By Cathy Singer, Dateline Producer
I’m thinking a lot about Myanmar these days. The cyclone that struck that country, also known as Burma, has been devastating. The images from the aftermath make me heartsick – and while I, like many people around the world, would have paid attention to this disaster because the death and destruction are so vast and shocking and sad, I am especially fixated and upset by the news because I was in Myanmar just a few months ago.
I went to Southeast Asia on a four-week journey with my sons in December and January and the last country we visited was Myanmar. I loved being in that country, a country that is largely closed to the world. The last time Myanmar was in the news was in August and September, when dissidents and monks led peaceful protests in the country, initially against the increase in the price of fuel, but which escalated to protest the military rulers’ oppressive control over the country, which has impoverished its people and crushed human rights (but not the human spirit). The government killed protesters, including monks, but it is unclear how many more died beyond the United Nations calculated death toll of 31. The junta also jailed hundreds – some say thousands - more to slap down and silence the rebellion.
But I’m not here to talk about politics in Myanmar. I want to share a bit of what we experienced there so that people will know a little more about the country than the headlines about a repressive government and now a natural disaster with suffering beyond comprehension. While most tourists cancelled their trips to this exotic Buddhist country in the months since the protests last fall, we decided to stick to our initial plans – and I am so glad we did. For a week we were allowed a peek into a country filled with gentle people, half who live as they have for generations in villages without electricity or indoor plumbing.
Our first stop was in the more or less modern city of Yangon, formally known as Rangoon. It’s the country’s largest city and former capital with a population of six million. I’m not sure what I expected of Yangon, but what we found was a lovely city with tall leafy trees, wide boulevards, lakes, colonial buildings and the gloriously gilded Shwedagon Pagoda, the most spectacular Buddhist temple we saw in the four countries we toured.
In the center of town, we walked through crowded open-air markets and past men enjoying late-afternoon socializing at outdoor cafes, most of whom wear what we would call skirts. The women also wear long skirts, although they are wrapped and tied slightly differently. Many women (and children) also spread “thanaka” on their faces, a yellowish-white paste made from wood which functions as both make-up and sunscreen, a practice that dates back more than 2,000 years.
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By Fred Rothenberg, Dateline Producer
The next decision in the Michael George murder case -- the so-called “Comic Book Murder” -- could be a game-changer and and hugely controversial.
On Thursday, May 15, Judge James M. Biernat will hear oral arguments as the defense asks the judge to overturn the jury's unanimous guilty verdict. In legalese, the defense has asked for a directed verdict. Lawyers for both sides, who already have submitted written briefs, say the judge could make a decision immediately after the oral arguments, or days later.
It appears he has three choices, two of which would be remarkable.
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by Keith Morrison, Dateline correspondent
If the images of Nona Dirksmeyer's fresh open face convey a certain vulnerability, it shouldn't be too surprising; at 19 years old, though she sang beautifully, looked wonderful, and had been winning some local and entering state beauty pageants, she was still struggling with an awful secret.
Secrets, of course, do not survive murder investigations, and the details of Nona's troubles spilled out for all the world to pick over.
Certainly her mother was shocked and dismayed when Nona told her that her own father sexually abused her when she was a little girl, and that later on she began to cut herself. Imagine then, how horrifying for Nona's grieving mother when the whole town learned about not just that, but eventually, in open court, the extremely personal details of Nona's love life.
Repeatedly in recent years I have found myself in the company of parents who must struggle to make sense of the senseless death of a child, to go on after a murder. How Nona's mother Carol managed it, especially when her daughter's own secrets became such a significant part of the case, I do not know.
I left her understanding very well how important it was for her to find some form of justice... some answer.
So it was hard to fault her deep suspicion of Nona's boyfriend, Kevin. After all, the local police and prosecutors -- the only authorities she could trust -- were convinced that he must have killed her. And this was a boy she had long since begun to treat as a future son-in-law!
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Chris Hansen, Dateline correspondent
Every once in a while a story finds you. Such is the case with the hour-long investigation we'll bring you on Friday night, May 2.
I think it's one of the most unique and interesting stories we've done this year and it came to us in an equally unique and interesting way. It was a tip from a Texas-based cameraman that got the ball rolling. In the past, Izzy Cardoza had done some work for NBC News and so he felt comfortable calling NBC after he says a so-called producer/reality show host didn't pay him for a project Izzy and his crew shot.
Izzy, as it turned out had kept all the tapes as collateral and when the producer/host never came up with a promised certified check, Izzy and his crew walked off the job with the tapes.
Guess who has the tapes now?
That's right, Dateline. And they not only make for compelling television, they allowed us to track down a group of contestants who say they were duped into believing they were going to appear worldwide on a reality show. The group was told that the winner would get $50,000 and the possibility of a big time modeling contract.
The host/producer was a fellow named Gemase Simmons. He claimed to be a former supermodel, but as our investigation would reveal, that and so many other things he claimed couldn't be confirmed or just weren't true.
As you'll see, Simmons puts the contestants through the kind of grueling physical contests that have become reality show fare, but it's what was going on off-camera that was really bizarre.
We'll show you that, and also what happens when we go looking for Gemase Simmons to ask him what he was really up to.
'Reality Bites' airs May 2, Friday, 9 p.m.
By Josh Mankiewicz, Dateline Correspondent
It's been a long road for Cindy Sommer. Her U.S. Marine husband died in February, 2002, and she just got out of jail last week after being convicted by a jury of his murder. Now here's the hitch: she's innocent. Officially.
Cops and prosecutors will tell you, somewhat derisively, that the jails and prisons are just full of innocent men and women, that everyone behind bars comes armed with a story about how they got jobbed by the system. I don't know how often that's true, but it's certainly true for Cindy Sommer.
Her husband dropped dead on the bedroom floor that awful night, and although Cindy tried to do CPR, Todd Sommer died at only 23. The official cause of death was a heart attack.
A year or so later, Naval investigators (NCIS) were about to close the case when they decided to send Todd's tissue samples to a lab for heavy-metals analysis. That lab test came back showing more than a thousand times the amount of arsenic in Todd Sommer's tissues than should have been there.
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By Chetna Purohit, Dateline NBC
One of the most interesting aspects of this case to me was that, even though there was no body, no physical evidence of a crime and, essentially, no smoking gun, detectives still had plenty to investigate. The biggest clue they had into the disappearance of Ann Racz was Ann herself.
Ann lived her life with strict organization and was exceptionally meticulous about documenting the mundane details of her life. When detectives entered Ann's condo, they found letters with Post-it notes detailing dates when they needed to be mailed. Her calendar read like a diary of everything she had done and all that she planned to do. And a Boboli pizza sat on the kitchen counter -- dinner that she had promised her children the day she disappeared.
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By Bob Gilmartin, Dateline Producer
I first met Eddie Locascio Jr. at the law office of a longtime friend of mine, Michael Band. Michael, a former top Miami prosecutor, is now a successful private attorney who was hired to help steer Eddie and his aunt, Ursula Silveira, through the maze of the criminal justice system. Eddie struck me immediately as a brilliant young man. Looking in his eyes you could almost see his brain tracking the information minutes ahead of where you were in the conversation.
I first formally met his father, Ed Locascio Sr., in court during a break in the trial. We had seen each other many times in court before, but never spoke. He knew who I was from conversations with his brother, Al, and his sister, who I had spoken with in the hall. But the opportunity had never arisen to go speak with him. With the permission of a court officer, I approached him and introduced myself. Initially, there was some unease on my part about seeming too chummy with the defendant in a first-degree murder case -- especially in front of the victim's family.
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By Hoda Kotb, NBC News
It still hurts. A year has passed and it still hurts. I keep paging through the newspapers and reading bits and pieces, stories of survivors a year later. My heart aches. I am a 1986 Virginia Tech graduate. It may have been 22 years since I graduated, but I feel so close to that campus. It’s my school.
I will never forget one year ago, those images, those frantic kids running across my campus, through my drill field, becoming my memories. I searched for people I knew—some teachers, Tri-Delta sorority sisters. I realized that even though I didn’t personally know the people who were killed, I did know them. They were brothers and sisters, sons and daughters, they wore maroon and orange and cheered for the Hokies. They were family.
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By Chris Hansen, Dateline Correspondent
We’d been hearing complaints from senior citizens and government regulators across the country about the tactics some insurance salesmen are using to sell certain investments to retired folks. I’m a long ways off from retiring, but it’s an important subject to me because my mom’s close to that age and my aunts and uncles are already there. Given the turbulence we’ve seen on Wall Street, it seems like everyone is re-evaluating or repositioning their investments and would like to have their money in a safe place. And that’s what a lot of salesmen are pitching these days.
The investments are called equity-indexed annuities. They may be appropriate for some, but not for everyone. Why are so many people trying to sell these to retired folks? Simple: that’s where the money is. Seniors control more than $15 trillion in today’s economy and for the salesmen, these annuities pay healthy commissions.
Dateline decided to use hidden cameras to find out what salesmen were really saying or not saying to seniors when peddling these investments. We attended some of those “free lunch” seminars put on for potential clients, classes where salesman are taught the tricks of the trade. We wired some houses in communities where a lot of retired people live, so we could see the one-on-one pitch play out in real time.
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By Keith Morrison, Dateline Correspondent
A strange thing has happened in recent years to some of law enforcement's signature tools, those pieces of evidence which have sent countless thousands of men and women to prisons all around the world. The agent of change is, of course, that amazingly accurate marker of individuality, DNA.
DNA is now helping police solve crimes which once would have languished in a cold case room forever. But as we have also learned, occasionally to our surprise, DNA has also undone convictions once considered absolutely solid.
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