe to Dateline Premium. Thanks for listening. Dateline True Crime Weekly is produced by Frannie Kelly and Katie Ferguson. Our associate producers are Carson Cummins and Caroline Casey. Our senior producer is Liz Brown-Kurloff.
Dateline NBC
A mom's desperate search to find her daughter. Tears and fury in an Ohio courtroom. And the latest in the Karen Read case.
Production and fact-checking help by Sara Kadir. Veronica Mzeika is our digital producer. Rick Kwan is our sound designer. Original music by Jesse McGinty. Bryson Barnes is head of audio production. Paul Ryan is executive producer. And Liz Cole is senior executive producer of Dateline.
Dateline NBC
A mom's desperate search to find her daughter. Tears and fury in an Ohio courtroom. And the latest in the Karen Read case.
How might it all impact the trial set to begin next week? Here to bring us up to speed is Grayson Gordon, a news reporter from our NBC affiliate WRCB Local 3 News. Grayson, welcome to the podcast. Thank you for having me. This is such a sad story. To start, can you just tell us tell us about Jasmine Pace and who was she?
Dateline NBC
A mom's desperate search to find her daughter. Tears and fury in an Ohio courtroom. And the latest in the Karen Read case.
You're listening in to Dateline's morning meeting in 30 Rockefeller Center. Happy New Year. Happy New Year, everybody. Our editorial team is catching up on breaking crime news around the country. He actually felt afraid that people were after him.
Dateline NBC
A mom's desperate search to find her daughter. Tears and fury in an Ohio courtroom. And the latest in the Karen Read case.
Welcome to Dateline True Crime Weekly. I'm Andrea Canning. It's January 9th, and here's what's on our docket. In Ohio, there were tears and rage at a sentencing last week as multiple family members admitted their parts in what's been called the Pike County Massacre.
Dateline NBC
A mom's desperate search to find her daughter. Tears and fury in an Ohio courtroom. And the latest in the Karen Read case.
So her mom sort of turns investigator, right? Because it's unlike Jasmine to not check in with her mom.
Dateline NBC
A mom's desperate search to find her daughter. Tears and fury in an Ohio courtroom. And the latest in the Karen Read case.
So Jason's not there in the apartment and they gain entry and And that's when they say they found Jasmine's phone, credit cards, and driver's license. So obviously very scary for the family to not know where their daughter is and to walk in and find that.
Dateline NBC
A mom's desperate search to find her daughter. Tears and fury in an Ohio courtroom. And the latest in the Karen Read case.
And police also say during the search, they found blood spatter on the bathroom wall, cleaning supplies, a large amount of blood that had been cleaned up in the living room. This is a very disturbing scene. Parents taking matters into their own hands. You understand that. If your child is missing, you will do anything. The defense has made this a big deal.
Dateline NBC
A mom's desperate search to find her daughter. Tears and fury in an Ohio courtroom. And the latest in the Karen Read case.
And that all makes sense from a defense perspective. Katrina, the mom, was actually cross-examined on the stand. What did she have to say about her actions and gaining entry to the apartment?
Dateline NBC
A mom's desperate search to find her daughter. Tears and fury in an Ohio courtroom. And the latest in the Karen Read case.
Oh, wow. So with regard to any alleged evidence found by the mom, did the judge rule that that will be admissible in trial? Yes.
Dateline NBC
A mom's desperate search to find her daughter. Tears and fury in an Ohio courtroom. And the latest in the Karen Read case.
And we should just remind our listeners, Jason Chen has pleaded not guilty, and we will learn more about his defense when the trial gets underway next week. This is interesting because the case has had so much media attention. Jurors are actually being brought in from another county. Absolutely.
Dateline NBC
A mom's desperate search to find her daughter. Tears and fury in an Ohio courtroom. And the latest in the Karen Read case.
In Dateline Roundup, Karen Reid's defense team was back in court this week talking about dogs. And we've got details on new charges filed against the man at the heart of what's been called the real-life Gone Girl case.
Dateline NBC
A mom's desperate search to find her daughter. Tears and fury in an Ohio courtroom. And the latest in the Karen Read case.
Well, we will keep an eye on this one, Grayson. Thank you so much for joining us on the podcast. Thank you. Thank you. Up next, there was talk of Satan and Jesus in an Ohio courtroom last week as a mother and son were sentenced for their roles in one of the most gruesome crimes in Ohio history.
Dateline NBC
A mom's desperate search to find her daughter. Tears and fury in an Ohio courtroom. And the latest in the Karen Read case.
For our next story, we're heading to an Ohio courtroom where emotions and rage bubbled over last week at the dramatic sentencing of three family members for their roles in one of the bloodiest crimes in Ohio history.
Dateline NBC
A mom's desperate search to find her daughter. Tears and fury in an Ohio courtroom. And the latest in the Karen Read case.
The horror began on the morning of April 22nd, 2016, when a woman walked into her brother-in-law's home and found him shot to death, along with his cousin. His name? Chris Roden Sr. But they weren't the only members of the Roden family found dead that day.
Dateline NBC
A mom's desperate search to find her daughter. Tears and fury in an Ohio courtroom. And the latest in the Karen Read case.
In total, seven adults and one 16-year-old boy were found gunned down in four different locations, victims of what's been dubbed the Pike County Massacre. Two years later, police arrested six members of another family, the Wagners, after uncovering what prosecutors say was a ruthless plot to stamp out the rodents over a custody dispute.
Dateline NBC
A mom's desperate search to find her daughter. Tears and fury in an Ohio courtroom. And the latest in the Karen Read case.
Here to catch us up on this case that he's been covering for years is Dateline producer Jay Young. Jay, thanks for joining us.
Dateline NBC
A mom's desperate search to find her daughter. Tears and fury in an Ohio courtroom. And the latest in the Karen Read case.
So the scope of this crime spree is really unlike anything a lot of us have ever seen before.
Dateline NBC
A mom's desperate search to find her daughter. Tears and fury in an Ohio courtroom. And the latest in the Karen Read case.
Jay, police zeroed in on the Wagner family. Who are the Wagners?
Dateline NBC
A mom's desperate search to find her daughter. Tears and fury in an Ohio courtroom. And the latest in the Karen Read case.
So what went wrong?
Dateline NBC
A mom's desperate search to find her daughter. Tears and fury in an Ohio courtroom. And the latest in the Karen Read case.
Just sounds so unbelievable.
Dateline NBC
A mom's desperate search to find her daughter. Tears and fury in an Ohio courtroom. And the latest in the Karen Read case.
So the Wagners alleged that the rodents were abusing Sophia, but investigators found no evidence of that.
Dateline NBC
A mom's desperate search to find her daughter. Tears and fury in an Ohio courtroom. And the latest in the Karen Read case.
Plus, a new year could mean an unexpected summons to jury duty. A jury consultant gives us her tips on what to expect.
Dateline NBC
A mom's desperate search to find her daughter. Tears and fury in an Ohio courtroom. And the latest in the Karen Read case.
Okay, so it took more than two years for investigators to make arrests in the case. Jake Wagner, along with his parents and older brother, were charged with multiple counts, including aggravated murder. Jay, what evidence did the prosecutors say they had against them?
Dateline NBC
A mom's desperate search to find her daughter. Tears and fury in an Ohio courtroom. And the latest in the Karen Read case.
So we should say that Jake's dad, Billy Wagner, has consistently denied having anything to do with the murders or any plot. He is still in custody awaiting trial. And Jake's brother also denied being a part of the plot, but he was convicted at trial in 2022. A big twist to this case, Jake and his mom, Angela, did something that surprised everyone.
Dateline NBC
A mom's desperate search to find her daughter. Tears and fury in an Ohio courtroom. And the latest in the Karen Read case.
They decided to plead guilty and they started cooperating with investigators.
Dateline NBC
A mom's desperate search to find her daughter. Tears and fury in an Ohio courtroom. And the latest in the Karen Read case.
So take us inside the courtroom last week. Who was being sentenced?
Dateline NBC
A mom's desperate search to find her daughter. Tears and fury in an Ohio courtroom. And the latest in the Karen Read case.
Before they were sentenced, the victims' families got to talk.
Dateline NBC
A mom's desperate search to find her daughter. Tears and fury in an Ohio courtroom. And the latest in the Karen Read case.
But before all that, we're heading to Chattanooga, Tennessee, where a highly publicized murder trial is about to get underway. And the mother of the victim has faced questions about what she did to try to find her daughter and whether she went too far. In the early morning hours of November 23rd, 2022, 22-year-old Jasmine Pace sent her mother an unsettling text message.
Dateline NBC
A mom's desperate search to find her daughter. Tears and fury in an Ohio courtroom. And the latest in the Karen Read case.
What were the sentences then?
Dateline NBC
A mom's desperate search to find her daughter. Tears and fury in an Ohio courtroom. And the latest in the Karen Read case.
So this all leaves Billy Wagner, the father. He was supposed to go to trial this week. What happened?
Dateline NBC
A mom's desperate search to find her daughter. Tears and fury in an Ohio courtroom. And the latest in the Karen Read case.
Okay, so this trial is supposed to be sometime this year?
Dateline NBC
A mom's desperate search to find her daughter. Tears and fury in an Ohio courtroom. And the latest in the Karen Read case.
Okay, Jay Young, thank you for breaking down this extremely horrific story and also complicated story.
Dateline NBC
A mom's desperate search to find her daughter. Tears and fury in an Ohio courtroom. And the latest in the Karen Read case.
Next, it's time for Dateline Roundup. We've got the latest from the courtroom as Karen Reid's defense team gears up for her second trial. And more on the new chapter in what's been called the real-life Gone Girl case. Plus, what do you need to know if you get a jury summons? We've got tips from a jury consultant.
Dateline NBC
A mom's desperate search to find her daughter. Tears and fury in an Ohio courtroom. And the latest in the Karen Read case.
Joining me for this week's Roundup is Dateline producer Sue Simpson. Hey, Sue. Hey, Andrea. Happy New Year. Yeah, happy New Year. So, Sue, our first story is something very familiar to both of us, the Karen Reid case. For anyone who doesn't know, she's the Massachusetts woman accused of killing her police officer boyfriend, John O'Keefe, by backing her car into him after a night of drinking.
Dateline NBC
A mom's desperate search to find her daughter. Tears and fury in an Ohio courtroom. And the latest in the Karen Read case.
She denies doing that, of course, and a jury deadlocked at her trial last year that you were at, Sue, every day.
Dateline NBC
A mom's desperate search to find her daughter. Tears and fury in an Ohio courtroom. And the latest in the Karen Read case.
Yeah, so this week, there was the second part of a hearing about something pretty crucial to the case.
Dateline NBC
A mom's desperate search to find her daughter. Tears and fury in an Ohio courtroom. And the latest in the Karen Read case.
Yeah, important, obviously, because Karen Reed's defense says that John O'Keefe wasn't run over. He was beat up by people at a house where she says she dropped him off. The people there at the house, they deny that. But at this house, there was a dog. She was a German shepherd named Chloe. So how did this expert do on the stand?
Dateline NBC
Emotional testimony from a killer. A murder defendant's unusual defense. And travel scam safety tips.
Good morning. It's morning here at 30 Rockefeller Center and time for the Dateline story meeting.
Dateline NBC
Emotional testimony from a killer. A murder defendant's unusual defense. And travel scam safety tips.
Yeah, that's giving the jury a lot to think about. So, Marianne, we will want to hear how this plays out. Thank you so much for being in court every day for Dateline and for Dateline True Crime Weekly. We appreciate it. My pleasure. Up next, it's Dateline Roundup. We've got a big development in the case of Deanne Warner, the Michigan grandmother whose body was found stuffed in a fertilizer tank.
Dateline NBC
Emotional testimony from a killer. A murder defendant's unusual defense. And travel scam safety tips.
The latest from the courtroom in the Karen Reed case and what investigators are saying about the death of Gene Hackman. Plus, are you booking your next vacation? Tips on how to avoid becoming the victim of a travel scam. Welcome back. Joining us for this week's Dateline Roundup is Dateline producer Sue Simpson. Hey, Sue. Hey, Andrea. All right.
Dateline NBC
Emotional testimony from a killer. A murder defendant's unusual defense. And travel scam safety tips.
For our first story, we are off to Santa Fe, where last week actor Gene Hackman and his wife Betsy were found dead in their home along with one of their dogs. Sue, what have we learned about this tragedy that has some mystery to it?
Dateline NBC
Emotional testimony from a killer. A murder defendant's unusual defense. And travel scam safety tips.
Yeah, initially, law enforcement kind of assumed that this could be a carbon monoxide poisoning, but they ruled it out, right?
Dateline NBC
Emotional testimony from a killer. A murder defendant's unusual defense. And travel scam safety tips.
And they also found that Gene Hackman's pacemaker stopped on February 17th. So they, you know, are assuming that they know exactly when he died.
Dateline NBC
Emotional testimony from a killer. A murder defendant's unusual defense. And travel scam safety tips.
So really a lot of outstanding questions at this point. So now I assume we're waiting on toxicology, which can take a while.
Dateline NBC
Emotional testimony from a killer. A murder defendant's unusual defense. And travel scam safety tips.
For our next story, we are off to Michigan, where there's been a big development in the case of murdered Michigan grandmother Deanne Warner, which Josh covered on his Missing in America podcast. So just to remind people of this one, Deanne was a successful businesswoman who ran a trucking company with her husband Dale Warner until she went missing in 2021.
Dateline NBC
Emotional testimony from a killer. A murder defendant's unusual defense. And travel scam safety tips.
Prosecutors say Christopher Austin helped Monica's lover, Robert Baker, kill her husband, Fabio. In January, Austin pleaded guilty to second-degree murder for his role in the crime and agreed to testify against Monica, who he says knew about the plot. This week, we finally heard his emotional testimony in court. Dateline producer Chetna Joshi is back to tell us what Christopher Austin had to say.
Dateline NBC
Emotional testimony from a killer. A murder defendant's unusual defense. And travel scam safety tips.
Two years later, before her body was even found, Dale was charged with her murder. Then this past August, her remains were found inside a sealed fertilizer tank on the family farm. And this week, a second person was arrested in the case. Sue, tell us, who has been charged now?
Dateline NBC
Emotional testimony from a killer. A murder defendant's unusual defense. And travel scam safety tips.
Okay, so police are saying that Dee's stepson, it looks like, helped his father, according to them. That's right. Okay, so what is next for the stepson?
Dateline NBC
Emotional testimony from a killer. A murder defendant's unusual defense. And travel scam safety tips.
And for our final story, we are back yet again in Dedham, Massachusetts, for another Karen Reid update. She is the woman accused of drunkenly backing her SUV into her police officer boyfriend, John O'Keefe, back in 2022 and leaving him to die in the snow. She has denied having anything to do with his death.
Dateline NBC
Emotional testimony from a killer. A murder defendant's unusual defense. And travel scam safety tips.
There has been a lot happening in this case, Sue, over the past few weeks, and we're waiting— on some answers.
Dateline NBC
Emotional testimony from a killer. A murder defendant's unusual defense. And travel scam safety tips.
And in court on Tuesday, the defense presented their motion to dismiss the case entirely. What was their argument?
Dateline NBC
Emotional testimony from a killer. A murder defendant's unusual defense. And travel scam safety tips.
And last week, we talked about how the federal probe was rumored to be over. Now we actually have official confirmation.
Dateline NBC
Emotional testimony from a killer. A murder defendant's unusual defense. And travel scam safety tips.
This comes after prosecutors previously accused the defense of violating a protective order by publicizing a text sent by Michael Proctor to an assistant district attorney. In response to that accusation, the defense attorney said it was an oversight on his part. The defense has not yet responded to this latest allegation that they're trying to influence the jury pool.
Dateline NBC
Emotional testimony from a killer. A murder defendant's unusual defense. And travel scam safety tips.
So we will continue to keep an eye on these rulings. Thank you so much for these updates, Sue. Thank you, Andrea. For many Americans, winter is a season of bitter cold or staying indoors, as we all know so well. But it's also the perfect time to start dreaming up your next big vacation.
Dateline NBC
Emotional testimony from a killer. A murder defendant's unusual defense. And travel scam safety tips.
So for anyone making plans, we've got some tips on how to avoid travel scams with NBC News chief consumer investigative correspondent Vicky Nguyen.
Dateline NBC
Emotional testimony from a killer. A murder defendant's unusual defense. And travel scam safety tips.
Okay, Vicki, so most of the time, if a vacation offer seems too good to be true, you say it probably is, right?
Dateline NBC
Emotional testimony from a killer. A murder defendant's unusual defense. And travel scam safety tips.
Chetna, thanks for joining us again. Yeah, thanks for having me. So, Chetna, the prosecution started by talking a bit about Christopher Austin's relationship with Robert Baker, which had been a bit of a mystery to you, Chetna, your team, Dateline, until now. So what did we find out about their connection?
Dateline NBC
Emotional testimony from a killer. A murder defendant's unusual defense. And travel scam safety tips.
If you're browsing, Vicki, potential destinations, hotels, vacation activities, cruise lines, how do you confirm that what they're telling you is really true?
Dateline NBC
Emotional testimony from a killer. A murder defendant's unusual defense. And travel scam safety tips.
So you have your whole trip laid out. Anything else that we should watch out for before pulling the trigger?
Dateline NBC
Emotional testimony from a killer. A murder defendant's unusual defense. And travel scam safety tips.
You're going to train your family very, very well, Vicki. Thank you. And I hope everyone enjoys their vacations wherever they're going. If they're going somewhere in the cold or they're booking for summer, which I know my family is. So lots of good stuff in there, Vicki. Thank you so much. You bet. On the eve of trial and in her first television interview ever,
Dateline NBC
Emotional testimony from a killer. A murder defendant's unusual defense. And travel scam safety tips.
That's a really sad question.
Dateline NBC
Emotional testimony from a killer. A murder defendant's unusual defense. And travel scam safety tips.
What secrets will she reveal? You've heard a lot of stuff, Keith. What I tell you will be the truth. Watch Lori Vallow Daybell, The Jailhouse Interview, airing this Friday at 9, 8 central on NBC, or stream it starting Saturday on Peacock. Thanks for listening. All right. Thanks, everybody.
Dateline NBC
Emotional testimony from a killer. A murder defendant's unusual defense. And travel scam safety tips.
OK, so the prosecution walked through Christopher Austin's arrest last October. Now, this is more than seven years after the crime. When the detective met with him, Austin said he was shown photos of himself and Baker jogging and inside the black Porsche that they took from the cement tilly house after the murder.
Dateline NBC
Emotional testimony from a killer. A murder defendant's unusual defense. And travel scam safety tips.
Oh, my gosh. That's intense. And interestingly, when Austin was arrested, he was taken to a cell where they had planted an undercover officer. Does he get anything good out of him?
Dateline NBC
Emotional testimony from a killer. A murder defendant's unusual defense. And travel scam safety tips.
Oh, this is huge. And he told the undercover officer something else that had to do with money.
Dateline NBC
Emotional testimony from a killer. A murder defendant's unusual defense. And travel scam safety tips.
Welcome to Dateline True Crime Weekly. I'm Andrea Canning. It's March 6th, and here's what's on our docket. Fireworks in a Kansas courtroom as Dana Chandler, the woman representing herself at her third trial on charges she murdered her ex-husband and his girlfriend, calls the lead detective as a defense witness.
Dateline NBC
Emotional testimony from a killer. A murder defendant's unusual defense. And travel scam safety tips.
Christopher Austin, he was extremely emotional at times on the stand. One of those times in particular, he's describing what happened the day Fabio was killed.
Dateline NBC
Emotional testimony from a killer. A murder defendant's unusual defense. And travel scam safety tips.
Monica's defense has, no surprise, maintained that she had nothing to do with this plot to kill Fabio. This was Robert Baker. This was him reeling in Christopher Austin. How did they get around this very damaging testimony from Christopher Austin, Chetna?
Dateline NBC
Emotional testimony from a killer. A murder defendant's unusual defense. And travel scam safety tips.
And also, the defense tried to poke holes with Christopher Austin as well with inconsistencies, that, you know, he wasn't truthful at times with police. Yes.
Dateline NBC
Emotional testimony from a killer. A murder defendant's unusual defense. And travel scam safety tips.
No.
Dateline NBC
Emotional testimony from a killer. A murder defendant's unusual defense. And travel scam safety tips.
No. In Dateline Roundup, what we know about the investigation into the mysterious death of Hollywood legend Gene Hackman.
Dateline NBC
Emotional testimony from a killer. A murder defendant's unusual defense. And travel scam safety tips.
Chetna, thank you for your insight into this. This definitely was a very fascinating week in this trial. Definitely. Thanks so much for having me. Coming up, we'll take you inside a Kansas courtroom where Dana Chandler is on trial for the third time for a double murder she says she didn't commit and is representing herself.
Dateline NBC
Emotional testimony from a killer. A murder defendant's unusual defense. And travel scam safety tips.
This week, she called a surprising defense witness to the stand, the lead detective on the case. For our next story, we're heading back to a Kansas courtroom where Dana Chandler is standing trial for the third time for a double murder that happened 23 years ago.
Dateline NBC
Emotional testimony from a killer. A murder defendant's unusual defense. And travel scam safety tips.
Prosecutors say Chandler, consumed by hatred for her ex-husband and his girlfriend, drove hundreds of miles from Colorado to Kansas to murder them in their home. Her trial was expected to last three weeks, but has stretched into five, thanks in part to a choice Chandler made on the eve of trial. She fired her attorneys and decided to represent herself.
Dateline NBC
Emotional testimony from a killer. A murder defendant's unusual defense. And travel scam safety tips.
Since then, she has cross-examined her own children. And she has spent multiple days on the witness stand telling the jury her version of events. Then, this week, in another courtroom surprise, Chandler called the lead detective who put her behind bars as one of her main defense witnesses.
Dateline NBC
Emotional testimony from a killer. A murder defendant's unusual defense. And travel scam safety tips.
Here to tell us how Dana is faring as her own lawyer is Dateline producer Marianne O'Donnell, who's talking to us from the courthouse parking lot. Marianne, thanks for coming on the podcast. Thanks for having me. Okay, so the twists and turns of this trial, it's going what appears to be into overtime. How do the people in the courtroom seem to be taking that?
Dateline NBC
Emotional testimony from a killer. A murder defendant's unusual defense. And travel scam safety tips.
Plus, NBC News chief consumer investigative correspondent Vicky Nguyen is back to share her tips on how to avoid being scammed while booking your next vacation.
Dateline NBC
Emotional testimony from a killer. A murder defendant's unusual defense. And travel scam safety tips.
Dana has previously served as her own lawyer in some hearings, but this is the first time she is fully representing herself at trial. What is your impression of her legal skills?
Dateline NBC
Emotional testimony from a killer. A murder defendant's unusual defense. And travel scam safety tips.
Well, on the tape, Marianne, you can hear some swooshing noises. And that's actually coming from Dana's court attire.
Dateline NBC
Emotional testimony from a killer. A murder defendant's unusual defense. And travel scam safety tips.
Marianne, what would you say is her clearest argument that she's made on her behalf?
Dateline NBC
Emotional testimony from a killer. A murder defendant's unusual defense. And travel scam safety tips.
And Marianne, she really tried to hit home the lack of evidence in the case when she called the lead detective to the stand. And she was not afraid to go toe-to-toe with him.
Dateline NBC
Emotional testimony from a killer. A murder defendant's unusual defense. And travel scam safety tips.
But before all that, we're heading back to Los Angeles and the latest bombshell testimony in the trial of a woman accused of plotting with her lover to murder her hairstylist husband.
Dateline NBC
Emotional testimony from a killer. A murder defendant's unusual defense. And travel scam safety tips.
So as we said, Dana testified over the course of five days. She talked about the marriage going bad and being heartbroken about losing custody of her kids. But she said she was nowhere near the crime scene that night in 2002. And Marianne, she also shared something that we hadn't heard before.
Dateline NBC
Emotional testimony from a killer. A murder defendant's unusual defense. And travel scam safety tips.
She gave an explanation for two gas cans that prosecutors say she bought to fuel up for her drive to Kansas.
Dateline NBC
Emotional testimony from a killer. A murder defendant's unusual defense. And travel scam safety tips.
Producers are swapping tips about breaking crime news and cases playing out in courtrooms across the country.
Dateline NBC
Emotional testimony from a killer. A murder defendant's unusual defense. And travel scam safety tips.
Yes. So she still hasn't been able to present a witness who can give her a solid alibi. And this week, Dana, she's on the stand being cross-examined by the prosecutor. Has this prosecutor been able to undermine her testimony?
Dateline NBC
Emotional testimony from a killer. A murder defendant's unusual defense. And travel scam safety tips.
Six weeks into the prosecution's case against Monica Sementilli, the state has called an array of witnesses, from the paramedic who responded to the murder scene to a host of LAPD detectives to Monica's own daughter, Jessica. On Tuesday morning, they called one of their star witnesses.
Dateline NBC
Emotional testimony from a killer. A murder defendant's unusual defense. And travel scam safety tips.
And she's also, you know, the type of witness that doesn't remember a lot of things.
Dateline NBC
The 911 call in the Hollywood hairdresser murder. And investigators explore links between six violent deaths and a group called the Zizians.
You're listening in as our producers swap tips about breaking crime news, trial updates and stories that could become the next Dateline episode.
Dateline NBC
The 911 call in the Hollywood hairdresser murder. And investigators explore links between six violent deaths and a group called the Zizians.
Snyder has yet to enter a plea in that case, and prosecutors have not said why Ziz is a person of interest in Vallejo. So where is Ziz? What do we know?
Dateline NBC
The 911 call in the Hollywood hairdresser murder. And investigators explore links between six violent deaths and a group called the Zizians.
Feels like it's far from over, Rich.
Dateline NBC
The 911 call in the Hollywood hairdresser murder. And investigators explore links between six violent deaths and a group called the Zizians.
You'll have to come back and tell us what you learn. And our listeners can read your piece about this case and Ophelia in particular on NBCNews.com.
Dateline NBC
The 911 call in the Hollywood hairdresser murder. And investigators explore links between six violent deaths and a group called the Zizians.
Coming up, it's Dateline Roundup. We'll have the latest on the sex trafficking case against music legend Sean Combs. Plus, 30 years after the murder of six-year-old JonBenet Ramsey, the investigation gets new life. We'll take a look back to where it all began. Welcome back. Joining us for this week's Dateline Roundup is Dateline producer Jay Young. Hey, Jay.
Dateline NBC
The 911 call in the Hollywood hairdresser murder. And investigators explore links between six violent deaths and a group called the Zizians.
Good. For our first story, we're headed to West Virginia for an update on the trial of Natalie Cochran. She is the West Virginia pharmacist accused of poisoning her husband, Michael Cochran. Jay, you've been following this story for years, and you were in the courtroom every day of this trial, which ended last week with a guilty verdict. So, Jay, what is new now?
Dateline NBC
The 911 call in the Hollywood hairdresser murder. And investigators explore links between six violent deaths and a group called the Zizians.
For our next story, we've got updates in the case of Sean Diddy Combs, the music mogul who was indicted in September on charges of sex trafficking, racketeering, and transportation to engage in prostitution. He is pleaded not guilty. Jay, what's new in this?
Dateline NBC
The 911 call in the Hollywood hairdresser murder. And investigators explore links between six violent deaths and a group called the Zizians.
The prosecution alleged that Monica and her lover, Robert Baker, plotted to kill Fabio so she could collect $1.6 million in life insurance money. The defense countered in their opening statement that it was Baker alone who was the mastermind.
Dateline NBC
The 911 call in the Hollywood hairdresser murder. And investigators explore links between six violent deaths and a group called the Zizians.
Has Combs responded to these new accusations, Jaye?
Dateline NBC
The 911 call in the Hollywood hairdresser murder. And investigators explore links between six violent deaths and a group called the Zizians.
For our last story, we've got an update on the case of Jimmy J. Lee, the 20-year-old Ole Miss student who disappeared on July 8th, 2022. Last fall, we covered the trial of Sheldon Timothy Harrington Jr., a fellow Ole Miss student who prosecutors allege killed Lee to hide their romantic relationship. Harrington has always denied any involvement in Jay Lee's death.
Dateline NBC
The 911 call in the Hollywood hairdresser murder. And investigators explore links between six violent deaths and a group called the Zizians.
The trial ended with a hung jury, and a retrial date is supposed to be set soon.
Dateline NBC
The 911 call in the Hollywood hairdresser murder. And investigators explore links between six violent deaths and a group called the Zizians.
So sad. On Wednesday, local police and the Mississippi State Crime Lab confirmed via DNA analysis that the remains belonged to Jay Lee. Thank you so much, Jay, for these updates.
Dateline NBC
The 911 call in the Hollywood hairdresser murder. And investigators explore links between six violent deaths and a group called the Zizians.
There is a murder case that has recently been making headlines on social media, the news, TV morning shows. And here's what's amazing about that. The case is 30 years old. one of America's most notorious unsolved murders.
Dateline NBC
The 911 call in the Hollywood hairdresser murder. And investigators explore links between six violent deaths and a group called the Zizians.
I believe it can be solved. I'm talking, of course, about the unsolved murder of JonBenet Ramsey. She was just six years old when she was found strangled to death in her family's Colorado home. And for years, her family lived with their grief, at times under suspicion themselves. Their daughter's death was a media sensation.
Dateline NBC
The 911 call in the Hollywood hairdresser murder. And investigators explore links between six violent deaths and a group called the Zizians.
But they never got closer to getting any answers until maybe now. My next guest, Dateline producer Jessica Devera, has been covering the story for more than a decade. She's here to bring us up to speed on the latest in the case and remind us of what we might have forgotten. Jessica, thanks for coming on the podcast.
Dateline NBC
The 911 call in the Hollywood hairdresser murder. And investigators explore links between six violent deaths and a group called the Zizians.
So to start, as we mentioned, this case is... is nearly three decades old. Why is it making headlines again now?
Dateline NBC
The 911 call in the Hollywood hairdresser murder. And investigators explore links between six violent deaths and a group called the Zizians.
Last week, John met with the new Boulder police chief. He spoke to NBC News correspondent Stephanie Gosk shortly afterwards.
Dateline NBC
The 911 call in the Hollywood hairdresser murder. And investigators explore links between six violent deaths and a group called the Zizians.
So take us back to those early days, Jessica. This case was an absolute media frenzy back in the 90s. I was working at the TV show Extra at the time. It was my first job. They covered the story every single night. This was something that everybody was talking about.
Dateline NBC
The 911 call in the Hollywood hairdresser murder. And investigators explore links between six violent deaths and a group called the Zizians.
And there were so many bizarre clues, too, like robbed people's attention.
Dateline NBC
The 911 call in the Hollywood hairdresser murder. And investigators explore links between six violent deaths and a group called the Zizians.
But then the public started to turn on them a little bit because word got out that they were not talking to the police, but they were talking to the media.
Dateline NBC
The 911 call in the Hollywood hairdresser murder. And investigators explore links between six violent deaths and a group called the Zizians.
The family was officially cleared in 2008, but John Ramsey told NBC's Stephanie Gosk last week that he thinks the only way to restore his family's reputation is to find JonBenet's killer.
Dateline NBC
The 911 call in the Hollywood hairdresser murder. And investigators explore links between six violent deaths and a group called the Zizians.
Baker has already pleaded no contest to the killing and is serving a sentence of life without parole. And this week, the prosecution started to present its evidence against Monica, playing audio for the jury pulled straight from investigators' case files. Dateline producer Chetna Joshi has been in the courtroom, and she is with us now to tell us what she saw and what she heard.
Dateline NBC
The 911 call in the Hollywood hairdresser murder. And investigators explore links between six violent deaths and a group called the Zizians.
So John Ramsey, as you said, Jessica, wants DNA evidence tested. What specifically is he talking about?
Dateline NBC
The 911 call in the Hollywood hairdresser murder. And investigators explore links between six violent deaths and a group called the Zizians.
The police chief said... A cold case review board met in 2023 to go over the case. What happened with that?
Dateline NBC
The 911 call in the Hollywood hairdresser murder. And investigators explore links between six violent deaths and a group called the Zizians.
We will be keeping an eye on any developments. Absolutely. Thank you, Jessica. Thank you so much for having me. One more thing before we go. Monday was National Missing Persons Day. For more than 10 years now, our digital team has covered more than 500 cases in its Missing in America series. You might have heard some of them on our Missing in America podcast.
Dateline NBC
The 911 call in the Hollywood hairdresser murder. And investigators explore links between six violent deaths and a group called the Zizians.
Well, this week, you can read about 88-year-old Myrtle Polk, who vanished from her Dallas home in June 2024. To check out the article and see if you have any information that might help bring her home, head to NBCNews.com forward slash Missing in America. That's it for this episode of Dateline True Crime Weekly. Coming up this Friday on Dateline, Josh has an all-new two-hour episode.
Dateline NBC
The 911 call in the Hollywood hairdresser murder. And investigators explore links between six violent deaths and a group called the Zizians.
The murder of a beloved tech mogul stuns a city and sends investigators into a world of glamour, parties and rage.
Dateline NBC
The 911 call in the Hollywood hairdresser murder. And investigators explore links between six violent deaths and a group called the Zizians.
Watch Under the Bay Bridge, airing this Friday at 9, 8 central on NBC, or stream it starting Saturday on Peacock. Thanks for listening. All right. Thanks, everybody.
Dateline NBC
The 911 call in the Hollywood hairdresser murder. And investigators explore links between six violent deaths and a group called the Zizians.
Chetna, thanks so much for coming back. Hi. So let's start where the prosecution did, with the 911 call from the couple's teenage daughter who found her father stabbed to death on the patio. It's tough to listen to, Chetna. What was the reaction like in court as it played?
Dateline NBC
The 911 call in the Hollywood hairdresser murder. And investigators explore links between six violent deaths and a group called the Zizians.
Good morning. It's another day at Dateline headquarters in 30 Rockefeller Center.
Dateline NBC
The 911 call in the Hollywood hairdresser murder. And investigators explore links between six violent deaths and a group called the Zizians.
has almost deeper meaning to it because the prosecution is alleging that it was actually part of Monica's plan for her daughter, Isabella, to arrive home first and discover the body.
Dateline NBC
The 911 call in the Hollywood hairdresser murder. And investigators explore links between six violent deaths and a group called the Zizians.
Yeah, which the prosecution believes is Monica establishing an alibi. Right. Yes. In court, prosecutors also played audio from Monica's first interview with police.
Dateline NBC
The 911 call in the Hollywood hairdresser murder. And investigators explore links between six violent deaths and a group called the Zizians.
I'm Andrea Canning, and this is Dateline True Crime Weekly. It's February 6th, and here's what's on our docket. In Vermont, a group of young people called the Zizians is in the spotlight after two of them get in a deadly shootout with border guards. Investigators say the deaths aren't the only ones allegedly tied to the group.
Dateline NBC
The 911 call in the Hollywood hairdresser murder. And investigators explore links between six violent deaths and a group called the Zizians.
Chetna, what stood out to you listening to this audio?
Dateline NBC
The 911 call in the Hollywood hairdresser murder. And investigators explore links between six violent deaths and a group called the Zizians.
They also played in court several of the follow-up calls Monica made to investigators. What did those recordings reveal?
Dateline NBC
The 911 call in the Hollywood hairdresser murder. And investigators explore links between six violent deaths and a group called the Zizians.
There were even more recordings, Chetna, where Monica spoke with the detective about Fabio's life insurance claim being held up. And this is, of course, significant because it cuts right to the heart of, you know, what the prosecutors say was the motive.
Dateline NBC
The 911 call in the Hollywood hairdresser murder. And investigators explore links between six violent deaths and a group called the Zizians.
Obviously, the prosecution is painting like a very vivid picture through their eyes that, you know, this is all about this life insurance and it's making her look really suspicious. But on the other hand, the defense could say, look, she needed the money for her family.
Dateline NBC
The 911 call in the Hollywood hairdresser murder. And investigators explore links between six violent deaths and a group called the Zizians.
When the defense was given the chance to cross-examine the detective, it got pretty tense. In part, the defense's questions focused on Robert Baker, who they contend, of course, was the only person responsible for planning the murder.
Dateline NBC
The 911 call in the Hollywood hairdresser murder. And investigators explore links between six violent deaths and a group called the Zizians.
Chetna, wow, this is such a fascinating case all around. Thank you so much. I can't wait to have you back on and hear how this plays out going forward. Definitely. Good being with you. Up next, investigators link the murders of an elderly man in California, a husband and wife in Pennsylvania, and the fatal shooting of a Vermont border guard to a group of young people called Zizians.
Dateline NBC
The 911 call in the Hollywood hairdresser murder. And investigators explore links between six violent deaths and a group called the Zizians.
Who exactly are they and what do they believe in? Last May, 21-year-old Teresa Youngblood disappeared. She'd graduated from the same private high school in Seattle where Bill Gates and Paul Allen went, then started working on a computer science degree. Her parents reported her missing to the police. Then, two weeks ago, Teresa suddenly reappeared in a Vermont courtroom.
Dateline NBC
The 911 call in the Hollywood hairdresser murder. And investigators explore links between six violent deaths and a group called the Zizians.
In Dateline Roundup, prosecutors beef up their indictment against rap mogul Sean Combs. And emotions run high at the sentencing hearing for Natalie Cochran, the West Virginia pharmacist convicted of murdering her husband.
Dateline NBC
The 911 call in the Hollywood hairdresser murder. And investigators explore links between six violent deaths and a group called the Zizians.
Because David Mayland was a federal agent, the killing made national news. And then reporters all over the country started connecting the shooting with other deaths. Pennsylvania State Police just released new information in the double murder.
Dateline NBC
The 911 call in the Hollywood hairdresser murder. And investigators explore links between six violent deaths and a group called the Zizians.
That 22-year-old was arrested and charged with murder. Six violent deaths across three different states connected to people Teresa associates with. People who, like her, were part of a group some people who know them have called a death cult. NBC News investigative reporter Rich Shapiro has been trying to untangle the web of how these crimes are connected. He's here to tell us what he's learned.
Dateline NBC
The 911 call in the Hollywood hairdresser murder. And investigators explore links between six violent deaths and a group called the Zizians.
Rich, thanks for coming on the podcast.
Dateline NBC
The 911 call in the Hollywood hairdresser murder. And investigators explore links between six violent deaths and a group called the Zizians.
Let's start with what happened in Vermont in the middle of January.
Dateline NBC
The 911 call in the Hollywood hairdresser murder. And investigators explore links between six violent deaths and a group called the Zizians.
Plus, the 1996 murder of six-year-old JonBenet Ramsey is making headlines again. We'll get you up to speed on what you might have missed. But first, we're heading to a Los Angeles courtroom where the trial of a woman accused of conspiring to murder her celebrity hairstylist husband is finally underway.
Dateline NBC
The 911 call in the Hollywood hairdresser murder. And investigators explore links between six violent deaths and a group called the Zizians.
Do we know then if Teresa is the one who killed the Border Patrol agent?
Dateline NBC
The 911 call in the Hollywood hairdresser murder. And investigators explore links between six violent deaths and a group called the Zizians.
What did they find when they searched
Dateline NBC
The 911 call in the Hollywood hairdresser murder. And investigators explore links between six violent deaths and a group called the Zizians.
Did the journal shed any light on why they had all this stuff?
Dateline NBC
The 911 call in the Hollywood hairdresser murder. And investigators explore links between six violent deaths and a group called the Zizians.
And the name of that person of interest in the California case is sort of the key to unlocking how all these people connect, right? A person by the name of Jack Lasoda?
Dateline NBC
The 911 call in the Hollywood hairdresser murder. And investigators explore links between six violent deaths and a group called the Zizians.
Is she the common denominator in all of this?
Dateline NBC
The 911 call in the Hollywood hairdresser murder. And investigators explore links between six violent deaths and a group called the Zizians.
So what, Rich, have you learned about Ziz? Who is she? What is her background?
Dateline NBC
The 911 call in the Hollywood hairdresser murder. And investigators explore links between six violent deaths and a group called the Zizians.
Mm-hmm. Are we talking about a cult here?
Dateline NBC
The 911 call in the Hollywood hairdresser murder. And investigators explore links between six violent deaths and a group called the Zizians.
Monica Sementilli's trial began last week with a gripping two-day opening statement by the prosecution. She told the jury the case was a story of lust, greed, and betrayal right out of a Hollywood movie with Monica at the center.
Dateline NBC
The 911 call in the Hollywood hairdresser murder. And investigators explore links between six violent deaths and a group called the Zizians.
And you, of course, tried to reach Ziz to get her response to that, but didn't hear back.
Dateline NBC
The 911 call in the Hollywood hairdresser murder. And investigators explore links between six violent deaths and a group called the Zizians.
We don't know yet how these beliefs or if these beliefs played any role in what's happened or even why Teresa was driving around Vermont with a car packed full of tactical gear and ammo. We don't even know how Teresa met Ziz. But there is one more connection between her and Teresa we haven't talked about, Rich. You said earlier that Ziz is a person of interest in a California murder.
Dateline NBC
The 911 call in the Hollywood hairdresser murder. And investigators explore links between six violent deaths and a group called the Zizians.
Tell us about that.
Dateline NBC
Verdict in the pharmacist poisoning trial. A deadly love triangle in paradise? And Bryan Kohberger is back in court.
Joyce is standing by her husband. Has she been appearing in court this time around?
Dateline NBC
Verdict in the pharmacist poisoning trial. A deadly love triangle in paradise? And Bryan Kohberger is back in court.
All right, Mark, we'll keep an eye on this one. Thank you so much.
Dateline NBC
Verdict in the pharmacist poisoning trial. A deadly love triangle in paradise? And Bryan Kohberger is back in court.
Coming up, we've got two big stories to talk about in Dateline Roundup. New information from the courtroom about the roommate who was inside the house and survived when four University of Idaho students were murdered. And updates from the trial of Monica Semantilli, the woman accused of plotting to kill her hairstylist husband. Plus, did you know there are lots of different ways to plead guilty?
Dateline NBC
Verdict in the pharmacist poisoning trial. A deadly love triangle in paradise? And Bryan Kohberger is back in court.
NBC News legal analyst Danny Sabalos will be here to break it down for us. Welcome back. Joining us for this week's Dateline Roundup is Dateline digital producer Veronica Mazzaco. Hey, Veronica. Hi, Andrea. So for our first story, we're off to Boise, Idaho, where there was an important hearing last week in the case of Brian Koberger.
Dateline NBC
Verdict in the pharmacist poisoning trial. A deadly love triangle in paradise? And Bryan Kohberger is back in court.
Last week, we finally got more insight into Natalie Cochran's defense as her attorneys began to make their case, calling to the stand friends of the couple, medical experts, and family, including both of the Cochran's children.
Dateline NBC
Verdict in the pharmacist poisoning trial. A deadly love triangle in paradise? And Bryan Kohberger is back in court.
He is the man accused of the 2022 fatal stabbings of four University of Idaho students. Brian Koberger has pleaded not guilty and, as of now, is set to go to trial this summer. Veronica, bring us up to speed on this latest hearing.
Dateline NBC
Verdict in the pharmacist poisoning trial. A deadly love triangle in paradise? And Bryan Kohberger is back in court.
Yeah, and for people who don't remember, law enforcement initially connected Koberger to the crimes through DNA on a knife sheath found at the crime scene. They used genetic genealogy to connect that DNA to Koberger by finding relatives of his in public online ancestry databases, which we're seeing so much of these days.
Dateline NBC
Verdict in the pharmacist poisoning trial. A deadly love triangle in paradise? And Bryan Kohberger is back in court.
Someone we haven't heard much about until these hearings was a surviving roommate who was in the house at the time of the murder. She's expected to be a witness for the prosecution, but the defense had questions about her.
Dateline NBC
Verdict in the pharmacist poisoning trial. A deadly love triangle in paradise? And Bryan Kohberger is back in court.
Our editorial team is catching up on breaking crime news around the country.
Dateline NBC
Verdict in the pharmacist poisoning trial. A deadly love triangle in paradise? And Bryan Kohberger is back in court.
OK, we'll keep an eye on what the judge decides on these various motions. For our next story, we're off to Los Angeles for an update on a case we first told you about last week. Monica Semantilli is on trial for allegedly orchestrating the 2017 murder of her husband, respected Hollywood hairstylist Fabio Semantilli. Monica's trial got started last Friday. How's it going?
Dateline NBC
Verdict in the pharmacist poisoning trial. A deadly love triangle in paradise? And Bryan Kohberger is back in court.
Dateline producer Jay Young was in the courtroom and joins us now to tell us all about the dramatic testimony and what the jury decided. Jay, thanks for joining us again.
Dateline NBC
Verdict in the pharmacist poisoning trial. A deadly love triangle in paradise? And Bryan Kohberger is back in court.
Yeah. And Robert Baker, you know, isn't trying to trade favors or anything. He maintains that Monica was never involved in the plot. How does the prosecution plan to dispute that?
Dateline NBC
Verdict in the pharmacist poisoning trial. A deadly love triangle in paradise? And Bryan Kohberger is back in court.
Most of the cases we cover on Dateline end up with a defendant in court having to make a decision, how to plead to the charges against them. And it probably seems obvious they can plead guilty or not guilty. But covering the case of murdered Hollywood hairstylist Fabio Simantelli these past few weeks, where one of the defendants pleaded no contest to the murder charge against him —
Dateline NBC
Verdict in the pharmacist poisoning trial. A deadly love triangle in paradise? And Bryan Kohberger is back in court.
It reminded us there are some special kinds of pleas you can make. Here to walk us through it is NBC legal analyst Danny Savalos. Hey, Danny.
Dateline NBC
Verdict in the pharmacist poisoning trial. A deadly love triangle in paradise? And Bryan Kohberger is back in court.
So good to have you back. So to start, defendants, of course, have that choice, as we mentioned, guilty or not guilty, which seems like the obvious two choices.
Dateline NBC
Verdict in the pharmacist poisoning trial. A deadly love triangle in paradise? And Bryan Kohberger is back in court.
Yeah, so let's start with one of the first witnesses the defense called, Natalie and Michael's daughter, Nicole. What was the reaction like in the courtroom when she took the stand?
Dateline NBC
Verdict in the pharmacist poisoning trial. A deadly love triangle in paradise? And Bryan Kohberger is back in court.
Right. And some of our listeners might recognize that term Alford plea from two big cases. One of them is Michael Peterson, famously accused of murdering his second wife, Kathleen, after her body was found at the bottom of a staircase. He took an Alford plea. And then there was Pam Hupp, who our listeners might recognize from Keith's podcast, The Thing About Pam.
Dateline NBC
Verdict in the pharmacist poisoning trial. A deadly love triangle in paradise? And Bryan Kohberger is back in court.
She was accused of killing a man she'd lured to her home, and before facing trial, she took an Elford plea, too. So why was an Elford plea right for them, Dani?
Dateline NBC
Verdict in the pharmacist poisoning trial. A deadly love triangle in paradise? And Bryan Kohberger is back in court.
And Pam Hopp?
Dateline NBC
Verdict in the pharmacist poisoning trial. A deadly love triangle in paradise? And Bryan Kohberger is back in court.
Who does it favor more than? Does it favor the defendant more? Because they're still going to face some consequences.
Dateline NBC
Verdict in the pharmacist poisoning trial. A deadly love triangle in paradise? And Bryan Kohberger is back in court.
I'm assuming you can't appeal this plea deal later on. Is that true?
Dateline NBC
Verdict in the pharmacist poisoning trial. A deadly love triangle in paradise? And Bryan Kohberger is back in court.
So why does a judge allow it then if they don't like it? Is it because the person just won't budge and, you know, plead straight up guilty?
Dateline NBC
Verdict in the pharmacist poisoning trial. A deadly love triangle in paradise? And Bryan Kohberger is back in court.
And Danny, you are not just a defense attorney who plays one on TV. You are actually a defense attorney. I always think about when a defendant has to make that decision, if a plea deal is being offered, I can't even imagine being an attorney with a defendant sitting in the room mulling over that life-changing choice. Yeah.
Dateline NBC
Verdict in the pharmacist poisoning trial. A deadly love triangle in paradise? And Bryan Kohberger is back in court.
So the prosecution argued Michael died from an overdose by insulin injection given to him by his wife. But Nicole's testimony pointed to other potential sources of his health problems, which had started in the years leading up to his death.
Dateline NBC
Verdict in the pharmacist poisoning trial. A deadly love triangle in paradise? And Bryan Kohberger is back in court.
And imagine if you're innocent and you have to make that choice.
Dateline NBC
Verdict in the pharmacist poisoning trial. A deadly love triangle in paradise? And Bryan Kohberger is back in court.
Just very complex. Thank you so much, Danny, for breaking it down for us.
Dateline NBC
Verdict in the pharmacist poisoning trial. A deadly love triangle in paradise? And Bryan Kohberger is back in court.
That's it for this episode of Dateline True Crime Weekly. If you want to learn more about the cases discussed in this and other episodes, head to our website at dateline truecrimeweekly.com. And coming up this Friday on Dateline, Keith has an all-new two-hour mystery. She was a criminal mastermind on a deadly crime spree. She was also a mother.
Dateline NBC
Verdict in the pharmacist poisoning trial. A deadly love triangle in paradise? And Bryan Kohberger is back in court.
The inside story of Sante Kimes and her two very different sons.
Dateline NBC
Verdict in the pharmacist poisoning trial. A deadly love triangle in paradise? And Bryan Kohberger is back in court.
Watch The Devil Wore White airing this Friday at 9, 8 central on NBC or stream it starting Saturday on Peacock. To get ad-free listening for all of our podcasts, subscribe to Dateline Premium. Thanks for listening. Dateline True Crime Weekly is produced by Frannie Kelly and Katie Ferguson. Our associate producers are Carson Cummins and Caroline Casey. Our senior producer is Liz Brown-Koroloff.
Dateline NBC
Verdict in the pharmacist poisoning trial. A deadly love triangle in paradise? And Bryan Kohberger is back in court.
Production and fact-checking help by Sara Kadir. Veronica Mazeka is our digital producer. Rick Kwan is our sound designer. Original music by Jesse McGinty. Bryson Barnes is head of audio production. Paul Ryan is executive producer. And Liz Cole is senior executive producer of Dateline.
Dateline NBC
Verdict in the pharmacist poisoning trial. A deadly love triangle in paradise? And Bryan Kohberger is back in court.
We've got, you know, these big attacks on the DNA. Welcome to Dateline True Crime Weekly. I'm Andrea Canning. It's January 30th, and here's what's on our docket. In Oahu, Hawaii, opening statements in the sensational second trial of a husband accused of murdering his wife's acupuncturist turned lover.
Dateline NBC
Verdict in the pharmacist poisoning trial. A deadly love triangle in paradise? And Bryan Kohberger is back in court.
Nicole spoke about Michael spending time in hospitals, and she mentioned how his poor health was affecting him.
Dateline NBC
Verdict in the pharmacist poisoning trial. A deadly love triangle in paradise? And Bryan Kohberger is back in court.
Natalie's son also took the stand. He talked about his parents' business and about who was in charge and who wasn't.
Dateline NBC
Verdict in the pharmacist poisoning trial. A deadly love triangle in paradise? And Bryan Kohberger is back in court.
You're listening in to Dateline's morning meeting in 30 Rockefeller Center.
Dateline NBC
Verdict in the pharmacist poisoning trial. A deadly love triangle in paradise? And Bryan Kohberger is back in court.
Right, because the prosecution had said that it was Natalie who was in charge, correct?
Dateline NBC
Verdict in the pharmacist poisoning trial. A deadly love triangle in paradise? And Bryan Kohberger is back in court.
So the defense also challenged another key part of the prosecution's case, that Natalie poisoned Michael with insulin. And remember, investigators exhumed Michael's body twice to examine it. The first time, the manner of death was undetermined, and then the second, they found it was homicide. The defense argued in court that the body was simply too decomposed to make a determination.
Dateline NBC
Verdict in the pharmacist poisoning trial. A deadly love triangle in paradise? And Bryan Kohberger is back in court.
And they showed photos from the first autopsy in court in a very emotional moment.
Dateline NBC
Verdict in the pharmacist poisoning trial. A deadly love triangle in paradise? And Bryan Kohberger is back in court.
What did the defense's experts have to say about the findings from the autopsy?
Dateline NBC
Verdict in the pharmacist poisoning trial. A deadly love triangle in paradise? And Bryan Kohberger is back in court.
Yeah, and we have some sound from Dr. Priya Banerjee, a forensic pathologist, speaking about that.
Dateline NBC
Verdict in the pharmacist poisoning trial. A deadly love triangle in paradise? And Bryan Kohberger is back in court.
The prosecution took an opportunity, you know, to cross Dr. Banerjee. She really, she stood her ground with her findings.
Dateline NBC
Verdict in the pharmacist poisoning trial. A deadly love triangle in paradise? And Bryan Kohberger is back in court.
So we move on, Jay, to closing statements. What were the arguments both the prosecution and the defense each wanted to leave the jury with?
Dateline NBC
Verdict in the pharmacist poisoning trial. A deadly love triangle in paradise? And Bryan Kohberger is back in court.
In Dateline Roundup, Brian Koberger, the man accused of murdering four University of Idaho students in their beds, is back in court as his defense team cries foul.
Dateline NBC
Verdict in the pharmacist poisoning trial. A deadly love triangle in paradise? And Bryan Kohberger is back in court.
So the jury started deliberating Wednesday morning, and they came back with a verdict about only two hours later.
Dateline NBC
Verdict in the pharmacist poisoning trial. A deadly love triangle in paradise? And Bryan Kohberger is back in court.
Was that a surprise to you?
Dateline NBC
Verdict in the pharmacist poisoning trial. A deadly love triangle in paradise? And Bryan Kohberger is back in court.
All right, Jay, thanks so much for coming on and keeping us up to date on this case.
Dateline NBC
Verdict in the pharmacist poisoning trial. A deadly love triangle in paradise? And Bryan Kohberger is back in court.
Up next, heartbreak in paradise. We've got details from inside a Hawaii courtroom as a man accused of shooting his wife's lover is tried for the second time. Three years ago, 47-year-old John Tokuhara, an acupuncturist in Honolulu, Hawaii, didn't show up for dinner with his mom. The next morning, she went to open the clinic their family owned and found him dead on the floor.
Dateline NBC
Verdict in the pharmacist poisoning trial. A deadly love triangle in paradise? And Bryan Kohberger is back in court.
He'd been shot in the face three times. A month later, our affiliate KHNL reported that a contractor named Eric Thompson had been arrested.
Dateline NBC
Verdict in the pharmacist poisoning trial. A deadly love triangle in paradise? And Bryan Kohberger is back in court.
But Eric's wife Joyce wasn't the only one having an affair with John Tokuhara. There were other love triangles, other angry husbands.
Dateline NBC
Verdict in the pharmacist poisoning trial. A deadly love triangle in paradise? And Bryan Kohberger is back in court.
Eric Thompson pleaded not guilty to murder in the second degree and went to trial in the summer of 2023. A jury deliberated for more than three days but could not reach a verdict. Earlier this month, a new jury was sworn in and Eric Thompson's retrial began. Mark Carpenter from KHNL covered Eric's first trial and now he's on his second. He's here to tell us what is new this time around.
Dateline NBC
Verdict in the pharmacist poisoning trial. A deadly love triangle in paradise? And Bryan Kohberger is back in court.
Plus, you've definitely heard about defendants pleading guilty or not guilty. But did you know there are some other kinds of pleas defendants sometimes make? NBC News legal analyst Danny Savalos will be here to give us the basics.
Dateline NBC
Verdict in the pharmacist poisoning trial. A deadly love triangle in paradise? And Bryan Kohberger is back in court.
Mark, thanks for making the time.
Dateline NBC
Verdict in the pharmacist poisoning trial. A deadly love triangle in paradise? And Bryan Kohberger is back in court.
Mark, what happened here?
Dateline NBC
Verdict in the pharmacist poisoning trial. A deadly love triangle in paradise? And Bryan Kohberger is back in court.
Yeah, and even after she had the baby, not only did they keep seeing each other, but she kept going to the clinic to get treated.
Dateline NBC
Verdict in the pharmacist poisoning trial. A deadly love triangle in paradise? And Bryan Kohberger is back in court.
And she admitted it.
Dateline NBC
Verdict in the pharmacist poisoning trial. A deadly love triangle in paradise? And Bryan Kohberger is back in court.
What does the prosecution think the motive was then if the affair had ended?
Dateline NBC
Verdict in the pharmacist poisoning trial. A deadly love triangle in paradise? And Bryan Kohberger is back in court.
So lay out what prosecutors say happened. This is the middle of January 2022.
Dateline NBC
Verdict in the pharmacist poisoning trial. A deadly love triangle in paradise? And Bryan Kohberger is back in court.
The prosecution says DNA evidence is pointing straight to Eric. This is like the smoking hat.
Dateline NBC
Verdict in the pharmacist poisoning trial. A deadly love triangle in paradise? And Bryan Kohberger is back in court.
Or could be because the defense has a counter to that. They say the hat was mishandled by the police. And this summer, their lab came under scrutiny.
Dateline NBC
Verdict in the pharmacist poisoning trial. A deadly love triangle in paradise? And Bryan Kohberger is back in court.
Okay, and the defense's theory, how does it differ from the prosecution's?
Dateline NBC
Verdict in the pharmacist poisoning trial. A deadly love triangle in paradise? And Bryan Kohberger is back in court.
But before all that, we're heading back to West Virginia and the trial of Natalie Cochran, the pharmacist accused of poisoning her husband Michael to cover up a multi-million dollar Ponzi scheme. Nearly six years after Michael's death, we finally have a verdict. We've been bringing you inside the courtroom for the trial of Natalie Cochran over the last few episodes.
Dateline NBC
Verdict in the pharmacist poisoning trial. A deadly love triangle in paradise? And Bryan Kohberger is back in court.
How are things going to play out differently for the prosecution with this second trial? Because, you know, whatever they were doing the first time didn't work if it ended in a deadlock.
Dateline NBC
Verdict in the pharmacist poisoning trial. A deadly love triangle in paradise? And Bryan Kohberger is back in court.
So Eric's second trial began last week, and the first witness the prosecution called was John's mother. This is actually her second time having to testify in 18 months. That can't be easy.
Dateline NBC
Verdict in the pharmacist poisoning trial. A deadly love triangle in paradise? And Bryan Kohberger is back in court.
Yeah, and she's suing Eric for wrongful death?
Dateline NBC
Verdict in the pharmacist poisoning trial. A deadly love triangle in paradise? And Bryan Kohberger is back in court.
The prosecution also called witnesses to set up the surveillance video they say shows Eric near the clinic that day. And they're arguing if you can't tell it's Eric, that's because he went to great lengths to conceal his identity.
Dateline NBC
Verdict in the pharmacist poisoning trial. A deadly love triangle in paradise? And Bryan Kohberger is back in court.
Eric Thompson testified in his own defense in his first trial.
Dateline NBC
Verdict in the pharmacist poisoning trial. A deadly love triangle in paradise? And Bryan Kohberger is back in court.
Do you think you'll see him take the stand again?
Dateline NBC
Accused killer's voice on a 911 call in Michigan. A hike in paradise gone terribly wrong. And Karen Read's retrial begins.
Good morning.
Dateline NBC
Accused killer's voice on a 911 call in Michigan. A hike in paradise gone terribly wrong. And Karen Read's retrial begins.
We also remember your soccer chair. Are you having to show up at midnight again just to get a seat? No.
Dateline NBC
Accused killer's voice on a 911 call in Michigan. A hike in paradise gone terribly wrong. And Karen Read's retrial begins.
And would you say that there are as many Karen Reid supporters as from the first trial? Does it feel smaller now or the same?
Dateline NBC
Accused killer's voice on a 911 call in Michigan. A hike in paradise gone terribly wrong. And Karen Read's retrial begins.
How in the world do they pick a jury with everyone knowing about this case now?
Dateline NBC
Accused killer's voice on a 911 call in Michigan. A hike in paradise gone terribly wrong. And Karen Read's retrial begins.
But Linda was released from prison after serving only eight years of a life sentence. A federal appeals court ruled that she deserved a retrial because of ineffective counsel and prosecutorial misconduct, and that began last week.
Dateline NBC
Accused killer's voice on a 911 call in Michigan. A hike in paradise gone terribly wrong. And Karen Read's retrial begins.
Dateline producers are also following Lori Vallow Daybell's trial in Arizona. This is about how Lori's brother, Alex Cox, killed Lori's fourth husband, Charles Vallow, in an argument and claimed self-defense. But Alex has since died, and Maricopa County is alleging that it wasn't self-defense and that Lori helped plan it. So she is facing a conspiracy charge, and they've seated a jury there, Sue.
Dateline NBC
Accused killer's voice on a 911 call in Michigan. A hike in paradise gone terribly wrong. And Karen Read's retrial begins.
And openings in that case are coming soon? This coming Monday. Okay. And finally, we know that the trial of Sean Diddy Combs is set to start next month. He's charged with sex trafficking, transportation for the purposes of prostitution, and conspiracy. And he has pleaded not guilty to those charges. Sue, what is going on with all the civil suits since there are, what, more than 50 of them now?
Dateline NBC
Accused killer's voice on a 911 call in Michigan. A hike in paradise gone terribly wrong. And Karen Read's retrial begins.
The prosecution is calling just about every neighbor who showed up to the scene that day, a dentist who performed CPR, the friend who noticed blood on the bumper of Linda's van, and the next-door neighbor who called 911. Dateline producer Sergei Evonen has been in the courtroom in Pawpaw, Michigan, and he joins us now with the latest. Hey, Sergei.
Dateline NBC
Accused killer's voice on a 911 call in Michigan. A hike in paradise gone terribly wrong. And Karen Read's retrial begins.
Okay, Sue, thanks for taking the time and good luck in court today. We'll talk to you soon. Bye-bye, Andrea. My next guest is a former New Jersey police captain on a mission. Ever since his retirement, Jerry Turning has traveled the country training first responders on how best to interact with people with autism.
Dateline NBC
Accused killer's voice on a 911 call in Michigan. A hike in paradise gone terribly wrong. And Karen Read's retrial begins.
As he said in a training session recently for the Hamden, Connecticut Police Department, for him, it's personal. He has a son with autism.
Dateline NBC
Accused killer's voice on a 911 call in Michigan. A hike in paradise gone terribly wrong. And Karen Read's retrial begins.
We first met Jerry through his daughter, Anna, who happens to be a Dateline Digital Associate Producer. She has written several articles for our Missing in America series, including some about people with autism who have gone missing. Since April is Autism Awareness Month, we asked Jerry and Anna to come on the podcast and tell us what we need to know.
Dateline NBC
Accused killer's voice on a 911 call in Michigan. A hike in paradise gone terribly wrong. And Karen Read's retrial begins.
Anna and Jerry, thank you so much for being here. Thanks for having us. Yeah, thank you. It's an honor. Yeah, absolutely. You're doing very, very good work. So to both of you, Anna and Jerry, you have someone in your family with autism, and this is what inspired you to do this work with the autism community.
Dateline NBC
Accused killer's voice on a 911 call in Michigan. A hike in paradise gone terribly wrong. And Karen Read's retrial begins.
Jeri, you were in the unique position of being a police officer. So you decided to rethink the interactions between law enforcement and people missing.
Dateline NBC
Accused killer's voice on a 911 call in Michigan. A hike in paradise gone terribly wrong. And Karen Read's retrial begins.
Yeah, so set the scene for us. The Sturmers lived in a pretty rural area. Linda boarded horses. The neighbors' houses weren't all that close to each other, right?
Dateline NBC
Accused killer's voice on a 911 call in Michigan. A hike in paradise gone terribly wrong. And Karen Read's retrial begins.
There's no playbook, but what's your advice to the caretakers of people with autism about how to deal with a situation where law enforcement exists?
Dateline NBC
Accused killer's voice on a 911 call in Michigan. A hike in paradise gone terribly wrong. And Karen Read's retrial begins.
Anna, of course, a big job that you have here at Dateline is covering these missing persons cases. Is there a case that you've seen that showcases some of what your dad's training is trying to accomplish?
Dateline NBC
Accused killer's voice on a 911 call in Michigan. A hike in paradise gone terribly wrong. And Karen Read's retrial begins.
And I'm so glad you're writing about this. It's so important. And also, you know, if anyone has any information, of course, about Sebastian Rogers from Sumner County, Tennessee, please let let the police know or reach out to us at Dateline. And, you know, just thank you to both for all of your work in the autism community. Thank you, Andrea. It means a lot. Thank you so much for having us.
Dateline NBC
Accused killer's voice on a 911 call in Michigan. A hike in paradise gone terribly wrong. And Karen Read's retrial begins.
That's it for this episode of Dateline True Crime Weekly. To get ad-free listening for all our podcasts, subscribe to Dateline Premium. If you have any true crime questions you want our team to look into, we'd love to hear your voice on the podcast. Send us an audio message on social at Dateline NBC or call us at 212-413-5252. And we'll see if we can get some answers for you.
Dateline NBC
Accused killer's voice on a 911 call in Michigan. A hike in paradise gone terribly wrong. And Karen Read's retrial begins.
There's a lot of misdirect and mystery.
Dateline NBC
Accused killer's voice on a 911 call in Michigan. A hike in paradise gone terribly wrong. And Karen Read's retrial begins.
Coming up this Friday on Dateline, I've got an all-new two-hour episode. After a couple is found shot to death on a Fourth of July weekend, the man's grieving daughter is determined to find their killer, even if it means going undercover and confronting someone she loves. I really wanted to find out who did it. You put your detective hat on. Yeah, I did. A fire was lit. Yeah.
Dateline NBC
Accused killer's voice on a 911 call in Michigan. A hike in paradise gone terribly wrong. And Karen Read's retrial begins.
Watch Deadly Obsession this Friday on NBC at 9, 8 Central or stream it on Peacock on Saturday. And for the next few weeks, you can get your Dateline fix on Sundays, too. This Sunday, tune in at 10, 9 Central for Josh's report about the puzzling murder of a University of Iowa student and the piece of surveillance video that cracked the case wide open. Thanks for listening.
Dateline NBC
Accused killer's voice on a 911 call in Michigan. A hike in paradise gone terribly wrong. And Karen Read's retrial begins.
What did the neighbors say they saw when they got there?
Dateline NBC
Accused killer's voice on a 911 call in Michigan. A hike in paradise gone terribly wrong. And Karen Read's retrial begins.
One of the neighbors called 911? Yes.
Dateline NBC
Accused killer's voice on a 911 call in Michigan. A hike in paradise gone terribly wrong. And Karen Read's retrial begins.
It sounds so primal. Linda's friend Kim Thompson also testified.
Dateline NBC
Accused killer's voice on a 911 call in Michigan. A hike in paradise gone terribly wrong. And Karen Read's retrial begins.
Welcome to Dateline True Crime Weekly. I'm Andrea Canning. It's April 3rd, and here's what's on our docket. At a popular hiking trail in Hawaii, investigators say a doctor allegedly tried to push his wife off a cliff, and then he hit her on the head with a rock. She said that she bit him to try to fight him off. Other stories we've got our eyes on. Lori Vallow Daybell, a.k.a.
Dateline NBC
Accused killer's voice on a 911 call in Michigan. A hike in paradise gone terribly wrong. And Karen Read's retrial begins.
Did they talk to Linda in the days that followed?
Dateline NBC
Accused killer's voice on a 911 call in Michigan. A hike in paradise gone terribly wrong. And Karen Read's retrial begins.
Dateline's morning meeting is getting underway.
Dateline NBC
Accused killer's voice on a 911 call in Michigan. A hike in paradise gone terribly wrong. And Karen Read's retrial begins.
So the prosecution used those witnesses to paint the picture of a chaotic scene and bring in evidence that Linda ran over Todd with the van, leaving him with lacerations on his head. And they believe that would have happened after Linda poured an accelerant on Todd and lit him on fire. They called the medical examiner to testify to that.
Dateline NBC
Accused killer's voice on a 911 call in Michigan. A hike in paradise gone terribly wrong. And Karen Read's retrial begins.
Linda's defense attorney was equally aggressive when he cross-examined the pathologist, Dr. Michael Markey. At one point, he got him to concede that Todd's head wounds didn't kill him.
Dateline NBC
Accused killer's voice on a 911 call in Michigan. A hike in paradise gone terribly wrong. And Karen Read's retrial begins.
As we've talked about on the podcast before, in some states, juries can ask questions right after a witness testifies. Michigan is one of those states, Sergey. And on Friday, the jury had a lot of questions for the pathologist who did the autopsy. Did you get a sense? Did those questions reveal anything about what the jury might be thinking?
Dateline NBC
Accused killer's voice on a 911 call in Michigan. A hike in paradise gone terribly wrong. And Karen Read's retrial begins.
All right, Sergey, thank you for keeping us up to date on this very interesting trial. We will check back in with you soon.
Dateline NBC
Accused killer's voice on a 911 call in Michigan. A hike in paradise gone terribly wrong. And Karen Read's retrial begins.
Coming up, in Hawaii, a scenic overlook turned into an alleged crime scene. Investigators say a doctor tried to push his wife over a cliff. What did she tell the police about what happened? The Palipuka Trail in Oahu is one of the Hawaiian island's popular destinations for adventurers.
Dateline NBC
Accused killer's voice on a 911 call in Michigan. A hike in paradise gone terribly wrong. And Karen Read's retrial begins.
Mommy Doomsday, is on trial again. This time, she's the defendant and her own defense attorney. Music mogul Sean Combs gets some good news from a judge. And supporters gather outside the courthouse for Karen Reid's retrial. The scene here in Dedham is still kind of wild. And later, April is Autism Awareness Month. A retired police captain tells us what he wants law enforcement to know.
Dateline NBC
Accused killer's voice on a 911 call in Michigan. A hike in paradise gone terribly wrong. And Karen Read's retrial begins.
The trail's scenic overlooks might just be the perfect place to take a selfie, though its jagged cliffs could be perilous to inexperienced hikers. Last week, it became the site of what investigators say was something far more treacherous, attempted murder. Gerhard Koenig, a 46-year-old doctor, is accused of attempting to kill his wife Ariel on the trail.
Dateline NBC
Accused killer's voice on a 911 call in Michigan. A hike in paradise gone terribly wrong. And Karen Read's retrial begins.
Investigators say he tried to push her off a cliff, and they say when that didn't work, he attacked her.
Dateline NBC
Accused killer's voice on a 911 call in Michigan. A hike in paradise gone terribly wrong. And Karen Read's retrial begins.
Koenig was taken into custody after a manhunt last week and indicted for attempted second-degree murder. He has not yet entered a plea, and his attorney did not respond to a request for comment. Mahe Alani Richardson, who is the evening anchor for Hawaii News Now, KHNL, joins us to break down this story of the ultimate trouble in paradise. Welcome to the podcast. Aloha, Andrea.
Dateline NBC
Accused killer's voice on a 911 call in Michigan. A hike in paradise gone terribly wrong. And Karen Read's retrial begins.
I love hearing aloha. Okay. So to start, this couple, they seem to have it all. They were married in 2018. They had two children. They had lived in Pittsburgh in an affluent area and then moved to Hawaii. Okay. What do we know about the relationship between Gerhardt and Arielle Koenig?
Dateline NBC
Accused killer's voice on a 911 call in Michigan. A hike in paradise gone terribly wrong. And Karen Read's retrial begins.
How did they end up, Gerhard and Ariel, wind up on this trail in the first place?
Dateline NBC
Accused killer's voice on a 911 call in Michigan. A hike in paradise gone terribly wrong. And Karen Read's retrial begins.
So in these court documents, Ariel says that things got physical.
Dateline NBC
Accused killer's voice on a 911 call in Michigan. A hike in paradise gone terribly wrong. And Karen Read's retrial begins.
And thankfully, two women were hiking and saw some of this and actually called 911.
Dateline NBC
Accused killer's voice on a 911 call in Michigan. A hike in paradise gone terribly wrong. And Karen Read's retrial begins.
Oh my gosh, that's awful. Ariel applied for a restraining order soon after this happened. Did she say anything that gave police a possible motive for what she's alleging he did on the trail?
Dateline NBC
Accused killer's voice on a 911 call in Michigan. A hike in paradise gone terribly wrong. And Karen Read's retrial begins.
Our editorial team is catching up on the latest developments in cases we've been watching around the country.
Dateline NBC
Accused killer's voice on a 911 call in Michigan. A hike in paradise gone terribly wrong. And Karen Read's retrial begins.
Before all that, we're heading back to a Michigan courtroom where the prosecution came out swinging at the retrial of a woman accused of murdering her husband. Fifteen years ago, Linda K. Stermer was convicted of killing her husband, Todd Stermer, by setting their house on fire while he was asleep in his Lazy Boy and then running him over with the family van once he ran outside.
Dateline NBC
Accused killer's voice on a 911 call in Michigan. A hike in paradise gone terribly wrong. And Karen Read's retrial begins.
The restraining order we talked about was granted, and he is currently being held at a jail in Oahu. Initially, his bail was set at $5 million, but after his indictment for attempted murder, he's now being held without bail. What can we expect from this next?
Dateline NBC
Accused killer's voice on a 911 call in Michigan. A hike in paradise gone terribly wrong. And Karen Read's retrial begins.
All right. Thank you so much for bringing this story to us. So sad, but thank goodness Ariel is okay. Thank you. And we'll put that information in the episode description. Up next, it's time for Dateline Roundup. We've got the latest on Lori Vallow Daybell's trial in Arizona on a charge of conspiracy to commit murder. This is her second trial in two years.
Dateline NBC
Accused killer's voice on a 911 call in Michigan. A hike in paradise gone terribly wrong. And Karen Read's retrial begins.
And then over to Boston, where Karen Reid is also on her second trial. This one, a retrial for the alleged murder of her police officer boyfriend. And why an anonymous lawsuit against music mogul Sean Diddy Combs was dropped. Plus, a retired police captain talks about his tips for law enforcement on how officers should be interacting with people on the autism spectrum. Welcome back.
Dateline NBC
Accused killer's voice on a 911 call in Michigan. A hike in paradise gone terribly wrong. And Karen Read's retrial begins.
Joining us for this week's Dateline Roundup is Dateline producer Sue Simpson. Hey, Sue, thanks for coming back on the podcast. You're in Dedham, Massachusetts for Karen Reid again.
Dateline NBC
Verdict in the roommate murder trial. Mom accused of murder by fire and van. And, actor Dennis Quaid.
Last week, more than a dozen court filings were made public, giving us a glimpse of what the prosecution and defense might be planning in the run-up to his trial, including a selfie.
Dateline NBC
Verdict in the roommate murder trial. Mom accused of murder by fire and van. And, actor Dennis Quaid.
She was a first-year college student and hadn't shown up for work or answered his calls, so he drove over to her apartment. What he found there would shake not just the Knutson family, but the community of Minot, North Dakota. Anita had been murdered, stabbed to death in her bed. Following the killing, police had no shortage of leads.
Dateline NBC
Verdict in the roommate murder trial. Mom accused of murder by fire and van. And, actor Dennis Quaid.
Also in recent filings, Veronica, prosecutors talk about Koberger's alleged click activity on Amazon, what he was searching.
Dateline NBC
Verdict in the roommate murder trial. Mom accused of murder by fire and van. And, actor Dennis Quaid.
Some legal experts are calling Koberger's searches on Amazon a smoking gun, saying the evidence is catastrophic to the defense's case.
Dateline NBC
Verdict in the roommate murder trial. Mom accused of murder by fire and van. And, actor Dennis Quaid.
There's also been some back and forth over security footage from an apartment building near the crime scene.
Dateline NBC
Verdict in the roommate murder trial. Mom accused of murder by fire and van. And, actor Dennis Quaid.
And the prosecution filed something that involves Brian Koberger's family and how they could get dragged into this.
Dateline NBC
Verdict in the roommate murder trial. Mom accused of murder by fire and van. And, actor Dennis Quaid.
For our next story, we're off to the West Coast where there's news in the murder of a California fire captain, Rebecca Becky Morody, who was fatally stabbed this February in her house.
Dateline NBC
Verdict in the roommate murder trial. Mom accused of murder by fire and van. And, actor Dennis Quaid.
And then the San Diego County Sheriff's Department named her wife, Yolanda, as the suspect.
Dateline NBC
Verdict in the roommate murder trial. Mom accused of murder by fire and van. And, actor Dennis Quaid.
So where does Yolanda go from there then? What do authorities say?
Dateline NBC
Verdict in the roommate murder trial. Mom accused of murder by fire and van. And, actor Dennis Quaid.
What are they saying, the police, the prosecutors, about a possible motive here?
Dateline NBC
Verdict in the roommate murder trial. Mom accused of murder by fire and van. And, actor Dennis Quaid.
They interviewed more than 40 people and said there were several possible suspects. But the case went cold until almost 15 years later. Anita's roommate, Nicole Rice, was charged with her murder. She pleaded not guilty and her trial finally began last week.
Dateline NBC
Verdict in the roommate murder trial. Mom accused of murder by fire and van. And, actor Dennis Quaid.
This isn't Yolanda's first run-in with the law, is it?
Dateline NBC
Verdict in the roommate murder trial. Mom accused of murder by fire and van. And, actor Dennis Quaid.
Thanks for the update on that. We also have an update on the Karen Reed case. The Massachusetts woman accused of murdering her police officer boyfriend, John O'Keefe, in 2022, something she vehemently denies. What is the news in Karen Reed land this week, Veronica?
Dateline NBC
Verdict in the roommate murder trial. Mom accused of murder by fire and van. And, actor Dennis Quaid.
All right. Thank you so much, Veronica, for all these updates. Of course. Thank you. For our final story this week, I am joined by a famous actor who's been a household name for decades. You might know him from his role as an astronaut in The Right Stuff or a loving father in The Parent Trap or his most recent film role as a TV producer in The Substance.
Dateline NBC
Verdict in the roommate murder trial. Mom accused of murder by fire and van. And, actor Dennis Quaid.
Our producers are catching up on breaking crime news around the country.
Dateline NBC
Verdict in the roommate murder trial. Mom accused of murder by fire and van. And, actor Dennis Quaid.
Now he is tackling something in our wheelhouse, a completely new genre playing serial killer Keith Jesperson in the series Happy Face. He is also a friend of mine, and he likes to watch Dateline with his wonderful wife, Laura. So we invited him on the show to talk true crime. Dennis, thank you for making time to come on the podcast.
Dateline NBC
Verdict in the roommate murder trial. Mom accused of murder by fire and van. And, actor Dennis Quaid.
I love it. Well, as you may remember, my favorite role of yours was in The Rookie, where you play the older baseball pitcher.
Dateline NBC
Verdict in the roommate murder trial. Mom accused of murder by fire and van. And, actor Dennis Quaid.
This is not that.
Dateline NBC
Verdict in the roommate murder trial. Mom accused of murder by fire and van. And, actor Dennis Quaid.
No, this is so much darker. Let's just start with, can you just give our listeners a quick snapshot of who Jesperson was and what he did?
Dateline NBC
Verdict in the roommate murder trial. Mom accused of murder by fire and van. And, actor Dennis Quaid.
That's how he got the nickname.
Dateline NBC
Verdict in the roommate murder trial. Mom accused of murder by fire and van. And, actor Dennis Quaid.
Dateline producer Haley Barber is in Grand Forks, North Dakota, and joins us now to bring us up to speed on the case and take us inside the courtroom as the verdict was read. Haley, thank you for joining us.
Dateline NBC
Verdict in the roommate murder trial. Mom accused of murder by fire and van. And, actor Dennis Quaid.
Does he know about the show?
Dateline NBC
Verdict in the roommate murder trial. Mom accused of murder by fire and van. And, actor Dennis Quaid.
Seeing the relationship between you and her was so creepy.
Dateline NBC
Verdict in the roommate murder trial. Mom accused of murder by fire and van. And, actor Dennis Quaid.
Yeah. We deal with so many families on Dateline, you know, families of the killer, families of the victims, and these people, you know, that are collateral damage in all of this.
Dateline NBC
Verdict in the roommate murder trial. Mom accused of murder by fire and van. And, actor Dennis Quaid.
So, Haley, to start, can you tell us a little bit about Anita Knutson? What have you learned about her?
Dateline NBC
Verdict in the roommate murder trial. Mom accused of murder by fire and van. And, actor Dennis Quaid.
You said it so well. I mean, this is something that we know on Dateline is this ripple effect of a murder and crime. On another note, I'm putting you on the spot. Do you have a most fascinating Dateline? Or are there too many?
Dateline NBC
Verdict in the roommate murder trial. Mom accused of murder by fire and van. And, actor Dennis Quaid.
Oh, Laurie Valodebo.
Dateline NBC
Verdict in the roommate murder trial. Mom accused of murder by fire and van. And, actor Dennis Quaid.
Yeah. I'm working on a dateline right now that involves a mother and her two children that's airing very soon. So you'll look forward to that one. Dennis, thank you so much for this conversation.
Dateline NBC
Verdict in the roommate murder trial. Mom accused of murder by fire and van. And, actor Dennis Quaid.
I encourage everyone to watch Happy Face. Thank you so much. And our hats off to Melissa for her bravery and for telling her story. It sounds like she's on the road to healing by doing things like this with you.
Dateline NBC
Verdict in the roommate murder trial. Mom accused of murder by fire and van. And, actor Dennis Quaid.
Excellent. Thank you so much, Dennis.
Dateline NBC
Verdict in the roommate murder trial. Mom accused of murder by fire and van. And, actor Dennis Quaid.
Dateline is off this Friday for the 2025 World Figure Skating Championships. But get ready for a whole lot of Dateline for the next couple of months. We'll have episodes Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays starting next week. And we've also got plenty to keep you busy on Dateline's podcast feed. Coming up this Friday, we have a treat for Dateline Premium subscribers.
Dateline NBC
Verdict in the roommate murder trial. Mom accused of murder by fire and van. And, actor Dennis Quaid.
Listen in as Josh, Dennis, and Keith talk about a very special anniversary, their 30 years spent working on Dateline. From their very first stories to prison interviews that didn't quite go according to plan, you'll hear them reflect on what Dateline and you mean to them.
Dateline NBC
Verdict in the roommate murder trial. Mom accused of murder by fire and van. And, actor Dennis Quaid.
One last thing before we go. If you have any questions for the Dateline True Crime Weekly team or suggestions for a case we should look into, send us an audio message on social at Dateline NBC or you can leave us a voicemail at 212-413-5252. Thanks for listening.
Dateline NBC
Verdict in the roommate murder trial. Mom accused of murder by fire and van. And, actor Dennis Quaid.
So sad that her life just was so abruptly ended in that way. Horrible. After Anita's father found her body, police came to the apartment. Was there anything out of place, any clues that might have given them an idea of who could have done this?
Dateline NBC
Verdict in the roommate murder trial. Mom accused of murder by fire and van. And, actor Dennis Quaid.
Good morning. It's the start of another workday for the Dateline team here at 30 Rockefeller Center.
Dateline NBC
Verdict in the roommate murder trial. Mom accused of murder by fire and van. And, actor Dennis Quaid.
So something really big the police found, they found what they believe was the murder weapon in the apartment? That's right.
Dateline NBC
Verdict in the roommate murder trial. Mom accused of murder by fire and van. And, actor Dennis Quaid.
So as we know, Anita had a roommate, Nicole, the woman now on trial for her murder. When did police first talk to her?
Dateline NBC
Verdict in the roommate murder trial. Mom accused of murder by fire and van. And, actor Dennis Quaid.
Welcome to Dateline True Crime Weekly. I'm Andrea Canning. It's March 27th, and here's what's on our docket. In Western Michigan, a woman accused of murdering her husband is on trial for the second time. Can a renowned arson investigator clear her name?
Dateline NBC
Verdict in the roommate murder trial. Mom accused of murder by fire and van. And, actor Dennis Quaid.
At the trial last week, one of the detectives who responded to the crime scene talked about that.
Dateline NBC
Verdict in the roommate murder trial. Mom accused of murder by fire and van. And, actor Dennis Quaid.
So that stuck out to investigators at the time, and they also discovered there was tension in this roommate relationship?
Dateline NBC
Verdict in the roommate murder trial. Mom accused of murder by fire and van. And, actor Dennis Quaid.
Yeah, I mean, I think a lot of college kids have those sort of petty arguments with their roommates, but this seemed like it was more than that.
Dateline NBC
Verdict in the roommate murder trial. Mom accused of murder by fire and van. And, actor Dennis Quaid.
What did Nicole tell police about where she was at the time of the murder?
Dateline NBC
Verdict in the roommate murder trial. Mom accused of murder by fire and van. And, actor Dennis Quaid.
So 15 years go by. And then finally, there is an arrest. of Nicole in 2022. What changed?
Dateline NBC
Verdict in the roommate murder trial. Mom accused of murder by fire and van. And, actor Dennis Quaid.
And you were in the courtroom when those witnesses testified for the prosecution, including a man Nicole had dated at one time?
Dateline NBC
Verdict in the roommate murder trial. Mom accused of murder by fire and van. And, actor Dennis Quaid.
Other stories we're watching this week. New details in the prosecution's case against Brian Koberger. The wife of a murdered California firefighter is arrested in Mexico. And it's not the first time she's been charged with murder. And the latest on Karen Reid's upcoming trial. Jury selection will start on Tuesday.
Dateline NBC
Verdict in the roommate murder trial. Mom accused of murder by fire and van. And, actor Dennis Quaid.
Right off the bat, the defense really went after alternate suspects in this trial. In their opening statement, they were pointing the finger at other people.
Dateline NBC
Verdict in the roommate murder trial. Mom accused of murder by fire and van. And, actor Dennis Quaid.
The defense also, you know, has really questioned, you know, why it took a TV show to shake the trees on this.
Dateline NBC
Verdict in the roommate murder trial. Mom accused of murder by fire and van. And, actor Dennis Quaid.
The trial moved very quickly, and we heard closing arguments in the case on Tuesday, and then we got a verdict.
Dateline NBC
Verdict in the roommate murder trial. Mom accused of murder by fire and van. And, actor Dennis Quaid.
Haley, thank you so much for joining us to talk about this trial. Thank you, Andrea. Coming up, the Michigan mom accused of burning her husband before running him over with a van is heading to trial for the second time. She says investigators got it all wrong. On a cold and rainy January day in 2007, fire trucks raced to a house in Lawrence Township, Western Michigan.
Dateline NBC
Verdict in the roommate murder trial. Mom accused of murder by fire and van. And, actor Dennis Quaid.
The home was destroyed, and Todd Stermer, who'd run out of the building with the top half of his body in flames, died in the yard. Three years later, a jury convicted Todd's wife, Linda Stermer, of murdering him by first setting him on fire and then running him over with her van. Her mandatory sentence was life in prison without the possibility of parole. But in 2018, Linda was released.
Dateline NBC
Verdict in the roommate murder trial. Mom accused of murder by fire and van. And, actor Dennis Quaid.
A federal appeals court ruled Linda hadn't received a fair trial because of mistakes her defense attorney made. This week, almost 20 years after her husband's death, she is standing trial yet again. Dateline producer Sergey Ivonin was there as a jury was selected. Sergey, thank you for coming on the podcast.
Dateline NBC
Verdict in the roommate murder trial. Mom accused of murder by fire and van. And, actor Dennis Quaid.
Set this up for us, Sergey, because I understand at the beginning of their relationship, Linda and Todd Sturmer seemed to have a great relationship, a lovely blended family.
Dateline NBC
Verdict in the roommate murder trial. Mom accused of murder by fire and van. And, actor Dennis Quaid.
Plus, we've got our first celebrity here on Dateline True Crime Weekly. Dateline fan and actor Dennis Quaid, he's got a new role as a serial killer.
Dateline NBC
Verdict in the roommate murder trial. Mom accused of murder by fire and van. And, actor Dennis Quaid.
So... The allegations here are that Linda killed Todd by setting him on fire.
Dateline NBC
Verdict in the roommate murder trial. Mom accused of murder by fire and van. And, actor Dennis Quaid.
So is Linda saying that she didn't hit him or that she accidentally hit him?
Dateline NBC
Verdict in the roommate murder trial. Mom accused of murder by fire and van. And, actor Dennis Quaid.
So I'm assuming at her first trial, the state presented evidence that Linda started the fire, committed arson, you know, to be able to get that conviction.
Dateline NBC
Verdict in the roommate murder trial. Mom accused of murder by fire and van. And, actor Dennis Quaid.
So how does that work? Are they trying to say that it was actually Todd trying to kill Linda?
Dateline NBC
Verdict in the roommate murder trial. Mom accused of murder by fire and van. And, actor Dennis Quaid.
Those fires were investigated as arson, but according to Todd's sister, someone else was eventually held responsible for them, right?
Dateline NBC
Verdict in the roommate murder trial. Mom accused of murder by fire and van. And, actor Dennis Quaid.
But before all that, we're heading to the North Dakota prairie for the latest chapter in a murder that stumped investigators for decades, until a surprising arrest three years ago. On June 4th, 2007, Gordon Knutson was worried that he hadn't heard from his 18-year-old daughter, Anita.
Dateline NBC
Verdict in the roommate murder trial. Mom accused of murder by fire and van. And, actor Dennis Quaid.
Interesting. But the jury still convicted her back in 2010, and they didn't deliberate for very long, did they?
Dateline NBC
Verdict in the roommate murder trial. Mom accused of murder by fire and van. And, actor Dennis Quaid.
So Linda has been out on bail since 2018.
Dateline NBC
Verdict in the roommate murder trial. Mom accused of murder by fire and van. And, actor Dennis Quaid.
So the fire evidence will be newly contested this time, but what about Linda driving over Todd with her van? How will they handle that?
Dateline NBC
Verdict in the roommate murder trial. Mom accused of murder by fire and van. And, actor Dennis Quaid.
Wow. Okay. Well, thank you, Sergey, for this. I know you're heading off to court as we speak, so please keep us posted.
Dateline NBC
Verdict in the roommate murder trial. Mom accused of murder by fire and van. And, actor Dennis Quaid.
Up next, it's time for Dateline Roundup. We've got details from the latest court filings in the case against Brian Koberger. And after a month on the run, a woman wanted for the murder of her firefighter wife is finally in custody. Plus, actor Dennis Quaid tells us what he learned playing the happy face serial killer. Welcome back.
Dateline NBC
Verdict in the roommate murder trial. Mom accused of murder by fire and van. And, actor Dennis Quaid.
Joining us for this week's Dateline Roundup is Dateline Digital producer Veronica Mazeka. Hey, Veronica. Hi, Andrea. For our first story, we are off to Idaho for the latest in the case of Brian Koberger. He is the man accused of fatally stabbing four University of Idaho students in November of 2022.
Dateline NBC
Audio of a jailhouse sting. A woman's third murder trial in three decades. And the latest on a new texting scam.
Got it. Fascinating. Sergei, how much longer do you think this will go for?
Dateline NBC
Audio of a jailhouse sting. A woman's third murder trial in three decades. And the latest on a new texting scam.
The state is painstakingly laying out the evidence it says proves Sementilli and her lover, Robert Baker, planned the stabbing of her husband, Fabio, to collect his hefty life insurance policy. They were allegedly helped by a third person whose identity remained a mystery for years. Last week, prosecutors presented the jury with video of Monica and Robert immediately after their arrest.
Dateline NBC
Audio of a jailhouse sting. A woman's third murder trial in three decades. And the latest on a new texting scam.
OK, well, thank you for staying on it. Thank you so much, Sergey.
Dateline NBC
Audio of a jailhouse sting. A woman's third murder trial in three decades. And the latest on a new texting scam.
Up next, it's Dateline Roundup. We've got updates in the case of Adnan Syed, the convicted murderer whose story went viral in the podcast Serial. And more on the upcoming retrial of Karen Reed. And in Hawaii, there's been a verdict in the murder trial of the husband accused of killing his wife's ex-lover.
Dateline NBC
Audio of a jailhouse sting. A woman's third murder trial in three decades. And the latest on a new texting scam.
Plus, NBC News chief consumer investigative correspondent Vicky Nguyen is back, and she wants you to know about a scam targeting drivers. Welcome back. Joining us for this week's Dateline Roundup is Dateline producer Sue Simpson. Hey, Sue. Hey, it's great to be back. Yes, and we are back in Dedham, Massachusetts for another Karen Reid update.
Dateline NBC
Audio of a jailhouse sting. A woman's third murder trial in three decades. And the latest on a new texting scam.
She is the woman accused of drunkenly backing her SUV into her police officer boyfriend, John O'Keefe, back in 2022 and leaving him to die in the snow. Her trial last summer ended with a hung jury, and her retrial is scheduled for April. She has denied having anything to do with his death.
Dateline NBC
Audio of a jailhouse sting. A woman's third murder trial in three decades. And the latest on a new texting scam.
Last week, the judge in the case stopped a hearing halfway through the day citing grave concerns about the defense's work with crash reconstruction experts in Reid's first trial. That hearing started up again this Tuesday. What did we learn, Sue?
Dateline NBC
Audio of a jailhouse sting. A woman's third murder trial in three decades. And the latest on a new texting scam.
And, Sue, one last piece of Karen Reid news, the findings from a federal investigation into the Karen Reid case, which we think has been going on since about April 2023.
Dateline NBC
Audio of a jailhouse sting. A woman's third murder trial in three decades. And the latest on a new texting scam.
Definitely a hit to the defense. We'll stay on top of the Karen Reed case, of course, Sue, you will. For our next story, we're off to Baltimore, where there is a big development in a case true crime podcast fans will probably recognize, Sue.
Dateline NBC
Audio of a jailhouse sting. A woman's third murder trial in three decades. And the latest on a new texting scam.
Video, they say, that captured the unraveling of their plan in real time.
Dateline NBC
Audio of a jailhouse sting. A woman's third murder trial in three decades. And the latest on a new texting scam.
OK, and for our final story, we are off to Honolulu, Hawaii, for a big update on a trial we've been following here on the podcast for the past few weeks. Eric Thompson is accused of murdering his wife's acupuncturist ex-lover in 2022. This is his second trial. His first one in 2023 ended with a hung jury. They've been in deliberations, the jurors, for days. Sue, do we have a decision?
Dateline NBC
Audio of a jailhouse sting. A woman's third murder trial in three decades. And the latest on a new texting scam.
Appreciate it.
Dateline NBC
Audio of a jailhouse sting. A woman's third murder trial in three decades. And the latest on a new texting scam.
For those of you listening in the car right now, our final story is for you. Drivers in the U.S. pay billions of dollars in road tolls each year. But sometimes you might not even know that you've gone through a toll until you get some kind of notice, like a text or an email that you owe money. But what happens when that notice is a scam?
Dateline NBC
Audio of a jailhouse sting. A woman's third murder trial in three decades. And the latest on a new texting scam.
My next guest, NBC News Chief Consumer Investigative Correspondent Vicky Nguyen is here with some safety tips. Welcome back, Vicky. Thank you so much for having me, Andrea. So why are you worried about this now, Vicki? What's going on?
Dateline NBC
Audio of a jailhouse sting. A woman's third murder trial in three decades. And the latest on a new texting scam.
Dateline producer Chetna Joshi is back to bring us up to speed on the latest in the case. Chetna, thanks for making time for us again. Thank you for having me. Sure. OK, so the last time we spoke, Chetna, you told us that prosecutors were telling the jury how investigators had zeroed in on Monica and Robert Baker.
Dateline NBC
Audio of a jailhouse sting. A woman's third murder trial in three decades. And the latest on a new texting scam.
So, Vicki, these scammers, do they know that we use these passes or we use tolls? Or are they just casting a wide net to as many cell phone numbers as they can, hoping that it resonates with someone? Yeah.
Dateline NBC
Audio of a jailhouse sting. A woman's third murder trial in three decades. And the latest on a new texting scam.
You know, and in most states, tolls are collected electronically. So you might not know or remember being charged or the rules can change. You know, it's confusing for people.
Dateline NBC
Audio of a jailhouse sting. A woman's third murder trial in three decades. And the latest on a new texting scam.
So we know what not to do. What should you do if you do get one of these text messages?
Dateline NBC
Audio of a jailhouse sting. A woman's third murder trial in three decades. And the latest on a new texting scam.
Recently, prosecutors have focused more on what they say was their suspicious behavior after they were arrested. And a lot of that was actually caught on tape. Monica and Robert were arrested together and placed in the back of a patrol car. Chetna, what happens in that patrol car?
Dateline NBC
Audio of a jailhouse sting. A woman's third murder trial in three decades. And the latest on a new texting scam.
Good point, good point. So the road toll texting scam, it's just a great reminder that these scammers, they just continue to create new tactics to get money from people. Absolutely. All right, you have the best information, the best tips. Thank you so much as always for being here. Thank you for having me. And to get ad-free listening for all our podcasts, subscribe to Dateline Premium.
Dateline NBC
Audio of a jailhouse sting. A woman's third murder trial in three decades. And the latest on a new texting scam.
Coming up this Friday, Blaine Alexander has her first all-new two-hour dateline since she officially joined the team. In 2016, a young woman's body is found in an abandoned farmhouse, a place known locally as the Haunted House. As fear grips the community, investigators' search for answers takes them from a crime lab to a house of worship.
Dateline NBC
Audio of a jailhouse sting. A woman's third murder trial in three decades. And the latest on a new texting scam.
Watch The Haunted House Confession, airing this Friday at 9, 8 central on NBC, or stream it starting Saturday on Peacock. And don't forget to check out Keith's new podcast series, Murder in the Moonlight. It's about a double murder in the Great Plains and an investigation that came down to one single shiny clue —
Dateline NBC
Audio of a jailhouse sting. A woman's third murder trial in three decades. And the latest on a new texting scam.
Dateline Premium subscribers can binge the entire series, and episodes one through four are available for everyone else. Thanks for listening. Dateline True Crime Weekly is produced by Frannie Kelly and Katie Ferguson. Our associate producers are Carson Cummins and Caroline Casey. Our senior producer is Liz Brown-Koroloff. Production and fact-checking help by Sara Kadir.
Dateline NBC
Audio of a jailhouse sting. A woman's third murder trial in three decades. And the latest on a new texting scam.
Veronica Mazeka is our digital producer. Rick Kwan is our sound designer. Original music by Jesse McGinty. Bryson Barnes is head of audio production. Paul Ryan is executive producer. And Liz Cole is senior executive producer of Dateline.
Dateline NBC
Audio of a jailhouse sting. A woman's third murder trial in three decades. And the latest on a new texting scam.
Welcome to Dateline True Crime Weekly. I'm Andrea Canning. It's February 27th, and here's what's on our docket. In Kansas, a woman accused of murdering her ex-husband and his longtime girlfriend almost 25 years ago is now on trial and representing herself. Last week, she cross-examined her own children.
Dateline NBC
Audio of a jailhouse sting. A woman's third murder trial in three decades. And the latest on a new texting scam.
I'm sure the defense can spin that in a different direction.
Dateline NBC
Audio of a jailhouse sting. A woman's third murder trial in three decades. And the latest on a new texting scam.
So in court, Chetna, we also heard audio of Monica in a jail cell.
Dateline NBC
Audio of a jailhouse sting. A woman's third murder trial in three decades. And the latest on a new texting scam.
It's time for the Dateline story meeting at 30 Rockefeller Center.
Dateline NBC
Audio of a jailhouse sting. A woman's third murder trial in three decades. And the latest on a new texting scam.
Remind us who the police believe this man is and how he fits in.
Dateline NBC
Audio of a jailhouse sting. A woman's third murder trial in three decades. And the latest on a new texting scam.
Other stories on our radar this week, a verdict in Hawaii where the man accused of murdering his wife's ex-lover has been on trial. In Baltimore, a big ruling for convicted killer Adnan Syed, whose story you may know from the podcast Serial. And we've got an important update in the Karen Reid case.
Dateline NBC
Audio of a jailhouse sting. A woman's third murder trial in three decades. And the latest on a new texting scam.
Christopher Austin, the third person involved in all of this, he has pleaded guilty to second-degree murder, will be sentenced on April 30th, and he's going to testify.
Dateline NBC
Audio of a jailhouse sting. A woman's third murder trial in three decades. And the latest on a new texting scam.
Okay, well, you will let us know when this big piece of testimony is coming, and we will have you back to hear about that, what presumably could be explosive in that courtroom. Thank you, Chetna. Thanks for having me. Coming up, just before opening statements three weeks ago, murder defendant Dana Chandler fired her attorneys and took over her own defense. She's called herself as a witness.
Dateline NBC
Audio of a jailhouse sting. A woman's third murder trial in three decades. And the latest on a new texting scam.
In July of 2002, Michael Sisko and his longtime girlfriend Karen Harkness were found shot to death in bed in Topeka, Kansas. Ten years later, a jury convicted Michael's ex-wife, Dana Chandler, on two counts of first-degree murder, and a judge sentenced her to 100 years in prison. Then, in 2018, came a reversal. The Kansas Supreme Court overturned Dana's conviction.
Dateline NBC
Audio of a jailhouse sting. A woman's third murder trial in three decades. And the latest on a new texting scam.
A new prosecutor took Dana Chandler to trial again in the summer of 2022, and that jury didn't return any verdict. Now, Chandler had little reaction when the jury announced they couldn't come to a decision today. So this month, Kansas is trying Dana Chandler for a third time with one major difference. After the jury had been selected, Dana made this head-snapping decision.
Dateline NBC
Audio of a jailhouse sting. A woman's third murder trial in three decades. And the latest on a new texting scam.
Dateline producer Sergey Ivonin was in the courtroom as the prosecution presented its case last week, calling Dana and Mike's children to the stand. Sergey, thank you for being on the podcast.
Dateline NBC
Audio of a jailhouse sting. A woman's third murder trial in three decades. And the latest on a new texting scam.
So why don't we start with the prosecution's theory of this case? They haven't wavered much in the last 15 years.
Dateline NBC
Audio of a jailhouse sting. A woman's third murder trial in three decades. And the latest on a new texting scam.
What do they believe was Dana's motive?
Dateline NBC
Audio of a jailhouse sting. A woman's third murder trial in three decades. And the latest on a new texting scam.
They say that her behavior was getting obsessive.
Dateline NBC
Audio of a jailhouse sting. A woman's third murder trial in three decades. And the latest on a new texting scam.
And a lot of phone calls? Yeah.
Dateline NBC
Audio of a jailhouse sting. A woman's third murder trial in three decades. And the latest on a new texting scam.
Dana has maintained her innocence from the very beginning.
Dateline NBC
Audio of a jailhouse sting. A woman's third murder trial in three decades. And the latest on a new texting scam.
But still, she was convicted in 2012, and it was super fast.
Dateline NBC
Audio of a jailhouse sting. A woman's third murder trial in three decades. And the latest on a new texting scam.
Plus, Vicky Nguyen, NBC News chief consumer investigative correspondent, has a warning about a new texting scam targeting drivers.
Dateline NBC
Audio of a jailhouse sting. A woman's third murder trial in three decades. And the latest on a new texting scam.
So Dana won her appeal and the county tried her again in 2022. That trial ended in a hung jury, which brings us to the third trial that's underway now. Two of the prosecution's main witnesses are Dana's own children. They were just teenagers when their dad died, right?
Dateline NBC
Audio of a jailhouse sting. A woman's third murder trial in three decades. And the latest on a new texting scam.
So what did the prosecutors ask them about on the stand this time?
Dateline NBC
Audio of a jailhouse sting. A woman's third murder trial in three decades. And the latest on a new texting scam.
Producers are discussing this week's big stories in true crime.
Dateline NBC
Audio of a jailhouse sting. A woman's third murder trial in three decades. And the latest on a new texting scam.
Yeah, this one exchange happened when Dana was telling Haley she didn't want to communicate with her anymore. Dana brought up an accusation she'd made before that Mike had raped her during their marriage, which Mike's family disputes. The prosecutor read Dana's part in these exchanges, and Haley, she read her part.
Dateline NBC
Audio of a jailhouse sting. A woman's third murder trial in three decades. And the latest on a new texting scam.
That is so sad. What did the son say on the stand, Dustin? He actually tried to get his mom to confess, right? I know one time he recorded a conversation they had in the car.
Dateline NBC
Audio of a jailhouse sting. A woman's third murder trial in three decades. And the latest on a new texting scam.
But before all that, we're heading back to a Los Angeles courtroom where the widow of a famous hairstylist is on trial for allegedly plotting his murder. The prosecution's case against Monica Sementilli has entered its fifth week.
Dateline NBC
Audio of a jailhouse sting. A woman's third murder trial in three decades. And the latest on a new texting scam.
Okay, so this is awkward then. Dana representing herself. How does she handle her own children on cross-examination?
Dateline NBC
Audio of a jailhouse sting. A woman's third murder trial in three decades. And the latest on a new texting scam.
So are both children saying on the stand that they think she killed Mike and Karen? I know out of court they've said it.
Dateline NBC
Audio of a jailhouse sting. A woman's third murder trial in three decades. And the latest on a new texting scam.
So we're in the defense portion now of the trial. Who is Dana calling to the stand?
Dateline NBC
Audio of a jailhouse sting. A woman's third murder trial in three decades. And the latest on a new texting scam.
So how does she, she can't really question herself. So what is she doing? Giving a statement on the stand?
Dateline NBC
Audio of a jailhouse sting. A woman's third murder trial in three decades. And the latest on a new texting scam.
Yeah. And she said she was deeply embarrassed, right, about her exchange with her daughter that she'd been drinking to the point of blacking out when she sent those AOL messages. It was a monologue and she's not done yet. Has she even been questioned yet by the prosecution?
Dateline NBC
A verdict in Chattanooga. A widow accused of murder. And how to avoid natural disaster scammers.
Chetna, thank you so much for giving us this preview before this trial starts. A fascinating, fascinating case. Nice talking to you. Coming up, it's Dateline Roundup. We've got an update on an important pretrial ruling in the Karen Reed case. And the latest from the trial of the West Virginia pharmacist accused of poisoning her husband.
Dateline NBC
A verdict in Chattanooga. A widow accused of murder. And how to avoid natural disaster scammers.
Plus, tips from NBC News senior investigative correspondent Vicky Nguyen on how to steer clear of disaster-related scams. Welcome back. Joining me for this week's Dateline Roundup is Dateline producer Sue Simpson. and leaving him to die in the snow back in 2022. Reid pleaded not guilty. Her murder trial ended with a deadlocked jury and a retrial set for April of this year.
Dateline NBC
A verdict in Chattanooga. A widow accused of murder. And how to avoid natural disaster scammers.
Sue, we have some new information.
Dateline NBC
A verdict in Chattanooga. A widow accused of murder. And how to avoid natural disaster scammers.
Karen Reid, of course, had so many supporters at the courthouse during her trial. We talked about that before. But even in the bitter cold this past weekend, some of them were out in force across New England at protests they're calling standouts.
Dateline NBC
A verdict in Chattanooga. A widow accused of murder. And how to avoid natural disaster scammers.
Amazing. An arctic blast does not deter Karen Reid supporters. Up next, an update on a story we told you about last week. This is the murder trial of Natalie Cochran. She is the West Virginia pharmacist accused of poisoning her husband with insulin. Sue, what's the latest from the courtroom?
Dateline NBC
A verdict in Chattanooga. A widow accused of murder. And how to avoid natural disaster scammers.
On Friday, an FBI chemist testified about the evidence central to the prosecution's case against Natalie. The vial of insulin recovered from the Cochran's home. What did he tell the jury?
Dateline NBC
A verdict in Chattanooga. A widow accused of murder. And how to avoid natural disaster scammers.
Up next, we're headed to a Las Vegas courtroom with an update in the murder case against hip-hop legend Tupac Shakur's alleged killer. His name is Dwayne Keefy D. Davis. Remind us about the murder itself, Sue. It certainly has been a very long time.
Dateline NBC
A verdict in Chattanooga. A widow accused of murder. And how to avoid natural disaster scammers.
Chen had been facing charges of first-degree premeditated murder for allegedly stabbing Jasmine 60 times in 2022, then packing her into a suitcase and leaving the suitcase next to a creek. His defense? That Jasmine had actually attacked him and that he'd killed her spontaneously before covering up her death out of shame.
Dateline NBC
A verdict in Chattanooga. A widow accused of murder. And how to avoid natural disaster scammers.
So his murder has been unsolved, fueling conspiracy theories until, of course, an arrest was made in 2023. Dwayne Davis, he was charged with the murder. How does law enforcement say he was connected to the crime?
Dateline NBC
A verdict in Chattanooga. A widow accused of murder. And how to avoid natural disaster scammers.
So they feel that he incriminated himself with those words. Davis's team filed a motion in the beginning of January seeking dismissal of the charges against him.
Dateline NBC
A verdict in Chattanooga. A widow accused of murder. And how to avoid natural disaster scammers.
Thank you, Andrea. These past few months, our hearts have gone out to those impacted by Hurricane Helene in North Carolina and the wildfires in Los Angeles. The devastation is truly massive. Entire neighborhoods have been destroyed. Thousands of people have lost their homes or been displaced. So many of us, of course, want to help.
Dateline NBC
A verdict in Chattanooga. A widow accused of murder. And how to avoid natural disaster scammers.
Unfortunately, according to the Federal Communications Commission and the Better Business Bureau, scammers often take advantage of natural disasters to prey both on those looking to give help and those most in need of it. So here to give us some tips on how to avoid getting scammed is NBC News Senior Consumer Investigative Correspondent Vicki Wynn. Vicki, thanks for joining us again.
Dateline NBC
A verdict in Chattanooga. A widow accused of murder. And how to avoid natural disaster scammers.
Yeah, I know you're going to have amazing tips on this subject. So, Vicki, in the past week or so, we've seen lots of fundraising links go up for things like GoFundMe on social media. I've seen some that have surpassed $100 million. But I've also heard there are some fake GoFundMes going around where scammers are posing as disaster victims and pocketing the money, which is so horrible.
Dateline NBC
A verdict in Chattanooga. A widow accused of murder. And how to avoid natural disaster scammers.
If you want to donate, how can you be sure the money is actually going to the people who need it?
Dateline NBC
A verdict in Chattanooga. A widow accused of murder. And how to avoid natural disaster scammers.
Totally.
Dateline NBC
A verdict in Chattanooga. A widow accused of murder. And how to avoid natural disaster scammers.
When we talked about this trial last week, the prosecution was making its case. The defense took over on the holiday weekend. Here to fill us in on what we missed is Dateline producer Mario Garcia and associate producer Jess Koenig. Hey, guys.
Dateline NBC
A verdict in Chattanooga. A widow accused of murder. And how to avoid natural disaster scammers.
You know, I have a lot of friends who've been displaced. I have one friend who lost his house. What can people do who are looking for help right now as they start thinking about the long process of rebuilding?
Dateline NBC
A verdict in Chattanooga. A widow accused of murder. And how to avoid natural disaster scammers.
Yeah. So that could be an opportunity for scammers to step in. What should you watch out for on this end of it?
Dateline NBC
A verdict in Chattanooga. A widow accused of murder. And how to avoid natural disaster scammers.
No, do not give it.
Dateline NBC
A verdict in Chattanooga. A widow accused of murder. And how to avoid natural disaster scammers.
There will be a lot of rebuilding in the coming weeks and months and, of course, years.
Dateline NBC
A verdict in Chattanooga. A widow accused of murder. And how to avoid natural disaster scammers.
Hey, Andrea. Thanks for having us. All right, let's do a quick reminder of this case. It's the one where Jasmine's family took matters into their own hands.
Dateline NBC
A verdict in Chattanooga. A widow accused of murder. And how to avoid natural disaster scammers.
The best defense is listening to Vicki because these tips are so, so good. Vicki, thank you for everything you're doing to help people.
Dateline NBC
A verdict in Chattanooga. A widow accused of murder. And how to avoid natural disaster scammers.
Such good work on this, Vicki. Thank you.
Dateline NBC
A verdict in Chattanooga. A widow accused of murder. And how to avoid natural disaster scammers.
That's it for this episode of Dateline True Crime Weekly. Next week, we'll have the latest from the courtroom and the run-up to Brian Koberger's summer trial. You can read more about the cases featured on the podcast on our website, datelinetruecrimeweekly.com. And if you have any questions or comments for us, you can reach us on social media at DatelineNBC.
Dateline NBC
A verdict in Chattanooga. A widow accused of murder. And how to avoid natural disaster scammers.
And coming up this Sunday on Dateline, after a Pittsburgh dentist predicts his own death, his friends and family vow to track down his killer. It does seem outrageous that this person is not being looked at closer.
Dateline NBC
A verdict in Chattanooga. A widow accused of murder. And how to avoid natural disaster scammers.
You can watch my classic two-hour mystery, The Premonition, this Sunday on NBC at 9, 8 central. And if you have any questions or comments for us, you can reach us on social media at Dateline NBC. To get ad-free listening for all our podcasts, subscribe to Dateline Premium. Thanks for listening. Dateline True Crime Weekly is produced by Frannie Kelly and Katie Ferguson.
Dateline NBC
A verdict in Chattanooga. A widow accused of murder. And how to avoid natural disaster scammers.
Our associate producers are Carson Cummins and Caroline Casey. Our senior producer is Liz Brown-Koroloff. Production and fact-checking help by Sara Kadir. Veronica Mzeika is our digital producer. Rick Kwan is our sound designer. Original music by Jesse McGinty. Bryson Barnes is head of audio production. Paul Ryan is executive producer. And Liz Kohl is senior executive producer of Dateline.
Dateline NBC
A verdict in Chattanooga. A widow accused of murder. And how to avoid natural disaster scammers.
And according to the prosecution and the defense, their actions of going in there kind of lit a fire under the police. And then that led to a search warrant. And they found blood on the rug and floors, which was huge in this. The blood, in their words, all over the apartment, bedroom, bathroom. It was everywhere. So Jason Chen has admitted to killing Jasmine.
Dateline NBC
A verdict in Chattanooga. A widow accused of murder. And how to avoid natural disaster scammers.
You're listening in to Dateline's morning meeting in 30 Rockefeller Center.
Dateline NBC
A verdict in Chattanooga. A widow accused of murder. And how to avoid natural disaster scammers.
His defense lawyer said as much in his opening statement.
Dateline NBC
A verdict in Chattanooga. A widow accused of murder. And how to avoid natural disaster scammers.
So really, at the heart of this is, was it premeditated or not? The medical examiner testified last week for the prosecution. Did the medical examiner's testimony support that it was premeditated?
Dateline NBC
A verdict in Chattanooga. A widow accused of murder. And how to avoid natural disaster scammers.
Right. In the suitcase, she had handcuffs on that locked her wrist to her ankle. One of the key witnesses for the defense was a neighbor who overheard something.
Dateline NBC
A verdict in Chattanooga. A widow accused of murder. And how to avoid natural disaster scammers.
Which can connect, you know, to possibly that this was a spontaneous fight.
Dateline NBC
A verdict in Chattanooga. A widow accused of murder. And how to avoid natural disaster scammers.
Welcome to Dateline True Crime Weekly. I'm Andrea Canning. It's January 23rd, and here's what's on our docket. In California, eight years after a celebrity hairstylist was found stabbed to death on his patio, his widow is set to stand trial for allegedly masterminding his murder with her lover.
Dateline NBC
A verdict in Chattanooga. A widow accused of murder. And how to avoid natural disaster scammers.
But there was a witness for the prosecution that poked a big hole in that narrative there. A tech investigator for the district attorney, right?
Dateline NBC
A verdict in Chattanooga. A widow accused of murder. And how to avoid natural disaster scammers.
Closings were on Monday. The prosecution's first argument was quite methodical going through everything again.
Dateline NBC
A verdict in Chattanooga. A widow accused of murder. And how to avoid natural disaster scammers.
What did the defense say in their closing argument?
Dateline NBC
A verdict in Chattanooga. A widow accused of murder. And how to avoid natural disaster scammers.
So the jury got the case at about 4.30 Monday afternoon. How long did they deliberate for?
Dateline NBC
A verdict in Chattanooga. A widow accused of murder. And how to avoid natural disaster scammers.
That has got to be one of the shortest deliberation times I've ever heard.
Dateline NBC
A verdict in Chattanooga. A widow accused of murder. And how to avoid natural disaster scammers.
Yeah, that's so true, because you had told us that in this trial, the jurors could ask in real time. Jason's mother gave a statement at the sentencing hearing the day after the verdict.
Dateline NBC
A verdict in Chattanooga. A widow accused of murder. And how to avoid natural disaster scammers.
Did Jasmine's family speak?
Dateline NBC
A verdict in Chattanooga. A widow accused of murder. And how to avoid natural disaster scammers.
That's heartbreaking. The jury also had say in the sentencing.
Dateline NBC
A verdict in Chattanooga. A widow accused of murder. And how to avoid natural disaster scammers.
Mario and Jess, thank you for covering this for us. Thank you, Andrew.
Dateline NBC
A verdict in Chattanooga. A widow accused of murder. And how to avoid natural disaster scammers.
Up next, with her trial set to begin in Los Angeles, we've got all the details in the case of the widow accused of masterminding a plot to murder her celebrity hairstylist husband. Will her lover testify for or against her?
Dateline NBC
A verdict in Chattanooga. A widow accused of murder. And how to avoid natural disaster scammers.
In January 2017, respected Hollywood hairstylist and executive Fabio Semantilli was found stabbed to death on the patio of his multi-million dollar mansion in the upscale Woodland Hills neighborhood of Los Angeles. There had been a run of burglaries in the area, and the crime seemed like a break-in gone wrong until six months later.
Dateline NBC
A verdict in Chattanooga. A widow accused of murder. And how to avoid natural disaster scammers.
In Dateline Roundup, rap icon Tupac Shakur was gunned down 30 years ago. This week, his accused killer appeared in court. And an update on the trial of the West Virginia pharmacist accused of poisoning her husband.
Dateline NBC
A verdict in Chattanooga. A widow accused of murder. And how to avoid natural disaster scammers.
Here's what our affiliate NBC4 Los Angeles had to say at the time.
Dateline NBC
A verdict in Chattanooga. A widow accused of murder. And how to avoid natural disaster scammers.
Monica Semantilli, Fabio's wife of almost 20 years, was arrested and charged with first-degree murder. And she wasn't the only one. Her lover, a man named Robert Louis Baker, was also charged. Both pleaded not guilty. Now, after eight years, Monica's trial is set to begin next week. Dateline producer Chetna Joshi is here to break down the story for us. Chetna, welcome to the podcast.
Dateline NBC
A verdict in Chattanooga. A widow accused of murder. And how to avoid natural disaster scammers.
Happy to be here. So many of our datelines start out this way where, you know, police have to look at could this have been, you know, a more random murder? There was a string of burglaries in the area. In this case, though, there were some details that stuck out to the detectives that maybe this wasn't one of those burglaries.
Dateline NBC
A verdict in Chattanooga. A widow accused of murder. And how to avoid natural disaster scammers.
Yeah, that's something you would very likely want to take if you're a burglar. Right. This got investigators thinking that this could be an inside job. And one thing they discovered was that Monica was having an affair.
Dateline NBC
A verdict in Chattanooga. A widow accused of murder. And how to avoid natural disaster scammers.
So his name is Robert Lewis Baker. Their affair had been going on for, what, about a year and a half? According to the documents, yeah.
Dateline NBC
A verdict in Chattanooga. A widow accused of murder. And how to avoid natural disaster scammers.
Was there any evidence left at the crime scene that, you know, pointed perhaps to... the man Monica's having an affair with.
Dateline NBC
A verdict in Chattanooga. A widow accused of murder. And how to avoid natural disaster scammers.
Plus, NBC News senior consumer investigative correspondent Vicky Nguyen is back. In the wake of the devastating wildfires in Los Angeles, Vicky has tips on how to avoid disaster-related scams wherever you live.
Dateline NBC
A verdict in Chattanooga. A widow accused of murder. And how to avoid natural disaster scammers.
From the beginning, prosecutors said that Monica wasn't involved in the actual murder, but that she helped plan it.
Dateline NBC
A verdict in Chattanooga. A widow accused of murder. And how to avoid natural disaster scammers.
Yes. Today it is cold. Our editorial team is catching up on breaking crime news around the country.
Dateline NBC
A verdict in Chattanooga. A widow accused of murder. And how to avoid natural disaster scammers.
In July 2023, Baker ended up pleading no contest to the murder charges.
Dateline NBC
A verdict in Chattanooga. A widow accused of murder. And how to avoid natural disaster scammers.
Most of the time with these cases, you know, it's kind of like who's first when there's a couple of people involved and who's going to flip on the other, you know, to get a better deal. Did we see that in this case? Did Baker flip on Monica?
Dateline NBC
A verdict in Chattanooga. A widow accused of murder. And how to avoid natural disaster scammers.
So you mentioned, Shetna, that there were on the video the two men in hoodies. What happened to this other man if Monica's at Target and you've got two guys on the video?
Dateline NBC
A verdict in Chattanooga. A widow accused of murder. And how to avoid natural disaster scammers.
I always think about, you know, hairstylists and how close they get to their clients. And this must have been such a shock for so many, so many people connected to Fabio and his family.
Dateline NBC
A verdict in Chattanooga. A widow accused of murder. And how to avoid natural disaster scammers.
But before all that, we're heading to Chattanooga, where there have been some big developments in a story we've been watching closely on the podcast, the murder trial of Jason Chen. There were sobs and cheering in a Tennessee courtroom earlier this week when Jason Chen's 10-day trial for murdering his girlfriend, Jasmine Pace, came to a rapid conclusion.
Dateline NBC
A star defense witness takes the stand. The Zizians' leader in court. And a new scam called pig butchering.
Good morning. You're listening in to Dateline's morning meeting.
Dateline NBC
A star defense witness takes the stand. The Zizians' leader in court. And a new scam called pig butchering.
Yeah, back in August of 2022, the Coast Guard got a distress call. Someone said Ziz had fallen over the side of her boat in the San Francisco Bay and just disappeared.
Dateline NBC
A star defense witness takes the stand. The Zizians' leader in court. And a new scam called pig butchering.
You can't make this stuff up. Okay, Ziz, Michelle, and Daniel Blank, they'll all be in court next week?
Dateline NBC
A star defense witness takes the stand. The Zizians' leader in court. And a new scam called pig butchering.
Okay, Rich, I don't know how you're keeping this all straight, but thank you. You can read Rich Shapiro's reporting on the Zizians at NBCNews.com.
Dateline NBC
A star defense witness takes the stand. The Zizians' leader in court. And a new scam called pig butchering.
Up next, it's time for Dateline Roundup. We've got an update on the Karen Reid case and the latest from the Dominican Republic, where a college student went missing two weeks ago. Plus, have you heard of pig butchering? It's a new kind of financial scam. Our NBC News justice and intelligence correspondent, Ken Delaney, will be here to give us all the details. Welcome back.
Dateline NBC
A star defense witness takes the stand. The Zizians' leader in court. And a new scam called pig butchering.
They told the jury Baker was Monica's lover and the person she conspired with to kill her husband Fabio. In 2023, he pleaded no contest to the murder and is serving a sentence of life without parole. But Baker has consistently denied that Monica had anything to do with the crime. Last week, the defense finally called him to the stand.
Dateline NBC
A star defense witness takes the stand. The Zizians' leader in court. And a new scam called pig butchering.
Joining us for this week's Dateline Roundup is Dateline producer Sue Simpson. Hey, Sue. Hey, Andrea. All right. For our first story, we are back in Dedham, Massachusetts for the latest on the Karen Reed case. She is the woman accused of killing her police officer boyfriend, John O'Keefe, back in 2022, something she denies.
Dateline NBC
A star defense witness takes the stand. The Zizians' leader in court. And a new scam called pig butchering.
And she is heading to trial for a second time in a few weeks after her first trial ended with a hung jury. Sue, you were in court on Tuesday for a pretrial hearing in the case. What can you tell us?
Dateline NBC
A star defense witness takes the stand. The Zizians' leader in court. And a new scam called pig butchering.
I'm not going to tolerate false statements, any stretching of the truth, no misleading distortions. There's no place for that in the courtroom.
Dateline NBC
A star defense witness takes the stand. The Zizians' leader in court. And a new scam called pig butchering.
On top of that, there was also a ruling by a federal judge in this case last week.
Dateline NBC
A star defense witness takes the stand. The Zizians' leader in court. And a new scam called pig butchering.
Okay, for our next story, we're off to the Dominican Republic for an update in the case of Sudiksha Kunanki, the 20-year-old University of Pittsburgh student who disappeared from Apuntakana Beach on March 6th.
Dateline NBC
A star defense witness takes the stand. The Zizians' leader in court. And a new scam called pig butchering.
According to the police and the D.R., this is not a criminal investigation. But Reby's lawyers were in court this week regardless. They requested his release and it was granted. He left the Dominican Republic on Wednesday. And there was another major development, Sue, this week regarding her family and their wishes.
Dateline NBC
A star defense witness takes the stand. The Zizians' leader in court. And a new scam called pig butchering.
For our final story, we're off to Phoenix, where convicted killer Lori Vallow Daybell was in court on Tuesday for a hearing ahead of her March 31st trial. She is accused of conspiring to murder her fourth husband, Charles Vallow. She denies having anything to do with his death, and she's representing herself at this trial.
Dateline NBC
A star defense witness takes the stand. The Zizians' leader in court. And a new scam called pig butchering.
The judge also looked over witness lists, and the prosecution is asking that one of Lori's expert witnesses be blocked?
Dateline NBC
A star defense witness takes the stand. The Zizians' leader in court. And a new scam called pig butchering.
I'm sure Keith's team will be following this closely. And any listeners who want to learn more about Lori Vallow Daybell's case can listen to Keith's podcast, Mommy Doomsday, or check out his exclusive jailhouse interview with Lori that aired recently. You can also hear Keith tell me more behind-the-scenes details on Talking Dateline. We'll put links to those shows in the episode notes.
Dateline NBC
A star defense witness takes the stand. The Zizians' leader in court. And a new scam called pig butchering.
Okay, Sue, thank you so much for joining us. Thanks, Andrea. For our final story, we've caught wind of a new cryptocurrency scam that's sweeping the nation, one that potentially plays on people's hearts and their wallets. It's been given the name pig butchering, and it's so widespread the FBI is intervening.
Dateline NBC
A star defense witness takes the stand. The Zizians' leader in court. And a new scam called pig butchering.
Over the course of several days, Robert Baker told the jury his side of the story, often offering explicit details and frequently clashing with the prosecution. Dateline producer Chetna Joshi is here to tell us about what Baker had to say and where the rest of the trial goes from here. Chetna, thanks so much for coming back on. Good to be with you.
Dateline NBC
A star defense witness takes the stand. The Zizians' leader in court. And a new scam called pig butchering.
Our next guest, NBC News justice and intelligence correspondent Ken Delanian, is here to tell us what exactly the FBI is doing about it and how to avoid the scam yourself. Hi, Ken.
Dateline NBC
A star defense witness takes the stand. The Zizians' leader in court. And a new scam called pig butchering.
You too. Okay, so this is such a horrible, horrible term. First of all, pig butchering. Why that phrase? And what does it mean?
Dateline NBC
A star defense witness takes the stand. The Zizians' leader in court. And a new scam called pig butchering.
Okay, so how do they carry it out?
Dateline NBC
A star defense witness takes the stand. The Zizians' leader in court. And a new scam called pig butchering.
Awful. Who is behind the scams? I'm sure it's very difficult to catch these people.
Dateline NBC
A star defense witness takes the stand. The Zizians' leader in court. And a new scam called pig butchering.
You have spoken to the FBI, and they have launched something called Operation Level Up. What kind of progress are they making in combating these scammers?
Dateline NBC
A star defense witness takes the stand. The Zizians' leader in court. And a new scam called pig butchering.
What are some signs people should look out for?
Dateline NBC
A star defense witness takes the stand. The Zizians' leader in court. And a new scam called pig butchering.
So we've heard a lot about Robert Baker in this case so far, and now we've finally seen the man himself.
Dateline NBC
A star defense witness takes the stand. The Zizians' leader in court. And a new scam called pig butchering.
You have spoken to some of these victims, and the one thing we can't stress enough is this can happen to anyone.
Dateline NBC
A star defense witness takes the stand. The Zizians' leader in court. And a new scam called pig butchering.
Ken, to anyone who's embarrassed that they were taken by this, what's your advice?
Dateline NBC
A star defense witness takes the stand. The Zizians' leader in court. And a new scam called pig butchering.
Yeah. OK, great advice. Thank you, Ken, for joining us and for raising awareness about this.
Dateline NBC
A star defense witness takes the stand. The Zizians' leader in court. And a new scam called pig butchering.
So here's something new we're trying. If you have any true crime questions you want our team to look into, anything you've always wanted to know about investigative techniques, legal terminology, scams you've heard about, anything at all, we'd love to hear your voice on the podcast. Send us an audio message on social at Dateline NBC, and we'll see if we can get some answers for you.
Dateline NBC
A star defense witness takes the stand. The Zizians' leader in court. And a new scam called pig butchering.
That's it for this episode of Dateline True Crime Weekly. To get ad-free listening for all our podcasts, subscribe to Dateline Premium.
Dateline NBC
A star defense witness takes the stand. The Zizians' leader in court. And a new scam called pig butchering.
Maybe this isn't the slam dunk case that some people think it is.
Dateline NBC
A star defense witness takes the stand. The Zizians' leader in court. And a new scam called pig butchering.
Watch Poison Twist this Friday on NBC at 9, 8 central or stream it on Peacock starting this Saturday. Thanks for listening. Good stuff. All right. See you, everybody.
Dateline NBC
A star defense witness takes the stand. The Zizians' leader in court. And a new scam called pig butchering.
So keep the cuffs on during testimony?
Dateline NBC
A star defense witness takes the stand. The Zizians' leader in court. And a new scam called pig butchering.
How did the defense start with him? I know that they wanted to introduce his background.
Dateline NBC
A star defense witness takes the stand. The Zizians' leader in court. And a new scam called pig butchering.
That's quite the background. And so then they also – this is – key here, he started working at LA Fitness, which is, of course, where he met Monica.
Dateline NBC
A star defense witness takes the stand. The Zizians' leader in court. And a new scam called pig butchering.
Welcome to Dateline True Crime Weekly. I'm Andrea Canning. It's March 20th, and here's what's on our docket. The Zizians have surfaced again. According to law enforcement, the group of radical vegans is connected to violent deaths in multiple states. Their leader was in court last month.
Dateline NBC
A star defense witness takes the stand. The Zizians' leader in court. And a new scam called pig butchering.
Within a couple of weeks, these two are hooking up, Monica and Robert. There was some discussion about how they would sneak around.
Dateline NBC
A star defense witness takes the stand. The Zizians' leader in court. And a new scam called pig butchering.
The prosecution alleges that Robert Baker and Monica Cimentelli planned this so they could be together, they could have Fabio's money. Since Robert Baker is saying that that is not true, that she had nothing to do with this... What is he saying was his motive for killing Fabio?
Dateline NBC
A star defense witness takes the stand. The Zizians' leader in court. And a new scam called pig butchering.
One of the most riveting parts of Baker's testimony is describing the killing on the stand.
Dateline NBC
A star defense witness takes the stand. The Zizians' leader in court. And a new scam called pig butchering.
The defense wanted to get it out there, almost a preemptive strike that Robert Baker has lied about the case in the past.
Dateline NBC
A star defense witness takes the stand. The Zizians' leader in court. And a new scam called pig butchering.
In Dateline Roundup this week, we'll tell you all about an important ruling in the Karen Reid case. Lori Vallow Daybell has some decisions to make about her upcoming trial. And we've got a major development from the Dominican Republic on a missing college student.
Dateline NBC
A star defense witness takes the stand. The Zizians' leader in court. And a new scam called pig butchering.
And the prosecution really pounced on that. You know, of course, no surprise on the lies, the inconsistencies of Robert Baker's story.
Dateline NBC
A star defense witness takes the stand. The Zizians' leader in court. And a new scam called pig butchering.
Then we'll hear the closing arguments. Such a complicated case and trial. Thank you, Chetna, for breaking it down for us. We appreciate it.
Dateline NBC
A star defense witness takes the stand. The Zizians' leader in court. And a new scam called pig butchering.
Up next, according to law enforcement, a group of radical vegans is connected to violent deaths in multiple states. Next week, three of them will go on trial in Maryland. About a month ago, a man in Western Maryland called the police and said three people dressed in black were camping out on his property in box trucks.
Dateline NBC
A star defense witness takes the stand. The Zizians' leader in court. And a new scam called pig butchering.
When officers arrived, they discovered that the alleged trespassers were wanted for questioning in three other states. They'd stumbled across the Zizians. And not just that, they'd found the Zizians' elusive leader.
Dateline NBC
A star defense witness takes the stand. The Zizians' leader in court. And a new scam called pig butchering.
And law enforcement says the Zizians are linked to six violent deaths around the country. Four Zizians are awaiting trial in California and Vermont. But until that day in Maryland, their leader had not been found. Next week, Jack Lasoda, or Ziz as she calls herself, will stand trial on trespassing and gun charges.
Dateline NBC
A star defense witness takes the stand. The Zizians' leader in court. And a new scam called pig butchering.
My next guest, NBC News investigative reporter Rich Shapiro, says that may be just the start of her legal troubles. Hi, Rich. Thanks for coming on the podcast.
Dateline NBC
A star defense witness takes the stand. The Zizians' leader in court. And a new scam called pig butchering.
Plus, tens of thousands of Americans have fallen for a new scam known as pig butchering. Our NBC News justice and intelligence correspondent Ken Delanian has the details.
Dateline NBC
A star defense witness takes the stand. The Zizians' leader in court. And a new scam called pig butchering.
Okay, so just remind us about the deaths the Zizians are suspected of being wrapped up in. When you and I first spoke, Rich, two of the group's members had allegedly been involved in a shootout with border police in Vermont. That led to the deaths of one of the officers and one of the Zizians.
Dateline NBC
A star defense witness takes the stand. The Zizians' leader in court. And a new scam called pig butchering.
Our editorial team is catching up on breaking crime news around the country. We know that we have this person of interest, but we don't know what the connection is at all.
Dateline NBC
A star defense witness takes the stand. The Zizians' leader in court. And a new scam called pig butchering.
Three other Zizians were awaiting trial in California for an assault involving a samurai sword and a murder. Was the incident in Maryland also violent?
Dateline NBC
A star defense witness takes the stand. The Zizians' leader in court. And a new scam called pig butchering.
As we mentioned, Ziz was in one of those box trucks. Who else was with her?
Dateline NBC
A star defense witness takes the stand. The Zizians' leader in court. And a new scam called pig butchering.
And that double homicide happened in Pennsylvania. Why do investigators want to talk to Daniel?
Dateline NBC
A star defense witness takes the stand. The Zizians' leader in court. And a new scam called pig butchering.
Have we learned any more of what this group's beliefs are? Why people around them keep dying?
Dateline NBC
A star defense witness takes the stand. The Zizians' leader in court. And a new scam called pig butchering.
But before all that, we're heading back to a Los Angeles courtroom and the trial of the woman accused of conspiring to murder her hairstylist husband. The defense's star witness has finally taken the stand. We've heard the name Robert Baker countless times over the course of the Monica Cementilli trial. For six weeks, the prosecution built a case that put him squarely at the center of the murder.
Dateline NBC
A star defense witness takes the stand. The Zizians' leader in court. And a new scam called pig butchering.
Why is this group moving around the country and living out of box trucks?
Dateline NBC
A star defense witness takes the stand. The Zizians' leader in court. And a new scam called pig butchering.
There was a bail hearing for the three Zizians in Maryland. I know you didn't learn a whole lot there from what I understand, but Rich, we did get to hear from Ziz.
Dateline NBC
A star defense witness takes the stand. The Zizians' leader in court. And a new scam called pig butchering.
So what ultimately happened at this hearing? Were they released?
Dateline NBC
Cases to watch in 2025: Sean "Diddy" Combs and Bryan Kohberger. Plus, safety tips for AI scams.
It's Andrea Canning, and you're listening to Dateline True Crime Weekly. It's January 2nd, 2025, the start of a new year in courtrooms across the country and at Dateline's headquarters in 30 Rockefeller Center.
Dateline NBC
Cases to watch in 2025: Sean "Diddy" Combs and Bryan Kohberger. Plus, safety tips for AI scams.
Shane, thank you so much for coming on the podcast and for sharing your personal experience being there so many times working on this story. We appreciate it. You bet, Andrea. When we come back, we've got Dateline Roundup and details on some cases you might want to put on your calendar. Plus, we've heard of AI or artificial intelligence.
Dateline NBC
Cases to watch in 2025: Sean "Diddy" Combs and Bryan Kohberger. Plus, safety tips for AI scams.
But wait until you hear how much smarter AI makes the criminals. Welcome back to the show. We've got a different kind of Dateline roundup this week. Instead of bringing you up to speed on the latest headlines and true crime news, we've got a rundown of some of the cases we're keeping an eye on for 2025. Here to walk us through it all is Dateline producer Rachel White.
Dateline NBC
Cases to watch in 2025: Sean "Diddy" Combs and Bryan Kohberger. Plus, safety tips for AI scams.
Rachel, welcome back to the podcast. Thank you for having me. Let's start in the suburbs of Washington, D.C. This is a story we've talked about a lot. This is where the Brazilian au pair and her employer turned lover were accused of a double murder last year. Rachel, just remind us of the story.
Dateline NBC
Cases to watch in 2025: Sean "Diddy" Combs and Bryan Kohberger. Plus, safety tips for AI scams.
Yeah, this story is straight out of a Lifetime movie, I have to say. And there was a big development in this case in late October.
Dateline NBC
Cases to watch in 2025: Sean "Diddy" Combs and Bryan Kohberger. Plus, safety tips for AI scams.
His charges?
Dateline NBC
Cases to watch in 2025: Sean "Diddy" Combs and Bryan Kohberger. Plus, safety tips for AI scams.
So when is Brendan's trial scheduled to start? And because of this, are we expecting then Juliana will testify against him?
Dateline NBC
Cases to watch in 2025: Sean "Diddy" Combs and Bryan Kohberger. Plus, safety tips for AI scams.
Up next, we're heading to a place that is very familiar to the listeners of our podcast, Massachusetts, where round two of the blockbuster trial of Karen Reid is set to begin in April. Prosecutors say Reid hit her boyfriend with her SUV. The allegation is that she left him to die in the snow after a night of partying back in January 2022.
Dateline NBC
Cases to watch in 2025: Sean "Diddy" Combs and Bryan Kohberger. Plus, safety tips for AI scams.
The jury at her first trial couldn't reach a verdict, which is why we're heading back to court. Rachel, tell us what we can expect.
Dateline NBC
Cases to watch in 2025: Sean "Diddy" Combs and Bryan Kohberger. Plus, safety tips for AI scams.
Interesting. So Alan Jackson, her lead attorney out of Los Angeles, he made such an impression at the first trial. That, ladies and gentlemen,
Dateline NBC
Cases to watch in 2025: Sean "Diddy" Combs and Bryan Kohberger. Plus, safety tips for AI scams.
Is he still a part of her team?
Dateline NBC
Cases to watch in 2025: Sean "Diddy" Combs and Bryan Kohberger. Plus, safety tips for AI scams.
There is another high profile trial in Norfolk County, Massachusetts, that we've got our eye on taking place in late October. And this is the case of Brian Walsh. He is accused of murdering his wife, Anna, a real estate executive who disappeared on New Year's Day back in 2023. Her body has never been found. Rachel, walk us through what we know about this case.
Dateline NBC
Cases to watch in 2025: Sean "Diddy" Combs and Bryan Kohberger. Plus, safety tips for AI scams.
There were also some disturbing Google searches that investigators found.
Dateline NBC
Cases to watch in 2025: Sean "Diddy" Combs and Bryan Kohberger. Plus, safety tips for AI scams.
For our last story, we're heading to Summit County, Utah. And you may remember Cory Richens. She is the mom of three who wrote the children's book about grief after her husband died back in March of 2022. She was arrested on charges of poisoning him. Prosecutors say she laced his drink with fentanyl. Richens has pleaded not guilty.
Dateline NBC
Cases to watch in 2025: Sean "Diddy" Combs and Bryan Kohberger. Plus, safety tips for AI scams.
U.S. Attorney Damian Williams held a press conference the day after Combs was arrested in September, and he said Combs had accomplices.
Dateline NBC
Cases to watch in 2025: Sean "Diddy" Combs and Bryan Kohberger. Plus, safety tips for AI scams.
And last year on the podcast, we played exclusive jailhouse recordings that Richens sent to Dateline from jail.
Dateline NBC
Cases to watch in 2025: Sean "Diddy" Combs and Bryan Kohberger. Plus, safety tips for AI scams.
This year, we'll finally see that fight play out in court. How long can we expect this trial to go for?
Dateline NBC
Cases to watch in 2025: Sean "Diddy" Combs and Bryan Kohberger. Plus, safety tips for AI scams.
So 2025 is shaping up to be another busy year in true crime. And we didn't even scratch the surface with all the cases that Dateline will be watching. Rachel, thank you so much for joining us and giving us a preview of what's to come this year. Great to be here. While artificial intelligence may seem like a concern for the future, it's already an integral part of our daily lives.
Dateline NBC
Cases to watch in 2025: Sean "Diddy" Combs and Bryan Kohberger. Plus, safety tips for AI scams.
Ridesharing apps like Uber, streaming services like Netflix or Peacock, and digital assistants like Alexa, Siri, or Google Assistant. AI is all around us in good ways and bad. Law enforcement agencies and consumer advocates are raising the alarm about scams powered by AI.
Dateline NBC
Cases to watch in 2025: Sean "Diddy" Combs and Bryan Kohberger. Plus, safety tips for AI scams.
Here to help us understand how AI may already be a part of your life and what to watch out for in 2025 is NBC News Senior Consumer Investigative Correspondent Vicky Nguyen. Hey, Vicky, thank you for coming back.
Dateline NBC
Cases to watch in 2025: Sean "Diddy" Combs and Bryan Kohberger. Plus, safety tips for AI scams.
Happy New Year. Yeah. So, Vicky, explain artificial intelligence and how it is all around us, even when you might not know it is.
Dateline NBC
Cases to watch in 2025: Sean "Diddy" Combs and Bryan Kohberger. Plus, safety tips for AI scams.
Combs has denied it all, and in addition to his criminal case, he is also facing over 30 civil suits accusing him of sexual violence. His lawyers continue to deny the allegations in the suits and call them cash grabs. NBC News has been on this story since Combs' ex-girlfriend Cassie Ventura filed and settled within 24 hours last fall with no admission of wrongdoing.
Dateline NBC
Cases to watch in 2025: Sean "Diddy" Combs and Bryan Kohberger. Plus, safety tips for AI scams.
In December, the FBI issued a public service announcement warning that criminals are using AI to generate scams on a larger scale that are more believable. and that AI actually cuts down the time and effort it takes for criminals to come up with scams. What kind of things are they talking about?
Dateline NBC
Cases to watch in 2025: Sean "Diddy" Combs and Bryan Kohberger. Plus, safety tips for AI scams.
So according to a recent article by Forbes, global deepfake-related identity fraud attempts are forecasted to reach 50,000 this year.
Dateline NBC
Cases to watch in 2025: Sean "Diddy" Combs and Bryan Kohberger. Plus, safety tips for AI scams.
That's it for this episode of Dateline True Crime Weekly, our first episode of 2025. Coming up this Friday on Dateline, a Fitbit captured the last moments of a woman's life and helped investigators capture her killer. Watch my classic two-hour mystery, The Secrets of Birchview Drive, airing this Friday at 9, 8 central on NBC, or stream it starting Saturday on Peacock.
Dateline NBC
Cases to watch in 2025: Sean "Diddy" Combs and Bryan Kohberger. Plus, safety tips for AI scams.
To get ad-free listening for all our podcasts, subscribe to Dateline Premium. Thanks for listening. Say thank you for listening. Thank you for listening. No, say it nice.
Dateline NBC
Cases to watch in 2025: Sean "Diddy" Combs and Bryan Kohberger. Plus, safety tips for AI scams.
True crime. True crime. Weekly. Weekly. Dateline True Crime Weekly is produced by Frannie Kelly and Katie Ferguson. Our associate producers are Carson Cummins and Caroline Casey. Our senior producer is Liz Brown-Koroloff. Production and fact-checking help by Sara Kadir. Veronica Mazeka is our digital producer. Rick Kwan is our sound designer. Original music by Jesse McGinty.
Dateline NBC
Cases to watch in 2025: Sean "Diddy" Combs and Bryan Kohberger. Plus, safety tips for AI scams.
Bryson Barnes is head of audio production. Paul Ryan is executive producer. And Liz Cole is senior executive producer of Dateline.
Dateline NBC
Cases to watch in 2025: Sean "Diddy" Combs and Bryan Kohberger. Plus, safety tips for AI scams.
That is frequent Dateline True Crime Weekly guest and NBC News correspondent Chloe Malas, who's broken the recent big developments in the Combs case, a lawsuit that for the first time names another celebrity.
Dateline NBC
Cases to watch in 2025: Sean "Diddy" Combs and Bryan Kohberger. Plus, safety tips for AI scams.
We brought Khloe back and also asked NBC News senior legal correspondent Laura Jarrett to join us. She's been covering combs as well, and they'll talk about where this case might go in 2025. Thank you both for being here. Thanks for having us. Always a pleasure. So whoever wants to dive in first, where is this story going in 2025? I'll let the lawyer take this one.
Dateline NBC
Cases to watch in 2025: Sean "Diddy" Combs and Bryan Kohberger. Plus, safety tips for AI scams.
So the big question since all this started has been, who else might be involved?
Dateline NBC
Cases to watch in 2025: Sean "Diddy" Combs and Bryan Kohberger. Plus, safety tips for AI scams.
This week, we're going to tell you about some cases we'll be paying close attention to in 2025.
Dateline NBC
Cases to watch in 2025: Sean "Diddy" Combs and Bryan Kohberger. Plus, safety tips for AI scams.
Yeah. And Laura, there's talk about tapes at these parties, tapes of sex acts. I mean, do you think when the prosecutors say that there are accomplices, do you think it's maybe coming from those tapes?
Dateline NBC
Cases to watch in 2025: Sean "Diddy" Combs and Bryan Kohberger. Plus, safety tips for AI scams.
And Chloe, you interviewed Jay-Z's lawyer, Alex Spiro, who isn't attacking the accuser, but is really going after her lawyer.
Dateline NBC
Cases to watch in 2025: Sean "Diddy" Combs and Bryan Kohberger. Plus, safety tips for AI scams.
To be clear, Jay-Z has vehemently denied these allegations. Is this going to be an uphill battle for his accuser? Well, I sat down with...
Dateline NBC
Cases to watch in 2025: Sean "Diddy" Combs and Bryan Kohberger. Plus, safety tips for AI scams.
Yeah. And Laura, one thing we know is the government does not bring criminal charges unless they generally have the goods to back it up because they don't want to take a loser to trial.
Dateline NBC
Cases to watch in 2025: Sean "Diddy" Combs and Bryan Kohberger. Plus, safety tips for AI scams.
Welcome to Dateline True Crime Weekly's Look Ahead 2025. Here's what's on our docket. In Idaho, the man accused of murdering four University of Idaho students, Brian Koberger, will finally head to trial. He can face the death penalty if convicted. In Dateline Roundup, we've got a roundup of cases to watch. From Karen Reed in Massachusetts to accused poisoner Corey Richens in Utah.
Dateline NBC
Cases to watch in 2025: Sean "Diddy" Combs and Bryan Kohberger. Plus, safety tips for AI scams.
So for 2025, there's going to be a lot happening in this case.
Dateline NBC
Cases to watch in 2025: Sean "Diddy" Combs and Bryan Kohberger. Plus, safety tips for AI scams.
Chloe and Laura, thank you so much for bringing your insight into this matter. Thank you. Always fun. Up next, an Idaho town looking for answers. Will the trial of Brian Koberger on charges of killing four college students finally bring closure?
Dateline NBC
Cases to watch in 2025: Sean "Diddy" Combs and Bryan Kohberger. Plus, safety tips for AI scams.
In the early hours of November 13th, 2022, four University of Idaho students, Kaylee Gonsalves, Madison Mogan, Ethan Chapin, and Zanna Kernodel, returned to their off-campus house in Moscow, Idaho, after a night out. Hours later, a call went into 911. Officers arrived at the scene to find the four students had been fatally stabbed.
Dateline NBC
Cases to watch in 2025: Sean "Diddy" Combs and Bryan Kohberger. Plus, safety tips for AI scams.
A manhunt ensued, and 47 days after the murders, authorities across the country in Pennsylvania arrested Washington State University criminology PhD student Brian Koberger and charged him with the stabbings.
Dateline NBC
Cases to watch in 2025: Sean "Diddy" Combs and Bryan Kohberger. Plus, safety tips for AI scams.
Koberger has pleaded not guilty, and the past two years have been painfully long for the families of the victims, as the prosecution and the defense have had major disagreements about evidence. The trial has been delayed not once, but twice. What do you think about all this time that has passed that we have not been to trial yet?
Dateline NBC
Cases to watch in 2025: Sean "Diddy" Combs and Bryan Kohberger. Plus, safety tips for AI scams.
This year, the lengthy wait is finally coming to an end. Coburger will face a jury in August. Joining us today to talk about what we can expect from one of the biggest trials of 2025 is Dateline producer Shane Bishop. Shane, thanks for joining us.
Dateline NBC
Cases to watch in 2025: Sean "Diddy" Combs and Bryan Kohberger. Plus, safety tips for AI scams.
You were on the ground in Idaho very shortly after these murders first happened. Tell us about that experience.
Dateline NBC
Cases to watch in 2025: Sean "Diddy" Combs and Bryan Kohberger. Plus, safety tips for AI scams.
Yeah, absolutely. I can only imagine the fear as well of the not knowing who is out there and like who did this.
Dateline NBC
Cases to watch in 2025: Sean "Diddy" Combs and Bryan Kohberger. Plus, safety tips for AI scams.
I'm anxious to get to trial. And I'm ready to get this one heck of a fight. We've got trial dates and details. Plus, NBC News senior consumer investigative correspondent Vicky Nguyen will be here with tips on scams right out of the future.
Dateline NBC
Cases to watch in 2025: Sean "Diddy" Combs and Bryan Kohberger. Plus, safety tips for AI scams.
That makes absolute sense. Tell us about these four victims and who we lost that day in 2022.
Dateline NBC
Cases to watch in 2025: Sean "Diddy" Combs and Bryan Kohberger. Plus, safety tips for AI scams.
Oh, that's really sad. A lot has happened since Brian Koberger was arrested at the end of 2022. Where do things stand now?
Dateline NBC
Cases to watch in 2025: Sean "Diddy" Combs and Bryan Kohberger. Plus, safety tips for AI scams.
What has the community's response been to these developments?
Dateline NBC
Cases to watch in 2025: Sean "Diddy" Combs and Bryan Kohberger. Plus, safety tips for AI scams.
Yeah, that is a long drive. And as we know, Shane, families tend to want to be there in court for their loved ones. There's so much we don't know about this case. Do you think we'll get any answers before this trial starts or do you think we have to wait to see what the prosecution has once they get into that courtroom?
Dateline NBC
Cases to watch in 2025: Sean "Diddy" Combs and Bryan Kohberger. Plus, safety tips for AI scams.
There were two women who lived in the house who survived. One said she saw a figure in black clothing and a mask in the house just after the attacks. Shane, do you expect her to testify?
Dateline NBC
Cases to watch in 2025: Sean "Diddy" Combs and Bryan Kohberger. Plus, safety tips for AI scams.
Because they're just so scared of him.
Dateline NBC
Cases to watch in 2025: Sean "Diddy" Combs and Bryan Kohberger. Plus, safety tips for AI scams.
Oh, my goodness.
Dateline NBC
Cases to watch in 2025: Sean "Diddy" Combs and Bryan Kohberger. Plus, safety tips for AI scams.
No, that would be awful. Koberger has pleaded not guilty, and we've yet to hear his story. But what do you know about law enforcement's theory about why he targeted this particular house and these students?
Dateline NBC
Cases to watch in 2025: Sean "Diddy" Combs and Bryan Kohberger. Plus, safety tips for AI scams.
But before all that, we're headed to New York to take a look at a blockbuster case with a celebrity defendant. And it's shaping up to be what could be one of the biggest trials of the year. The music business executive Sean Combs, also known as Puff Daddy, Puffy, and Diddy, spent Christmas at the Federal Detention Center in Brooklyn. He's being held until his trial set to start in the spring.
Dateline NBC
Cases to watch in 2025: Sean "Diddy" Combs and Bryan Kohberger. Plus, safety tips for AI scams.
well, he's going to have a defense. What do we know about it?
Dateline NBC
Cases to watch in 2025: Sean "Diddy" Combs and Bryan Kohberger. Plus, safety tips for AI scams.
Yeah, remind us how that DNA on the knife sheath, how that then led them to Brian Koberger.
Dateline NBC
Cases to watch in 2025: Sean "Diddy" Combs and Bryan Kohberger. Plus, safety tips for AI scams.
Any major hearings taking place before the trial in August?
Dateline NBC
Cases to watch in 2025: Sean "Diddy" Combs and Bryan Kohberger. Plus, safety tips for AI scams.
Oh, that would be not good for the families to have to to wait like that. You just came back from a trip to Idaho, you know, where over two years out from the murders, is it still top of mind for everyone?
Dateline NBC
A "no body" murder trial in Mississippi. A Wisconsin dad fakes his death. Plus, keeping your home safe during the holidays.
We have a seventh murder charge now.
Dateline NBC
A "no body" murder trial in Mississippi. A Wisconsin dad fakes his death. Plus, keeping your home safe during the holidays.
How were they able to finally charge him with this additional murder? This is over two decades, you know, since the first of Valerie Mack's remains were found.
Dateline NBC
A "no body" murder trial in Mississippi. A Wisconsin dad fakes his death. Plus, keeping your home safe during the holidays.
That's Stephanie testifying two weeks ago at the trial of the man accused of murdering her son. The prosecutor asked her what she was expecting after sending the text.
Dateline NBC
A "no body" murder trial in Mississippi. A Wisconsin dad fakes his death. Plus, keeping your home safe during the holidays.
Fascinating. Heuermann has denied all the allegations against him and has pleaded not guilty to this charge and the six other charges. So we will keep an eye out on this one. Next, we're off to Minnesota, where there was an emotional sentencing this week in the case of Adam Fravel, the man convicted of the 2023 murder of Madeline Kingsbury, his ex-girlfriend and the mother of his children.
Dateline NBC
A "no body" murder trial in Mississippi. A Wisconsin dad fakes his death. Plus, keeping your home safe during the holidays.
What happened, Veronica, with this sentencing?
Dateline NBC
A "no body" murder trial in Mississippi. A Wisconsin dad fakes his death. Plus, keeping your home safe during the holidays.
Very sad for all involved. What was Adam's sentence?
Dateline NBC
A "no body" murder trial in Mississippi. A Wisconsin dad fakes his death. Plus, keeping your home safe during the holidays.
For our final story, we are off to San Francisco, where there is finally a verdict in the trial of Nima Momeni, who was accused of fatally stabbing Cash App co-founder Bob Lee back in 2023. All right, what did the jury decide?
Dateline NBC
A "no body" murder trial in Mississippi. A Wisconsin dad fakes his death. Plus, keeping your home safe during the holidays.
Definitely a lengthy deliberation for this case. So what is next for Momeni? When is his sentencing?
Dateline NBC
A "no body" murder trial in Mississippi. A Wisconsin dad fakes his death. Plus, keeping your home safe during the holidays.
Thank you so much for the updates, Veronica.
Dateline NBC
A "no body" murder trial in Mississippi. A Wisconsin dad fakes his death. Plus, keeping your home safe during the holidays.
The holidays are just around the corner, and while you might be planning to hit the road to celebrate with your loved ones or just leaving the house to go shopping, you don't want unexpected guests to break in on your holiday fun. So here to share some tips on how to keep your home safe is Today Show Senior Consumer Investigative Correspondent Vicki Wynn. Hey, Vicki. Hey, good morning.
Dateline NBC
A "no body" murder trial in Mississippi. A Wisconsin dad fakes his death. Plus, keeping your home safe during the holidays.
Hey, so let's start with just some of the basics of this.
Dateline NBC
A "no body" murder trial in Mississippi. A Wisconsin dad fakes his death. Plus, keeping your home safe during the holidays.
Stephanie never heard from her son again, and his body was never found. But just a few weeks after he went missing, police in Oxford, Mississippi arrested Sheldon Timothy Harrington for Jay Lee's murder. They say Harrington, who pleaded not guilty, killed Lee to cover up their secret sexual relationship. His defense team, meanwhile, said there was no proof.
Dateline NBC
A "no body" murder trial in Mississippi. A Wisconsin dad fakes his death. Plus, keeping your home safe during the holidays.
You say one of the most important steps to keeping your home safe is to actually make it appear like someone is still at home.
Dateline NBC
A "no body" murder trial in Mississippi. A Wisconsin dad fakes his death. Plus, keeping your home safe during the holidays.
So when we think of holiday burglaries, I'm going to do the home alone reference. Instead of setting up actual booby traps and cardboard cutouts of people... Is there anything that you can do inside your house to deter a burglar?
Dateline NBC
A "no body" murder trial in Mississippi. A Wisconsin dad fakes his death. Plus, keeping your home safe during the holidays.
Our editorial team is catching up on breaking crime news around the country.
Dateline NBC
A "no body" murder trial in Mississippi. A Wisconsin dad fakes his death. Plus, keeping your home safe during the holidays.
And break-ins, unfortunately, they're not the only thing that you have to worry about when you're traveling.
Dateline NBC
A "no body" murder trial in Mississippi. A Wisconsin dad fakes his death. Plus, keeping your home safe during the holidays.
Vicki, really, really good tips for the holidays. We want everyone's holiday to go off without a hitch. Have a great holiday.
Dateline NBC
A "no body" murder trial in Mississippi. A Wisconsin dad fakes his death. Plus, keeping your home safe during the holidays.
That's it for this episode of Dateline True Crime Weekly. Next week, we'll have a special episode for you with some special guests. Josh, Dennis and Keith will be here to take a look back at the biggest stories of 2024. We hope you'll join us for Dateline True Crime Weekly's Year in Review.
Dateline NBC
A "no body" murder trial in Mississippi. A Wisconsin dad fakes his death. Plus, keeping your home safe during the holidays.
And coming up this Friday, after a woman survives a brutal attack, investigators work tirelessly to identify a suspect. Only she's convinced they have the wrong man.
Dateline NBC
A "no body" murder trial in Mississippi. A Wisconsin dad fakes his death. Plus, keeping your home safe during the holidays.
Last week, the blockbuster trial came to a stunning and abrupt conclusion. Dateline producer Isar Harpaz was in Mississippi for the trial. He joins us now to tell us what happened. Isar, welcome to the podcast.
Dateline NBC
A "no body" murder trial in Mississippi. A Wisconsin dad fakes his death. Plus, keeping your home safe during the holidays.
upside down. Watch Keith's classic two-hour mystery Left 4 Dead airing this Friday at 9, 8 central on NBC or stream it starting Saturday on Peacock. And for even more Keith this holiday season, starting on Friday, you can listen to him read classic Christmas stories wherever you get your podcasts. To get ad-free listening for all our podcasts, subscribe to Dateline Premium. Thanks for listening.
Dateline NBC
A "no body" murder trial in Mississippi. A Wisconsin dad fakes his death. Plus, keeping your home safe during the holidays.
Dateline True Crime Weekly is produced by Frannie Kelly and Katie Ferguson. Our associate producers are Carson Cummins and Caroline Casey. Our senior producer is Liz Brown-Kurloff. Production and fact-checking help by Sara Kadir. Veronica Mazeka is our digital producer. Rick Kwan is our sound designer. Original music by Jesse McGinty. Bryson Barnes is head of audio production.
Dateline NBC
A "no body" murder trial in Mississippi. A Wisconsin dad fakes his death. Plus, keeping your home safe during the holidays.
Paul Ryan is executive producer. And Liz Cole is senior executive producer of Dateline.
Dateline NBC
A "no body" murder trial in Mississippi. A Wisconsin dad fakes his death. Plus, keeping your home safe during the holidays.
To start, what can you tell us about Jay Lee? Who was he?
Dateline NBC
A "no body" murder trial in Mississippi. A Wisconsin dad fakes his death. Plus, keeping your home safe during the holidays.
Isar, what do we know about the relationship between Jay Lee and Timothy Harrington?
Dateline NBC
A "no body" murder trial in Mississippi. A Wisconsin dad fakes his death. Plus, keeping your home safe during the holidays.
Okay, so a big part of the prosecution's case was that Harrington was the last known person to see Jay Lee alive. The prosecutor told the jury that the men met up on July 8th in the early morning hours and then Lee left after an argument.
Dateline NBC
A "no body" murder trial in Mississippi. A Wisconsin dad fakes his death. Plus, keeping your home safe during the holidays.
And at trial, the prosecution presented evidence of a Snapchat conversation between the two that helped them sort of piece together what might have happened next.
Dateline NBC
A "no body" murder trial in Mississippi. A Wisconsin dad fakes his death. Plus, keeping your home safe during the holidays.
One of the problems the police have here is that there's no body. They haven't found Jay Lee, right?
Dateline NBC
A "no body" murder trial in Mississippi. A Wisconsin dad fakes his death. Plus, keeping your home safe during the holidays.
Aside from Jay Lee being with Harrington, what other evidence did the prosecution present to make their case against Harrington.
Dateline NBC
A "no body" murder trial in Mississippi. A Wisconsin dad fakes his death. Plus, keeping your home safe during the holidays.
Welcome to Dateline True Crime Weekly. I'm Andrea Canning. It's December 19th, and here's what's on our docket. The Wisconsin kayaker who made headlines around the world when he faked his own death and fled the country is back in the U.S. to answer to a judge and his family.
Dateline NBC
A "no body" murder trial in Mississippi. A Wisconsin dad fakes his death. Plus, keeping your home safe during the holidays.
Could they tell who was driving it when it came into the complex?
Dateline NBC
A "no body" murder trial in Mississippi. A Wisconsin dad fakes his death. Plus, keeping your home safe during the holidays.
Could they make out a face on the jogger?
Dateline NBC
A "no body" murder trial in Mississippi. A Wisconsin dad fakes his death. Plus, keeping your home safe during the holidays.
They had some other evidence that didn't look so good for Tim Harrington. He goes over to his parents' house. He's wearing rubber boots. He's carrying a shovel and getting a wheelbarrow. That doesn't make him a killer. But when you add it all together, it doesn't look good.
Dateline NBC
A "no body" murder trial in Mississippi. A Wisconsin dad fakes his death. Plus, keeping your home safe during the holidays.
You're listening in to Dateline's morning meeting in 30 Rockefeller Center.
Dateline NBC
A "no body" murder trial in Mississippi. A Wisconsin dad fakes his death. Plus, keeping your home safe during the holidays.
Was there anything else, Isar, that really stuck out to you from the defense?
Dateline NBC
A "no body" murder trial in Mississippi. A Wisconsin dad fakes his death. Plus, keeping your home safe during the holidays.
Yeah.
Dateline NBC
A "no body" murder trial in Mississippi. A Wisconsin dad fakes his death. Plus, keeping your home safe during the holidays.
How did Tim Harrington react to a hung jury? It's very, you know, on one hand, it's good for the defendant in some ways, but then this still hangs over their head.
Dateline NBC
A "no body" murder trial in Mississippi. A Wisconsin dad fakes his death. Plus, keeping your home safe during the holidays.
Are they going to try Tim Harrington again?
Dateline NBC
A "no body" murder trial in Mississippi. A Wisconsin dad fakes his death. Plus, keeping your home safe during the holidays.
All right, Isar, thank you so much for taking us through this really sad story.
Dateline NBC
A "no body" murder trial in Mississippi. A Wisconsin dad fakes his death. Plus, keeping your home safe during the holidays.
Up next, new details in the investigation into the missing Wisconsin dad who staged his own death and ended up on the other side of the world and the sheriff who refused to give up on bringing him home. At around 10 p.m. on August 11th of this year, 44-year-old Wisconsin native Ryan Borgwart took his kayak out for a paddle on the state's deepest lake. It's called Green Lake.
Dateline NBC
A "no body" murder trial in Mississippi. A Wisconsin dad fakes his death. Plus, keeping your home safe during the holidays.
In Dateline Roundup, a big development in the case of the alleged Gilgo Beach serial killer. And finally, a verdict in the trial of the man accused of murdering tech mogul Bob Lee.
Dateline NBC
A "no body" murder trial in Mississippi. A Wisconsin dad fakes his death. Plus, keeping your home safe during the holidays.
But Ryan, married with three kids, he never came home. His family reported him missing the next day, and our affiliate NBC26 was on the case.
Dateline NBC
A "no body" murder trial in Mississippi. A Wisconsin dad fakes his death. Plus, keeping your home safe during the holidays.
Over the next eight weeks, cadaver dogs and dive teams tirelessly searched the lake for a body. But then, in November, police held a press conference.
Dateline NBC
A "no body" murder trial in Mississippi. A Wisconsin dad fakes his death. Plus, keeping your home safe during the holidays.
When investigators tracked him down, Ryan was very much alive and hiding in a place no one expected. Police urged him to come back and face law enforcement and his family.
Dateline NBC
A "no body" murder trial in Mississippi. A Wisconsin dad fakes his death. Plus, keeping your home safe during the holidays.
Last week, Ryan did just that. Here to fill us in on how investigators tracked down a man who didn't want to be found and what happens next is NBC News correspondent Marquise Francis. Marquise, thanks for joining us.
Dateline NBC
A "no body" murder trial in Mississippi. A Wisconsin dad fakes his death. Plus, keeping your home safe during the holidays.
Okay, this is a crazy story. What do we know about Ryan Borgwardt?
Dateline NBC
A "no body" murder trial in Mississippi. A Wisconsin dad fakes his death. Plus, keeping your home safe during the holidays.
August 11th, Ryan goes out on his kayak at night. He never returns home. How did the investigation play out from there?
Dateline NBC
A "no body" murder trial in Mississippi. A Wisconsin dad fakes his death. Plus, keeping your home safe during the holidays.
Obviously, if you're the family, I would imagine you're thinking that this doesn't look good. My husband, father is gone. He's drowned. But over the course of a few months, police went from expecting to find a body in the lake to tracking down a live man. What was that turning point?
Dateline NBC
A "no body" murder trial in Mississippi. A Wisconsin dad fakes his death. Plus, keeping your home safe during the holidays.
Plus, NBC News senior consumer investigative correspondent Vicky Nguyen will be here with some tips on how to keep your home safe if you're traveling over the holiday.
Dateline NBC
A "no body" murder trial in Mississippi. A Wisconsin dad fakes his death. Plus, keeping your home safe during the holidays.
Yeah. I mean, I wonder, you know, how he got to Canada.
Dateline NBC
A "no body" murder trial in Mississippi. A Wisconsin dad fakes his death. Plus, keeping your home safe during the holidays.
Oh, my God.
Dateline NBC
A "no body" murder trial in Mississippi. A Wisconsin dad fakes his death. Plus, keeping your home safe during the holidays.
So Ryan ends up in Canada. Where does he go from there?
Dateline NBC
A "no body" murder trial in Mississippi. A Wisconsin dad fakes his death. Plus, keeping your home safe during the holidays.
With this woman from Uzbekistan?
Dateline NBC
A "no body" murder trial in Mississippi. A Wisconsin dad fakes his death. Plus, keeping your home safe during the holidays.
Was there any thought about where... I'm assuming maybe he met this woman online? Like in some type of a place where you connect?
Dateline NBC
A "no body" murder trial in Mississippi. A Wisconsin dad fakes his death. Plus, keeping your home safe during the holidays.
But first, we're heading to a college town in Mississippi where a case without a body made its way to trial more than two years after the victim disappeared. On July 8th, 2022, Stephanie Lee woke up to a text from her 20-year-old son, Jay. The University of Mississippi student wished her a happy birthday. I gave him a text back with a smiley face.
Dateline NBC
A "no body" murder trial in Mississippi. A Wisconsin dad fakes his death. Plus, keeping your home safe during the holidays.
Yeah, and they heard from Ryan over video, which they played at a later press conference. So what was it ultimately that brought him back to America? Did he do it on his own or did they find him and force him to come back?
Dateline NBC
A "no body" murder trial in Mississippi. A Wisconsin dad fakes his death. Plus, keeping your home safe during the holidays.
Where is Ryan now? Is he with his family at home?
Dateline NBC
A "no body" murder trial in Mississippi. A Wisconsin dad fakes his death. Plus, keeping your home safe during the holidays.
A judge entered a not guilty plea for Ryan last week. Last question, Marquise, has his wife said anything about how she feels about him coming back?
Dateline NBC
A "no body" murder trial in Mississippi. A Wisconsin dad fakes his death. Plus, keeping your home safe during the holidays.
Marquise, thank you so much for joining us and taking us through this wild story. We really appreciate it and have a happy holiday.
Dateline NBC
A "no body" murder trial in Mississippi. A Wisconsin dad fakes his death. Plus, keeping your home safe during the holidays.
When we come back, it's time for Dateline Roundup. New charges for Rex Heuermann, the man accused of being the Gilgo Beach serial killer. And a verdict in the case of the tech executive stabbed to death on a San Francisco street. Plus, for anyone planning to travel this holiday season, we'll have some tips for how to keep your home safe. Welcome back.
Dateline NBC
A "no body" murder trial in Mississippi. A Wisconsin dad fakes his death. Plus, keeping your home safe during the holidays.
Joining me for this week's Roundup is Dateline Digital producer Veronica Maseko. Hey, Veronica. Hey, how are you? Okay. For our first story, we are off to Suffolk County, New York, home of alleged serial killer Rex Huerman and the notorious Gilgo Beach murders.
Dateline NBC
An accused killer's surprising defense. A pharmacist on trial for poisoning. And a medical examiner's strategy for cracking cold cases.
Our editorial team is catching up on breaking crime news around the country.
Dateline NBC
An accused killer's surprising defense. A pharmacist on trial for poisoning. And a medical examiner's strategy for cracking cold cases.
Jay, thank you for staying on this and for bringing us this key information in this all around sad case.
Dateline NBC
An accused killer's surprising defense. A pharmacist on trial for poisoning. And a medical examiner's strategy for cracking cold cases.
Next, it's Dateline Roundup, and Alec Baldwin is on the offensive with his blockbuster lawsuit against the prosecutor who charged him in the Rust movie set shooting death. And Lori Vallow Daybell appears in court as her own defense attorney. How did she do? Plus, a veteran medical examiner on the challenge of cold case autopsies.
Dateline NBC
An accused killer's surprising defense. A pharmacist on trial for poisoning. And a medical examiner's strategy for cracking cold cases.
Joining me for this week's Roundup is Dateline producer Rachel White. Hey, Rachel. Hi, Andrea. Okay, so first up, we're off to New Mexico where actor Alec Baldwin has filed a lawsuit against a whole lot of people involved in the criminal case brought against him in connection to the shooting on his Rust movie back in 2021.
Dateline NBC
An accused killer's surprising defense. A pharmacist on trial for poisoning. And a medical examiner's strategy for cracking cold cases.
Rachel, for anyone who doesn't know this story, and I think most of America does, just remind everyone what happened.
Dateline NBC
An accused killer's surprising defense. A pharmacist on trial for poisoning. And a medical examiner's strategy for cracking cold cases.
Right. And I remember we covered this trial, of course, on the podcast. And there was this dramatic moment when everything just stopped and the judge ordered the jury to go home so she could investigate claims that the prosecution had deliberately withheld evidence from Baldwin's defense team.
Dateline NBC
An accused killer's surprising defense. A pharmacist on trial for poisoning. And a medical examiner's strategy for cracking cold cases.
He's accused of killing 22-year-old Jasmine Pace. But the jury is from somewhere else. They've been bussed in from Nashville, and it's a two-hour trip. They are sequestered for this trial. All of that is because when Jasmine went missing over Thanksgiving in 2022, her face was all over TV, including on our affiliate WRCB Local 3 News.
Dateline NBC
An accused killer's surprising defense. A pharmacist on trial for poisoning. And a medical examiner's strategy for cracking cold cases.
Some people would just walk away, you know, after getting off of something like this, but not Alec Baldwin.
Dateline NBC
An accused killer's surprising defense. A pharmacist on trial for poisoning. And a medical examiner's strategy for cracking cold cases.
Lori Vallow Daybell, so-called Mommy Doomsday, there is news about her. She's back in court, and this time she's representing herself.
Dateline NBC
An accused killer's surprising defense. A pharmacist on trial for poisoning. And a medical examiner's strategy for cracking cold cases.
Finally, we have an update in a disturbing story out of Wisconsin known as the Slender Man case. Some people may remember this story from 2014. Two tweens stabbed their friend 19 times, Rachel.
Dateline NBC
An accused killer's surprising defense. A pharmacist on trial for poisoning. And a medical examiner's strategy for cracking cold cases.
Investigators caught up with her attackers, and they admitted what they'd done, but they had a bizarre reason.
Dateline NBC
An accused killer's surprising defense. A pharmacist on trial for poisoning. And a medical examiner's strategy for cracking cold cases.
Both Geyser and Weyer were sent to psychiatric centers after pleading guilty to intentional homicide charges. Weyer was granted supervised release in 2021. And the big news now is that Geyser is going to be released as well.
Dateline NBC
An accused killer's surprising defense. A pharmacist on trial for poisoning. And a medical examiner's strategy for cracking cold cases.
And how difficult it can be trying to figure out someone's cause of death years, sometimes decades after they've died. So for our final story this week, we asked Dr. Mary Jim Bellick, the former chief medical examiner of Onondaga County in New York, who has conducted thousands of autopsies in her 25-year career, to give us the basics. Mary, thank you so much for joining us again. Hello, Andrea.
Dateline NBC
An accused killer's surprising defense. A pharmacist on trial for poisoning. And a medical examiner's strategy for cracking cold cases.
So, Mary, what is the first thing you do when you are asked to look into the case of someone who's been dead for a while?
Dateline NBC
An accused killer's surprising defense. A pharmacist on trial for poisoning. And a medical examiner's strategy for cracking cold cases.
If you're looking at human remains, can you tell if someone has been shot or stabbed or strangled at that point? How hard is it?
Dateline NBC
An accused killer's surprising defense. A pharmacist on trial for poisoning. And a medical examiner's strategy for cracking cold cases.
And if someone is poisoned, can the remains still carry some of that poison or is it too late?
Dateline NBC
An accused killer's surprising defense. A pharmacist on trial for poisoning. And a medical examiner's strategy for cracking cold cases.
Jasmine's body was found about a week later in a suitcase on the side of the road. By then, her boyfriend Jason had already been arrested and his face was all over the news too. But it felt like only the prosecution's case was getting airtime.
Dateline NBC
An accused killer's surprising defense. A pharmacist on trial for poisoning. And a medical examiner's strategy for cracking cold cases.
We were just talking on the podcast about the trial of Natalie Cochran. She's accused of fatally poisoning her husband Michael with insulin back in 2019. The state medical examiner's office initially ruled that Michael died from natural causes. The prosecutor went up against that ruling by the medical examiner.
Dateline NBC
An accused killer's surprising defense. A pharmacist on trial for poisoning. And a medical examiner's strategy for cracking cold cases.
Yeah, and in the Natalie Cochran case, prosecutors exhumed her husband's body to run forensic tests. There must be a lot of thought that goes into that decision. How common is it for cold cases to involve exhumations?
Dateline NBC
An accused killer's surprising defense. A pharmacist on trial for poisoning. And a medical examiner's strategy for cracking cold cases.
That's it for this episode of Dateline True Crime Weekly. Next week, we'll have tips from NBC's senior consumer investigative correspondent, Vicki Wynn, on how to avoid disaster-related scams. Whether you're looking for help or trying to give it, we'll tell you what to watch out for. And coming up this Friday on Dateline, Keith Morrison has a brand new story.
Dateline NBC
An accused killer's surprising defense. A pharmacist on trial for poisoning. And a medical examiner's strategy for cracking cold cases.
After a wealthy Georgia man's body is found on his sprawling estate, investigators uncover a trove of family secrets and unmask a killer.
Dateline NBC
An accused killer's surprising defense. A pharmacist on trial for poisoning. And a medical examiner's strategy for cracking cold cases.
Watch Keith's story, A Little Patch of Perfect, airing this Friday on NBC at 9, 8 central or stream it Saturday on Peacock. And if you're looking for Deadly Mirage, Josh's story, which was supposed to air last Friday but got preempted by our coverage of the wildfires in L.A., you can see it this Sunday on NBC at 9, 8 central.
Dateline NBC
An accused killer's surprising defense. A pharmacist on trial for poisoning. And a medical examiner's strategy for cracking cold cases.
To get ad-free listening for all our podcasts, subscribe to Dateline Premium. Thanks for listening. Dateline True Crime Weekly is produced by Frannie Kelly and Katie Ferguson. Our associate producers are Carson Cummins and Caroline Casey. Our senior producer is Liz Brown-Koroloff. Production and fact-checking held by Sara Kadir. Veronica Maseka is our digital producer.
Dateline NBC
An accused killer's surprising defense. A pharmacist on trial for poisoning. And a medical examiner's strategy for cracking cold cases.
Rick Kwan is our sound designer. Original music by Jesse McGinty. Bryson Barnes is head of audio production. Paul Ryan is executive producer. And Liz Cole is senior executive producer of Dateline.
Dateline NBC
An accused killer's surprising defense. A pharmacist on trial for poisoning. And a medical examiner's strategy for cracking cold cases.
Bye. Bye.
Dateline NBC
An accused killer's surprising defense. A pharmacist on trial for poisoning. And a medical examiner's strategy for cracking cold cases.
Jason Chen has pleaded not guilty to charges of first-degree murder and abuse of a corpse. And on Monday, the jury and Jasmine's mother, who was the first to point the finger at Jason, heard his side of the story for the first time. It was laid out during the defense's opening statement. Dateline producer Mario Garcia was there. Mario, thanks for coming on.
Dateline NBC
An accused killer's surprising defense. A pharmacist on trial for poisoning. And a medical examiner's strategy for cracking cold cases.
We talked on the podcast last week about this case. Remind us of the prosecution's argument.
Dateline NBC
An accused killer's surprising defense. A pharmacist on trial for poisoning. And a medical examiner's strategy for cracking cold cases.
You're listening in to Dateline's morning meeting in 30 Rockefeller Center.
Dateline NBC
An accused killer's surprising defense. A pharmacist on trial for poisoning. And a medical examiner's strategy for cracking cold cases.
Yeah, so there were signs. They had gotten in a loud fight, you know, late at night at his apartment. Her neighbors heard a woman screaming, and then she drops a pin to her mom on her phone. Yeah.
Dateline NBC
An accused killer's surprising defense. A pharmacist on trial for poisoning. And a medical examiner's strategy for cracking cold cases.
Yeah, investigators weren't even the first people in Jason's apartment. Her mom, Katrina, goes to the location and starts, as you said, playing detective.
Dateline NBC
An accused killer's surprising defense. A pharmacist on trial for poisoning. And a medical examiner's strategy for cracking cold cases.
I didn't think that actually worked. And she found Jasmine's driver's license, credit card. You know, she took some things from the apartment, including his phone.
Dateline NBC
An accused killer's surprising defense. A pharmacist on trial for poisoning. And a medical examiner's strategy for cracking cold cases.
Welcome to Dateline True Crime Weekly. I'm Andrea Canning. It's January 16th, and here's what's on our docket. In West Virginia, a small-town pharmacist who made national headlines after being convicted of masterminding a multi-million dollar scam is back in court for allegedly poisoning her husband.
Dateline NBC
An accused killer's surprising defense. A pharmacist on trial for poisoning. And a medical examiner's strategy for cracking cold cases.
Was the prosecutor's opening statement what you expected? Were there any surprises? What do you think the tone was that they wanted to set for the jury?
Dateline NBC
An accused killer's surprising defense. A pharmacist on trial for poisoning. And a medical examiner's strategy for cracking cold cases.
The district attorney wanted to get in front of the issue of mom breaking into Jason's apartment. You know, we got to just address the elephant in the room right away.
Dateline NBC
An accused killer's surprising defense. A pharmacist on trial for poisoning. And a medical examiner's strategy for cracking cold cases.
The defense, they had an opening statement that I did not see coming.
Dateline NBC
An accused killer's surprising defense. A pharmacist on trial for poisoning. And a medical examiner's strategy for cracking cold cases.
The defense is saying voluntary manslaughter, a state of passion produced by provocation. What does the defense say happened?
Dateline NBC
An accused killer's surprising defense. A pharmacist on trial for poisoning. And a medical examiner's strategy for cracking cold cases.
The defense also indicated that Chen was worried about the shame that he would bring to his family.
Dateline NBC
An accused killer's surprising defense. A pharmacist on trial for poisoning. And a medical examiner's strategy for cracking cold cases.
The prosecution's first witness was Katrina, Jasmine's mom. How was she handled by the prosecution and the defense?
Dateline NBC
An accused killer's surprising defense. A pharmacist on trial for poisoning. And a medical examiner's strategy for cracking cold cases.
After Katrina's testimony, who else did the prosecution call?
Dateline NBC
An accused killer's surprising defense. A pharmacist on trial for poisoning. And a medical examiner's strategy for cracking cold cases.
One of the things that you're learning in Tennessee is that these jurors are able to ask questions as the trial goes along.
Dateline NBC
An accused killer's surprising defense. A pharmacist on trial for poisoning. And a medical examiner's strategy for cracking cold cases.
In Dateline Roundup, all the details from Alec Baldwin's explosive lawsuit against New Mexico prosecutors and investigators involved in the Rust trial. And Lori Vallow Daybell, a.k.a. Mommy Doomsday, is back in court, this time defending herself.
Dateline NBC
An accused killer's surprising defense. A pharmacist on trial for poisoning. And a medical examiner's strategy for cracking cold cases.
Yeah, normally you're just kind of looking for facial expressions, emotion, you know, anything you can.
Dateline NBC
An accused killer's surprising defense. A pharmacist on trial for poisoning. And a medical examiner's strategy for cracking cold cases.
Right.
Dateline NBC
An accused killer's surprising defense. A pharmacist on trial for poisoning. And a medical examiner's strategy for cracking cold cases.
All right. This is a tough one, Mario. Thank you for coming back on the podcast and breaking it all down for us.
Dateline NBC
An accused killer's surprising defense. A pharmacist on trial for poisoning. And a medical examiner's strategy for cracking cold cases.
Up next, the long-awaited trial of a West Virginia pharmacist accused of poisoning her husband with insulin gets underway. We've got the latest from inside the courtroom. For our next story, we're heading back to West Virginia for a trial many years in the making. We talked about this story on the podcast last fall.
Dateline NBC
An accused killer's surprising defense. A pharmacist on trial for poisoning. And a medical examiner's strategy for cracking cold cases.
It's a complicated case where one crime, fraud, to the tune of $2.5 million, allegedly turned into another, murder. In September 2019, Natalie Cochran, a pharmacist from the small town of Daniels, West Virginia, was indicted on multiple counts of fraud. The charges came just months after her husband, Michael, died suddenly.
Dateline NBC
An accused killer's surprising defense. A pharmacist on trial for poisoning. And a medical examiner's strategy for cracking cold cases.
The victims of the scam were primarily friends and family who thought they were investing in the Cochran's business. Natalie pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 11 years in federal prison. That wasn't the end of the story. Just two years later, Natalie was charged with a new crime, her husband's murder. Prosecutors said Natalie poisoned Michael with a vial of insulin. She has pleaded not guilty.
Dateline NBC
An accused killer's surprising defense. A pharmacist on trial for poisoning. And a medical examiner's strategy for cracking cold cases.
And this week, after several delays, including multiple exhumations of Michael's body, the trial finally began. Dateline producer Jay Young was in West Virginia this week and called us from the courthouse to tell us about what went down. Jay, thanks for joining us again this week.
Dateline NBC
An accused killer's surprising defense. A pharmacist on trial for poisoning. And a medical examiner's strategy for cracking cold cases.
So to start, can you just quickly remind us of the circumstances of Michael's death?
Dateline NBC
An accused killer's surprising defense. A pharmacist on trial for poisoning. And a medical examiner's strategy for cracking cold cases.
And the state medical examiner's office, they rule it natural causes at the time?
Dateline NBC
An accused killer's surprising defense. A pharmacist on trial for poisoning. And a medical examiner's strategy for cracking cold cases.
Okay, but investigators weren't totally buying that ruling, and they began to suspect that there could be some foul play here with Michael.
Dateline NBC
An accused killer's surprising defense. A pharmacist on trial for poisoning. And a medical examiner's strategy for cracking cold cases.
Plus, a former medical examiner tells us how hard it really is to get a cause of death from a body, especially a skeleton.
Dateline NBC
An accused killer's surprising defense. A pharmacist on trial for poisoning. And a medical examiner's strategy for cracking cold cases.
And was it, is it 100% proven that he died from insulin?
Dateline NBC
An accused killer's surprising defense. A pharmacist on trial for poisoning. And a medical examiner's strategy for cracking cold cases.
He's free. He's out.
Dateline NBC
An accused killer's surprising defense. A pharmacist on trial for poisoning. And a medical examiner's strategy for cracking cold cases.
This case, as we said, has been going on for a long time. Jury selection was hotly anticipated. You were there, Jay, in the courtroom.
Dateline NBC
An accused killer's surprising defense. A pharmacist on trial for poisoning. And a medical examiner's strategy for cracking cold cases.
You're certainly trying to win over some very important strangers in your life. And there's something really interesting that the prosecutor pointed out that we've heard about before, you know, the CSI effect with jurors, that they need DNA, they need video or witnesses. You know, in this case, the prosecutor warned them that there's almost no direct evidence involved.
Dateline NBC
An accused killer's surprising defense. A pharmacist on trial for poisoning. And a medical examiner's strategy for cracking cold cases.
But before all that, we're heading back to a Tennessee courtroom and a story we first told you about last week. 24-year-old Jason Chen is on trial, accused of stabbing his girlfriend to death two years ago. Only now, his defense team is saying she attacked him. This week, we heard opening statements in a Chattanooga courtroom for Jason Chen's murder trial.
Dateline NBC
An accused killer's surprising defense. A pharmacist on trial for poisoning. And a medical examiner's strategy for cracking cold cases.
So opening statements began on Wednesday morning. It may be no surprise the prosecution hit hard on what they say was Natalie's motive.
Dateline NBC
An accused killer's surprising defense. A pharmacist on trial for poisoning. And a medical examiner's strategy for cracking cold cases.
The defense told a very different story in their opening statement.
Dateline NBC
Survivors' haunting texts in Idaho. Questions for a New York prosecutor. And a spring break mystery.
So what is the latest on the brothers?
Dateline NBC
Survivors' haunting texts in Idaho. Questions for a New York prosecutor. And a spring break mystery.
This is a big blow for the brothers. You know, they were finally getting some traction. What do we know about what he sees differently? Why this big reversal? Different beliefs?
Dateline NBC
Survivors' haunting texts in Idaho. Questions for a New York prosecutor. And a spring break mystery.
So the Menendez brothers had a reaction through their lawyer who spoke to the Today Show. Have you spoken to Lyle and Eric since this happened? And what's their reaction?
Dateline NBC
Survivors' haunting texts in Idaho. Questions for a New York prosecutor. And a spring break mystery.
But many details in the case have been filed under seal, kept out of the public eye, until last week when Judge Stephen Hippler ordered more than a dozen filings be unsealed. And what those filings revealed are harrowing details from the night and morning after the murders, as told in real time by the two roommates who survived.
Dateline NBC
Survivors' haunting texts in Idaho. Questions for a New York prosecutor. And a spring break mystery.
Okay, let's talk about a trial that we've been watching closely, Dana Chandler's third prosecution on charges of killing her ex-husband and his girlfriend. This is happening in Kansas. This is a story that you've been working on, Sergey. Tell us what the latest is there.
Dateline NBC
Survivors' haunting texts in Idaho. Questions for a New York prosecutor. And a spring break mystery.
The first trial, the jury convicted her. That conviction was thrown out by the Kansas Supreme Court. The second one was a hung jury. And now we have this third jury that did come to a resolution.
Dateline NBC
Survivors' haunting texts in Idaho. Questions for a New York prosecutor. And a spring break mystery.
Me either. Our editorial team is catching up on the latest twists and turns in cases we've been watching around the country.
Dateline NBC
Survivors' haunting texts in Idaho. Questions for a New York prosecutor. And a spring break mystery.
Yeah, this has been a long saga. We'll see if it's actually truly over.
Dateline NBC
Survivors' haunting texts in Idaho. Questions for a New York prosecutor. And a spring break mystery.
Exactly. Finally, last week, a 20-year-old pre-med student from Northern Virginia, Sudiksha Konanki, was reported missing by her friends. The group of six women were at a resort in the Dominican Republic for spring break. And, Sergey, the first reporting was that she went out for a walk on the beach and didn't come back. New information keeps coming out as this story picks up traction.
Dateline NBC
Survivors' haunting texts in Idaho. Questions for a New York prosecutor. And a spring break mystery.
I know her local sheriff from Virginia has been very vocal about this as well. And he has named a person of interest. As of now, this has not been declared a criminal investigation. But do investigators think foul play was involved?
Dateline NBC
Survivors' haunting texts in Idaho. Questions for a New York prosecutor. And a spring break mystery.
Yeah, let's hope that the family gets answers soon. Thank you so much, Sergey, for bringing us Roundup this week.
Dateline NBC
Survivors' haunting texts in Idaho. Questions for a New York prosecutor. And a spring break mystery.
For our final story, we're getting to the bottom of a legal question that recently stopped one of Karen Reid's pretrial hearings in its tracks. As you all know, Karen Reid is the Massachusetts woman being retried in April on charges she murdered her police officer boyfriend, John O'Keefe, an accusation she vehemently denies. But this week, we're not talking about what Karen did or didn't do.
Dateline NBC
Survivors' haunting texts in Idaho. Questions for a New York prosecutor. And a spring break mystery.
Here to help us break down what we've learned is NBC News Senior Legal Correspondent Laura Jarrett. Hey, Laura. Always happy to be with you. Thank you for coming on. So this is pretty big. It hasn't been often in this case that we've gotten these sorts of documents unsealed. Any idea, first of all, why these court filings are being unsealed now?
Dateline NBC
Survivors' haunting texts in Idaho. Questions for a New York prosecutor. And a spring break mystery.
We're talking about her defense team. As we told you on the podcast a few weeks ago, the prosecution has accused Reid's lawyers of being misleading about their use of expert witnesses. We've covered lots of trials here at Dateline that feature expert witnesses, so this made us wonder what the rules actually are.
Dateline NBC
Survivors' haunting texts in Idaho. Questions for a New York prosecutor. And a spring break mystery.
Here to break it down for us is NBC legal analyst and a criminal defense attorney himself, Danny Savalos. Hey, Danny.
Dateline NBC
Survivors' haunting texts in Idaho. Questions for a New York prosecutor. And a spring break mystery.
So to start, I mean, I know this feels like a fairly obvious question, but it's really important. Why are expert witnesses called to testify during trials?
Dateline NBC
Survivors' haunting texts in Idaho. Questions for a New York prosecutor. And a spring break mystery.
And I think some people are surprised to learn that some of these experts take money to testify.
Dateline NBC
Survivors' haunting texts in Idaho. Questions for a New York prosecutor. And a spring break mystery.
And so it brings up that challenge for the juror. Of course, the prosecution is only going to put someone on the stand who agrees with the narrative that they're painting. And the defense is only going to put someone on the stand who agrees with the narrative they're painting. And having talked to jurors a lot after some of these trials, you'll hear them say, well, they canceled each other out.
Dateline NBC
Survivors' haunting texts in Idaho. Questions for a New York prosecutor. And a spring break mystery.
So it's tricky to
Dateline NBC
Survivors' haunting texts in Idaho. Questions for a New York prosecutor. And a spring break mystery.
And a lot of times on Dateline, we hear that term junk science, where this expert will present something and then the opposing attorneys will say, hey, this is junk.
Dateline NBC
Survivors' haunting texts in Idaho. Questions for a New York prosecutor. And a spring break mystery.
So that brings us to the Karen Reed case. Can you break down for us what the judge's issue was exactly with the defense and these experts?
Dateline NBC
Survivors' haunting texts in Idaho. Questions for a New York prosecutor. And a spring break mystery.
And the defense is saying they're not hiding anything that working with these experts that simply their statements in previous motions were poorly worded. Do you buy that?
Dateline NBC
Survivors' haunting texts in Idaho. Questions for a New York prosecutor. And a spring break mystery.
Reid's pretrial hearings resume on March 18th and will certainly be watching. Danny, thanks so much for joining us.
Dateline NBC
Survivors' haunting texts in Idaho. Questions for a New York prosecutor. And a spring break mystery.
That's it for this episode of Dateline True Crime Weekly. To find out more about the cases discussed on the podcast, check out datelinetruecrimeweekly.com. And if you've got any questions for us, hit us up on social at Dateline NBC. And coming up this week on Dateline, Blaine has an all-new two-hour episode.
Dateline NBC
Survivors' haunting texts in Idaho. Questions for a New York prosecutor. And a spring break mystery.
After a beloved art teacher is shot to death in her home, her husband tells investigators about the other woman in their unusual marriage, a mistress with the key to the whole mystery. What did you think? It just seemed an odd situation.
Dateline NBC
Survivors' haunting texts in Idaho. Questions for a New York prosecutor. And a spring break mystery.
Watch Deadly Entanglement this Friday on NBC at 9, 8 central or stream it on Peacock starting this Saturday. Thanks for listening. Dateline True Crime Weekly is produced by Frannie Kelly and Katie Ferguson. Our associate producers are Carson Cummins and Caroline Casey. Our senior producer is Liz Brown-Koroloff. Production and fact-checking help by Sara Kadir.
Dateline NBC
Survivors' haunting texts in Idaho. Questions for a New York prosecutor. And a spring break mystery.
Veronica Mazeka is our digital producer. Rick Kwan is our sound designer. Original music by Jesse McGinty. Bryson Barnes is head of audio production. Paul Ryan is executive producer. And Liz Cole is senior executive producer of Dateline.
Dateline NBC
Survivors' haunting texts in Idaho. Questions for a New York prosecutor. And a spring break mystery.
Bye-bye. Bye, everyone.
Dateline NBC
Survivors' haunting texts in Idaho. Questions for a New York prosecutor. And a spring break mystery.
The text messages and phone calls really help give a timeline of what these surviving roommates experienced. It's very terrifying. Around 4.19 a.m., one of the roommates, Dylan Wardenson, is woken up and has presumably seen a stranger in the house. And the filing reveals that she calls her housemates out of fear and really to warn them, right? And she was clearly freaked out.
Dateline NBC
Survivors' haunting texts in Idaho. Questions for a New York prosecutor. And a spring break mystery.
Monica supposedly has her lover saying, she didn't do it, I did it.
Dateline NBC
Survivors' haunting texts in Idaho. Questions for a New York prosecutor. And a spring break mystery.
You see her even say, I'm so freaked out right now. And then a few minutes later, according to the filing, Dylan, who is on the second floor, texts the other roommate, Bethany Funk, who is in the basement, about what she sees the stranger wearing. She says it's like a ski mask almost.
Dateline NBC
Survivors' haunting texts in Idaho. Questions for a New York prosecutor. And a spring break mystery.
And so the unsealing of the transcript, the 911 call that was placed about the murders, that gives also a window into what happened the following morning.
Dateline NBC
Survivors' haunting texts in Idaho. Questions for a New York prosecutor. And a spring break mystery.
Dateline's story meeting is getting underway.
Dateline NBC
Survivors' haunting texts in Idaho. Questions for a New York prosecutor. And a spring break mystery.
Welcome to Dateline True Crime Weekly. I'm Andrea Canning. It's March 13th, and here's what's on our docket. After a college student was murdered in a New York town over two decades ago, her family refused to stop looking for answers. This week, the trial of her accused killer finally began.
Dateline NBC
Survivors' haunting texts in Idaho. Questions for a New York prosecutor. And a spring break mystery.
Another filing that was unsealed last week was one from the defense team. They've previously tried to get the death penalty taken off the table for Koberger unsuccessfully, but they are trying again, and this time with a different argument.
Dateline NBC
Survivors' haunting texts in Idaho. Questions for a New York prosecutor. And a spring break mystery.
They are saying that a psychological evaluation shows Koberger has autism spectrum disorder and that subjecting him to the death penalty would be cruel and unusual punishment.
Dateline NBC
Survivors' haunting texts in Idaho. Questions for a New York prosecutor. And a spring break mystery.
Another big motion from the defense, they're asking to limit the use of some words in trial, words that could be key in a murder case.
Dateline NBC
Survivors' haunting texts in Idaho. Questions for a New York prosecutor. And a spring break mystery.
Do you expect these motions to possibly get approved or when can we expect another ruling given that the judge is moving quickly?
Dateline NBC
Survivors' haunting texts in Idaho. Questions for a New York prosecutor. And a spring break mystery.
Fascinating case and very scary and sad case as well. Laura, thank you for breaking this all down for us as we inch closer and closer to trial. Anytime. Coming up, as a murder trial begins in a more than 20-year-old cold case, the victim's family says the local prosecutor has some explaining to do.
Dateline NBC
Survivors' haunting texts in Idaho. Questions for a New York prosecutor. And a spring break mystery.
On March 13th, 2003, 20-year-old Megan McDonald did what any college student might do on a Thursday night. She went to a friend's house to watch TV. She stopped by a birthday party. But the next day, her family and friends couldn't reach her, and her body was later found on a dirt path in Orange County, New York. The cause of death, blunt force trauma with multiple fractures to her skull.
Dateline NBC
Survivors' haunting texts in Idaho. Questions for a New York prosecutor. And a spring break mystery.
We've got our roundup of the latest crime headlines, a verdict in the third murder trial of Dana Chandler, the latest on the search for a college student who disappeared on spring break in the Dominican Republic, And an update from the prosecutor handling the Menendez brothers' case.
Dateline NBC
Survivors' haunting texts in Idaho. Questions for a New York prosecutor. And a spring break mystery.
In April 2023, there was finally an arrest in the case. Here's our affiliate NBC4 New York.
Dateline NBC
Survivors' haunting texts in Idaho. Questions for a New York prosecutor. And a spring break mystery.
And this week, the trial of Megan's alleged killer finally began. But Megan's family wants to know what took so long. And they aren't the only ones. In a startling turn of events, New York State police investigators are also pointing the finger at a man they say stood in the way of justice. And that is the local district attorney.
Dateline NBC
Survivors' haunting texts in Idaho. Questions for a New York prosecutor. And a spring break mystery.
Dateline Digital producer Veronica Mazzaca is here to bring us up to speed. Veronica, welcome back to the podcast.
Dateline NBC
Survivors' haunting texts in Idaho. Questions for a New York prosecutor. And a spring break mystery.
Yeah, so let's just start with, tell us about Megan McDonald.
Dateline NBC
Survivors' haunting texts in Idaho. Questions for a New York prosecutor. And a spring break mystery.
So, Veronica, what do we know about the last day of Megan's life? Yeah.
Dateline NBC
Survivors' haunting texts in Idaho. Questions for a New York prosecutor. And a spring break mystery.
Investigators learned that Megan had stopped by a birthday party that Thursday night, but she didn't go inside.
Dateline NBC
Survivors' haunting texts in Idaho. Questions for a New York prosecutor. And a spring break mystery.
So it sounds like things weren't great between the two of them, but Megan did end up going back to that birthday party, and then this ends up being the last time she's seen alive, right?
Dateline NBC
Survivors' haunting texts in Idaho. Questions for a New York prosecutor. And a spring break mystery.
We know Megan's body was found on a dirt path, and her car was found parked in an apartment complex nearby. But, Veronica, do we know what happened when she left the birthday party? Did anyone see anything?
Dateline NBC
Survivors' haunting texts in Idaho. Questions for a New York prosecutor. And a spring break mystery.
Plus, expert witnesses in the courtroom. After Karen Reid's defense team came under fire recently for their use of expert witnesses, we wondered, what are the rules? NBC News legal analyst Danny Savalos breaks it down for us.
Dateline NBC
Survivors' haunting texts in Idaho. Questions for a New York prosecutor. And a spring break mystery.
So Holly was interviewed by police all those years ago, and at some point, the investigation hit a wall of But they took another look at him.
Dateline NBC
Survivors' haunting texts in Idaho. Questions for a New York prosecutor. And a spring break mystery.
So Edward Holly became the prime suspect. But investigators also say Holly wasn't the only one at the scene of the murder, right?
Dateline NBC
Survivors' haunting texts in Idaho. Questions for a New York prosecutor. And a spring break mystery.
All right. So Edward Hawley was indicted in January 2024. He is pleaded not guilty to second-degree murder charges. And his defense says the prosecution's looking in the wrong place, that they should really be looking at a different ex-boyfriend. So we'll learn a lot more over the coming weeks at trial, but one really important thing looming over all of this is Megan's family.
Dateline NBC
Survivors' haunting texts in Idaho. Questions for a New York prosecutor. And a spring break mystery.
Her family says the case against Holly should have been made years ago. They want answers. Why did this take so long?
Dateline NBC
Survivors' haunting texts in Idaho. Questions for a New York prosecutor. And a spring break mystery.
And two special prosecutors have been appointed who are outside Hoovler's office to try the case. Megan's mom was on the stand earlier this week. This must be just so hard for them on so many levels.
Dateline NBC
Survivors' haunting texts in Idaho. Questions for a New York prosecutor. And a spring break mystery.
But before all that, we're heading to Idaho, where we learned terrifying new details last week about the night four students were murdered in 2022. It's a case you know well by now. Four University of Idaho students stabbed to death in their beds in November of 2022. Brian Koberger, the man charged with their murders and who has pleaded not guilty, is set to go on trial in August.
Dateline NBC
Survivors' haunting texts in Idaho. Questions for a New York prosecutor. And a spring break mystery.
uh veronica thank you so much this is such a sad story that the family has had to deal with this for this long we'll see what happens thank you Up next, it's time for Dateline Roundup. We'll have the latest on the Menendez brothers' efforts to get out of prison and new information about the college student missing in the Caribbean.
Dateline NBC
Survivors' haunting texts in Idaho. Questions for a New York prosecutor. And a spring break mystery.
The last known person to see her on the beach that night was a 24-year-old from Iowa. Does his story add up? Plus, we're taking a look at expert witnesses. We'll do a deep dive into their role in the courtroom and why Karen Reid's defense team is in hot water. Welcome back to the show. For this week's Roundup, we've asked Dateline producer Sergey Avonin to join us. Hey, Sergey.
Dateline NBC
Survivors' haunting texts in Idaho. Questions for a New York prosecutor. And a spring break mystery.
You too. So the case getting the most attention this week, as it has for almost six months now, is Lyle and Eric Menendez, who are still fighting to get out of prison. They have been incarcerated for almost 30 years since being convicted for killing their parents back in 1989. We have a new DA in town, Sergey, as of last year, and he was going to make some decisions.
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A murder suspect's brother under scrutiny. Breakthrough in parents' quest for answers. And should jurors question witnesses?
And what is happening then with the police? Is this investigation open? Are there plans to open it?
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A murder suspect's brother under scrutiny. Breakthrough in parents' quest for answers. And should jurors question witnesses?
And the Greenbergs spoke to NBC10 WCAU Philadelphia after the agreement. I hope today we made Ellen proud of us.
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A murder suspect's brother under scrutiny. Breakthrough in parents' quest for answers. And should jurors question witnesses?
Thank you so much, Brian.
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A murder suspect's brother under scrutiny. Breakthrough in parents' quest for answers. And should jurors question witnesses?
Up next, it's time for Dateline Roundup. We've got an update from Hawaii as the defense team for Eric Thompson, the man accused of murdering his wife's ex-lover, makes its case. And Donna Adelson's latest court filing, the Florida matriarch accused of masterminding a hit for hire wants out of jail. Plus, we've seen it in a few cases this year, jurors asking questions during murder trials.
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A murder suspect's brother under scrutiny. Breakthrough in parents' quest for answers. And should jurors question witnesses?
Does it work? We've got a judge to give us his take. Welcome back. Joining me for this week's Roundup is Dateline Associate Producer Kelly Moody. Hey, Kelly. Hi, Andrea. How are you? Good. So you have the assignment of the year this winter. You're in Hawaii to cover a case that we talked about a few weeks ago on the podcast. We're talking about Eric Thompson.
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A murder suspect's brother under scrutiny. Breakthrough in parents' quest for answers. And should jurors question witnesses?
It's been a year since anybody has heard from Anna Kinesovich and a year since a man wearing a motorcycle helmet was caught on video spray painting over the lens of a security camera in her Madrid apartment building. Federal prosecutors say that mystery man was Ana's husband, David Kinesovich. In May, David was arrested and charged with Ana's kidnapping.
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A murder suspect's brother under scrutiny. Breakthrough in parents' quest for answers. And should jurors question witnesses?
He is on trial for the second time for the murder of his wife's former lover in 2022. His first trial ended in a hung jury. So, Kelly, first just remind us about this case.
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A murder suspect's brother under scrutiny. Breakthrough in parents' quest for answers. And should jurors question witnesses?
So it is now week four in the trial, and we are in the defense portion. They are trying to poke holes in the prosecution's case.
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A murder suspect's brother under scrutiny. Breakthrough in parents' quest for answers. And should jurors question witnesses?
The defense also called Eric Thompson's brother, Michael, to give character testimony. What did he have to say about his brother?
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A murder suspect's brother under scrutiny. Breakthrough in parents' quest for answers. And should jurors question witnesses?
Eric has pleaded not guilty. What can we expect from the trial in the coming days?
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A murder suspect's brother under scrutiny. Breakthrough in parents' quest for answers. And should jurors question witnesses?
Okay, we'll be sure to check back in on that one and see what the jury decides. Up next, a defendant in a double homicide out of Kansas. And this is not her first murder trial or her second. Kelly, bring us up to speed on Dana Chandler and her third murder trial in two decades.
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A murder suspect's brother under scrutiny. Breakthrough in parents' quest for answers. And should jurors question witnesses?
So her third murder trial began last Friday, and the big news out of the courtroom last week is that Chandler is representing herself.
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A murder suspect's brother under scrutiny. Breakthrough in parents' quest for answers. And should jurors question witnesses?
And we've learned that the court appointed standby counsel for her. Yeah.
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A murder suspect's brother under scrutiny. Breakthrough in parents' quest for answers. And should jurors question witnesses?
Finally, we are off to Florida, where Donna Adelson's defense attorneys are pushing for her release as she awaits her murder trial. She is the 75-year-old family matriarch and fifth person charged in the murder-for-hire plot of her former son-in-law, law professor Dan Markell. Now, she's in protective custody, right, Kelly?
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A murder suspect's brother under scrutiny. Breakthrough in parents' quest for answers. And should jurors question witnesses?
Six months after that, the charges were upgraded. NBC6 South Florida WTVJ covered the news.
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A murder suspect's brother under scrutiny. Breakthrough in parents' quest for answers. And should jurors question witnesses?
And her defense attorneys say, should Bond be set, she's not a flight risk. But remember, this is the woman who was arrested as she was about to board a one-way flight to Vietnam, although her lawyer argues she was going on vacation and there was no warrant for her arrest at the time. We can expect a ruling on this motion on February 27th. When, Kelly, can we expect her trial to begin?
Dateline NBC
A murder suspect's brother under scrutiny. Breakthrough in parents' quest for answers. And should jurors question witnesses?
Her trial is currently still set to start in June of 2025. Okay, so many cases to watch. Thanks, Kelly, for joining us this week. Enjoy Hawaii. Thank you. Will do. Before I introduce my next guest, take a listen to this.
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A murder suspect's brother under scrutiny. Breakthrough in parents' quest for answers. And should jurors question witnesses?
That is the voice of Judge Boyd Patterson reading out juror questions to witnesses at the trial of Jason Chen. Chen was convicted last month of murdering his 22-year-old girlfriend, Jasmine Pace. And the Jason Chen trial wasn't the first time we've come across jurors asking questions of witnesses in the courtroom this year.
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A murder suspect's brother under scrutiny. Breakthrough in parents' quest for answers. And should jurors question witnesses?
Our team noticed it at the trial of Richard Allen, the man convicted of murdering two schoolgirls in Delphi, Indiana.
Dateline NBC
A murder suspect's brother under scrutiny. Breakthrough in parents' quest for answers. And should jurors question witnesses?
More recently, jurors had lots to say in San Francisco, where Nima Momeni was convicted of fatally stabbing Cash App co-founder Bob Lee. There was quite a large stack of questions from jury members to Nima. This made us wonder, why do we hear jurors asking questions in some trials but not others? And what are the pros and the cons?
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A murder suspect's brother under scrutiny. Breakthrough in parents' quest for answers. And should jurors question witnesses?
So we asked Judge Patterson to come on the podcast and share with us what he's seen in the courtroom when juries are given the freedom to ask what's on their mind. Hi, Judge. Thanks for coming on the podcast.
Dateline NBC
A murder suspect's brother under scrutiny. Breakthrough in parents' quest for answers. And should jurors question witnesses?
So as we mentioned, you allowed the juror questions in the Jason Chen trial. But most of the cases we cover don't involve jurors asking questions. Why do we see it sometimes and sometimes not?
Dateline NBC
A murder suspect's brother under scrutiny. Breakthrough in parents' quest for answers. And should jurors question witnesses?
Even though questions are allowed in a lot of states, a lot of judges won't use that tool. Is it always the judge that decides?
Dateline NBC
A murder suspect's brother under scrutiny. Breakthrough in parents' quest for answers. And should jurors question witnesses?
Ana had moved from Fort Lauderdale to Spain while she and David were separating. Prosecutors say David tracked her down there and killed her, but her body has not been found. Search efforts for Ana Maria in Europe have turned up empty. His lawyer says he's not guilty and there's no proof Ana is even dead. But investigators in this country have been busy, too.
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A murder suspect's brother under scrutiny. Breakthrough in parents' quest for answers. And should jurors question witnesses?
So take us inside the courtroom where it is allowed. How does it work?
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A murder suspect's brother under scrutiny. Breakthrough in parents' quest for answers. And should jurors question witnesses?
What would you say are the biggest benefits to allowing jurors to ask questions?
Dateline NBC
A murder suspect's brother under scrutiny. Breakthrough in parents' quest for answers. And should jurors question witnesses?
I can't help but feel like they're channeling their inner Dateline correspondent when they come up with these questions.
Dateline NBC
A murder suspect's brother under scrutiny. Breakthrough in parents' quest for answers. And should jurors question witnesses?
What are the criticisms of asking questions as you go along? Because there are places where this is not allowed. Why not?
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A murder suspect's brother under scrutiny. Breakthrough in parents' quest for answers. And should jurors question witnesses?
Judge, is it true that it can reduce hung juries?
Dateline NBC
A murder suspect's brother under scrutiny. Breakthrough in parents' quest for answers. And should jurors question witnesses?
Okay, Judge Patterson, this has been fascinating. Thank you for giving us your insight.
Dateline NBC
A murder suspect's brother under scrutiny. Breakthrough in parents' quest for answers. And should jurors question witnesses?
That's it for this episode of Dateline True Crime Weekly. Next week, I'll be off, but Blaine Alexander will be here to host, and she has a very special guest, Keith Morrison. He'll be talking about his brand new podcast series, Murder in the Moonlight. A family was torn apart when a couple was shot to death in their quiet farmhouse on America's Great Plains.
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A murder suspect's brother under scrutiny. Breakthrough in parents' quest for answers. And should jurors question witnesses?
Last week, we got our first hint that David may not be the only person in his family under scrutiny. Here to tell us more about what seems to be a widening investigation is Dateline associate producer Alex LeRae. Hey, Alex. Hey, Andrea. Let's start at the beginning. Remind us of the FBI and the prosecutor's theory of this crime.
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A murder suspect's brother under scrutiny. Breakthrough in parents' quest for answers. And should jurors question witnesses?
What followed was a lengthy investigation that included four suspects, spanned three states and came down to one single shiny clue. Subscribe to Dateline Premium on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or DatelinePremium.com to hear the first two episodes now or listen to the first two episodes free on Monday, February 17th. And coming up this Friday on Dateline, Craig Melvin has an all-new two-hour episode.
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A murder suspect's brother under scrutiny. Breakthrough in parents' quest for answers. And should jurors question witnesses?
Susan Smith made headlines 30 years ago when she let her car roll into a South Carolina lake, drowning her two young sons who were strapped inside. In a revealing and rare interview, Susan's ex-husband, David Smith, sits down with Craig to talk about his heartbreak and his fight to keep her behind bars.
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A murder suspect's brother under scrutiny. Breakthrough in parents' quest for answers. And should jurors question witnesses?
Watch Return to the Lake, airing this Friday at 9, 8 central on NBC, or stream it starting Saturday on Peacock. Thanks for listening. Dateline True Crime Weekly is produced by Frannie Kelly and Katie Ferguson. Our associate producers are Carson Cummins and Caroline Casey. Our senior producer is Liz Brown-Koroloff. Production and fact-checking help by Sara Kadir.
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A murder suspect's brother under scrutiny. Breakthrough in parents' quest for answers. And should jurors question witnesses?
Veronica Mazeka is our digital producer. Rick Kwan is our sound designer. Original music by Jesse McGinty. Bryson Barnes is head of audio production. Paul Ryan is executive producer. And Liz Cole is senior executive producer of Dateline.
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A murder suspect's brother under scrutiny. Breakthrough in parents' quest for answers. And should jurors question witnesses?
David isn't disputing that he was in Europe, but he says that there's a really good reason why he was there.
Dateline NBC
A murder suspect's brother under scrutiny. Breakthrough in parents' quest for answers. And should jurors question witnesses?
Welcome to Dateline True Crime Weekly. I'm Andrea Canning. It's February 13th, and here's what's on our docket. In Philadelphia, after a first-grade teacher died under mysterious circumstances, her parents launched a 14-year quest for answers. Last week, they got big news.
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A murder suspect's brother under scrutiny. Breakthrough in parents' quest for answers. And should jurors question witnesses?
And then those charges were upgraded to murder. Yeah.
Dateline NBC
A murder suspect's brother under scrutiny. Breakthrough in parents' quest for answers. And should jurors question witnesses?
And we should say that David has pleaded not guilty. So let's get into the latest development. Who is the other member of David's family who is now in the crosshairs of investigators?
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A murder suspect's brother under scrutiny. Breakthrough in parents' quest for answers. And should jurors question witnesses?
It's the start of another workday for the Dateline team here at 30 Rockefeller Center.
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A murder suspect's brother under scrutiny. Breakthrough in parents' quest for answers. And should jurors question witnesses?
How is he wrapped up in this now? What are they alleging?
Dateline NBC
A murder suspect's brother under scrutiny. Breakthrough in parents' quest for answers. And should jurors question witnesses?
But according to the FBI, David's brother was the first person David called when he was arrested in May, correct?
Dateline NBC
A murder suspect's brother under scrutiny. Breakthrough in parents' quest for answers. And should jurors question witnesses?
Do we know if the FBI was able to get anything off of David's brother's phone and laptop?
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A murder suspect's brother under scrutiny. Breakthrough in parents' quest for answers. And should jurors question witnesses?
The FBI also seems to be investigating payments that David's brother has made to inmates in the federal prison where David is being held. What's that all about?
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A murder suspect's brother under scrutiny. Breakthrough in parents' quest for answers. And should jurors question witnesses?
Has David's brother said anything about these allegations? He hasn't been arrested or charged, but has he responded publicly at all?
Dateline NBC
A murder suspect's brother under scrutiny. Breakthrough in parents' quest for answers. And should jurors question witnesses?
So this warrant not only mentions David's brother, but another family member of David's. And we're talking about his mom. Yes.
Dateline NBC
A murder suspect's brother under scrutiny. Breakthrough in parents' quest for answers. And should jurors question witnesses?
In Dateline Roundup, there's news from a Florida jail about Donna Adelson, the grandma accused of masterminding a plot to murder her son-in-law, FSU law professor Dan Markell. And more from the retrial of the Hawaii man accused of murdering his wife's acupuncturist, ex-lover.
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A murder suspect's brother under scrutiny. Breakthrough in parents' quest for answers. And should jurors question witnesses?
Alex, what is next in this case? We will just have to wait and see if there are any more arrests. Okay. In the meantime, Anna's family filed a wrongful death lawsuit using some of this information that became public last week.
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A murder suspect's brother under scrutiny. Breakthrough in parents' quest for answers. And should jurors question witnesses?
All right, Alex, thank you for bringing us the latest on this. Thanks, Andrea. Coming up in Philadelphia, a new chapter in a family's 14 year quest for the truth about their daughter's mysterious death. On January 26, 2011, a nor'easter hit Philadelphia. Schools closed, and 27-year-old first-grade teacher Ellen Greenberg went home early to the apartment she shared with her fiancé.
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A murder suspect's brother under scrutiny. Breakthrough in parents' quest for answers. And should jurors question witnesses?
Just a few hours later, she was found dead with a knife four inches deep in her chest. Her parents, Josh and Sandy, were devastated.
Dateline NBC
A murder suspect's brother under scrutiny. Breakthrough in parents' quest for answers. And should jurors question witnesses?
For more than a decade, Ellen's parents have waged a battle to find out the truth about what happened the night their daughter died, even filing two lawsuits against the city of Philadelphia. All that came to an abrupt halt last week.
Dateline NBC
A murder suspect's brother under scrutiny. Breakthrough in parents' quest for answers. And should jurors question witnesses?
Brian Sheehan, a reporter at NBC10, WCAU in Philadelphia, has been following this story for years. He joins us now to tell us more. Brian, thank you so much for coming on the show.
Dateline NBC
A murder suspect's brother under scrutiny. Breakthrough in parents' quest for answers. And should jurors question witnesses?
So why don't you just start by telling us a little bit about Ellen Greenberg? Who was she? What was she like? What have you learned?
Dateline NBC
A murder suspect's brother under scrutiny. Breakthrough in parents' quest for answers. And should jurors question witnesses?
Okay, let's fast forward now to the evening Ellen was found dead. We know from the investigation report that her fiancé, Sam Goldberg, was reportedly at the gym. And when he came home, the door was bolted shut from the inside. What happened? happen next?
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A murder suspect's brother under scrutiny. Breakthrough in parents' quest for answers. And should jurors question witnesses?
So he calls 911? 911.
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A murder suspect's brother under scrutiny. Breakthrough in parents' quest for answers. And should jurors question witnesses?
Plus, for the first time on the podcast, we're joined by a judge. He tells us why he thinks jurors should be allowed to ask questions during a trial.
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A murder suspect's brother under scrutiny. Breakthrough in parents' quest for answers. And should jurors question witnesses?
So this is not just one stab wound we're talking about. There are 20, including 10 to her head and her neck. And Brian, she had some bruising as well?
Dateline NBC
A murder suspect's brother under scrutiny. Breakthrough in parents' quest for answers. And should jurors question witnesses?
So the medical examiner initially ruled the manner of death was homicide, but that all changed a few weeks later. What happened?
Dateline NBC
A murder suspect's brother under scrutiny. Breakthrough in parents' quest for answers. And should jurors question witnesses?
And also the knife only showed Ellen's DNA.
Dateline NBC
A murder suspect's brother under scrutiny. Breakthrough in parents' quest for answers. And should jurors question witnesses?
Was there any type of note in the apartment or something she had written to a family member or friend that she was distraught or depressed or some type of indication?
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A murder suspect's brother under scrutiny. Breakthrough in parents' quest for answers. And should jurors question witnesses?
And what about her fiancé's story? Did the police look into that? You know, he says he's at the gym when this is happening, let the doors bolted shut. Did they find anything out with that?
Dateline NBC
A murder suspect's brother under scrutiny. Breakthrough in parents' quest for answers. And should jurors question witnesses?
The family obviously has a very strong conviction that this was not suicide. They essentially began their own investigation into this, consulting many experts over the years. What did they find?
Dateline NBC
A murder suspect's brother under scrutiny. Breakthrough in parents' quest for answers. And should jurors question witnesses?
Our producers are catching up on breaking crime news around the country, swapping tips and story ideas. The clock starts ticking on that April 2nd.
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A murder suspect's brother under scrutiny. Breakthrough in parents' quest for answers. And should jurors question witnesses?
Josh and Sandy Greenberg ultimately filed two civil lawsuits against Philadelphia, the city. One sought to change the manner of death. The other sought damages for intentional infliction of emotional damages by city employees who conducted the investigation. This legal battle was going on for more than five years. Last week on the eve of this civil trial, there was a big development in the case.
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A murder suspect's brother under scrutiny. Breakthrough in parents' quest for answers. And should jurors question witnesses?
But before all that, new developments in an international murder investigation. After a Florida woman went missing in Spain, her husband was arrested and accused of killing her. Now the FBI is looking at his family to see if they played a role.
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A murder suspect's brother under scrutiny. Breakthrough in parents' quest for answers. And should jurors question witnesses?
And the city and the Greenbergs also, they reached a settlement of some sort?
Dateline NBC
A murder suspect's brother under scrutiny. Breakthrough in parents' quest for answers. And should jurors question witnesses?
And is this medical examiner who's reviewing the manner of death, is this a different medical examiner or the same one?