Dateline NBC - Deadly Affair

Episode Date: February 1, 2023

Twelve hours after a South Dakota wife and mother is reported missing, police make an arrest in her murder. What happened next would shock the entire community. Josh Mankiewicz reports in this Dateline classic. Originally aired on NBC on February 13, 2009.Additional footage: South Dakota National GuardListen to Josh’s conversation with Haylee Reay Cole about how she’s doing today as a 29-year-old mother, how she’s emerged from her ordeal stronger and more driven as she shares her story as a tribute to her mother.After the Verdict available now only by subscription to Dateline Premium on Apple Podcasts. LINK: https://apple.co/3EO70u9

There are nearly 600 empty desolate miles between Lander, Wyoming and Pier, South Dakota. But every morning Don and Bonnie Burns say they felt the lonely miles melt away when their daughter Tammy phoned home. We'd make our call to each other and sometimes it would be you know maybe five minutes, ten minutes, maybe half an hour, depending on what was going to happen that day. And this was seven days a week? Seven days a week for years. Bonnie and Tammy treasured those long-distance mother-daughter chats. Tammy in South Dakota, Bonnie back home in Wyoming. But on the morning of February 8, 2006, the phone at

Bonnie Burns' house didn't ring at the usual time. It was quarter to seven and I thought, well, that's weird. Tammy hasn't called me this morning. So I called her home phone. No answer. Called her cell phone. Her message came on. Nothing. Mental alarms began to go off among the members of Tammy's family, her sister Holly. My mom said I can't get a hold of Tammy and my stomach just, I felt instantly sick. Since it was nearly nine o'clock in Pierre, Raquel, Tammy's other sister, thought Tammy might be at Kmart where she worked part-time. The lady who answered put me on hold and it was the longest few minutes of my life waiting, you know, just hoping that Tammy would answer. But when Kmart paged Tammy over the PA system,

she didn't answer there either. I hung up, and my mom and I thought, well, now what do we do? Because the family had never been close with Tammy's husband, Brad. They didn't even consider calling him. But then Bonnie remembered something Tammy had told her over Christmas, something about a co-worker at Kmart. She told me that he was the manager. All I knew his name was Brian. So I called Kmart again, not knowing his last name. I just asked for Brian, that was a manager of a department. This time, pay dirt. There was a Brian there. I told him who I was, and I said, have you seen Tammy? And he said, no. And I said, well, we can't get a hold of her. We're a little bit worried, and I need to call Haley. Haley is Tammy's 12-year-old daughter. Brian helped Raquel get a hold of her at school.

I said, Haley, we can't find your mom. Where is your mom? And she said, well, last time I saw her was last night. Feeling helpless, Bonnie and Raquel once again turned to Brian. I said, we need to call the police. And he said, I'll call the police and I'll be in touch. So you're waiting for word. Is Brian calling you back? No. You don't know anything about this guy. You trusted him. I did. Was that the right thing to do? At that point in time, yes.

Later that evening, lawman Ian Lander dropped by with alarming news for Tammy's family. They'd been notified from the Pierre Police Department that they have found blood in my sister's car and it wasn't looking good. What were you thinking? You fall to the floor and you feel sick. You're 600 miles away. Should we look for her? Is she hurt someplace? Tammy was all her parents and sisters could think about.

Tammy growing up. Tammy the athlete. Tammy the young woman. Tammy the mother. Tammy was a very good person and most of all a very good mother. That was the most wonderful thing that had ever happened to her, was having that baby girl. But Tammy's marriage was not as wonderful. As years went by, there were signs of trouble. I knew that Tammy was unhappy. She had not been

happy for a long time. The problem wasn't that Brad was inattentive. In fact, it was just the opposite. When Brad wasn't working crazy long hours as a manager at Walmart, he was on Tammy like cling wrap. She would come home to visit and he would be there with her. You'd think, you know, just let Tammy come sit with us and let us just talk, just girl talk. But he had to be right there. I mean, there were times when I could just look at my sister and tell that she wanted to say, just give me some space. But a few weeks before she disappeared, during a Christmas visit home without Brad,

Tammy finally got just enough space to tell her mom and sisters privately that at last she was planning to leave Brad. She kind of got teary-eyed, and she said, I've wanted this for years, Mom, but she said I've never had the courage to leave Brad. She kind of got teary-eyed and she said, I've wanted this for years, Mom. But she said, I've never had the courage to do it. But mixed in with the relief was the faint smell of trouble. Frequent mentions by Tammy of a co-worker named Brian. No last name.

And his exact relationship to Tammy was, at best, murky. She was telling me how she, you know, this Brian guy, he was a good friend. And he did act like a friend, didn't he? Without him, police might not even have started looking for Tammy until she'd been missing for 48 hours. But as Tammy's family waited for news, they kept returning to the same basic questions. Where was Tammy? And who was Brian? On the morning of February 8, 2006,

the sleepy town of Pierre, South Dakota, got a wake-up call. Tammy's friend Brian Clark, the Kmart manager, called the police and he had his own suspicions about what may have happened to Tammy. Foul play could be suspected here. Okay, and why do you think that, sir? Hopefully this is his greed, but me and her have been having an affair. Apparently her husband has found out about it. She disappeared at 5 o'clock last night. Okay, what is his name? Brad Ria.

There it was. Brian Clark, a married man with children of his own, had been more than Tammy's friend. Peer Lieutenant Detective Dave DiGiube, acting on Brian's tip, drove to Walmart to interview Brad Ria. He explains to us that he got off work around 10 o'clock p.m. the night before. He went home and his wife Tammy was not home. His daughter Haley was already asleep in the house.

Brad told the detective that later on he heard his wife pull up and saw her get out of her car, get into another car, and leave. So he went into her car and attempted to follow them. And he told us that his car stopped and wouldn't start again. And a highway patrolman came up behind him to offer assistance. The encounter caught on police video places Brad Rea in his wife's Durango at 1 40 in the morning. Do you have any ID with you at all? No, I just ran to the store real quick. At the time Brad said nothing about trying to follow his wife. Later, when Detective DiGiube entered the Ria's garage, he saw signs of trouble. I could see blood on the running boards that dripped onto the concrete, opened up the back door, and the first thing that hit me was a strong odor of chemical, like bleach.

Suggesting what, that somebody tried to clean the car? Exactly. Suddenly, the detective's missing persons case had all the hallmarks of a homicide. At the police station, Brad presented police with many more questions than answers. Have you ran over an animal with it? Did you guys find something? Yeah. We found blood running off the running board,

dripping onto the concrete. Do you know how it got there? I don't know. Well, you're the last one to drive the vehicle, right? Yes, I am. In spite of the fact that his wife was missing and blood was literally dripping out of her car, the Durango he'd last driven, Brad seemed mystified that anyone might suspect him of murder. He behaved like a man with nothing to hide.

He even admitted knowing that his wife had been seeing someone else. Brad said he and Tammy had slept in separate bedrooms for years, and he told the detective that Tammy had recently told him she wanted a divorce. Did you harm your wife? No. I wanted them to get back together. Two hours into Brad's interrogation, Detective DeJabé was joined by state criminal investigator Guy DiBenedetto, who immediately turned up the heat. You're starting to jerk on a chain and you're being disrespectful for your daughter. Your daughter's mother, Haley's mother Tammy, is out there rotting somewhere right now. An innocent man would have looked at me and said,

I'll tell you anything you want to know. You guys are talking to the wrong guy. Brad never once tried to even enlist our help in finding his wife. I'm hoping that you do find the body because it will be something to set me free. After five hours of interrogation, an exhausted Brad Ria asked for a lawyer, bringing the talking phase of the investigation to a close. Brad, we're going to arrest you right now for first degree murder. Just 12 hours after Tammy Ria was reported missing, Her husband was charged with murder. Not long after, a helicopter spotter found Tammy's body in a remote area 10 miles outside of town.

Again, just by chance, we did come across her. She had multiple stab wounds and had been stripped and left face up. He left her nude to humiliate her, to leave her out here naked, to be found that way. Prosecutor Todd Love believed Tammy's murder could have only been the work of her jealous husband, Brad. What about the boyfriend? He had what we believe is a solid alibi. Brian was with his wife and his daughter that evening. They had been to one of the local basketball games. So he'd been seen by other people. Yes.

That seemed to eliminate Brian as a suspect, at least for the moment. Then one day, four identical hand-scrawled letters arrived in the mail, addressed to police and prosecutors. Unsigned, the letters implicated Brian Clark. The letters were supposed to have been written from a cousin of Brian Clark, the boyfriend, basically stating that his cousin Brian came up to him and said that basically admitted murdering his girlfriend. The letters claimed Tammy was the victim of a deadly sexual assault

and that a vital piece of evidence, a condom, had been left behind. At that point, we immediately had to get a hold of our pathologist and ask him to go look. Sure enough, on closer inspection, a condom was found inside her body. Was this proof of what Brad had been saying all along? I'm hoping that the body is found because it'll be something to set me free. I don't know. There was just one problem. Investigators knew the letters implicating Brian Clark had been engineered by Brad with some help from his brother Brett because police had been recording Brad's jailhouse phone calls from day one.

I want some letters sent up. Send those to those maids. One copy of each. The letter, the condom. To police, it all demonstrated that Brad had intended to frame Tammy's lover from the very beginning. As his trial approached, there seemed to be a mountain of evidence that pointed to Brad Rhea. Brad, how do you figure that the blood got into your truck? But few imagined that Brad Rhea would still have one card to play, and he was prepared to deal that one from the bottom of the deck. For 11 months, Brad Reyes sat in the Hughes County Jail.

The truth, he insisted, would set him free. Look at the clues in the paperwork. Of course, prosecutors believe they already knew the truth and could prove it. We believe that Brad walked into the room where Tammy was sleeping, carrying a knife and a tarp with him. In a matter of seconds, prosecutors say, Tammy was stabbed in the back five times, her throat cut. At that point in time, we believe that he grabbed Tammy and pulled everything onto the floor next to the bed onto the tarp. And that he pulled the tarp along with Tammy approximately five feet out to the garage and put her in the Durango. But as thought through as the murder seemed to be,

Prosecutor Todd Love believed things must have taken an unexpected turn. At some point, either in the Durango, or once he got out to the scene where he dumped her body, we believe he stabbed her numerous more times in the chest. Was it rage or fear that Tammy wasn't dead yet that drove her killer to such a frenzy? Prosecutor Love couldn't know for sure, but as he approached the courthouse on the first day of Brad's murder trial, he was certain he had an open and shut case. Once inside, however, Brad's attorney unveiled a surprise as big as the prairie wind and twice as cold.

It was literally the half hour before we did opening statements that he disclosed that he was going to be blaming Haley. That's right. Brad Rea was prepared to argue that his 12-year-old daughter was the real killer. According to Brad, it all began when he and Tammy told Haley that they were going to get a divorce. He said that she was in a trance or something like that when she did because she was traumatized by the impending divorce, that she would walk into her mother's room while she's sleeping and stab her so many times. According to trial transcripts, Brad told the court that on the night of Tammy's death, he was startled awake by Haley's cat and discovered his daughter in Tammy's room holding a bloody knife. And Brad knocked her back when she was sleepwalking and carried her off to bed and then went down and tried to clean

Tammy up and give her mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. On the stand, Brad admitted to dumping Tammy's body and destroying evidence, to planting the condom and trying to frame Brian Clark. Everything except the actual murder. He says, when I discovered what my daughter had done, I did the right thing as a dad to protect it. When it came time for her to take the stand, witnesses say Haley, now 13, held her own under questioning from Brad's attorney. I think he attempted to paint Haley as somebody who was very physically skilled, involved in a lot of sports, played soccer, volleyball, and is somebody who could have physically done this. And he asked her at one point, like, when you're spiking the volleyball, what do you... He asked her if she was somebody who served overhand

and, you know, saying to her, you know, when you serve, do you serve like this? Were you looking at the jury during that time? Yeah. And? And I think it was kind of comical. I don't think the jury put any credence at all into any of that. All he did was throw his daughter under the bus, finger-pointed her to save his own hide.

When we come back, the verdict. But first, the girl who'd been forced to take center stage in a very grown-up drama gets to tell her story of what happened that night. Everyone has childhood memories, but few have memories as searing as the ones Haley Rhea lives with every day. Memories of the night her mom was murdered and life as she'd known it have been kicked aside. I had volleyball and my mom went and watched it. We had Taco John's, went home and watched TV and I did my homework. Haley went to sleep that night in the safest place on earth,

in her own home, in her own bed, with her mom just a few steps away. I woke up, my door was shut, when it's hardly ever shut when I'm sleeping, and my dad opened it, and he had laundry in his hand. I was like, what are you doing? He's like, oh, just some laundry. Go back to bed. About what time was this? Middle of the night? Yeah. So he came and laid with

me and I fell back asleep. The next morning, Haley says her father told her that her mother had run off with another man and might be gone for days. He told me not to tell anybody because it was our family and it shouldn't go out of it. It's like a family secret. Yeah. By the time her father turned on her in the courtroom and tried to accuse her of stabbing her own mother 37 times, Haley had already learned an adult-sized lesson that every betrayal begins with trust. How'd that make you feel? Horrible, because he was my dad and he shouldn't be saying stuff, especially when I didn't do it. Is any part of his story true? No. Did you ever sleepwalk? Were you angry at your mother? No. Though juries are often full of surprises,

it took only three hours, including a dinner break, for the one hearing this case to find Haley's father, Brad, guilty of murdering her mother, Tammy. She was just a great person. You know, she didn't deserve any of this. Brad Rhea received a life sentence for killing Tammy. In a letter to Dateline, Brad claimed crime scene investigators failed to collect evidence that might have helped him and falsified other evidence that was used to convict him. Prosecutors deny that and a South Dakota court turned down Brad's appeal. Do you think you'll ever talk to your father again? No. You want to talk to your father again? No. When we spoke with Haley, her life centered on another

small town in the plains, Lander, Wyoming, where Tammy's family wrapped its arms around the daughter she left behind. Thank goodness we still have Haley because she's so much like her mom. On the walls of the family home were reminders of the daughter, the sister, the mother, who is never coming back. Your face is starting to fade. I wish you could have stayed, but we will meet again, meet again. Mothers and daughters are forever, nobody can break that never, but we will meet again, meet again.