Dateline NBC - Dateline: True Crime Weekly with Andrea Canning

Episode Date: September 19, 2024

Listen to this week's episode of the Dateline: True Crime Weekly podcast with Andrea Canning. This week, music legend Sean Combs is arraigned in open court; a Virginia man is charged with killing his wife and a stranger so he could be with the family’s au pair; and a longtime Dateline producer stops by to  talk about “The Sing Sing Files”, his book chronicling his decades spent uncovering wrongful convictions. Like what you hear? Listen to Dateline: True Crime Weekly every Thursday. Follow here:  https://link.chtbl.com/dtcw_fdlw

Hi everyone, Andrea Canning here, inviting you to listen to this week's episode of Dateline True Crime Weekly. It's the podcast we've been working on over the summer in which we dive into the cases making true crime headlines around the country. You'll hear the stories behind the story from Dateline producers and NBC News reporters in the field. And you never know when Josh and Keith will stop by. New episodes drop every Thursday, so take a listen. We'd love to know what you think. Good morning. Hey, good morning. You're listening in to Dateline's morning meeting in 30 Rockefeller Center. Let's get started so you can get going on your day. Our editorial team is catching up on breaking crime news around the country.

She says he was going to kill her. He had my mom on the ground kicking her and I shot him. Originally, of course, the thought was, was she going to turn on him, right? So it's a pretty volatile situation, but right now we are back on track. I'm Andrea Canning. Welcome to Dateline True Crime Weekly. It's September 19th and here's what's on our docket. In Virginia, the latest on a bizarre double murder plot involving a fetish website and the family au pair. I know it sounds like a cliche, but it is something out of every woman's suburban nightmare. In Dateline Roundup, updates from three big Florida cases, a verdict in the Lori Shaver trial, the convicted killer ballerina gets some good news and a courtroom surprise for a mother-in-law accused of murder. Jury selection in Donna's trial started on Tuesday, but it stopped

pretty quickly. We'll also talk The Sing Sing Files, a new book from veteran Dateline producer Dan Slepian about wrongful convictions. But the real shock to me from going to Sing Sing, and the reason why I kept going, is because I can't believe how many innocent people I found there. But before all that, we're headed to New York City, the federal courthouse where prosecutors unsealed a criminal indictment this week against a pop culture legend. On Monday night, Sean Combs, the music mogul you probably know as Puffy or Puff Daddy or Diddy, was arrested in the lobby of a luxury hotel in midtown Manhattan.

And on Tuesday, United States Attorney Damian Williams laid out the three federal crimes Combs has now been indicted on. Sean Combs with racketeering conspiracy, sex trafficking, interstate transportation for prostitution. The indictment alleges that between at least 2008 and the present, Combs abused, threatened, and coerced victims to fulfill his sexual desires, protect his reputation, and conceal his conduct. The indictment is not exactly unexpected. It was just six months ago agents raided his homes in Los Angeles and Miami, carting off computers and guns. And Combs has spent the past 10 months battling 10 civil suits filed by accusers who say he abused them, almost all of which he denies. But this week, Combs faced a different kind of reckoning, his arraignment in open court.

Chloe Malas was sitting just a few feet away from Combs. She is joining us from a news van outside of the federal courthouse in New York to tell us what she saw. Thanks for making time for us, Chloe. Thanks for having me. Chloe, what was it like watching Diddy, who we know from award shows and music videos, walk into court for his arraignment? It was quite jarring. I mean, this was a man that launched the careers of so many. He's a billionaire. You know, some would say he had the Midas touch. Yeah. Who was there? Who came out to support him? His entire side of the courtroom was packed. Andrea, several of his children were there, his sons, family members, a team of lawyers, and it looked like some friends as well. And on the other side was all media from all over

the world. Okay, so he pleaded not guilty and has denied the allegations through his lawyer as well. These charges are very disturbing, Chloe. One of the things that really got my attention was when I heard this term, freak-offs, that the U.S. attorney talked about. As alleged, Combs used force, threats of force, and coercion to cause victims to engage in extended sexual performances with male commercial sex workers, some of whom he transported or caused to be transported over state lines. Combs allegedly planned and controlled the sex performances,

which he called freak-offs. And drugs came into play in all this, the prosecution says. You're right. They talk about all sorts of drugs in the indictment, from GHB to ecstasy to opioids, claiming that Combs would ply these women and men with copious amounts of drugs and that they would be disoriented when participating in these freak-offs and sometimes not even realize that they were being filmed. And that the recordings of them were then allegedly used to threaten them to stay silent. So what evidence did the prosecutor lay say that they spoke with 50 witnesses. Not only did they find, you know, firearms with the serial numbers off of them, they have videos of these freak-offs that during the raids they obtained over 90 cell phones, 30 thumb drives, surveillance cameras.

The indictment refers to surveillance video from a hotel hallway in 2016. It shows Combs kicking and dragging his former girlfriend, Cassie, by her hair. She was the first person to file a civil suit against Combs. That video became public this May, and right now it's the only allegation that Sean Combs has apologized for. My behavior on that video is inexcusable. I take full responsibility for my actions in that video. So that has become a big part of this. It's a huge part of the indictment.

And she did settle that civil suit with Diddy last year. I mean, I listened to prosecutors talk about the fact that the video backs up these claims of violence. And that was one of their big sticking points and why he shouldn't be allowed bail. But what I did find interesting is that when Combs' attorney got up there, he claims that before Cassie filed that civil suit, that allegedly she and her lawyer went to Diddy's legal team and asked them to pay for the rights for a book that

she was writing for $30 million, and that when he denied the opportunity to buy the memoir, that that is what prompted her to file this civil suit. And I think that that would be very interesting to a jury. Oh, for sure. Puffy's team first made that allegation right after she filed last year. And Cassie's lawyer told the New York Times then that Puffy offered Ms. Ventura eight figures to silence her and prevent the filing of this lawsuit. She rejected his efforts. And we do know that nine more accusers at least have since come forward with allegations of abuse dating back to the 90s. They have. The most recent of the 10 lawsuits was filed just last week by singer and songwriter Dawn Richard, who worked with Puffy for more than a decade. What was new about her

lawsuit is that she claimed she witnessed him abusing Cassie in public and named names of people who saw it and did nothing. Yeah, she claims at a dinner party she actually saw Diddy punch Cassie in the stomach and that she keeled over and was crying and that this really famous music executive named Jimmy Iovine, he ran Interscope Records, that he witnessed it and it was a night where Diddy was going to be signing some big deal and that it actually still went forward even after they watched him allegedly punch Cassie. Now, we've reached out to Jimmy Iovine for comment. We haven't yet heard back, Andrea.

But in the indictment, the federal prosecutors say that Diddy's behavior was recurrent and widely known. Yeah, and I think a lot of people are going to think of Harvey Weinstein, you know, when woman after woman started accusing him, and people were asking, you know, why wasn't more done, you know, bystanders who knew that this was happening? United States Attorney Damian Williams, he actually said something that I wrote down on a piece of paper I'm looking at that says he did not do this all on his own and that they are not done. This investigation is ongoing, and I encourage anyone with information about this case to come forward and to do it quickly. Puffy's defense team is fighting back, of course, and one of

his lawyers said last week about Don Rashard's suit that she's just trying to get a payday conveniently timed to coincide with her album release and press tour. We don't know how many victims are in this criminal indictment, but the allegations are clearly very serious. So, Chloe, what are the penalties that Sean Combs is now facing? One of those charges alone out of the three is a 15-year minimum sentence. The others, it could be up to life in prison. We heard the judge say that more than once, and I kept looking over at Combs to see if there was any reaction from him, and he was just stone-faced, staring straight ahead. He was denied bail. I think some people will be surprised by that. Yeah, I mean, his team put up a very solid argument. I listened to his attorney, Mark Agnifilo, talk about how Combs voluntarily moved to New York two weeks ago to cooperate with federal authorities because they had a sense this

indictment was coming. He also said, look, you know, Combs surrendered his passport. Some of his family members surrendered their passports. He held them up in the air. And he also said, look, you know, Combs surrendered his passports. Some of his family members surrendered their passports. He held them up in the air. And he also said that he was putting up one of his homes in Florida worth almost $50 million as collateral. But the judge ultimately denied it because she said that these allegations are things that happen behind closed doors and she cannot confidently allow him out on the streets and know that he is safe to society. So it looks like he's going to be sitting behind bars until this goes to trial. All right. Well, it's clear this investigation will continue. Thank you so much for taking the time.

Thank you. Up next, investigators make a second arrest in a Virginia double murder plot. Did a woman's husband commit not one, but two murders to start a new life with the family au pair? For our next story, we're heading to a Virginia suburb and a house on a tree-lined street where early one morning in February 2023, Brendan Banfield walked in on a stranger viciously stabbing his wife, Christine. So he told a 911 police dispatcher he shot him. But earlier this week, after a 19-month investigation, police announced Brendan was under arrest, charged with not just the murder of the man Joseph Ryan, who he admitted shooting, but his wife too.

570 days later, we are finally in a position to announce that two persons are being charged and held responsible. The other person charged in connection to the crime? The family au pair. And according to prosecutors, Brendan's lover. Here to tell us more is Dateline producer Marianne O'Donnell. Marianne, thank you so much for joining us. Hi, Andrea. How are you? Crazy story. Yeah, this is twisted. Let's start by talking about Brendan and Christine Banfield. What do we know about them? So they're a young couple, 30-something. Christine is a pediatric ICU nurse.

He, Brendan Banfield, is with the IRS. He's a criminal investigative agent. And together they have a little girl. They needed help caring for their daughter. And so as part of an au pair exchange program with Brazil, they hired a young woman in her early 20s, her name, Juliana Perez Magales. And she settles in with the family and apparently does beautifully. There's a but here. Yeah, a big but. Prosecutors have a very

different take on the relationship that develops. What they say is that Brendan and the au pair start a love affair. I know it sounds like a cliche, but it is something out of every woman's suburban nightmare. Husband falls in love, and then the two lovers conspire to kill with a twisted plot to get a stranger to come to the house and try to pin it all on him. Okay, so we go to the morning of February 24th. Several 911 calls come in from the Banfields' house. First responders arrive. They find the man dead and Brendan's wife stabbed several times. What do Brendan and Juliana say to the authorities? It's Juliana who speaks to police.

This is the story she tells. She left the house with the little girl sometime after 7 in the morning, around the same time Brendan Banfield left for work. Minutes out, she realized, oh, I forgot our lunches for the day. She heads back to the house, and what she says is that she sees a strange man enter the Banfield home. She immediately reaches out to Brendan, and he shows up minutes later on the scene, and they together go upstairs to the main bedroom where they find Christine. This man's standing over her. He's attempting to stab her, or he has stabbed her.

That's not clear. Brendan takes his service revolver, fires a shot, and then Juliana says, Brendan told her to go into his closet. There's a safe. Get his personal Glock. And she shoots the second shot. Police are skeptical of this story. Absolutely. They're absolutely skeptical. The 911 calls. That is the first red flag. Before Juliana actually speaks with the 911 dispatcher that morning, there were two other aborted calls to the dispatch center. And they're like, wait, why would you hang up twice? That right there was a red flag for them.

But then, much later, they had gone to search the house and they saw a framed photo of Brendan Banfield and his au pair sitting on the nightstand in the main bedroom and Juliana's clothes now hanging in the closet. Tell us about this fetish website that authorities found with a profile with Christine and messages with Joseph Ryan. Right. So they find early on, on Christine's computer, she has an account to something called FetLife for fetish hookups. The prosecutor said that there was no evidence to suggest that Christine set that profile up. So are they suspicious then that someone else has set up this profile of Christine? Absolutely. Someone else. Exactly. And this someone they believe was Juliana, Brendan? Possibly one of them posing as Christine, setting up this rendezvous at the Banfield home with Joseph Ryan. So Joseph Ryan, it appears then,

if the authorities are correct, that he's this unsuspecting guy who thinks he's getting a hookup and he shows up at the house only to be killed. That is what the prosecutors are saying. All right. So eight months after the murders, Juliana was arrested and charged with the second degree murder of Joseph Ryan. Juliana is pleaded not guilty. No charges, though, for the death of Christine Banfield. So the months go by, and what we're all being led to believe is that authorities are looking at Brendan Banfield. And in fact, at an April hearing of this year, he comes in to testify.

And it was so tense because you could see Juliana sitting at the defendant's table, staring at him as he is asked these questions and continually takes the fifth. So what you're led to believe is that they are trying to squeeze her to get to him. We don't know if that's what she did. Earlier this week, he was arrested and charged with the murders of both Joseph Ryan and Christine Banfield. And not only was he charged, he was charged with four counts of aggravated murder and a count of use of a firearm. He has not yet entered a plea, but is expected to today, Thursday. And then there is also a hearing today for Juliana. There is. And I'll be there. And this is just weeks away from her trial scheduled in November. So stay tuned, as they say. All right, Marianne, thank you. We will absolutely keep watching this story.

Yeah. When we come back, it's Dateline Roundup. There's a last-minute courtroom surprise for the mother-in-law of murdered FSU lawyer Dan Markell and a verdict in the Lori Shaver trial. And we'll talk to a Dateline producer who spent 20 years reporting on wrongful convictions. Welcome back. Joining me for this week's Roundup is Dateline's Assistant Story Development Producer, Celia Tuohy. Welcome, Celia. Thanks for having me. For our first story, we're going to a Tallahassee, Florida courtroom where Donna Adelson was set to go to trial this week for masterminding the murder of her ex-son-in-law, FSU law professor Dan Markell. Motivated, according to prosecutors, by an ugly custody battle. But there was a big surprise in court on Tuesday.

Celia, what happened? Well, jury selection in Donna's trial started on Tuesday, but it stopped pretty quickly. If you remember, Dan was shot to death back in his garage in 2014. Donna was arrested just last year at the Miami International Airport on her way to Vietnam. This arrest was just days after her son Charlie, Dan's brother-in-law, was found guilty for his role in the murder. Donna's attorney, Dan Rashbaum, was also Charlie's attorney. Right. And Charlie, who'd been brought to Florida to testify, he was supposed to sign a waiver saying that it was OK with his mom having that same attorney and that it wasn't a conflict of interest. But there were some problems with that.

I have asked for my prior client's waiver again. He has decided not to give it. So as a result, I need to withdraw from the case. So Donna's lead attorney has withdrawn after he couldn't get Charlie's permission. So what happens now? She has a secondary attorney. Will that attorney continue with the case? Donna says she's ready to continue

with the proceedings, but the second attorney says he doesn't feel prepared to go on to trial by himself. Hence the trial not going forward. There will be another hearing on October 15th to discuss case management. So we'll keep you posted on any more updates on that trial. Next up, we have an update in another Florida story. This is the murder trial of Lori Shaver. She is the woman accused of killing and burying her husband in the backyard. She had that really surprising defense that it was actually her seven-year-old daughter who pulled the trigger. So at the end of last week, Lori took the stand, sticking to her story that she didn't do it. Now, your testimony is that she shot him, correct? Yes.

So one of the things we were all really waiting for to see how this would play out is, you know, if her daughter, who's now a teenager, would take the stand. And she did. And she backed up her mom. Right. She did. She pointed to a really abusive household and he was beating Lori in the backyard and that she went out in the backyard and shot him.

He had my mom on the ground still, still holding her to the ground, still kicking her. And I shot him. But the jury didn't believe her or her mom. They came back pretty quickly with a verdict. The way the jury finds this follows is to count one of the charge. The defendant is guilty of second degree murder. So the daughter testified that she pulled the trigger.

Now, does that put her in danger of charges herself since she's saying she shot someone? Right. I mean, if you confess to a crime under oath, anything you say can be used against you, even resulting in an eventual charge against you. But so far, there's no sign of that. And let's bear in mind, the prosecutor said he didn't believe her. And she's only 15 at this time as well. Yeah. Perhaps the prosecutor almost feels like she's a bit of a victim herself in all of this. When is the sentencing for Lori Shaver? Her sentencing is tentatively set right now for November 25th, where she faces life in prison. Finally, former ballerina Ashley Benefield, convicted in late July of the manslaughter of her husband, is making headlines again. Right. Remember, Ashley's defense team filed

a motion saying there had been juror misconduct. One juror didn't disclose a history of domestic violence. Another one snuck a phone in and was actually messaging a YouTuber about that verdict. And at a hearing on Monday, a Manatee County judge said that he would conduct interviews with those jurors. Wow. So this is progress for Ashley Benefield. How will these juror interviews be conducted? This is quite unusual. Right. The judge will receive questions from both the prosecution and the defense, and they'll be interviewed one-on-one with the judge, not in an open courtroom, and these interviews won't be recorded. Ashley Benefield's sentencing is still on for October.

Yeah. Her manslaughter conviction carries a prison sentence of 11 to 30 years behind bars. Okay. One we'll be watching. Thank you for joining us, Celia. Thanks for having me, Andrea. We talk a lot about justice on Dateline. In most of our stories, it's what families, investigators, and attorneys say they're fighting for, and what juries do their best to deliver, a just verdict. But what happens when juries get it wrong? According to research funded by the National Institute of Justice, an estimated 5% of convictions are wrongful convictions. If you do the math, that adds up to 100,000 people sitting in prison for a crime they did not commit.

My next guest knows this statistic better than most. past 20 years, veteran Dateline producer Dan Slepian has embarked on a reporting odyssey that has uncovered not one, but six cases of men behind bars when they shouldn't be. And he describes it all in his gut-wrenching new book, The Sing Sing Files. Dan is not only an award-winning investigative journalist, he's also my great friend. Dan, welcome to the show. Thank you. So the title, Sing Sing Files, for listeners who don't know Sing Sing, you have a vivid description in the book of your first visit there. Tell us about it. It is a notorious maximum security prison about 40 miles north of Manhattan.

And it looks like basically a warehouse of human beings, of tiny cells running the length of two football fields stacked four tiers high. When I walked down those tiers, I literally thought to myself, I would not put my dogs in these cages, even for a weekend where people need to live for 25 years or longer. But the real shock to me from going to Sing Sing, and the reason why I kept going, is because I can't believe how many innocent people I found there. So your book introduces readers to six men. All of them have been convicted of brutal crimes. Give us a sense of what you found out after years of reporting on their cases. Each man that I feature in the book was convicted of murder. But when I started to look into their cases, I was astonished to find how unbelievably apparent evidence of innocence was in each of those cases. For example, in the case of Richard Rosario, he had 13 alibi witnesses and he was a thousand miles away in Florida when he was accused

of a crime in New York and he gave police this information and they didn't do anything for 20 years. In J.J. Velasquez's case, I was told five eyewitnesses picked him out. One of those five never picked him out in a photo array and in court picked out a juror when asked to identify the gunman in court. The other four, of those four, two recanted, saying that they were totally pressured by police to pick out J.J. You visited him hundreds of times in Sing Sing. What was it about him? Really what ended up happening is that when I started visiting him and getting to know him and his family, I saw how good of a man he was. And as the years passed, and as I became sure of his innocence, when I saw JJ's own kids growing up, as I saw my own daughter grow up, and for me,

that was a stark reminder literally every day of what is lost in cases like this. He was eventually released. He got clemency in 2021, and you captured that moment on your award-winning podcast, Letters from Sing Sing. I watch as Maria and the boys surround JJ, wrapping their arms around him. They're holding him so tightly, I can hardly see him. Oh, my gosh. I listen to that whale live, and it will never get out of my DNA.

It's in every fiber of my psyche. Yeah. And there is more good news for JJ coming. By the end of this month, I'm told JJ will be exonerated. The Manhattan District Attorney's Office has finally agreed to consenting to vacate the conviction. And while that's really great news for JJ, and I'm thrilled for him, this is what it took. We did a story on Dateline in 2012. He spent another decade in prison after that. It's only two weeks after my book, The Sing Sing Files comes out that he's being exonerated. If it took him, a guy like that, this much, God help everybody behind him. As you said at the beginning, it's estimated

100,000 innocent people are sitting in a cage right now while you and I are talking. Just under 3,500 people have been exonerated in 35 years. Do you ever have any contact with the victims in these cases? Do you tell the story of these men who eventually get out against all odds? How do the families of the people who were killed feel about it? There's a phenomenon that I find that even when there is obvious evidence, it's very difficult sometimes for victims' families who thought justice had been done decades earlier to believe that it wasn't done. In other cases, the victims' families feel horrible. And what happens then now that someone like JJ, for example, is exonerated? Do they look for the real killer?

I have been looking for the real killer for more than two decades, but very often we don't find the real killer. Well, that would be amazing to solve that, Dan. Congratulations on the book, and I urge everyone to go get it, The Sing Sing Files. And if you want to listen to Dan reading an excerpt, you can find that in the Dateline podcast feed. Dan, thanks for joining us. Andrea, it's always a pleasure to talk to you on microphone or off microphone. That's it for this episode of Dateline True Crime Weekly. Next week, we're off to a San Francisco courtroom where the murder trial of the man accused in the brutal stabbing death of Cash App CEO Bob Lee is set

to begin. And coming up this Friday on Dateline, all new mysteries are back. A mother was found dead on the ground outside of her Michigan home beneath an open second story window. Investigators wondered, was it an accidental fall or something more sinister? None of it felt real. Like, none of it felt real. But it was real. Real the way a shadow is real

when it exposes what lies behind. Tune in to NBC Friday at a special time, 10, 9 central, to watch Keith's episode called The Shadow in the Window, or stream it Saturday on Peacock. And to get ad-free listening for all Dateline podcasts, subscribe to Dateline Premium. 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-Koroloff. Production and fact-checking help by Sara Kadir. Veronica Mazzica 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 Kuhl is senior executive producer of Dateline.

All right, good to see you all. Have a great day. Bye.