Josh Mankiewicz

You wanted to be a lawyer. Yeah. I must say, I have only followed that case by watching your stories. But that is a weird story. And that's the kind of thing we were talking about earlier in which this is not a traditional Dateline defendant in which they're involved with or close friends with or married to somebody in the case.

I do.

Thanks, Keith. Yeah.

That's a sweet thought. Yeah. Just for the audience's benefit. None of that was true. Keith, Happy New Year. Happy New Year to you, too, Josh. And one more thing. I have a new podcast out called Deadly Mirage.

Deadly Mirage. We called it Deadly Mirage because the other seven or eight titles that we thought of were all taken. My choice was Keith Wasn't Interested, but that apparently was also taken. Yeah. But anyway, it's called Deadly Mirage, and it's going to run on Dateline as a TV episode Friday at 9 o'clock Eastern. Oh, isn't that interesting? That's sort of a clever idea.

If you've been listening to this podcast, you can now watch the TV program, and you'll see what all these people look like. Oh, just to see what they look like. And what the places look like. Anyway, so Deadly Mirage, that's... That's this Friday on Dateline. And I hear it's pretty good, Josh, so congratulations on that. Thank you very much. One more thing.

For Dateline Premium subscribers, we have a new After the Verdict that will be available on January 9th. If you have any questions for us about our stories or about Dateline, you can reach us on social media at DatelineNBC. See you Fridays on Dateline on NBC.

She was just that kind of person. I think that's probably unusual as people who come out of law school wanting to work for the PD's office. I mean, some people want to do defense work, but wanting to work for, you know, essentially people who can't afford lawyers is something else.

No, and it's underfunded, and every time you go to court, the deck is very heavily stacked in favor of the prosecution because they have the police department, and you have maybe an investigator who's working on a bunch of different cases. You're starting off behind the eight ball a lot of the time, and you're juggling a zillion cases. So you have to really want to do it.

Hi everybody, it's Josh Mankiewicz, and we're talking Dateline. Today we're talking about an episode called The Watcher, and we're here with the correspondent who is, let me see, I have that here somewhere. Oh, it's Keith. Yeah, hi Keith. You know, that's a good title, don't you think? It is. It is a good title.

Although, although one could argue that it gives it away because when I, there were points in this where I thought like, oh yeah, it's called the watcher. So yeah.

Yeah. And, like, literally, like, if the trash had been picked up a day sooner, if the police had gotten there three hours later, you know?

It's in the middle of that TV interview. Now, yes, you've got to be prepared if you're the killer or you would think you'd be prepared for, you know, when you're told that she is dead because you're the only person that knows that she is dead at that point. So when somebody says, hey, we found her and she's no longer with us, you should be. Well, I can't believe it. That's the worst news.

But instead, he's he's like, wait, they found the body. body, he says. Yeah, that was, that's not the way.

No, but I mean, it's astonishingly telling is what it is.

Because there certainly wasn't enough to arrest him for her murder at that point. Right, exactly. So he talked himself right into the jailhouse. I think one of the lessons here is you never really know who's living next door. Right. I mean, I know my neighbors to say hello to. I certainly, you know. Sure. Beyond that, I couldn't tell you much. And you've lived there for quite a while. I have.

This is a very good episode. I thought now if you have not seen it, This is the episode right below this one on your Dateline podcast feed. So go there, listen to it, or you could stream it on Peacock and then come back here. So just to recap, in 2011, Georgia law student Lauren Giddings vanished. Investigators were pretty certain that this wasn't an ordinary missing persons case.

I have. And I don't think anybody's spying on me. I think most people who get spied on don't think anyone's spying on them. What's interesting, you know, something we talk about all the time here is how you need to listen to your instincts. And she had this sense that somebody was stalking her, following her, something was up. She did.

And, you know, her friends just kind of chalked that up to, well, you know. You know, men are always interested in her. You know, this is probably not a big deal.

Now, let me ask you this. I don't know the answer to this. Yeah. That video that they come up with that closes the case, essentially, that is taken, obviously, by him looking in her window. She's not in that video, right? You don't ever actually see her.

It's clearly her apartment that he's looking into through the blinds, but he doesn't actually get any video of her, at least not that they recovered.

Steve McDaniel pleaded guilty, but years after confessing the crime, he made a bunch of attempts to appeal his conviction. When we get back, the details revealed during his appeals and the surprising person who reveals them. a couple of interesting things in this story, particularly from a storytelling point of view that I thought you did very well as you always do.

One was you just sort of barely mentioned the neighbor. Like he was, we wanted to help and he had some thoughtful things. You just mentioned that there's a neighbor who wants to help, but then clearly you've got it down to Joe, the ex-boyfriend and, and David and the, Yeah. And then David, the current boyfriend. Right. And so you're thinking if you're the audience, OK, it's one of them.

And then you throw in the maintenance man. And I'm like, OK, well, that's clearly who it is. Like, it's nearly probably the guy. It's neither Joe nor it's the maintenance man, obviously. And then it turns out, of course, it's somebody else entirely. And so from a Dateline storytelling point of view, I thought that was great. Well, that's very kind of you to say, Josh. Thank you.

when we're telling these stories, when we're writing them, is we have to do the storytelling in a way that it's not obvious from the get-go what happened, but we also have to stay completely faithful to the truth. Like, we're not going to say, you know, the maintenance man was a suspect if he wasn't a suspect.

We're not going to say the cops were looking at Joe and they were looking at David if they weren't. But they were.

And then in what really amounted to some very lucky happenstance, investigators found some dismembered remains at Lauren's apartment, and then they knew what had happened. What they did not know was who had committed that crime. And it turned out that someone who was the watcher, her next door neighbor, had actually done it.

And I mean, usually, almost always... the person who ends up being the culprit is the Joe of the story or the David of the story. Well, it's almost never the random guy who was not on police radar, but sometimes it is.

I mean, look, look, I mean, I'm going to say upwards of 90% of dateline stories involve some sort of relationship between the killer. They're not, they're not unknown to each other.

I mean, the person who leaps out of the bushes and attacks someone and rapes them, That's the least common kind of rape. Almost always it's somebody that the victim knows. That's overwhelmingly likely. But that's sort of not widely known. And so people fear one maybe more than they should and fear the other maybe less than they should.

So since this happened, Steve McDaniel has tried to appeal his case in Georgia state courts.

Which usually means you give up any right to appeal. That's what a guilty jury does.

Yeah. But in 2018, he claimed his constitutional rights were violated, asked for a new trial. He represented himself. He called one of his own defense attorneys as a witness in his case. Not the right move. No. No. That backfired. Because to do that, to call your attorney to testify in your appeal, he had to waive attorney-client privilege.

Which means the attorney can now say anything that the defendant said to him during a time when that was privileged.

What Stephen McDaniel's defense attorney, Floyd Buford, said when he could speak freely about what his client had shared with him, in other words, outside lawyer-client privilege, well, it's like something out of a horror movie. He testified that McDaniel had admitted to decapitating Lauren, cutting her fingers off, and flushing them down the toilet. Really awful stuff. And he also said...

that McDaniel possessed some of the worst child porn that the attorney had ever seen. This normally would have been protected by privilege, but in this case, it wasn't. And it's not what you want your defense attorney revealing in court. That appeal didn't go anywhere.

So coming up next, your questions from social media. Let's take your questions from social media. Good idea. So a lot of people wrote to us saying that they lived in Macon at the time. They remember the coverage of this case. I will say this.

Now, for this Talking Dateline, we have the very latest developments in this case, because the man who ended up pleading guilty to the murder of Lauren Giddings tried to appeal his conviction. One of his defense attorneys revealed some significant details of the murder that his client may not have wanted to make public. So let's talk Dateline.

Just thought I'd add that. I like going places like that. I used to live in Atlanta. This was like 40 years ago. So I was in Macon and other parts of Georgia back then. A lot. You know, you loved Macon when you were there. Did people love you back? Were they nice to you?

No. A lot of questions about Lauren's dog. What became of Lauren's dog? Everybody wants to know. Well, it's an important thing.

Dogs are very important to a lot of people. And in nearly every Dateline episode that I've done that involves a dog, there are social media questions about what happened to the dog.

On the other hand, it may also have been that he waited until the dog wasn't there anymore, you know?

Yeah. Gail Brown Salvo on Facebook. Keith and I are on Facebook all the time. She says that this was such a sad story. So strange that the man who did this had a promising long career ahead of him and would end up destroying his life and the lives of this woman and her family, which is all true.

I will say that in most cases, I don't see people who end up being the killers sort of thinking about the ramifications of what happens. You know, I'm going to get caught. I'm going to, you know, end up in prison. My family will be ashamed of me. I'll impoverish them because they had to hire an attorney. You know, I'll wreck somebody else's family's life by taking away this person. Right.

I mean, that guy presumably went into law for some reason. Like, he thought, you know, he could help people, or he could help himself, or he could help his family, and, you know, he's going to be locked up for the rest of his life.

The sense that I get from Lauren Giddings is that she was a lot of fun. She was really smart. She was really interesting. And she was, you know, maybe the glue that held all her friends together. They all seemed to sort of coalesce around her.

I thought you were great with her. I thought that the two of you really had a great rapport.

And then, of course, this great twist in which the person that gets arrested that everybody thinks did it, at least at that point, is acquitted. So let's talk a little bit about that for starters.

Yeah, I've seen that. I've seen that a lot of times with families that got the result they wanted, you know. But now that other job that you had, that second job of representing the person who's no longer here, your loved one, all of that's over. And now, you know, the prosecutors, the cops that you dealt with all those years, they've moved on to something else, some other crime, some other case.

And you're like, OK, well, now what? You know, like I still have this giant void in my life because my husband, daughter, son, you know, wife is gone still. And that can be very hard. I'm glad that she's thinking about other things that they can do because that can be a tough place to be at. That's if you get the conviction you want.

Do we know what became of Nicole, where she is now, what she's doing?

I mean, look, you know, the title of that case is The People versus Nicole Rice. If I were acquitted in that case. you know, if it's the people versus Josh Mankiewicz, I would be getting away from those people. Like I would probably move out of that town.

And coming up next, your questions from social media. Social media, a lot of discussion about whether or not the jury reached the right verdict. Sue Marie on Facebook says, I can see the anxiety it would cause for a jury to put someone in jail on circumstantial evidence. And that may have been the problem.

A lot of conversation about the investigation on social and whether or not the police focused on the right suspects early on. Peggy Nicholson on Facebook. Those who investigated her murder failed to get any testings on the roommate or even thoroughly questioned her. I think they're talking about at the beginning. They were stuck on Tyler being the murderer the entire time.

Investigators failed Anita and her family for justice. Well, I'm not sure I would go along with that. But does the family feel investigators failed them?

and the length of time it took to get there. Kerry Fryer wants to know about cell phone records. And this was a question that I also had, which is, they mentioned texts in the cell phone records where any of the suspect's cell phones pinging in the area the morning of the murder.

I'm thinking that one of the problems might be that it's such a small town that everybody's cell phone is pinging on the same tower.

At all. Rebecca Gage asks a question that a lot of people ask, which is, can they try this case again? And the answer is, under our system of jurisprudence in this country, there's a thing called double jeopardy. And no, you cannot try it again.

You can only try once.

Now, remember, if you have any questions for us about stories or about Dateline, you can reach us 24-7 on social media, at DatelineNBC. And if you have a question for Talking Dateline, and if you have three names, because we prefer people who use three names. That's one of the bylaws of Dateline. You know who would have done really well would be Arthur Conan Doyle.

We would probably take his questions every week. But 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 at 212-413-5252. That's Keith's private number for a chance to be featured on a future episode.

And coming up on Friday, Keith has an all-new two-hour episode on a case that we've been following since the very beginning. It is the murders of four University of Idaho students. We have new reporting and new interviews and what it all means ahead of the murder trial of the suspect, Brian Koberger, later this summer. So check out Keith's episode, which is called The Terrible Night on King Road.

That's Friday at 9 o'clock, 8 central. Now, coming up Sunday at 10 o'clock is a dateline in a time when you don't usually find us. I have a new episode in which we're looking ahead to the Sean Combs trial, sort of everything that led up to this point and what you might hear over the next couple of weeks as the trial unfolds. That's at 10 p.m. Eastern time this Sunday. Thanks for listening.

But I mean, we hate that word. Yeah.

There's a period at the end of the sentence. And somebody almost always got convicted. I mean, you're talking about this was your first acquittal. I mean, in 30 years here, I've done, I don't know, maybe 10. I mean, they just don't come along that often.

You know, prosecutors are not supposed to bring murder cases unless they're very certain that they're going to get a conviction. You're not just allowed to try somebody because like, hey, maybe we'll get lucky and the jury will go along with us. Like the prosecutors don't do that. They tend to not go into the courtroom unless the deck is significantly stacked in their favor.

And that clearly was not the case this time. There was not an overwhelming case against Nicole.

Yeah. And you've got to believe that what Nicole is so sophisticated that she could leave the victim's DNA on the knife, but wipe hers off. She doesn't she doesn't really strike me as that kind of killer.

So the motive is what? They weren't getting along as roommates, so she decided to kill her?

And watch it because you record it every single week, which is what you ought to be doing. And then come back here. Now, to recap, college student Anita Knutson was found stabbed to death in her North Dakota apartment in 2007, and it took nearly 15 years for investigators to make an arrest immediately. in that murder.

You know, I've covered cases in which people who live in the same house, one of them ended up killing the other. And I will say that, I mean, look, every case is a little bit different. I'm not seeing the level of tension between the two roommates that gets you to murder. And also, like, and then what? And then you don't have that roommate anymore? I mean, there's no financial gain here.

There's no third party. They're not supposedly fighting over some boyfriend or girlfriend. Right. You know, nobody got custody of the home afterwards. I mean, it's... It feels thin kind of from the get-go.

And if that's what it is, if it's second degree, heat of passion... Then where's her DNA on the knife? One of the things that came up in my last story, which was the widow of Woodland Hills, was something very common in stabbing homicides, which is that when you stab somebody else, you frequently get cut. There wasn't any of that in this one. There weren't two sets of blood on the knife.

Two stab wounds also kind of fights the, you know, frenzy, anger, I've had it with you theory. But, you know.

You had a lot of access to the cops who investigated the case, who I thought were quite good. Tell me a little bit more about the ride along with David Goodman, who was the detective on this.

You know, in a lot of jurisdictions, bigger ones, you know, I mean, there are 15-year-old cold cases here in Los Angeles, where I am right now. But since... the 15-year-old cold case, and now there have been hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of other murders. Some, a lot of them unsolved. You don't really have that in Minot. You don't have this huge backlog of open cases.

And so I think this was, I get the feeling that this was kind of always in the back of their head.

Hi, everybody. I'm Josh Mankiewicz, and we are talking Dateline today with Blaine Alexander. Hi. Hello. So we're here to talk about Blaine's episode called Murder in Minot. Now, 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, stream it on Peacock or go to your DVR.

And then that turned out to be one of the first people they spoke with at the crime scene, which was Anita's roommate, Nicole. Now, she maintained her innocence. And as you saw or heard in the episode, she was acquitted after a week-long trial.

Like that's not happening in your big cities.

When we get back, we'll have that clip of Blaine's interview with Anita's sister, Anna, and how she describes the family's journey to find justice and also how they're looking ahead now. It was really heartbreaking to see Anita's parents on the stand as bad as it was. It's a great example of sort of how excruciating this whole thing is from beginning to end for the families involved.

And I say this all the time, like, you know, people always want to know, like, what's it like to sit across from murderers? That's easy. The hard part is sitting across from those families and watching what they have to go through.

So for this Talking Dateline, we have an extra clip for Blaine's interview, really great interview, I thought, with Anita's sister, Anna, and how she talks about that long fight for justice for her sister, which ultimately did not lead where the family wanted it to lead. So let's talk Dateline. Let's do it. a couple of things I loved about this episode.

Well, you know, and the other thing is sort of the part of the family's involvement that is not shown on TV because we just, you know, we only have two hours and not six hours. But, you know, by the time this gets into a courtroom, those parents, I don't know about these particular parents, but in almost all cases, that family, whoever we're talking about, has shown up for dozens of

Of different hearings involving, you know, status conferences, motion hearings, evidentiary hearings, all kinds of things in which they show up in the courtroom to represent the victim and to show the accused, hey, we're here and we haven't given up and we see you and we're going to be here throughout. And it becomes for these families like a second job.

Now let's talk about the verdict. So the judge issues this instruction beforehand, like everybody, you know, stay quiet. And then... the verdict is delivered and it's not guilty. And again, You know, they're acting like they just won a bowl game. I'm surprised that they didn't exercise a little bit more self-control, the defense.

Not like that. I mean, I recall some outbursts. I can't remember anything on that level. Anything, you know, the fist pumping, the whooping, that I don't remember. I remember, you know,

One, like it wasn't clear until pretty close to the end who police thought the guilty party was. A lot of times you have a pretty good idea earlier on, uh, There were a lot of sort of equally rated suspects as you sort of tick them off through the investigation.

judges saying i don't want to hear anything afterwards and then you do hear something you hear people you hear somebody go you know yes or good or you know and it's usually a gasp right or like and then people contain themselves and you hear people crying that's the other thing and and uh and and that's sort of an emotion that people are unable to control but but

Generally, over all the years that now I've been doing this, the reaction you hear is from the gallery, from the people watching on both sides, not from the defense or prosecution. That's the unusual part here was that it was it was a an outburst that really sort of started at the defense table.

You know, and I will not forget Anna saying, you know, I wish I could get that out of my head, but I can't. I can hear those. I can still hear those those screams of triumph. So you spoke with her in a clip that we are now that didn't make the broadcast that we're going to play now about you.

In which you were talking with her about sort of what those 15 years have been like, not just the trial itself, but the actual period of time of losing your sister and not knowing what happened. So let's listen to that.

I mean, I get why it made her family. It would make me crazy if that happened, but ultimately he did get the, he did get the punishment that the legal system would have doled out regardless of whether he had gone to church first or not.

There's a there's a great deal more writing. But even so, there's stuff you have to leave out. You have to make some of the same choices that you do when you're doing a piece that lasts a minute and 10 seconds for the evening news.

Yeah. OK, coming up next, your questions from social media. Okay, we are back with social media questions. Well, we got a lot of questions on a lot of topics. Jim Kelly from Facebook said, it showed how tech can use DNA to render an image of the killer and aid in their apprehension. Truly amazing. Now, here's the thing.

There's an enormous amount of debate within the forensic scientific community over whether or not DNA phenotyping is is is legit or junk science. But Parabon does not market this as we're going to give you an image of the killer. They market this as we're going to provide you with a lead. You still need to do basic police work after that.

We have an audio question from Brandon Elkins. Let's listen to that.

Another audio question. This one's from Catherine Eipert about the timing of Ryan's confession.

I do love it when people call in with audio questions. It's nice to hear everybody's voice.

Dateline fans, as we already know, are dog lovers. Patricia N. The Mutts says, always take issues of animal cruelty seriously. Ryan Riggs committed animal cruelty. It escalated from there, resulting in the rape and murder of a beautiful young woman. And it is true that a lot of rapists begin with cruelty towards animals, specifically cats, since that's perceived as a more feminine animal.

Patricia also said that the Good Samaritans that went out looking for her and found her in this place where no one ever goes, she says that was divine intervention, which I'm guessing people in that church might agree with.

So as you might expect, as we all might expect, Shantae's family and friends were watching. Linda Lamond wrote, thank you so much for telling Shantae's story. Blaine, you did a wonderful job. I agree.

Shantae's mother, Michelle, said, thank you all so much for telling my baby's story. She deserves this.

Um, my prediction is that you will still be in touch with some of these people in a few years.

So let's talk about the episode. The locals referred to that farmhouse, which was off the map in a lot of ways. They call that the haunted house. What was that place like?

You produced this with Marissa Mayer?

Who is the greatest. Congratulations to both of you. Very, very good story. Good episode. And a great sort of tale from start to finish.

Remember, if you have any questions for us about stories you think we should cover or about Dateline, you can reach us 24-7 on social media at at Dateline NBC. And if you have a question for us here on Talking Dateline, you can leave it for us in a voicemail at 212-413-5252 for a chance to be featured on a future episode. And that phone rings on Keith's desk, just FYI.

And since we're talking about Keith... Be sure to check out Keith's new podcast, which is called Murder in the Moonlight. It is about a double homicide and a single shiny clue that helps investigators crack the case. You can binge the entire series right now, wherever you get your podcasts.

And coming up this Friday, convicted murderer Lori Vallow Daybell, who some of you may know as Mommy Doomsday, speaks with Keith Morrison in her first ever television interview. We will see you Fridays on Dateline on NBC.

And I also thought the town was much more of a character than a lot of localities are when we do Dateline. You know, a lot of them are in bigger cities. This really felt like a movie. You know, I mean, the drone shots of those dirt roads and those long straightaways. I mean, you get a sense of how sort of isolated it must have been at the time.

So go there, listen to it, or you can stream it on Peacock if you want to watch it, and then come back here. So to recap... This is about a young woman named Shantae Blankenship, and her remains were found in a deserted and very scary-looking farmhouse in Brownwood, Texas.

She made a tremendous impression on people. And Shantae did. Watching the story, I thought you were able to get a really good sense of sort of what she was like.

So for the first hour I'm watching this, I'm thinking, okay. This is the boyfriend. Like, I don't even know how you guys are going to sustain this for two hours because it's so obviously him. I mean, you come in, you're the boyfriend, right? So you're got to be close to the top of the suspect list and you delete texts from your phone.

I mean, that is that that is like, you know, wearing a sandwich board that says I did it.

And then, of course, it turns out he's not the guy. He doesn't have anything to do with it. And he ends up being like a really important interview.

Hey everybody, I'm Josh Mankiewicz, and we're talking Dateline today with Blaine Alexander. Hi. Hello. Hello, hello. So Blaine is here to talk about her episode called The Haunted House Confession. Now, if you have not seen it, you, the listeners, it's the episode right below this one on your Dateline podcast feed.

And law enforcement worked for a long time to track down her killer because they were certain that somebody in that church-going community was behind the murder. And it would take a confession in church to crack that case. Now, for this Talking Dateline, we have some extra sound from a couple of churchgoers, Linda and Russell Lamond.

When we get back, we're going to have an extra clip of churchgoers Linda and Russell Lamond, the couple who were there for the killer's confession in church in front of the congregation and what they learned about compassion from that. So the Texas Rangers, they have to wear that hat. That's not choice.

That is a requirement. And if they do an interview without it, they will get in some trouble, I think.

So I did a story with the Rangers once. The guy wore his hat like the entire time. I never saw the top of his head. And we don't do a lot of stories with people who wear hats.

Absolutely. One of the things I thought that really came out in this was the sort of zigzag nature of some of these investigations in which You know, they looked at the boyfriend, they looked at her grandfather, they looked at the pastor, they looked at that other guy who got very combative in the police interview. And that's how these things go. I mean, that's not just Dateline storytelling.

That is, you know, you're looking at these guys and you want to know, you know, do you have an alibi? And sort of, you know, what kind of read do we get off you when we ask you these tough questions?

And they're going to talk about how their proximity to this awful crime gave them a new perspective. So let's talk Dateline. I am delighted to be here because this is your first two-hour episode as a Dateline correspondent.

Let's talk a little bit about that sketch. Yes. The Hail Mary sketch done by Parabon. Now, phenotyping to get a portrait is extremely controversial. Andrea did it in an episode, which I think was called Facing the Music. And they made a sketch of her based on her DNA. And it didn't really look like Andrea. You certainly wouldn't have looked at that sketch and thought, oh, that's Andrea.

So sometimes it doesn't work and it can be incredibly misleading is the criticism. But in this case, it led to the guy.

I was struck by how much the sketch looked like him, particularly in the eyes. Yes.

yes yes you know there's a lot of police generated video in this which i thought really sort of helped help the viewer kind of live in the moment you really see a lot of things and i'm actually going to say that this is one of those episodes where it really is important for people to go look at it and not just listen to the audio because you're going to learn some stuff from the pictures that you're not going to learn otherwise

A lot of times, you know, it's very hard for killers to recount what it is that they did. He just he just talks about it like like he was having lunch. One of the other things that I thought was was fascinating was there's those weird markings on her, which, you know, maybe makes you think like this is some kind of like devil worshiping cult. She's killed on Friday the 13th.

And then it turns out none of that really has anything to do with it. But again, it's one of those things that if you're working on this murder, like you're going to look at those possibilities because that does all seem like the stars are kind of lining up.

This feels like a good time to play the extra sound from the Lamans who talked about what that confession sort of did to them.

Now, you know, you are a veteran TV reporter, but I'm guessing that you were experiencing the same thing I did when I joined, which is, you know, you go from stories that are, you know, a really long story is two and a half minutes long. In your old life. And now you're doing two hours, which means a lot more can be included. You can tell a longer story.

I'm always stunned when I hear people talking about forgiveness and compassion for people like Ryan in a case like this. I am. I would find that hard to conjure up, but they don't, clearly.

That part was super creepy. Okay. After the break, we will be back with Dateline producer extraordinaire, Ann Priceman. And she will answer some of your questions from social media. We are back and we are joined by Dateline producer Ann Priceman. Hi, Ann.

I'm good. I love having you here on Talking Dateline.

We are going to take some questions from social media, which Anne is going to help us answer. But first, Anne, tell us about sort of your journey with this case.

Yes, yes, yes. Was it as intimidating to work with Keith in 1998 as it is now? Hmm.

We have. Let's talk about some social media questions which have come in. Now, they're more statements than questions. But here's one from Tammy Minoski, who we know very well here at Dateline. She said, Kenny probably has no idea how to live without his mother. And I have to say that sounds true to me because she is like dominated his life, controlled almost every aspect of it forever.

And he's like a bunch of other people that we occasionally interview on Dateline, which is I'll do the interview, but I don't want to talk about the thing that you want to talk about, which is the only thing anybody wants to interview you about.

Okay. One, I think you're right to stop kissing up to Keith.

I think I like Ann better than I like you, Josh. Oh, first of all, I don't have any question that that's true. Most people feel that way. So you're definitely the majority. Joan GVS says, I had to go to the bank four times in a month to answer for everything in my life to buy my house. Over 20 pages of information proving we're not laundering money was completed. It was crazy.

How do these people get away with it? Uh, you know, uh, first of all, the answer is one of the answers is it was easier to do that previously than it is now.

Stacey Delilah writes in to say, if these people had put this time and effort into a legitimate business, they could have been successful. And that's probably true. But going straight's not as much fun, is it? No, that wasn't the point.

in the business of conning and scamming people sort of have contempt for, for like, you know, the squares who, you know, work every day and don't break the rules.

Now, Andrea and Blaine got a question last week that they want us to listen to. So let's listen to that.

Yeah, Andrea could not be more wrong. No, she clearly doesn't know us well at all. Andrea is correct. Keith is one of those people that you never hear anything bad about. And now that I've gotten to know Keith a little better, I do understand why, because he is a pro and a great journalist.

Everybody loves him. What is he doing? Keith is so great. La, la, la, la, la. I can't get enough of Keith. Yeah, yeah. It's like the rest of us don't exist. Okay. There you go. All right. I feel better now. Okay. So that is Talking Dateline for the week. Thanks very much, Keith and Anne. And thanks to all of you for listening.

Remember, if you have any questions for us about our stories or any case that you think we should be covering, you can reach out to us on social media at at Dateline NBC. Or you can send us an audio message. for a chance to be featured in our next Talking Dateline episode, which I know there's fistfights to do that.

And don't forget to tune in Friday for my all-new episode on Dateline at 9 o'clock Eastern, 8 Central about the April 2023 murder of the guy who founded Cash App, a man named Bob Lee. It's a story you've heard about. And now we're going to tell you about the hunt to find his killer. See you on Dateline on NBC.

It's the kind of story that makes people want to get into journalism. I mean, it's a long, endless, twisting yarn that touches on all different localities, different people, different crimes. I mean, like Sante, her big talent clearly is that she doesn't come off as being as dangerous and as homicidal as she actually was.

To be a criminal, to be a sort of small-time criminal.

Because I don't think she understood for a long time. One, what a huge service she did for him by talking him out of that life. And second, how lucky she was to be finished with that world. That's right. Because she could have been in a landfill somewhere.

Well, what's interesting is that Sante was arrested a few times and had a criminal record, and that didn't slow her down. But the possibility that might happen to him clearly did slow Kent down.

Now, this is the story of a criminal mastermind, someone you might have heard of. Her name is Sante Kahn. She became famous back in the 90s when investigators who were looking for a missing millionaire uncovered a very, very creepy, dark history of crimes and her surprising partner in those crimes and those murders, her youngest son, Kenny. Right.

You know, frequently on Dateline, we cover the stories of murders, and the murder is the point of the person's criminal activity, which is, like, they want to get rid of their husband or wife or, you know, boyfriend or whatever, right? Or whatever. But in this case...

Frequently, the murders were were to cover up other crimes, financial crimes, insurance fraud, check kiting when they would be found out like they were with that bank examiner. Right.

Like they killed that guy like they didn't gain anything from his death except that he was no longer investigating them. And, you know, they clearly killed that poor old woman in New York City just because they wanted to either, what, live in her house or sell it and cash it out.

great police work in this one and also some incredible luck in which one officer recognizes the sketch put out by a different part of the department.

When we come back, Keith has some extra sound that did not make the broadcast that he's going to play for us from his first interview with Kent Walker. You know, most moms don't lead their kids into lives of crime, but that is a position of some colossal influence. I hear my mom's voice when I have not made the bet, right? I hear my mom saying, go make the bet. And I do, and I'm good at it too.

Hi, everybody. I'm Josh Mankiewicz, and we're talking Dateline today with Keith. Hi, Keith. Oh, hello, Josh. So this episode is called The Devil Wore White, and it's the kind of story that we almost never do at Dateline because it's less about the relationship between killer and victim and almost entirely about the relationship between killer and other killer.

That's all Holly Mankiewicz. But most moms don't groom their kids for a life of crime, you know. And the idea that one son couldn't break away and the other one knew he had to is such a great part of this story.

Now, if you have not listened to this broadcast yet, it is the episode right below this one in the list of podcasts that you chose from. So you can go there. You can listen to it. You can watch it on Peacock. And then when you come back, Keith has an extra clip that he wants to play for more of his interview back in 2001.

I don't excuse his behavior at all. I don't. He's right where he belongs. He's a killer. Yeah, exactly. But one does sense that he sort of never had a chance. Right.

I'm not sure I'd buy it.

Well, I mean, first of all, you do this. He does this interview, you know, but I don't want to talk about my mom.

That's a guy who sort of is disconnected from reality now as he was when he was under his mother's thrall.

He wouldn't have been able to have one before he was incarcerated. Right. I will never understand that. Although I did work years ago with a woman who was dating a guy and he was locked up. And I assumed wrongly that they had been together before he got locked up. She's like, no, I met him, you know, after he was. And I'm like, why are you? Why are you dating somebody who is incarcerated?

And she said to me, well, you always know where he is. It's right.

with kent walker who was you know sort of the heart and soul of this show in a lot of ways and later we're going to be joined by one of my favorite people and that is dateline producer ann priceman who worked on this broadcast and she will also help answer some of the questions that you may have from social media so stick around for that or stay tuned as we often said in 1961 keith you remember saying stay tuned i remember saying that

And they say that our culture is flawed. Just imagine. Yeah. Yeah. All right.

That was a harrowing story. You hear anything from Kenny that sounded like remorse to you?

Yeah, we're big on that in this country, on confession and redemption. Oh, yeah, and not believing the confession for a long time. Maybe more cynical. Um, so was it difficult to get Kent to sit down and talk about this?

This feels like a good time to play the extra sound from Kent Walker. This is a piece of the interview that did not make the broadcast, and he's talking about some early memories with Sante.

You're in a drugstore or something with your mother.

Did police have anything to say about whether or not Sante and Kenny are suspects in any uncharged murders? Are there other people out there that they killed?

Yeah. There's no tuner anymore. That's the problem. So let's talk Dateline. So as I said in the intro, this is the kind of story we don't usually do here at Dateline. That is absolutely correct. This is less about killer and victim and more about killer and killer. And it's a crazy, crazy story.

They're both on the hook for these murders. Kenny confesses to save her. It's like the last act of this controlling relationship that they have.

Yeah. Yeah. And it's great that everybody did show up. I mean, that really tells you a lot about what kind of what kind of place Brooklyn, Iowa is.

No, this is someplace even cooler, Brooklyn, Iowa.

Yeah. I mean, it's an awful story. And it all I mean, it's one of those things that, you know, if she goes out for a run five minutes later, you know, they don't run into each other. And she's alive today.

Yeah. I mean, that's, look, you know, prosecutors don't like to go into court on any case, but certainly a murder case without some significant evidence. So, you know, maybe the killer was hoping that that stuff might get thrown out too. That's the only thing I can think of.

Yeah. Well, I mean, fortunately, you know, they continued talking and he incriminated himself all over again.

The thing I keep coming back to is that she was wearing headphones and she didn't know that he was approaching her. And that is, I mean... You know, how many times has a victim wearing headphones unable to detect the person coming up behind them been an issue?

And I know that's part of the advice that people get, which is if you're going to go jogging, don't wear your headphones because, first of all, you might not hear a car that could hit you. And you also will be vulnerable to people like this guy. Yeah.

I mean, sometimes people are listening to Dateline podcasts and sometimes they're listening to music.

I mean, that's a that's a big part of running. That's the problem. Yeah. And now here's an opportunity for me to get on my soapbox again, which is like the world is full of tips for women about how not to be assaulted and don't wear headphones while running is one of them. Be situationally aware, which means, you know, you have to be able to hear as well.

I mean, I don't know that I, having done this job and also having been a reporter for nearly half a century, would ever go to sleep without locking my door. I don't know that there is a city on earth or a town on earth where I would not lock the door. So I can't say that that would be the case. But I will say that clearly everything about Brooklyn, Iowa, said you're safe here.

And learning self-defense and, you know, don't have too much to drink at a party if there isn't somebody that you trust to take you home. Those are all good pieces of advice. But what no one ever talks about is if we taught our sons not to rape, We wouldn't need any of these things.

And now it is time for me to go.

And she clearly did not feel in any danger.

And for investigators, I think that was a big help. I mean, here in Los Angeles, you see a black Chevy Malibu. I mean, you go to DMV, there are going to be thousands of those, but not in that area. So, I mean, that kind of, that smallness definitely helped in the investigation.

And it required... Endless, lengthy, repeated viewing of all the video that was available from people's houses, from Ring cameras and other security cameras around town, because they just got all the video, is what they did. And they just looked and looked. Now, the interesting thing about seeing the witness's van is that, you know...

One of the things that we've learned and that detectives across the country know is that witness statements, particularly involving people who are trying to be helpful to law enforcement, aren't always correct. Sometimes something the investigator says will find its way accidentally into the witness statement. So it's great for investigators to be able to see that.

The hairstylist's fan, thus corroborating what she said. She did not embellish her statement trying to help police unconsciously, which people sometimes do. She actually saw what she said she saw, and there's the proof. I mean, that is a little tiny window into how... Investigating homicides have changed. I mean, 50 years ago, pretty much none of that existed.

There was some security video, but it wasn't being recorded. You know, maybe it was a live camera that somebody was watching from another place. I mean, closed circuit TV has been around for a while, but not the kind of stuff that you have here and not people's doorbell cameras and not all the other...

things that they have, not the ability to track a cell phone or to look up a car's license or registration, you know, like that. Those things didn't exist. And that made this case possible to break. Finding that little tiny snippet of her ponytail bobbing as she ran, that told you, we don't have to worry about everything before that on her run. No, not at all.

Every other place she was that we don't I don't need to go back there because it didn't happen there. It happened later. And that that's a huge help.

Yes, they go out and they buy a new phone and they connect it to her account.

Thus being able to essentially clone it, I guess.

It depends on what kind of phone you have. It depends on what kind of first of all, whether they build the people know the password. That's that's a huge thing.

And in this case, you know, it wasn't as probative as it otherwise might have been because, you know, you're looking on the phone and what you want to see is a text from the killer saying, hey, why don't you meet me at such and such a place at 6 p.m., right? And there wasn't anything like that.

But the absence of someone saying, please meet me, gave them a sort of alternative theory of the crime, which was that this was essentially random. This wasn't somebody she knew. This wasn't somebody she was headed to meet. What that says to investigators is this was unplanned.

Right. You know, when she's going 60 miles an hour, obviously she's in a car there. Is she alive at that point? Is she with her phone at that point? Because we only know the phone is going 60 miles an hour. So that doesn't necessarily mean she's with it. But in this case, I think it did. So, I mean, those are all things that investigators have to think about while they're looking at that data.

You know, I mean, she was she had a Snapchat streak going with her cousin for 600 days. That kind of helps. because that kind of person is not going to fall off the earth. You know, like that person is not going to stop. They're not going to stop.

I think he was on a day off and he just sees them out. He's like, oh, well, look at that. You know, now I will say this. After we finish recording talking Dateline, I'm going to to the retirement of a homicide detective here in Los Angeles. And she is one of those people like that.

Steve Kivy, who would have noticed the car, put it together and despite being on day off, you know, would have started making some phone calls. You know, there are a lot of cops. I'm not talking about homicide detectives, but guys in uniform in radio cars who just obsessively punch in plate numbers that they see all day long.

on every street corner because they're thinking, like, that car doesn't look like it belongs in this neighborhood. And sometimes that's how you get hits, you know, because you're always working and always thinking. And Steve Kivy is one of those guys.

One of the things that certainly is pervasive among the criminals we cover is that they have this idea that they're not going to get caught, right? That there was no one there when the crime happened except themselves and the victim. And so therefore, there weren't any eyewitnesses.

And now a few days have gone by and police have not come to my house and they haven't arrested me and I'm living my life as normal. I'm back to my job. And And everything seems OK. And that, I think, gives a lot of people a false sense of security. Now, whether, you know, in this case, Mr. Rivera felt, I don't know what he felt, but clearly he was working. You know, he had a job to go to there.

And as to why investigators waited, you know. I think they felt like they had a fix on him. And I think that area is too sparse and underpopulated for a full time surveillance. I mean, that's really hard in a small town because, you know, I mean, you know, you park a van on my street here in Los Angeles. I don't pay any attention to it.

But if there are no cars on the street, but there's a surveillance van, you are going to pay attention to it.

You know, I mean, this is small town America where everybody knows everybody else. Maybe not everybody else, but you know a lot of your neighbors when people drive by you and things like that. This is sort of the quintessential small town where neighbors look out for each other and people don't lock their doors.

They wanted Pamela Romero because she spoke Spanish. And also because of sort of, I mean, the thing about her is that she'd never done a homicide investigation before. And that kind of worked to their advantage because this wasn't the sort of Hollywood idea of, you know, the cop sitting across from you and banging on the table and saying, If you talk to me, I'll help you out with the DA.

I mean, there was none of that. She's soft spoken and she's empathetic. And that apparently did work with him to the point where there was another officer in the room with them at the beginning, a man. And he was the suspect was directing everything. Yeah. Just wanted her to Romero. And so finally, the other guy was just like, you know what, I'm going to leave.

And, you know, he was the Miranda thing later became a huge issue. But, you know, they kept saying to him, I think a bunch of times they said to him, you're not in custody. You can you can go. You know, and they point the doors right there. And that, I think, also gave him sort of a sense that, OK, this doesn't really count if I'm not being arrested. If I just keep denying it, I'll be OK.

But, you know, look, one of the things, again, that we learn in Dateline is that. Telling a lie is much harder than people think it is. And sticking with it is much harder than people think it is, particularly when the person you're talking with has some evidence that you don't know they have, and they are also kind of rolling it out bit by bit by bit. So you can't just be saying, I don't know.

I didn't do it. I wasn't there. I don't know. I don't know what happened. I wasn't there. Then they're like, well, wait a minute. Why is your phone and her phone in the same place? That kind of thing, right? First, he said, I wasn't there. I don't know what you're talking about. Then he said, OK, well, I did see her. OK, well, you know, I did stop. You know, I mean, you know, she was cute.

I mean, all this stuff that he didn't want to say at the beginning. And eventually, as Officer Romero keeps talking to him, it just sort of starts coming out.

It's just I mean, it's it's just the most gigantic error. And I know she's super regretted that. Fortunately, I mean, and the result was, I think, like six hours of his interrogation went out the window. The judge ruled they couldn't use that. Fortunately, he got remorandized, which was so brilliant.

And she was the kind of young lady that grows up in a town like that, sweet and a nice person and trusting of other people. Hollywood couldn't write this any more effectively than real life did.

He led them to her body and then he made another confession there. So, I mean, that ended up not being as big a deal as it otherwise might have been.

When it is custodial or when the person believes it is custodial, in other words, I can't leave. I'm being questioned. I don't have the option to leave. That's where you need to advise somebody of their rights.

He's been cyber-stalking you. He read all your emails. He's learned everything about this affair. And now he's going to confront the guy you're having the affair with. That's when, like, alarm bells should be going off. Like, this is a time to start taking this extremely seriously. Right. You know, one of the things Meridot said is, Rob died so Sophie could be free. Right.

So profound. I mean... Those two loved each other. I think that's true.

clearly trying to get out of the place where the fire is happening and that that didn't happen in this case. And that was in itself suspicious.

It's the worst. It's the worst. And I wish we never see it, but we see it all the time. That's it for this episode of Talking Dateline. Thank you, Andrea. Before we go, we wanted to tell you about something that we're trying now. You can now send us audio of your questions, and so your voice might be featured on an upcoming episode.

Make a recording of your message on your phone and send it to us as a direct message on Facebook, Instagram, or X, formerly Twitter. And it doesn't have to be about the episode itself. And no topic is off limits, although some language is not going to get you on Talking Dateline. But you can also still reach us the old-fashioned way.

Now this is the old-fashioned way, the OG way on social at DatelineNBC. Also, don't forget to listen to my all-new podcast, which is called Deadly Mirage. The first two episodes are now available wherever you get your podcasts. Subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and for early access to episodes. Okay, that's Talking Dateline. Thank you. See you Fridays on Dateline on NBC.

This reminds me of Dawn Hackney, the woman who was killed in Bremerton, Washington, and In a podcast I did called Mortal Sin, in which it was thought that she died in a fire. It turned out that her husband had strangled her before the fire began. So, you know, there were two other kind of similar murders, arsons in that Teaneck, New Jersey area. I know, strange, right?

This episode of yours is called The Room Downstairs. And if you in the audience have not listened to it, it's the episode right below this one on your Dateline podcast feed. So go there and listen. Now, for this talking Dateline, Andrea has two extra interview clips that did not make it into the broadcast.

Around the time of Rob's death. And so police clearly were at least... wondering whether this had to do with one of those. It certainly does leap out at you from the beginning. What do you think? You think Tony Tung knew about those?

I mean, they'd been in the paper. Like, you know, you could have seen it.

Right.

I have to believe that in this case, Tony Tongue was the main suspect sort of from the get-go. I mean, Rob had to tell people, you know, I'm having an affair with this woman, Sophie. And by the way, her husband was not happy. Like, that's not the kind of thing you keep to yourself. Right.

There would be video, and there would be a way to place Tony at the scene more accurately.

The prosecutor was pretty clear with you, I thought, that he believed that somebody else had helped Tony Tong get from Manhattan to New Jersey to cover his tracks. That it wasn't just, you know, he took a cab and the cab driver didn't realize, you know, who he was taking or why he was taking it and didn't remember it later. Like, he makes it sound like it's an actual co-conspirator.

And nobody ever got arrested for that. I mean, the feeling you get is that whoever that was, if that person does exist, they're getting away with it.

So to recap, this was March 2011 in suburban New Jersey, just across the George Washington Bridge from Manhattan in New York City. A house was engulfed in flames. Firefighters found a body in a basement bedroom, belonged to a 59-year-old guy named Robert Cantor. And police did have a feeling that it was more than a standard house fire.

I mean, I've said this in the past, but there's this sense that, you know, out there in the public, as you know, that circumstantial evidence sort of is lesser, that it doesn't count as much. I mean, here's the thing about circumstantial evidence. It doesn't lie. Like, he did erase his hard drive at that time that night.

Circumstantial evidence can't be accused of forgetting to put on its eyeglasses. Circumstantial evidence can't be accused of being angry at the defendant and slanting its testimony for that reason. Circumstantial evidence is whatever it is. There's no other way to interpret that. So sometimes circumstantial evidence is much better than direct evidence.

Right.

Well, you know, he leaves the apartment at different times than he says. His timeline does not match up. Rob's wife, who got some insurance money as a result of this, she would be someone police would look at. She clearly was not involved. Those kind of things also sort of end up pointing law enforcement more and more and more toward Tony, who's a natural suspect.

He's the husband whose wife is cheating on him with the person who ended up getting killed. Yeah.

Okay, when we come back, Andrea has a behind-the-scenes story about her interview with Tony Tongue. Let me ask you a couple of things about Tony Tung, because when I see him in the interview and he's wearing that atrocious sweater, right? You know, which is clearly not prison wear. I think to myself, oh, OK, he's either not the guy or he was acquitted.

Now, for those of you who are listening who have not seen the episode, we have included a link to a photo from that interview in the episode description. Take a look.

Turned out they were right because he had been shot in the head and that the fire was a kind of a cover-up. So this case sort of takes us to the oldest motive in the book, which is jealousy, passion, revenge, and a love triangle, familiar shape to anybody who watches Dateline, that went very, very wrong. So let's talk Dateline.

This was Tim Beachum?

Oh, I'm absolutely going to name him.

That sweater is hideous.

Right, right.

Well, I'm pretty sure there is now.

It is. And I totally bought it. I thought, well, either he beat the charges or he's not going to get charged and I'm wrong about him. So this case took a while. I mean, he was arrested like 14 months after the murder.

Right.

Clearly, some people were not expecting a guilty verdict because this was not some like overwhelming slam dunk case.

Yeah.

Three days, which is a long time. Yeah. And then his conviction is overturned. You know, there's this belief that when that verdict is entered and the jury comes back, like, well, that's it. You know, there's not going to be any more here. And then turns out, a couple years later, you're back to square one, essentially.

What do you think made the difference between the first trial and the second trial? Because the first trial, the jury was out for a long time. I think sort of a lot of people expected a mistrial. The second one, you know, the jury was only out for a couple hours.

After the break, Andrea is going to share two podcast exclusive clips that did not make it into the broadcast. One was Rob's best friend and the other from Rob's killer. I'm guessing you guys tried very hard to get Sophie to talk and she didn't want to. But you got Rob's sister, and she was great.

Yeah. I thought your interview with Mayor Dodd was just so adorable. I mean, he seems like a great guy. And the closeness that he felt with Rob and clearly still feels all these years later is very obvious. I mean, he really loved his friend. And they loved each other. They had these silly nicknames for each other. They were funny. They were so funny.

So here's a clip that did not make the broadcast from your interview with Mehrdad.

You know, everything about this from the beginning, from when you first, you know, the guy first sees the smoke coming from across the street, the guy who's fixing his tire, like you immediately think, yeah, there's going to be more to it than just somebody dies in a fire.

Hi, everybody. I'm Josh Mankiewicz, and we are talking Dateline today with Andrea.

I mean, if I'm in that situation, I'm not letting that guy in my house. I know why he's there. I know he's ticked off at me. I'm going to be like, hey, look, you should probably talk to your wife about this. Like, this is between the two of you. This is not about you and me. But I would not be like, hey, come on in. Let's have coffee. Let's be buds. That's a really good point.

Or if somebody's wearing an incredibly garish sweater.

Yeah, yeah.

Now we have a different piece of sound about the same thing. This is Tony Tong telling you about those visits to Rob. Let's listen to that.

And I thought it was very interesting what the fire investigators said, that when you see a healthy person, not somebody who's, you know, confined to their bed or something, a guy who's 59 years old, they don't stay in the bed. They're trying to get out. You find them near the door or they're,

not see this love triangle, you know, from Sophie's point of view, for example, or Rob's and not think to yourself, this is going to head in a direction I don't want it to head in. Like they did not seem to see that. Rob seemed to think, no, no, I'll win this guy over the way I win everybody over. And Sophie did not seem to perceive the danger. Yeah. Your husband has found out about the affair.

Thank you. Brandy Guthrie, thank you so much for that. That's one of my favorite lines in Dateline. Yeah, David did not flip on Bathsheba. That's what's interesting, is they spent so much time reading and talking about the Bible and using it to justify this affair that they were having, if not the And yet, if you read the story of David and Bathsheba, it's very clearly a cautionary tale.

Like, you don't read that and think like, all right, yeah, that all worked out the way it was supposed to. It didn't. We can mirror this.

I mean, they were, no question they were. This would all happen sort of after the kids would go to bed and the liquor bottles would be uncorked.

And, you know, it's this sort of happy, perfect community existing, you know, sort of in the middle of nowhere.

I was just going to ask you, yeah, when... Yeah, when the kids are in bed, I'm thinking that the last thing you and Jay are thinking about is let's have some other people over.

Yeah, no, it's I must say, I thought, wow, weren't you worn out?

Yeah, the Bernatine's marriage did not survive all of this. And I guess the question is, you know. Is did this intrigue, you know, the the wolf pack? Maybe is that what undid them? Or is that what made a marriage possible? This little extracurricular thing that they were having, because in some cases that clearly is is the escape valve that people need.

And look, I mean, I'm not looking down my nose at anybody. I mean, I you know, marriage is very difficult. People do all kinds of things to make their marriages work. As long as everybody understands what they're getting and as long as, you know, you're not hurting anybody else, there certainly exists an argument for an alternative lifestyle.

I don't know how she's doing in prison. Look, the one person we really wanted to speak with for this was Sabrina. First was Sabrina, and second was Jonathan. Those are the two people I wanted to talk most with. And third was the prosecutor, because I wanted to know what got you from Jonathan actually committing the crime to her being the ringleader.

because what is there besides Jonathan's word that she was the ringleader in all this? And none of those people wanted to talk with us. The answer was no. Now, in California, where everybody's incarcerated, doing electronic interviews, radio or TV, from prison is much more difficult than in other states because the laws were enacted after Charles Manson gave a bunch of TV interviews there.

to make it harder for prison inmates to appear on television. So it's much harder in California to speak with people who are incarcerated in the state system than in other states.

Okay. I have two things to say to that. One, Lisa, thank you. Two, a year from now, you'll be saying Blaine Alexander is your favorite Dateline host.

They will be absolutely saying that to you, too. Yeah. And you're like, huh. Noted. OK. Yeah. Yeah. I'm sure. Sure. I will. I will cover your your horrifying disappearance. Disappearance.

Well, I mean, it's a little like, you know, sort of Never Never Land. I mean, you know, you've got this group of young couples, call themselves the Wolfpack, their parents during the day and partiers during the night, you know, and they're

That's right.

That's right.

Thank you. And great to see you and hear you here on Talking Dateline and many more to come. Absolutely. Can't wait.

that might not be the same in other cities because you don't necessarily have people just like you at your age group with kids living right near you in the same area. But, you know, look, I mean, the things that happened here are things that happen all the time, all over America.

I guess people who thought of building this community out there into the desert sun thought that they would not ever happen there.

Yeah, I mean, I think that's right. I mean, look, there are desert communities out there that have been out there a very long time. But, like, more recently have been these other sort of, you know, perfect planned communities where the streets are, you know, have names like Strawberry Lane where the LeBrons lived. Right.

And I guess, you know, I guess the answer is that no matter how perfect you try to make the place where you are, real life issues are going to come in like infidelity and boredom and sometimes much worse than either of those.

I think that Jason and Kelly were an interesting part of this story. You know, they were clearly part of the Wolfpack and the sort of party atmosphere that surrounded that. And there's

No question that that they were part of the I don't know whether you want to call it swinging or wife swapping or let's just say this alternative lifestyle that they were doing, because because at one point, Jason made this sort of distinction between infidelity and what they were doing.

You know, what can I say? I think for a lot of married couples, it's kind of understood that there isn't any permission, no matter who it is, no matter what situation it is. But they had chosen to do things differently.

Yeah. I can't tell you, you, Blaine, exactly how this worked. But they clearly had some system which involved different people being together in different situations, maybe while other people were present, that they felt did not stretch the bounds of permission. Right. So it was a way for people to be with other people without sort of, you know, breaking, breaking either.

I'm not going to say breaking their vows, but at least breaking their their post marriage vows of of what constituted fidelity and infidelity.

Oh yeah, no, no. They, they, they both, they had that expression of like, you know, when people are going to the dentist, you know, like this is going to be awful, but you know, in a couple hours it's going to be over. I'll be out of here thinking about how terrible it was. I mean, look, they agreed to do it.

And I think they agreed to do it because they loved Rob because they felt that he had been done wrong. We've got no subpoena power here at Dateline. People are only on because they want to be. And I think the Bernatines wanted to tell their story. They were ready for anything. And I can only imagine that it was embarrassing.

It always is to have your sort of personal business laid out in front of the whole country. Right. Look, one of the things that's always true about murder investigations is that it pulls back the covers on everybody's secrets, including things that don't actually have to do with the murder itself. And this was one of those cases.

Look, this is a question that I have specifically asked of defendants. from whom I was separated by a thick pane of prison glass. Why did you not think about just getting a divorce? I mean, it's legal in this country, and you can get divorced as many times as you want, and your family may hate you afterwards. You may be out of money afterwards.

You may have the distrust and enmity of your family and friends, but you will not be locked up, and you probably also will be able to sleep at night. Why people choose murder is one of the questions involving the stuff that you and I cover here at Dateline that I've never really had an answer to. Now, that said, why did this happen? Sabrina's defense was... I didn't want him dead. I was content.

I had this life sort of compartmentalized the way I wanted it. I had my husband who I loved and who was a great father and, you know, took care of me and the kids. And then I had my lover who was very exciting and younger and we read scripture to each other. You know, her defense was I didn't want to do, I didn't want either a divorce or murder.

And you can't convict her without believing Jonathan. There is nothing on those tapes in which she acknowledges authorship of this plan.

I think that the idea that Rob was murdered at a place that wasn't his normal place of employment was a very big part of the prosecution's case, because I think the argument was made that Jonathan would only have known where to go if Sabrina had told him.

And Sabrina's response to that was, yeah, I probably did tell him, but not because I wanted Rob killed, but because when Rob was working that far away, then... My lover and I would have plenty of time to get together because it's a super long commute for Rob, and he's going to call me each way, coming and going. So it'll be the perfect day to sneak away for a few hours with Jonathan.

All I can say is, you know— All of you, not just you, Blaine, but you in the audience, like think back to your first relationship and how it seemed like it was everything, right? This is the person I've always thought I should be with. And now I'm with them.

How can we forge a relationship that lasts forever, despite the fact that we are not supposed to be together or that we're too young or we're both in high school or like whatever it is? And people do that. And I think that's some of what Jonathan was going through. He had led in that way, I think, a kind of a sheltered life.

I mean, there was a lot of discussion that she was the first significant relationship he'd ever had.

Or if you've talked yourself into that. How you read the Bible as closely as at least Jonathan did, and she did under sort of his tutelage, I think, and come up with a justification for murdering your husband, an innocent person who was not any kind of immediate physical threat to her.

Let me just say to all Dateline viewers, when somebody says I'd rather be dead than divorced, they do not actually mean it. They don't mean it. No, no, no. Most people forced, forced with that choice. Most people would rather continue to be alive.

There's one of the commandments, by the way, that deals with this. Maybe they should have read that. A little more fuller reading of Scripture might have been required here.

Shall not covet thy neighbor's wife.

If you look at the story of David and Bathsheba in the Bible and get away from that with the idea that, like, there's a biblical justification for that, then you have not read the Bible very closely. Right.

People make all kinds of moral choices to assuage themselves of the guilt that they might be feeling. What was in his head? I don't know. I can tell you the one thing that was in his head was to hire a criminal attorney and get to the courthouse first, because this is a classic example of first squeal gets the deal.

First of all, I love you so much, but I never want to hurt your family. Clearly, he went back on that decision. I think what the prosecutor is trying to show here is that there was this magnetism between the two of them that kept drawing them back together, even though they tried to break up a couple of times.

I had. It is, you know, one of the interesting things about it is that like a lot of other things in California, it's completely artificial, right? It's this community that wouldn't exist if water were not brought in from somewhere else because it's the desert. But from that, there's this like little green oasis.

And look, I mean, I mean, here is the absolute worst thing that Rob Lamone did. If you believe her story and Jonathan's story, they both are claiming that it was Rob Lamone's idea that his wife sort of partake in this sort of, you know, party sex atmosphere. That is the allegation. Again, was it true or was she as active a player in that as he was? We don't know. But the idea is that somehow...

This is Jonathan's thinking that somehow that is in itself reprehensible and led him to sort of have no respect for Rob and somehow ignoring the fact that he's taking off his clothes with somebody else's wife. That's not as reprehensible because he's the one that's doing it.

Yeah, right. I mean, you know, what's right for me is not right for you. And I can condemn your conduct while sort of, you know, exhibiting some of the same strange decisions myself.

About The Killer Among Us?

Wow. In the show.

And you're also mine.

You should put that in your business card. Oh, my gosh.

That is Talking Dateline for this week.

Tell us about it. This is a story from here in California from about 10 years ago. There was a whole other life that went on involving open marriage and involving what people would call wife swapping.

And then there was also infidelity that in this case was not sanctioned. And then there was a murder that came from that. And it is one hell of a story. And one of the amazing things which made a lot of people crazy was the idea that religion was used as sort of a way to not only justify the murder but also cover it up.

And that's called Deadly Mirage. Deadly Mirage. And it will be available very shortly.

Andrea, thank you. And thanks to everyone for listening to us. Remember, if you have any questions for us about our stories or any cases that you think we should cover, you can reach out to us on social at at Dateline NBC or send us an audio message. for a chance to be featured in our next Talking Dateline episode.

Also, don't forget to listen to my all-new podcast, which is called Deadly Mirage, and you can start getting episodes for free beginning next Tuesday, December 3rd, or you can subscribe to Dateline Premium and start listening now, ad-free, wherever you get your podcasts. See you Fridays on Dateline on NBC.

And also the fact that the killer was at that party.

And rented the same room, right?

Yeah, I love how that draws you into the mystery that follows. One of the things that sort of jumped out at me in this episode was sort of how weird the crime scene was. Like putting the girlfriend's picture face down at the side of the bed. That says to me, I didn't want to see that woman, right?

Stopping the clocks, which I guess maybe was to prevent the alarm from going off and somebody finding the body sooner, right?

The gum wrappers. The gum wrappers.

The gum wrappers that were found on the ground. I think the first law enforcement theory was that this person standing outside the house watching him chewing gum, throwing the wrappers on the ground.

I know, but I do love that. I'm applauding here. Yeah. So I used to live in Atlanta. Before this happened, I lived there about 40 years ago. It's one of my favorites.

I called a friend of mine who lives there and asked if she knew Lance because they sort of ran in the same circles back then. She hadn't even seen the episode when I talked with her. And she was like, oh, yeah. Yeah. I remember that story. I remember he died and he was a huge womanizer. That was like the first thing that came out of it. And she hadn't even seen your story.

It definitely did because of his sort of crazy social life in which there were all these women who, many of whom had a sort of a quite legitimate reason to feel bruised by him and angry at him.

I will say that one of the great sort of redeeming things about this story is how well Harrison turned out.

And that person had actually been at his big glamorous birthday party in Atlanta just a little while before he was killed. Now, when you come back, Andrea has an extra clip that she wants to play for us from the killer's police interrogation. And also later, we're going to answer some of your questions about the episode from social media. And now let's talk Dateline.

Because he seems to be like – he seems to be like living the life that his dad probably would have wanted for him.

Yeah, I saw that. I noticed that.

When we come back, we have an extra clip from Dionne Baugh's police interrogation, which is one of the more fun police interrogations I've ever watched.

I mean, it feels like everybody in the episode at one time or another had warned Lance about her. Like, why are you doing this? This is nuts. She's young and she's, you know, she's clearly swayed by the fact that I'm getting her a Mercedes and I'm showering her with money.

She's got this letter with her that I guess she thought is going to get her that car.

In fact, it's like wearing a sandwich board that says, I did it.

Yeah, what are you doing? You sort of want to say to Dion, you were already stalking him. Police already knew that. He already knew that. Like, come on.

So at some point, Dion is in there for the police interrogation in which I'm going to say does not realize that she is, that the persona she is showing the cops is more important than the things that are coming out of her mouth because she's telling a story which later gets picked apart.

But sort of way she talks about Lance and about money and about what she's owed and who she is, that sort of tells you more about Dion than any single thing she says.

This feels like a good time to listen to some extra sound that did not make the episode. So let's listen to that. This is Dionne talking about how she felt fearful after Lance's death.

You have no idea. You know, the interesting thing there is that she's clearly lying. Now we know that. You know, I was afraid. The cops are playing along. Earlier in that same interrogation, they're lying about the video cameras, and she's playing along. It's a nice little dance that's going on there in that little tiny room.

How many times on Dateline have we seen that? People who sit down in that room and think, I'm smarter than these guys who are interrogating me, and they're not. Right. You know, she lies on the stand in her divorce trial, or she tells the truth on the stand in the divorce trial, which means she's lying to the cops.

But she can't get her story straight, and it clearly didn't occur to her that cops are going to be watching both of those things.

Yeah. I loved the prosecutor going to the divorce hearing.

Clint Rucker, when he was a prosecutor, he was the prosecutor in the Tex McIver case, which we covered here on Dateline. And he did a thing, which I, in that case, which I think he did in other cases, which is when he's giving, I can't remember whether it's his opening or his summation at the end. He had a jar of muddy water.

So you say killer among us in the episode. Is this one of those rare instances in which the title is actually your title?

But he shakes it up like a mason jar full of water and dirt, and so it's all muddy. And he puts it down on the edge of the juror box, and he says, this is cloudy.

And then he lays out his case. And that takes an hour or something because it's a long opening or a long summation. By the end, the silt has settled and you can see through the water. It's a good prop.

I don't know if he did it in your trial or not.

Tommy was a good interview. I liked him.

Hi, everybody. It's Josh Mankiewicz, and we are talking Dateline today with Andrea Canning. Hi, Andrea. Hi, hi. So this episode is called The Killer Among Them. It's from 1996. An Atlanta millionaire named Lance Herndon was found bludgeoned to death in his home, and detectives dug into his life. It turned out one of the people closest to him was his killer.

It was also great that you saw him young and then you saw him later, too. I loved that.

Yeah.

Yes, yes. So she's convicted at the first trial. A couple of years later, her conviction is overturned on appeal. She's retried. This time, that does not go to verdict, and they offer her manslaughter, and she takes it, and she does 10 years. And Dionne is out now, walking around.

Any idea what she's been up to?

Okay, after the break, we will be back to answer some of your questions from social media. So for the first time on Talking Dateline, we have some audio questions from social media from our viewers, which is a new thing that we're doing. So let's listen to those. So from Instagram, Ashley Lennington,

I have not had the experience of seeing myself on an airplane.

So nobody's pointing at the screen and then like, is that you? I don't think so.

And now next from me to Sam Pat.

Yeah, I can answer that question, which is that sometimes there are stories that we want to do and the people in them that we need to interview them, they want to get paid. That's happened to me once or twice. They want some kind of monetary compensation. And we do not pay people because, one, that changes the story. We're not in that business anymore. Right.

And you can't, you know, when you pay people, you're sort of saying to them, we expect a great story out of you. And it sort of encourages them to, you know, kind of soup up their account. So, yeah, we don't pay people.

All right. Let's go to more social media. Joanna F31894705, which is a very catchy social media handle, Joanna. Oh, my gosh.

Yeah, man, I wanted to get that, but apparently, yeah, it was taken. Yeah, that's the first one I went after. We love you, Joanna. She's referring to Lance's phone call telling his friend to take care of herself right before he was killed. And she says, that sounds like a goodbye call, like he knew it was coming. I don't think he knew it was coming.

I think, in fact, he wasn't suspicious enough because he shouldn't have let that woman into his house.

Maybe you're like the muse. I like that. So I loved the using of the clouds and the weather to sort of set the scene at the top. And then it ends with the candles being blown out, which suddenly looks very ominous, which is normally a very happy thing. I thought that was great. And the whole idea that like you just celebrated this birthday with this sort of star studded party and now he's dead.

Next, Southern Beach Girl says, if you have to designate girlfriends as primary and secondaries, I don't want to be on the list. Yeah, I would agree.

Mike H. 1990 says how horrible for Talana because she tried to warn him as best she could, and she did. She did. She did. Yeah. I mean, I thought of all the people in this that were actually involved in it. I'm not counting the son because he was a baby at the time. But, I mean, she was on the side of the angels. She loved him. She cared about him. She worked for him.

She was trying to sort of keep him on the right path.

Free Kev 22 or Freak EV 22, no way to know, says he leased a married woman a Mercedes. How on earth did her husband not know? That's a good question. I presume at some point Dion's husband had to cross police radar, right? I mean, that's the kind of thing that makes you want to kill somebody is you find out that somebody's not only seeing your wife, but leased their car. Yeah.

We are here to discuss Andrea's episode called Poison Twist. Now, if you have not seen it, it's the episode right below this one on your Dateline podcast feed. So go there, listen to it. You can also watch it on Peacock and then come back here. Now, just to recap a little bit, this is about the death of a chiropractor named Mary Yoder back in 2015.

But I got a tremendous amount of interest in your story on social media on Friday night. I mean, a lot of people ask me, like, what's going on here? What is this? Who is this? I'm like, you should be directing these questions to Andrea. Like, I'm actually not covering this. But. A lot of people very interested. Fred Hines on Facebook said, interesting show tonight.

It's really hard to know who the real killer was, which is one reason this was such a great episode. I suppose it comes down to just three people, husband, son, son's girlfriend. If no one outside the family was involved, then it has to be one of those three. Those would appear to be the possible choices, although, as we've discussed, Adam or Bill were not charged.

One of our questions from Offy32 concerns the search warrant that was thrown out. I understand that Katie won her hearing and her conviction was thrown out because of a flawed search warrant regarding her cell phone. Why can't law enforcement administer a new and legal search warrant for its contents? Evidence obtained illegally is still evidence.

To help us answer that, here is NBC legal analyst Danny Savalas. Thanks for joining us. here on Talking Dateline. Thank you for having me.

And, you know, if this is her being framed by Adam, which I'm not taking a position on, but if it is, it's one of the great frame-up jobs of all time.

Let's say they write it for some other phone and they get it off that phone, for example. Right, exactly.

Right. Or if she if she mailed it to herself on her Gmail account, on her computer or something like that.

Thanks, guys. A lot of viewers had a difficult time watching Katie's latest attorney, Melissa, seeming so happy. She was happy because as an attorney, she'd won her case. A lot of people have difficulty with the idea that defense attorneys work to free people who are convicted of crimes, some of whom are not guilty and some of whom probably are.

And everybody deserves representation. And it makes the prosecution prove their case. They can't just say their case. They have to prove it. And you would want that, you, the viewer, if you were ever accused of anything.

So this is a question of how messy it is. adam's jeep was um uh you know if adam was innocent this is a les g jv uh les g one day you're going to be promoted to the varsity never doubt that um i'm not sure who did it but if adam was innocent why was he so hesitant to let them search his jeep well Well, he did let them. Yeah.

Also, if your Jeep looked like you were living in it, which it kind of almost did. Catherine Wilcox points out it was a pigsty. Maybe that's why he was embarrassed. Maybe. And finally, we come back to Katie's motive. Christy Michelle Bennett says, this one really has me baffled. Katie seems so sweet and innocent, but all the evidence points to her. What motive would she have had?

And we talked about this. I can't think of a good motive for Katie. I can think of this convoluted idea that... Losing Mary might make Adam come back to her, which sort of happened in a kind of way, but it didn't last. And that feels like a lot to go through to get your boyfriend to notice you again.

Why would you keep it anywhere? Why would you not throw it out the window?

to bring someone on murder charges. No, but maybe the fact that they, basically the fact that they got two hung juries almost might have something to do with the fact that they didn't have a really good motive.

Congratulations, Andrea. I thought this was a great episode.

That's it for Talking Dateline for this week. Now, remember, if you have any questions for us about stories or about Dateline or things we should cover, you can reach us 24-7 on social media at at Dateline NBC. Now, 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 at 212- 413-5252.

It's not like the colchazine is a gun or something you want to hang on to to use later. You know what I mean? It's not a possession of yours. It's the thing you gave somebody to kill them. You would not want to keep that with you, I would think.

That's Keith's personal cell phone.

So the TV series House had an episode called Occam's Razor about somebody taking colchazine. It wasn't a murder plot. I think it was a pharmacy error. They took one drug instead of another, but colchazine poisoning was a feature of that episode. Do we know whether Katie ever saw that episode? Was she a fan of House? We don't know. I'm not aware of that question.

And that didn't come up in court that you know of.

I checked after I heard about the Colchisian and House, which was a 2004 episode. My cousin, John Mankiewicz, was an executive producer of House that year. So he was probably one of the writers of that. Yeah.

Yeah.

So let's talk about the evidence that remains against Katie. She is free on what sort of in, you know, normal parlance is a technicality, right? The search warrant wasn't done correctly. Yeah. But the evidence that is eliminated from the search warrant is not at issue. There's not any question as to whether or not that phone was used to search for the poison.

The question is, was she doing the searching or was somebody else doing the searching?

That turned into a criminal investigation, and it turned out she had been poisoned. And a very weird anonymous letter eventually led them to a possible killer who was Mary's office manager, a woman named Caitlin Conley, also known as Katie. And there's a new development, and it's turned all of this kind of upside down. And it's a great whodunit.

Right. Katie's DNA is on the bottle.

So the thing I kept thinking while I was watching this is... Okay, it has to be her, but it can't be her, right? Because it doesn't make any sense. Like, why would she want to kill Mary? All of the possible motives, like removing Mary from Adam's life would make Adam come back to her. That's like out of some nutty movie. Any evidence that, like, you know, Mary was going to let Katie go?

I mean, the abuse allegations that, you know, Adam denied it, then kind of admitted it. I mean, did Mary even know about that? We don't know.

Yeah, so Mary couldn't have been that upset about it.

At the beginning of the episode, Mary shows up at her sister's house and she sort of is hinting that she has something to talk about. We're never going to know what that was. What do you think that was?

Hi, everybody. I'm Josh Mankiewicz, and we're talking Dateline today with Andrea. Hi, Andrea.

It feels to me that my husband is having an affair with my sister is more likely than my office manager is trying to kill me.

When we get back, we will have that extra clip from Andrea's interview with Melissa Swartz, Katie Conley's latest attorney, and her very strong opinions about the previous defense teams. In January of this year, Katie's conviction was overturned and she was released. And she went to McDonald's. Yeah. Went to McDonald's.

I think this is an important talking dateline question. If you'd been locked up for seven years, Andrea, what would your first meal be? Because I don't think it would be McDonald's.

Is McDonald's your fast food of choice?

I tend to eat McDonald's only – it's, it's always like a last resort because some other place that you wanted wasn't available or it's too late or you're, you're exhausted or, you know, and in my case, like changing planes at DFW, right. Or O'Hare or somewhere. And you know, you're not getting in until really late. That's when the sirens call of the golden arches. Yeah. Yeah.

So for this Talking Dateline, we have an extra clip of Andrea's interview with Katie Connolly's latest attorney, Melissa Swartz. And later on, we'll be joined by our very own legal analyst, Danny Savalas, to answer one of your social media questions. So let's talk Dateline. Katie Conley is no longer behind bars. And one kind of gets the sense that she might not be retried again.

And the corollary to that is if I'm in certain places in the Midwest, it's Culver's. And if I'm in Texas, it's Whataburger because Whataburger is the greatest. Yeah.

All right, so one of the interesting things about this is that, you know, her conviction has been thrown out and she gets a new trial because of something that just about never happens, which is ineffective assistance of counsel. We have an audio question about that. Let's listen to that.

I have covered one case in all my years at Dateline that I can recall in which that happened, in which somebody's conviction was thrown out in a new trial order. I mean, generally, the bar for that is so high.

Can you automatically, instantly tell when somebody's Canadian?

I know. This feels, by the way, like a social media contest that is upcoming. I can see this coming. Since we're talking about ineffective assistance of counsel, let's listen to... Katie's latest attorney, Melissa Swartz, because she has a lot to say about the previous attorneys on this case. So let's listen to that.

Well, I mean, I think she I think she clearly did a great job because she she triumphed in a way that most attorneys do not. And those other two guys that came before her. I mean, if you can battle the prosecution to essentially a draw when the when the jury says we can't make a decision, that means you did a pretty good job.

Sounds like trying her again is going to be a lot harder than trying her the first couple of times.

So if you're Katie, you're going out into the world knowing that a large number of people think that you literally got away with murder.

That's the interesting thing about this. I don't mean to dismiss Katie's parents. And I have no doubt that they actually do believe in their daughter's innocence. Parents almost never feel any other way. No one wants to admit they raised a monster or a killer. And this is true across the board.

So that was less surprising to me than the fact that Mary's family was really sort of steadfast and still is.

Police looked into the alleged affair and say Bill's phone records appear to confirm his account. And wouldn't it have been very hard for him to give her the colchicine in an appropriate time frame unless you believe that she got it like 12 hours earlier or something like that?

He wasn't there. Yeah. They didn't have lunch together.

No question. It's more difficult now that the cell phone evidence can't be used.

So if you believe that this happened at lunchtime, which is what the prosecution says, then it's pretty much got to be Katie.

Bill did not want to talk. We approached him, I'm sure.

Over the course of Katie's trials, both Adam and Bill... ended up with transactional immunity because they testified in front of a grand jury. Now, for people who have committed crimes, transactional immunity can be this giant gift because what essentially is, it says, we will not prosecute you for anything you admit to in this proceeding, in this session.

So you better confess to everything because you will not be prosecuted for it under the law.

So, you know, that suggests that Bill or Adam could not be charged, at least not based on whatever they said in the grand jury. But again, they didn't confess. Neither one of them said, yeah, I did it.

The question is going to be whether Katie gets tried again, not whether somebody else gets tried. Absolutely. Up next, you, and by you, I mean the home listener, had a lot to say about who you thought killed Mary Yoder and about the investigation and about everything that happened. We will be right back with your questions from social media. OK, so this is not my story. This is your story.

You know they can refile.

Well, I mean, then we did a good job because when, you know, you're watching and you're thinking, oh, I understand it. Wait, I don't understand it. Wait, now I think it's this. And then at the end, it's something you didn't see coming. That means we've done our job.

You don't think they have a case?

I agree.

And also, I mean, he's absolutely provably right about one thing, which is he never should have been arrested because people who you don't think you have enough evidence to convict should not be arrested. I mean, I think, you know what, eight years have passed since we did that story. He has not been retried. I think the chances that that's going to happen are,

significantly diminish with each passing year.

You know, the fact that he told me that felt like sort of powerful evidence of his lack of guilt because Like, you've got to believe that he is one sophisticated criminal to have committed a murder, gotten away with it, and then made up a story like that. That felt to me as if he were telling the truth, which is I visit my mom's grave.

Great to see you.

Oh, no, no, it rings right to Keith's desk and he will call you back like instantly.

Yes, yeah, he's got nothing else to do.

Yeah, and that's the kind of dynamic that's going on in houses all across the country, which was one sort of great thing about this story was that it was kind of emblematic what a lot of families are struggling with all over the United States. You and I know from our careers and the stories we've covered, all the things that can go wrong when you have a teenager in the house, right?

And what was Madison doing? Well, he was using some drugs, and he was inviting his friends over when his parents weren't home, and he was lying to them, and he was kind of a little bit of a discipline problem. But, I mean, you look at that measured against the chart of all the things that can happen with teenagers, and those are not the worst things out there.

On the right path. I mean, you know, handcuffs are one of those things like hitting your kids, which is you're going to find people on both sides of that issue. That seemed a little extreme to me, given that there was no testimony about him being violent toward his parents. There was certainly plenty of testimony about him misbehaving and not being honest and doing that kind of thing.

But you didn't have some record for beating people up or fighting with his parents. I mean... One senses that the parents were more at the end of their rope than actually fearful of Madison. That was my sense. Like, this is more about teaching you a lesson than protecting us.

But I got to say, I mean, putting handcuffs on somebody is kind of a thing you do when you're afraid of what they're going to do, not where they're going in life at the moment.

That is the kind of small town. I mean, there's literally, I think, one traffic light, or at least there was when we were there. This was one of the few places that we've been at Dateline. They were not glad to see us in Eclectic. We were in the town cafe, the coffee shop where everybody meets, and we were talking to somebody there.

And the people at the next table heard it, and they went to the manager, and the manager came over and said, I want you guys to leave. That's unusual, because generally... Yeah, when we're in a small, any town, when we're in a small town, generally people, sometimes they know why you're there, but they don't necessarily want you out of there.

Right. And I think that's exactly what it was. I mean, I think this is anguish for everybody because no matter what you believe, right, Michael and April were vital members of that community. And I think what they were probably saying to us is, you know, we miss them. We respect them. We don't want to talk about this.

You know, he was very forthright. His demeanor with me was not tremendously different from his demeanor with the cops. You know, he said, yes, sir, and no, sir. He was looking at me. He was paying attention. He wasn't looking down. He wasn't mumbling. He was ready for whatever came. And again, remember,

Your attorney may tell you to talk to police or not, but you're certainly not required to talk with reporters. But he did. And that earned him some points with me because I asked him all the questions that you'd want to ask. Like, you know, what's the story here? And he he was pretty good about that.

I think they were convinced, not because they believed Madison, but because they knew what Michael and April were going through. And they probably had... sort of a ringside seat to what was happening in that marriage in a way that Madison wouldn't have. Sure.

So my guess is they knew things about that marriage, about what was happening and, and what Michael in particular, the dad was going through that made them think this has nothing to do with Madison.

I mean, they weren't very familiar, it seems. No. No, that's why I thought this really had to do with, not with knowing Madison, but with seeing whatever they saw in that marriage and hearing whatever they had heard.

It was a fight for her life that April eventually lost the next day. She was alive, I think, when she went to the hospital. But 24 hours later, I don't think she was.

You're giving somebody information that's going to split their life in two.

Yes. Greg Biggs was under no obligation to help Madison, but he did. And he made a tremendous difference, I thought, because he started uncovering all kinds of like little things in the investigation that hadn't made sense, things that a defense attorney would use. And he...

uttered a memorable line that the women of A Date with Dateline talk about all the time and that many people talk with me about. In fact, I have a screenshot of this moment with Chiron on it, you know, with the subtitles in my phone, which I send to people sometimes, which is, I kissed a dead dog on the road when I was 17. Wow. Which he said, right?

I, I, yeah, I believe it was some kind of like probably pre-college high school college road trip. Um, He was with his friends and was either a dare or losing a bet. I can't quite remember that little moment, which, of course, has nothing to do with Madison Alton.

I was doing a story once. I said in the interview with one of the people in the case, I said, you know, I jumped off the garage holding an umbrella like I was Mary Poppins. Right? Because I thought it would be like a parachute. Right? And guess what? Yeah, it wasn't. Didn't work, I'm assuming? No. Landed in a bush. I got cuts on my arms. I mean, I'm lucky I didn't break anything, but I didn't.

Let's talk Dateline.

Yeah, but yeah.

Right. So like post-seeing Mary Poppins or The Wizard of Oz, both of which have, I believe, scenes in which people use umbrellas and are carried by the wind.

Yeah. I was seven years old and clearly influenced by things I saw on television.

It's a weird story because no matter which way you go with this, whether you believe prosecutors and the sheriff or whether you believe Madison and his supporters, there are big holes in the story. Like none of it makes sense.

Yeah, they met in a church group. And I really do think that without Greg Biggs' involvement, the case against Madison Holton would have gotten into a courtroom. I do.

Yeah, I mean, to give the benefit of the doubt to local law enforcement down there, this is a little more complicated case than they usually get. And, you know, this is not a jurisdiction that gets a tremendous amount of murders on which forensics tell one story and eyewitnesses tell a completely different one, and you can't tell which is which.

Because even the forensics, like, we're a little bit... You know, flawed, like there wasn't any blood on Madison. So he shoots mom and dad, but then there's no there's no blood spatter. And there's clearly he doesn't have time to change his clothes or wash it off in those 11 minutes. So that was something that sort of was a hole in the in the armor of the state's case.

We look at investigations all the time and sometimes big elaborate investigations by major departments that get a lot of homicides. Sometimes there can be a thing or two that they should have done differently and that can make the difference. I mean, in this case, like at first, clearly law enforcement thought this was a murder-suicide. Again, which is something that's going to come out at trial.

I mean, like any defense attorney is going to say, you know, in their opening statement, law enforcement believed at first that this Michael's parents in a murder-suicide because their marriage was failing, and they were right. That's what they thought, and they were correct. And we don't need to go any farther than that.

Yeah, I mean, like, it's, you know, it's... You don't get to think to yourself, well, I've had a pretty good life because you've had almost no life at that point. And suddenly you're realizing the rest of it's going to be in a place like where I've been locked up, only worse with some scarier people. That is a daunting future to look at.

And I think he thought, absolutely, until Greg Biggs got involved, I sort of felt like Madison thought he was probably going to get convicted, even with the support of his uncles.

Look, prosecutors have a duty under the legal canons of ethics not to bring cases that they don't think they can win. And it's one reason why, and we've talked about this before, one reason why these murder prosecutors go into court and they got a record of like, you know, Twenty nine and one, you know, like they almost never lose.

And that's because they have an overwhelming case before they go in. And this prosecutor did not have an overwhelming case. And I think they thought we are going to lose and we cannot be confident that we will win. And if you're not confident that you're going to win, you are not supposed to bring the case.

No question. And again, you have leave to represent if you want. I mean, if you get more evidence, you know, look, we talk about this all the time. What leads to a prosecution when there couldn't have been one before? And it's two things. Changes in technology. Changes in circumstance, right? Changes in technology. Suddenly you can get touch DNA from places where you couldn't get it before.

Suddenly this person was in that room. They said they weren't in that room, but we now know they were in that room because their DNA was on the doorknob on the inside. So that story they told us about not being there, they're lying. That's one way. The other is, you know, I am not in love with you anymore anymore. And I'm not going to lie for you anymore.

And when I said that you were with me when that person got killed, I'm not going to tell that lie anymore. Changes in technology, changes in circumstance. Either one of those could get Madison Holton back in a courtroom.

I don't want to be in there. And then it turns out there's a whole other subterranean thing beneath the surface.

Quite a story. Quite a story.

And when we come back, I will be joined by Dateline producer Susan Leibowitz. And we will answer some of your questions from social media. Okay, I'm back with the producer of this episode. Susan Leibowitz is here to answer some questions of yours from social media. Hi, Susan. Nice to see you.

This was a very complicated episode to put together. Tell me about how difficult this was.

All right. We have some audio questions from the audience. Let's listen to those. First is Wendy Barron on Facebook.

Next question is from Latasha McClellan.

It's very rare that Alford pleas are taken and frequently like no one's happy with the Alford plea. Right. Lynn Wallace from Facebook says, did Marty mention anything about Paige putting him up to the murder of Desiree? I'm wondering why he wouldn't dime her out if she put him up to this. Also, did Scott go to any part of Marty's trial?

Right, because he would have been a witness against Paige, and she would have been charged.

Because an Alford plea does not require admission of guilt, just that there is sufficient evidence to convict you.

You wrote to Marty.

Felicious1908, who was a friend of mine in real life, writes in and says, Paige really wants us to believe that she can't remember telling a friend that she wants someone gone permanently.

Work right, calm. says, hard to believe Scott and Page aren't mixed up in this. Somehow, betting Scott and Page wanted Desiree dead, Page manipulated Marty into doing the dirty work. That's certainly the popular theory, and there isn't anything actually to support it beyond suspicion, right?

And the physical movement of their telephones around the area doesn't tell you anything either.

Susan, thank you very much. Thanks for coming on Talking Dayline.

And thanks to everybody for listening. Now, remember, if you have any questions for us about our stories, or any case you think we should be covering, or pretty much anything else, you can reach out to us on social at DatelineNBC. That's at DatelineNBC.

Or, if you have a question for Talking Dateline, if you want to hear your voice on Talking Dateline, well, you can leave it for us in a voicemail at 212- 413-5252. That phone rings on Keith's desk 24 hours a day. And you can record yourself and send it to us via DM on social media. You can also do it that way. And don't forget to tune in this Friday.

Andrea takes us back to the very chilling murder of a doctor in central New York. It's a good story. Thanks. See you Fridays on Dateline on NBC.

Particularly if I were armed, you know?

In the Jodi Arias case in Arizona, the cops leave the interview room for a few minutes and she starts doing yoga poses. And I was thinking about that when I watched him because I'm like, man, you know, the talking to yourself and all the body language. You do think to yourself, if this guy did it, he didn't think this part out terribly well.

I think that, you know, if you're in that kind of traumatic situation and you had absolutely nothing to do with it, the natural reaction is you're going to be anguished. You're going to seem anguished and upset and miserable and scared and horrified and realizing, you know, one, that this person you loved is gone.

And second, like they're looking at you for it when you had absolutely nothing to do with it. I think there are some very natural reactions, but what he exhibited are not among that kind selection of natural reactions. That looks like somebody basically coaching himself. And this might be a good time to mention it. Never charged. Yeah, never charged. Never charged.

This, I think, I'm sure that Susan Nall, who is the keeper of the official Dateline institutional memory, will inform me that I am wrong. But I do not remember a story in which Previous military service and trauma experienced on the battlefield came back in which that was a factor in determining how someone might behave in a stressful situation.

Yeah, I mean, I think that one of the things that we sort of don't know a lot about is how... That kind of trauma and that kind of stress affects people when they leave military service and return to private life. Despite that, there are clearly people in this story who think he knew what had happened. Maybe he didn't do it, but he knew what had happened.

I mean, when he says, you know, I decided not to come back until the next morning, I think, uh-oh. And then I stayed the night with a friend. Okay, well, who was it? Well, it was a friend of mine named, well, let's see. Let me go through my Rolodex. I mean, yeah, come on, dude.

Hi, everybody. I'm Josh Mankiewicz, and we are talking Dateline today with Blayne Alexander. Hi, Blayne. Hello, hello. So this episode is called Deadly Entanglement. It's about the 2013 murder of a woman named Desiree Sunford in her home in Yakima County, Washington, and the very, very complicated relationship that ultimately led to her murder. Thank you so much.

We've had throuples on Dateline before. This is not the first time that's come up. But it certainly added to the intrigue. And when you start hearing about that, that's when I think like, oh, wait, everything I thought I understood about this maybe is a little bit wrong because now there's somebody else involved. But then it turns out there's a whole layer beyond that.

is watching the episode in addition to listening to the podcast and then listening to Talking Dateline. And if you don't have any time for the other things in your life, like your family, that's your problem. So go there, listen to it, and then come back here.

I'm asking you this, admitting beforehand that without talking to Scott or Desiree, we might not know the answer here. But you think Desiree's infidelity maybe gave Scott what he thought, I got to pass now, you know?

Not a great idea, but certainly not while they were married is when that happened, which is an important distinction to some people when we return. We will have an extra clip from Blaine's interview with the woman at the center of this extremely complicated, weird case, Paige Blades. Page texts Desiree, I'm fairly convinced that in the event of your demise, I would be the chosen one.

First of all, when you're that age, right, you don't talk to your friends about like, you know, if you die, what is going to die at that? What are you talking about? That's not an age where you think about people dying and you replacing them. I just thought that was really weird.

Now, when we come back, Blaine has an extra clip that she's going to play for us with her interview with the woman who's absolutely at the center of this page, Blades. Later, I'm going to be joined by Dateline producer Susan Leibowitz. who will help answer some of your questions about the broadcast from social media. So stick around for that. And now let's talk Dateline.

And the other thing I thought was really weird was Paige's text saying, I've been wanting to do away with you because she was done away with.

There were people you interviewed who clearly suspect that Paige either knew more than she was telling or was involved to a greater extent than she is sort of given credit for by law enforcement. But it's Paige who points the finger at Marty. Right.

I mean, so you got to ask yourself, I mean, if if she did this, if she wants Scott all for herself and says to her friend Marty, who will do anything for her, hey, you need to you need to get rid of Desiree for me. It's kind of counterproductive to call up the tip line anonymously and say, you know, here's Marty, because if you're going to do it to save yourself.

Then you go in with an attorney, and you say to the district attorney, I need a deal here, which is I don't have any charges, and I'm going to tell you who it was. But she doesn't do that. She just calls the tip line and hopes that the cops will focus on Marty, and that suggests – A lack of any responsibility and a desire to have somebody brought to justice.

First squeal gets the deal.

This feels like a good time to listen to your extra sound that you brought that did not make our episode. This is your interview with Paige, and let's listen to that.

All right, so one of the great things about this story is that from the get-go, you're like, all right, well, it's pretty clearly the husband, right? I mean, that guy's a liar. He's acting like out of a textbook, like how to make the police suspicious of you right after something is happening. I don't want to go in the house, but I want the cops to find the body, right?

Very, very odd relationship between Paige and Marty.

Well, it's this sort of odd devotional relationship in which he's making, he's probably made it clear to her a hundred times, you're the only woman for me, even though you're not interested.

I'm going to always carry this torch for you, even though, right, I'm in another relationship. It doesn't matter. You're the one for me forever.

I can only imagine that taking advantage of that, you know, to get out of some terrible relationship that you were in, which is the situation Paige describes, and sort of encouraging the Marty in that relationship, you know, to sort of like, okay, well, now I am leaning on you for something, right? That's a very awkward... That's a difficult choice to make. And I'm sure...

Paige is probably looking back on that.

Yeah. She said something like he worships the ground I walk on or something like that.

I felt bad for Marty's wife, Beth. I did. Who just sort of was a kind of an unwitting passenger in this story.

Didn't like it any more than Desiree did, probably. Didn't like it any more.

This is not something you get over. Nope. It's why I hate the word closure so much. I mean, she's locked up and she didn't get parole, but there's no closure here.

No, you were like, you saw this, I'm thinking, through the bars of your crib.

And in at the next one, I mean, increasingly jurisdictions around the country are releasing older prisoners so they can stop paying for the cost of their health care. Assuming that Susan does not cause more problems behind bars, the odds go up just for that, that she's going to be released or that a parole board will want to release.

I was 15. Okay. All right. Because I was, I think, 65 then. Shut up. Uh, I remember, I remember this story. I was actually, um, not only was I a TV reporter at this, at this stage, I was not working. I had not come to Dateline yet.

And the parole board sort of didn't buy it 30 years later. No. Did that surprise anybody? Was there anybody who thought that was going through? No.

Craig, thank you for joining us. After the break, I'm going to be joined by Dateline producer Carol Gable, and together we will answer some of your questions from social media. We are now joined by producer Carol Gable. Hi, nice to see you. Good to see you, Josh.

You started working on this episode for Dateline back in 1994, which was actually even before I joined Dateline, which is what you and many other people refer to as the good old days. Tell me a little bit about your journey with this case. What sort of kept you working on it for so long?

And I was working for a show that had stopped producing episodes and we were all just kind of getting paid, waiting for them to figure out what they were going to do next, which turned out to be nothing. So I had a lot of time to watch coverage of this. And I did, I remember watching a lot of it.

The thing that everybody asks about is remorse. What do you detect from Susan Smith under that category?

Let me ask you a question that is not among the social media questions that we're going to be answering today, but it is one that I know is out there. Why are you, Dateline and Carol Gable and Craig Melvin, giving this woman a platform to whine about her problems? She's a terrible person. She committed a horrible crime. She's right where she belongs. Why are you giving her any airtime?

Now we're going to listen to some audio questions, which were sent to us on social media.

This is from Marion Marshall Hardy on Facebook.

That's when they realize, okay, this person's lying. There was no question about where the call was placed from at the time the call was placed because it was from that woman's house that she ran to.

Here's another audio question. This one from Gail Pannis on Facebook.

That's it for the audio questions today. Now we're going to go to other questions from social media. Southern Beach Girl says, I'm sure David or other family members would have been happy to take those babies in and she could still have run off with the other guy.

Eight Lawana says, I can't believe it's been 30 years. Those little boys would have went to college and had lives of their own, if not for Susan's selfishness. And that is something I always think about when kids are involved, which is the life that went unlived.

Carol, thank you very much. And thanks, everybody, for listening. Now, remember, if you have any questions for us about our stories or any case that you think we should be covering, you can reach out to us on social at at Dateline NBC, or you can send us an audio message for a chance to be featured in our next Talking Dateline episode.

Also, do not forget about Keith's all-new podcast called Murder in the Moonlight. It's very, very good. And I know that because Keith told me that personally. So you can listen to the first two episodes of Murder in the Moonlight right now for free.

For early access to future episodes and to listen to all Dateline podcasts ad-free, which I know you want to do, subscribe to Dateline Premium on Apple, Spotify, or at datelinepremium.com. See you Friday for an all-new Dateline on NBC.

And I'm presuming that even when the TV wasn't on, everybody was talking about it. It's all anybody could talk about. You know, the detail of her story, I remembered this when I saw it in your broadcast. The guy jumps in the car, supposedly, and says, you know, he's got a gun. He's like, just drive. And she said, and the boys were crying.

And I remember thinking, like, man, they must have been terrified. Like, they could tell something was wrong. They knew how frightened she was. That was the moment where I thought, oh, my God, how awful that must be. And, of course, all made up.

I mean, she she sold this really well. It wasn't like she was refusing to talk to anybody or wouldn't speak afterwards. I mean, correct. She absolutely played her part.

So this episode is called Return to the Lake, and it is about a horrifying case that everybody of a certain age, that being me, will remember. It's from 1994. It's the story of Susan Smith, who murdered her two young children.

Yeah. I mean, I don't want to say it was a simpler or more innocent time, but it may have been a less suspicious time because without, without social media and the internet, uh, The impulse was to believe her story. She's telling the truth. Yep. And people did believe it.

And then, clearly, I mean, at some point, law enforcement starts doing what I think was a pretty good job, like figuring out, like, her story about the stoplight couldn't have been true. That's a... That's pretty good police work in a time when there weren't cameras at every intersection.

Can't track her, nothing. No, no. Old school. Right. I mean, today that story wouldn't stand up because of technology. Back then? You know, you told it and you sold it. And she did. You guys got some conversations, some audio from those conversations. Now, those have not been played before. And they're chilling, I thought.

Now, for this episode, Craig spoke with her ex-husband, David, in a very rare, very revealing interview about how this case, this loss, how it impacted him and how he is fighting to keep the woman that he once loved behind bars. Now, if you've not listened to this episode yet, it is the episode right below this one on the list of podcasts that you just chose from.

Yeah. So, you know, Susan Smith initially, I mean, after she eventually told the truth, she first said that she sort of tried to drown herself along with her sons. Anybody believe that?

Hi, everybody. It's Josh Mankiewicz, and we're talking Dateline today with Craig Melvin. Hi, Craig. Josh, how are you, Mank? Good, and congratulations on that new non-Dateline job that you have. I see you trying to fit in around your Dateline responsibilities.

You know, over the years, Carol Gable, our producer, sort of kept in touch with Susan Smith and wrote her all these letters, I think knowing that this story was going to come back one day. Yeah. And you included some of those. Is Susan Smith still selling the story, you think?

When we come back, we will have an extra clip from the interview with the chief of SLED, Mark Keel, who remembers where he was when Susan Smith confessed to killing her two sons. You know, when I saw Mark Keel in your episode, I realized that I had interviewed him before. I immediately recognized him and his name.

And I have been racking my brain unsuccessfully, as it turns out, to try to remember what story it was that I interviewed him for. I can't remember. Now, he has not really talked about this case.

This is full circle for him. I mean, he went from being like part-time on a pilot and now he's running sled and he's still on this story. Yep. Yep. We have a little bit more of Craig's interview with the chief of SLED, Mark Keel. And he remembers very well what was going on back then and in the days after. Let's listen to that.

So you can go there and you can listen to it and come back here or you can go to Peacock and stream it. Now, when you come back, Craig and I will talk about the episode. Craig also has an extra clip that he wants to play for us from the chief of SLED, the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division, Mark Keel. And then later, we're going to be joined by a special guest.

I completely agree.

No, I completely agree. Because there's no way that that was quick or painless.

And that is Dateline producer Carol Gable, who exchanged letters with Susan Smith for 20 years. And she's going to talk about that and also answer some of your questions about the broadcast from social media. So stick around for that. And now let's talk Dateline. You were a small child when this happened. I know that. It's not a small child.

This is one of the things we've talked about before on previous episodes of Talking Dateline and elsewhere, which is there's this ripple effect to murder. It's not just the person. It's not just the immediate family. It doesn't go away because the person gets convicted or locked up. And those people that approach you in the supermarket, like they're well-meaning. Yes.

But they're not letting you move on from this. Right? Nope. it also defines your life. Right. Whether you, and you probably don't wish that, I mean, when you don't want it to, but it will anyway.

Yeah.

This was very long. A lot of people and... And a lot of story to tell. You know, one of the great things about this is that you have the two murderers on the stand, each telling different stories. Baker saying, I loved her then, I love her now, and I did the murder myself.

Austin comes on, and he very sorrowfully, and I thought clearly, honestly, told the story of not just what happened, but about how wrenching it was for him to have gone through that. The problem was, he couldn't testify publicly. firsthand to any of Monica's involvement. All of his connection with Monica was through what Baker said about what Monica wanted and what Baker wanted.

And so that made these two completely divergent accounts of what happened in that backyard so important, and the jury had to sort it out.

She did seem stunned by it, I would say. And Fabio's family seemed relieved to the extent that a guilty verdict can be any kind of relief. Because as we said in the story, it doesn't turn the clock back.

No, no. I mean, Chet Najoshi, Jessica DeVera, Michelle Madigan. The producers who worked on this, Allison Orr, the senior producer, like these are the people whose names you don't know at Dateline. The people you don't see on TV are the big stars here. And as a result of the incredible organization of this team, we were completely ready to

Yes.

And there were a few.

cute jc delaney wrote beans i don't know why beans just beans uh did you have a nickname growing up josh oh you know i mean the usual uh dweeb loser president truman that was a popular one president truman well he was president when i was growing up uh no i have i do not remember um Nicknames. But, you know, everybody in my family is known as Mank. We all are. Like our whole lives.

Like my dad was, my grandfather was, my brother is, you know.

That's why we never have family gatherings. Yeah, maybe that's why.

It beats President Truman, I'll tell you that. It does.

The answer, Laurie, and by the way, this continues our tradition of only people with three names being allowed to ask audio questions. The answer, Laurie Keeble Bailey, is as far as I know, they believed her right up until the end and they believe her today. Whether that changes over time, I don't know. But, you know, as we said, I mean, you know. Nobody wants to believe mom killed dad.

Jessica, thank you. First of all, for nearly every reporter I know, certainly Blaine included, it's not difficult to step back and look at any story objectively. Because there's usually something on both sides that makes you think, you know, this could be true. Even if there's a mountain of evidence, there's something on the other side that points towards innocence.

For example, there is no piece of audio anywhere in which Monica says, thanks for going along with my plan or I'm glad we did this or whatever. So, no, it is not it is not hard to keep an open mind.

Julie, first of all, I need to know what your other two names are, but well, good question. As we say in television, when we don't quite know how to respond, I have a lot of pocket squares. I've been wearing them for about 40 years. I started in the early eighties and I They are kind of based on my mood at the moment.

I should have some line and say that it's like some kind of code as to like where I am in the country at the time or, you know, right? But it's not true. It's sort of, you know, what I think... You know, sometimes I find one, I think like, oh, I haven't worn that in a while. Then I want to get that one on the air.

But a lot of times that has to do with sort of what shirt and tie I'm wearing, because you don't want to go, you want to compliment those, not be completely crazy. You can't clash. Yeah. I wish I could say that there's rhyme or reason to my pocket squares, but there isn't.

Yeah, I know. It's crazy.

Chris Austin got a deal. He hasn't been sentenced yet. His sentencing comes later in April, but he's looking at something around 16 years. Robert Baker pleaded to the top count. He's life without parole.

We don't know. Her sentencing is not until June, but she's looking at the same numbers as Robert Baker. I mean, she was found guilty on everything. She's also looking at life without the possibility of parole.

No, I mean, I think nobody did. You know, I have friends who live in. lived in that part of Woodland Hills. And they knew the Sementilli family, not very well, but they knew them. Both my friends described life over there as extremely happy.

It was a house that seemed to be full of love, not full of anger, not full of distrust, which is why nobody, certainly nobody at first thought that Monica could have had anything to do with this because she seemed happy. He seemed happy. Nobody detected this.

He was killed. I mean, you know, I mean, it's a tragedy. I mean, this guy never made it to 50. And he, you know, he, yeah, he got his start cutting hair in the basement. His sister was showing him how, you know, and the next thing you know, he's this big hairdresser. And the next thing you know, he's got this huge job with Wella and he's moving to Los Angeles.

And, you know, that is, you know, that's the kind of life people dream of. And he was living it. He just didn't live it long enough.

We don't know how it started. There's so much yardage between I met this guy at the gym and I'm going to fool around with him because I'm bored. My husband isn't around to I'm in love with that guy. I'm planning a life with him and I'm going to have him stab my husband. I mean, it's incomprehensible. And here's one more thing that's incomprehensible. This is.

in some ways, a familiar story on Dateline. Someone has an affair, and the person they're having the affair with decides, I want them for myself, so I'm going to get rid of the partner. That certainly has happened before on Dateline. Here's the part that hasn't happened before, or at least hasn't happened in the stories that I've done, is he takes the fall.

You know, this guy knows how the criminal justice system operates. He's been in it before. She doesn't. But he goes in and says, I did it. And she didn't have anything to do with it. She didn't even know it was being done. That, to me, is very unusual. Why he did that? I don't know. I would have loved to have asked him. I'm like, what's going on there? Is that love? I mean, what is that?

No, he pled to the top count. That's it.

Yeah, it's not spoken of that often. Um, but they are an absolutely an elite unit. They're part of the robbery homicide division. They've been around for a while and their specialty is surveilling like robbery crews, people who are, who are, who are, they think are going to knock over a bank or are going to, you know, go into somebody's house for a home invasion. And they,

They think they know who it is, so they're following them. And then they need to be ready to move and go to tactical right away if they see that the crime is going down. And sometimes that ends up in an arrest right there. So this was an unremarkable case for SIS because Monica and Baker were not in the process of committing any additional crimes.

And they were also completely oblivious to the fact that they were being followed. The guy that we interviewed, Rob Burke, is an old friend of mine. I mean, I've known him for a while. And very recently, he said to me, you know, what are you working on? And I said, oh, it's the, you know, the Simantilli case down the valley. He's like, oh, yeah, we followed her. I'm like, what?

I said, you didn't tell me that. He's like, I didn't know you were on it. Um, so then very sort of late in the game, um, I, I, I, uh, asked him if he would talk about, uh, SIS's role in, you know, following them and sort of, uh, uh, giving the primary investigators sort of the, you know, putting the pieces together so that they could understand Monica and Baker's relationship.

I mean, that definitely filled in a lot of blanks for investigators on this.

Yeah, well, you know, it's one of those assignments that people get within the LAPD and then they never want to leave. It's very kind of high tension and you have access to all this technology that other people don't have access to. I mean, you can do, you know, you can follow people with, you know, drones and trackers and helicopters and all kinds of stuff.

Let's talk Dateline.

What an assignment that is. Inside law enforcement, that's known as Perkins. That's from a Supreme Court decision, Perkins v. Illinois, about statements that are made to law enforcement. For example, if you're charged with a crime and you say, I want an attorney and I'm not talking to the police, and then...

I'm a cop, and they put a jail uniform on me and shove me in there and say to you, hey, you know, I just committed murder. Blaine, what did you do? And you start talking. That frequently will get thrown out because I am the police trying to interrogate you Even though you have said, I'm not talking to the police, which is your right under the constitution.

So Perkins, the thing they did with Monica in this case is a way around that. And there are very specific rules for what you can and can't say to the person. So. They ran a Perkins operation, and it definitely produced some things, although it did not produce the admission that prosecutors were hoping for, which is Monica admitting, yeah, this was my plan.

The only thing that came out of that was she admitted the affair, and she gave some sense of how –

into baker she was to me the smoking gun piece of audio in this it's when baker and monica are in the patrol car and they've just been pulled over and arrested when they were out driving in monica's nice mustang and they put them both in the back of a police car and a lot of police cars um um a lot of black and whites are i think wired for sound and video but they did get monica whispering to baker which you saw in our episode and she says somebody must

have talked okay innocent people do not say somebody must have talked innocent people say what are we doing here why would they think we would have anything to do with this this is insane right somebody must have talked about what you know that's the yeah yes that that to me that's the smoking gun here absolutely is and who did they tell yeah

Something like that. Yeah. This was kind of a breaking news bit for us. And it's great when that kind of thing can happen, when we can go on the air at 9 o'clock on a Friday night and say, this happened today. That doesn't always happen that way. A lot of times we do stories that were adjudicated more than a couple of years before we went on the air.

His relationship with Monica began as an affair. Thought he was married at the time, right? So she was having an affair with a married guy, which was him, right? There are people who will say neither one of those people should trust each other because they're willing to have an affair. And if they did it before, they will do it with you.

And I don't think that is necessarily true because sometimes people meet the right person and they did seem extremely happy together. But yes, they began as an affair. And that's what ended the relationship with Luigi's mom.

Yeah, I mean, you'll be divorced like so many other people are in this country. And, you know, I mean, there should be no stigma about it. If relationships are not working, murder. It is the most astonishingly foolish, selfish, mistaken way to get out of a marriage. There is no worse way.

It's not unusual for children to take the side of the surviving parent because nobody wants to hear or say to themselves, you know, dad killed mom or mom killed dad.

That's a good example of something that we see all the time on Dateland, which is that kids frequently want to believe that the parent who lived and who is charged did not do it. And believe me, I get it.

But when we're covering a trial right down to the minute, it's great to be able to say, this is the latest news on this, the actual verdict.

This we have talked about, which is you think you're going to take away the parent of your kids and they're just going to be fine. Right. Like, they'll be okay because you're happy? It's nuts. It's just insane. I mean, it's a terrible thing to put your kids through. And, you know, in that way, in that sense, Monica and Robert Baker have something else in common, which is they were both willing to

to expose someone they loved, to enmesh them in this plot. Monica getting her daughter to find Fabio's body and Baker getting his lifelong friend, Chris Austin, no criminal record, somebody who looked at him like an uncle and who trusted him and who clearly did not want to be involved in this murder plot at the beginning and getting him to do it, making him a murderer.

Now he's wrecked his life and his family's life and he's going away too. I mean, it is astonishing display of selfishness and willingness to hurt people close to them for their own means. It's a terrible thing.

I completely agree because it's pretty obvious he tried to sort of get out of doing it a couple of times. But when, you know, when the chips were down, Baker kind of just, you know, said, we're doing this. And he lacked the strength at that moment to say, you may be doing it, but I'm not.

act on it. Yeah, he just didn't have it.

You've got to know the facts of the story before you go in, because people, not everybody, but people are going to try to sell you a different version of it. And, you know, that's sort of part of the job here.

Yeah, I mean, it was long, and many people thought it went past the amount of time that the judge had told the jurors, this is how long the trial will take, including your deliberations. So many people, this reporter included, many people thought this is going to be a mistrial, which would have been... I think a pretty big victory for the defense.

I think that would have been exactly what Sam Zangan wanted. Because look, I mean, in a mistrial, like you've already seen the other guy's hand, you know, you know what cards they have, you know how they're going to. And I don't know that there were that many more ways to present the evidence that the prosecution had presented. I mean, they they put it out there.

And the motive was always kind of convoluted. That's one of the harder things to understand. The forensics, they're a little more clear. The video, that's a little bit more clear. You sort of know that Nemo was the last person to see Bob before he was stabbed. But then at the last minute, they came out with a verdict.

Not guilty of first-degree murder, but guilty of second-degree, which is going to be when he's sentenced, it's a 16-year minimum. I think the prosecution was happy with a 16-year minimum. I think the family sees a measure of justice in this. I mean, here's one interesting thing.

At the beginning of this case, people saw this as, you know, crime is the great equalizer because even the rich can't protect themselves in the streets of San Francisco. And of course, that wasn't what this was about. This wasn't about how much crime there was or wasn't in San Francisco. But in the end,

The Lee family are like a lot of other families we cover, which is they got the verdict that they wanted, or at least one close enough to it. But they've discovered that the criminal justice system is not a time machine. And whatever happens to Nima Momeni now... This trial, that verdict doesn't bring back Bob Lee. And your life is split in half.

that it can sort of rob us of one of the things that we need for Dateline, which is sort of the suspense. So in this case, you have a certain base of knowledge out there among the public. The thing that really I thought helped us in this is that, first of all, we covered the trial and we're airing pretty close after the trial ended. It was just a couple of weeks ago.

And in that way, the Lee family is like all the other people that we cover on Dayline, which is there's the part before and then now there's the part after.

I bet they did.

The answer is, we don't know for sure, but there was discussion from many people that what Bob used to do cocaine was a collar stay. One of those little plastic things that fits inside your shirt collar to keep it stiff if you're wearing it with a tie. And that that would have been about the right size to be the object shown in the video.

By the way, I believe that no collar stay was recovered from Bob, which doesn't mean anything because he could have thrown it away. Men tend to have a lot of those. I mean, I probably have hundreds of them.

No, I've never seen anybody carry them around. But it... Sometimes when you send your shirts out, sometimes they come back with those stays in them. Usually when you buy the shirt, they have them. And you're supposed to take them out before you send them to the laundry. Otherwise, they'll get pressed into the shirt, which is not good. So you want to take them out before the laundry.

This is the vital premium content that Talking Dayline listeners expect, by the way.

I mean, there's a guy on Turner Classic Movies who does it all the time and it's really irritating. But I can't think of anybody else. Well, I mean, you know, I mean, maybe technically. But no, I don't. But, you know, that's who Sam Zanganeh is. Like, I certainly took no offense at any of that. That's how he talks normally to everybody. But, you know, hey, I've been called better.

I've been called worse.

the video, what's called the pantomime video, which is Nima, depending on who you ask, either pantomiming or not pantomiming, stabbing Bob Lee in a conversation with his then attorney's private investigator in a parking lot. The defense argued that that was attorney work product. Talking to an investigator is like talking to your attorney.

You obviously would not be able to take a video of a person talking to their attorney inside the attorney's office, That's clearly attorney-client privilege. The issue was that it happened in public, that it happened in a parking lot where anyone could have seen it. The video was blurred because the judge, I think, was sort of splitting the baby here.

And we have one more advantage, which is sort of what you thought You, the viewer, what you thought when this happened turns out to be not really the story that was there. You know, a lot of people saw that video of Bob Lee stumbling around downtown San Francisco and then sort of didn't really connect with anything after that because, you know, just the general flow of news.

and saying, okay, you can see what he's doing, but I'm not going to let you hear what he said because anybody walking by might not have heard what he said. So that's why the court blurred Nima's mouth so you can't try to make out the conversation, but you can see what he's doing. And what the prosecution says he's doing is pantomiming, stabbing Bob Lee twice, and then throwing the knife away.

I want to encourage everybody to submit audio questions.

Well, first of all, Keith, you know, does tower over me when Keith is over six feet. I'm five nine and Keith is over six feet tall. But Sergeant Dittmer, I think, is six five. And a lot of people on social the other night were saying things like, wow, is Josh like five three? I'm like, and he's normal sized. I'm like, no, he's very tall.

So great to see you.

They remember, oh, yeah, that guy got stabbed in San Francisco where the crime is so terrible. That's sort of what what people thought. And then it turns out, of course, it really wasn't that at all.

I think a lot of people jumped to the conclusion that this had to do with the crime problem on the streets of downtown San Francisco. And it didn't.

The police certainly knew immediately that this wasn't a robbery, but they sort of the police did an interesting thing, which is they kind of did not say anything to refute that part of the story saying, we don't really know what this is, but we're pretty sure what it's not. They didn't do that because what they were fine with was the idea of that story being

The robbery stories just sort of sitting out there because they thought, well, whoever is responsible and we don't know who that is at this point, they're going to think we're looking for, you know, downtown stick up men or something. And we aren't.

Right. Yeah. Right. That's what you want if you're doing an investigation.

Yeah. I mean, then the police went out. They got all of this stuff. That's one of the first things that happens in an investigation. They were able to not just see where Bob was walking around before he collapsed and before the police and paramedics found him after his 911 call. But they sort of went back in time on the video, and they saw that white car.

And then they follow that white car, and it leads back to the Millennium Tower. And the video gets progressively better of the car, like, as they sort of go back in time. Like, the first video at the crime scene is not so good. But then they see it a couple of blocks away heading toward the crime scene, you know, sort of going back in time. They're like, okay, that's a little better.

They go back a little farther. They go to the Millennium Tower, and that's pay dirt. And you have this kind of Rashomon thing where they're walking out of the Millennium Tower, he and Nima. So the question is, what do you see when you see that video? Is that one guy who knows he's about to commit a murder and the other guy who thinks the danger, whatever it was, has passed? We're fine.

We're going to go hang out. We're good. Or is that Nima who is no longer angry at Bob and Bob who is carrying a knife and planning on attacking Nima?

Cash App, Square, MobileCoin, you know, in a way. This was robbery because we got robbed of all the stuff that Bob Lee would have created down the line. Right. So many of the things that Bob Lee was involved in and would have done would have continued to change people's lives and make life easier for everybody and better for a lot of small businesses and people like that. So.

You know, he was an interesting guy in that when police began their investigation, they couldn't find anybody that didn't like Bob Lee. Everybody talked about him as being a wonderful guy, a great friend, a really supportive coworker, a guy who had made a lot of money. but who had turned down probably bigger money because he wanted to help people.

And the interesting thing was, I didn't know his name. You may not have known his name before this happened, but you knew his work. And inside the tech world, he was very well known. So this kind of hit like a bomb because this was a guy that was very well known, very well liked, and very well regarded.

No, I mean, look, I mean, look, a lot of these guys are just like, you know, world's biggest nerds who have, you know, conquered the world through tech. And what do they do on their time off? Sometimes, as one guy said, it's playing Wii tennis all night long until dawn. And sometimes it's doing something at a different level.

You know, sometimes it's drinking all night long and sometimes it's it's it involves the drug world. You know, one interesting thing. There was a lot of talk about sex at the beginning of this case, that that was going to be part of this sort of Silicon Valley party underworld that was going to be unearthed. Yeah. In the end, this was drugs.

Drugs ended up being sort of the through line that connected all these people. And it turned out to be way less sex than I think people were initially expecting to hear about.

Bob's friends were pretty open about it. Krista, his ex-wife, who remained extremely close to him, was open about it. And nobody was really worried about it except Bob's brother, Oliver, who was concerned about the extent to which he thought Bob was self-medicating because there had been some depression in their family and he thought Bob was dealing with that.

Krista was not worried about his drug use. She never saw that as impairing him personally, him professionally, or his relationship with the kids. And the kids clearly did not feel like they had sort of lost part of him because of that. They were both very attached to him and saw him as a really involved, caring, thoughtful, present parent.

What did you learn about her through the course of this? Her conduct... played a huge role in setting in motion whatever happened next, whatever you believe. But she said something or did something. She suggested a scenario in which something happened that made Nima angry. This is the prosecution's point of view and made him angry that Bob had put Kazar in that situation.

Now, we do know that whatever happened to Kazar, whatever it was, and that's very murky at this point, we know that Bob wasn't present. We know that Bob had already left at that point. Did Kazar, in some subsequent conversation with her brother, blame Bob for what had happened to her? Or did Nima just kind of take that from her, that inference?

Like, oh, Bob must have had something to do with this. You know, that we're sort of never going to know. The sense that you got from this trial was that she would have said or done just about anything to keep her brother safe. out of prison. I mean, she's on the stand and she says, you know, my brother is not the person that killed Bob Lee. She said that.

Well, her brother admits being the person that killed Bob. I mean, that was sort of the problem with her on the stand is he had said, yeah, I did do it, but it was self-defense. That was their defense was he tried to kill me and I ended up stabbing him with his own knife.

Which is something you don't hear every day. In the end, the question of what happened that night between Kazar and Bob and Jeremy Boivin is is. murky. Jeremy Boivin very explicitly says there was no sexual assault and Kazar later apologized to me. We don't know exactly what happened and we don't know exactly what Kazar said about what happened.