Dateline NBC - Talking Dateline: After the Halloween Party

Episode Date: November 6, 2024

Blayne Alexander and Keith Morrison sit down to discuss his episode, “After the Halloween Party.”  Friends and family were at a loss when Karen Swift, a Tennessee mother of four, went missing on October 29th, 2011. It took investigators 6 weeks to find Karen’s body and prosecutors 11 years to charge someone with her murder, but the case is anything but closed. Keith and Blayne talk about the small-town gossip that plagued the investigation in Dyersburg, Tennessee, and the private investigator from out of town who set out to solve the case herself. Then, Keith shares a podcast-exclusive clip from an interview with two of Karen’s neighbors who knew her as a child, and Dateline associate producer Sam Springer joins Blayne to answer viewer and listener questions from social media.   Learn about more cases featured in Dateline’s Cold Case Spotlight series here: https://www.nbcnews.com/cold-case-spotlightYou can also read the stories of those covered in Dateline’s Missing in America series here: https://www.nbcnews.com/missing-in-americaListen to the full episode of "After the Halloween Party" here: https://link.chtbl.com/dl_afterthehalloweenparty

Hello, everyone. I'm Blaine Alexander and we are Talking Dateline. Today I'm joined here by the Keith Morrison. Hi, Keith. Am I the one or a? I'm a Keith Morrison. You are the. You are the, my friend. Well, this episode is called After the Halloween Party. And if you haven't seen it, it's the episode that's right below this one on your Dateline podcast feed. So make sure you go there, listen to it or stream it on Peacock and then come right back

here. And for this Talking Dateline, Keith has an extra clip that didn't make it into the show. Then I'll be talking with Dateline associate producer Sam Springer, who will join me to answer some of your social media questions about the episode. But just a quick recap, the Dyersburg, Tennessee community was at a loss when Karen Swift, a local mother of four, went missing after a Halloween party on October 29th, 2011. It took investigators six weeks to find Karen's body, and it took prosecutors 11 years to charge her husband, David Swift, with her murder. At his 2024 trial, the jury was not able to agree that David killed Karen, meaning that

this case is still very much open. All right, Keith, let's talk Dateline. It's a very, very unusual story, but it shows what happens when a thing like this occurs in a small town where people talk and whisper a lot You know what? I want to start right there actually because I was just fascinated by the town itself, but by Dyersburg I mean, this was a small town We're talking about a lot of people who knew each other and a lot of people who seem to have opinions about how other folks Were kind of living their lives, right? Yes. Very gossipy place. And I got that impression from everybody I talked to. And one of the

ways you can tell, of course, is that people in positions of officialdom in Dyersburg sort of try to tamp that talk down. You know, things are really pretty normal here. But clearly from the discussions with other people, it wasn't necessarily so quiet behind the scenes. As one of the characters, Heather Cohen, discovered when she came to town and gotten earful from everybody. You know what? Heather was fascinating to me.

There is a laundry list of fascinating characters, but I think Heather's probably at the top of my list. She was the little disruptor that got thrown into this like a hand grenade. Disruptor with a capital D. Yeah. You know, I'm curious though, because when we do episodes, every now and then you'll come across kind of like a Heather, somebody who really doesn't have anything to do with the story, but comes in and starts investigating or gets interested or really kind of attaches

themselves to it. I'm curious as you spoke to her, what was it that really drove her and motivated her throughout this? Well, you know, she portrays herself as a private investigator who does a wide variety of other cases. She claims that she did this case for free. She wasn't hired by anybody. She just was very interested in it and she wanted to solve it.

Enough that she devoted years to this effort. But I found that when I was talking to Heather, I felt like though she's a very bright woman, perhaps she was giving too much credence to some of the gossip that went around town. Gossip which might have been true, might not have been true. But in a town like Dyersburg, there's a lot of it. I'm curious, what was it like, Keith, for you and the team to try and get to the bottom of these swingers, rumors, right? Like, it's not easy reporting on secrets, but especially when you're talking about a small town like this. That's right.

You know, the official line is there were no such things. Pink poodle, I think, was one of the phrases that supposedly described them. And there may or may not have been, I don't know. But I will say this, uh, you know, you can tell by my wrinkles, I've been around for a while. And, um, I've encountered, uh, lots and lots of small towns where the things that go on would curl

your hair and swinging is kind of tame compared to some other stuff that would happen in a small town. I think they happen everywhere. They happen in cities too. It's just that it's a little harder to identify. And in a small town, everybody knows everybody else's business, and so the word goes around. Yeah. It was like an unspoken secret, but an unspoken, like the worst kept secret kind of or? Sure. Uh-huh. Or it didn't happen at all. Depends on who you listen to.

Mm-hmm. Let's talk about the the investigation because there were so many pieces here to this, of course, as well. One thing that stood out when that kind of first call came in and they said, we seem to have misplaced her about a missing person. I've certainly never heard anybody described it as that way. Talk to me a little bit more about that. What do we think was behind that phrase? You can only speculate, right? Right.

According to the family, it was not uncommon for Karen to vanish in the middle of the night. She'd get up at three or four o'clock in the morning and go out somewhere. Sometimes to meet someone, sometimes not. But you know, it's a way of saying maybe she's not lost, maybe she just went out of her own accord or maybe she is lost., maybe she just went out of her own accord, or maybe she is lost. We don't know. But...

AMT. SREENIVASAN Let's talk about that horse search. The fact that a dozen, more than a dozen of Karen's friends went out on horseback to search for her. It was so interesting to me because it really, in many ways, told me a lot about that town and about that community. One, that there is a prevalence of horses to jump on. But the fact that all of them came together, they all went out on searches. Of course, we've done stories where people kind of go out and search by foot.

But talk a little bit more about that scene and that kind of community coming together to find her. Yes. They really were kind of worried about it and united about it. And I was a little surprised by the horses, too. What hit me was I grew up in a different part of the world where kudzu vines are just not part of the topography. So the idea that, you know, vines growing seasonally enough to hide a body for that long was kind of a surprise to me that they didn't find her for that long when she was actually not that far away from civilization. was kind of a surprise to me that they didn't find her for that long when she was actually

not that far away from civilization. It was also a surprise. I guess, you know, horses are not trained cadaver beasts. Right, exactly, search animals. You know, the kudzu, but the kudzu vines almost kind of had a sort of, they almost kind of became... Yeah, I always, I didn't even know how to pronounce it properly. Kudzu, I kept saying kudzu. Kudzu. Kudzu.

But they almost became their own character. The fact that they were in a strange sort of sense, kind of concealing this body, and it wasn't until the season changed that they could find her. That was striking to me. It was, and you know, would we even have a story with all these twists and turns that

the kudzu vine not hidden her body for so long? Her body may have given the police all kinds of evidence, but it didn't because they didn't find it. That is very true. When we talk about this investigation, of course, we talk about the fact that this is kind of just hanging there, right? That nobody has been convicted of this. Yet. Yet. When you do a story like this and somebody's acquitted, but there's another charge pending, what is that like talking to the people afterwards? I mean, the attorneys put so much into this case. Well, there's a certain kind of deflation, but they haven't lost. So they try to give

themselves that sort of compensating feeling. The DA and the prosecutor are determined that they're going to make the best of it and try to get a conviction on manslaughter. But, um, you know, David and his supporters are absolutely insisted. It wasn't manslaughter either. He had nothing to do with it. So we'll see. As I was watching this and I watched this episode a couple of times just to, you know, make sure that I got all the nuance. I did. I this, and I watched this episode a couple of times just to make sure

that I got all the nuance. I did, I did. It was a fascinating episode. In the final act, as we call them, each episode is 12 parts. Final act is you're introducing the prosecution team for the final time, and you do these establishing shots, right, where you say, oh, here are the people,

and show them kind of sitting. It starts with a shot of an F. Lee Bailey book and then goes to the prosecution. And this is before you talk about the fact that David's acquitted on these murder charges. But I wondered if that was intentional. Is that kind of an Easter egg for our very sharp-eyed Dateline viewers to have F. Lee Bailey there before this man is acquitted of a murder charge. I will never say. That gives me the answer I need.

You've got sharp eyes, I must say. Blaine Alexander. I said F. Lee Bailey. That can't be a coincidence. Well, you know, you have it on his desk. Just for our viewers, I want to say, in case they're driving, I don't want them to have to start googling who this is that we're talking about.

He was, some people would say that he was the greatest, one of the greatest attorneys of the 20th century, but he was, at least for me- In his mind, anyway. In his mind, right? He was well known because he was part of the dream team for the O.J. Simpson trial, got him acquitted on murder back in the early 90s.

Certainly one of the most famous defense attorneys of the 20th century. It's a good way to put it. Yes. And, you know, often successful, but sometimes just more famous than successful. There you go. When we get back, Keith is going to share a podcast exclusive clip from an interview with Jenna and Gerald Scott. Those were Karen's neighbors when she

was growing up. You know, let's talk about Ashley. Of all the many people that you talked to that we heard from in this story, Ashley absolutely stayed with me. And I'm sure that was the case for so many of our viewers, because you can't help but just feel so terrible for her. Oh, you do. And she was very brave, I thought. She was brave to testify in support of her father.

She was brave to come and talk to us at great length, and she didn't shy away from anything. But she absolutely believes in her bones that her dad is innocent that he did not do this. When I heard her say that, and you asked her, you said, is there even an inkling, even a little bit? And she said, absolutely not. No.

I almost wondered if that was a sort of method of self-protection for her, that she couldn't bring herself to believe that her dad had anything to do with it. I think that is sometimes the case in a situation like this. With Ashley, I didn't get that impression. I thought it was stronger than that, her opinion. But one of the moments in that interview with her that I still think about in terms of her certainty was when her mother brought her home

in the middle of the night and put her into bed. She was moved from one bed to another, which would have made it possible for something to happen to her mother, either Karen left of her own accord or she was, you know, removed forcibly from bed. But before that could happen, Ashley had to be taken out of the bed that she was sharing with her mother. Somebody picked her up, she was at the time nine years old, nine. So not kind of before memories get formed, memories are pretty good at nine. Not perfect, but pretty good. So somebody picked her up and the authorities alleged that had to be David. An assumption, frankly. She is completely convinced and repeated this several times,

I know who it was that picked me up. A daughter knows when her mother is carrying her out of the bed and putting her somewhere else. I knew and I know it was her who carried me to a different bed, which really takes the heat off David. There was something about that that gave me chills because she was so convinced. I, you know, as you know, I've got two of these Dateline episodes under my belt at this point. And the second one that I've done had an interview that was very similar. There's something about interviewing an adult who was a child when they lost their parent because the memory is formed as a child. So even though they're speaking to you as an adult, they've lived

their lives, when they talk about that moment, it's almost like you're talking to that nine-year-old, right? Yes, yes. In a way that was true. I'll never forget doing a story some years ago involving a cold case that was apparently solved when a way that was true. I'll never forget doing a story some years ago, involving a cold case that was apparently solved when a person who was, I think around that same age had been at a slumber party with her girlfriends and came down, sneaked down to the kitchen in the middle of the night and remembers seeing a person who wound up being convicted of the crime, sitting at a dining room table, lighting candles,

and apologizing to the person who had been murdered, as if that woman committed the murder. That, she said, was an absolutely clear memory that she had when she was, whatever, nine, 10 years old. And she revealed this to the police when she was in her 30s, an established professional woman, very bright, very interesting, very nice person. But the question of whether that memory was accurate has bothered the heck out of me.

Because you look back on something that happened in your life back then, a thing you think you remember, compare it to somebody else's memory of that thing that you think you remember, and find you both have very, very strong views about that memory, and they're diametrically opposed. Because memory is a very funny thing. That's not to say that Ashley was wrong, it's just that, you know, you always keep in the back of your mind that people's memories are fallible. That's very true. That's very true.

Especially when it's inputted at such a young age, possibly. The one thing about which there was no question was that Karen had changed, that she wanted out of the marriage, and her friends, not just her family, but her friends, described choices that just were not what they were used to seeing. She was always in a buoyant, friendly, one of those sparky people who could, you know, be the center of attention and a delightful person. always in a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a,

a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a you will. But you know, that was, I guess that was her searching for a way to be and unfortunately for her, she never found it. Certainly we've talked a lot about Karen and I was fascinated to hear so much about her though. We have an extra clip from an interview with Jenna and Gerald Scott.

They were Karen's neighbors when she was growing up and kind of gave us more of a look into who Karen was. Let's listen. She was just a good helper in the church. She was a good kid. She was a little bit rebellious. And I wasn't expecting it a lot of times. My wife would say, well, Karen, I can't believe you said that to my husband. I mean, little things like, I tell her, can you get that chair and bring it across the room? Well, why don't you just get up and get it yourself? I mean, little things like that. know, I tell her, can you get that chair and bring it across the room? Well, why don't you just get up and get it yourself?

I mean, little things like that. And we just laughed at it. It was really, really funny, but she was really down deep, a very, very good person. Her mother, she texted us on Facebook and got ahold of us and told us that she was missing. When she went missing, you know, and they couldn't find her, and it just seemed missing, you know, and they couldn't find her,

and it just seemed like, you know, it died down. I contacted a few different places, Dateline, Nancy Grace, but I emailed them and just told them about the story and what was going on. Sure, neighbors who saw her grow up, who understood her, understood the little girl. Yeah. And I'm so curious to know, she's gone, she's been gone from us for a dozen years. But Karen Swift sounded, if you speak to her friends and her husband for that matter, smart,

fun-loving, interesting, always there for the children, always up for, you know, some fun with their friends, but fun with their friends and the kids. She was a very engaged mother, a person with a happy personality, and then something changed. Was it marriage related? Must have had something to do with it. Was it related to something else?

I don't know, but when, you know, when a person in her stage of life suddenly takes up drinking, something's caused it. Especially a mother, right? A mother of four. I remember at some point in the episode, Ashley says, we would beg her not to go out at night. Stay with us. Stay with us. And she would go anyway, right?

There's something driving that change. Something was happening and it's still unclear exactly what it was. Now, I should say this about the clip that we just played. Dateline actually first heard about Karen's case through Jenna, the person that you just heard from who submitted it years ago as part of our cold case spotlight series. Of course, that's our online article series where we highlight unsolved cold cases around the country. But I think that it just really speaks to how, you know, when our viewers send us things, we listen to them, we look into these types of things.

We do. And I think that's one of the most useful parts of our program, actually, Missing in America and these kinds of cases that finally get some new attention because potentially at least partly because of attention from media from us. Sure. That's a very, very happy feeling when you can be somewhat helpful in the resolution of a case or to give a family a chance to tell the world what's been going on and describe their hopes and their frustrations

and their griefrations and their grief for that matter if somebody has been killed or missing. So these are, you know, I think important contributions that we're happy to make. And to that point, I want to give this plug. If you have a cold case, if you're listening, you have a cold case that you'd like to be featured, please submit it to us. You can submit it to us on social media at Dateline NBC. Well, Keith, it has been a true joy

talking Dateline with you. I appreciate it. Oh, thank you. I'm delighted to talk to you. And you know, not only you're a very engaging interlocutor, but you're not Josh Megowitz. Yay! Two wins in my column.

I will take it. As a newbie, I will absolutely take it. Thank you, Keith. And welcome. Thank you. Thank you, my column. I will take it. As a newbie, I will absolutely take it. Thank you, Keith. And welcome. Welcome. Thank you. Thank you, my friend. I'm so glad to be here.

And after the break, I'm going to be joined by Dateline associate producer, Sam Springer, who will help answer some viewer and listener questions about the show from social media. Well, guys, I'm here now joined by Dateline associate producer Sam Springer, who worked very hard on this episode. And we are here to answer some of your social media questions. Hi, Sam. Hi, how are you? I'm good. So glad to be here with you.

And also just for our eagle-eared listeners who may hear a difference in sound, I'm recording this portion from my car because I'm getting ready to jump into election coverage for the next few days. So if it sounds a little different, that's why. Okay, Sam, we have a lot of people who had a lot of thoughts about this episode, so let's just jump right in.

This one is from Susie Mack on Facebook who writes, why wasn't that anonymous phone call investigated more? And Susie, I have to say, I had kind of the same question. That that anonymous phone call investigated more? And Susie, I have to say, I had kind of the same question. That's the phone call that came in for a possible location for Karen's remains. And that was something that was certainly talked about a lot. But what do we know about that one? The investigators told us that they looked into it.

They got a lot of tips, a lot of call-ins. But the exact distance that they gave in that phone call, whoever called in, wasn't exactly accurate. It was a few miles off. And so they felt like it wasn't correct. It didn't seem like a relevant lead. So it didn't even seem like something that was worth necessarily chasing down because they got so many just kind of off the wall calls. Right. Exactly. Interesting. Okay. Here's one from Twitter or X. This is from at art one vegan.

Why is David Swift still in prison? Yeah, that's a good question. He's in prison awaiting trial on his manslaughter charge. His bond was revoked because of the stalking charge that he's facing in Alabama. So he's pleaded not guilty to both the manslaughter charge and the stalking charge, but he's not out on bond. Okay. So he has to stay incarcerated until they get this manslaughter trial underway. And that could be some time.

Yes. There's no date been set for that yet. So he's waiting in a Tennessee prison right now. Okay. Okay. Let's go to Chris Hamm on Facebook who writes, who is the man in the multicolored suit sitting behind whoever is speaking at the lectern during the trial? We got a lot of comments about this man and my eye went to him as well when I watched. I said, okay, he's there. You notice him. Yes. Twitter was a flurry with comments about TJ. That's TJ Jones. He's the circuit clerk in Dyersburg and he wore a colorful suit almost every day of the trial. We started court the day after Memorial Day and his entire suit was American flags.

Oh. Well, question, was it the same colorful suit every day or did he have like a new colorful suit for each day of the trial? He had a new colorful suit. I'm sure that man's closet is very bright. That's talent. That's dedication to your craft right there. Well there we go.

Question answered. Okay. There was plenty of Keith love in these comments. This question from Rachel Wellington. Rachel writes, would love Keith Morrison to read stories about mysteries. He is the best storyteller ever. Well, Rachel, you are in luck. Yes, of course.

We've got three seasons of our Morrison Mysteries podcast out wherever you get your podcast. You can hear Keith read a different story every season. The most recent one was the classic mystery, The Dead Alive. He's also read A Christmas Carol and The Story of Sleepy Hollow. I love it. You did that very well. The Dead Alive. You almost chanted a little Keith there yourself when you said that title. That's why I was just thinking of him reading it. I love it. Well, this was a lot of fun. Definitely an episode that got a lot of people talking. So Dateline associate producer Samantha Springer, so good to have you here with us today. Thank

you. Thank you. And that's it for talking Dateline for this week. Remember, if you have any questions for us about stories or about Dateline, you can reach us 24-7 on social media at Dateline NBC. And be sure to check out Keith's newest Dateline original podcast, The Man in the Black Mask. All six episodes are available now wherever you get your podcasts. Dateline Premium subscribers can binge the entire series ad-free. And of course, we'll see you Fridays on Dateline on NBC.

Thanks for listening.