Dateline: True Crime Weekly
Survivors' haunting texts in Idaho. Questions for a New York prosecutor. And a spring break mystery.
Thu, 13 Mar 2025
In pretrial hearings for Bryan Kohberger, unsealed court documents reveal chilling texts sent by the roommates of four murdered Idaho students. The family of a young woman murdered in New York wants to know why the arrest of her suspected killer took so long. And we've got an update on the investigation into a student who went missing from a beach in the Dominican Republic. Plus, what's fair game when attorneys call on expert witnesses?Find out more about the cases covered each week here: www.datelinetruecrimeweekly.com
Chapter 1: What chilling details were revealed in the Idaho murders case?
Yeah, this has been a long saga. We'll see if it's actually truly over.
I suspect it's not the last we heard of Dana Chandler.
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.
What we know is like the whole group of them went to the beach. They were there at 4 a.m. in the morning, as, you know, students are known to do. And then they left her there with a guy, they're saying, who had been partying with them earlier that night. There's still a massive search on for her. They're looking for her in the water, on land, helicopters, drones.
Investigators have said they're looking at surveillance footage from the moment that, you know, those students landed last week. You know, the State Department, the FBI, the DEA, they're all involved in this. But an interesting thing is that her friends, you know, her friends who stayed on the beach and partied, they did not say anything. They didn't report her missing until 4 p.m.,
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?
The last person seen with her was a 24-year-old from Iowa who was a guest at the resort as well. And according to the police, he told three different stories. So on Monday, the sheriff in Virginia filed an Interpol alert. It's a worldwide police alert for a missing person.
Yeah, let's hope that the family gets answers soon. Thank you so much, Sergey, for bringing us Roundup this week.
My pleasure.
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Chapter 2: What new evidence was unsealed in the trial of Bryan Koberger?
to determine that this is a legitimate area, whether it be scientific, technical, whatever the case may be. It's got to meet at least a minimum standard before a judge allows any old expert to come in and start testifying to a jury.
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?
This is a very is that the defense team said to the court and to the prosecution, we have had limited access to these guys. We're basically taking them as we find them. We're barely talking to them. We haven't paid them anything.
Well, now it seems that the defense may have possibly violated their obligation to disclose information about the level of, let's say, coziness that the defense had with these experts. Prosecutors allege that there were emails between the defense team and these experts, and in addition, an alleged payment of about $24,000. If true, and this wasn't disclosed, that's a huge problem for the defense.
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?
That may be a lot of what we call lawyerly backpedaling at this point. But here's the thing. You've got to disclose information about your expert. You've got to give the other side the opportunity to cross-examine them as completely as they can.
Reid's pretrial hearings resume on March 18th and will certainly be watching. Danny, thanks so much for joining us.
Thanks for having me.
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.
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