Dateline NBC - Lori Vallow Daybell's phone calls. Karen Read's retrial set to start. And Houston's "lost boys".

Episode Date: April 17, 2025

Listen to this week's episode of the Dateline: True Crime Weekly podcast with guest host, Blayne Alexander. In Arizona, the prosecution plays phone calls Lori made to her insurance agent in the days after her husband's shooting. In Massachusetts, a jury is finally seated in the Karen Read retrial, and the prosecutor has a new strategy. The accused Gilgo Beach serial killer is back in court. Plus, a forensic anthropologist on a mission to identify the victims of the Candyman serial killer.Find out more about the cases each week here: www.datelinetruecrimeweekly.comListen to Keith's podcast, Mommy Doomsday, about the Lori Vallow Daybell story here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/mommy-doomsday/id1540849480Listen to Josh's episode "The Widow of Woodland Hills" about the Monica Sementilli case here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-widow-of-woodland-hills/id1464919521?i=1000703469294And vote for us for a Webby award: https://vote.webbyawards.com/PublicVoting#/2025/podcasts/shows/crime-justice

Who on the call would want to do the rocket? I'm curious. It's time for the morning meeting here at Dateline headquarters. Let's rocket into the meeting. Our producers are catching up on breaking crime news around the country. Your jury's deliberating? Yeah, they just got charged like five minutes ago. Long investigation does not always equal mystery. Welcome to Dateline True Crime Weekly. I'm Blaine Alexander,

filling in today for Andrea, who's out on vacation this week. It's April 17th, and here's what's on our docket. In Massachusetts, a jury is seated for Karen Reed's highly anticipated retrial. Ahead of opening statements, we'll catch you up on what to watch out for this time around. It was a huge challenge to see the jury in a case that is as public and controversial as this one. Other stories on our radar this week. We've got verdicts in two murder trials and a pivotal pretrial hearing in the case of the alleged Gilgo Beach serial killer.

Prosecutors hired a private lab to analyze those hair fibers using nuclear DNA. Plus, we're joined by author and investigative journalist, Lisa Olson, to talk about her new book on one of the deadliest serial killers in American history and the scientist who helped return his victims to their families. She took the police report home. She read it late at night and she noticed names of kids who had been forgotten. But before all of that, we're heading back to Arizona where Lori Vallow Daybell's trial for conspiring to murder her fourth husband continues and so does the drama. For the past week, prosecutors have presented their theory of what happened on the morning

of July 11th, 2019 when Lori Vallow Daybell's fourth husband, Charles Vallow, was shot and killed by her brother, Alex Cox. They say that greed and betrayal motivated Lori to plot her husband's murder with her brother so she could collect $1 million in life insurance and be free to marry her lover, the self-proclaimed doomsday prophet, Chad Daybell. Lori, who's representing herself in court, has denied all of this, telling the jury that Alex, who is now dead, shot her husband in self-defense. Self-defense is not a crime.

A family tragedy is not a crime. But earlier this week, the jury got to hear Lori under very different circumstances, as the prosecution played snippets from her interviews with detectives and calls with an insurance agent in the wake of Charles' death. Here to fill us in is Nate Eaton, the news director at East Idaho News and an NBC News consultant on this case. Nate right now is calling us tucked away in the corner of a courthouse in Phoenix. Nate, thank you so much for joining us. Yeah, good to be here. I apologize for the noise. We're on our lunch break, so it might be a little loud out here, but I am tucked away and

ready to report what's been happening. Listen, thank you for giving up your food to bring us up to speed. So this week, the trial has given the jury a chance to hear Lori's voice from the hours and days after her brother, Alex Cox, shot Charles Vallow. And some of this comes from phone calls that Lori made to ban her life insurance after her husband's death. So tell us about those phone calls and why they're so important for the prosecution here. Lori thought she was the sole beneficiary of a $1 million life insurance policy. Days after he shot to death in her front room, she called the life insurance company to cash in on that policy.

Are you aware of who the primary beneficiary of the policy is? It's me. They told her that they would send her information via email. She learned a few days later that she was not the recipient. Instead, it was her husband's sister. How did she react when she found out that had to have been very surprising for her? Oh, yeah, she was shocked. She was upset. She called the life insurance company lady and tried to get answers as far as why this happened. Okay, let's listen to some of that conversation. So I can tell you that the beneficiary was changed in March of this year.

Okay. Okay, I'm trying to figure out what he was doing since we have five kids and we've been married for 15 years. I'm sorry. Did he change it to one person or was it several? Unfortunately, I can't release that. I'm sorry. I deal with this business all the time, so I kind of know how it works, but I'm completely surprised. Right, I'm sure.

We have our seven-year-old with autism that we adopted together, so I'm surprised that he would do that without telling me. Interesting. I'm fascinated on what it must have been like to be in the courtroom listening to those calls play. What was the mood inside the courtroom? How were people reacting? I think people were really into this, really intrigued because we got to hear her demeanor.

In fact, when the operator said, tell me how your husband died, Lori pauses for a moment. And what was the cause of his passing? Well, he was shot. Okay, so I don't know what how I want to put that. Okay. All right. Um, I hate to ask, but is it you can just say yes or no. Um, it is it was it a homicide? No, it was an accident. An accident, okay.

It's almost as if she was thinking through, how do I answer this question and what are they going to put on the forum? Also this week, the prosecution called the detective Cassandra Inklund to the stand. She interviewed Lori in the hours after the shooting, and the jury got to hear some of that this week. Did you actually see, see the shot or did you just hear it? I didn't see the shot,

I heard it and then I came back around and I saw that he was on the ground. What else did we learn from the detective during her testimony? This is a detective who went to the scene the morning of the shooting. A couple of things stuck out to her. One is how nonchalant Lori was about the whole thing. The detective said that she didn't think that Lori knew that her husband was dead. Lori and Tylee went into a police van and the detective said, I'm going to go over and I'm going to let her know her husband's dead. I think at some point I asked her something to the effect that if she would step out of the van to talk to me. And at that point she said that she already knew because she was there,

which was kind of a surprise. I wasn't necessarily expecting that. Did her demeanor change at all when she's telling you that she was there and knew he was dead? No. And Lori did get pretty fiery with that particular detective on cross-examination. What did you say that made me say that I was already there? I was asking you to step out of the van,

and you said, I was there, I already know. I already know what? That Charles had died. I was trying not to tell you in front of your daughter. That would have been nice, but that wasn't the point. You, how did I know you were coming to give me a death notification? Can't reject a speculation.

Sustained. Another thing is, Lori made a really big deal about the mood of the scene, that everybody was nonchalant, and that's how the detective described Lori's behavior, and Lori fired back at her. Do you have a degree in psychology? I do not. Do you know what a person should act like if they're in a stressful situation?

So there isn't one way to act. There's just behavior that is striking. Striking behavior? Correct. Okay. And it would have been non-emotional if I was trying to be calm for my daughter? I'm not going to object to speculation.

Sustained. Were you being calm? I believe so. Were the other detectives being calm? I believe so. It was other detectives being calm? I believe so. It was a pretty calm environment that day, wasn't it? I don't know if I'd agree with that, but... Well, no one was running around hysterical, right?

Correct. Okay. There is just so much here. Nate, thank you so much for keeping us up to speed. And for more on the trial, you can also check out Nate's show Courtroom Insider. That's live at 8 p.m. Mountain Time on the East Idaho News YouTube channel, Every Day After Court. Thank you, Blaine. Good seeing you. You too. Coming up as Karen Reed's Blockbuster retrial gets underway, how her own words may come back to haunt her.

Karen Reed's first trial began almost a year ago. Reed was charged with second-degree murder, among other charges, for allegedly killing her boyfriend, John O'Keefe, a Boston police officer. Prosecutors say she left him to die in the snow after hitting him with her SUV outside of a party at the home of another Boston police officer. Now for its part, the defense argued that O'Keefe had been beaten up inside the house and Reed was being framed for his death. Reed has pleaded not guilty.

Her first trial ended after nine weeks without a verdict. I'm declaring a mistrial in this case. In the years since, Karen Reid's case has never been far from the headlines, as attorneys have continued to battle it out in pretrial hearings and Reid herself has spoken out. This week, a jury was finally selected for the retrial. With opening statements set for next Tuesday, Dateline producer Sue Simpson joins us again to bring us the very latest on what to expect this time around. Sue, there is so much to watch here. Thanks so much for joining us to break it all down.

Yeah. Hi, Blaine. Hi. Hi. Okay. So let's get into it. On Tuesday, we finally got a jury. That is big. Yeah, it really is big. Judge Canone wanted 18 jurors and she got them Tuesday afternoon, nine men and nine women. All of the jurors are going to be seated for the entire trial, but after closing arguments, only 12 of them are going to be chosen to deliberate. Okay. So in the initial trial, a lot of our listeners will remember that jury selection happened in the first week. This time around, it took double that time. So why did it take longer this time around?

Belinda, it was a huge challenge to see the jury in a case that is as public and controversial as this one. Let's just look at the numbers from court for Tuesday's jury pool. Pool number 10, there were 54 people, 43 had heard of the case, 26 had formed an opinion and that's about half of the people there and eight reported having a bias. So then you have other conflicts, for instance, nine of the jurors said they knew witnesses,

four knew either some of the lawyers involved in the case or the district attorney. Outside of court this week, Karen Reit said she wasn't bothered by the long selection process. Interesting. So that longer process, that's just one of several differences between the first trial and the second as it's playing out. Another big difference is what's happening outside the courtroom. Yeah. So I was up there for the start of jury selection and there are metal barricades around the courthouse. There are more Massachusetts state police. It's a very different vibe. Karen

Reid has a lot of supporters and many of them wear pink to show their support. During the first trial, they had signs and they had bull horns and even dressed up their dogs in pink to show that they were standing with her. But they were kept back from the actual courthouse. There was a buffer zone for the first trial. It's just grown bigger for the retrial. Judge Canone ordered an expanded buffer zone and four of Karen's supporters filed a lawsuit in federal court arguing that it limited their right to free speech. On Monday, a judge denied the suit and said that Canone's expanded buffer zone, his words, directly advanced the goal of ensuring a fair trial. An attorney for the protesters said

they're going to appeal. There was also some news this week from the prosecution about their strategy for this retrial. They filed a notice saying that they intend to introduce statements that Karen's made outside of court. Yes. Karen was outspoken after her first trial and she's been speaking out ahead of her second trial. She's done a lot of media interviews. She sat down with Dateline, of course, for a lengthy interview, but she also talked to documentary makers and to magazine writers and now the prosecution wants to turn her statements against her. Their strategy is basically to take her words to help make their case. Karen was asked about that strategy outside of court

and she answered with a bit of bravado, you know, come at me were her exact words, come at me. But she also wanted to make it clear that she knew what she was saying in each interview. As she put it, I would not have said anything that I wouldn't say again. So one thing we are expecting to look pretty similar in the second trial is the witness list. And there's one name in particular that people of course are very curious about, Michael Proctor. A lot of our listeners will remember that name. Just remind us who he is and do we expect to see him take the stand this time? Yeah, Michael Proctor was the lead investigator in the case and he was fired by the Massachusetts State Police earlier this year due to misconduct,

including, and this is very big, sending demeaning and derogatory text messages about Karen Reed during the investigation. His testimony was a really dramatic part of the first trial. Defense attorney Alan Jackson forced Proctor to read some of those text messages he sent on the stand. So these came from me. She's a whack job. She's gross. No nudes so far. No nudes so far. Correct? Correct. And you sent that to your bosses? Yes, sir. We expect Proctor to take the stand. It's a tough call for the prosecution though, because if they don't call them, you can bet the defense will. And

after the jury was selected on Tuesday, speaking of who may testify, Karen Reed herself was asked if she planned to testify. She said, quote, to be determined. So what do you think? Do you think we'll see her take the stand this time? Million dollar question, maybe a billion dollar question. She's almost a fully-fledged, she's almost a fully-fledged member of her own defense team. She knows the facts inside and out, but you know, always the case. And you know this, Blaine, the defense is going to give the prosecution a real target if they put her on the stand. So we'll have to see. Interesting. So opening statements scheduled to begin in this case this coming Tuesday. One last thing that will be different this time around, getting into the court. So last

time for the longtime listeners of our podcast, they'll remember that you were faithfully sitting in line with your soccer chair very, very early in the morning. You've been the MVP of our coverage this entire time, by the way. But you don't have to do that this time. That's not the case. What's changing this time around? You know, Vlin, it's almost a letdown. And I can tell you, when I go up there this time, I am putting that soccer chair in my trunk. I'm going to have it with me as kind of a talisman for the retrial. But this time, let me tell you what the system is. There's a lottery system.

Something called a randomizer selects 10 reporters from about 30 who want to sit inside the court. There's only 10 seats in this tiny, tiny courtroom. But whether I'm in the court or streaming the trial online, I'm going to be watching it very closely and reporting back to tell you about it. And I might be sitting in my chair when I do it. That's what the people need. We need the Sue Simpson soccer chair. Sue Simpson, our intrepid reporter who has been all over this case from the beginning of time. Sue, thank you so much. Thank you for joining us. Thank you.

Up next, verdicts are in on two separate murder trials that we've been following. Two female defendants, both accused of murdering their husbands. Will either of them walk free? Plus, author Lisa Olson is here to talk about her new book on the man she calls the worst serial killer you've never heard of and the scientist who's working to bring closure to the families of his victims. Welcome back. Joining me for this week's roundup is Dateline booking producer, Rachel White. Hi, Rachel.

Hi, Blaine. How are you? So good to talk with you. It's great to be here. Okay. So let's dive in. Let's start with two verdicts that came back last week in trials that we've been following pretty closely here on the podcast.

First up, the murder trial of Monica Cimentelli, the wife of Hollywood hairstylist Fabio Cementelli. Rachel, just real quickly remind us about that case. Absolutely. So Monica Cementelli was accused of masterminding a plot to have her husband killed. Even though her lover, former porn star and sex offender Rob Baker and his lifelong friend, Christopher Austin, confessed to carrying out the murder itself, a jury still had to decide just how involved Monica was with the plan. lifelong friend, Christopher Austin, confessed to carrying out the murder itself. A jury still had to decide just how involved Monica was with the plan. That was a long trial, a very long trial, about 10 weeks. How long did it take the jury

to deliberate on this? So they deliberated for about eight hours and 45 minutes, and that was spread out over three days. Okay, got you. So let's take a listen to what the jury decided here. Here's the verdict. We the jury in the above entitled action find the defendant Monica Cementilli guilty of the crime of murder

in violation of penal code section 187A. Monica was very emotional in court, put her face in her hands and sobbed, but Cementilli's sister said justice had been served and Fabio could now rest in peace. So what's next for Monica now? She's going to be sentenced in June and she faces life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Okay. And a quick plug for those who have not seen the Dateline episode that Josh did on this. It should be on your Dateline feed. Peacock wherever you see it, but it was a fantastic episode about that case. Okay. Let's move on to the trial of Linda Sturmer, the Michigan woman accused of killing her husband by setting their house on fire and running over him with a van. This was Linda's second trial on these charges, right?

That's right, Blaine. And listeners might remember that 15 years ago, Linda was convicted and got a life sentence for this crime. But after just eight years behind bars, a federal appeals court said she should get a new trial, citing ineffective counsel and prosecutorial misconduct. So this is her second go-around now facing a jury. What verdict did they reach this time around?

Yeah, so they came back guilty on two counts of murder, and her bond was revoked and she was immediately taken into custody. So her sentencing will be in May. All right. So up next, Rex Heuerman, that's the accused Gilgo Beach serial killer back in Suffolk County Court this week for a hearing regarding some pretty critical evidence in this case. Rachel, what's this one about?

The hearing was something called a fry hearing. So this is when a judge hears arguments to decide whether scientific evidence that the prosecution or the defense wants to present to a jury is based on established science and therefore would be admissible. What's under discussion in this case is the prosecution's use of nuclear DNA. Okay. So let's talk about nuclear DNA. How does that come up in this case? According to prosecutors, investigators found hair fibers on or around six of the seven bodies that they say Heuerman dumped on Gilgo Beach. Prosecutors hired a private lab to

analyze those hair fibers using nuclear DNA, which is a cutting edge DNA analysis. Well, Rachel, the prosecution says that the lab's analysis linked Heuermann to the hair is found on the victims. But the defense says this method of DNA testing has never been used before in New York courts and has also called it substandard. They want to, in essence, have a jury rely on this, which is not trustworthy. It's not reliable. It's not reliable. It's not scientific, and it shouldn't be utilized in a court.

So Rex Heuerman's estranged wife, Asa Elarap, and their daughter, Victoria Heuerman, were at the hearing this week. Did either of them have anything to say to the press this week? Elarap's attorney said, it's important for the family to be here to obtain whatever type of closure they're going to get out of this case." He went on to say that Asa and Victoria's DNA was allegedly found on some of the victims' bodies, but emphasized that the prosecutor has said neither have been charged or are considered suspects.

So Heurman has pleaded not guilty to all of the charges against him. And of course, we will certainly be waiting to see how the court rules on this. All right, Rachel, thanks for joining us this week. Thank you for having me. For our final story today, we wanted to talk about a fascinating new book that's just been published. It's called The Scientist and the Serial Killer. On an August afternoon, more than 50 years ago, police officers gathered at a boat shed in Houston, Texas, where they dug up the bodies of more than a dozen young boys. They were the victims of the so-called Candyman serial killer. His name was Dean Coral, and he got the nickname the Candyman because of the years he spent helping his mother run candy stores in the area.

That's where he ended up meeting some of his victims. Others he lured to his home with the help of two teenage accomplices. The murders were only exposed after one of those accomplices shot and killed Coral. But that was not the end of the story. Many of the bodies were never identified until decades later, a forensic anthropologist in the Harris County Medical Examiner's office by the name of Dr. Sharon Derrick made it her mission to return the lost boys to their families. We're joined now by Lisa Olson, the author of the book and an investigative journalist

who has spent years researching this story. Lisa, thank you so much for joining us to talk about this. Thank you for having me. Well, Lisa, I guess, you know, before I even get into the case itself, I want to ask how did this come to be something that you dove into and ultimately wrote a book about? I moved to Texas from Seattle, which was the hunting ground of the Green River Killer. And he got away with his crimes for much longer because some of his victims weren't identified. So I became really interested in this whole world of America's silent mass

disaster, the 40,000 unidentified victims of murder, suicide, and accidents that are all over our country. So when I came to Texas, I met Dr. Derek, who was already diving into this serial killing case. I want to talk about Dr. Sharon Derrick and kind of her work in really restoring identity to these kids. One, talk to me about what that looks like, because yes, you talk about the scientific method of going through and actually identifying the kids, but restoring identity in a bigger sense as well.

Absolutely. In the 2000s, she discovered that, in fact, a third of Coral's victims had never been identified, even though many of them were from the same neighborhood. Her first time into the morgue, she goes in to the cold storage unit and she is assigned as a forensic anthropologist to these unidentified cases. She finds these boxes of bones and she's very galvanized by that. She's able to use all the tools that we read about in CSI, of course, DNA, DNA comparisons to siblings and parents, and her new technology to find clues that lead her to the siblings and the parents who were still looking for them all these years later.

At the time, the Candyman was abducting kids, parents were reporting their kids missing, but for some reason, the police just didn't connect some of these reports to Dean Correll, even after the bodies of his victims were discovered. And this quest to identify victims actually became personal to Dr. Derrick. She had parents who met in the neighborhood. She had cousins who grew up in this neighborhood. So she really took this personally. She felt these were crimes that once they were discovered really affected a whole generation of people. And she knew there would be people out there still looking, people whose

grief was what they say are frozen, you know, people who weren't able to mourn their lost relatives because they didn't know for sure what had happened to them. When you look back at the cases, it's really heartbreaking how many times the parents tried to get the police to do something and at the time the attitude was no, they ran away. And actually, even after the crimes were found, the police chief at the time blamed the parents for not being more sort of attentive. He refused to believe that his officers should have noticed that there was a serial killer at work. And so Dr. Derrick became very personally and professionally engaged in this case. She took the police report home, she read it late at night, and

she noticed names of kids who had been forgotten, like Randy Harvey is one of the names. His sister had called multiple times saying, my brother would never leave and not tell my mom and I where he went. So she's trying to find the families to link them to the bodies. And the first one she does find is Randy Harvey, who had been riding his bike to work on the day he disappeared. And he had gone off with his bell-bottom pants, with his shirt with the peace sign on it. So she describes Lenore Harvey, Randy's little sister, as being sort of almost giddy seeing his clothing because she could never resolve in her heart for

sure that he had died. And so when she gets the proof and she realizes that she's been right all along, she has a huge sense of relief. She's able to have a memorial service for her brother. She plays the zombies at his service. So Randy is the first identification that Dr. Derrick made in this case. And through her work, she was actually able to increase the number of known victims. Tell us about that. It was originally thought to be 27 and it's definitely 30, it could be as many as 40. And she goes on to be able to provide those answers to family after family.

This is a fascinating story, Lisa, and I'm grateful for Dr. Derrick's work on this and just her tireless work to bring some dignity and identity back to these young men and their families. And many thanks to you too for just telling these stories in this fascinating book. The title again is The Scientist and the Serial Killer. Thank you. And that's it for this episode of Dateline True Crime Weekly. But remember, if you want to leave us a message with questions or suggestions for cases you'd like us to cover, you can reach us on social media at Dateline NBC or call that phone line

212-413-5252. And if you like the show, and we hope you do, please go online and vote for it. We have been nominated for a Webby Award in the Crime and Justice Podcasts category, along with Dateline's Missing in America Season 3. So voting closes on Thursday, April 17th. You don't have much time. We've included the voting link in the episode description. So please, please go and vote. We appreciate you so much. Finally, get ready for a weekend of classic Datelines on NBC. We have episodes for you on Friday and Saturday

at 9, 8 Central and a Sunday episode at 10, 9 Central. Thanks so much for listening. Dateline True Crime Weekly is produced by Franny Kelly and Katie Ferguson. Our associate producers are Carson Cummins and Caroline Casey. Our senior producer is Liz Brown-Kuriloff. Veronica Mazaka is our digital producer. Rick Kwan is our sound designer, original music by Jesse McGenty.

Bryson Barnes is head of audio production. Paul Ryan is executive producer and Liz Cole is senior executive producer of Dateline. See you later, bye bye.