Blayne Alexander

Like really spreading their light.

She was just an incredible person to sit down and talk to because you could feel that pain. I mean, you could feel the pain. This didn't make it into the episode, but there was a time when she and I sat down and we looked through younger pictures of her with her brother and sister. And for her to be the only person that remains of that trio was just a really, really sad thing.

To your point earlier about how emotional this is for so many families, For a lot of people, that's how they channel their energy, right? How they kind of channel their grief, how they channel going through this process of keeping someone's memory alive or pushing for justice or going to the trial, going to the hearings.

That's kind of their way of being there for their loved one who was taken or whatever. When that ends, and especially if there's no conviction, but even just when that ends and you don't have that place to naturally channel your grief anymore. then what? And that was the heart of what I was trying to get, get at with her. And it's yes, doing something to keep her brother and sister's memory alive.

But I also just kind of felt that, you know, that need of what do you do once all of this comes to an end, essentially. Yeah.

She's married. She has a daughter. She still lives in Minot. You know, of course, we reached out to her. We reached out to her family. They didn't want to talk. This has been a weight on her, on her family to kind of go through this, you know, holding the suspicion for 18 years and then be acquitted.

It would be very hard to stay there. Again, we've talked about the size of Minot, right? It's not like you're acquitted in LA. You could just move to a different part, right? It's a very different, very different story.

You know, this was an interesting story for me to do, Josh, because this was my first time doing an acquittal story for Dayline. Not like I have a whole heck of a lot of them under my belt, but it was a very different process.

And kudos to the jurors, because at least in the one that we talked to who kind of talked about the deliberations that were going on, they really took this seriously. And I think that that piece, the circumstantial evidence piece, is something that they just couldn't get past, plus the number of other suspects.

Well, I think, and Peggy, to that point, I don't think that the family would disagree with her. I'll say that. I think that they, even just over the course of the 15 years between murder and arrest, felt, is everything being done? Don't forget about us kind of thing, right? And so I don't, you know, obviously they were not very happy with the outcome.

On the same thing. You know, that is a very fantastic question. But it's not something that was presented, not something that was part of evidence.

You cannot be tried twice for the same crime. You're acquitted and you're done.

I was just going to say, too, you know, I mean, Klug made it very clear that it's case closed. Blaine, thank you. It was a joy as always, my friend. Thank you so much.

Almost throughout, I would say, starting with the family, because typically, you know, when you sit down with families, you kind of have a there's a hate to use the word closure because you don't bring the person back.

Yeah.

It's rare, right? And in cases like this, because I mean, I think when you have a murder case, you take it all the way to the courtroom. Typically, by the time you get there, you're pretty certain if you're the prosecutor that you're going to get a conviction. That was obviously not the case here. So it was a very different type of story to tell.

And to your point about the suspects, there were a lot of them. And I think that that's what sowed a lot of seeds of doubt in the jury. When you heard from our juror, he was like, yeah, I was able to eliminate two of them and say they definitely didn't do it. But that still left him with several other people that he thought could have possibly done it.

And you don't typically have that many suspects who kind of have to some degree equal weight and impossibility of guilt.

There wasn't. I mean, it was a circumstantial case to begin with. There wasn't physical evidence. You know, in a number of stories we do, they never find the murder weapon, right? Here, the murder weapon was right on the bed, right next to Anita. But even that didn't give them any sort of DNA evidence, any sort of forensic evidence to lead them any closer to the killer.

So there were all of these different things that fell through. The typical things that you think of as this is what's going to be something that points to the eventual killer. None of those existed for investigators.

And that's the other question, right? Was somebody wearing gloves? Was it more planned than what prosecutors were kind of saying would have been more of an act of anger between two roommates? If that were the case, you're not putting on gloves, you're not wiping off evidence.

And so, yes, I think that that was a big hole, of course, when it came to the investigation, why it took so long for an arrest to be made and then ultimately why there was an acquittal.

That's the prosecution's theory, yes. They said, though, that there were a number of things that were showing that it was getting increasingly tense between the two of them.

What prosecutors would point to would be rage, right? That it was just one of those crimes of passion, a fit of rage. That's kind of what prosecutors, you know, walked in with.

There wasn't. There wasn't. And what was interesting, I mean, her stab wounds were obviously fatal, but they were minimal. She was stabbed twice. So it wasn't this kind of repeated in and out. It was two stab wounds.

There was also a theory of maybe she was stabbed in her sleep. But you're absolutely right. I mean, the knife for everything that it could have represented in this investigation really yielded nothing.

I really love when we do the ride-alongs. It's when you get out in the field and kind of get people more in their element that you really kind of get a sense of what they were thinking that day, what they were feeling that day. I also enjoyed it because it was at the time that I did the interview with him, that was my first trip to Minot, North Dakota.

And so he was able to kind of just show me around. I mean, I got a sense of how quickly he could get to the murder scene, right? Seeing the apartment itself. You know, one thing that he told me that I thought was interesting was that They were doing a lot of the canvassing, like knocking on the doors, talking to people.

And a lot of folks just didn't really have much information about her or hadn't seen anything or heard anything. And so some of those things that kind of, you know, come in handy, I guess you could say, if you're an investigator early on in the investigation, they didn't have a lot of that stuff.

It was in the front of their head. I mean, it was forefront in their mind. I mean, I really think that it was, A combination of the death itself being so hard hitting for people there. Again, college students, that was the talk of Minot State University. That was the talk of anyone in town. That was the talk of Butte nearby. I mean, the hometown where she was from.

So everyone was talking about it. There was fear. There was also the very real, you know, question of. Who did this and how could they have gotten away with this? I thought it was so telling when we heard from Klug once he became chief that they almost kind of put up this reminder of Anita Knudson.

I mean, they pulled out her binders, put her picture up, and people who were in the investigations division had to walk past that every day. Just a reminder of, hey... This is still open. We need to do something about this. And then you had a family, a very diligent family. I mean, the billboards went up. They had this Facebook page that really gained a lot of traction, which was a big deal.

And all those ribbons are still up. Yes.

Yeah. No, absolutely not. They're still there. That faded photograph is still very much hanging. And so, yes, it impacted the community in a way that, to your point, a lot of others don't. A lot of other places don't have.

I think that I have a lot of thoughts about sitting down with Anna Knudsen. One... What she and her family have had to go through in losing not only Anita, but losing Daniel, who died by suicide a few years later, was really unbelievable. And they all have carried this sense of the killer, whomever the killer may be, took from their family twice.

And so they've had this pain that has then been compounded. They were waiting for an arrest. The arrest happened and then they had an acquittal. And so it really is a difficult place for them. And I think when you saw their parents on the stand, I mean, they are elderly. Yes, Sharon was 80 years old. Gordon was 90.

And I think another thing, too, that our viewers don't know, this trial happened a good three hours from where they lived. There was a big fundraiser around town to kind of make it so that they wouldn't have to drive back and forth so that they could be taken care of and put up down there. But they had to be away from home for several weeks for the duration of this trial.

And, you know, again, when I spoke with one of Anita's friends, they said we really were holding on to some sort of justice for her parents because they have been through so much. they were thinking, okay, this is going to be the thing for them. And so that sense of disappointment, but especially at that age, after going through so much loss, I can't imagine and I really feel for them.

And it's emotional, too, because, again, every time they have to go in there, they're in the courtroom. And I'm speaking generally any families in the courtroom with the person they believe to be the killer of their loved one. So you're talking about sitting a few feet away every time that you have to go in there, seeing their family and friends. And so it was difficult. You know, that's...

One of the reasons I asked the question, would they consider a wrongful death suit? Would they consider some sort of civil lawsuit? And they basically said no, because that would mean taking Gordon and Sharon, Anita's parents, through more. And they just needed it to end for them. That's what Karen and Anna told me.

They got a lot of flack for that online, by the way. I'm sure. There were a lot of angry comments. There were a lot of people who said that was just a terrible taste, poor taste. And I think, you know, talking to Anna... She said, yes, that was a hard moment hearing the not guilty. But she said when she heard that celebration on the other side, she said, I just felt the room getting smaller.

I just had to get out of there. I'm curious when you, I mean, have you, obviously acquittals are rare. So this is a rare thing anyway. Can you recall such a courtroom response?

Absolutely. That's absolutely it.

Where do you go from here?

There's something driving that change.

Now, I should say this about the clip that we just played. Dateline actually first heard about Karen's case through Jenna, the person that you just heard from, who submitted it years ago as part of our Cold Case Spotlight series. Of course, that's our online article series where we highlight unsolved cold cases around the country.

But I think that it just really speaks to how, you know, when our viewers send us things, we listen to them. We look into these types of things.

And to that point, I want to give this plug. If you have a cold case, if you're listening, you have a cold case that you'd like to be featured, please submit it to us. You can submit it to us on social media at Dateline NBC. Well, Keith, it has been a true joy talking Dateline with you. I appreciate it.

Two wins in my column. Absolutely. I will take it. As a newbie, I will absolutely take it. Thank you, Keith.

Thank you. Thank you, my friend. I'm so glad to be here. And after the break, I'm going to be joined by Dateline Associate Producer Sam Springer, who will help answer some viewer and listener questions about the show from social media. Well, guys, I'm here now joined by Dateline Associate Producer Sam Springer, who worked very hard on this episode.

And we are here to answer some of your social media questions. Hi, Sam. Hi, how are you? I'm good. So glad to be here with you. And also just for our eagle-eared listeners who may hear a difference in sound, I'm recording this portion from my car because I'm getting ready to jump into election coverage for the next few days. So if it sounds a little different, that's why.

OK, Sam, we have a lot of people who had a lot of thoughts about this episode. So let's just jump right in. This one is from Susie Mack on Facebook, who writes, why wasn't that anonymous phone call investigated more? And Susie, I have to say, I had kind of the same question. That's the phone call that came in for a possible location for Karen's remains.

And that was something that was certainly talked about a lot. But what do we know about that one?

So it didn't even seem like something that was worth necessarily chasing down because they got so many just kind of off-the-wall calls.

Right. Exactly. Interesting. OK, here's one from Twitter or X. This is from at Art One Vegan. Why is David Swift still in prison?

OK, so he has to stay incarcerated until they get this manslaughter trial underway. And that could be some time.

OK, OK. Let's go to Chris Hamm on Facebook, who writes, Who is the man in the multicolored suit sitting behind whoever is speaking at the lectern during the trial? We got a lot of comments about this man and my eyes went to him as well when I watched. I said, OK, he's he's there. You notice him.

Well, question. Was it the same colorful suit every day, or did he have, like, a new colorful suit for each day of the trial?

That's talent. That's dedication to your craft right there. Well, there we go. Question answered. Okay. There was plenty of Keith love in these comments. This question from Rachel Wellington. Rachel writes, would love Keith Morrison to read stories about mysteries. He is the best storyteller ever. Well, Rachel, you are in luck.

I love it. You did that very well. The Dead Alive. You almost channeled a little Keith there yourself when you said that title.

I love it. Well, this was a lot of fun. Definitely an episode that got a lot of people talking. So Dateline Associate Producer Samantha Springer, so good to have you here with us today. Thank you. Thank you. And that's it for Talking Dateline for 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 Dateline NBC.

You know what? Heather was fascinating to me. There is a laundry list of fascinating characters, but I think Heather's probably at the top of my list.

Disruptor with a capital D. You know, I'm curious, though, because when we do episodes, every now and then you'll come across kind of like a Heather, somebody who really doesn't have anything to do with the story, but comes in and starts investigating or gets interested or really kind of attaches themselves to it.

I'm curious, as you spoke to her, what was it that really drove her and motivated her throughout this?

You are the, my friend. Well, this episode is called After the Halloween Party, and if you haven't seen it, it's the episode that's right below this one on your Dateline podcast feed. So make sure you go there, listen to it, or stream it on Peacock, and then come right back here. And for this Talking Dateline, Keith has an extra clip that didn't make it into the show.

I'm curious, what was it like, Keith, for you and the team to try and get to the bottom of these swingers rumors, right? Like it's not easy reporting on secrets, but especially when you're talking about a small town like this.

It was like an unspoken secret, but an unspoken, the worst kept secret kind of? Uh-huh.

Mm-hmm. Let's talk about the investigation because there were so many pieces here to this, of course, as well. One thing that stood out when that kind of first call came in and they said, we seem to have misplaced her about a missing person. I've certainly never heard anybody described it as that way. Talk to me a little bit more about that. What do we think was behind that phrase?

Let's talk about that horse search. The fact that a dozen, more than a dozen of Karen's friends went out on horseback to search for her. It was so interesting to me because it really, in many ways, told me a lot about that town and about that community. One, that there is a prevalence of horses to jump on. But the fact that all of them came together, they all went out on searches.

Of course, we've done stories where people kind of go out and search by foot. But talk a little bit more about that scene and that kind of community coming together to find her.

Right, exactly. Search animals. You know, the kudzu, but the kudzu vines almost kind of had a sort of, they almost kind of became.

But they almost became their own character. The fact that they were in a strange sort of sense kind of concealing this body and it wasn't until the season changed that they could find her. That was striking to me.

Then I'll be talking with Dateline associate producer Sam Springer, who will join me to answer some of your social media questions about the episode. But just a quick recap, the Dyersburg, Tennessee community was at a loss when Karen Swift, a local mother of four, went missing after a Halloween party on October 29th, 2011. It took investigators six weeks to find Karen's body.

That is very true. When we talk about this investigation, of course, we talk about the fact that this is kind of just hanging there, right? That nobody has been convicted of this yet. When you do a story like this and somebody is acquitted, but there's another charge pending, what is that like talking to the people afterwards? I mean, the attorneys put so much into this case.

As I was watching this, and I watched this episode a couple of times just to, you know, make sure that I got all the nuance. I did.

It was a fascinating episode. In the final episode. Act, as we call them, you know, each episode is 12 parts. Final act is you're introducing the prosecution team for the final time. And you do these establishing shots, right, where you say, oh, you know, here are the people and show them kind of sitting. It starts with a shot of an F. Lee Bailey book and then goes to the prosecution.

And this is before – I will never say. Yeah. That gives me the answer I need.

I said F. Lee Bailey. That can't be a coincidence.

Just for our viewers, I want to say, in case they're driving, I don't want them to have to start Googling who this is that we're talking about. Some people would say that he was one of the greatest attorneys of the 20th century, but he was, at least for me— In his mind, anyway. In his mind, right?

He was well known because he was part of the dream team for the O.J. Simpson trial, got him acquitted on murder back in the early 90s.

When we get back, Keith is going to share a podcast exclusive clip from an interview with Jenna and Gerald Scott. Those were Karen's neighbors when she was growing up. You know, let's talk about Ashley. Of all the many people that you talked to that we heard from in this story, Ashley absolutely stayed with me.

And I'm sure that was the case for so many of our viewers because you can't help but just feel so terrible for her.

When I heard her say that, and you asked her, you said, is there even an inkling, even a little bit? And she said, absolutely not. I almost wondered if that was a sort of method of self-protection for her, that she couldn't bring herself to believe that her dad had anything to do with it.

And it took prosecutors 11 years to charge her husband, David Swift, with her murder. At his 2024 trial, the jury was not able to agree that David killed Karen, meaning that this case is still very much open. All right, Keith, let's talk Dateline.

there was something about that that gave me chills because she was so convinced. As you know, I've got two of these Dateline episodes under my belt at this point. And the second one that I've done had an interview that was very similar. There's something about interviewing an adult who was a child when they lost their parent because the memory is formed as a child.

So even though they're speaking to you as an adult, they've lived their lives, when they talk about that moment, It's almost like you're talking to that nine-year-old, right?

Hello, everyone. I'm Blayne Alexander, and we are talking Dateline. Today, I'm joined here by the Keith Morrison. Hi, Keith.

You know what? I want to start right there, actually, because I was just fascinated by the town itself, by Dyersburg. I mean, this was a small town. We're talking about a lot of people who knew each other and a lot of people who seemed to have opinions about how other folks were kind of living their lives, right? Yeah.

Certainly, we've talked a lot about Karen, and I was fascinated to hear so much about her, though. We have an extra clip from an interview with Jenna and Gerald Scott. They were Karen's neighbors when she was growing up. gave us more of a look into who Karen was. Let's listen.

Especially a mother, right? A mother of four. I remember at some point in the episode, Ashley says, we would beg her not to go out at night. Stay with us. Stay with us. And she would go anyway, right?

.

Michelle, Shantae's mother, was really upset about that. She was certainly noting the compassion that wasn't shown to her daughter. But then also this was a place that was very special to Shantae, right? This was Shantae's safe space. And, you know, obviously, Ryan, his family had a relationship with the church and the pastor as well.

And I should mention our team reached out to the pastor a number of times and he never responded. And Ryan's parents declined interview. but she was just very upset by the fact that the place that was so important, Shantae could receive such a, such a confession.

Sure. And I, You know, and I asked that question. This is somebody that you've been looking for for 18 months, right? The crime is brutal. And as soon as you got word, why didn't why weren't the police immediately called? Why was that allowed to happen? That in the end, he was kind of able to do things on his own terms to a degree. Yeah.

Being able to go home, his parents taking him to church, going to the sheriff's office rather than, you know, law enforcement coming in, carting him away. And that's the end of it.

The investigators are very clear about that, too. It was, yes, we have the sketch. Yes, we now have this name. But that would not be enough to take into court. That wouldn't be enough to convict someone, certainly. So it led them to Ryan. But it was the fact that Ryan knew the things that only the killer would know. Right.

Like, yes, obviously, the DNA match was what really, really tied it together.

Absolutely. There's so much to even undertake a story that's as long as the things that we do for Dateline. You have to gather so much information, right? Like by the time we finish these stories, you feel like you're an expert on these cases. And so there are all these different facts and different pieces of sound and information that you want to cram in.

Brandon, first I'll say, one, thank you so much for the kind welcome. I really appreciate it. And this just goes to prove that our Dateline viewers are basically detectives in and of themselves. I mean, that's a fantastic question. So we never actually got a great answer to that. John, the boyfriend, Shantae's boyfriend, said that he had mentioned Ryan's name, but it never really went anywhere.

We don't know the degree to which investigators went down that road.

Catherine, thank you for your question. A great question. Yes, that's what investigators believe. And so what happened was the Parabon image was released. Soon after that, Ryan, who had been at his parents' house, disappeared. After several days or so on the run, he came back and went to the church.

Oh, that's the most fun part about this. Whether it's on social media or the new phone number we have, I love hearing people's voices and actually asking the question. So more of that, please.

And it shows how closely she's paying attention because, yes, you did mention that in his childhood, he had this chihuahua that he would try and drown. But, you know, that is, yes, an early indicator. It starts with animals and then escalates from there.

Well, not only the church, but that's something that investigator Scott Bird said to me multiple times. Had it not been for the fact that they were able to find her as quickly as they did, they would not have been able to track down the killer without that evidence. So, yes, he is not shy about the fact that he believes that this was absolutely divine intervention.

But even in two hours, somehow you run out of time. So that's why I'm grateful for talking Dateline, because we can talk about all of these other things that never made it into the actual show.

That's so kind. I don't take that lightly. I really appreciate hearing from Linda. Thank you for that comment.

I just, I have so much love for Michelle. My heart really, really goes out to her and to Stephen, Shantae's stepfather, for both of them to sit down and talk with us and trust us to tell Shantae's story in the right way, in a respectful way, really meant a lot. So thank you, Michelle, for that.

You know, I've got to say the, a few hours before this episode aired on Friday, I got a text from the very first Dateline interview I ever did. It was Jolene and she was a sister-in-law of Heidi Furcus. And that was my story that aired in 2023. And yes, it will always stay with me. And I think all of these families will because

You know, when you do a story, to your point about the depth that we go to kind of know and understand the story, the case, but also the person, that kind of a connection isn't one that goes away quickly.

Yes. Who's fantastic.

Thank you so much, Josh. This was one that will stay with me and an honor to do this one. Thank you, my friend.

You know, I'd done a ton of research for this story, read about it, all of that good stuff, read previous, you know, news clips and everything. I hadn't actually seen the house for myself. And so I didn't see it until I was riding with the investigator, Investigator Bird. We had GoPros in the car and he was kind of driving me down the dirt roads. And then we get there.

And immediately I said, oh, wow. You can immediately see why this place is called The Haunted House. I mean, it looks right out of central casting of what you would expect to see a haunted house look like. All broken down inside. It looks like a horror movie. It does. It does. It does. And then you kind of consider some of the other things. I mean, there is a fence around it, right?

That, you know, kind of tells people to keep out. If you go inside there, the floorboards aren't there. You can't really walk through. There are animals inside and creatures. And then there's this storm cellar, which... I wanted to when we were putting this together, we wanted to make sure that everyone understands what a storm cellar is. Right. I grew up in Oklahoma.

Everybody has storm cellars for the most part. Lots of people have them. But this kind of underground place where you go for tornadoes and even tornadoes. And so that's where Shantae was ultimately found. And so the place itself almost becomes a character in the story just because of how how creepy it was, to be honest.

And just to break down that isolation a little bit more, Dallas probably is the nearest big city, Dallas-Fort Worth. That's a good two and a half hour, maybe three hour drive from Brownwood. But then the place where this happened, where Shantae lived, is actually slightly to the north of Brownwood.

And so you have this kind of small town anyway, but then an even smaller community that's kind of nestled around the lakes. When you talk about a small community, I mean that everyone truly knows everyone there.

And I'm glad. I'm glad to hear that because everybody that I spoke to really said that exact same thing. I mean, she was feisty. She had her opinion. She had her thoughts. Her routine with the walking was unlike anything anyone had ever seen. She'd wave at the car. She'd wave at the neighbors, right? People knew her.

And when she would go into church, everyone was just kind of taken by just how involved she was. I mean, really how, how moved she was by the music, how much she enjoyed being there. And that's something that, that drew a lot of people to her as well.

Yeah. And, you know, when I talked with both of the, you know, Ranger Shea and Investigator Scott Byrd and both of them were just you could tell they were personally impacted by this case that they I mean, they put a lot of just kind of their own emotion and obviously brainpower into this.

But when they talked about John, I mean, they talked about the fact that, yes, he saw her not too long before she disappeared. There were the people who said, OK, maybe they argued and maybe he was possessive and deleting of the text messages. And then, you know, we talk about this. He slept outside in his car after he realized that. Chante wasn't inside.

And that was something that struck them as odd. So there were these kind of string of just odd things that made them certainly go further down that rabbit hole.

I'm glad that he was able to kind of tell his story, right? To, to, to in his own words, because he makes the point that even though he was cleared from, you know, by investigators pretty early on, a lot of the people in the community were looking at him and saying, okay, clearly it's John, clearly it's the boyfriend. Like that's the only way to go. And so, you know,

To have that hanging over his head until there was ultimately an arrest, which came more than a year later, was also something that was difficult for him as well. So I'm glad that he was able to talk. I'm glad he agreed to speak with us. How did you... Was it hard to get him? You know, well, one, I want to say something about sitting down and talking to him. John was so...

It was so clear that he was just still so impacted by everything that happened to Shantae. He left Brownwood for a while. He moved away. He got work elsewhere. You know, he's still close with her family today, by the way. But he had to leave. He just kind of couldn't necessarily deal with this for a while and then came back to talk.

I asked him how he felt after the interview and he said he felt relieved. And so I think that he was glad to be able to tell his story, glad to be able to talk about his love for Shantae because it was something that had come under question during this investigation. It was something that even when I talked to him, I could tell he was still upset by it and rightfully so. Right.

But but I could tell that, you know, him just talking about and being able to express that love was was important to him.

That is the uniform.

So here's what's funny. I don't... Speaking of picking up things from your grandparents, Walker, Texas Ranger was my grandpa's one of his favorite shows. You guys remember that? Love that. And so after I finished my long interview with Ranger Shay, I said, I have to say, I was very excited to interview you today because I love Walker, Texas Ranger. And he just fell out laughing.

And so but I asked him, I said, I need to know about this hat. And he says, yes, it's part of the uniform. But here's the thing. They have to be a light color because in the old Westerns, dark color represents the bad guy. And so, yeah, the bad guy. So you have to have your light colored hat. He told me about it, gave me the specific name of it and everything.

It brings so much character, though, right?

And I think you're absolutely right. Yes, those was kind of a roadmap of their actual investigation. But what was so frustrating? And this is something that Investigator Bird kept coming back to when he talked to me. It was so frustrating because he had the killer's DNA right there in his hand. I mean, it's the best evidence you can use to identify someone, but I don't know who it is.

So he said at one point they were so frustrated. They said, we're just going to set up at this kind of four-way stop sign and just ask everybody who passes for DNA.

It paid off. It absolutely paid off. And talking with Investigator Byrd, there were several things that he believes really lined up. One of them is that with this, they choose an age of what they're going to make the sketch look like. And it was within a year of Ryan Riggs' actual age. And so had they chosen, I don't know, a 75-year-old man or something, it obviously wouldn't have looked like him.

Two, though, they talk about going through pictures, and this was one of the pictures on his Facebook page, believe it or not, that actually looked almost exactly like that.

Absolutely. I mean, I think probably one of the strongest examples of that is when they're talking with Ryan at the end, after he's done this confession in church, which was stunning in and of itself, the way that he is just so casually describing what he did to Shantae, not seeming to flinch, not seeming upset. That's something that you have to see, I think, to get the full effect of that.

Absolutely is. There is nobody I would rather do this Talking Dateline with than you, Josh. So thank you.

They really did. I think also when you juxtapose, we talked about the haunted house being a character. The church in its own way was also a character, right? Because you have this house of evil, the haunted house. But then at the end, the confession happens in the house of worship, right? Yeah.

I think that especially when you talk with the Lamans, I mean, they were scarred by what happened there in church, by what happened, what was supposed to be this kind of safe sanctuary of a space. And so some of that evil did infiltrate the church as well.

And I can tee it up real quick. I am very glad that we talked with the Lamans, Russell and Linda, and appreciative to them for speaking with us because this is something that clearly still upsets them today. You know, they're both people of very deep faith, very deep Christian faith. He was a leader in the church.

And so to kind of have this, we love, we forgive, but also we love Chante and you did a terrible thing to her. How do you kind of... marry those two thoughts. So anyway, they talk about it a little bit more in this piece, in this clip here. You've gone through a lot from mourning the death of someone who was like a family member to months of not knowing to now these conflicted emotions.

As you sit here today, how has this whole experience changed you?

Linda, I'd ask you the same question. How has this whole experience changed you?

I think that that section of interview could be very difficult for a lot of people to listen to, of course, not least of all Shantae's family. But this notion of when you kind of look at the context of how Ryan was... able to go in front of his church, confess, have people in some way show support, and then proceed on to the sheriff's office and confess there and face the consequences.

Some interesting ones. OK, so Stacy at Stacy Delilah on X says she's a pharmacist and let him take a sketchy supplement from Mexico. Interesting.

OK, Cheryl Haley Rodriguez on Facebook wrote, was her leukemia diagnosis ever investigated?

Here's a question from Julie Waters Hamrick, who wrote on Facebook, why wasn't there an autopsy done?

Hmm. That's super interesting. OK, here's one from Randy Giamarco at Randy Tony G3 on X. So Randy writes, Michael must have wanted receipts and she didn't have any. So she killed him.

The way that you guys revealed in the episode, the degree of their, I don't know, financial affluence, I guess you could just say, I mean, like, oh, that escalated quickly. You know, I mean, you think that they're a beautiful family, little league, but then when you hear just kind of like about the money and the way they're living this high life, that was a big surprise.

Yeah. I have a question along those lines. This is coming from my own viewer at home. Jay had this question.

A question that needs answering. So we're talking about this and he says, you know, if he was buying these cars, like talked about the fact that he had the cars, like he had to have had some transparency into what the bank account was looking like. How could he not have known if he was making big ticket purchases too?

Jay will be very happy that we addressed his question.

He definitely does. Okay, here's one. We actually asked our listeners a question. Why do you think Natalie sent around that photo of Michael, the photo of him on the floor? Here's a response from Ella at Twisted Fairytale on X. Ella writes... In her warped mind, it was a sort of an alibi or she's sick and proud?

And I think that it would be even more impactful in a small town, in a smaller community like that.

Absolutely. Wow. A lot of great questions that we had from our viewers as always.

Yes, yes. And this was an excellent episode, Andrea. Thank you so much for talking Dateline with me. Thank you. And that's it for Talking Dateline this week. Remember, if you have any questions for us about stories or about Dateline, You can always reach us 24-7 on social media at Dateline NBC.

And if you have a question for Talking Dateline, you can record a message and send it to us on social media or you can leave a voicemail. Here's that phone number, 212-413-5252 for a chance to be featured on a future Dateline episode. Also this Friday at 9, 8 central, I've got an all new two hour Dateline for you. So please be sure to check it out. See you then on Dateline on NBC.

And as always, thanks so much for listening.

Exactly. So let's talk about this Ponzi scheme, because before we get to the crime of murder, the crime that we first deal with in this episode is fraud. So first, I was just really interested in the arms business in the first place. Like, who knew that it was so easy to go from pharmacy to...

And it's taking money from family, right? Taking from your best friend.

It's your best friends. I think the biggest question in all of this, Andrea, as I was watching, as I'm sure everybody else was watching, did Michael know about this scheme? Right. Like, that's certainly what the defense says, that he was in on this thing from the very beginning. But I'm curious, is there any chance that he actually knew what was going on or was he completely in the dark here?

In 2019, the sudden death of Michael Cochran, a young dad from West Virginia, left his family and friends reeling. But an investigation pulled back the curtain on their storybook family life to reveal a planned killing and a sinister scheme. For this Talking Dateline episode, we have an extra clip from Andrea's interview with Michael's best friend, Chris Davis.

I mean, you have to have a lot of trust, right? Like he trusted her. You have trust when you're in marriage. You have trust when you're in business. So you kind of think, OK, she's handling this. She says she is. I'm moving on to something else. And I know it's handled.

It also kind of this is a complete aside. Listening to this, it had a lot of echoes of the Alec Murdoch case. Someone else just said that to me. Financial issues and then doing all of these things to keep someone from finding out and then murder at the end, right? It really, really reminded me of that. I mean, this beautiful fairy tale life, everything is perfect, but really it wasn't.

You know, I mean, we talked earlier about just the utter betrayal of, you know, scamming the people that are closest to her. Right. I mean, the people that are closest to them in their lives. I'm curious how they're doing in terms of just kind of like recovering from all of this. I mean, those are tremendous amounts of money that they lost.

Of course. Yeah. When we get back, we've got a podcast exclusive clip from Andrea's interview with Michael's best friend, Chris Davis. Let's talk about Michael's death. It was really tragic in so many ways to hear several of his family members talk about how they said goodbye, their last goodbyes to him. And at the time, many of them were like, OK, this is natural causes.

All right, Andrea, so let's talk Dateline. Let's do it. So, Andrea, I always kind of like rank Dateline episodes by the amount of times that I talk to myself while I'm watching the episode. And this one, I was giving very authentic exclamations throughout the entire episode.

This is just something that unfortunately just happened.

Hi, everyone. I am Blayne Alexander, and this is Talking Dateline. I'm joined today by Andrea Canning to discuss her latest episode, The Devil's in the Details. Hi, Andrea. Hey, Blayne. Hey. Okay, so if you haven't seen it, it's the episode right below this one on your Dateline podcast feed. So go there, listen to it, or stream it on Peacock, and then come right back here. Just a quick recap.

Was there any proof that Michael had been poisoned other times before his death? Was he actually having seizures? Like, kind of what was his medical history up until that point?

I think what was interesting to me is that Natalie's a pharmacist, so she understands, theoretically, how these things work, right? Like, if you or I were to try and poison someone, like... I'd have to Google. I wouldn't know inherently what one is supposed to do. But to have an understanding kind of how medicine reacts with the body, I think, was certainly an interesting tidbit as well.

Let's talk for a second about poison as a murder weapon of choice, right? I mean, I know that it's something that you've talked about a number of times on the True Crime Weekly podcast. Mm-hmm. I mean, we've seen it. We've seen, right, like eye drops sometimes as different options.

And what is colchicine commonly found in?

Let's kind of go to the beginning and just talk about the storybook life, right? I mean, because that's a really a good way to put it. They were a gorgeous family. She's a pharmacist. I mean, they were very much a successful family. Two cute kids. Yeah.

Wow.

Andrea, I've got to say, next time you update your resume, you need to put poison expert because you know a lot about a lot of these things, my dear.

Fascinating. You know, I have to say that sometimes, I mean, by the time typically when we watch these episodes, by the time we get to, you know, towards the end, when we're kind of dissecting the You kind of get a sense of which way it's going to go, right? This one, both sides had me. Like, if I was a juror, I would have had a very hard time trying to kind of bring a verdict in this one.

You know, that's hard to get around. So it was Jennifer and Chris who gave Natalie that insulin. Like, how do they—do they wrestle with that?

And Andrea, I know that you have some extra sound from Chris and Jennifer about the moment they realized what had happened. Let's listen to that.

Yeah. I thought that Chris was so, oh my goodness, he was just such a strong, compelling interview in this. His grief over losing his friend is still so raw.

They're so amazing for doing that. I also think that speaks just to how much they thought of their friend, that they would do something like that and really kind of dredge up those feelings and do that interview for him. Up next, we are taking your questions from social media. Hi. OK, we are back and we're going to answer some of your questions from social media. Andrea, you ready? I'm ready.

But definitely over the years, people have predicted their own murders on Dateline, sadly.

Yeah. And he got anything but that. And that's not what he deserved.

We do. Yeah, we do a lot of them. There's one case that I would like to do, Olivia Lone Bear. She is an indigenous woman that we talked about on an episode that I did. She was found in a lake in her car in the passenger seat. And that case has gone unsolved. But I would like to do that as a full dateline.

And I would like to see it solved.

Isn't somebody behind bars for that?

That was a great question. No, I can absolutely tell you that they are friends and they love rubbing each other and they love, you know, 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. And only Josh and Keith, right?

We have, Blaine. Thank you.

Well, it's always horrible when a child has to be the one to find someone who has died. It happens too often where children are dragged into these things where they have to see these horrific things that they can't unsee. And imagine how that shapes your life at that point. You know, that you've seen something so gory and awful and you're just a child.

Yeah. I mean, in this case, the neighbor was, you know, kind of collateral damage, right? That he had to be the one... To find him.

Yeah. I mean, he put his mind to something. He set out to do what he wanted to do and he made it happen.

No. Absolutely not. No. I think I've told this story before. I'm going to date myself here, but I also lived in the country. Okay. We had three channels. And, you know, after school, six o'clock rolls around. All I want to do is watch TV. And all that would come on was the news. And I'm like, darn news. you know, I don't like this is all that's on my three channels. What am I supposed to go do?

Read a book. And then I went on a shoot with like a TV commercial. And then I was like, I'm kind of interested in TV. And then that just kind of unraveled into TV news. And then now I'm like a news junkie. That's all I watch now is like during the day is like news, news, news. That is so fascinating. But at first you're like, no, absolutely not. Oh, gosh, no, no, I just couldn't. What about you?

Were you like on your dad's lap going? I'm going to be a reporter. Yes, I was the exact opposite.

Like I loved. Yeah. Yeah.

I think he was like, you know, I got the Budweiser girl. I got the homecoming queen. Yeah. You know, right? There's a lot of guys who would be excited about that, right? That they got, like, the girl that all the guys want. Because the Budweiser girls back in the day, I don't know if they still have them, but, you know, they were popular. Yeah. Michelle was definitely attractive.

Yeah, I think John wanted a family so badly. And he certainly wanted a child with Michelle. But I think this was a way to just kickstart that family that he'd wanted so badly. He stepped right in as a father figure to her children. Yeah. And he was in love with her and she was a package deal. Yeah. Especially after having lost his own parents. Right.

This kind of longing for family or longing for his dad. And then his mom, of course, later in life. But yeah, like losing his dad, you know, when he was just a baby.

So he was able to be a dad to her kids and then ultimately to their child that they adopted from Russia.

You know, what is it? Don't throw stones at glass houses. I just feel like if you're going to have an affair, then you really... Can't judge your partner for having an affair.

Yeah. Like what if it was amicable? What if there was like a different way to handle it? Could his life have been spared?

Four kids.

I know. Right.

I know. I know. Yeah. Like, it's amazing. She just was on it. I remember when I had to go to an interview at a jail and I had my kids with me because we were doing like a handoff or something. Somebody was coming to get them because we had been somewhere. And they were always asking me when they were little, what does a jail look like? What is a jail? And I'm like, well, here you go.

Let's talk Dateline. Hey, Blaine. Hey, Andrea. How are you? I'm good. I haven't even seen you in the new year. So it's a little late, but happy new year, Blaine. Thank you. It's always appropriate. And happy new year back to you.

We're at the jail now. We're not going inside. You're not. I think a lot of moms would

And it's always like add sort of that extra layer of chilling moments when you get access to the house where the murder happened or the field or whatever it may be, because you're really going back to that moment exactly where you can see that person like going through what they went through. Of course.

I'm trying to think if I've interviewed other psychics. I probably have at some point, but no one stands out more than the sisters. Oh, my gosh. I mean, I still remember sitting there outside talking to them. They were funny, but they said that they they felt a dog tag. You know, they were thinking military, but they weren't that far off.

I mean, you know, police, military, you know, maybe that's like where they're, you know.

But then there's people who actually believe in psychics as well. So maybe they're not desperate. They just actually really believe- And the power of that. Yeah, the power of that. I mean, I've I've been to psychics in my life. I wouldn't say that I'm like some huge psychic believer or regular visitor to a psychic. But I remember it's so funny. I still have the piece of paper, the psychic.

This was before I was married. She said she was writing everything down and she said she said, your your husband is up in the air. And I was like, well, up in the air. Yeah, of course he's up in the air. Like everyone's husband is like up in the air if you're single, right? Like, and then I ended up marrying a pilot. A pilot, yes, that's amazing. He was up in the air.

Yeah, I'm glad we interviewed them because we don't usually get to interview psychics. And sometimes like police will, like in this, Corporal Lydic was like, You know what? Any whatever helps at this point.

Yeah. Nothing.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah, that was interesting because those shoes were not available for purchase in the area. And then they, of course, they find out that Foley has ordered those shoes through like a law enforcement type, you know, website where you can, you know, I mean, what are the odds?

Right. And I'm going to use a pun, gumshoe detective work at its best.

Well, I think it was that whole, you know, he's a state trooper and she's being told not to interview him or Michelle, which is just odd. That baffles me to this day. And also apparently Trooper Foley would make comments like, you know, I wish he was dead and, you know, and things like that. And they're going through a divorce. I mean, hello. That's the first place you look.

It is wild. And it's something we see in different forms on Dateline, where someone writes a letter to themselves, or they write it to someone else, or they tell someone, you know, if something happens to me, you know, so this was... more uncommon because he's paying money and he's actually like enlisting the help of his attorney.

So so, you know, putting those the fingernails like I think she just had that instinct. I think she was just nervous that given his connection to the state police, like I'm going to keep these a little closer.

DNA is an investigator's best friend. Those fingernails just became everything.

Do you have that hesitation, though, of How am I going to convince these people? I'm a scientist. You know, it's a different animal going into a courtroom.

So the judge obviously agreed and allowed it into trial?

A judge is one thing, a jury is another.

Did you have any doubt that the DNA found under John Yelnik's fingernails belonged to Kevin Foley?

You were convinced you had your math.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, that's hard to get around.

Well, something we see a lot in these stories is where the we'll just use mom as an example. The mom tells the new boyfriend that, you know, her ex is a monster and he's doing these horrible things. And a lot of times the mother will get the new boyfriend, new husband riled up.

Like he did these awful things. And that could be the case here. Doesn't excuse anything. Doesn't, you know, mean you could kill someone, but it certainly could get somebody fired up.

About another person. But there were no charges brought against Michelle.

yeah and i think that doesn't sit well with some people what happened when you know you and our team reached out to her she you know did not want to talk to us um but i think for john's friends they were upset you know they really felt like she got away scot-free that's their opinion i could see how they could still feel some frustration there yeah let's talk real quick about john um

Up next, we're taking your questions from social media. Let's jump into some of our social media comments. There were a lot, a lot of comments about how Jonathan and Sabrina were kind of misinterpreting words in the Bible, twisting words in the Bible, however you choose to characterize it, for their own benefit. So here's what Darlene said.

I hate it when people try to use the Bible to justify their evil doings. Brandy Guthrie, I think this is the episode where he says, David didn't turn state's evidence on Bathsheba. which, yes, yes, it was. I love that line, and I remember rewinding it several times. That was a good one. That was a good one.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Also, lots of comments about the swinger lifestyle. Salome Paul says, what surprised me the most was the revelation that Jason and Kelly were also swingers. That was a huge part in the story and that they were together and all of this.

Can I just say, I was really, as a mother of two children, I was just amazed that folks had the energy for this. I was just going to ask you this. I am exhausted at the end of the day.

We can barely have a coherent conversation. We are exhausted. So the fact that parents have energy for anything else, much less this very involved lifestyle, is beyond me.

But apparently not. We are confused, but OK. Diane Toth also kind of touched on a little bit about the two friends. Did I hear right? The two friends talking about Jason and Kelly who spoke about them are now divorced.

You know, a lot of people had comments or questions about the sentencing and all of this. So Brianna Alba on Facebook wrote, is there any update on Sabrina in jail? How is she doing in jail? Has she spoken? Anything like that?

I'm curious, if you pick this story up and plopped it in another city, like a larger city, Atlanta, New York, do you think that it would have had the same kind of ring? Do you think that this would have played out anywhere else but this community?

And then this last one from Lisa Helfrich. I want to read this. I have to say, I think this is the most riveting episode of Dateline ever. Since it aired, I've spent a sad amount of time watching footage from the trial. And for the record, Josh Mankiewicz is my favorite Dateline host. I've already told my loved ones that if, God forbid, I am missing or murdered, I want Josh to cover it.

So there you go.

That is very, very kind.

It's kind of an honor in a way. We hope it never comes to pass. We don't ever want to cover you, Lisa, or anybody else.

Thanks.

OK, well, this has been quite a discussion for quite an episode. Josh, always, always great to share a mic with you, my friend. Thank you so much for talking Dateline.

And that's it for Talking Dateline this week. To dive even deeper into this case, make sure to check out Josh's six episode podcast of the same name, Deadly Mirage. You can find it wherever you get your podcasts. Also, make sure to follow Dateline True Crime Weekly, where you can get daily coverage of the Sean Combs trial and our latest podcast series on trial.

Remember, if you've got any questions for us about stories or about Dateline, you can always reach us 24-7 on social media at DatelineNBC. And if you have a question for Talking Dateline, you can record a message and send it to us on social media or call this phone number and leave a voicemail. That number is 212-413-5252.

You never know who will answer it, and you'll have a chance to possibly hear your voice featured on an upcoming episode. And of course, we will see you Fridays on Dateline on NBC. Thanks as always for listening.

It's kind of a thread through this entire episode, people going out of their way to almost kind of create this facade of this perfect kind of place.

So I really like this question that you asked, Jason, if Rob might have gotten involved with the wrong person or perhaps involved in a bad situation. And he says, yes, you never really know anyone, even in a picture perfect place like Silver Lakes.

In 2014, when Rob Limone was found dead at the rail yard where he worked, investigators wondered if it was a burglary gone wrong until they learned more about Rob's open marriage and close-knit group of friends who called themselves the Wolfpack.

But there was even the notion of Sabrina talking about permission, right? Like what she had permission to do. It's almost like it's fine. It's right. It's sanctioned if it's within this group because we all share this belief. But if you go outside, then you're stepping over the line.

And at least for a long time, that appeared to be working. What was it like in that interview room when you were interviewing Kelly and Jason, when you actually asked them, okay, break this down for me. I don't understand. Who was with who? How did this work? What was that like?

One, that was a very poetic way of describing this entire kind of convoluted thing. But two, I'm curious, there are always like moments in our interviews that we do that can be uncomfortable or, ooh, you're really challenging someone or you're pushing somebody. Was this uncomfortable? How was that? in the room? How did they respond to your question?

Hi everyone, it's Blayne Alexander and I am so glad to be here today with Josh Mankiewicz to talk about his episode, Deadly Mirage. If you haven't seen it, it's the episode right below this one on your Dateline podcast feed. So make sure to go there, listen to it, or of course you can stream it on Peacock and then come right back here. So just a quick recap.

Detectives eventually zeroed in on Rob's wife, Sabrina, and her lover, a young firefighter by the name of Jonathan Hearn, and arrested them for Rob's murder. Hearn quickly confessed and agreed to testify against Sabrina in exchange for a reduced prison sentence. Sabrina denied everything but was convicted in 2017. She is currently serving a prison sentence of 25 years to life.

When we get back, we've got an extra clip from Jonathan's testimony at Sabrina's trial. So when I was watching this, my first question that I came back to, why did they have to kill the guy? Why murder, right? Why not divorce?

One of the questions I had the day that Rob was murdered is a day where he's actually covering a shift for another employee. How would Jonathan know that he was picking up that shift? Did investigators think Sabrina might have told him or did he kind of get that hanging around the wolf bag?

That's her argument. One of the questions that was posed during this episode was why would Jonathan throw away his entire life?

Especially if you feel that it's all kind of, I guess, underwritten or supported by religion, right?

That's what's so fascinating about this. There's kind of this notion of when you talk about the kind of push and pull between what prosecutors allege happened and then just the religion behind it. And at one point we heard her say Rob would rather be dead than divorced. I wonder if at some point there was kind of this decision that was essentially almost made for Rob, right?

Later on, we'll play you an extra clip from Jonathan's testimony at Sabrina's trial. But for now, Josh, let's talk Dateline. There's so much to talk about in this episode. I actually want to start with the location, Silver Lakes. You know, they called it the happiest place in the high desert, but that was actually the very first character that we kind of met in this story, right?

Like if the question is why not divorce, kind of saying, well, he would prefer it this way. I wonder if that was part of the mindset of like, hey, we're almost doing him a favor.

You're not doing them a favor. I was even struck. One thing that almost gave me chills was when we listened to the wiretap and it sounded like they literally prayed for the wisdom to be able to cover up a murder.

Several. You shall not kill. You shall not lie. Like, there were a lot of commandments.

Exactly. Exactly.

It didn't happen. It didn't happen in the scripture. No. Didn't happen that way. No. You know, I wonder if Jonathan's motivation for all of that, right, afterwards was, let me confess to Kelly and Jason. That will be kind of my way of following through with the scripture, confessing, that's a police. Who could put me in prison? But let me confess to these friends and that'll...

Kind of help me get rid of this guilt.

No, I have to say for all the love talks, all the hours and hours of phone conversation, all the praying together, it didn't seem to take long for him to go ahead and flip on her. No. So Jonathan pleads guilty to manslaughter and agrees to testify against Sabrina during her trial. And when he does, the prosecutor projects a selfie of Jonathan that was taken in December of 2013.

And in the selfie, you see him. He's crying in a picture and holding up a letter. I want to play a little bit of a clip from that prosecutor asking Jonathan about that letter.

What was the prosecutor trying to show there?

Before we knew anybody's names, we knew the name of this location. Had you ever been to Silver Lakes before this report?

So the prosecution went on to ask Jonathan about some of his writing from a few months later, and the tone has shifted quite a bit. Let's listen to that.

Dismissive of his life. That's one way to minimize that. what he ultimately would ultimately happen. But yes.

But this whole notion of selective morality throughout, like, aha, that is wrong, and therefore that justifies murder. Or this is wrong, but I'm actually doing the same thing, but this is wrong over here. That really was kind of the theme throughout this entire thing.

Yeah.

Well, no, watching you, I could tell just where your heart was in this story. And I think that you just did a really beautiful job with it.

Everyone says it and I completely believe it. So thank you for that. And thank you for, thank you for this. This episode was just, it was moving in so many ways, truly. Okay. And after the break, we will be back to answer viewer and listener questions from social media. We've got some social media questions. There were a lot of reactions to this. So I'll just read through a few.

Ronnie Brock says, how could the police wait five years to follow up on a man who tells them he was there? Police could have gone to his home and found the jacket and pants he was wearing that day. That's, I mean, it's something we talked about.

Okay. Jerry Lynn wrote on Facebook, how high off the ground was that bridge? 63 feet. 63 feet. Yeah.

I am sure. Yeah. I have to say, I have, I actually have a fear of heights. It comes and goes, but it would definitely would have, I couldn't have done it. You wouldn't like it. No, you would not like this.

We would have had to come up with a different way to shoot that if I could not have been up there. So my hat's off to you because that was amazing. Okay. Daniel Welcher on Facebook says, did Richard Allen have any criminal record before this? No. None.

And then we have an audio question from Gracie Donaldson Cipriano. Let's listen.

I remember that line. And I thought the exact same thing. I mean, was it as high as it seemed?

Just bizarre. It's so strange too, because you're absolutely right. You want that resolution at the end, but no, it's in the truest sense, a senseless crime. Well, Andrea, we have talked a lot of Dateline today. Thank you so much. This was just a fascinating conversation as always. Thank you. And that's it for Talking Dateline this week.

Remember, if you have any questions for us about stories or about Dateline, you can always reach us 24-7 on social media at DatelineNBC. And exciting news, you can now submit your questions over the phone. Just call 212-413-5252. And leave a message with your question about Dateline and our episodes for a chance to be featured on Talking Dateline.

And also remember to check out Keith's brand new podcast, 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. And as of today, Dateline premium subscribers can binge the entire series, and episodes one through four are available for everyone else.

And of course, we'll see you this Friday on Dateline on NBC for my very first show as a full-time Dateline correspondent. Thanks so much for listening.

There was a lot that was really memorable about this episode, but I have to say that almost as soon as you introduced Libby's grandparents, Mike and Becky, my heart just went out to them because I can't imagine just this feeling of like, hey, they were just having a sleepover at the house. Yeah. And then the next day they're gone.

Talk to me about what it was like just having that conversation with them.

To recap, in 2017, two schoolgirls, Libby German and Abby Williams, were found murdered in the woods of Delphi, Indiana, near an abandoned railway bridge. For years, the case went unsolved and police were at a standstill except for one clue— A grainy picture and a gravelly voice captured on Libby's phone right before the murders.

Of course, of course. Oh gosh, that's just so, so heartbreaking. I'm curious, did you or did anybody from our Dateline team, did anyone speak to Abby's family?

what they went through. Absolutely. Absolutely understandable. You know, let's talk about this investigation. I think, Andrea, for stories like this that so many of us follow kind of almost in real time, I'm almost even more fascinated to watch the Dateline episode because I think that I know a lot about a case and then the episode brings forth some more that I didn't know.

And the thing that I think all of us remember is that eerie recording from Libby's phone. They have this image now of the murderer, his voice, and really the girls helped bring down their own killer.

Hi, everyone. I'm Blayne Alexander, and today we are talking Dateline. I'm joined today by Andrea Canning to discuss her latest episode, A Walk Through the Woods. 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 back here.

I'm curious, you know, one of the things that we heard was that recording and the words down the hill, right? And correct me if I'm wrong, but that was the only portion that was released. I didn't realize that they actually had, what, 43 seconds, you said, of audio?

Well, I have another question about that. I wonder, did the video lead investigators astray at all? I mean, it led to people kind of pointing fingers at friends, acquaintances online, just anyone that they could think about that even slightly resembled Bridge Guy.

It would turn out to be a very big clue that helped solve the girls' murders. For this episode, Andrea is going to share a podcast-exclusive clip from her interview with the case's prosecutor, Nick McCleland. Then we'll answer viewer and listener questions from social media. All right, let's talk Dateline. Hey, Blaine. Hi, Andrea. How are you? I'm good. Thank you. This was a tough one for me.

That is unbelievable. Before we go further into Richard Allen, something that was really interesting about this episode to me, there were obviously alternate suspects. Let's talk about Anthony Schatz or Kagan Klein. That was a journey. That was interesting.

Yes, absolutely. It was. First, I want to say I loved that we had these interviews that like Court TV reporter had done, like WTHR. Yeah. I mean, to have that interview with the guy whose real picture it was while he was working out on a workout machine.

Can I just say I appreciate the multitasking. Okay. He said, no excuses. We're getting it in today. I know.

I just want to go on the record and say, next time we do a talking date line, perhaps we could do it from the Peloton.

No excuses to not work out here. But that whole- whole episode with Anthony Schatz, Kagan Klein. I mean, that really was, yes, talk about a red herring. But I'm sure that when detectives kind of found those conversations with Libby, they were like, okay, this is it. Case closed. We got a guy.

And it just didn't happen. I would imagine this had a tremendous impact on this community.

And you know, everybody, that's the creepy thing. You feel like you know everybody. So now you're looking and it's like, okay, these people that I know is one of you guys, like, are we in the same restaurant with the person who did this?

They would have just like... Yelled at you and probably kept going.

OK, we're going to take a quick break. When we come back, Andrea is going to share a podcast exclusive clip from her interview with the prosecutor in this case, Nick McCleland. Let's talk about the trial.

I can only imagine. I want to dive into that because this was one of those stories that... You know, a lot of our Dateline cases for viewers and even for us, they're brand new, right? You haven't heard about them before we bring them the episodes. This was something that we all kind of watched play out from beginning to end, right? Like I remember having friends cover this. I remember watching it.

And before we can talk about the trial, of course, we have to talk about the pretrial hearing and kind of the judge ruling that the defense could not introduce this alternate theory that the murders were tied to Odinism. First, talk about what that was. And that was a tremendous blow to the defense.

That was fascinating, by the way.

Sure. So who knows? And so having that not be allowed in, I mean, that kind of upends their defense in a way, right? Like they have to go on trial in a very... In a different posture.

Why?

That's really interesting. Something that stood out to me was, I believe it was his defense attorney who was basically saying, hey, when you talk about matching the physical description. He's wearing what? Jeans and a Carhartt jacket. Like everybody's wearing jeans and Carhartt jacket. Yeah, Carhartt hoodie.

And when the cell phone video was released, all of that, there's a lot to dive into. I want to start with just where this actually occurred, that bridge. It was already an eerie kind of setting for a crime like this, right? Yeah.

So I wonder about those just kind of differences or the kind of the pushback of like, does he exactly match the description of this guy?

Yeah. Nick McCleland, the prosecutor, talking about what it was like waiting for the jury to come back with a verdict.

Do you find that there is still, even though he's been convicted, is there still some doubt about this in the town? Like, where do people land on where the verdict?

Before we wrap up this portion of our conversation, Andrea, I want to circle back to something that you said at the beginning of just how difficult this case was, the story was for you to cover personally. And I mean, I wanted to ask you about that. I know that you are a mom, you are a girl mom.

And you even mentioned that for a bit in the episode of just the similarity in ages with two of your girls. How did you kind of make your way through this story?

That's exactly it. That's what he was trying to do. The story that the defense wove was that There was an argument that was sparked because Jazzy heard the phone ding and it was Tinder, basically him talking to other women, according to the defense, that she got upset that, you know, they fought.

There was broken glass and he she came at him with broken glass and that he had no choice but to defend himself.

It's not. And I think the prosecution kind of had this burden of saying, here's what this is. It doesn't necessarily mean that you sat and thought for weeks and planned this out and wrote out every detail. But it more so means that in some way you had foresight, right, that you thought about this and before committing this crime.

And so that was the argument that they were that they were trying to make.

Especially, Dennis, when you're kind of confronted with legal terms, right? Like premeditation and things like that, that you have to sort through. I thought that that was a fascinating way to look at it of, yes, everyone has been in a car where you get to a yellow light and it's like, do I gun it and keep going? Do I slam on the brakes? Yes. What do I do?

And so that's really kind of a way to think about it there. And again, I think the sheer number of wounds really also kind of helped nudge it into the premeditation column because, yes, you can get to 25 stabs. Let me stop. You know what I mean? There are many chances to kind of to make a different decision.

Less than an hour. Wow. 40-something minutes. I mean, really very quickly. It was a very quick conviction there.

None. He was... Everybody that I've spoken to says that he was very kind of stone-faced. He would look down, according to the prosecution. It looked like he was looking down, but there was a monitor that showed some of the evidence. So he was looking at that. The only reaction, from my understanding of talking to people who were there, that he showed was...

When his family or his mother was mentioned, his mother took the stand during the sentencing phase and basically kind of pleaded for leniency for her son. That didn't happen. But he did show some reaction when she spoke. And then also when cousin Jackie said, another victim here is your mom, Emily. Jackie's... victim impact statement was very moving.

It was unthinkable, Dennis. I mean, I think that, yes, Granny had cancer. She was in remission. They thought she was fine. And then basically that morning, I mean, it went from, hey, I'm not really feeling that well. Let me go to the hospital to, boom, she's gone. I mean, it's jarring. It's kind of whiplash for anybody. And then, yes, that was the last time that their family saw Jazzy.

She took a glass jar and we kind of showed it in the episode, but you don't get the full effect. She took a glass jar and she took 60 stones and one by one put them in the jar. And that represented each one of the stab wounds that Jazzy had just to show the sheer amount of times that he stabbed her, right? And then she began her statement.

So to do that silently and then kind of begin her statement was really powerful.

Yes. I don't think that there's a parent in the world that would disagree with that. That, you know, hey, my child is missing. What do I need to do? Doesn't matter what I'm doing. I'm going to do it to find them. Absolutely.

That's what's so sad.

That she missed it. Right. And you have to think even as a parent going through something like this or anyone loses a loved one, you think a billion what ifs. But when you have something that that is that strong of a what if of a possibility, that has to be just devastating for her. Truly.

That's exactly what Cousin Jackie said to me. If it was startling enough to you to make you write down the time but not call for help, you wonder where that decision was made, why that decision was made. We didn't, you know, weren't able to speak to them. But that is certainly a good question that the family has and that I had it as well.

That is the biggest piece of all of this, Dennis. I mean... There wasn't one. I think that when we do stories and it's like, oh, husband catches wife cheating on him and he goes crazy and kills her. Oh, someone wanted insurance money. And so they do it for that or whatever it may be. At least you can kind of wrap your head around this.

I mean, for all intents and purposes, the prosecution said the same thing. It seemed that he just wanted to. kill her.

It's a terrifying answer because there's not a, you think about people that you meet just in general, right? You meet tons of new people every day and you don't know what's going on in their mind. You don't know what's going on behind their kind of normal facade of being a student and a comp sci major, whatever it may be. And this is one of those terrifying examples.

You know, they kind of talk about the fact that They're grateful that they were able to gather for Granny because all of the family got to see Jazzy and then she was gone. But later, Jackie told me, you know, when we were talking, she said later they realized we never got a chance to mourn Granny because immediately they were into finding and then mourning Jazzy.

Yes. It seemed like he was, according to detectives, it seemed like he was trying to work out his alibi. And so would write, okay, last talked to her this day, or just different things, or if police come, what to say to parents, or those types of things that he was kind of jotting down notes of how to keep an alibi straight.

That's really interesting when we have viewers who are very familiar with either the story, the crime itself, or certainly the place where it happened, right? Because for most of our viewers, it's someplace that, you know, maybe they know they've traveled to. But yes, when it's your city, when it's your street, you can kind of see these things on local news, perhaps.

I know that this was a case that was covered locally, but I know that in the way that we do this, trying to really humanize the victim and tell more about the person who was taken away, I think sets our stories apart. So hopefully, even if he had seen kind of like different coverage, hopefully he learned more about who Jasmine Pace was through our story.

Thank you so much, Dennis. It was truly an honor to get to know her and know her through her family and friends and learn more about her.

Thank you, Dennis.

So it really was just a hard time for them.

I think so. And I'm glad you felt that, too, Dennis, because I think that that's that was one of the things that really stood out about this. There were tons of videos about her. Right. I mean, it's 2022. Like, you know, she's young. She's very online, if you will.

Dennis, I'm so good. I'm so glad to join you, my friend.

And so finding videos and pictures wasn't it wasn't a hard thing to come by. She was vivacious. She was excited about life. I mean, she was kind of in this place where, hey, I'm going to school. I'm getting, you know, my eyes into what I really want to do with my life. She loved people. She loved her family.

And I think that's something that stood out, too, because you can think about going off to college. You get kind of absorbed in your friends and your life. And maybe I'll talk to my mom every three days or whatever. No, she was very, very close to her family. So that's why they knew immediately when she wasn't answering and things like that, that wasn't like her.

Different times. And so, for instance, this happened the Tuesday before Thanksgiving. They were all expecting to see her on Thanksgiving and she didn't come. So they get some messages from her phone saying, hey, I'm going to go with my friend Emma, you know, out of town with her family. So that's not like Jazzy.

Exactly. Exactly. But also it was after they realized, OK, no one's talked to her. She's only been texting us. And so that's when I mean, to this family's immense credit, that's when their antenna started going up and they said, OK, let's look at her phone records. Let's call Emma. Let's see what's going on.

And the more and more they started to dig, that's when they realized, no, something's something's wrong. And, you know, I think that this is one thing that the family told us and will tell us. They didn't believe that they were getting the help from police that they would have liked to have in those early hours, those early days.

You know, we asked the detective about that. We asked him about that when we had him in the chair. And basically, he said that they did as they should. He didn't say that they did anything wrong with their response, that they were responsive. But of course, when it's your loved one that's missing, you want heaven and earth to be moved to find them.

You know, I and I should say Jackie was kind of the spokesperson. Jackie, Gabby, they spoke. Katrina didn't want to speak with us for this episode, completely understandably. But my hat's off to her and my heart went out to her because when I saw her in that parking lot and everything that she was just kind of spinning through her mind and let's do this, let's do this. What can we do?

I said, that's a mom, right? Like I immediately identified with her because you're thinking through everything. everything, but especially when you think your child is in danger. She said, okay, we can't do this. Can we get security video? Can we go to these gas stations and ask these people?

Can we, I mean, they were asking the security at the apartment, like the way that her mind was thinking under duress, under stress of what can I do next was impressive.

That's exactly it. The first thing that really impressed me was when they had this phone number. Right. And they said, OK, who could it be? And Jackie immediately said, well, I'm going to type it into my cash app. Right. Everyone who uses cash.

So Cash App, if I were to send you $50 because you're amazing. Thank you very much. You absolutely are. You deserve more than 50, by the way. But I would send you $50 and I'd send it via Cash App, right? I'd say, what's your Cash App? You would probably give me your phone number and I'd put it in and then Dennis Murphy would pop up if you're registered with Cash App.

So I could take theoretically any phone number. And most people, I think it's safe to say, are on Cash App at this point. So you can type in their phone number and up pops their Cash App ID. So that's kind of a very quick way to identify someone. I mean, in the old days, you would have to like look through a phone book, I guess. I don't know. Google a phone number, maybe.

carrier pigeon up to the heavens to figure out where it is. But I think that this, you know, Cash app and also Zelle, you could type it into Zelle. That's, you know, tied to a phone number.

So once you put it in, the name Jason Chen popped up. And that was enough to give them really a thread to start pulling on. And that's kind of what came down to it. So Jazzy had been hanging out with him, you know, kind of on and off dating loosely, if you will. They took a trip to Chicago, but her mom knew the name. And so her mom immediately said, yep, I know who that is.

And, you know, was off to the races.

They went looking for the vehicle and they found it. You know, there's one piece that didn't make it into the story, Dennis, that I thought was interesting.

When I was talking to Gabby, Jazzy's half-sister, who was there for the parking lot and going into the apartment and all of that, she told me that when they found the SUV, she looked in the window and she said she noticed that the seat was pushed all the way back. So that indicates that a tall person was driving it. And she said, Jazzy's short. Jazzy's tiny.

There's no reason that the seat would need to be pushed all the way back. So she said that was her first indication of, OK, my sister wasn't driving this.

Very. Absolutely. And so I think that all of them had their different moments where they realized something's wrong, something's off. That was Gabby's moment for sure. But then when Katrina, Jazzy's mom, found that pin that she had sent her, I can't imagine anything more heartbreaking than to discover that several days after.

It was at 2.18 in the morning on the Wednesday, early Wednesday morning. So the last time her family saw her was that Tuesday night at the hospital. And what prosecutors pieced together is that after that, she had her long phone call with Jason Chen, eventually goes over to his apartment. And then in the overnight hours, like around the 2 a.m.-ish hour, that's when she sent that pin.

And that was also within three minutes of when Jason Chin's neighbors told the family that they heard a scream come from the apartment. And so you know that something happened in that time frame that Jazzy realized, one, she's in trouble. I need to call for help. She obviously couldn't do much, but the best she could do was send a pen.

And it's something you can do on an Apple Watch, too, even if you don't have your phone beside you. So somehow she was able to send off a pen instantly. I want to say something about the pen, too, because I think some viewers may wonder, like, how did you not see that? How did you not see this text from your daughter?

One, it came in the wee morning hours. But two, remember, this happened after Granny died, the person who raised her. So Katrina was getting this kind of deluge of all of these sympathetic texts. Oh, my God, I'm so sorry. You know, what can I do for you? All these texts are coming through. And so Jazzy's text got lost immediately. in there. That's kind of how Jackie explained it to me.

Terrible for Katrina to realize later that she missed it. But that's kind of what happened there. So the pen, she sees the pen. They're like, oh, my gosh, let's follow this pen. It takes them to the apartments and specifically in front of apartment 210.

So now the family is armed with this pin that takes them right to the front of the door of 210 and the neighbors that say they heard something. So who lives in 210, Blaine? Jason Chen. That's what they find out. Jason Chen lives inside that apartment.

And I have to say, Dennis, if I ever needed to get into an apartment or a locked door, I wouldn't know what to do. Would you naturally know to just get a credit card and pop the lock?

Yeah. I mean, even if I'd seen it on like a TV show, I wouldn't have known how to take the credit card and actually jimmy the lock open. What did they find inside? The first thing that the family saw was Jazzy's overnight bag. And so that was to them saying, okay, she's been here. I know my daughter's bag. That's her bag. That was number one. They found her driver's license.

They found several credit cards. And then they said they found a series of other cell phones, just a bunch of cell phones. All of that made them say there's something going on here. And they called police. You know, the police take that. They obviously turn it over to the detectives, but they also say to the family, Jazzy, Don't do this again. You can't go inside this apartment.

Don't go back inside. Now, once police got involved and they ended up going into the apartment, that's where they really did the real police work. Right. I mean, they obviously were going around seeing I talked to the detective and he saw that heel print where it looked like someone was wearing socks, stepped in blood and then left kind of like a transfer from the sock print just a little bit.

But it was enough for him to say, OK, we need to get crime scene in here.

They did. That's when they bring in the crime scene investigators to come in and they spray. They basically have a chemical that reacts when there's the presence of blood. And so they sprayed it on the floor just to see, is there any more blood? And that's when they said about a third of the floor was. Which is stunning.

Jackie was incredible. Jackie is somebody that, I mean, she really was kind of like the heart and soul of our story. She spent a lot of time just kind of talking to us about Jazzy. The two were very close. I mean, they were very, very close. And from the very beginning, you kind of noticed that, you know, when they were together, when they were morning granny,

There was blood in almost every corner of the apartment, as the detective said to me. He said that there was blood on the bathroom floors, blood on the main area floors, but also there was blood splatter kind of on the wall. So he said that indicates obviously something very violent, right?

This is a homicide. They said that when they saw that, they said that whatever happened, there's no way that whoever was the victim could have survived that because of just how much blood there was. And so, yes, it's a very unusual place for detectives to be in. There was no body. There was no suspect there. No one had confessed.

But they knew just from the sheer amount of blood that had been lost that they were dealing with a death, a homicide.

So Jason Chen is son of Chinese immigrants. He was somebody who was at University of Tennessee, Chattanooga, student there, been there for a couple of years. And he was a comp sci major, computer science. And so this is somebody who obviously knows their way around phones, technology.

They knock and it's, you know, it's just outside of Nashville. Parents come down first, according to the detective. And essentially, you know, they kind of talk to him and finally Jason comes down and, you know, says, hey, here I am. And the other thing is they took him back.

They had some warrants to, you know, get like DNA, just different things that they could get from him and then ultimately issued the arrest warrants. At that point, is he giving anything up? No. Police never did an interview with him. Because he didn't, you know, he refused to talk and refused to give any sort of information.

The phone told the story. And I think that it's, again, without these kind of digital pieces, he very likely wouldn't have been arrested.

Well, Well, it was kind of a double-edged sword because that's the first thing that Jason Chen's attorney went after. He doesn't believe that should be admitted. From the prosecution side, you know, I asked District Attorney General Cody Womp. She said, listen, there is no question that that was crucial, what the family found.

They were the two that said, no, we got to make sure our moms are OK. We've got to do this. So they were kind of, you know, you have that person in the family that you're like, OK, we're going to take care of things. That was Jackie and Jazzy. That's kind of the feel I got from them.

But on the other side of that, yes, that did kind of make things more difficult. I don't know, vulnerable if it wasn't admitted. So there were a lot of hearings back and forth on that. Ultimately, the judge did decide to admit it. And the prosecution was off to the races after that.

He gave it up. What did he say? He is guilty, but he's not guilty of specifically what you're saying. And so I think the question was never did Jason Chin end the life of Jasmine Pace, right? The defense attorney said that from jump. More so, what were the circumstances that led to that? Was it premeditated as the prosecution was arguing?

Hi, everyone. I'm Blayne Alexander, and today we are talking Dateline. I'm here with the one, the only Josh Mankiewicz. Hi, Josh. Hello. Okay, so today's episode is called 11 Minutes. It's the story of 17-year-old Madison Holton, who was charged with the September 2016 murder of his parents, Michael and Jennifer Holton. after a family dispute turned deadly in their small town of eclectic Alabama.

Listening to him, there's no wavering in his voice.

I agree.

You know, you ended with Madison talking about the fact that he visits his mother's grave, but he doesn't visit his dad's grave, even though they're separated by steps. It has to be just a very big internal struggle for him.

Well, like I said, my friend, you packed a whole lot into this hour. There were a lot of twists and turns and it was a very compelling story. So thanks so much as always for talking Dateline with me.

And that's it for our Talking Dateline this week. Thanks, of course, to all of you for listening so faithfully every week. Remember, if you have any questions about our stories or a case that you think we should be covering, you can reach out to us at any time on social media at DatelineNBC.

And if you've got a question for Talking Dateline and you want to hear your voice right here on this very podcast, you can leave us a voicemail at 212-413-5252. And Keith will call you back personally if that happens. Well, see, I heard that that rang directly to your landline, Josh.

Yeah. Let's talk about this family. We start the story getting to know Madison, learning about this family dynamic. They're dealing with a teenage son who they're trying to figure out how to get a hold on him. And at the same time, the parents are going through a divorce themselves. I can't imagine that. that kind of turmoil in one house at the same time.

And have a long conversation.

So call that line or record yourself and send it to us via DM on social media. Thanks so much for listening. And of course, we will see you Fridays on Dateline on NBC. And just one more thing before we go. Remember to check out Andrea's daily coverage of the federal sex trafficking trial of Sean Combs.

She's getting updates from NBC News correspondent Chloe Malas every day after court, and those conversations are dropped in the Dateline True Crime Weekly feed. You can listen to that wherever you get your podcasts.

So he has a house party, but his parents really just don't know what to do. And they said, this is almost kind of like a parental scared straight. We're going to put some handcuffs on him. Some could say, hey, is this extreme? Or other people saying, hey, we just, parents need to do something to get their son under control.

I thought it was notable that the dad just apparently had handcuffs there ready to be put on. Right. He was a former fire chief, former mayor. There's some embarrassment issues that you kind of pointed to.

Madison insisted he was innocent, joining forces with his uncles and a retired FBI investigator who stepped in to fight for him. They raised serious doubts about the case against him and pointed to a different explanation, that Madison's father may have murdered his mother in a murder-suicide.

I was struck by the fact that, you know, Madison's dad got a call from somebody, from a friend, somebody who knew and said, hey, my kid came home from your house under the influence of something. You need to figure out what's going on, basically. Right. I had that happened in Atlanta or in L.A. It may not have been like I know exactly the kid and the parent and who to call.

I would think that that's a nod to just how difficult this story was, that they don't want to talk about it. They don't want it to be put on a national platform, I assume.

Yeah, interesting. I thought the interviews that you did do were very compelling. I mean, obviously you sat down with Madison himself. I'm curious, what was your impression of him?

When we come back, we will hear an extra clip from Josh's interview with one of the men who set out to free Madison, his uncle, Chris Owenby. Madison's uncles, Chris and Mike, absolutely believed him, and they stepped up immediately to help him. The family rallied behind him. I'm curious what stood out to you in your conversations with them.

Now, remember, if you haven't listened to or watched the full episode yet, it's right below this one on your podcast list. So go listen to it or stream it now on Peacock and then come back here. And when we come back, we'll have two extra clips from the story, including one from Madison Holton, the person at the center of it all. So stick around. All right, Josh, let's talk Dateline.

When you were talking to Madison, he said at one point, I don't remember which uncle, Chris or Mike, but he said he'd only had maybe a five-minute conversation with him ever before in life.

We actually have an extra clip from your interview with Chris Owenby that didn't make it into the show. Here in this clip, he's describing what it was like to tell the kids that their father had been killed and their mother was fighting for her life.

She was gone. Wow. To hear him describe having to tell the children that, no matter how you say it, it's not going to soften the blow at all.

Yeah, yeah. Let's talk about Greg Biggs. He's a former FBI agent.

Yes. When he said this, he said, you know, kids do foolish things all the time. I'm like, yeah, I'm with you. Kids do do silly things. Like, of course we all do. He's like, yeah, let me tell you my story. I kissed a dead dog. I was like, wait, wait, I can't go with you there.

He certainly illustrated to us that there is a very wide spectrum of kids do foolish things when they're young.

You squeezed a whole lot into an hour here, my friend. There was a lot in the story.

Within that realm, within that safe realm of, okay, this is cute and it makes sense.

It could make sense. I could see who that could follow.

Well, insofar as the case is involved... He was an interesting character in that too, right? Madison kind of said, this guy was my guardian angel. They met essentially by chance.

You know, what does that say about the initial investigation? That somebody from the outside, a former FBI agent, could come through and say, no, this was wrong, this was wrong, this was wrong. Certainly, you kind of have to look at the initial investigation and say, okay. Maybe there are some questions.

When we come back, we have an extra clip from Madison Holton himself. Let's talk about the march up to trial, the lead up to trial that never happens. You point this out, and I think that this was such a strong point to make in this story. But life sentence feels daunting. And then two life sentences feels, you know, also daunting.

But when you're 17 years old, I can't imagine walking into trial, what you think will be a trial, with that on the table, possibly ahead of you.

Well, as I was watching this and going along, I'm thinking, oh, there are so many ways this could go. Oh, yeah, he definitely did it. Wait, no, he didn't do it. Oh, wait, he's handcuffed. No, they have problems. I mean, all of these things just kind of keep coming to where you really don't know how it's going to shake out. And in the end, nobody saw it coming.

Sure. You know, what happens next almost sounds like something out of a courtroom TV show, right? Everyone starts rushing around, there's a flurry of activity, and then suddenly the charges are dropped.

They drop the charges. And that end, like you said, that's the ethically responsible thing to do. Oh, no question.

Of course, you talked to Madison. Sometimes we do these stories where someone is exonerated and you know they're not going to be tried again. They can move on with their life, not having to wonder or worry. That's not the case for Madison here. He could face charges again. Let's listen to the two of you talking about that.

It was kind of... Just bringing it up, letting people notice what they noticed.

For our viewers or our listeners who maybe are only listening and didn't actually see it, can you kind of describe what she did with her body in that moment?

And I think that that, it just felt like such a turning point in there because it, at least from the prosecution, it kind of sounded like they said, okay, this is your one chance to show, hey, this is what he did. And, you know, she didn't necessarily seem to have a good reenactment of what she said happened. It seemed like a turning point in there, though.

So the jury deliberates. One point they come back, they say, hey, we don't have a verdict. The judge says, OK, keep trying. And they ultimately find Ashley Benefield guilty of manslaughter, but not guilty of the higher charge of second degree murder. So Ashley Benefield will be sentenced next month. And that's something, of course, that a lot of us are going to be watching.

And I know that you are going to be discussing it and giving updates as well.

Oh, you know we'll be there. Okay, Andrea, thanks so much for talking Dateline with me today. Yeah, thanks, Blaine.

And also, I think that to go from a dinner party where you're talking about whatever you're talking about to like, hey, come outside and look at my guns. I just wonder how you make that conversation leave.

It's probably one of the most – if it did, it would be one of the most creative Hallmark movies or something like that. Yeah, yeah. Okay. Let's say that that was an interesting meeting. But to go from that to I do in 13 days is so interesting, right? So, like, the question is, was this infatuation? Was it just love? Or did Ashley have some sort of a hidden agenda in all of this? Well.

One question I had when we heard about her dream to open this ballet studio, I wonder to your point about money, like how much did Doug have to do with giving her the money to open that studio or making it possible?

For this Talking Dateline, we have an extra clip from Andrea's interview with Ashley Benefield's therapist, Dr. Barbara Russell. But just a quick recap. In 2020, former ballerina Ashley Benefield claimed that she acted in self-defense after fatally shooting her husband, Doug Benefield.

You know, the other big thing, of course, she got pregnant and she became a mom. I'm assuming that she really wanted children because she was pregnant relatively soon after they got married. And that became kind of the just kind of like a central focus when you talk about, you know, this poor girl who was really caught in the middle of all of this.

I was so fascinated by this because from the beginning, it wasn't this question of like, oh, who did it, right? Like we knew that she pulled the trigger, but why? Why did she do it?

When

I could imagine that would be tricky. It really was a delicate kind of balance that they had to strike. They had to be delicate with it. I thought that it was so striking that Eva at the end, Doug's daughter from a previous marriage – It came out and kind of addressed, almost apologized to women who suffered from domestic violence or really brought that forward, too.

When we get back, we've got a bonus clip from Andrea's interview with Ashley Benefield's therapist. So let's go to the crime scene because there was something that was very unusual about this. Very soon after Doug Benefield was shot, we saw all of these people kind of start showing up for Ashley. Lawyers, her therapist. How unusual is something like that?

But when investigators took a closer look into the couple's whirlwind relationship, they learned of abuse allegations, a bitter custody dispute, even an accusation of a previous murder. To investigators, the tumultuous relationship mixed with the physical evidence pointed to one thing, and that's murder. OK, Andrea, let's talk Dateline. Let's do it. So the big question, who is Ashley Benefield?

I'm really glad that we had the voice of Dr. Russell because I do think that she said so much about Ashley. I wonder if there were questions about, you know, to be there on the scene, to be so involved, was it possible that she was overstepping her bounds as a therapist to be there?

Yes, exactly.

In a couple of ways, she played the role kind of almost of an advocate of Ashley, right? Like they're on the crime scene and, you know, she joined the protests for her around the trial time too, right? Yeah.

Let's talk a little bit more about those protests. Among the people protesting was their six year old daughter, Ashley and Doug's six year old daughter, Emerson. I mean, that was very striking to just see her little self out there. Who brought her out there and kind of what was that like for her to be out there?

I mean, I think that's the question from all angles. So she's a former ballerina, a swimsuit model. She enters Doug Benefield's life and they get married within 13 days of first meeting. What makes someone get married after 13 days?

Where is Emerson now? I mean, I think the sad thing about this, as you mentioned at the end of the episode, she's still kind of locked in this custody battle, right? Yeah.

It's so often in so many of our Dateline stories, child custody disputes kind of can be at the heart of this. It really is just so heartbreaking for the kids who are in the middle of all of this. And Emerson has lost both of her parents.

I talked with Keith about this recently for his episode, and it's almost like it's a method of self-protection or self-preservation.

Almost like maybe you can't allow yourself to believe that your father is capable of this because even if they are, you know, found guilty or whatever, just having something in your mind to say, okay, I admit that maybe he is responsible, then you are really losing both parents, right? Like it's a way of holding on. Yeah, I totally buy that. Let's talk about Eva Benefield.

Hi, everyone. I'm Blaine Alexander, and we are Talking Dateline. Today, I'm here with Andrea Canning. Hi, Andrea. Hey, Blaine. So this episode is called Deadly Dance. If you haven't seen it, it's the episode right below this one on your Dateline podcast feed. So go there, listen to it, or stream it on Peacock, and then come right back here.

That's, you know, Doug's daughter from his marriage to Renee, his previous wife who passed away. But when Doug and Ashley married, Eva was Ashley's stepdaughter, even though the two only had nine years of age difference, right, between the two of them. So how was their relationship?

She was very vocal. She was claiming Ashley murdered her dad. And you even kind of said she used humor in all of that. But do you think that that kind of helped to draw a lot of attention to this story?

Oh, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, it really is.

I mean, I think that especially when you see people outside, but also just kind of thinking about, yes, social media and the way that some of these things spread, like people are able to follow along and feel like they really know the people or they really know the, you know, the facts of the case, or even people who show up and kind of try and be investigators on their own.

Or, you know, involve themselves. Let's talk about the trial. Because as you mentioned, when the murder trial began, a lot of people dubbed it the Black Swan murder trial because of that movie. Have you seen the movie Black Swan?

There was a lot. I didn't get into it. I really like Natalie Portman. I do, too. Because I liked her as Padme. She's great. So anytime Natalie Portman does anything, I'm like, oh, wow, let's see. And I do remember it was one of those ones I had to watch twice just to kind of digest what was happening.

Yes.

So to have this trial likened to Black Swan was interesting. I'm curious, what was Ashley like in the courtroom during this trial?

This was an interesting one. Blaine, thank you. Absolutely. So good to be with you, my friend.

You know, we kind of commented at some point that viewers will need literally a notepad to write down all of the people and how they're related and arrows and kind of like a playbook, right? Because once we get into this and once we really start diving into this marriage and then there is another woman and then there's another man and how are all these people connected?

It takes a lot to kind of pull together this very convoluted motive. But yes, from the very beginning, investigators looked at Scott and said, what in the world is up with this guy? I mean, this man was somebody who is military trained. He's a tall gentleman. He was carrying a firearm at the time. Not only is he proficient in firearm use, but he had a gun on him.

And they're wondering why not go into the house. And, you know, when I spoke with Detective Johnson and a number of people were saying, listen, if I thought that there was something wrong with somebody that I cared about in the house, there's not a force on earth that would stop me from going inside.

And yes, and military trained, right? So that screamed suspicion from the second they got to the crime scene. And then the suspicion only grew. There was the scene, and I think that this was something that really struck with a lot of people, but where he was talking to himself in the interview room and telling himself to stay calm and keep cool. You know, the red flags were just piling up, right?

Moment after moment, everyone's looking at him.

Yeah, it's interesting because nobody knows how you're going to act if you find yourself in a police interrogation room, right? Hopefully you or I never find ourselves in that situation. But if we did and we didn't do it, you would think that you wouldn't have to kind of whisper to yourself to stay calm and to keep it together.

Yeah, it came up in several ways. And so he was deployed to Iraq. He spent time in Iraq, served in Iraq. And afterwards, one of Desiree's friends said, you know, this is somebody that she had known since middle school. And she said that he seemed to be acting different.

But also when I asked one of the friends about perhaps, you know, he's seen a lot of things that you or I or most of us have never seen on the battlefield before. Was his response just kind of a downplayed response when he found out that his wife was killed? Because he had seen so many things. Was this a defense mechanism? Was this somebody who was just naturally stoic?

And she said that she believed that, yeah, that's kind of who he was to a degree.

Yeah, we spoke to three friends who have known Desiree through almost her entire lifespan, going back from middle school through high school to early marriage to, I mean, the day she was killed, right? Some think that, yes, there was a conspiracy to get her out of the way. Others are just like, you brought this woman and who brought this man into Desiree's life and all of it ended with her dead.

So you bear some responsibility as well. But again, never charged.

When I asked the investigator about that moment, of course, that was a big turning point for them, right? Because it was okay, you're out with family, you're staying with family. Wait, now we have a new name. Okay, and wait, it's a woman's name. Okay, and wait, you stayed at her house, right? So suddenly this kind of kicks things into a whole different level.

And as you know, investigators then have to spin off on Let's dig deeper into this marriage.

And one of the big pieces in this whole thing, Josh, is what exactly... was this relationship, right? Scott and Paige made it seem as though everybody's happy. This is kind of a cozy little throuple, if you will. But then when you look at those text messages, it was very clear. Desiree at some point grew tired of Paige being in their relationship.

She was very concerned about her marriage to Scott. When I spoke with her friend, Michelle, you know, they would go on walks around the school. And that was something that came up often in their walks, just concerns about the health of her relationship and not being able to talk to her husband about it. And I should mention, too, we reached out to Scott.

We tried a number of ways to get him to talk with us. He would not. He's remarried now and didn't want to talk to us for this episode.

Well, And this is this is an important nuance. And so Scott was in basic training when Desiree had her infidelity. It was before he was deployed to Iraq. It was also before they were married. And so I put that in there because it's, you know, not apples to apples. Nobody should cheat on anybody.

She ultimately was. You know, the text messages, I have to say what Paige said, one, she said that she didn't remember it clearly, but she said what she believes was that they were talking about life insurance or arrangements or something like that. And then I pushed her on that. I said, you know, we have all of the 40 pages of text messages or something.

The context before, the context after has nothing to do with life insurance or anything like that. It kind of goes on to talk about Desiree saying she would be upset if there were anything sexual that were to happen between her husband and Paige, or if they were together. In talking to Paige, Paige says that it was actually Desiree who invited her to live with them.

I think that diving into those text messages, there was a portion in there where, though they never explicitly said it, certainly kind of alludes to the fact that there was a... more than platonic interaction between Paige and Desiree at some point. But it's also very clear that this wasn't an ongoing, long-lasting relationship between the two of them.

Good point. One, not everybody is as savvy as you are, Josh Mankiewicz. Not many people might have thought to go in and say, hey, I need an attorney.

That is very true. But, you know, in talking with Paige about this and questioning her a number of different ways about this, she says and maintains and believes that she put her safety on the line to essentially help bring Desiree's killer to justice. That because she ratted on Marty, spoke about Marty, turned him in, that he has reason to be angry with her.

He's going to be getting out of prison in a few years. And so, you know, she is concerned about that.

Considering the fact that he will be out in several years, are you concerned personally about Marty getting out of prison?

You felt like he could possibly hurt you?

Even though he was doing so many things for you, even though he was a friend, he was helping you in so many ways, was your savior in many ways?

Pitch, I asked her about this, right? I said, what would you describe him as? Friend? I mean, they were coworkers. They worked at the same place. Her mother had actually set her up on a blind date with Marty. Thought that this was a stable guy. He's making money. Might be a good guy for you. She said, okay. She was doing her daughterly duty, as she put it.

went out on a date and then kind of thought, okay, great, it's over, bye. Marty didn't see it that way, according to Paige. And so that plus the fact that they worked together, she said she was trying to make things not awkward. And so when he would say hi, she'd kind of keep going and talking with him. But that kept growing.

But what's interesting is Paige said that at some point she was in a very difficult situation that she was trying to leave, whether it was a relationship, I'm not sure, but just a difficult situation. And Marty was giving her the money to do that, right? Like helping her financially, helping her make a deposit on a new apartment, right?

helping her with gas money, helping with groceries, with the car, things that she couldn't have done on her own. And she said, because she was so desperate at first, she was uncomfortable with it, but you know, always the arrangement was, Hey, I'll pay you back. She says she did pay him back for some of that. But again, it, All of it goes beyond the normal kind of scale of a friendship.

And even though he was married, even though he got married.

Well, she is. I mean, it's, you know, I wondered if there was any point at which she was disturbed with this relationship. And she said, I mean, he would say things like, you know, I would do anything for you or, you know, his undying love. He professed his undying love for her, those types of things. I said, how did that make you feel?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. She said that to police. And so, you know, that brings forth just the questions of how did you feel in all of that? And she said, yes, it was awkward. It was weird. But at some time, I mean, at many times, he was literally the only person she had to turn to. You know, she was a single mom at this point. She says she didn't have many friends, any other friends.

So that was kind of her resource. Yeah.

Yeah, I did, too. From the beginning, she was very concerned about Paige. And by concerned, I mean Marty made Paige the best man, quote unquote, in the wedding. Beth didn't like that.

And Desiree did. And she was already kind of seeing, OK, there's this other woman. But amidst all of those things, never did Beth and in her telling to me, never did she think that police were going to show up on her doorstep and say, hey, we're arresting your husband for murder or questioning him, then arresting him for murder. Right. So that was something that completely caught her off guard.

Understandably, obviously, she's divorced him now. She's moved on. She's got a new boyfriend. But she said this was a very difficult thing for her to get through, to get over afterwards when she just kind of thought about her own judgment and all of this and how she was, like you said, unwittingly brought into all of this.

Why was it so long?

Her reaction to the verdict, she was emotional.

Yeah, yeah. Up next, we're taking your questions from social media. All right. We are back with the one and only Josh Mankiewicz to talk about our social questions, comments, thoughts from your episode.

We have some good ones.

There were a few. So I think something that stood out to a lot of our viewers was the nickname Ravioli. That was Fabio's childhood nickname. We asked our viewers on Friday night what their nicknames were growing up. So Marie Wilson writes, Feetsie was her nickname because I kept growing so quickly out of my PJs.

That can be confusing like at family gatherings if someone just yelled out Mank.

I think mine... know Blaine it's not a it doesn't lend itself to you know what when I was running track and cross country in high school we put nicknames on the back of our shirts and mine was legs with two G's because I'm very tall and I'm all legs so that was you know that's good I take it. It was earned, right?

It does. We have an audio question about the daughters from Lori Keeble Bailey. Let's listen.

Well, we're going to our next question continues the trend of three named audio questions. This comes from Jessica McCourt Hughes, who has a question on how we report our cases.

Here's an important question. One more audio question. Let's listen.

Well, I love it. It's amazing to see. It's amazing to watch it. And, you know, at least from the podcast side, be part of it for today. So let's jump into this episode, Josh. I think the first thing that if you watch Dateline, you work on Dateline, you always know, okay, they're going to look at the partner first, right? This one, you had me fooled.

If you had to give a number real quickly, how many pocket squares would you say you have? 250.

We have a couple of questions about the sentences that everyone received. Cindy Wilson Shepard is asking, but what sentence did the two guys get for killing him?

He's going away. Yeah. Okay. And then last question from K Star Maddox. What's Monica's sentence? Never heard what it was.

Goodness. All right. A lot of great comments, a lot of great questions, a fantastic deviation on your pocket squares. This was a good one, Josh. Thank you. Thank you. And that's it for Talking Dateline this week. Remember, if you have any questions for us about stories or about Dateline, you can always reach us 24-7 on social media at DatelineNBC.

And if you have a question for Talking Dateline, you can leave it for us on our social media or in a voicemail. That number is 212-413-5252 for a chance to be featured on a future episode. I'm told that that number rings directly to a traveling Blackberry that has passed around amongst correspondents. Maybe not. We will see you Fridays on Dateline on NBC.

Also, make sure to check out Dateline True Crime Weekly. This week, I will be in. I'm hosting for Andrea Canning while she's out on vacation for the week. So we've got some updates on some big cases that we've been following. We also have a very fascinating interview about a new book on a rather high profile crime down in Houston. So all of that is coming up on Dateline True Crime Weekly.

Make sure you listen to that Thursday morning wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks so much for listening.

For a minute, because I'm listening to them talk about the marriage and the things she posted. And I'm like, no, this marriage is solid. So I was actually surprised when I heard about the affair. I actually did not see that coming.

So, I mean, one of the big themes of this, of course, we hear about this a lot in Dateline, but betrayal. And I really think that that's a it seems like that was certainly a running theme of the story. But when you talk about the betrayal of even if Monica was saying, you know, oh, he worked a lot or he was never home, it didn't seem like Fabio knew that that was an issue with them.

I want to talk about Fabio, though, because we really get a sense. And this is something we try and do in all of our Dateline episodes. But we really get a sense of who this guy was. I mean, he seemed like someone who loved his life. I was really struck by the fact that he had just sent this email about this epic 50th birthday trip that he was going to have. And then what was it the next day?

So go there, listen to it or stream it on Peacock, of course, and then come right back here. Quick recap, when Hollywood hairstylist Fabio Cimentelli was stabbed in his own backyard, investigators wondered if it was a burglary gone wrong. What they uncovered instead was an affair that turned deadly.

This seems like a good time to juxtapose Fabio with one Robert Baker, who was Monica's lover. I mean, you just ran down the man's CV in his life. And I mean, he really was just an impressive kind of larger than life figure. And then you have this man who is a former porn star. He's a convicted sex offender. He wears a pleather jacket that everybody liked to talk about.

And one can't help but wonder like, How do you go from married to this guy to a very deep, steamy affair with that guy?

And he even said on the stand, they said, you still love her, right? He said, yes. And they said, do you hope that you'll still be together? And he even admitted, no, that's never going to happen. That's never going to happen. Right. Like knew that it's not like they were going to go towards some sort of far off happy ending here.

He's going away, regardless of what happens to her. I want to talk about the affair, but I also want to talk about how it came to light. The SIS, the Special Investigation Section. Did you know about this branch of LAPD?

Hi, everyone. It's Blayne Alexander. And today we are talking Dateline. I am so happy to be joined by the one, the only Josh Mankiewicz. Hi, Josh. Hi. Hello. How you doing? I am great. So we're talking about your episode, The Widow of Woodland Hills. If you haven't seen it, it's the episode right below this one on your Dateline podcast feed.

For this Talking Dateline, we've got an extra clip from Josh's interview with Fabio's sister and more about how the murder has torn this family apart. Okay, let's talk Dateline.

I thought that it was one of the more interesting parts of the story, just kind of seeing how they do their job.

Interesting. You know, another thing that we saw in this episode was a lot of just different audio, but the undercover audio when Monica was being held with the cellmate, quote unquote, who was actually an undercover officer.

You know, I think that this story is kind of what Talking Dateline is made for, because as we sit here recording, it's 3.36 p.m. Eastern time on a Friday. We just got the verdict two out three hours ago.

When we get back, Fabio and Monica's daughters chose to stand behind their mother even after she was accused of killing their father. We've got a clip of what Fabio's sister has to say about that decision. You know, we learned a lot about Fabio from his son, Luigi. And obviously that's his son from a previous marriage.

I think that's important to point out because you kind of certainly see the different position that Luigi had versus, you know, their two daughters who shared with Monica. Yeah.

I think it's also worth pointing out Fabio obviously chose divorce to kind of begin a new life with Monica. And some could say like she had the blueprint right there. Right. And in front of her, I thought that it was interesting to dive into why she didn't choose divorce. You and I have had this conversation plenty of times on Talking Dateline that, yeah, it may suck. You may be embarrassed.

You may get shunned by your family, but someone doesn't have to die. You don't have to spend the rest of your life in prison. Right. Like, how does that become the top choice?

I felt terribly for their two daughters in all of this. They stood by their mom, maintained that she was innocent of this whole thing. One testified for her. I know that you asked Fabio's sister, Mirella, what she thought about the kids supporting their mom. We have a clip of that.

My heart just goes out to them, especially the daughter who found her father stabbed to death on the patio. And The jury has decided Monica was responsible. And, you know, and the prosecutor's telling she essentially orchestrated for her daughter to to find her father bleeding out and stabbed to death because she wanted an alibi.

It's a terrible I mean, for a mother to do that to a child is something that's just fully beyond me.

The level of manipulation, yes, is insane. Let's talk about Chris Austin. I can't remember being as glued to the screen for a portion of a dateline as I was when he was on the stand and describing what happened that day. I'm always stunned by just how almost easily someone can agree to be a henchman, if you will, or a sidekick in a murder, right?

And I think it's a testament to just... The dexterity of our producing team, of everyone who puts these shows on the air, because I mean, yes, to scramble and get that together and fill the holes that need to be filled. Yeah, it takes a team. It takes an effort.

He had no stake in this to do that and to be okay with playing a part in ending a life. It's just shocking to me.

He just didn't have the courage to.

The trial itself was full of a lot of kind of dramatic moments. This trial was long, two and a half months.

Truly. For the many people who know the details of this case and who know these names of these beautiful young lives, it is in connection to these murders. And I think that that has to also present a specific and special kind of pain for their families, I would imagine.

Up next, we're taking your questions from social media. We had a lot of social media comments on this episode, as you could well imagine. Let's hear from Gail Sorensen. She said, wow, we really got a lot more of the story that we didn't know about before. Keith, you're the best.

We have an audio question. Let's take a listen to this one.

There is an interesting question that I want to ask you. I'm sure you'd love to answer it. Does Keith write his own questions? Well,

That's exactly it. We have to be nimble. And I should say that question is from Jennifer Hart. But the interview goes where the interview goes. I bring all sorts of things out that were never written down just based on the answers that you get. And you have to you have to listen actively to primary best response.

A lot of comments that we heard from our viewers about why it's taken so long for this to go to trial. The murders, of course, happened in November of 2022. Trial is set for August of 2025. Phoenix Lopez Harmon writes, what is taking so long? Is it because this is a death penalty case? And it's important to point out that these trials are not instantaneous.

This has been a fascinating discussion, Keith, talking about this case, but also talking about how you were able to bring us the story. So thank you so much for talking with me today.

I like it, too. I'm enjoying this, Keith. And that is it for Talking Dateline this week. Remember, if you've got any questions for us about stories or about Dateline, you can always reach us 24-7 on social media at DatelineNBC. And if you have a question for Talking Dateline, you can record a message and send it to us on social media or call this number and leave a voicemail.

Here's that number, 212-413-5252. And you'll have a chance to possibly hear your voice featured on an upcoming episode. And of course, we will see you Fridays on Dateline on NBC. Thanks as always for listening.

Sure. There are a lot of different sensitivities when it comes to reporting a story like this, when it comes to the story that you and your team aired, and even when it comes to our conversation here.

There is nothing cagey about you, Keith Morrison. All good.

Good to see you and hear you too, my friend. So before we jump in, if you haven't seen it, it's the episode right below this one on your Dateline podcast feed. So make sure to go there, listen to it or stream it on Peacock and then come right back here.

You know, let's let's dive in, because I think that another thing that was different about this story is sometimes when we present stories to our audience, this may be the first time that many people have heard about this case. Obviously not the case here. If anybody has followed and consumed any bit of news over the past two plus years.

You know, at least in some part, have some degree of familiarity with this case out of Idaho. So when you do a story like this, when people really are hanging on every small detail of this, certainly when you're able to advance a story the way that you have, that's that's a remarkable thing.

I mean, the big question in all of this and from the beginning has been, who is Brian Koberger? And in this episode, you described him as a man who lived in the shadows.

Hi, everyone. It's Blayne Alexander and we are Talking Dateline. I'm joined by the one and only Keith Morrison to talk about his latest episode, The Terrible Night on King Road. Hi, Keith.

You know, in talking about his chosen field of study, criminology, I have to say that when I was watching your story and when you reported about the Google searches that were found on his phone. Right. This, you know, some of the questions, can psychopaths behave pro-socially and sociopathic traits in college student? I have to say that when I saw that, I thought, OK, maybe it means again.

Now, just to recap, in the early morning hours of November 13th, 2022, four University of Idaho students were found stabbed to death in their home. With the trial of Brian Koberger, the man accused of killing the students, now just 12 weeks away, Keith and his team revealed the results of their groundbreaking two-year investigation into this case.

If he is, in fact, guilty of the crimes of which he's being accused, did he in some way know that maybe there was something off about him and perhaps he was engaged in that field of study to understand or lean into it?

Speaking of explanations, someone could look at this and say, OK, maybe there wasn't an explanation for this or maybe there was. Ted Bundy was a name that came up a lot in this story. There were a lot of searches related to just for those who maybe need a refresher. Remind us who Ted Bundy was.

Mm-hmm. You talked to people who had had what most of us would call just kind of chance run ins with Brian Koberger. I mean, at a pool party. I loved the Ph.D.J. That was my favorite title ever. I would like to go to a party that he's DJing. He seems like fun. Sure. You know, I was very interested, though, that they just kind of had these little snapshots of just little, you know, interactions.

But even from then, it sounded like some of them said, hey, that even that just small interaction was kind of off. It's kind of strange.

So let's let's talk about some of the evidence that you bring forward in this groundbreaking episode. I mean, of course, and we need to say that, yes, this is evidence he's been accused of these crimes. A judge has entered a not guilty plea on his behalf. But in this episode, you lay out some additional evidence that could point to his alleged involvement in these murders.

Most people know how his DNA was found on the knife sheath at the crime scene. That's kind of a famous piece of evidence. But talk about some of the other pieces of evidence that came out here.

The episode sheds incredible new light on the murders and just what happened that night on King Road. For this Talking Dateline, we want to tell you, of course, a little bit more about who those four students were that were murdered that night through the eyes of those who loved them best. Okay, let's talk Dateline, Keith.

If I could jump in real quick. Talk about that white sedan. I mean, what was, when you talk about it in the episode, but what was with the back and forth and the back and forth? That was very chilling to me.

Right.

One of the things that I thought was an effective piece of storytelling and reporting in this, Keith, was this animation that your team put together to kind of spell out how your investigative sources believe this crime took place. And I have to say, for a lot of our, you know, our audience who only kind of consumes these stories via podcast and doesn't actually look at the episode, go back.

This is one that you need to go back, find on Peacock and actually look at this animation because it tells us a lot.

One of the experts that you spoke with also talked about social media intel that that one would have gathered. Right. That, you know, the victims, young ladies posted a lot on social media. All of these strange things that one wouldn't necessarily think of could have been actual clues to help the killer understand the layout of this house.

which is very chilling. When we get back, Kaylee was spontaneous. Maddie was an old soul. We're going to play some clips from interviews with family and friends of the four victims to get to know them a little bit better. That's when we get back. The texts between two of the surviving roommates show that they knew something was wrong. They were upset.

They were trying to figure out what was happening. Yet it seems that it took a long time for 911 to be called.

You know, before we jump into this discussion, I think it's important to note that this episode is so different from the episodes and stories that we typically do on Dateline. Right. Because by the time we get our hands on a story, usually the case is adjudicated. Somebody has either been found guilty or acquitted. And that is, of course, not the case here.

If there's one thing that I've learned in my so far brief time with Dateline, it's that no matter in all of these stories, we never know what we are going to do or what anyone will do when confronted with a scene like this coming upon someone that they know or that they love that has been brutally killed. We don't know what you would do, what I would do, what any of our audience would do.

And you can speculate all you want, of course, but you certainly don't know until you are faced with such an unimaginable moment. And so shock, who knows? It's easy to kind of look and say, oh, call 911, but you just don't know what one feels in that moment.

Especially now. You've made it even more difficult. We spoke earlier about these four students, and I'm going to say their names because... We want to dedicate some time to hear from their family, their friends, those who knew them best about just who they were.

So Maddie Mogan, Kaylee Gonsalves, Zaina Kurnodal, Ethan Chapin, you got a chance to speak with their friends, their family about who they were. Tell us a little bit about that.

Well, let's listen to some of their family and friends. Let's listen to some of the people who knew them best.

You know, when we do stories like this, I think that all of us can kind of identify with this being on the cusp of stepping into life, right? Yes. This kind of the excitement, the sense of excitement, being on the verge of realizing your potential.

You kind of anticipate the arguments they're going to have. And so it really is just an interesting way of going into a conversation and, you know, thinking about all the different angles they're going to throw at you.

Absolutely. There are a lot of just kind of like still, I guess, hanging chads in this story. Right. You know, the sentencing phase. I do want to ask you, though, about the deliberation. Five days.

Yeah. Yeah. And there's nothing to change that. Josh, we are going to talk about questions from social media. A lot of people had thoughts about this episode. So we've got that coming up.

Okay, we're back. And Josh, we have a couple of audio questions this week. First up, let's hear from Amy Brownstein Berry on Facebook. Here's what she had to say.

Interesting. Do people keep them? I mean, obviously they're in your shirt, but do you keep them just in your pockets? Are they usually found loose in your pocket somewhere?

OK, this is a fun question. Jabour Estefan on Facebook asked, has anyone ever said to Josh, bro, the defense attorney called you, bro. Have you ever been called bro in an interview before? I noted that one, too.

Okay, we've got another audio question. This one is from Amanda Lechman DePaulis on Facebook. Let's take a listen.

Well, lots of audio questions. I love the audio questions, by the way. This is a lot of fun to hear, to hear actually from people's voices.

Here's something that was funny, Josh, that people notice. And I have to admit that I noticed this one too. Fans notice just how tall Sergeant Dittmer is. When you guys were kind of walking side by side, I think down the street, Sylvia NYC wrote on X, I don't think I've ever seen anyone tower over Josh Mankiewicz on Dateline. So what was what was the deal there? How tall was this gentleman?

Josh, this was a fascinating episode. And it's always good to talk Dateline with you, my friend. Thank you.

That's it for Talking Dateline for this week. Remember, if you have any questions for us about stories or about Dateline, you can always reach us 24-7 on social media at DatelineNBC. And if you'd like to hear your voice on an upcoming episode of Talking Dateline, please send your questions as an audio file. We cannot wait to hear from you.

And Keith's got a brand new podcast, Murder in the Moonlight. When a couple is found shot to death in their quiet farmhouse on America's Great Plains, The investigation includes four suspects, spans three states, and comes down to a single shiny clue, a gold ring found at the scene of the crime.

Follow Murder in the Moonlight now and get two new episodes a week starting February 17th completely free. Or subscribe to Dateline Premium to start listening now. Premium subscribers get early access and ad-free listening. And as always, we will see you on Fridays on Dateline on NBC. Thanks for listening.

Well, let's talk about San Francisco. I mean, this really kind of provoked a very strong response about the city. It's fair to say this kind of shook the area and people far beyond it as well.

And, you know, you talked about, of course, in the story that like he still had his wallet, he still had his watch. So that was pretty quickly kind of disproven.

And they'll let their guard down. Right.

One thing that really stood out to me in this story, Josh, there was so much video. I mean, obviously, we had, yes, a video of him stumbling after he was stabbed. But the video of his final moments before that, I mean, the, you know, accused killer allegedly demonstrating his crime, like, oh. All of these different things.

Now, just to recap, when tech executive Bob Lee was fatally stabbed in 2023 on the streets of San Francisco, concerns grew over violence in the city. Investigators discovered that the crime was actually far more personal, involving the suspected killer's sister, allegations of sexual abuse, and a rather convoluted theory of the potential motive.

It's like exactly like you said, like you look at one of those pictures. It's like, do you see a woman with a shawl or do you see a dog with a smile? Right. Like, what are you seeing? Let's talk about Bob Lee. I love the way that you unfolded it. I mean, first, of course, you talk about who he was to his family. And then it's like, ah, yes, here's who he was, you know, in the bigger sense.

For a lot of us, it's like, oh, my God, that's the guy who founded Cash App. That's immediately what a lot of people go to because it's somebody whose influence was certainly felt by by all of us in some way.

I have to say I have a new favorite term from this episode. Code play hard. I mean, it was one of those things where I heard it. I was like, oh, that I have a surprisingly clear picture of exactly the type of lifestyle you're talking about right now when he said that. Yeah.

Well, for this talking dateline, we also have an extra clip about the star witness in the trial, Kazar Momini, and what it was like for Bob Lee's brother to watch her take the stand and defend the man accused of killing him. All right, Josh, let's talk Dateline. How are you doing? I am good, my friend. How are you doing? Good, good. Great to see you.

I'm curious, as you were going through your interviews and talking about people who knew Bob and also who were in that culture, did you find that anybody was hesitant to kind of dive into that?

Hi, everyone. It's Blaine Alexander and we are talking Dateline. I'm joined today by Josh Mankiewicz to discuss his episode Under the Bay Bridge. Now, if you haven't seen it, it's the episode right below this one on your Dateline podcast feed. So make sure to go there, listen to it or stream it on Peacock and then come right back here.

You know, I think that, you know, we got a beautiful picture, though, of the duality of Bob's life, right? Because we heard from Crystal Lee, like you said, and then we heard from their two kids, right? How he was just this truly loving dad, like some real concrete examples of how he taught them things, doting on his kids.

Yeah. You know, you get a real sense of loss, I think, from the kids. They added a lot. When we get back, Bob Lee's brother thought Nima Momeni's testimony was outrageous. But what did he make of the accused killer's sister on the stand? We've got an extra clip from Josh's interview with Oliver Lee coming up. I want to talk about Kazar Momeni.

I think it's very fair to say that Kazar Momeni was one of those unforgettable characters. She was so interesting. She became a key part, but it was very clear that she wanted nothing to do with this trial.

So my first question, actually, this one came to me as I was watching. A lot of time in the Dateline world, our stories don't necessarily make national news before we air them on Dateline, right? Right. Our audience is hearing about them for the very first time when we bring them the story. This was clearly the opposite. This is a story that I remember when it first happened.

I mean, you illustrate it right there, like Nima's defense attorney, who, by the way, is being paid for by Kazar, right? Says, don't believe a word she has to say. Don't don't believe anything.

While we're on the subject of Kazar, a lot of people had thoughts about her, clearly, including Bob Lee's family. So we have an extra clip of Bob Lee's brother, Oliver Lee, talking about his impressions of Kazar Momini.

I remember watching it. We covered it so heavily on NBC. How does that change your process, either the storytelling process or even just kind of how does that impact when you're trying to get people to do interviews with you?

You know, when you look at kind of the Momini family as a unit, and I'm so glad that we heard from the mother in all of this too, what Krista said at the end just kind of angry at the family in its entirety. I will never forgive this family for what they did to Bob.

I thought that that was really interesting, but I also, it made me, it made me wonder, was there ever any talk of anyone else being, you know, facing charges and all this as an accomplice or anything?

I want to ask you about the defense attorney, because one, I love the back and forth between the two of you guys. Obviously, you held your own. It was it was interesting. As soon as you introduced him and said he came from Miami to help with this case, I said, aha, Miami like that. You know, just kind of he seems like an attorney who came from Miami.

But it was, you know, for our listeners who watched the episode and who are listening to us right now, one, it was a masterclass in how to do those types of interviews, right? Because I think for people who kind of see the end product of Dateline, when we're prepping for these, there's a lot of, you know, the story in and out. So you anticipate what your interviewee is going to say.

Here's Keith Morrison with After the Halloween Party.

Investigators found a rusty lawnmower blade near her body. It was covered in blood.

There were deep cuts on Shantae's scalp and face, bruises on both sides of her neck, her arms and legs, and something odd on her chest.

Did you have any idea what it could have been?

An autopsy revealed Shantae had died from blunt force trauma consistent with that bloody lawnmower blade. She had also been sexually assaulted.

Crime scene techs collected evidence at the scene and sent it out for DNA testing, hoping it would lead them to Shantae's killer.

Alicia Bird is Investigator Bird's wife. She is also the county's assistant DA.

When she saw a photo of that mark on Shantae's chest and considered that the murder happened on Friday the 13th, a theory started to take shape.

Maybe that could explain the why, if only they could figure out the who. Right away, Investigator Bird knew who he wanted to look at first.

Charlie Radel and Jackie Neal, the searchers who found Shantae.

So you're thinking, we found who did this, and they gave themselves away.

Time to head to the sheriff's office for questioning. What might a polygraph reveal?

The search for Shantae had ended, but the hunt for her killer was just getting underway. To start, investigators wanted to take a hard look at Charlie Radel and his girlfriend Jackie, the searchers who found Shantay.

It seemed so unlikely that they just got lucky. The house is so remote, it's almost impossible to find, even with GPS. It's on a dirt road off of another dirt road.

But one night, the horror became real. This was the scene of a crime so evil it haunted an entire community and made neighbor doubt neighbor. Everybody was a suspect.

Charlie and Jackie were both in their 40s, and they both knew Shantae from her daily walks in the neighborhood. She lived about a mile away from them.

investigators took note of Charlie's emotion at the scene and invited him to the sheriff's office to see how he would answer questions there. Charlie told the investigator he'd just seen Shantae out walking not long before she disappeared.

Charlie said that as soon as they heard a search was being organized, he and Jackie jumped in the truck and hit the country roads.

Then, he said, they came upon that dirt road, the one leading to the haunted house.

After looking around the dilapidated house, he said he decided to check the storm cellar. That's where he found Shantae's body.

They also interviewed Jackie. The investigator asked her where Charlie was on Friday the 13th, the night Shantae disappeared.

The search for justice would lead to a different house, a house of worship. Had evil made its way there too? For the congregation of North Lake Community Church, this simple building was a refuge, a place to sing and worship in peace, a haven for people like Shantae Blankenship.

Charlie also agreed to a polygraph. How hard did law enforcement press Charlie?

While investigators searched for Shantae's killer, her family was facing the difficult task of planning her funeral. mourners gathered for the service at her beloved church.

Did you feel the love that this community had for your daughter? I did. I did. Did you ever consider the possibility that her killer might be right there in the room, in the church with you? I didn't. She didn't, but investigators did. They rigged up surveillance cameras inside the church. You thought that it was important to see who was coming, who was going.

They also set up cameras at the cemetery by Shantae's grave.

But after scrubbing through hours of video, investigators didn't find anything suspicious. Still, they were convinced Shantae's killer had to be close by, almost certainly someone she knew.

So they would have to look at everyone in Shantae's circle, starting with the man closest to her.

In the days after Shantae's body was found, her family and friends tried to come to terms with her savage murder. I know that you'd said at some point, even after she was found, There were days when you almost still expected to see her on those walks.

Was it hard for you to grasp that reality when you traveled down that road? Yes, because—

And as investigators looked for Shantae's killer, those closest to her were under scrutiny.

John Adams, Shantae's live-in boyfriend. At 26, he was a year older than Shantae. They'd known each other since middle school, had been a couple for more than three years. They were even starting to talk about marriage. John meant a lot to her. She meant a lot to him. That's what mattered to Shantae's family. They made it clear to John that Shantae was special and needed to be protected.

Two days after Shantae's body was found, investigators paid John a visit. Hello. Hello. John recognized the deputy from a traffic stop.

Can we have this brush? Took pictures and examined Shantae's belongings. Just gonna dump this out.

Then they went back outside. That's when they let John know they weren't just looking for clues. They were looking at him.

What is that on that hammer? Is that from pulling out nails or something? They took pictures of John's pickup truck and were interested to see a lot of lawnmowers in the shed. Man, do you guys have a lawn care service? Remember, it was a lawnmower blade that killed Shantae. They also wanted to know about John's relationship with Shantae.

Investigators had heard it was loving, but could be tense at times. It was strained.

Shantae was 25 and lived with her grandfather and boyfriend in a community on Lake Brownwood in Central Texas. Linda and Russell Lamond met Shantae at church. Russell was the assistant pastor. He and his wife took Shantae under their wing when she started showing up with a notebook and her own Bible.

Did you ever learn that Shantae had complained to neighbors about John sometimes wanting to control her?

But Bitsy Hobbs, one of Shantae's friends, told investigators she heard the couple fighting. Shantae sounded angry.

So he was thinking it may come to an end soon.

But they were about to find out. They had a stack of questions for John Adams. For starters, what did he do with his phone?

John Adams seemed like a friendly guy when he met investigators. Who lives here?

But friendly didn't mean innocent.

John said that around 5 p.m., he picked Shantae up at the restaurant where neighbors had seen her that afternoon. So he picked her up and took her to where?

John said he then went to work at his restaurant job around 6 p.m.

He said he worked an overnight shift and got home around 5 the next morning. Shantae wasn't there. He thought maybe she was at a friend's place.

But investigators found something while searching his cell phone data.

This time, the conversation was less friendly on both sides.