Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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Chapter 2: What led to the investigation of Sarah Hartsfield?
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It's still relatively rare that we see women as perpetrators in cases like this. You've covered a few. Is this your specialty? Is this something you're able to look and... It seems like it's becoming one. It seems a little blunt. Hi, everyone. I'm Lester Holt, and this is Talking Dateline. I'm joined today by Keith Morrison.
And, Keith, this is a case I know you have been covering for years, and it brings us back to Baytown, Texas, where the death of Sarah Hartsfield's husband, Joe, ultimately exposed a much darker story. Multiple marriages, volatile relationships, and allegations of violence that stretch back for decades. The episode is called The Trouble with Sarah.
And, folks, if you haven't listened to the episode... You can find it in the Dateline podcast feed or stream it on Peacock. So go there and listen to that. When you come back, Keith has some extra sound for us from private investigator Lynn Marie Garcia, who describes a surprising request she says that Sarah made after her conviction. And later, Keith will answer your questions from social media.
So, OK, let's start talking Dateline. Keith, just give us the overview, your view of this story.
Well, this was a case that might not ever have seen the light of day. If a member of the medical staff in the emergency department of the hospital in Baytown, Texas, saw something that didn't look right and made a phone call to the sheriff's department and a deputy went over to the hospital and
talked to the people there and was sufficiently concerned that he placed a call to the duty detective, who happened to be this young woman named Skylar Rocks, who was brand new to the detective service. She went over to the hospital
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Chapter 3: What evidence was uncovered about Sarah's past relationships?
And after talking to Sarah Hartsfield, immediately smelled a rat. And she fussed around trying to get information for a while. And when finally it became apparent that she wasn't going to be able to make this a big investigation until she got some support, she went to the district attorney. DA happened to be a woman who's pretty aggressive in her treatment of crime.
And also there was a female prosecutor. So the three of them together said, yeah, this is a case. We know what we're dealing with here. We've dealt with. The word that they used with me was sociopathic female. So Skylar Rocks went about her investigation. And every rock that she turned over, she uncovered some more very interesting information about Sarah's life.
It's still relatively rare that we see women as perpetrators in cases like this. You've covered a few, though. Lori Vallow, Pam Hupp, Sarah Hartsfield. Is this your specialty? Is this something you're able to look and... It seems like it's becoming one. It seems a little blunt.
You know, I interviewed Lori Vallow some time ago, some months ago, when she was in jail awaiting trial for one of the murders that she was accused of committing. And First of all, she winks at the camera on the way in. She sits down. She turns on the charm like crazy. You can see why some people would have several husbands and lots of ability to attract men and their affections.
But also that a woman might look at that same scene and say, oh boy, somebody's getting snowed again because it's a technique that some people are able to use. Men are good at it too. They're just good at it perhaps in a slightly different way. You know, I found it fascinating talking to the district attorney in Texas who handled this case. Interesting woman. But
She was of the view that it isn't often that you run into a sociopathic female, as you call it.
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Chapter 4: How did the investigation into Joe Hartsfield's death unfold?
But she said they're very good, they're very slippery, and they're very good at persuading men that they're as innocent as the driven snow. But she was convinced that a lot of them get away with things that we never hear about because they got away with them. And it takes a woman— She told me over and over again that it takes a woman to recognize that sort of behavior.
In fact, in this case, it took three women.
Yeah, it's because this idea that Sarah has this, somehow this pull over men. Can you describe what it was about her that made her so appealing?
Yeah, I asked the men who had had relationships with her, and there were lots of them. But those who had talked to us, at least, described somebody who was vivacious, who was the kind of person you would fall in love with immediately. They described a beautiful woman. She could charm the birds out of the trees, especially if the birds were male.
When investigators look at Sarah's early relationships, they see the same cycle repeating, essentially. Intense, very intense emotional beginnings, followed by deception, and then chaos once the relationship starts to fall apart. Is that where the story really starts to shape for you, this pattern?
Yes. And the pattern, you've described it perfectly. That's what would happen. She would attract a man. The man would fall for her. They would have a very intense first few weeks of the relationship. And then if they wanted to break off the relationship, that was no good. And so Sarah would take some sort of retaliatory action.
attempting, apparently, to burn down Titus's house after he became engaged to another woman, or at least was discovered pouring gasoline all over his house. Then a boyfriend's house, her grandmother's house burned down.
She was never charged in any of those cases, though, correct? No, she wasn't. When I was watching this, I was reminded of a recent interview I did for Dateline True Crime Weekly, where I interviewed an arson investigator, and he talked about how difficult these cases are to prove.
Yes. Arson is very difficult to prove. There are so many different possibilities for the reason it may have happened.
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Chapter 5: What role did prior bad acts play in Sarah Hartsfield's trial?
And in Sarah's case, it was always kind of slippery. There was always some kind of reason why you'd suspect it was her, but not quite enough to charge her with something.
Well, let me ask you about David Bragg. She shoots and kills him, then claims self-defense. At the time, police accepted that explanation. They didn't really look any farther into it, did they?
There was an investigation. It wasn't just like a one-hour investigation. They went on. They looked at it. Several agencies looked at it. and came back with the ruling that it appeared to be self-defense. But when this investigation looked into it more carefully, they could see that the relationship with David Bragg fit that perfect template that you cannot leave me, David Bragg.
You cannot break up this relationship. Only I can. And the way I can break it up tends to be something you wouldn't like.
Then you had David George.
Yeah. David George took that long journey down to the place where the ex-husband was living, went up to the door, pushed the doorbell. You can see him on a ring camera. He had a bouquet of flowers supposedly for the wife of her ex-husband. Later on, he said he had no intention of ever shooting anybody. There was no charge.
And that's another case that wasn't really a part of the central case in this story.
Right, exactly. However, often we'll follow cases, and you know that somebody has behaved badly on a number of occasions, and those situations cannot be brought up in a trial. prosecution can do is focus on the specific charge that this person is facing, and the details only concerning that particular act, the illegal act that that person is on trial for.
But there's a rule in Texas that you can use past bad acts in the prosecution of a case, and that is what made all the difference in this case about Sarah. because the prosecutor was able to bring up all of these things in her past, all these relationships that had become violent.
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Chapter 6: How did the prosecutor build a case against Sarah Hartsfield?
All right, we'll take a break. When we come back, Keith is going to play some extra sound from his interview with the investigator in this case and also hearing her describe what Sarah Hartsfield wanted done with Joe's ashes. after she was convicted. We'll be right back.
I'm Julio Vaqueiro, anchor of Noticias Telemundo. You can watch Dateline, the hit true crime series on Telemundo. And now you can listen to Dateline as a podcast. Stories of love and betrayal, of secrets revealed, of the men and women who stand between evil and justice. Every twist and turn can now be heard in Spanish, with new mysteries arriving every week.
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Where was she? The disappearance of Carrie Farmer was quite unlike any other. Because Carrie hadn't exactly vanished, but retreated beyond the shadows to release rage in torrents of text messages.
And it just went on and on and on.
Beyond diabolical, beyond the macabre, to murder. A story straight out of left field. You're on edge as to what's going to happen next. I'm Keith Morrison, and this is Something About Carrie, an all-new podcast from Dateline. Listen to all episodes now, wherever you get your podcasts.
On the night before Halloween in 1975, 15-year-old Martha Moxley was murdered, but police failed to make an arrest. Until, in 2000, her one-time neighbor, Michael Skakel, was arrested. He was also a cousin of the Kennedys. The Kennedy connection is the reason that most people know about this case. But the deeper I dug, the more I came to question everything I thought I knew.
Dead Certain, The Martha Moxley Murder. All episodes are available now, wherever you get your podcasts.
Keith, you described so many instances where Sarah is able to charm or talk or cajole, whatever she would do to get out from these things. Do you think when it came to the death of Joe – that she somehow believed she could work her way out of that one too?
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Chapter 7: What was the significance of Sarah's behavior during the trial?
You know, we can't know what really was in her mind. Among the cases in her past, I suppose the one regarding Joe was easier potentially to solve, but Detective Rock certainly had to drill down on it and was able to find out that in the many hours before Joe's death,
While he was having a diabetic crisis and his alarm was going off every five minutes to tell Sarah that her husband was in diabetic shock, she claimed that she was asleep on the couch because she had just recently had surgery. And therefore, she just didn't wake up when the alarm went off.
But when she was able to get access to Sarah's phone, she discovered at the times that Sarah claimed that she was asleep on the couch, she was actually up walking around, making calls to other people, doing this, that, and the other. Certainly she wasn't asleep.
And certainly she would have heard all of those alarms when they went off and chose to do nothing about it, which kind of formed, I think, the basis for the charges against her.
Let me ask you about the children. Very often in cases like this, children are kind of left with a choice. Which parent are they going to back or support in this? The children were really pivotal ultimately in this case.
They were. And I felt for them so deeply to have to go through life the way they did. It sounded like a pretty difficult way to grow up. The children that I talked to, though, seemed to be remarkably well-adjusted, or at least able to talk about what happened to them in a very clear-headed way.
But as we know, Sarah actually appeals to Ashley for her support.
Sure. They had a complicated relationship, those two. I think that Sarah really tried to manipulate Ashley for years and years and was obviously trying to do that in their conversations from the jail. The recordings that we heard, it was – An effort to guilt Ashley into doing something on her mother's behalf. But at that point, Ashley was beyond it. She wasn't going to get involved.
Her mom apparently says, this isn't looking procedural. I think that came up during a voicemail. How damaging was that particular message?
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Chapter 8: How did the children influence the outcome of the case?
I think the prosecutor was able to use that attitude as part of the case. It was an interesting trial, a fascinating case to look into. And yes, another one of those cases where there was a woman who did some bad things.
All right, we have an extra clip that didn't make the broadcast.
Yes, and the voice is Lynn Marie Garci, who was the private investigator the defense brought in as an assistant to help with the case, to see how the jury was reacting, to make recommendations about how Sarah should behave.
In the courtroom, there was an attempt, I think, by the defense to at least gain a sense of what the jury was thinking so that they could come up with some sort of defense for Sarah. Oh, there was a story about Joe's ashes. She had a request. Tell me that one, if you don't mind.
Well, I guess it has nothing to do with her case anymore, but she wanted them to... to be thrown in the trash can after she was convicted. And the four of us, we have hearts, and we have a little bit more integrity than that. And we're not doing that. And so my understanding is that his sister got the ashes. Yeah, she just want them thrown in the trash can.
That's pretty ice water in the veins to me.
Yeah. Truly, it's taken retribution to its ends.
Ice water in the veins, I think, is a pretty good description.
It is. It is. She was, I think, frankly, horrified by this particular defendant. And she said she was relieved by the... And here's somebody working for the defense, but she was relieved by the fact that Sarah was convicted. She said she didn't know what would happen if Sarah got out. And she said, well, I'm not too worried because I have a pew-pew. I said, what are you talking about, a pew-pew?
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