Dateline NBC - Talking Dateline: Down the Rabbit Hole

Episode Date: October 16, 2024

Keith Morrison and Josh Mankiewicz sit down to talk about Keith’s episode, “Down the Rabbit Hole.” In 2012, Mary Ann Murphy was found stabbed to death in her Humble, Texas, home. What initially looked like a simple break-in gone wrong, turned out to be something far more complicated. A thorough investigation of the crime led detectives down a path of multiple suspects and a web of lies. Josh and Keith discuss the young lovers at the center of the crime and the puzzling false confession from an innocent man. Plus, they answer viewer and listener questions about the episode.Listen to the full episode of “Down the Rabbit Hole” here: https://link.chtbl.com/dl_downtherabbithole

Hi everybody, it's Josh Mankiewicz and we're talking Dateline today with Keith Morrison. Very somber looking Keith Morrison. I'm not somber. I'm perfectly happy. I'm content to be here. I could be a hundred other places and here I am. Perhaps you could supply us with a list of those places later. So this episode is called Down the Rabbit Hole, and it is the story of the 2012 murder of Mary Ann Murphy in her home in Humble, Texas,

and the twists and turns and from what I can discern, roughly one jillion lies that led detectives to her killers. Now, if you have not listened to the broadcast yet, it is the episode right below this one on the list of podcasts that you just chose from. So go there and listen to it. Or if you want to watch it on TV, you can stream it on Peacock and then come back here. Now today, Keith has an extra clip that he's going to play for us from the jailhouse phone calls part of this. Oh boy, that's a good part.

And also like many other things in this story, very hard to believe. And then Keith and I are also going to answer some of your questions about the broadcast from social media. So stick around for that. So let's talk dateline. Okay. So, so let's start at the top. From the beginning, watching this, I was thinking, man, I hope, like, this feels so obviously like it's going to turn out,

Kerry killed her mom and lied about everything else. And I'm thinking like, how are you going to do that for two hours? Because like, I already suspect her in like the first 10 minutes. You're just a suspicious guy. I am a suspicious guy. I am a suspicious guy. Look, another guy confessed to her, so why should we think she did it? Well, before that, I was just thinking like, it's so obviously her, right? But then it's just one twist after another and one crazy lie after another.

I lost track. I didn't even try to count them all because there were, it was one after another after another. And I mean, maybe it's because we've been doing this for such a long time, but I mean, when I see things like the note left in the house and I ran outside because my mom is being killed and I slip on a piece of paper on the lawn and I pick it up, right? The minute I heard that I'm like, okay, well, she's obviously involved. Because that is too much storytelling, which is a trap a lot of people end up falling

into. You're talking too much. Pete Slauson What it seemed to me to be was evidence that more than one person was doing this planning. They came up with ideas and okay, if that idea doesn't work, then do this. You know, if Zane was not part of this and he wasn't, right, then Carrie had no way of knowing that he was going to cop to this. She must have thought, wow, this is my lucky day. I believe she did think that, yes. This guy I lied about is actually going along with the lie.

Yeah, go figure, right? I mean, he kind of talked himself into the jailhouse. I mean... He did, yeah, he did. But his family knew that very day that he couldn't possibly have done it, and told the police so, and provided proof that he was actually at home playing a video game. You try to sort of explain it to the audience, but I still don't get it. Like, why did he lie? Why did Zane confess to this? Well, actually, he didn't do it. He knew he didn't do it. What was his relationship with

Carrie? I mean, was he trying to take the heat off her? What was going on? Strange as darn thing. Again, this is all spoilers, right? But Carrie was claiming that Zane was stalking her, that Zane was obsessed with her. Zane had no idea what she was talking about. Pete Because it felt from the beginning like the stalking story was something that she set up in advance to be an alibi. Yeah. Pete It's all BS. So, but they put him in front of a questioner and he denied, denied, denied, denied he had

anything to do with this. And then they took him into the polygraph machine and all that is recorded is that he failed the test, failed it miserably. But also, interestingly enough, the person who actually committed the crime passed the test. So that might tell you something about polygraphy. Well, it does. We don't know how hard he was pushed. We do know, however, that when he was picked up and brought in for questioning, it was the task force that picked him up and he was terrified when he was picked up and brought in for questioning, it was the task force that picked him up, and he was terrified when he was pulled out of the house and taken down

to the station. Pete But presumably, one of the questions that he was asked was, you know, were you there when Marianne was killed? You have anything to do with this? You have any knowledge of the planning? You know, were you, you know, I mean, and we've talked about this before, frequently polygraphs are at their most useful when people refuse to take them because that generally is taken by law enforcement or can be taken as a sort of sign that they're hiding something. And some of these people's willingness to take polygraphs, exactly the same thing, like that's a good sign.

What he was up to, I literally do not understand. I mean, was this a case of police pressing too hard? Because sometimes, you know, particularly with kids or people who are not veterans of the criminal justice system, false confessions are easier to get. John McAllister Zayn is actually a perfect example of the kind of person who tends to confess falsely. He was vulnerable without a doubt. But all indications were that the initial interrogation was not the sort of harsh thing that would lead somebody, even a vulnerable person, to falsely confess. And because they had to wait to be sure that they could undo that confession. And this

brings up another subject that once a person, once usually a young person has confessed to a crime, even if the police are aware that that confession is false within hours of it being made. No, no, it's like a boulder coming downhill. Oh, absolutely. And it takes a long, long time and a lot of legal bouncing around before finally they can get the confession wiped. So many people need to hear when they are facing interrogation by police is one, retain legal counsel and two, try not to tell multiple and conflicting stories. Well, those are two very good pieces of advice.

I will never understand why people feel the need just because they're put in a room surrounded by a couple of detectives to answer every question. You say, whoa, I'm pretty scared. I want my lawyer here to help me. Pete Slauson Right. So, why, who are you talking to? Who are you blowing a kiss to? Dr. Craig Slauson It was my delightful and charming wife who just brought me a beautiful big cup of tea. Pete Slauson She's the best. Tell her hello.

Dr. Craig Slauson She is that, yes. I'll do that, yeah. Pete Slauson Yeah. Why she puts up with you, we literally don't, there aren't enough talking datelines to explain. Pete Slauson No, probably not. No. I've never understood why and I've stopped asking because, you know, as long as she's there, that's the main thing. Pete Slauson Hard to understand. Pete Slauson Alright, back. All right, back to the story. One of the things I thought really worked in this was showing the detective going back

to the house at night looking around. Now, obviously, that was not done at the time of the murder. How did we make that work? Dr. Craig Huffman Well, the new family living in the house was happy to help, which is not something you always run into, for sure. Pete Slauson No, frequently they don't want you there. Dr. Craig Huffman Yeah, of course. And who can blame them, right? They don't want the news spreading around even more than it might already be. And there is a location fee involved, of course, but

the question remains, why do some people feel comfortable living in a house where such a heinous crime has occurred and other people don't? Just an interesting little quirk about human nature, I don't know what the answer is. and other people don't. Just an interesting little quirk about human nature, I don't know what the answer is. When we come back, we have an extra clip from Rebecca and Carrie's jailhouse phone calls. Some stories are like, you know, stories that go back centuries. This one really was a version of a Shakespeare play. This could be a Shakespeare play because it's Romeo and Juliet with a different outcome. But all the kind of the side characters and the little avenues you go down that are false trails, the rabbit holes are there, but in a way that they would be in a Shakespearean play. It's a tragedy,

clearly, but just fascinating to see what the details were. Human beings don't change all that much over the centuries in some particular ways. Pete Slauson Were you able to tell like exactly when Carrie's relationship with her mother went sort of, not just bad, but homogeneidally bad? I mean, how long before Marianne was killed? Dr. Seheult I got the distinct impression that it was when Deputy Hooper came over to arrest the girlfriend, Rebecca, and take her downtown and charge her. At that point, it was going to be all out war and the planning began.

This is the most shocking part of it all, that a daughter can actually get together with somebody else and plan to commit a crime of that sort. And then as she admitted at the tail end of things, something Rebecca apparently didn't even know, is that she was right there watching the whole thing go down. Pete Slauson Clearly, there was some agreement that I'll do the crime and you don't have to be there. But then she did. Gary F. Kennedy Right.

Although, then she did. And the other thing about it was that after professing their love to each other hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of times on this, on these phone calls from jail, that particular young woman, Carrie, was quite naive about what law enforcement might in the end do and went on living her life. I mean, she just, the atrocity which would have been committed did not seem to matter a whole lot to her. Dr. Craig Larson I don't like to, you know, I'm no psychologist

and I don't like to throw around words like sociopath, but she clearly understood that there was between right and wrong. But what she was facing, she did not seem to understand. And it did not seem to bother her at all that she had done that to her own mother. Pete They still felt that they could get out of it somehow. Their conversations, their jailhouse conversations, which were, I mean, phenomenal. I can only imagine being one of the police officers listening to them. But they seemed to know enough that they had to cover their tracks most of the time, and they only leaked occasionally. But of course, the occasional leak is all they need to find out what they need to find out.

It was that recorded phone call that sort of led prosecutors to think to themselves, okay, this is it, we can go ahead now. John Yes. They'd been waiting for something just like that. They'd been waiting for that moment when there would be a conscious knowledge of what they had done expressed over the telephone in such a way that they could play that in court and the jury would say, oh, yes, I can see now what happened here and find them guilty. They didn't have to go that far in the end. But that's why they were waiting. They were waiting for that for a long time. Pete This feels like a good place to listen to the extra sound that we have. This did not make the

episode. This occurred when Rebecca was locked up and Carrie was out on bond and there's a couple of pieces of sound here. In the first, Kerry's talking about how she protected Rebecca when her mom, when Maryann caught them in the house. And in the second, they're discussing how prosecutors offered them a deal that they don't wanna take. So let's listen to those. Like what my mom tried to hurt you

when we were in the bathroom and she can't like, I told you to back up in the corners Like I moved you behind me and you like you can't trying to push yourself in front of me And I told my mom that she wasn't gonna touch you Remember oh yeah, I before you she called the cops Yeah, I was like you're not gonna touch her She's like oh, yeah, you love her? I was like, yeah, I'm not going to lay a hand on you.

She's like, go through me first. Do you have a picture of who I am of you? Jesus Christ. Since we're so young, they're trying to offer us so much time to try and make a confession. Basically saying, okay, well if you make a confession, we'll cut your time and hat. So they're trying to play us, but it's not working. Well, it's not because we're a lot smarter than what they think they are. Yeah, a lot smarter than police. Yeah. Yeah. Um, yeah. Police rely on that. You know, others thinking that they are smarter than the cops. Yeah. You've seen it a ton of times. I've seen it a ton of times where, where seen it a ton of times, where a good detective will

allow him or herself to be seen as kind of a dope. It's the Colombo approach, I guess, and it puts people at ease and then they get the impression that they're the smart one in the room. I gotta say, it is hearing a defendant say, yeah, we're a lot smarter than the cops. On a phone call that the cops are listening to and recording, yeah. Yeah, I think the. Yeah, that's right. I think we know the answer to that.

One of the things is kind of a larger thing that came out of this for me was the sort of the way that lying is perceived now. Lying used to be something that was inherently shameful, you know, like George Washington couldn't tell a lie, right? Today, people can't tell the difference, and it doesn't matter. Pete Slauson So, not mattering is disturbing, yeah. Pete Slauson The people involved in this, particularly

Kerry and Rebecca, seem to, like Carrie in particular. It doesn't matter. Like I'll say whatever I want to say if it'll get me out of it. Yeah, that's right. And her brother, by the way, was very slow to accept that. And it breaks his heart even to talk about it now. I thought he was a great character and I thought you did a great job with him. And I loved how you could sort of see him evolve along with her stories evolving through the entire episode because he starts out

like I know her, this could never have happened. And at the end, he's like, I barely have any contact with her because of what she did. And we've covered plenty of family members who will not accept what was proven in court and admitted on wiretaps and testified to. But he's not one of them. He knows what's out there. It's like a bomb went off in that family. And it's often the case when a murder occurs.

The whole thing comes apart. His father is in an institution, his sister is in prison for a very long time, his mother is dead, he's trying to build a life, but he's the only one left and he has all that emotional baggage to carry around. So, I fell for that guy a lot. Pete I love the way that you guys ended the episode, which was talking about her like, hey, look, let's be clear on a couple of things. Like those last few minutes of her life, that was not her life. And, you know, that she had this whole other life and she was a wife and a mom and a daughter and a friend. And,

you know, one of the things that gets lost sometimes in coverage of murders is who the victim was on all the days that the crime wasn't committed. And I think that's important because I think that's a bigger part of their life than just the way they died. Pete Slauson Absolutely, Drew. Yeah, that's quite right. to come back and answer some of your questions from social media. Okay, on to social media. Very interesting that the first question on social media is from our friend AnxietyFriesKim, who we love, and it's about, do you have your big boy pants on? She says, I can't think of a worse way to tell your son his mother is dead. And I got to tell you, I can't either.

That is not in any parenting notebook or handbook that I'm aware of. Pete No. It did not surprise the son though, because it didn't surprise Scott at all. That's kind of the way his dad would communicate. He was an interesting dude, a loving man who had trouble expressing it, a person who was happy to be married to Mary Ann but had a drinking problem, they'd had some issues in their marriage, but really, deep down he was happy to be where he was. And as it turned out, not being able to be where he was, not having his wife anymore was too much for him, he couldn't take it. Pete Slauson I thought, when he said, when Scott quoted

him as saying, I can fix a lot of things, but I can't fix this, that was just heartbreaking. Pete O'Brien It was, yeah. Pete Slauson And on the other side of deploring his comment about, do you have your big boy pants on, is BobbyG62 says, sounds like dad had good advice that night, which is true, in that sense, which was a torrent of bad news was coming. So I think I guess the audience had some mixed emotions on that.

Favorite Auntie Jen tells us, she says, I heard one line from the daughter and I started putting my money on her as the killer. No affect, emotion, no tears in an interview right after your mother was brutally murdered. She seemed unaware that investigators are going to be looking not just at her words, but everything else about her as she tells that story. Yeah. She and Deputy Hooper would be on the same page there. Here's an interesting question that came in from Instagram. It's from Mellyopila, M-E-L-Y-O-P-L-E-A, and said, I need to know if Josh and Keith don't get along. On the podcast, it sounds like playful animosity with an underneath layer of disdain. I would object to that.

Bingo! I would object to that very strongly. It's not an underlying layer of disdain. It's disdain. It's disdain. Yeah. Well, now I'm going to tell- Rise above it. Character, character will out. Now I'm going to tell a secret, which is-

Oh boy. Yeah. You're going to hate this. Everybody on Dateline, everybody, camera crews, producers, APs, everybody, everybody loves Keith and I'm no different. I do too. Aww. Yeah.lauson Yeah. Pete Slauson That's about the nicest thing anybody's ever said to me.

Pete Slauson And that is Talking Dateline for this week. Pete Slauson Wow. Pete Slauson Keith, thank you. Thanks everybody for listening. Remember, if you have any questions for us about anything on the broadcast, any of our stories or any cases that you think we should cover, you can reach out to us on social at at Dateline NBC. So you Fridays on Dateline, on NBC, and remember to listen to Keith's all new podcast, which is called The Man in the Black Mask. Pete Slauson Yeah, or Josh, say it correctly. The Man in the Black Mask.

Josh Birk Okay, I don't have your voice, okay? But let me do my best. Try to listen to Keith's new podcast, The Man in the Black Mask. Well, yeah. Yeah. The first two episodes are available to listen to. Go back to your usual style. No, I'm going to go back to that. First two episodes are available to listen to for free

wherever you get your podcasts.