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Chapter 1: What happened to Regina Hicks in Ohio?
Hi, it's Kate Snow, NBC News anchor and host of the NBC News podcast, The Drink. And this month, I'm grabbing a Hugo Spritz with former reality star Lauren Conrad here at The Drink. We love learning about someone's journey to the top. And Lauren and I, we go back to the very beginning of her extraordinary story.
We talk about why she always saw reality TV as temporary for her, the scrutiny she faced in the public eye, and why she says she'll never watch Laguna Beach again. Hope you'll join us for the drink. Listen and follow wherever you get your podcasts.
I'm Craig Melvin. Cheers. Cheers. Cheers. I've always been a glass half full kind of guy. And now I'm talking to some people who look at the world that way too. Some really fascinating folks who share their defining moments, their triumphs, their challenges. Their stories are funny and quite candid. So I hope you'll join me each week. And who knows?
You might just come away with your own glass half full.
Search Glass Half Full with Craig Melvin from today on YouTube and wherever you get your podcasts. Tonight on Dateline.
This was a very well thought out plan. The video of the fire is just insane. Betrayal, lies, manipulation, death.
The female, she's got a hood on. She lets her long curly blonde hair hang out of the hood. Later on, we will learn a wig is purchased and that a mask is purchased. He is dressing somebody up in a disguise to look like you. It's devastating.
I had nobody to protect me.
I do a little more digging. I started reading about the death of Regina Hicks, a young mom, a young wife.
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Chapter 2: What led to the discovery of Regina's body?
Why didn't somebody in the family know where she was at or contacted her? This is Regina's cousin and best friend, Jennifer Donenworth.
I knew she didn't run away. She would never leave her son. She loved him more than anything.
Family and friends left messages on her cell phone and on her answering machine.
When they said that they couldn't locate her, all of our cousins and all of her brothers, her stepdad, everybody went out looking for her.
Next day, the family called the Willard Police Department, filed a missing person report. So the police and the family, all of them, went looking for Regina. But they couldn't find her. Not that day, or the next day, or the frantic day after that.
And then... My ex-wife calls me and tells me, hey, they found a car in the pond. And I went there as fast as I could get there. And I watched them fish her car out of the pond. And they said, yes, there's a body in the car.
My mom said they found her. She was in her car. She's not with us anymore.
An incalculable loss, certainly, to the family, to that little boy of hers. That had to be an awful day. There's no way to explain it until you experience it yourself. Probably not a moment you'll forget. No, you'll never forget. I ain't forgot it in 24 years. Dane Howard remembers too. Dane was the sheriff's investigator back then. Can see it still, that woman in the car in the pond.
How she got there? Well, who knew? Early in the investigation, we had no idea. We didn't have any facts. We didn't know what happened to her at all. The autopsy didn't help much. Showed the cause of death was drowning. The method, undetermined. So they could have chalked it up to an unfortunate accident. But Ohio Assistant Attorney General Dan Caceres explained.
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Chapter 3: Who were the key witnesses in Regina's case?
But she couldn't prove it either?
She couldn't prove it either.
And then, years later and nearly 200 miles away, like the Twilight Zone...
I don't even know what you're talking about. I don't even know what the hell is going on. And she's like, his house burnt to the ground. And I'm like, what?
He came in and he saw the video and said, that's her hair, that's her face, that's her body shape. Regina Hicks had been dead a long time before investigative reporter Karen Johnson of WLWT-TV heard a thing about her. But pretty soon, she was hooked. What did you learn about Regina?
So Regina was a 25-year-old woman. She wanted this happy life with someone she loved, with her child, with her family.
Oh, very close, that family. Tell me about her. She was a very fun-loving girl. She never really met no enemies. She was seven years younger than me.
I brought her up a little rough, like a tomboy.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
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Chapter 4: What evidence suggested Regina's death was not an accident?
Meaning Howard was hamstrung, couldn't intensify the investigation the way he wanted to. And as the months went by and the investigation seemed stalled, Regina's mother contacted local TV stations to drum up interest in the case.
I stay in touch with the detectives that are working on it. I just try to keep it alive as much as possible.
On the first anniversary of Regina's death, she told how she paid for billboards and offered a reward for solid information.
My mother put up a lot of money that she was going to pay out of her pocket.
No one ever come through. Nothing ever happened. And it went on like that for years. Did you give up hope that this would be solved? No. Every time I went somewhere, I carried her picture in my billfold, still got it there. I thought about it every time I got up. Every night, I went to bed. So did you and your family push for answers over that whole course of years, or did you give up on it?
What happened? No, we never gave up on it. I mean, we had our lives to go on with, and it seemed like nobody gave a crap. But no, said Detective Howard, it wasn't like that. Everybody cared, he said. They never gave up.
I mean, the case file has hundreds of pages in it from different interviews and different things. We turned over every leaf and we did everything we could do.
Then, 14 years after Regina's death, her mom died. Her mother passed away in 2015. She died with a broken heart.
I think in Regina's mom's heart, she knew who was responsible. She had suspicions.
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Chapter 5: How did Regina's family seek justice over the years?
And she also looks at some of the cameras kind of directly with her face right to the camera. They bring in multiple cans of gas and pour them and ultimately light them.
Somehow the cameras were placed right in the perfect spot to capture everything.
Paul told police he had no idea who the man in the video was, but he certainly recognized the woman.
And he's saying, wow, that's my ex-girlfriend.
Had to be Kelly. Exactly. He came in and he saw the video and said, that's her hair, that's her face, that's her body shape. Those were the images the police had shown Kelly. At the time, her hair was curly. But to McCune, it all seemed a bit too convenient. As did this. Paul Hicks had been posting to his Facebook account to all of his Facebook friends.
He'd been using screenshots from his iPhone that made it appear Kelly was stalking him and harassing him and calling him like initially 60 times and then 90 times and then more than 100 times. Lo and behold, a few hours later, there's this arson fire that she's blamed for. So McCune started digging. He actually handed over his cell phone to us, which was analyzed.
And one of the contacts in his cell phone was a company called Spoof Card. What is that, Spoof Card? Spoof Card is a company that allows you to buy minutes with them. And when you use them, I could call you and make it look like it's someone completely different calling you. So all those messages from Kelly were fake. Then more digital evidence led to a phone Paul shared with another woman.
Her name was Terry Sweet. When McHugh looked at those phone records... He found receipts from a company with a strange name. That's My Face. We find out that That's My Face is a company that makes custom wearable masks of anyone's face. To create the mask, you have to have pictures of the person's face from front angles and side angles. The mask looked like this.
So the person in the video wasn't Kelly. It was someone wearing a mask to look just like her. Kelly was being framed. Was she a victim in all of this? She's the main victim in all of this, yes. And that wasn't all. Paul made false accusations about her using drugs and harming her son that resulted in her losing custody.
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Chapter 6: What role did Paul Hicks play in Regina's disappearance?
I knew that that wasn't the way it should have played out. It happened here, says Steve, on his farm in Willard. He was just 20 at the time. And Paul, Regina's estranged husband, was there with him. Paul was his buddy, though older and taller and a bit intimidating. So Steve was really more a follower who happened to have the toys Paul liked. So take us back there.
What actually happened that night?
Well, we... hung out that day.
I had a dozer and tractor and scuffed around in the mud. At around 8 in the evening, he said, Regina pulled into the driveway, intending to pick up her son Montana. And right away, she and Paul started arguing. I remember she showed up and All they did was fight, whether it was about money or who was in charge or who's going to get a job. It was always something. How much of that can you take?
I was just, I'm tired of it. So, Steve said, he walked away for about 15 minutes. And when he returned to her car... It was like twilight dark. And I remember seeing the dome light of the car. When I got over there, she was crumpled up in a ball on the floor. It was already done. She was, you know, dude, you know, she's hurt. She needs help. Let's call 911. He said Paul snapped back at him.
Dude, she's effing dead. And I just, you know, come on, follow me. I guess I didn't really know at the time where we were going. But Steve said he did what he was told, started up Paul's car with four-year-old Montana sleeping in the back seat, while Paul drove Regina's car with her in the passenger seat beside him. He took her in her car, and I followed him in his car.
I didn't know where we were going. And then we went down the road. There's a little driveway that goes into a pond, and When I pulled up, he kind of had her car blocking the whole thing, and I went down to turn around, and when I come back, I just remember seeing the car up in the air. He put it into the pond, and he came out, and, you know, I'm involved. I did this.
Whatever he says, yeah, that makes sense to a 20-year-old kid. I didn't touch her. I didn't drive the car in the pond. I didn't do anything with it. I didn't tell the truth about it. Some people were saying, well, why didn't you call 911 from the other car? You wouldn't have known that you were calling. Yeah. That's a good idea. I don't know.
This young woman was killed almost in front of you, and then the cover-up happens almost in front of you. For a 20-year-old kid, that's got to be a pretty horrific thing to see. Or was it? Or was it? What do you mean? Well, I'm asking you. I mean, I don't know. I don't know what you felt. It wasn't comfortable at all. It was terrible. Terrible and yet...
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Chapter 7: What new evidence emerged after 24 years?
It was amazing. I miss the sound of her laughter. It was my favorite part of her.
That's all for this edition of Dateline. And don't forget to check out our Talking Dateline podcast, in which we'll go behind the scenes of tonight's episode, available Wednesday in the Dateline feed, wherever you get your podcasts. We'll see you again next Friday at 10, 9 Central. I'm Lester Holt. For all of us at NBC News, good night.
Friday night on an all-new Dateline.
51 parents lost daughters that day.
Almost one year after the Camp Mystic floods.
Our girls should be here.
For the first time, some of the parents speak out together. Could this tragedy have been averted?
100%.
An all-new Dateline, Friday night at 10, 9 central, only on NBC.
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