Sergey Ivonin
Appearances
Dateline NBC
Verdict in the roommate murder trial. Mom accused of murder by fire and van. And, actor Dennis Quaid.
It'll come down to science, the science of fire.
Dateline NBC
Verdict in the roommate murder trial. Mom accused of murder by fire and van. And, actor Dennis Quaid.
Good morning, Andrea. Thanks for having me.
Dateline NBC
Verdict in the roommate murder trial. Mom accused of murder by fire and van. And, actor Dennis Quaid.
By all accounts, the 80s and the 90s were a happy time for the couple. Linda had two daughters when they met, and by the time they married, Todd and she already had two sons also together. It seems finances became an issue for them. And according to their sons, there was some infidelity on Linda's part. Linda denied that, and all of her children said that Todd had a temper.
Dateline NBC
Verdict in the roommate murder trial. Mom accused of murder by fire and van. And, actor Dennis Quaid.
Linda's daughters especially say that Todd sometimes hit Linda and her oldest daughter when she was a teenager. Todd did have an arrest record for a misdemeanor assault and drug charges and a DUI. According to all of their children, Linda and Todd had a big blowout fight the night before the house was set on fire.
Dateline NBC
Verdict in the roommate murder trial. Mom accused of murder by fire and van. And, actor Dennis Quaid.
Well, there's that and more. The state said that she had doused Todd in gasoline and then started a fire in the living room. And then he ran outside on fire and she drove over him in her Ford van. She denies that and said she was in the basement doing laundry and he was yelling at her from the living room and then his yells turned into screams.
Dateline NBC
Verdict in the roommate murder trial. Mom accused of murder by fire and van. And, actor Dennis Quaid.
So when she went upstairs, he was on fire and there was fire separating them. So she said she ran outside and to her van to get some help. Once she was there, she saw Todd run out of the house and she tried to get him to drop and roll and, you know, get the fire off of him or get in the van, but he just wouldn't do it.
Dateline NBC
Verdict in the roommate murder trial. Mom accused of murder by fire and van. And, actor Dennis Quaid.
And she said while she tried again to leave, the van got stuck in the mud because it had been raining and snowing. And that's when the next-door neighbors got to the house and found Todd lying on the ground and called 911.
Dateline NBC
Verdict in the roommate murder trial. Mom accused of murder by fire and van. And, actor Dennis Quaid.
Linda says she has no understanding of how Todd got hit by her van. The state says it must have happened because they found Todd's blood on the bumper and the undercarriage on the vehicle. The neighbors say she was incoherent when, you know, they saw her on site.
Dateline NBC
Verdict in the roommate murder trial. Mom accused of murder by fire and van. And, actor Dennis Quaid.
The state's fire investigator said that the fire was intentionally set in the living room and Todd was at the center of it. Linda's lawyer at the time told her, according to both of them, that she didn't need to hire a fire investigator of her own because their argument was that it was Todd, not Linda, who committed an arson. and he had accidentally set himself on fire.
Dateline NBC
Verdict in the roommate murder trial. Mom accused of murder by fire and van. And, actor Dennis Quaid.
Well, he had other properties that suspiciously caught on fire, and he was in debt on each of them.
Dateline NBC
Verdict in the roommate murder trial. Mom accused of murder by fire and van. And, actor Dennis Quaid.
Yes, but Todd's mother actually testified about those fires at Linda's first trial, and she said, quote, I will be hard-pressed to find somebody who has had one house burned down, but three? Three? So the argument was that he knew how to do it, and Linda didn't have a trace of gasoline on her when they tested the clothes that she was wearing that day.
Dateline NBC
Verdict in the roommate murder trial. Mom accused of murder by fire and van. And, actor Dennis Quaid.
Not even a full day. So she was sentenced to life and served eight years. One of her daughters actually reached out to a well-known investigator in Michigan called Bob Trenkle, who made a report that Linda's team got to the U.S. Court of Appeals, saying there wasn't enough evidence, and not only that Did Linda start the fire? But anyone did intentionally.
Dateline NBC
Verdict in the roommate murder trial. Mom accused of murder by fire and van. And, actor Dennis Quaid.
He said that the county's investigation was inadequate and the appeals court agreed with him, faulted her lawyer for not countering that official's testimony.
Dateline NBC
Verdict in the roommate murder trial. Mom accused of murder by fire and van. And, actor Dennis Quaid.
And she's been living here locally with one of her daughters. She's 60 years old now. And when I spoke with her, she sounds confident and ready for the new trial.
Dateline NBC
Verdict in the roommate murder trial. Mom accused of murder by fire and van. And, actor Dennis Quaid.
If the next door neighbors are called to testify and saying they saw any movement of the van's wheels, that testimony would be certainly damaging to her. So... We'll just have to wait and see.
Dateline NBC
Verdict in the roommate murder trial. Mom accused of murder by fire and van. And, actor Dennis Quaid.
Thanks for having me. Of course I will.
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's not done yet. No, no.
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 had previously indicated that she is going to present a whole battery of witnesses, defense witnesses. And so it looks like the trial will spill into March for sure.
Dateline NBC
Audio of a jailhouse sting. A woman's third murder trial in three decades. And the latest on a new texting scam.
Absolutely. Thank you for having me.
Dateline NBC
Audio of a jailhouse sting. A woman's third murder trial in three decades. And the latest on a new texting scam.
Watching those kids talk to their mother was a very uncomfortable experience, I will tell you that much.
Dateline NBC
Audio of a jailhouse sting. A woman's third murder trial in three decades. And the latest on a new texting scam.
Absolutely. Thank you for having me.
Dateline NBC
Audio of a jailhouse sting. A woman's third murder trial in three decades. And the latest on a new texting scam.
Their theory is that Dana had like a 27-hour window when nobody knew where she was. She spoke to nobody. And they're saying that she filled two five-gallon gas tanks in Denver and then drove to Topeka, Kansas. And she didn't stop anywhere. No cameras caught her. She didn't use her credit card. Prosecution said she did that deliberately not to get any tracks or digital crumbs.
Dateline NBC
Audio of a jailhouse sting. A woman's third murder trial in three decades. And the latest on a new texting scam.
Mike and she had a very long and bitter divorce. Mike got the custody, full custody of the kids, and Dana was not happy about it. And then Mike started dating Karen, and they were about to get married.
Dateline NBC
Audio of a jailhouse sting. A woman's third murder trial in three decades. And the latest on a new texting scam.
Absolutely. They were describing she would show up in restaurants all of a sudden where Mike and Karen were having dinner and she'd start walking around them and taking snapshots of them. Or another instance, she was jumping outside on their trampoline, jumping up and down in the middle of the night.
Dateline NBC
Audio of a jailhouse sting. A woman's third murder trial in three decades. And the latest on a new texting scam.
Yes, that she was incessantly calling. You know, there was one point at Karen's house, the phone rang 17 times in 18 minutes.
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 says she was in Denver that weekend in July, far, far away from where the murder had occurred. And she and her team, you know, argued for years that there's no physical evidence or eyewitnesses to show she's lying or she had anything to do with the murder.
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 jury didn't even think about it for 90 minutes, and they came out and they said, guilty. So why was it overturned? She appealed, and then the Kansas Supreme Court said the evidence was substantial but not overwhelming. They said the prosecutor played a big role in that guilty verdict, and she, the prosecutor, in fact, was... less than truthful.
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 said that Mike had gotten protection order of abuse from the judge right before he and Dana's divorce. And that was not true. And then the prosecutor said that Dana had found out about Mike's engagement to Karen two days before the murder. That was also not true.
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's right. Haley was 17 and Dustin was 15.
Dateline NBC
Audio of a jailhouse sting. A woman's third murder trial in three decades. And the latest on a new texting scam.
There were some exchanges presented that Haley and her mother Dana, they did on AOL. Remember AOL? I'm dating myself here. When we used to chat to each other, sort of like texting. And those were very hard to listen to.
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 Haley was clearly very uncomfortable in those chats, and she kept pleading with her mother, please stop, stop, stop. And Dana just would not let up.
Dateline NBC
Audio of a jailhouse sting. A woman's third murder trial in three decades. And the latest on a new texting scam.
Exactly, yeah. After the murders, he tried to get some information out of her that would be damning.
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 mean, you hated Karen.
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 hated Karen.
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, but you hated her.
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 every time you saw her, I mean, you had that glare in your eye like, you know.
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 was quite uncomfortable to be in the courtroom. She would address their kids by, you know, their last name, and it was very sort of dry and technical. And it... The kids were quite visibly uncomfortable, and understandably so. It's a very high-stress situation. And on top of it, it's your mother who is trying to dig into your testimony and undermine 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.
I'm not sure if that was something that was done pre-trial and discussed in chambers that they cannot say that. But they never once came out and say, she killed my dad.
Dateline NBC
Audio of a jailhouse sting. A woman's third murder trial in three decades. And the latest on a new texting scam.
Well, she called herself last Friday.
Dateline NBC
Audio of a jailhouse sting. A woman's third murder trial in three decades. And the latest on a new texting scam.
Yes, yes, exactly that. Her testimony was to her innocence and that surely there was bitterness in the divorce, but that does not make her a murderer.