Dateline NBC - Accused killer's voice on a 911 call in Michigan. A hike in paradise gone terribly wrong. And Karen Read's retrial begins.

Episode Date: April 3, 2025

Listen to this week's episode of the Dateline: True Crime Weekly with Andrea Canning. In Michigan, the prosecution plays the 911 call from the crime scene — but does it help the defense? In Hawaii, a doctor is charged with attempted murder after allegedly trying to push his wife off a popular trail. What she's told investigators. Jury selection is underway in Karen Read's retrial and finished early in Lori Vallow Daybell's Arizona trial. Plus, best practices for law enforcement on how to interact with people with autism. Find out more about the cases covered each week here: www.datelinetruecrimeweekly.com.Domestic violence resources: Call 1-800-799-SAFE, text START to 88788, or visit https://www.thehotline.org/

Good morning. Good morning. Dateline's morning meeting is getting underway. I see everybody on. Let's get going. Our editorial team is catching up on the latest developments in cases we've been watching around the country. It's a classic feud between these two prominent rappers.

There's a lot of misdirect and mystery. Prosecutor says we're going to bring her actual sons on. We're saying you killed our father. Welcome to Dateline True Crime Weekly. I'm Andrea Canning. It's April 3rd and here's what's on our docket. At a popular hiking trail in Hawaii, investigators say a doctor allegedly tried to push his wife off a cliff

and then he hit her on the head with a rock. She said that she bit him to try to fight him off. Other stories we've got our eyes on. Lori Vallow-Daybell, aka Mommy Doomsday, is on trial again. This time she's the defendant and her own defense attorney. Music mogul Sean Combs gets some good news from a judge and supporters gather outside the courthouse for Karen Reed's retrial. The scene here in Dedham is still kind of wild. And later, April is Autism Awareness Month.

A retired police captain tells us what he wants law enforcement to know. I realized very quickly that what I had to learn about raising a son on the spectrum was directly correlating to what I should have known as a police officer. Before all that, we're heading back to a Michigan courtroom where the prosecution came out swinging at the retrial of a woman accused of murdering her husband. Fifteen years ago, Linda K. Sturmer was convicted of killing her husband, Todd Sturmer, by setting their house on fire while he was asleep in his lazy boy and

then running him over with the family van once he ran outside. But Linda was released from prison after serving only eight years of a life sentence. A federal appeals court ruled that she deserved a retrial because of ineffective counsel and prosecutorial misconduct. And that began last week. The prosecution is calling just about every neighbor who showed up to the scene that day, a dentist who performed CPR,

the friend who noticed blood on the bumper of Linda's van, and the next door neighbor who called 911. Dateline producer Sergey Evonin has been in the courtroom in Paw Paw, Michigan, and he joins us now with the latest. Hey, Sergey. Hi, Andrea, Good to be here. Yeah, so set the scene for us. The Sturmurs lived in a pretty rural area. Linda boarded horses. The neighbors' houses weren't all that close to each other, right?

That's right. It's a pretty close-knit community. But during testimony, none of the neighbors said that they could see each other's houses. They could see the smoke and some saw the flames. And one neighbor testified that he and his sons heard the sound that they couldn't really place. They didn't know what it was. So they got in the car. And then when they got to the spot, they realized it was Linda Wailing. What did the neighbors say they saw when they got there? One of the neighbors, Dr. Richard Musali,

he's a dentist, he and his sons went over. And when they got there, they saw Todd, he was unconscious, laying on his back, all hair was gone, his skin was burned, he was not responsive. So Dr. Musali did perform mouth to mouth on Todd's tumor, trying to resuscitate him. One of the neighbors called 911? Yeah. So the first people on the scene were Connie Calhoun and her boyfriend at the time, Mike Matheny. They lived next door. And when they arrived, Mike told Connie to stay back

because he didn't want her to see the horror of the scene. And then when he came back to her, he said, Connie, you you gotta call 911 and the prosecution played that call during Mike's testimony. It was kind of bone chilling to hear that almost unnatural sound of Linda wailing. unnatural sound of Linda wailing. It sounded like almost a fire truck. It sounds so primal. Linda's friend Kim Thompson also testified. So Kim's testimony was that Linda was wearing socks, didn't have any shoes on, so she tried to get her clothes and her focus was Linda's comfort. She asked Linda if there was anything they could do and Linda asked them to take care

of the dog. And so Kim followed the dog as it was running around and that's when they discovered the van. And when they approached the van, they kind of froze because they immediately saw blood on the bumper. I remember my husband and I looked at each other and we both said the same thing. Something's not right. They never addressed it with her, but they were kind of shocked. And I backed right off. I did not want to be there.

Did they talk to Linda in the days that followed? They never asked Linda about the blood specifically, but she said that Linda's explanation for what happened that day kept changing. And Kim's husband took the stand as well. The deputy had asked us to guard that van and make sure that nobody sprayed it with water. And why was that?

I guess there was evidence on it. You could see blood on it. So the prosecution used those witnesses to paint the picture of a chaotic scene and bring in evidence that Linda ran over Todd with the van, leaving him with lacerations on his head. And they believe that would have happened after Linda poured an accelerant on Todd and lit him on fire. They called the medical examiner to testify to that? They sure did. The medical examiner took the stand and she testified that she smelled an

accelerant and the defense jumped right on her and said, it's been so many years ago. You distinctly remember that odor. How many calls have you been on? And the ME was very firm. And she said, I did smell that gasoline on Todd's body. But Dr. Mussali, who gave Todd mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, said that he didn't smell any accelerant on him. Linda's defense attorney was equally aggressive when he cross-examined the pathologist, Dr. Michael Markey. At one point, he got him to concede

that Todd's head wounds didn't kill him. Yeah, he did. Those four lacerations, we didn't have any brain damage, did we? No, there was no obvious injury to the brain. The band impact had no connection with the death. The death was caused by thermal burn injuries, fair? Yes, I believe his death was caused by the thermal injuries.

You're not qualified and you can't say that an accelerant gasoline or anything else had a connection to his burn injuries, fair? Right. I don't do accelerant testing that's out of out of the realm of what I do. And finally, the manner of death is undetermined, fair? That was my opinion at the time. Yes. As we've talked about on the podcast

before, in some states juries can ask questions right after a witness testifies. Michigan is one of those states, Sergey, and on Friday the jury had a lot of questions for the pathologist who did the autopsy. Did you get a sense, did those questions reveal anything about what the jury might be thinking? 100%. The jury asked a lot of questions about toxicology testing. The prosecution has raised the theory that Linda drug-taught before she started the fire, but the testing showed no drugs in his blood. They asked questions about the lacerations. Could those lacerations have been the result of him tumbling down the stairs?

But the doctor said he couldn't exclude that. The doctor's testimony did not confirm the prosecution theory. At least it didn't confirm all of it. All right, Sergey, thank you for keeping us up to date on this very interesting trial. We will check back in with you soon. Thank you for having me on the podcast. Coming up, in Hawaii, a scenic overlook turned into an alleged crime scene. Investigators say a doctor tried to push his wife over a cliff. What did she tell the police about what happened? The Polypuka Trail in Oahu is one of the Hawaiian Islands' popular destinations for adventurers. The trail's scenic overlooks might just be the perfect place to take a selfie, though

its jagged cliffs could be perilous to inexperienced hikers. Last week, it became the site of what investigators say was something far more treacherous, attempted murder. Gerhard Koenig, a 46-year-old doctor, is accused of attempting to kill his wife, Ariel, on the trail. Investigators say he tried to push her off a cliff, and they say when that didn't work, he attacked her.

His wife says he struck her with a rock 10 times on the head, grabbed her hair and smashed her face into the ground. Koenig was taken into custody after a manhunt last week and indicted for attempted second-degree murder. He has not yet entered a plea and his attorney did not respond to a request for comment. Mahayalani Richardson, who is the evening anchor for Hawaii News Now, KHNL, joins us to break down this story of the ultimate trouble in paradise. Welcome to the podcast. Aloha, Andrea.

I love hearing aloha. Okay, so to start, this couple, they seemed to have it all. They were married in 2018. They had two children. They had lived in Pittsburgh in an affluent area and then moved to Hawaii. What do we know about the relationship between Gerhardt and Ariel Koenig? We've talked to a few people who knew the Koenigs. She's reportedly a nuclear engineer. He is a medical doctor. Everyone said they appeared to be a loving couple. We had talked to a housekeeper who's also a friend of hers,

and she had just been to their house a week before the incident. She said that Dr. Koenig was normally quiet, and she thought it was because he's just a very professional person, and he was a very busy person, but she said that they were a loving family. Never, never in a million years would I think that this would happen. Shock, because I cannot, it's hard to fathom, it's hard to grasp the severity of this tragic

incident. I just, I can't. How did they end up, Gerhard and Ariel, wind up on this trail in the first place? They live on the island of Maui. And according to the court documents, he had planned a getaway for her birthday on Oahu. So he's the one who suggested, correct, this hike on the trail? That's right. According to the court documents, it was his idea to go on this hike at the Palipuku Trail. And if you can imagine, these hikes, this is not a simple walk in the park. It is an unmanaged trail. It is very rocky. It is very slippery, depending on the weather

conditions. So they went to the edge of the cliff and they took a selfie and she was feeling dizzy according to her accounts. And so she wanted to move away and it's during that time that she claims that he was angry at her and he said, and I'm going to use her language verbatim, she said, get back over here. I'm so sick of you. So in these court documents, Ariel says that things got physical. That's right. She says that he grabbed her, he grabbed her hair and hit her with a rock 10 times. He threw her into the bushes. And then she says that he had a syringe and tried to inject her with some sort of unknown liquid.

And then she said that she bit him to try to fight him off. I mean, at one point it sounded like he was on top of her, she was on top of him, and so there was a struggle. And thankfully two women were hiking and saw some of this and actually called 911. That's right. So according to the police records, one of them ran up ahead and saw Dr. Koenig on top of his wife in the middle of the struggle. And it's during that time that when this other hiker had come upon her, that's when he stopped and he was able to get away.

And according to the temporary restraining order, he has an adult son. We also believe that he lives on Maui as well. He had called the son and FaceTimed and said that he had tried to kill his wife and that he wanted to commit suicide by jumping off the side of the cliff. Oh my gosh, that's awful. Ariel applied for a restraining order soon after this happened.

Did she say anything that gave police a possible motive for what she's alleging he did on the trail? According to Ariel, he accused her of having an affair which fueled what she called extreme jealousy. And she claims that he was attempting to control and monitor her communications. We also learned that they had been seeing a therapist for both individual and couples therapy.

But in terms of what the court documents had said, it appears that this one incident was not a one-time thing. She accused him in her petition to the court of sexual assault and assault for months leading up to this incident. I spoke to the head of the Domestic Violence Action Center on how domestic violence experts are reacting to this case. One thing that they said was that what makes this so shocking is that this is involving a doctor,

and doctors take this oath to protect people. So that he allegedly tried to kill his wife is so shocking when doctors are supposed to be held to the highest ethical standards. The restraining order we talked about was granted and he is currently being held at a jail in Oahu. Initially his bail was set at five million, but after his indictment for attempted murder, he's now being held without bail. What can we expect from this next? Well, he is going to be going for an arraignment and plea. So that's coming up in just a few

days. And later on in April, there will be another hearing for the temporary restraining order. And so this is just the beginning of the court process. All right. Thank you so much for bringing this story to us. So sad, but thank goodness Ariel is okay. Thank you. If you or someone you know is experiencing relationship abuse, a good place to go for advice and resources is the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-SAFE, 1-800-799-7233 or text START to 887-88 or go to thehotline.org and we'll put that information in the episode description.

Up next, it's time for Dateline Roundup. We've got the latest on Lori Vallow Daybell's trial in Arizona on a charge of conspiracy to commit murder. This is her second trial in two years. And then over to Boston, where Karen Reed is also on her second trial. This one, a retrial for the alleged murder of her police officer boyfriend. And why an anonymous lawsuit against music mogul Sean Diddy Combs was dropped. Plus a retired police captain talks about his tips for law enforcement on how officers should be interacting

with people on the autism spectrum. ["Date Line Roundup"] Welcome back. Joining us for this week's Dateeline Roundup is Dateline producer Sue Simpson. Hey Sue, thanks for coming back on the podcast. You're in Dedham, Massachusetts for Karen Reid again. I am. I am. I'm here for the start of jury selection in Karen Reid's second trial. You'll remember she's charged with hitting and killing her police officer boyfriend John O'Keefe with her SUV a little over three years ago now. She's pleaded not guilty. And the scene here in Dedham is still kind of

wild. You know the judge, it's the same judge, Beverly Canone, has set an even bigger buffer zone around the courthouse to keep the crowds at bay. We also remember your soccer chair. Are you having to show up at midnight again just to get a seat? No. This time there's something called a randomizer actually, which is selecting all the reporters in the tiny courtroom. And would you say that there are as many Karen Reed supporters as from the first trial? Does it feel smaller now or the same? When jury selection started on Tuesday, I was there very early in the morning and there metal barricades up all around the court, more than in the past. I saw

Dedham police going by on bicycles and of course their Massachusetts state troopers stationed in front of the court as they were last time. It feels like there's more security. I saw really small groups of protesters. They were waving huge flags and they were wearing pink. How in the world do they pick a jury with everyone knowing about this case now? Oh boy, it is going to be a challenge. And people are saying, the judge is saying

it could take two to three weeks. So on the first day, almost a hundred prospective jurors were brought into the courtroom. And here's why it's going to be a problem. Three quarters of them said that they'd heard about the case with many of those people saying that they'd already formed an opinion about it. And that's not, of course, what either side wants to hear. One more thing I want to say, having watched the proceedings on Tuesday when jury selection

started, it's really interesting to see how deeply involved Karen is in working on the jury selection process. She is going through the questionnaires with the attorneys. She's sometimes at sidebar with them as they grill prospective jurors. I'm not surprised at all. Is Alan Jackson there, her LA attorney? He is and they've also added a New York attorney and they actually added an alternate juror from the first trial, somebody who came forward, who's an attorney, and she's working with the team. So she was going through Questionnaires Tuesday as well,

with Karen. Fascinating. Dateline producers are also following Lori Vallow-Daybell's trial in Arizona. This is about how Lori's brother, Alex Cox, killed Lori's fourth husband, Charles Vallow, in an argument and claimed self-defense. But Alex has since died and Maricopa County is alleging that it wasn't self-defense and that Lori helped plan it.

So she is facing a conspiracy charge and they've seated a jury there, Sue. Yeah, they have. They winnowed down about a hundred prospective jurors to 13 men and three women. So that will be the 12 and 4 alternates. They filled out online questionnaires, you know, what have you heard about the case? She's rolling the dice here by representing herself. Yeah, and so that led to a pretty intense moment in court earlier this week when they were still working their way through pretrial motions. Lori's trying to have a speedy trial, but the prosecution has said it's too speedy,

that they don't have enough information about what she's planned for her defense. And they actually said she's trying to conduct a trial by ambush. And Lori kind of took offense to that. How is the defense trial by ambush when they have interviewed every single one of these witnesses? Mary Striegel The judge was trying to get her to tell them about the relevancy of each of her witnesses. And they had this exchange. Lori Conner I've done everything in my power with the

limitations that I am an incarcerated person at this maximum security prison jail. Pete Slauson So, when you say… Lori Conner And I shouldn't be able to represent myself because of that fact? That negates my constitutional right? I didn't say that. All right. I said that sometimes there are reasons to not go forward to trial as fast as you want. And openings in that case are coming soon?

This coming Monday. Okay. And finally, we know that the trial of Sean Diddy Combs is set to start next month. He's charged with sex trafficking, transportation for the purposes of prostitution, and conspiracy, and he has pleaded not guilty to those charges.

Sue, what is going on with all the civil suits since there are what, more than 50 of them now? Yeah, the total was actually over 60 until this week when one of those suits was dismissed by a judge because the plaintiff didn't identify herself. So this claim was brought in federal court in the Southern District of New York, so Manhattan, and the plaintiff said that back in 1995 she was at a party for a music video and she and Combs started kissing in the bathroom. And when she stopped, she says he struck her and then he raped her. He has denied this allegation.

So when she filed the suit in October, the judge said the plaintiff could stay anonymous because putting her name to those allegations would get her, quote, significant, potentially harmful attention from the media and the public. But in January, that same judge said the plaintiff had until March 20th to come forward. When she didn't make that deadline, the judge dismissed her suit. Right. On Monday. Yes. Combs team put out a statement after that dismissal came down, which said, for months we've seen case after case filed by individuals hiding behind anonymity.

The other claims like the one dismissed today also will not hold up in a court of law. Okay, Sue, thanks for taking the time and good luck in court today. We'll talk to you soon. Bye bye, Andrea. My next guest is a former New Jersey police captain on a mission. Ever since his retirement, Jerry Turning has traveled the country training first responders on how best to interact with people with autism.

As he said in a training session recently for the Hamden, Connecticut Police Department, for him it's personal. He has a son with autism. I was second in command of my police department, and when I go home today, I am scared to death. If I ever have to call for help from my son, I'm going to hesitate. We first met Jerry through his daughter, Anna, who happens to be a Dateline Digital Associate Producer. She has written several articles for our Missing in America series, including some about people with autism who have gone missing. Since April is Autism Awareness Month,

we asked Jerry and Anna to come on the podcast and tell us what we need to know. Anna and Jerry, thank you so much for being here. Thanks for having us. Yeah, thank you. It's an honor. Yeah, absolutely. You're doing very, very good work. So to both of you, Anna and Jerry,

you have someone in your family with autism. And this is what inspired you to do this work with the autism community. Yeah, my son's name name is Eric and his brother. He has been an amazing, eye-opening experience for us. Yeah, part of my job is to write about missing people and to bring awareness to those cases. The ones where the person that's missing

is on the autism spectrum have hit me extremely hard because it's very personal to me. Jerry, you were in the unique position of being a police officer. So you decided to rethink the interactions between law enforcement and people with autism. Yeah, it's interesting, Angie. I was a cop for 10 years before my son was diagnosed.

I'd been involved in multiple large scale searches for individuals on the spectrum when they have gone missing. And it's sad to say that I have not, in my 25-year career, I had not received one minute of formal training or education on this topic. And I realized very quickly that what I had to learn in the education I was receiving about my son just to be a dad and to be a parent raising a son on the spectrum was directly correlating to what I should have known as a police officer. And for very selfish reasons, I decided to tackle this because what happens if my son who is now 21 years old, 6 feet tall, 200 pounds, what happens if he meets somebody

out there that I call brother, they misunderstand him, They mischaracterize who he is and the behaviors he is displaying. And they hurt my son. How are you training people to better handle these situations? Well, the first step is understanding that this stuff is hard. A lot of these behaviors that these individuals will display

will directly mimic things that we've been taught in the police academy to show intoxication, evasiveness, disrespect. All of this is very valid, 98% of the time. But that 2% of the time where that individual is on the spectrum and he's not interacting with you the way we expect, that's where we find ourselves in dangerous waters as law enforcement. There's no playbook, but what's your advice to the caretakers of people with autism about how to deal with a situation where law enforcement needs to show up? Well, this dances around a pretty controversial topic about privacy, and there's a large segment

of our population who say that they don't want their child labeled or somehow looked at as different. I understand that and I value that opinion. However, from my perspective as a cop for 25 years, I'm a big proponent of information. So if a family were to ask me my advice, my advice would be to, in any way possible, make that officer understand that this individual they're interacting with is on the autism spectrum, has whatever sensory challenges, communication challenges, whatever it is that that family understands about that person, make sure that that is clear. Whether that comes verbally or whether it's using some of these ID technology that exists, whether it's an ID bracelet, they're popping

up all over the place, especially in these registries now that you can register your child with your law enforcement organization. Anything that can put it out there that there's a certain special circumstance here, I'm a proponent of. Anna, of course, a big job that you have here at Dateline is covering these missing persons cases. Is there a case that you've seen that showcases some of what your dad's training is trying to accomplish? Yes, a case that definitely comes to mind for me was Sebastian Rogers. He's a 15-year-old autistic boy from Sumner County, Tennessee. He went missing in February of 2024. Something that police did

during their initial search efforts, which I thought was very creative and kind of highlights exactly what my dad is teaching in his trainings, is while searching for Sebastian, the search and rescue crews were playing music, specifically his favorite music. His favorite song is Eye of the Tiger. And they were playing that song in their cars and anywhere they could trying to soothe him and alert Sebastian that, you know, we're all here to help you. And I'm so glad you're writing about this. It's so important.

And also, you know, if anyone has any information, of course, about Sebastian Rogers from Sumner County, Tennessee, please let the police know or reach out to us at Dateline. And, you know, just thank you to both for all of your work in the autism community. Thank you, Andrea. It means a lot. Thank you so much for having us.

That's it for this episode of Dateline True Crime Weekly. To get ad-free listening for all our podcasts, subscribe to Dateline Premium. If you have any true crime questions you want our team to look into, we'd love to hear your voice on the podcast. Send us an audio message on social at Dateline NBC or call us at 212-413-5252 and we'll see if we can get some answers for you. Coming up this Friday on Dateline, I've got an all-new two-hour episode.

After a couple is found shot to death on a 4th of July weekend, the man's grieving daughter is determined to find their killer, even if it means going undercover and confronting someone she loves. I really wanted to find out who did it. You put your detective hat on. Yeah, I did. A fire was lit. Yeah. Watch Deadly Obsession this Friday on NBC at 9-8 Central or stream it on Peacock on Saturday.

And for the next few weeks, you can get your Dateline fix on Sundays too. This Sunday, tune in at 10-9 Central for Josh's report about the puzzling murder of a University of Iowa student and the piece of surveillance video that cracked the case wide open. Thanks for listening. Dateline True Crime Weekly is produced by Frannie Kelly and Katie Ferguson. Our associate producers are Carson Cummins and Caroline Casey.

Our senior producer is Liz Brown-Kurloff. Veronica Mazaka is our digital producer. Rick Kwan is our sound designer. Original music by Jesse McGinty. Bryson Barnes is head of audio production, Paul Ryan is executive producer, and Liz Kola is senior executive producer of Dateline. Bye everyone.