Crime
By Josh Mankiewicz, Dateline Correspondent
The guy reminded me of my grandfather. Same western shirt, same cowboy boots, same Brylcreem in his hair. Except that I never saw my grandfather cry.
Now, this fellow wasn't blubbering, but he'd choke up every so often and a tear would form, which he'd dab away with some Kleenex wadded up in his fist. And I just sat there and did nothing. Normally, when someone starts crying in the middle of a conversation, your urge is to get out of your chair and put your arm around them, or at least tell them how sorry you are. But this was television, so I just soldiered on.
He was talking about his daughter, who'd been killed by her husband. And sadly, he was one of six straight interviews I'd done for Dateline in which the person sitting across from me was crying. We cover a lot of murder cases at Dateline, and in each case, the person I was interviewing was telling me about the worst thing that had ever happened to them; the sister, the best friend, the wife taken from them suddenly and through violence.
Television is pretty good at showcasing emotion, and there was a time when getting someone to cry on-camera was hugely desirable. "Did she squirt?" one high-profile TV doctor used to ask his producers after they returned from an interview. I suppose there are still people who seek out the tears, but I'm not one of them.
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By Ellen Sherman, Dateline Producer
Understanding the people in our stories is always a challenge, especially when they are deceased, which is unfortunately the case more often than not when you deal with crime stories.
In the case of Fla. v. Keller, we had our two principal characters, a husband and wife, who were both deceased. It was not as difficult to get a handle on the wife, Rose Keil, since she had several surviving sisters and parents, one of whom agreed to share memories of her sister with us.
Rose was an interesting study in contrasts, an innocent girl who left school at 15 and married an older man. Yet as naïve as she might have been, she learned from him and eventually was so saavy that she was able to best him in a multi-million dollar divorce settlement. Some felt she was in the relationship for the money, but she stayed with her husband for almost a decade and, by the accounts of her family, she really tried to make the relationship work. What could have drawn a beautiful young girl to a man more than three decades her senior? That was the part that didn’t compute to many, but her sister told us that difficulties with Rose’s own father, were, she felt, the “X factor” that pulled Rose to look for a “father figure” in her love life.
As for Fred Keller, it seems few had a kind word to say about him. Sure, he was a successful businessman, but he was reportedly so litigious that he had sued his own children. That, coupled with the fact that he had, among other things, strong feelings about not dating women who were, in his eyes, racially pure, made him a difficult character to portray. CONTINUED >>
By Sara James, Dateline Correspondent
Being a network reporter means having the opportunity to travel to some places which are, to say the least, out of the ordinary -- such as the Washington State Penitentiary in Walla Walla.
I made the trek there on a bright, sunny day, and as I waited in the prison yard for the interview subject to show up, I leaned back against a 30-foot wall festooned with concertina wire. A guard beckoned me over. "Hey, ma'am, that's a No Go Zone," he informed me.
"I beg your pardon?"
"Move away from the wall, please. It's a shoot-to-kill zone."
I didn't waste any time following instructions.
If such precautions seem extreme, it's worth remembering that this prison is home to some notorious prisoners, and I was there to interview one of them.
When I met Kevin Coe, it was easy to see the handsome man he would have been in his 30s. He has blond hair, blue eyes, and a chiseled jaw. He seemed like the last person anyone in Spokane would have suspected as the terrifying figure from a nightmare which lasted for years.
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By Jack Cloherty, Dateline NBC National Producer
In 30 years of covering crime, cops and courts, I've never heard a story so evil: a 22-year-old woman is abducted and taken to a "party" where she is humiliated, abused, gang raped and strangled. At least two dozen of her so-called friends are at this "party," but no one intervenes on her behalf. Her naked and battered body is dumped in a snowdrift off the interstate, and for 25 long years, no one goes to the police. That's the thumbnail sketch of Janet Chandler's murder, and it is so gruesome it makes you want to stop believing in the decency of human beings.
But on the flip side of this horror is one of the most affirming stories about the human spirit that I've ever covered: a college professor and a group of students at Janet Chandler's old college make a documentary about her case, and spark a new police investigation. A tenacious cold case team works more than two years to track down the killers, and cracks the decades-old conspiracy of silence. Then Assistant Michigan Attorney General Donna Pendergast and the prosecution stepped up to put on a bullet-proof court case, and by late 2007, six people had been convicted of Janet Chandler's 1979 murder. There is a measure of justice for Janet today, but only because dozens of people worked in harmony for years to to win that justice.
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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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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 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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By Leonor Ayala, Dateline Field Producer
At 8:45 in the morning, I found myself zipping down a lonely, long stretch of road. State Road 62 in Florida wasn't much to look at in that hour, just lots of open space and farm land (of course this from my city girl's point of view). This led me to second guess myself. Was I going in the right direction?
My mind was racing. I was en route to my very first meeting with a first-degree murderer at Hardee Correctional Institution.
When I thought about stepping inside a prison for the first time, my anxiety wasn't for my personal safety. It wasn't about the pat-down everyone had warned me about, or being a few feet from a convicted killer. It was about getting to the prison on time.
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