Accused killer's voice on a 911 call in Michigan. A hike in paradise gone terribly wrong. And Karen Read's retrial begins.
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What are the main cases covered in this episode?
Welcome to Dateline True Crime Weekly. I'm Andrea Canning. It's April 3rd, and here's what's on our docket. At a popular hiking trail in Hawaii, investigators say a doctor allegedly tried to push his wife off a cliff, and then he hit her on the head with a rock. She said that she bit him to try to fight him off. Other stories we've got our eyes on. Lori Vallow Daybell, a.k.a. Mommy Doomsday, is on trial again. This time, she's the defendant and her own defense attorney. Music mogul Sean Combs gets some good news from a judge. And supporters gather outside the courthouse for Karen Reid's retrial. The scene here in Dedham is still kind of wild. And later, April is Autism Awareness Month. A retired police captain tells us what he wants law enforcement to know.
I realized very quickly that what I had to learn about raising a son on the spectrum was directly correlating to what I should have known as a police officer.
Before all that, we're heading back to a Michigan courtroom where the prosecution came out swinging at the retrial of a woman accused of murdering her husband. Fifteen years ago, Linda K. Stermer was convicted of killing her husband, Todd Stermer, by setting their house on fire while he was asleep in his Lazy Boy and then running him over with the family van once he ran outside. But Linda was released from prison after serving only eight years of a life sentence. A federal appeals court ruled that she deserved a retrial because of ineffective counsel and prosecutorial misconduct, and that began last week.
What's happening in Linda K. Stermer's retrial?
The prosecution is calling just about every neighbor who showed up to the scene that day, a dentist who performed CPR, the friend who noticed blood on the bumper of Linda's van, and the next-door neighbor who called 911. Dateline producer Sergei Evonen has been in the courtroom in Pawpaw, Michigan, and he joins us now with the latest. Hey, Sergei.
Hi, Andrea. Good to be here.
Yeah, so set the scene for us. The Sturmers lived in a pretty rural area. Linda boarded horses. The neighbors' houses weren't all that close to each other, right?
That's right. It's a pretty close-knit community. But during testimony, none of the neighbors said that they could see each other's houses. They could see the smoke and some saw the flames. And one neighbor testified that he and his sons heard the sound that they couldn't really place. They didn't know what it was, so they got in the car. And then when they got to the spot, they realized it was Linda Wailing.
What did the neighbors say they saw when they got there?
One of the neighbors, Dr. Richard Musali, he's a dentist. He and his sons went over. And when they got there, they saw Todd. He was unconscious, laying on his back. All hair was gone. His skin was burned. He was not responsive. So Dr. Musali did perform mouth-to-mouth on Todd Sturmer, trying to resuscitate him.
One of the neighbors called 911? Yes.
Yeah, so the first people on the scene were Connie Colquhoun and her boyfriend at the time, Mike Matheny. They lived next door. And when they arrived, Mike told Connie to stay back because he didn't want her to see the horror of the scene. And then when he came back to her, he said, Connie, you got to call 911. And the prosecution played that call during Mike's testimony.
We got the fire department on the way there, okay? Is that Linda?
It was kind of bone chilling to hear that almost unnatural sound of Linda wailing.
It sounded like almost a firetruck.
It sounds so primal. Linda's friend Kim Thompson also testified.
So Kim's testimony was that Linda was wearing socks, didn't have any shoes on, so she tried to get her clothes, and her focus was Linda's comfort. She asked Linda if there was anything they could do, and Linda asked them to take care of the dog. And so Kim followed the dog as it was running around, and that's when they discovered the van.
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Chapters
6 chapters
1
What are the main cases covered in this episode?
0:26–2:04
2
What's happening in Linda K. Stermer's retrial?
2:04–4:43
3
How did the 911 call play a role in the Michigan case?
4:43–10:17
4
What happened on the Palipuka Trail in Hawaii?
10:17–11:54
5
What do we know about Gerhard and Arielle Koenig's relationship?
11:54–14:19
6
How did the alleged attack unfold on the Hawaiian trail?
14:19–29:08
Speakers
5 identifiedMore from Dateline NBC
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