Dateline NBC - Talking Dateline: Deadly Swap

Episode Date: March 20, 2024

Andrea Canning and Dennis Murphy sit down to talk about his most recent episode, “Deadly Swap.”  When a young mother was shot in broad daylight in a Georgia parking lot, investigators combed through eyewitness testimony and surveillance footage to zero in on an unlikely killer.  Dennis tells Andrea what he learned about the killer’s motive and they discuss an unforgettable police interview.  Dennis also shares a podcast-exclusive clip from the victim’s grieving boyfriend and answers your questions from social media.Listen to the full episode of “Deadly Swap” here: https://apple.co/4aoADjb

Hello, everyone. We are Talking Dateline, and today we are talking about an episode called Deadly Swap with Dennis Murphy. Hi, Andrea. How are you? Nice to be with you. You too. And of course, I am Andrea Canning, moderating today's Talking Dateline. And if you haven't listened to the show yet, it's the episode right below this one on the list of podcasts you can choose from. So go there, listen to it. Or if you want to watch it, you can stream it on Peacock and then come back here. And when you come back, I've got some questions for Dennis about this case out of Snellville, Georgia. Dennis also has an extra interview clip he wants to play for us that didn't end up in the show. And later, we're going to answer some of your questions about this episode

from social media. So keep listening. All right. Let's talk Dateline, Dennis. Let's go. Well, so I made a whole bunch of notes as I was watching the show, things I was interested in. And the show grabbed me immediately because here we are in this busy parking lot. And she's shot in like just in broad daylight. And there's so many witnesses around.

It just was such an odd location. I always talk, Andrea, about a sense of place in the stories. I'm very big on that. I bet if I said your Target store where you are in New York, you can imagine exactly what it looks like. This could have happened anywhere. These are all the shops and all the malls that are across America. Yet at this particular mall, this ugly, heinous crime happened out of the blue. Imagine the people finishing up their late shopping. They're pushing their carts to their vehicles. And then what did I hear? What did I see?

What's going on? And he's just walking away. Right. And it was incredible to think of all the vantage points of this crime, right? All the different, what were there, six witnesses? Am I getting that right? Six witnesses they identified as their official, you know, observers of the scene. So you have to triangulate, probably more than triangle, to put all these points of view together.

What did these people really see and hear? The witnesses noted that this figure kind of lurking around the parking lot. And after there had been this custody swap, this person who was wandering around suddenly goes towards her. And some of them hear words and some of them see something going on between them, others don't. And all of a sudden she's down, just like that. And one of the things that I really related to was, you know, one of the witnesses was in her car with a, you know, a sleeping child. And I can't tell you how many times my husband and I will go shopping with the family and one of us stays in the car because Tripp fell asleep or whatever. She made for one of the prime eyewitnesses,

the mom who was in the car with her child. And the awful fact you can't unsee, of course, is that the child is in the vehicle as the mother is shot. It seemed apparent from right away that this had to do with custody related. And the eyewitnesses picked up on that very quickly, Andrea. They remembered the green minivan. They remember her Escalade. They remember the vehicle coming in and the child is transferred

into her car. They saw that. So they understood what was going on. But, you know, when I went to this Target store in Snowdell, Georgia, which is about an hour east of Atlanta, I was struck by just how vast this parking lot is. Probably two football fields from where the shooting occurred to the perpetrator walking out of the surveillance camera frame and then arriving at the ditched vehicle in the back. It's a long time to be cool, calm, and collected. And you don't see somebody saying, stop him. That's the guy over there. Get him. So, yeah, so weird because usually you think if someone commits a crime like that, their heart would be racing. You know, they'd be hightailing it out of there. It reminds me in a way of a case from my childhood in New York,

famous Kitty Genovese case. This is a woman who was in a dense neighborhood in Queens and everybody's windows open on a summer night and they can hear her screaming for her life, somebody come help me. And the urban myth is that nobody goes to help her, that she dies. And it became the subject of a lot of psychological evaluation. What is it about crowds where people will not come forward? And I remember doing a story a few years ago that said somebody has to break the hypnosis of this when an unexpected act happens like that. You need to be someone who will say, you in the green coat, you take out your phone right now, you call 911. I would also be completely stunned if something like that happened right in front of me. I mean, how shocking. I can't forget the one eyewitness story she tells the cops in the interview room where she's in a moving vehicle and her window is down and she sees the woman mouth the word help.

I mean, how haunting for her to be that close and to be unable to do anything. You can't stop it. Yeah. My heart really went out to the witnesses. You know, I just I felt like that's life changing, too, you know, to see something like that. And then the aftermath of that now you're wrapped up in a murder investigation and you had to witness that. How great was that truck driver out back? I think of him in the category, if you see something, say something.

He's staying at that motel and he's going out the back door to have a smoke. And what does he see but a white Ford F-150 pickup with a very strange character, notices the fake mustache, notices the cheap Halloween costume wig, and takes it all in. And the great thing about this guy, and it almost sounds like that old movie of my cousin Vinny where the witness gets on the stand and describes him. Great detail, you know, the Hemi Carver. And he says, I know my Ford F-150s. And this one I saw that day with a strange character had aftermarket trim on it. That became the fingerprint. That's huge. That became the smoking gun of this whole case. The fact that he knew, he recognized that trim on it, that, you know, the black, like that's something that I would notice a Ford F-150, but I don't think I would, as a witness, remember that there was black trim on it, aftermarket trim, which is what made him the perfect get to Joanna. It's her daily driver.

The person of slight build. And then the whole ruse of the, you know, this is, this is not a man we're looking for. It's a woman. It all falls apart. And of course, cameras become very important here and the surveillance footage.

What's interesting to me about the cameras is that these are old analog style cameras and they make motion look a little bit like old silent movie Charlie Chaplins because you don't get the full stride. So they make motion look a little bit like old silent movie Charlie Chaplins, because you don't get the full stride. So they kind of have to speculate on what the person's actual gait is. But those cameras were analog. If it happened a year later, the store was about

to change out to digital. It would have been a much better, much better imagery and had pictures telling him a different story. Well, yeah, because I'm thinking, I just did a story recently where it was from, you know, early 2000s. And, I mean, I think there was one camera and it was horrible. And so I thought, oh, look, this looks so modern, you know, this shopping center. And same problem again, except for they did get that gate, which was, you know, really important. And I actually had a question about the gate of the perpetrator. We, of course, learned that it was grandma.

It was, you know, his mom. Did they have her walk for them so they could compare? Was that something that the police did? I asked the detectives to kind of connect the dots on what the missing imagery is and what is the picture that comes together. And they sort of described this person, the shooter. They didn't know who it was at that time, walking very upright with her head back, almost like they're parade ground soldiers, throwing the legs forward, joining the leg, throwing the leg forward. Now, they had a chance to meet with Joanna many times. I mean, they confront her at her house. They bring her in

for several interviews. They have all sorts of occasions to watch her on the move. Are they connecting the gate? Eventually, they do. But did they actually have her, like, did they watch her walk into the police department or down the hall or, you know, just to see? If they did, they didn't do it as an exercise. It was just kind of tucked away information. They were more interested in the build. You know, all the witnesses said, this is a very slight person with a bad Sonny Bono wig and all things on and a mustache, but they're slight in build. So they were more concerned with her physique than her walk at that point, because they really couldn't quite figure

out how she did walk. And it's only when the son sees the surveillance footage. Right. And this reminds me of a story we just did last week, the Baltimore firefighter who was lurking in the back alley and surveillance pictures are taken of him before he crawls in this guy's apartment and kills him. And it is the way he moves when he's unaware that people are watching him. And to the two primary women in his life said, that's him. And I think there's some of that here in Joanna Hayes. When her son looked at her and said, Mom, it's you. I know you.

When we come back, we've got an extra clip from Dennis's interview with Heather's former boyfriend, Michael Vickers. Andrew, what did you make of what images you saw of Joanna, the suspect, in the interview room dealing with the cops, how she handled it. Oh, my goodness. Wow. Was that a steel magnolia or what? I mean, and they're in her grill. They're hitting her with all the bad stuff. I think it's Lieutenant Boone that's getting with her in that one scene, and she just stares him down. And I think that, as much as anything else, told me who this person was. So in this case, of course, we know Joanna was found guilty. Do they know exactly why she did it since she denied it? Well, the theory was that she wanted

to be new mom. And the way to do that was to get rid of old mom. Then the courts would put Carson, the child, with her son, the estranged husband, and he'd be in her life again in a way that wouldn't be if he was being shared by the family courts with visitation. And I don't know how she thinks she's made her life better. Well, she thinks she's in this disguise and people will think it's a man and they won't be able to identify her. And she'll go on to raise Carson. And can you imagine being Heather while she's still alive and having Joanna on you probably about everything you're doing as a parent. I could just see it.

You know, I could just see Joanna being all over her. The baby's diapers were coming back messy, that she wasn't a very good mother at all. You know, she really, after Heather's death, she went out of her way to tarnish her. And everybody speaks so well of Heather. I mean, this is a church on Sunday going girl. She's driving with her hands at 10 and 2. She colors inside the line. She's doing everything that she needs to do to be a young, successful mom. She's got a shop. Everything is going up. And then this thing happens. And look what Joanna has done to her grandson, to Carson. What was so sad was, you know, we kept seeing the pictures of Carson as a baby.

And I thought, here's this little boy who's loved so much by his mom and poor Buddy. I mean, also so apparent how much Buddy loved his daughter. And when you talk to Buddy, you can see the pain, Andrea. It's as though this just happened yesterday. There was no scar tissue there at all. He and Mary, his wife, were driving back from Mississippi and she hands the phone to him and says, it's my father. And he says, she's dead. I mean, how do you take that in? I mean, and just the evolution of Buddy after that, you know, just how traumatized he was by that and devastated. And then he has to lose Mary, his wife. He is on his own. He's on his own. He's got the other kids.

And he has to raise Carson. If Stephen wasn't in on it, though, how does Buddy end up raising Carson then? Carson, the baby, was delivered back to Buddy and Mary that very night. The police called up and they said, bring a relative over here. We're going to give you the child. So Carson went home to his grandparents and never left. They immediately started working their way through the family courts with lawyers, as did Stephen. He had a lawyer too. It was a tussle for the child that then continued in the courts. He ultimately lost. Buddy and Mary won. They were given custody of the child. And he left the area. He moved from the Atlanta area and he did marry that girlfriend. And do you know if Stephen has a relationship with Carson now that he's older?

I don't think there is one. These are stories we're hearing from Buddy. Well, God bless Buddy. Yeah. Likewise, the person I'm sorry for in the story is the boyfriend, Michael Vickers. All of a sudden, he is pulled into the witness room and he is a suspect. And he's got facts he has to talk himself out of. He's not in the end, of course, he is off the list, but it's a while and he's under a cloud of suspicion. Yeah. And you could tell he really cared about Heather. Oh, totally. And how this was so devastating for him on so many levels.

And I know that you have an extra clip that you would like to play with him. And he's going to talk about, you know, when he first met Heather and how much he loved her son, Carson. I met Heather at a restaurant that I was working at. And she's a customer or a coworker? She's a customer. And she just blew me away with how pretty she was. So what was your next play?

I just kept walking past her. And she came for dinner that night with her friend, Jennifer. And I asked Jennifer the next day, I said, who's your cute friend? And Jennifer's like, oh, she thinks you're cute too. And I'm like, ooh, here we got high school going on. Oh, yeah. It really, it shocked me. And Jennifer asked me if she could have my phone number to give to Heather.

And she called. And it was a four-hour conversation pretty much right after the bat. Wow. And when do you start looking at a house together? We were looking pretty- I'm getting way ahead of myself here. Pretty quick. She's like, let's buy a house together. And I said, okay. I said, yeah, sure. Yeah. Like jokingly. And then the next day she comes back with a whole list of properties that she wants me to look at.

Man, you guys were going at light speed. Yeah, we were. She was coming out of a bad relationship. She was. And she had a child. Yes. Were either of those life events baggage for you? No, I was just into her, and Carson was just part of the deal with her son, and I just thought it was awesome. How were things between you? Awesome. Carson was awesome. He was just a cute little kid. He was just like Heather, just blonde hair, blue eyes, baby boy, you know? And I always wanted to be supportive. And you know, we—the one thing I do remember with Carson, when we first—when she first

moved in, we, you know we decorated his room and everything. It was something that we did just to make him feel more comfortable at the house. So this was his home. His smile was just like his mom's. That was you being dad, Michael. Yeah, but I wasn't biologically his father. No, of course not. But yeah, I wasn't biologically his father. No, of course not. So, but yeah, he was, yeah, he was, I loved him. I still do. Good guy. Andrea, you know, when the audience is introduced

to Michael on the spot, he's being presented as a suspect. And that's the nature of police work, that if you're the spouse, the boyfriend, the husband, they're going to put you in the chair and give you a grill. But I want everybody to understand that Michael had nothing to do with this. Does he ever talk to Carson? He does. He's seen him a few times. So tragic that they were getting on with this new life together as a little family. And you don't have to be a biological father to be a father. They're together. They're measuring for the drapes. I mean, they can see their next chapter.

But Michael's life has moved on. What was difficult for him, I mean, they're together. They're measuring for the drapes. I mean, they can see their next chapter. But Michael's life has moved on. What was difficult for him, I think, is that we brought him in to be a character witness for this woman he loved dearly. On the other hand, he's got a new chapter in his life. He's very happily married. I'm very glad Michael has found love again and gotten married.

A very good guy. We enjoyed our day with him. It's really nice. Okay, after the break, we'll be back to answer some of your questions from social media. Let's move on to some viewer questions because our viewers always have very, very good questions

as they watch our Datelines. This is something that I mentioned earlier at Mad World, said if Joanna's walk is so specific when the cops, then the cops should have secretly recorded her walking and compared it. Sounds like good methodology. They didn't do it, far as I know. But it wasn't until the truck driver came forward that it's her truck. Look at the way she's built.

We know that's a fake mustache. It's a bad wig. That kind of deductive reasoning had to happen first. Snellville's not that big. Did they ever try to go to any of the stores, the dollar stores, or anything to see if someone had purchased the wig and the mustache at all? I think they looked around, but they never did find it. The closest they came was that they found a piece of extruded plastic fiber down on the floorboards of the F-150 truck that Joanna was driving. And they said it is consistent with the kind of plastic which is used in wigs, artificial wigs. But that doesn't get you to beyond a reasonable doubt. It was an interesting factoid.

They also found some traces of gunshot residue in the vehicle, but this is a family that had firearms. Okay, so this is at Modzalewski Jeff. Sorry, I just butchered Jeff's name. Jeff, I apologize to you. His question is, is this the first grandma killer in Dateline history? First grandma killer. I would say no, but I couldn't tell you what the case was. Didn't it occur to you? Well, in fact, no, it's not, Dennis, because you had an episode in 2021 called The Woman at the Bar. Oh, Lois, of course. Lois, unforgettable Lois, and I've forgotten her.

Yeah, she killed her husband in Minnesota, got in his Escalade and belted out to South Florida. And she was grandma. And she killed a woman that she met along the way after a festive night of margaritas. And she needed her identity. Yikes. Melom L, the fact it was timed to be after the baby was passed to her is pretty cold. Yeah, the child is then in the crime scene.

He is part of the crime. Really cold. I mean, why would you do that in front of Carson? Okay, this is a question from Terry0309. Seeing Dennis walk through the Target parking lot makes me wonder if he ran in to pick up a few items. I am not one of America's great shoppers. Though I got to say, our cats who are not with us anymore, Cy, used to love the boxes from Costco. I'm sorry. Well, that was the question was,

are you maybe more of a Costco guy? But I wouldn't have pegged you for a Costco guy. Costco once a year, you know, just to see what's out there. Yeah, because you, like, I have six kids. I have to go to Costco, you know, cause I need to stock up on just endless items. You go in thinking you're going to spend a hundred bucks and you come out and it's a $400 bill in your, in your cart. Oh, Dennis, it's bad, but we got to feed the kids, right? And all their friends who come over and eat all of our food and all of us, all of our snacks. That's the other thing. But shopping is not my thing. Noted. All right. This is from TRC Terp. I graduated from the Agatha Christie School of Mystery at age 10,

got my master's at Sherlock Holmes School of Deduction at 12, and I was awarded the Golden Scooby Snack by Fred and the gang. Some of our Dateliners, they have serious true crime credentials. Dennis, are you more of an Agatha Christie, Sherlock Holmes fan, or Scooby-Doo? Scooby-Doo is totally outside my ken. I aged out well before he came along. Agatha Christie, I don't disparage what she did. It was a great series of books. I think you're done with it by the time you're 12 years old. Who doesn't like Sherlock Holmes? But for me, I think then you've got to morph, you've got to graduate to like Raymond Chandler, you know, get into the real grown-up stuff. And

I think there's some terrific crime, I would call it literature. I think Raymond Chandler can run with anybody. When I was talking to Keith recently on Talking Dateline, he's into Scandinavian history. Oh, yes. Then you go to Inspector Martin Beck Beck and then you're on the Scandinavian shelf and you go through all of those. That's so cool. We need to start like a book club, like a Dateline book club, right? We should start writing books. Oh, I would love to. That's on my bucket list.

I want to write a murder mystery novel. And by the way, my son, Tripp, who's four, calls it Mr. Murdery. Mr. Murdery. Yes. Murder mystery is Mr. Murdery. Mr. Murdery. Yes, murder mystery is Mr. Murdery. I think you should copyright that before it gets away from you. Right? I know. I was like, could that be the title of a book? I don't know. If I see your paperback at the airport stall, I will go ahead and buy it, Andrea. Oh, thank you so much. And I will buy your book. All right. That is our talking dateline for this week. Thank you so much, Dennis. And thank you to everyone for listening to us. Remember, if you have any questions for us about our stories or

Dateline, reach out to us on social at DatelineNBC. That's at DatelineNBC. See you Fridays on Dateline. Thank you.