Josh Mankiewicz

On November 16th, 2017, almost two years to the day after he was arrested and charged with murder, Jonathan Hearn was back in court for his sentencing.

With Rob Lamone's sister sitting just a few feet away, Hearn read a long statement he'd composed while waiting for his sentence to be handed down. The calm and unflappable demeanor he had worn like a coat of armor at trial was gone.

In comments addressed to the court, to Rob Lamone's family, to his own family, and also Sabrina's family, Jonathan Hearn begged for forgiveness.

When all was said and done, the judge sentenced Jonathan Hearn to the agreed upon 25 years and four months. However, not long after Jonathan began serving his sentence, the California legislature passed a new law giving youthful offenders the opportunity for early parole. In Jonathan Hearn's case, that means he could be released from prison before his 40th birthday.

In February 2018, Sabrina Limon was sentenced to 25 years to life for her role in her husband's murder. An appellate court upheld her conviction in 2022. And last year, the California Supreme Court denied her petition for review of the case. Neither Sabrina nor Jonathan responded to our requests for an interview for this podcast.

So ends a story that began more than a dozen years ago in a busy shopping aisle at Costco. An ordinary day, except for the fateful meeting of two strangers. If not for the unique makeup of those two people and the astounding number of bad choices they made, their story might well have ended right there. A closer reading of the Bible might have been useful back then.

It's the book of Hosea that talks about how mistakes from the past can cause those who made them to reap the whirlwind. Sometimes the lessons from scripture and from real life are one and the same. Deadly Mirage is a production of Dateline and NBC News. Tim Beecham is the producer. Ryan Drew, Kelly Laudeen, and Marshall Hausfeld are audio editors. Carson Cummins is associate producer.

Adam Gorfain is co-executive producer. Paul Ryan is executive producer. And Liz Cole is senior executive producer. From NBC News Audio, sound mixing by Katie Lau. Bryson Barnes is head of audio production.

It was around 11 on the morning of November 17th, 2014, three months to the day after her husband's murder, that Sabrina Limon was taken into custody at her children's school. Like Jonathan Hearn, who had been arrested earlier, Sabrina was placed in the back of a patrol car and driven to the desert town of Boron, which was the closest Kern County Sheriff's Department substation

It was there that the couple's long journey through the American justice system would begin. Jonathan Hearn's family had already been notified of his arrest. Sabrina's sister Julie had been told by investigators that somebody needed to make arrangements to take care of her kids. Because she had been detained.

While Jonathan and Sabrina were being transported to Boron, teams of investigators fanned out to begin searches of their homes.

Every love letter, every racy photo, Every text message and every sales receipt were no longer just proof of a steamy, illicit affair.

In this episode, you will hear how some critical evidence was missed during those searches.

You'll hear about a motive for murder far more tangible than vague notions of God's purpose.

And you'll hear how one of those suspects was seemingly able to walk away, free and clear, to start life anew.

I'm Josh Mankiewicz, and this is Deadly Mirage, a podcast from Dateline. Episode 5, Busted. The arrests of Jonathan Hearn and Sabrina Limon on murder charges were a huge story in the high desert communities of California.

The Kern County Sheriff's deputies who'd conducted the months-long investigation into Rob Limon's death were justifiably proud of their work.

And you finally got your man and your woman. Yes. In the hours after his arrest, Jonathan said little to investigators beyond asking for a lawyer. Sabrina, on the other hand, seemed willing to talk, perhaps because her interrogators told her she was not under arrest. You are detained, but you're not under arrest. I want to make that perfectly clear to you, okay?

That may have been a distinction without a difference, but Sabrina was game. She readily admitted to having an on-and-off affair with Jonathan Hearn.

She was vague about when the affair began, when it resumed, and how often she'd spoken with Jonathan in the months, weeks, and hours before her husband's murder. Of course, the investigators already knew the answers to all of that.