Andrea Canning and Josh Mankiewicz sit down to talk about Andrea’s episode "Poison Twist.” In 2017, Katie Conley was convicted of poisoning her boss and ex-boyfriend's mother, Mary Yoder, a beloved chiropractor in upstate NY. But after a stunning development this year, Conley was released from custody. Andrea shares a podcast-exclusive clip of her interview with Conley’s defense attorney, and she and Josh discuss what might be next for Conley. Plus, they dish about their favorite fast food, Andrea’s uncanny ability to spot a Canadian accent, and welcome a special guest, NBC News Legal Analyst Danny Cevallos, to help answer viewer questions.If you have a question for Talking Dateline, send us an audio message on social @datelinenbc or leave us a voicemail at (212) 413-5252.Listen to the full episode of "Poison Twist" on Apple: https://apple.co/3RoALr6Listen to the full episode on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/3ZTbsKa4uQDCgQOyDV6o0h
Chapter 1: Who are the key players in the 'Poison Twist' case?
Hi, everybody. I'm Josh Mankiewicz, and we're talking Dateline today with Andrea. Hi, Andrea.
Hi, Josh.
We are here to discuss Andrea's episode called Poison Twist. Now, if you have not seen it, it's the episode right below this one on your Dateline podcast feed. So go there, listen to it. You can also watch it on Peacock and then come back here. Now, just to recap a little bit, this is about the death of a chiropractor named Mary Yoder back in 2015.
That turned into a criminal investigation, and it turned out she had been poisoned. And a very weird anonymous letter eventually led them to a possible killer who was Mary's office manager, a woman named Caitlin Conley, also known as Katie. And there's a new development, and it's turned all of this kind of upside down. And it's a great whodunit.
So for this Talking Dateline, we have an extra clip of Andrea's interview with Katie Connolly's latest attorney, Melissa Swartz. And later on, we'll be joined by our very own legal analyst, Danny Savalas, to answer one of your social media questions. So let's talk Dateline. Katie Conley is no longer behind bars. And one kind of gets the sense that she might not be retried again.
Sounds like trying her again is going to be a lot harder than trying her the first couple of times.
Yeah. I was literally just thinking about that seconds before you said it, Josh, about will they go after Katie Conley again?
No question. It's more difficult now that the cell phone evidence can't be used.
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.
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Chapter 2: What are the new developments in Katie Conley's case?
So the thing I kept thinking while I was watching this is... Okay, it has to be her, but it can't be her, right? Because it doesn't make any sense. Like, why would she want to kill Mary? All of the possible motives, like removing Mary from Adam's life would make Adam come back to her. That's like out of some nutty movie. Any evidence that, like, you know, Mary was going to let Katie go?
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.
But when you say them out loud, they seem, as we discussed, a little hard to believe.
I mean, the abuse allegations that, you know, Adam denied it, then kind of admitted it. I mean, did Mary even know about that? We don't know.
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?
Yeah, so Mary couldn't have been that upset about it.
Right. She could just let her go if she was upset with her.
At the beginning of the episode, Mary shows up at her sister's house and she sort of is hinting that she has something to talk about. We're never going to know what that was. What do you think that was?
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.
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Chapter 3: How does the cell phone evidence affect the case?
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.
Over the course of Katie's trials, both Adam and Bill... ended up with transactional immunity because they testified in front of a grand jury. Now, for people who have committed crimes, transactional immunity can be this giant gift because what essentially is, it says, we will not prosecute you for anything you admit to in this proceeding, in this session.
So you better confess to everything because you will not be prosecuted for it under the law.
Yeah, it was new to me. I always say, Josh, we learn something new every day on Dateline.
So, you know, that suggests that Bill or Adam could not be charged, at least not based on whatever they said in the grand jury. But again, they didn't confess. Neither one of them said, yeah, I did it.
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.
The question is going to be whether Katie gets tried again, not whether somebody else gets tried. Absolutely. Up next, you, and by you, I mean the home listener, had a lot to say about who you thought killed Mary Yoder and about the investigation and about everything that happened. We will be right back with your questions from social media. OK, so this is not my story. This is your story.
But I got a tremendous amount of interest in your story on social media on Friday night. I mean, a lot of people ask me, like, what's going on here? What is this? Who is this? I'm like, you should be directing these questions to Andrea. Like, I'm actually not covering this. But. A lot of people very interested. Fred Hines on Facebook said, interesting show tonight.
It's really hard to know who the real killer was, which is one reason this was such a great episode. I suppose it comes down to just three people, husband, son, son's girlfriend. If no one outside the family was involved, then it has to be one of those three. Those would appear to be the possible choices, although, as we've discussed, Adam or Bill were not charged.
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