20/20 - The After Show: Bad Romance

Episode Date: April 28, 2025

Deborah Roberts and ABC News Contributor Ryan Smith, who hosts the 20/20 limited run series 'Bad Romance,' discuss the combustable mix of love and true crime. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi there everybody. Welcome to 2020 The After Show. I'm Deborah Roberts and today we've got a special series to explore. 2020's limited series Bad Romance. It recently returned for its second season Tuesday nights on ABC through May 13th. Now, as you can probably guess from the title, these are stories of people who have lost their lives at the hands of those who they thought would love them forever. We're going to look at the consequences of obsession, manipulation, and take a look at the dark side of love. And joining me to discuss this combustible mix of love and true crime is ABC News contributor and my friend Ryan Smith. Hi Ryan. Deborah, it's so good to talk to you. Good to talk to you. I had to resist the urge to say and joining me as somebody who can talk about obsessive, you know, whatever in life, because that's not quite the case. But you are of course obsessed with 2020 and a lot of these

stories. You and I have worked on a lot of them together. It's great to see you and I'm glad we can talk about this. Yeah, me too. Well, you know, at the heart of these stories, and we, you know, we see a lot of overlap in these stories. So clearly, we had enough, sadly, I guess you could say to put them all together and sort of look at them, you know, through a bigger lens in this series called Bad Romance. And one of the things to me that is so compelling in these love relationships is that, you know, at the root of it, as we said, there's often obsession, things that have gone wrong and people who just either snap or just do the unthinkable. Why do you think people are so fascinated by these stories?

It's because of love. And I know that sounds trite for some people, but love is just this basic human emotion that we all want to feel. And when we feel it, Deborah, it can make us do things that are unexpected. And that make us go beyond what we would normally do. I can't tell you how many people who watch bad romance, they stop me on the street and say, Oh, I saw this show you guys did on bad romance. They tell me about a particular show. And then they say something to the effect of,

you know, I could see why maybe they felt that way. But why would they go here? And I always tell them, think about the first thing you just said, you can see why they felt that way. So many of the stories we cover are about people who are in a relationship or trying to hide something in a relationship to maintain another relationship, all these different emotions surrounding love that make people do things. And what I try to tell people is

the reason I think people connect with a lot of these stories is because they can see parts of themselves in those stories. Not in terms of the crime committed, but in terms of the emotions involved and why people end up feeling the way they're feeling. The only difference in many of our stories is people take it too far.

And one thing I like to tell people about these stories is a lot of times these cases are not often cases with people with long criminal records with previous crimes. Oftentimes no records. Exactly. Oftentimes no records. So you're talking about heat of passion situations, situations where people's emotions because of love drove them to do something that was really beyond their normal behavior. Yeah, I agree with you and you and I can peel back and look at some of the ones that we've covered but as you're talking about this I'm thinking about you know a story that I covered in Minnesota where you know someone actually betrayed his wife

and this guy had never been in trouble, in fact was quite religious and they're supposed to be going to church that morning when she's killed. What do you make of the motives? Because oftentimes these are folks who are trying to either cover their tracks or sometimes they're involved in, you know,

duplicitous relationships. Talk to me a little bit about the motives. It's interesting that you talk about this. One thing that shocked me when I first started working on 2020s was how many of these cases involve people who are living double lives, as we call them, or have a relationship in one spot, and then another relationship somewhere else. That's the motive a lot of times.

Sometimes it deals, our episodes deal with custody issues can be the motive. Other times it can be control issues can be the motive. Other times it can be control issues can be the motive, somebody didn't do what I wanted, and I wanted them to change their behavior. So now I'm taking this action. But it all still comes back to the basic human feelings that we have. Just these are those feelings that are far beyond the pale. So for example, we have an episode that involves a custody

situation. And then that involves a custody situation, and in that particular situation, you would argue, well, there's so many ways to handle that, but sometimes people feel it's gotten out of control and that there's no other way to do anything except take this extreme action. So the motives can be all over the place. And they feel boxed in.

Yeah, they feel boxed in. You make a great point. That's exactly right. That's what gets me, and you raise an interesting point when you talk about these double lives. I mean, those are the things of TV dramas, right? One of the ones that, of course, I remember so well, is we call it Love You to Death, is this case of Molly Watson, who was found murdered on a dark country road. She was getting ready to get married. Her new marriage license was in her car. Her boyfriend of seven years, so she'd been seeing somebody for seven years, and she's

got her new license there in the back of the car. And when police find her, they feel like they're going to go and drop this horrible news on this fiance who's going to be just devastated. And they shockingly discovered his wife, his wife at home, that he's got a double life. I was the correspondent on this story, and I still think about it to this day for a lot of reasons, but let's listen to a clip. I talked to Melanie Addie,

who is the ex-wife of the perpetrator, James Addie, and it was the first time she had actually given an interview. Let's take a listen. The police tell you... Yes. ...that your husband has a dead fiance? Yes. And he's engaged to the world. Yeah. And you're learning all of this in one night? Immediately, yeah. And you've been married for 20? 23 years. What did you think? I can't even

tell you. It was just mind-boggling. It made no sense at all, none. Were you angry? Were you hurt? What were you feeling? Probably just disbelief in the beginning. Didn't seem right. This was not my life. Did you think that your husband was capable of murder? Yes.

It just seemed like something he would do to fix a problem. He was a pretty selfish person. He could be controlling and intimidating and it could be challenging. Wow. Right? Wow. Yeah. First of all, I can't believe she said yes, but then also I'm not only registering the shock from her,

but the shock in your voice as you're going through it. Yeah. I was, I was, you know, the incredulity, because, you know your voice as you're going through it. Yeah. I was, you know, the incredulity because, you know, you have to think that people are going to wonder if you've been married to somebody for 23 years, did you see any signs, you know? And I did go into that thinking, you know, come on, you had to have seen something. I was a little surprised at how matter of fact she was about it. She was clearly still very hurt by it, but she absolutely stood by her story that she,

you know, they had problems in their marriage and, you know, they weren't necessarily probably on the best of terms, you know, he went his way, she would go to bed early, you know, they didn't have a great marriage, but she never ever would have imagined. And Ryan, remember, he worked at a prison. And so this is somebody you would expect to at least think about, right and wrong and so forth. So I wanted to sort of represent the viewer there with those questions and the shock of what she told me. First of all, my heart went out to her

because her life just blew up as she knew it. But wow is right. I mean, and I also like the fact that you talk about this idea because a lot of people asked me about this as well, that how could this person not have known? How could you not know? I mean, this is your husband, your spouse, and then they try to make, I think in many ways judgments on the relationship. I'm not trying to say that everybody should or

should not know in different situations. I'm just saying, I think sometimes what I've learned a lot of times, Debra, from these stories is, you have no idea the lengths that people sometimes go to try to cover something that's going on in their lives. And sometimes when that happens, it can be extremely difficult for people to know what's happening. Yeah.

And what was interesting, too, about this story is that clearly they had problems in their marriage. Because he would go out supposedly with his buddies. And on this particular night, he went out with his buddies. But he went to great lengths to cover his tracks. He would say he was going off to some kind of a convention or some kind of a meeting out of town. Of course, he's with Molly. This relationship goes on and this is the part I think that

intrigues people so much is that probably James Addie was content to just continue this affair but Molly with no knowledge of course that this guy is living a double life wants to get married. And so he is going to honor that at a certain point, you know, she's pushing, she's pushing, she wants to get married, and he's gotta figure it out. So he goes so far as to get the marriage license and he's caught on video tape. You see the two of them on surveillance tape going to the office to go get the marriage license

and you know his mind is spinning. What am I going to do? What am I going to do? And that's the kind of stuff I think that people find so intriguing. But Ryan, one of the things that I so enjoy about this kind of a conversation, us getting a chance to talk about these stories that we cover, is sharing with our viewers

and our listeners the things that happen behind the scenes, right, whether we're struggling to work a story and get some video that maybe something goes wrong or those kinds of things. But in this particular instance, this was one I will never forget. We are interviewing Melanie Addie and we have a hair and makeup team there who to touch her up to touch me up so we're sitting there doing this interview and after we finish when I go back

behind the scenes to say something to them they both these two women are standing there their face is almost ashen and they said we have something to them, they both, these two women, are standing there, their faces almost ashen, and they said, we have something to tell you. We have to tell you something. And I said, what is that? We knew Molly. We were the hair and makeup team hired for her wedding. We knew this woman.

We knew something happened to her. We never knew what. And then they proceed to play the last audio clip they have of her on their cell phone you know talking about the wedding. Hi Chris Fulfett, this is Molly Watson. I'm from the call you and um, um, that one's for me and I forgot you guys spoke at 3 today. I mean it was stunning we didn't get a chance to put that in our piece but it was just like what? Wow I can't believe that now them hearing that firsthand, standing right there with you. Yeah. I can't believe that just in real time. They're like, oh my goodness, that job. Yeah.

That canceled on us was this woman. And they had no idea because they didn't know what had happened to her. They didn't know what story we were there covering. So as they're hearing all of this unfold, they're thinking, wait a second, this is familiar. So these unusual things happen to us sometimes behind the scenes and that I have to say is probably one of the strangest ones for me. I have never had that happen. Somebody on the set who was in some way connected to what happened, I've never had that happen, but that is that is remarkable. That's mind-blowing. So you know I just thought you'd get a kick out of hearing it.

Well, listen, let's take a quick break because when we come back, there are more stories about double lives and crimes of passion from our Bad Romance series. ["Bad Romance"] From early morning workouts that need a boost to late night drives that need vibes, a good playlist can help you make the most out of

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Okay Martin, let's try one. Remember, big. You got it. The Ford It's a Big Deal event is on. How's that? A little bigger. The Ford It's a Big Deal event. Nice. Now the offer? Lease a 2025 Escape Active All-Wheel Drive from 198 bi-weekly at 1.99% APR for 36 months with $27.55 down. Wow! That's like $99 a week. Yeah, it's a big deal. The Ford It's a Big Deal event. Visit your Toronto area Ford store or Ford.ca today. Welcome back to the 2020 After Show. I'm Deborah Roberts here with Ryan Smith, my pal and colleague here at 2020. And Ryan, one of the stories you presented, we have called Betrayed, which aired last week. And it's the story of Angel Gojana, who was murdered in her home with her mom while planning her wedding to David Hoschaw. And investigators are struggling to find clues.

And then they get these letters, these bizarre letters sent to police by somebody claiming to have killed both of the women. Let's take a listen. Days are passing and there's no arrest, no clues, no clear direction. Within a development that most murder investigations never see, a letter from the killer, and it's postmarked in Chicago. You don't have a clue, do you? I met the pretty biatch at the beach a few days before I killed her.

She had her mother with her. She told me she was getting married in September, but she wanted to have one last fling beforehand. It references Angel and her mother going to the beach. Now investigators cross-check her diary, where she actually talks about going to the beach with her mom. Me and mom decided not to waste a good day.

I were ready to be on the beach by 8 a.m. or so. And the dates line up. How would the writer know all this unless they knew the women, unless they were actually there? Chilling stuff. David Hosha's ultimately revealed to be the killer, and similar to the last story we talked about, he's leading a double life,

but these letters, these haunting letters taunting police, Ryan, what was that all about? Yeah, it was so strange, this case. He was writing them to cover his tracks, but this case was a really strange one in that when you talk about David Hoschaw, he actually initially had an alibi in this situation. So as time went by though,

he felt the need to kind of cover his tracks. So he writes these letters, sort of baiting police, trying to throw police off. But what he didn't plan on, and I think people are really going to find this interesting when they watch the episodes, are that his cell phone records and his credit card receipts ended up putting him in the vicinity of some of the postmarks on the letters that ended up connecting officers and investigators to him. He was with one woman, he was trying to get married to her, but then met someone else and trying to break it off. If he would have handled it differently, maybe it would have ended differently.

But even in the aftermath of the killing, his behavior with the letters and the different things he wrote, kind of reminds you of a movie, right? Somebody sending these letters, please come and get me, what are you gonna do? He's trying to throw them off. And what he did was essentially give himself up. And instead he's drawing them closer to him. Exactly. And that's what's interesting.

I'm sure you see this and you feel this all the time, when we're examining these stories and you're thinking, how is it people think that they're gonna get away with this? In this case, if he hadn't sent the letters, he might have actually gone for a long time getting away with it. But don't you find yourself asking folks, what about divorce? All the time. All the time.

And it's exactly what we're talking about. It's this idea of, can't you just handle something differently? Like in this case, this was a man who was engaged to one woman and then ended up connecting with another woman who we end up speaking to in the episode. And so he tries to then break it off with the first woman. But instead, it's it kind of gets out of control and things happen. Part of his story is it went beyond what I thought it was was going to happen. But there are so many different ways to handle these issues. But I come back to the same thing we

talked about before, when emotion and passion and love are involved, all bets are off. And I can't tell you, I know I keep saying this, that people stop me and ask me about these episodes. But the other thing people say is, you know, why don't people just think it through more? Why don't, why would you do it that way? Because when you're, when you're in a situation like this and there is so much passion and so much emotion, you are not thinking clearly by default. Think about all the times when you've been in love.

I could tell you, at least for me, when I've been in love, like I would love to sit up here and say the only time I've been in love was with my wife, but there were times before. Okay, all right. We'll buy that. Maybe once or twice. Only once. But when I was in those situations, I can look back and say, why did I do that? Why did I do this? And I think these cases that we cover, it's that times 100. It's emotions or, you know, anger or different things coming in times 100. And when that happens, all the things that make sense go right out the window.

Explosive situations. Well, that's why they call it a crime of passion, obviously. You know, you mentioned the messiness of that one. And another story that I cover too, that was pretty messy, but also involved all of this betrayal, was one that we called Barefoot Witness. And this one still sticks with me too, because I'm just, I'm blown away sometimes that people can actually turn on someone that they purported to love, right? And not just turn on them, but just become violent. And this was the story of a school teacher, Lintel Washington. She was voted Teacher of the Year. She was a woman who by all accounts was just a great

educator. But sadly, she didn't do so well in the department of picking men. She was in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. She really wanted love. In this case, when we start off the story, it begins with her three-year-old daughter who is discovered wandering alone in a parking lot in Baton Rouge with blood on her feet, and days later, an extensive search turns up her mom's body. I worked on this story, and I was just not only shocked,

first of all, that there's a three-year-old child involved and who had to witness, you know, something horrible, but that the man that Lintel, you know, loved and thought loved her would actually wind up being charged here. So let's listen to a clip from this story. At what point did you know that she was interested in Robert Marks?

She shows me a picture of him. And so I say, OK, he's nice looking. And she just started beaming like she started smiling. Was she in love? Yes, she was. I think she had her disappointments. And so now finally, she gets someone who's Dr. Robert Marks.

And he wants her. He's pursuing her. Now finally she gets someone who's Dr. Robert Marx and he wants her, he's pursuing her. A new love, the promise of a new family. It's everything Lintel's been hoping for, but she has no idea what truly lies ahead. Something horrible has happened to Lintel Washington and where is she? So you hear from her friends there who, you know, were advising her and felt so horrible. But when you think about Ryan, her child, her daughter caught in the wreckage of this murder,

and she gave the lead to investigators because she's so tiny, but she was able to say, Mr. Robbie put the blood in the car, and that started to lead police to him. That information, that important clue, it stands out to me so much about this episode, because the worst part of cases like this that we cover, or at least I think, are the ones that involve children. And when you have a child, I always like to tell people,

cases like this, they don't happen, and then investigators Research it for a week and then the case is solved in two weeks like on television. Yeah, exactly. It takes years courtrooms The little child having to tell this story probably several times and all the trauma that she's gone through in all of this and that's what's So harrowing about this story Deborah that you did I really want people to see it because I want them to understand not only the effect of a case like this and how the emotions and the love of a situation can make things turn so wrong,

but also the involvement of children in some of this. Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah. And that trauma, when you think about that. Well, I got to meet the daughter years later, and she seemed to be doing pretty well. But you know that that's something she's going to live with. Well, Ryan, we're gonna take another quick break, and when we come back, we want to hear more about what's coming up in the Bad Romance series. Don't miss Good American Family. We have a little girl here for adoption. She has dwarfism. Starring Ellen Pompeo and Mark Duplass.

Something is off. She's just a little girl. You think she's a faking? She has adult teeth? There are signs of puberty? Inspired by the shocking stories that tore a family apart. I don't know what's going on. How old are you?

You should get a lawyer. You have no idea how those people hurt this girl. The Hulu Original Series, Good American Family. New episodes Wednesdays, streaming on Hulu. We're back with Ryan Smith. And Ryan, this has been so intriguing talking about these stories that you and I cover. And I'm just amazed that people stop you on the street because they feel so connected to these stories. Yes. The reason you're doing this podcast is so helpful for a

lot of people because what they do is they see our stories. And then they want to say I saw it and you helped tell it. So you got to tell me more. And so I'm like, okay, so this and that and then we go through it and then they want to dissect it. They want to know a more behind the scenes. Exactly. So they're gonna love this because they want to know as much as they can about the stories. And that's what makes this work so powerful. I think Deborah, I don't know how you feel about it, but it's true crime for a reason.

Crime that we watch on TV, CSI, things like that. Those are interesting. But when it actually happened in real life, you almost can't believe it happened and you want to know more. You're absolutely right. And people often want to know about the particular people that we interview. And I don't know how you feel about it, but, you, but at the end of the day, these are horrible crimes. They are traumatic situations. People's lives have been blown up as a result

and forever changed. And we're talking to them about deeply personal, intimate matters, oftentimes about their personal lives and how they either didn't see it coming or just how it's affected them. How about you in covering those interviews? Because for me, there are times I leave them kind of shaken. I feel the same way.

For all these interviews, especially when we're dealing with people who've lost someone, I try to look at it first like I'm trying to honor them first. So for example, if I'm interviewing someone who's lost a loved one, I want them to be able to tell the story of their loved one. And what I do a lot of times is I'll stop if they feel, and I'll try to say, are you OK? Do you want to share more?

How do you feel? I understand that we have a desire to tell as much of the story as we can, but I also feel like it's their story to tell. So for me, I always take it from a place of how can we help you best express what you feel about what happened? Yeah, I agree with you. And sometimes people have said to me too that they felt a sense of catharsis afterwards. I mean, there's no greater compliment to me when I'm doing an interview with someone

who has endured something so horrible than when they say afterwards, you made this so much easier than I thought it would have been. And it was so it's a relief to share my story. And you made me feel so much better doing it. That's the greatest compliment, right? I love that. And I love it when people a lot of sometimes people say to me, Hey, thank you for doing it that way. And that really makes me feel good. If they can feel at the end of it, some good has come out of this for them,

then I feel like I've done what I'm supposed to do. I totally agree with you. Well, you've got a lot more coming up. We're just a little more than halfway through the series. You've got three more episodes to go. Anyone that's really is intriguing to you or has captured your attention more than others? One that really stands out to me

is the story called Doomsday Bride. It's a case that a lot of people may know of. A woman named Lori Vallow Daybell. She was involved with a man, Chad Daybell. This is a very big story for a very long time. She's in a relationship and it's sort of a twisted story. She uprooted her life to be with Chad and Chad is this doomsday preacher. He talks about the end of times and Lori becomes a believer herself and then her children go missing.

So Lori recently faced a new charge in Arizona and she was found guilty of conspiracy to commit murder for the death of her fourth husband, Charles Vallow. She served as her own attorney in that case. Yeah, yeah we've seen pictures of her in court. I remember when this story first broke, it was during the pandemic, actually. I remember following it and maybe doing a report or two on Good Morning America, but there's so much to this, as you said, still unfolding, so much to keep an eye on.

And then, of course, I have to throw in that you're a lawyer as well. So you look at these stories from a very different point of view oftentimes when you're sitting down, I'm sure. I do I do. It's one of the things I think works when I do these interviews. And when I talk to people, just using my legal mind how a case comes together, how evidence comes

together to help them tell their stories. Yeah, that makes such a difference. Well, you bring a different perspective. And it's always such a pleasure to talk with you. So thanks so much for joining us. And that's going to do it for us today. We thank you for joining us. Make sure to tune in to the rest of the Bad Romance series Tuesdays at 10pm on ABC. And as always tune into 2020 Friday nights at nine o'clock. The 2020 After Show is produced by Cameron Shatavian and Sasha Ouslanian

with thanks to Anne Reynolds, Brian Mazursky and Alex Berenfeld of 2020. Theme music by Evan Viola. Janis Johnston is the executive producer of 2020, Josh Cohen, the director of podcasting at ABC Audio and Laura Mayer is the executive producer. Rapper Sean Diddy Combs was a kingmaker. He had wealth, fame, and power. What's up, welcome to New York! Until it all came crashing down.

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