Dateline NBC - Talking Dateline: A Promise to Gloria

Episode Date: January 10, 2024

Josh Mankiewicz talks with Andrea Canning about her latest Dateline episode, “A Promise to Gloria.” In 1984,  Yvonne Pointer vowed to track down the killer of her 14-year-old daughter,  Gloria, who was murdered on her morning walk to school. Andrea tells Josh why Yvonne’s 30-year search for truth has made such an impression on her and what Yvonne is doing now to protect other young people from harm.

Hi, everybody. We are Talking Dateline. I'm Josh Mankiewicz, and today's guest is Andrea Canning. Hi. Hi. Nice to see you. Happy New Year. You too. I love how with these Talking Datelines, I get to see you so much more. I know, because here's a little inside Dateline secret, which is the people that I see the least and that you see the least in person are the other correspondents because we're almost

never in the same place at the same time. And you live in California. I live in New York. So there's a bit of a country between us. Yes. I'm living in California and it's freezing today. It's 57 degrees. Oh, I feel so sorry for you. Brr. Not. So this episode is called A Promise to Gloria. And if you haven't seen it on television or if you haven't listened to it on podcast, it is the episode right below this one on the list of podcasts you were just looking at when you chose this. So go there, listen to it or watch it on television and then come back here. Okay. A promise to Gloria. You had the greatest interviews in this.

I really did. And of course, at the forefront of all that was Yvonne Poynter. No one has impressed me more than this mother. She is absolutely incredible. She is a force of nature, just the loveliest woman, and just so powerful with her voice, with her actions, with what she did with the murder of her daughter. She said, I'll find out who did this. Grief took a backseat. How do you plan a funeral for your child? That thing about God doesn't call the qualified, He qualifies the called. I mean, sometimes you just walk away from an interview, from a story, from an experience, and it touches you in just such a profound way. And there's certain people that you just will never forget. And Yvonne is one of those people. Let's talk about how you got on this story to begin with, because this didn't come in the door the usual way, did it? It was a very strange set of circumstances as to how I got on this story, how I met Yvonne.

We had done an hour on missing Indigenous women. And I thought, you know, why are we not doing an hour on missing Black women or unsolved murders of Black women? And so I read this article in the newspaper about a woman named Sylvia Bennett Stone. She runs Voices of Black Mothers United. And so I called her and I asked her if she had any stories that might fit into a dateline. And she told me about Gloria's story. And so I talked to Yvonne and I thought, you know, me, I guess, fair to say I was being maybe a little closed-minded. I thought, I feel like this story is going to be maybe too old for a dateline. Maybe Gloria is a little too young because we don't usually focus on victims that are so young, being a teenager. Shame on me, because a few days later,

I get a call from our senior producer saying, we'd like you to do a story on Gloria Pointer. And I'm thinking to myself, what? And I called Yvonne and I said, I'm sorry that I was so closed-minded. And she said, no, it's divine intervention. This is the power of God. This was meant to be. So it was pretty amazing. You know, one of the things I noticed when I was watching this is that everyone recounts this story like it was yesterday. You know, I mean, it's lived on. You expect that it's going to live on for the mom, for Yvonne.

But, you know, the prosecutor saved that box of files all these years, didn't have to do that. Her coach talks about it like it happened this morning. I think it just absolutely rocked that community. If you think about it, you have this promising young girl, teenager, she's going to get an attendance record because she wants to make something of herself. She was going to go over to her friend's house to get a comb for her hair because she wanted to look really pretty that day for her award. And then her body's discovered at a house right next to the school. I mean, feet from the school. You know, the day before her death, her coach had talked to her about stranger danger. Yes.

T. Stallworth. She had just talked to the students about it. And Gloria said, do we have to talk about that? And she said, yes, because people are crazy. And this is not the best part of town. You know, that made me want to ask you something, which is, you know, you have six children. Yes. I don't have any.

So between us, we have a normal amount of kids. So what do you say? What have you said to your kids about this? How do you strike a balance between wanting to protect them, wanting them to be, you know, aware of their surroundings, but at the same time, not making them afraid to leave the house. Yeah. I mean, you just, you know, you try to get them to stick together. You know, there is that talk of don't talk to strangers. Don't get into anyone's car. I don't care if they have puppies, candy, presents. They're telling you they're friends with me. They know my name. You do not get in that car. And what I tell them is scream and run.

I mean, what else? There's not a whole lot you can do in that situation. I mean, our executive producer, Liz Kohl, did a series years ago called My Kid Would Never. And I remember Natalie Morales was in tears because her child did go into that, I think it was an ice cream truck or something like that. But that series showed that even you can tell your kids all you want and doesn't mean they're going to listen to you because people have a lot of tricks up their sleeves. Yeah, they're good at it. But in this case, Gloria, she was minding her own business and unfortunately she just became a target. Janice Abernathy

is like the detective you want on the case of your loved one she was great yeah and she was chosen because she had dealt

with youth they felt like let's see if she can help us because we're dealing with so many young people here but yeah she's absolutely someone who cares.

She's a go-getter. She was really, really into that case and then was brought in again later, you know, to look at the case again. great crime fiction and previously had been a lieutenant with the LAPD. And who's sort of, I'm going to say sort of the father of modern crime fiction. Wambaugh used to say that he was interested in not just the stories about how the cops worked on the cases, but how the cases worked on the cops. And this was that because, you know, in this case, you have Janice Abernathy, like continuing to work on it, like after retirement, like she's not even on it anymore. You can go to Florida and put your feet up, but she did not and couldn't turn her back, which I think is great. Well, because these cases haunt the detectives when they're not solved,

because that's why they get into this job. They get into this job to find justice, to solve these cases. And when it doesn't happen, and they put so many hours, days, years into it, it's horrible, especially to retire without solving it. I mean, I would say probably 50% of the time, the detectives I interview will shed a tear in the interview and then tell me not to air that, you know, because they get really emotional and they get invested. And so she's an example of that. So Yvonne said she went through five or six police chiefs. One of the things that we've talked about here and elsewhere too, is that, you know, families

that agitate and that make themselves known to law enforcement and that make repeated of the things that we've talked about here and elsewhere too, is that, you know, families that agitate and that make themselves known to law enforcement and that make repeated calls and having press conferences and, you know, having events to sort of generate interest in the case, those families, you know, that doesn't get the case solved, but it does help. I've definitely noticed that it helps. Oh, it helps a lot. You know, I mean, sitting and waiting for the phone to ring is generally not the best strategy. And Yvonne clearly did not do that. She was on this and stayed on this. Yeah. And I think it shows you too, that to make a difference, to have your case heard,

paid attention to, you don't have to be rich. You know, you don't have to be powerful. Look at Yvonne. She had a voice. And so she just wouldn't let it go. She made that promise to Gloria. I'm going to find your killer. Every time there was a new chief, she would march in there and introduce herself. She would make the calls. She would talk to reporters. She would do everything she could. And it's incredible. It took decades, but it worked. The case was solved. And I mean, this highlights a problem that I'm not sure there's an easy answer to, which is once a case goes cold, particularly in a jurisdiction where there's going to be plenty of other crimes coming in, you know, police move on to sort of the low-hanging fruit, the cases that are much easier to solve, the ones where there is a fingerprint or there's

a DNA hit or there's videotape of the suspect or there's witness statements and all the things that you, you know, originally did not have in this case. And that just puts the, you know, the case where there aren't as many clues and there isn't as much evidence farther and farther down on the stack. Yeah. I mean, it was, thankfully it was one of those cases and in large part to Yvonne that did not fall through the cracks, but I do feel like it easily could have because it was hard to solve. They just weren't getting anywhere. You know, they're like, they thought they had this suspect, Rommel Broom, because he had attacked another girl.

But something in Yvonne told her, call it mother's intuition, that Rommel was not the killer. I mean, you know, police were not wrong for thinking that he was a likely suspect. Right. No, of course. He was, I mean, he had a record for exactly that kind of crime. And in previous years, you know, before there was DNA,

a lot of murders got hung on the Rommels of the world because they'd committed other similar crimes. It totally made sense. Yeah, I think it came down to timing. He couldn't have killed Gloria and then also attacked this other girl. And there was a snowstorm that day. So I think where Yvonne's intuition kicked in was she was just going by facts of where was Rommel, where was Gloria. It wasn't adding up for her, but some police certainly hung on to that theory for a long time that it was Rommel Broom who committed the crime. So, you know, really,

I can't think of other cases in which this happened, at least nothing that I've covered, in which you have Yvonne writing letters to a guy that certainly could have been her daughter's killer. You know, and he's in prison and he's going to be executed. And she's trying to get him to essentially confess, to unburden himself. And then finally, almost at the moment of his scheduled execution, he does write back. Yeah. He wrote her back and he said, I didn't kill your daughter. And you should keep looking.

Right. And at that point, you kind of want to believe him. Why lie at that point? He's got no reason to lie. And even though she really didn't believe it was him, but she wanted to be sure. She just wanted that answer from him. Rommel's execution was scheduled and then at the last minute postponed because something went wrong. I think they couldn't find a vein to inject the poison into him.

Yes. Botched execution. Was he eventually executed? Oh, you stumped me on that one. I need to go over to Google and find that one out. I actually don't know. But you know who responds to me within like seconds? It's Yvonne.

Really? I'm going to ask her right now. So Yvonne just wrote back and said that Rommel Broom died in prison. Before he could be executed. Yeah, botched execution, and then they didn't try again. He ended up dying. You know, one of the things we talk about is, you know, cold cases are solved through a couple of things. Changes in circumstance and the other is changes in technology. And this case is changes in technology. Now, first of all, you've got to give all props to the crime scene techs back in 1984 who preserved all that evidence, not knowing what changes in technology were going to come down the road.

Because without all that stuff and without that work and without being as careful as they were, probably no one's locked up for this. It's amazing that, yes, that they had the DNA and technology wasn't there. So they couldn't get a full profile. But to their credit, every time there would be advances in technology, they would try again and again until they finally got that profile. Yeah. So let me ask you something that occurred to me while I was

watching this. And I think it's going to occur to viewers and podcast listeners too, which is, you know, Rommel's locked up. So he, I think as an inmate, cannot refuse a DNA sample. So how was DNA not excluding him a lot sooner? And the answer is there was some problem with the DNA, right? Yeah. At one point, they had accidentally had the sample contaminated by an analyst, like by a crime scene person. And so the profile comes back to the technician and not the bad guy.

Right. And so they were going down the wrong road there with the wrong profile. What happened was eventually they cut another piece of cloth out of her clothes and had that tested. And that's when they got a full profile. So, yeah, there was a little hiccup along the way. And before that, it had been, it just wasn't a full profile. So, it was tricky because so many years went by.

And we're talking about 1980s. Like, we know DNA was not a big thing then. I mean, they wanted it to be, but it wasn't there yet. Is that why there wasn't a hit on Hernandez Warren early on? Well, yeah, they just didn't have enough with their profile. So they were putting it into the databases, but they weren't getting a hit. Eventually, once they had that full profile, they did a direct comparison to Hernandez, and that was a match. But you get the feeling that they weren't as confident about this DNA hit as maybe they would be, you know, on some other cases in which there isn't any question

about the DNA or it ever being contaminated or not having enough of a sample. Because, you know, a lot of times you and I have both covered cases like this in which, you know, they get a DNA hit and then they're like, okay, Mr. Smith, you are under arrest. We don't need to talk to you about it. It's your DNA on the victim. But in this case, they really tried to get him to confess. Well, so much time had passed as we know that I think that they were concerned about how old this DNA was, all the problems that they'd run into with the DNA. And I think they felt like, let's go the confession route first and see if we can get a confession because then, you know, we're in good shape.

So I think that was the logic behind that because, I mean, I love how long DNA lasts. It's really incredible that it can survive all those years, but not without its challenges because of the age of the case. Once the finger is finally pointed at Hernandez Warren, this was a name that wasn't on anybody's radar, right? I mean, even though he lived nearby and he also had a sheet. Nobody had seen him that day or he hadn't been harassing Gloria or anything to suggest that it could have been him. It seems as if Hernandez running into her that day was chance. He just happened to be there. She was coming down that alley on the way to school. I don't know that anyone knows except for him, but it was a strange time, though, that it happened.

I mean, so early in the morning during a snowstorm, and you take someone down outside, down the stairs toward a basement? I mean, this all happened outside. I don't know the answer to that question, but I did find it really bizarre. I would think the one time you would be safe is during a blizzard. You know, that who't know the answer to that question, but I did find it really bizarre. I would think the one time you would be safe is during a blizzard. You know, who's going to want to carry out a crime like that in the frigid temperatures? I found it very bizarre. Traditionally, during bad weather, and I think this is true in a lot of jurisdictions, crime goes down. You know, I know like here in L.A. when it's on the rare occasions when it's pouring rain,

like crime goes down a little bit, people stay in. It was very odd, odd timing. You know, the thing that I keep coming back to is Yvonne's sort of incredible reservoir of not just hope, but also forgiveness. Because, I mean, she's ready to not forget, but to forgive. And that comes from someplace in her. And she doesn't just say it. She does it. She does. And she did go to see Hernandez Warren. I said, did you feel like he was sorry for what he did? And she said, no. She said that he spent his time crying, unable to talk. She felt that his tears were for himself and his not wanting to spend his life in prison.

Now, Hernandez Warren is not the only murderer that Yvonne has visited in prison. Yeah, she goes into prisons to talk to killers and criminals, and she tries to help them understand what they've done and how their actions have affected people. And in fact, Yvonne is writing a play about a tale of two mothers, the mother of the victim and the mother of the killer, and the loss on both sides. So this is a play that she plans to put on, possibly at the Performing Arts Center that she just opened in Africa in Gloria's name. Pretty amazing.

Since her daughter's murder, Yvonne has gone on to do all these other things that I think she probably never thought she would do. And I think probably she wouldn't have done if Gloria were still alive. I totally agree. Midnight basketball. I love midnight basketball. I love it. Who knows how many crimes that prevented or how many lives that saved kids that didn't go down the wrong way. Yep. Getting them off the street, giving them a place to go, giving them an activity. I mean, that midnight basketball was such a great idea. I talk about here and elsewhere, I talk about the ripple effect of murder, about the effects it has on people that didn't even know the victim you know the kids who were not allowed to go to the mall because mom's aunt went to the mall and got killed the the the the parents who are too strict

because their their sister something happened to her and so this is a story not just of that but it's a story of the ripple effect that turned out to be something good. I mean, her daughter's death transformed Yvonne into something she wasn't and maybe wouldn't have been if Gloria had lived. She was essentially a housewife in Cleveland, and now she's been on Oprah. She's been to the White House. She's been to Africa countless times. Her life was just completely transformed. And I know she would trade all of it to have Gloria back, but she's not getting Gloria back. And this is now how she allows her daughter to live on. Andrea, thank you. Thank you for bringing us this story.

Thank you. This is the good part of the job, when you get to meet inspirational people who just want to make the world better. I agree. Makes it all worthwhile. It's great. That's it for Talking Dateline. Thanks for joining us. See you Fridays on Dateline on NBC.