Amy Robach & T.J. Holmes Present
Killer Thriller: A Small-Town Cheerleader Murder That Became the Highest Rated TV Movie of 1994 with Kellie Martin.
22 Feb 2026
Chapter 1: What true story inspired 'Death of a Cheerleader'?
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Guaranteed human. In the middle of the night, Saskia awoke in a haze.
Her husband, Mike, was on his laptop. What was on his screen would change Saskia's life forever.
I said, I need you to tell me exactly what you're doing. And immediately, the mask came off.
You're supposed to be safe. That's your home. That's your husband. Listen to Betrayal Season 5 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
1969, Malcolm and Martin are gone. America is in crisis. And at Morehouse College, the students make their move.
These students, including a young Samuel L. Jackson, locked up the members of the Board of Trustees, including Martin Luther King Sr.
It's the true story of protest and rebellion in Black American history that you'll never forget. I'm Hans Charles. I'm Menelik Lumumba. Listen to The A Building on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
I'm Nancy Glass, host of the Burden of Guilt Season 2 podcast. This is a story about a horrendous lie that destroyed two families. Late one night, Bobby Gumpright became the victim of a random crime. The perpetrator was sentenced to 99 years until a confession changed everything. I was a monster.
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Chapter 2: How did Kellie Martin prepare for her role as Angela Delvecchio?
Did you feel like, oh, this could happen to me? I mean, because the mind of a 10-year-old, right, you can imagine all sorts of things. No, I don't remember being scared. I remember being so scared. why are my parents so sad? And I'm sure they like shielded us from it, but not really. I mean, we knew what happened. We knew what happened.
And I can remember, and I've told Tori this before, like I can remember my dad telling me about the song they played. I know what the song is. Every time I hear the song. What is the song?
so again i get weird i don't want to say because i get so like i'm giving their private thing so it's like i only feel okay giving saying what my experience was because it's so devastating and what's weird is like i also don't think i've ever talked to my parents about it again very much i've talked to my mom a couple times Is she still friends with her parents? They moved away. They moved away.
Oh, yeah. Everybody moved away. Right, right. And I don't know. What's interesting, I thought about this, though. So in Brentwood, where I also live, my house is very, very close to Nicole Brown Simpson's. And same distance, about a five-minute walk. Anytime I walk down Bundy, I'm literally like, Nicole Brown Simpson's. Like, I think about it every time.
Of course.
When I drive on Orchard, I don't think about it and I don't know why. It's not like I'm like, well, there's... except when they are the ones who are actually experiencing the tragedy. It's like why instinctually we are rubbernecking at a car accident. That's why we're so obsessed with Nancy Guthrie. We cannot get enough information.
Yes, but yet when you are deeply enmeshed in it, you wish nothing more than to have no association with it. And so I would call myself somewhere like in the middle there because I'm not deeply enmeshed in it. I can remember it. Right, right.
we were too young like i'd have to ask like i have a friend who's kind of in the middle of the two ages so if you know they're seven years apart from me and the the so like 13 or something or yeah and i think she has a different experience than even i have but A lot of people still live here. Like, on that street, one of our friend's moms still lives in that same house.
And I think it was, like, very, very close to where it happened. And, like, I was so young. So, like, I don't remember, you know, yellow tape and investigators.
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Chapter 3: What insights does Kellie share about portraying a troubled character?
So it's pretty. Yep. They do all of that. All of it. It's the story. Like they just definitely kept a lot of it in there.
In the middle of the night, Saskia awoke in a haze. Her husband, Mike, was on his laptop. What was on his screen would change Saskia's life forever. I said, I need you to tell me exactly what you're doing. And immediately, the mask came off.
You're supposed to be safe. That's your home. That's your husband.
To keep this secret for so many years, he's like a seasoned pro.
This is a story about the end of a marriage, but it's also the story of one woman who was done living in the dark.
You're a dangerous person who preys on vulnerable and trusting people. Your creditor might go up in good.
Listen to Betrayal Season 5 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Welcome to the A Building. I'm Hans Charles. I'm Menelik Lumumba. It's 1969. Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. have both been assassinated, and Black America is at a breaking point. Rioting and protests broke out on an unprecedented scale. In Atlanta, Georgia, at Martin's alma mater, Morehouse College, the students had their own protest.
It featured two prominent figures in Black history, Martin Luther King Sr.
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Chapter 4: How did the murder impact the small-town community?
The biggest mind game of all? NLP might actually work. This is wild. Listen to Mind Games on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
China's Ministry of State Security is one of the most mysterious and powerful spy agencies in the world. But in 2017, the FBI got inside. This is Special Agent Regal, Special Agent Bradley Hall. This MSS officer has no idea the U.S. government is on to him. But the FBI has his chats, texts, emails, even his personal diary. Hear how they got it on the Sixth Bureau podcast.
I now have several terabytes of an MSS officer, no doubt, no question, of his life. And that's a unicorn. No one had ever seen anything like that. It was unbelievable. This is a story of the inner workings of the MSS and how one man's ambition and mistakes opened its vault of secrets. Listen to The Sixth Bureau on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
What's the most kind of unbelievable to me is the amount of time that passed that she was able to live with this. I mean, I think now there'd be DNA everywhere. I don't understand how you do that. Do you know what I mean? It's like, if this was now, there'd be DNA everywhere. Oh, sure. Yeah. Does she leave the knife or does she take the knife? Oh, yeah, she takes the knife. They found the knife.
She takes it, and then she goes home and washes it and cleans it a couple days later. And popped it back in the kitchen. Yeah, yeah. I don't know. So I think it's pretty diabolical that she could spend six months kind of working on her own status in the social circles, sort of gaining popularity, so to speak, while she's carrying this incredible guilt.
And again, I don't know how much of that is accurate from the TV. No, this is from the stuff that I read. I don't even think they do show it a little bit in the movie. So what did you think when you watched the movie? Were you just terrified for your kid? I felt like... The main thing that I really thought was, God, those years of life, particularly for a girl, are so, so hard.
And if you don't have... any kind of infrastructure of support with your own family, even if like, I mean, my parents and I, like I hated my parents, quote unquote, when I was that age, right? But at the same time, I knew that they were like there for me. And I also felt like I had, it's just hard. All of my friends turned against me at one point and like, I felt horrible. I was suicidal.
And you think, all these things could just, like, are we just a hair away from doing this? Or is it really, did this girl have real, real mental problems? And it sounds like her family was very religious and sort of very strict. And I think, you know, there were a lot of pieces of the puzzle that kind of
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Chapter 5: What were the dynamics of popularity and bullying in the film's context?
make it a perfect storm that she felt very embarrassed by her own family's home. Like all of these things are identified, like we can all identify in some regard with these things, but how do you get from there to killing someone?
So interesting too, because at the time back then, I sort of remember like, you know, like I can, I can understand that at the time where they're like the haves mores, right? Like it's the haves and the have mores.
Yes. Yes.
But then when I think about like other, other towns, other communities, other places in LA, oh my God.
Right.
It's like, this is just a pretty average town. But the feelings are the same. It's all relative, right? That's the thing that really freaked me out in watching it was... Do they make Kelly Martin sympathetic in it? A little bit. And she talks, she, you know, they do a little bit, but it's also, she's so, she's just so vulnerable.
She's such a kind of a warm spirit as an actress and as a person that I think inherently you do, you're going to feel. And they make Tori unlikable. They make her kind of unlikable. I don't think that's accurate. Not entirely, but they make her like she's very popular. She's mean. She's almost bullying her. I think they're taking a lot.
I don't want to speak out of school because, again, I was 10 years old, third grade at the time. But I think they really leaned into that, and I don't think that's all accurate. I mean, because you don't know how much people are ā
Again, a lot of what I'm saying I'm taking from the Rolling Stone article, from other extensive articles that were written about this with interviewing these children. And also, you don't know, you know, people start to inflame and inflate stories because they might feel important. So, you know, to your point, maybe these things aren't as... True.
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Chapter 6: How does Kellie view the portrayal of her character in the movie?
So that was really my impetus. Um, and I, I really haven't followed it much except when I did the new version, I was like, Oh, I kind of delved into it a little bit more, but I definitely didn't with the first one. Right. Well, so, um, This is going to be my question later on, but I'll ask it now since we're into it. You and Tori were both very close to the ages of these girls.
And so did you identify what because so so that everybody knows this is really interesting. This community was very, I don't know if you can call it, it was a very wealthy community. And everybody, there were very high expectations. It was very conventional. So these girls, it was all about fitting in, being the best, being well-liked.
And those are things that anyone at that age can identify with to some degree. So do you remember feeling like, oh, I identify with these feelings? Yes, absolutely. I definitely identified with those feelings and certainly always put a ton of pressure on myself. But I, like Angela, felt very much like a fish out of water. She really didn't fit in with that community. And there's...
I've never, you know, it's funny, like I've been in so many situations where I felt that imposter syndrome. And I think that Angela felt that overwhelmingly in this community with her very Catholic, modest, humble family. And then these kind of like perfect, affluent, blonde, you know, people that she was around. I think...
That that feeling of desperately wanting to fit in, which I definitely felt like because I was a child actor, too. So like I never fit in in high school. I mean, I pretty much went to high school on set. So when I did have experience with my peers, I felt like I had like.
two left feet i just never felt like i fit in and i really i know that angela felt so much like that i also think the thing that i don't think i felt but i feel like i really tapped into when i was trying to portray her as this feeling of shame even before she committed the murder overwhelming feeling of like not only that she's not good enough but shame Yes.
So that anything I've read extensively about this case, and there are so much of what she says, you know, her confession is really heartbreaking because she can't, and a lot of focus is put on how, you know, she was more, she was seemingly more concerned about what was going to happen to her as opposed to this horrific act that she had committed.
But I feel like you can't separate the two because that deep feeling that she had of insecurity and shame for her own not only for her inability to be what perhaps she felt she was supposed to be, that her family didn't have enough. And that's just heartbreaking. I found her to be very heartbreaking.
And, you know, when you read this, when you read the script, it definitely felt a little bit more neutral than that. And then as you watched the film, once it was made and it, Tori definitely played the character very kind of mean. She was mean.
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Chapter 7: What reflections does Kellie have on mental health and youth pressure?
That's your husband.
To keep this secret for so many years, he's like a seasoned pro.
This is a story about the end of a marriage, but it's also the story of one woman who was done living in the dark.
You're a dangerous person who preys on vulnerable and trusting people. Your creditor might go up in good.
Listen to Betrayal Season 5 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Welcome to the A Building. I'm Hans Charles. I'm Menelik Lumumba. It's 1969. Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. have both been assassinated, and Black America is at a breaking point. Rioting and protests broke out on an unprecedented scale. In Atlanta, Georgia, at Martin's alma mater, Morehouse College, the students had their own protest.
It featured two prominent figures in Black history, Martin Luther King Sr.
and a young student, Samuel L. Jackson.
to be in what we really thought was a revolution. I mean, people were dying.
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Chapter 8: Why does this film remain a cult classic decades later?
shocking yes absolutely on one level however it does make I can make it make sense in that once she got Kristen to just be quiet to stop to stop that she could move into who she is and kind of be what she's capable of. And I think that this one person was standing in her way and was so loud in her face that she just needed to be able to move past this person.
that's how I can make it make sense. But of course it's shocking. Of course.
Yes. Yeah.
That you just move on with life and, and, and then you, she flourishes like it truly is amazing and shocking and all of that. But that is how I think I made it make sense. Yeah, yeah. That's such a great, I love that whole intention of like, just stop, just be quiet so I can have a moment. And I think that's like a, that rage, like that's, those things build.
And I think I, anybody can understand that sort of feeling.
Yeah.
yeah so you and tori she was definitely your counterpart in this film and i know you guys have spoken about this um on her podcast but what do you remember about the two of you telling the story either on set or how did you talk about your characters or did you try to sort of stay away from each other or what was the so we totally stayed away from each other you did i don't know
I was the priciest thing you ever met when I was 17 years old. And I knew that Tori was known as a party girl. And I didn't, I mean, I worked with Tori for a minute on True Beverly Hills when we were like little kids. So I think that was probably the last time I saw her. So I totally took her reputation to mean that we were very different creatures.
Like we're not going to be, we're not going to be friends. I was very prissy. I don't even think I said, oh my God, I would say, oh my gosh, you know, like that's me at 17. So yeah. It kind of ended up being a little methody, like I'm Daniel Day-Lewis or something. So like the makeup trailer, like we didn't talk and we definitely did not talk about characters or any of that.
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