Dateline NBC - Talking Dateline: Deadly Entanglement

Episode Date: March 19, 2025

Josh Mankiewicz and Blayne Alexander sit down to talk about Blayne’s episode, “Deadly Entanglement.” In 2013, Desiree Sunford was found brutally murdered in her Yakima County, Washington, home. While authorities initially focused on the behavior of Desiree’s husband, a deeper dive into the couple’s relationship revealed a complicated connection to another woman and then to another man. Blayne and Josh discuss the tangled web that eventually led investigators to a suspect, as well as Blayne’s exclusive interview with the woman at the center of the story. And Blayne shares a podcast-exclusive clip in which the woman describes her relationship with the killer and her fears if he were to be set free. Plus, Dateline producer Susan Leibowitz joins Josh to answer viewer and listener questions from social media.Have a question for Talking Dateline? Leave it for us in a DM on social media @DatelineNBC or in a voicemail at [phone] for a chance to be featured on a future episode!Listen to the full episode of "Deadly Entanglement" on Apple: https://apple.co/3FG3XaHListen to the full episode on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/4VB0K1OU3xF3DMZS26tzri

Hi, everybody. I'm Josh Mankiewicz, and we are Talking Dateline today with Blaine Alexander. Hi, Blaine. Hello, hello. So, this episode is called Deadly Entanglement. It's about the 2013 murder of a woman named Desiree Sunford in her home in Yakima County, Washington, and the very, very complicated relationship that ultimately led to her murder. Now, if you haven't listened to the broadcast in Oklahoma County, Washington, and the very, very complicated relationship that ultimately led to her murder. Now, if you haven't listened to the broadcast yet,

it is the episode right below this one on the list of podcasts that you just chose from. So you can go there, you can listen to it, you can also stream it on Peacock, or you can look at it on your DVR, which is what you should be doing, is watching the episode, in addition to listening

to the podcast and then listening to Talking Dateline. And if you don't have any time for the other things in your life like your family, that's your problem. So go there, listen to it, and then come back here. Now, when we come back, Blaine has an extra clip that she's gonna play for us with her interview with the woman who's absolutely at the center of this page, Blades.

Later, I'm gonna be joined by Dateline producer, Susan Liebwitz, who will help answer some of your questions about the broadcast from social media. So stick around for that. And now let's talk Dateline. All right. So one of the great things about this story is that from the get-go, you're like, all right, well, it's pretty clearly the husband, right? I mean, that guy's a liar. He's acting like out of a textbook,

like how to make the police suspicious of you right after something has happened. Like, I don't wanna go in the house, but I want the cops to find the body, right? I don't wanna be in there. And then it turns out there's a whole other subterranean thing beneath the surface. You know, we kind of commented at some point that viewers will need literally a notepad

to write down all of the people and how they're related in arrows and kind of like a playbook, right? Because once we get into this and once we really start diving into this marriage and then there is another marriage and then there is another woman and then there's another man and how are all these people connected? It takes a lot since it's kind of pulled together this very convoluted motive. But yes, from the very beginning, investigators looked at Scott and said, what in the world is up with this guy?

I mean, this man was somebody who is military trained. He's a tall gentleman. He was carrying a firearm at the time. Not only is he proficient in firearm use, but he had a gun on him. And they're wondering why not go into the house. And you know, when I spoke with Detective Johnson, and a number of people were saying, listen, if I thought that there was something wrong with somebody that I cared about in the house, there's not a force on earth that would stop me from going inside.

So particularly if I were armed, you know, and, And yes, and military trained, right? So that screamed suspicion from the second they got to the crime scene. And then the suspicion only grew. There was the scene, and I think that this was something that really struck with a lot of people, but where he was talking to himself in the interview room and telling himself to stay calm and keep cool. You know, the red flags were just piling up, right? Moment after moment, everyone's looking at him. In the Jodi Arias case in Arizona, the cops leave the interview room for a few minutes

and she starts doing yoga poses. And I was thinking about that when I watched him because I'm like, man, you know, the talking to yourself and all the body language, you do think to yourself, if this guy did it, he didn't think this part out terribly well. Yeah, it's interesting because nobody knows how you're gonna act if you find yourself

in a police interrogation room, right? Hopefully you or I never find ourselves in that situation. But if we did and we didn't do it, you would think that you wouldn't have to kind of whisper to yourself to stay calm and to keep it together. I think that, you know, if you're in that kind of traumatic situation and you had absolutely nothing to do with it, the natural reaction is you're going to be anguished. You're going to seem anguished and upset and miserable and scared and horrified and realizing,

you know, one, that this person you loved is gone. And second, that like they're looking at you for it when you had absolutely nothing to do with it. I think there are some very natural reactions, but what he exhibited are not among that selection of natural reactions. That looks like somebody basically coaching himself. And this might be a good time to mention it.

Never charged. Yeah, never charged. Never charged. This, I think, I'm sure that Susan Knaal, who is the keeper of the official Dateline Institutional Memory, will inform me that I am wrong. But I do not remember a story in which previous military service and trauma experienced on the battlefield came back, in which that was a factor in determining how someone might behave in a stressful situation.

Yeah, it came up in several ways. And so he was deployed to Iraq. He spent time in Iraq, served in Iraq. And afterwards, one of Desiree's friends said, you know, this is somebody that she had known since middle school. And she said that he seemed to be acting different. But also when I asked one of the friends about perhaps, you know, he's seen a lot of things that you or I or most of us have never seen on the battlefield. Was his response just kind of a downplayed response when he found out that his wife was killed because he had seen so many things? Was this a defense mechanism? Was this somebody who was just naturally stoic? And she said that she believed that, yeah, that's kind of who he was to a degree.

Yeah. I mean, I think that one of the things that we sort of don't know a lot about is how that kind of trauma and that kind of stress affects people when they leave military service and return to private life. Despite that, there are clearly people in this story who think he knew what had happened. Maybe he didn't do it, but he knew what had happened. Yeah, we spoke to three friends who have known Desiree through almost her entire lifespan, going back from middle school through high school

to early marriage to, I mean, the day she was killed, right? Some think that, yes, there was a conspiracy to get her out of the way. Others are just like, you brought this woman and who brought this man into Desiree's life and all of it ended with her dead. So you bear some responsibility as well. But again, never charged. I mean, when he says, you know, I decided not to come back until the next morning, I think, uh-oh. And then I stayed the night with a friend. I'll go, who was it? Well, it was a friend of mine named, well, let's see if we go through my Rolodex. And then I stayed the night with a friend. I'll go, who was it? Well, it was a friend of mine named,

well, let's see, let me go through my Rolodex. Yeah, I'll pay, Jeff. I mean, yeah, come on, dude. When I asked the investigator about that moment, of course, that was a big turning point for them, right? Because it was, okay, you're out with family, you're staying with family, wait, now we have a new name. Okay, and wait, it's a woman's name.

Okay, and wait, you stayed at her house, right? So suddenly this kind of kicks things into a whole different level. And as you know, investigators then have to spin off on, let's dig deeper into this marriage. We've had throuples on Dateline before. This is not the first time that's come up. But it certainly added to the intrigue.

And when you start hearing about that, that's when I think like, oh wait, everything I thought I understood about this maybe is a little bit wrong, because now there's somebody else involved. But then it turns out there's a whole layer beyond that. And one of the big pieces in this whole thing, Josh, is what exactly was this relationship, right?

Scott and Paige made it seem as though everybody's happy. This is kind of a cozy little throuple, if you will. But then when you look at those text messages, it was very clear Desiree at some point grew tired of Paige being in their relationship. She was very concerned about her marriage to Scott. When I spoke with her friend, Michelle, you know, they would go on walks around the school. And that was something that came up often in their walks, just concerns about the health of her relationship and not being able to talk to her husband about it.

And I should mention too, we reached out to Scott, we've tried a number of ways to get him to talk with us. He would not, he's remarried now and didn't wanna talk to us for this episode. After you this admitting beforehand without talking to Scott or Desiree, we might not know the answer here. But you think Desiree's infidelity maybe gave Scott

what he thought, I gotta pass now, you know? Well, and this is an important nuance. And so Scott was in basic training when Desiree had her infidelity. It was before he was deployed to Iraq. It was also before they were married. And so I put that in there because it's, you know, not apples to apples. Nobody should cheat on anybody. Not a great idea, but certainly not while they were married is when that happened.

Which is an important distinction to some people. When we return, we will have an extra clip from Blaine's interview with the woman at the center of this extremely complicated, weird case. Paige Blades. Paige texts Desiree, I'm fairly convinced that in the event of your demise, I would be the chosen one. First of all, when you're that age, right? You don't talk to your friends about like, you know, if you die, what the what is gonna die at that? What are you talking about?

That's not an age where you think about people dying and you replacing them. I just thought that was really weird. And the other thing I thought was really weird was Paige's texts saying, I've been wanting to do away with you because she was done away with. She ultimately was. You know, the text saying, I've been wanting to do away with you because she was done away with. She ultimately was.

You know, the text messages, I have to say what Paige said, one, she said that she didn't remember it clearly, but she said what she believes was that they were talking about life insurance or arrangements or something like that. And then I pushed her on that. I said, you know,

we have all of the 40 pages of text messages or something. The context before, the context after has nothing to do with life insurance or anything like that. It kind of goes on to talk about Desiree saying she would be upset if there were anything sexual that were to happen between her husband and Paige or if they were together. In talking to Paige, Paige says that it was actually Desiree who invited her to live with them. I think that diving into those text messages, there was a portion in there where, though they never explicitly said it, certainly kind of alludes to the fact that there was a more

than platonic interaction between Paige and Desiree at some point. But it's also very clear that this wasn't an ongoing, long-lasting relationship between the two of them. Alan There were people you interviewed who clearly suspect that Page either knew more than she was telling or was involved to a greater extent than she is sort of given credit for by law enforcement. But it's Paige who points the finger at Marty, right? I mean, so you gotta ask yourself, I mean, if she did this, if she wants Scott off herself and says to her friend Marty who will do anything for her,

hey, you need to get rid of Desiree for me, it's kinda counterproductive to call up the tip line anonymously and say, you know, here's Marty. Because if you're gonna do it to save yourself, then you go in with an attorney and you say to the district attorney, I need a deal here, which is, I don't have any charges and I'm gonna tell you who it was.

But she doesn't do that, she just calls the tip line and hopes that the cops will focus on Marty. And that suggests a lack of any responsibility and a desire to have somebody brought to justice. Good point. One, not everybody is as savvy as you are, Josh Mankiewicz. Not many people might have thought to go in and say, hey, I need an attorney. First squeal gets the deal. Okay, go ahead.

That is very true. But you know, in talking with Paige about this and questioning her a number of different ways about this, she says and maintains and believes that she put her safety on the line to essentially help bring Desiree's killer to justice. That because she ratted on Marty, spoke about Marty, turned him in, that he has reason to be angry with her. He's going to be getting out of prison in a few years. And so, you know, she is concerned about that.

This feels like a good time to listen to your extra sound that you brought that did not make our episode. This is your interview with Paige and let's listen to that. Considering the fact that he will be out in several years, are you concerned, personally, about Marty getting out of prison? Absolutely. That has been a concern since day one. You felt like he could possibly hurt you? Absolutely. Even though he was doing so many things for you,

even though he was a friend, he was helping you in so many ways, was your savior in many ways? Any amount of safety that I felt surrounding Marty or any of the assistance that he had given me was shattered when it turned out that the information that I had was helpful to detectives. It was life-changing. It was shattering. Very, very odd relationship between Paige and Marty.

Paige, I asked her about this, right? I said, what would you describe him as? Friend? I mean, they were co-workers. They worked at the same place. Her mother had actually set her up on a blind date with Marty, thought that this was a stable guy, he's making money, might be a good guy for you. She said, okay, she was doing her daughterly duty, as she put it, went out on a date and then kind of thought, okay, great, it's over, bye. Marty didn't see it that way, according to Paige. And so that plus the fact that they worked together, she said she was trying to make things not awkward. And so when he would say hi, she'd kind of keep going and talking with him. But that kept growing. But what's interesting is Paige

said that at some point she was in a very difficult situation that she was trying to leave, whether it was a relationship, I'm not sure. It was just a difficult situation. And Marty was giving her the money to do that, right? Like helping her financially, helping her make a, you know, a deposit on a new apartment, helping her with gas money, helping with groceries with her car, things that she couldn't have done on her own. And she said, because she was so desperate, at first she was uncomfortable with it, but always the arrangement was, hey, I'll pay you back. She said she did pay him back for some of that. But again, all of it goes beyond the normal kind of scale of a

friendship. Well, it's this sort of odd devotional relationship in which he's making, he's probably made it clear to her a hundred times, you're the only woman for me, even though you're not interested. And even though he was married, even though he got married. I'm going to always carry this torch for you, even though, right, I'm in another relationship, you're the matter. You're the one for me forever.

I can only imagine that taking advantage of that, to get out of some terrible relationship that you are in, which is the situation Paige describes, and sort of encouraging the Marty in that relationship, to sort of like, okay, well now, I am leaning on you for something, right? That's a very awkward, that's a difficult choice to make. And I'm sure Paige is probably looking back on that.

Well, she is. I mean, it's, you know, I wondered if there was any point at which she was disturbed with this relationship. And she said, I mean, he would say things like, you know, I would do anything for you or, you know, his undying love. He professed his undying love for her, those types of things. I said, how did that make you feel?

Yeah. She said something like, he worships the ground I walk on or something like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. She said that's a police. And so that brings forth just the questions of how did you feel in all of that? And she said, yes, it was awkward.

It was weird, but at some time, I mean, at many times, he was literally the only person she had to turn to. She was a single mom at this point. She says she didn't have many friends, any other friends, so that was kind of her resource. I felt bad for Marty's wife, Beth. I did, who just sort of was kind of an unwitting passenger in this story. Yeah, I did too. From the beginning, she was very concerned about Paige.

And by concerned, I mean Marty made Paige the best man, quote unquote, in the wedding. Beth didn't like that. Didn't like it any more than Desiree did, probably. Didn't like it any more than Desiree did. And she was already kind of seeing, okay, there's this other woman. But amidst all of those things, never did Beth,

and in her telling to me, never did she think that police were going to show up on her doorstep and say, hey, we're arresting your husband for murder, or we're questioning him, then arresting him for murder, right? So that was something that completely caught her off guard, understandably. Obviously, she's divorced him now, she's moved on, she's got a new boyfriend. But she said this was a very difficult thing for her to get through, to get over afterwards when she just kind of thought about her own judgment and all of this and how she was, like you said, unwittingly brought into all of this.

Quite a story. Quite a story. This was an interesting one. Blaine, thank you. Absolutely. So good to be with you, my friend. And when we come back, I will be joined by Dateline producer Susan Leibowitz, and we will answer some of your questions from social media. Okay, I'm back with the producer of this episode, Susan Leibowitz, who's here to answer some

questions of yours from social media. Hi, Susan. Nice to see you. Hi, Josh. Always good to see you. This was a very complicated episode to put together. Tell me about how difficult this was. It was difficult because there were a lot of different players because this investigation

went a lot of different directions and we had to follow every direction it went in and get people to talk about each of those things. Even on social media, I saw people were just saying, there are so many people in this episode. All right. We have some audio questions from the audience. Let's listen to those. First is Wendy Barron on Facebook. Hi Blaine and the rest of the Dateline family. I just wanted to say that the last part of the show,

Blaine, when you stood with your arm around Kayla, I think that just brought the level of compassion and empathy in your show to a whole new level. And I thought it was amazing to see. My question this week is regarding the unknown DNA that was found under Desiree's fingernails. It was stated in the beginning that they had actually found unknown DNA that did not match any of the suspects. Was this followed up on at all?

Does law enforcement have any theories as to where this unknown male DNA came from? They have no idea whose DNA it is, and they have no plans at this point to follow up on it. She didn't go out that Saturday. On Friday, she was with her friend Michelle, who was in our episode. They were running around trying to find a place

where she could find a printer, because she had to print out documents for insurance Because they'd been broken into so she was running around on Friday Maybe she touched somehow picked up some male DNA the cops at this point We asked them about that and they have no plans to follow up on that DNA as of now next question is from Latasha McClellan Hi, Blaine. I'm wondering how did Desiree's family feel about the Alford plea being taken? No one who knew and loved Desiree was happy about the Alford plea. Their family was not happy, but they felt they had no choice.

It's very rare that Alford pleas are taken and frequently like no one's happy with the Alford plea. Right. Lynn Wallace from Facebook says, did Marty mention anything about Paige putting him up to the murder of Desiree? I'm wondering why he wouldn't dime her out if she put him up to this. Also, did Scott go to any part of Marty's trial? Danielle Pletka Okay, answering the second part first, there was no trial. There was just that sentencing hearing and Scott is sitting in the back with his

dad. I looked at the footage and there he was sitting in the back. So he definitely was at the sentencing hearing. He did not speak like her mom and aunt and other relatives. Marty never said Page put him up to this. I mean, if he had, it would be, this case would have gone in a different direction. He just- Right, because he would have been a witness against Page and she would have been charged. But he never admitted he did it either. So, if he had, that would be sort of admitting it. Like, hey, Page put me up to it. Because an Alford plea does not require admission of guilt, just that there is sufficient evidence to convict you.

Correct. And I wrote to him to see if he'd tell me something. He did not want to tell me anything. He wrote to Marty. Yeah. Marty, I emailed through that jail email, and he said to leave him alone, and he wasn't going to say anything. He knew what the truth was, but he wasn't going to share it with me, basically. Felicia, who was a friend of mine in real life, writes in and says, Page really wants us to believe that she can't remember telling a friend that she wants someone gone permanently.

Well, you know, we can't fact check her memories. So I mean, she did remember some things. She didn't remember some things. One of our producers who met with her thought, you know, that she legitimately doesn't remember things due to her own issues. But who knows? I don't know. Work Right Calm says, hard to believe Scott and Page aren't mixed up in this.

Somehow betting Scott and Page want to deseret Dad, Page manipulated Marty into doing the dirty work. That's certainly the popular theory. And there isn't anything actually to support it beyond suspicion, right? That's correct. They couldn't find any evidence. I mean, when the digital evidence came in,

they spent a long time pouring through every text, every bit of digital communication between those two, and they didn't find anything that in any way indicated they were tied to the murder. And the physical movement of their telephones around the area doesn't tell you anything either. The phones were where they were supposed to be. Susan, thank you very much.

Thanks for coming on Talking Dayline. Thanks for having me. And thanks to everybody for listening. Now, remember, if you very much. Thanks for coming on Talking Dateline. Thanks for having me. And thanks to everybody for listening. Now, remember, if you have any questions for us about our stories or any case you think we should be covering or pretty much anything else, you can reach out to us on social at Dateline NBC. That's at Dateline NBC.

Or if you have a question for Talking Dateline, if you wanna hear your voice on Talking Dateline, well, you can leave it for us in a voicemail at 212-413-5252. That phone rings on Keith's desk 24 hours a day. And you can record yourself and send it to us via DM on social media. You can also do it that way. And don't forget to tune in this Friday. Andrea takes us back to the very chilling murder of a doctor in central New York. It's a good story. Thanks. See you Fridays on Dateline on NBC.