Dateline NBC - Talking Dateline: Ghosts Can’t Talk

Episode Date: January 17, 2024

Josh Mankiewicz and Andrea Canning discuss her recent episode, “Ghosts Can’t Talk.” In March 2018, Nick Shaughnessy hired two hit men to murder his parents in their home as they slept. His father died, but his mother Corey survived. Andrea reveals what Corey told her about grieving both her husband and the son she thought she knew. Andrea also plays Josh an unaired portion of her jailhouse interview with Nick.

Hi, everybody. I'm Josh Mankiewicz, and we are Talking Dateline, and our guest is Andrea Canning. Hi. Hello, Josh and all of our listeners. So this episode is called Ghosts Can't Talk, which is a title that I love. Now, if you have not seen this on television or if you have not heard it on a podcast, it is the episode right below this on the list of podcasts that you just chose from. So go there, listen to it or watch it on television and then come back here. Okay. I am not usually this angry after watching an episode of Dateline. And when I am, it's usually about something that the person did and not how the system treated that person. But in this case,

I mean, it's outrageous. How is Jackie not wearing Texas prison white? It's nuts. And the person who thinks it's the most nuts is Corey Shaughnessy. That's the whole reason that she did the interview with us, because she was so upset with the treatment that Jackie got, what she considers to be special treatment. I mean, she clearly knew a murder was coming and didn't do anything about it. I mean, and what's with the, you go to jail two days a year for 10 years on the anniversary of Ted Shaughnessy's death? It's strange.

You think Corey only thinks about it two days a year? I know, this is one of those cases that went on for years. And, you know, it was kind of like, will they, won't they, will they, won't they with Jackie? It was just kind of like, it seemed like it was all over the map. And then suddenly we got this heads up that, you know, that she will face something. Nick took a plea. So they didn't need her testimony against him.

Right. Which is sometimes how people end up sort of escaping the sword of justice. But in this case, like they had him without that. Yeah. Usually it's who's first, right? Who's going to turn first gets the deal. Yeah. One of the things that the Travis County DA said was that Jacqueline Edison fully cooperated with law enforcement during the investigation, but that the investigation also revealed information that reduced her culpability which they did not share with us because they did not do an interview so we don't know what that

means i'm shaking my head yeah the da's office also went on to say our office takes acts of violence seriously and is committed to holding people who commit violent crimes accountable should miss edison violate the conditions of her, then she can be sentenced to 20 years in prison. So we're going to give you just one more chance. That's it. If you plot to kill anybody else, well then, Missy, you are really in trouble. That's what they're saying. I know. And for them to say that they, you know, found this new information, like what was this new information that reduced her culpability? You know, why don't you say what it was?

Yeah, I mean, sure sounds like they didn't want to defend that decision. They say that it's their policy to not do interviews, but we've come to learn that's not the case. And by the way, you always have a choice as the prosecutor if you want to do an interview.

There's no state mandate, you know, or county mandate telling him he can't. You start this episode out with the shootout, which is just a very strong way to get into the story. The dog gets shot and killed. Yeah. And that was because the dog, well, you didn't say this, but the dog was deaf. Is that right of them one of the dogs was deaf yeah and so probably and couldn't hear the gunshots but probably could probably could smell the people coming in the house one of the dogs

definitely knew what was happening because that's the whole reason ted got out of bed and went to go see what was going on. And that's when the shooting started. And that's when Corey grabbed her gun. I will say at the end of part one, and then even after that, I thought, oh, this is, Corey got prosecuted for this. The way she was talking about it, her tone of voice, her affect made me think, oh, she's going to claim there was a shooting. She's going to say, I accidentally shot my husband when I was shooting at the burglars. Yeah. Well, you know, police so often look to the spouse, you know, as being responsible. And in this case, it definitely caught their

attention. The fact that why did they come into the house and leave Ted dead, but not Corey, especially when Corey ran out of ammo and was hiding in the closet. Why spare her? And then, of course, you have that thought, motive, money. They have a lot of money. Maybe she didn't want Ted in her life anymore. She wanted the money for herself. I mean, these are all the things that the police were thinking about when they were investigating. And they wouldn't be doing their job if they didn't look at her but uh she did not refuse to be interviewed no not at all not at all she fully fully cooperated and you know you talked about her tone her affect um we did talk about that a lot as we were editing this story um and the thing

that i took away from it was Corey's intense. You know, she's been through hell and back and I think she sort of almost made it packed with herself. I'm not going to cry. You know, I'm going to be strong and she finally at the very end of the interview, she got teary-eyed

and she finally broke down a little bit. You know, everyone handles these different, these interviews differently. And for Corey, it was about, you know, I'm just, I'm going to be strong. Everything you know can be gone in a matter of seconds. I thought that was very poignant. That was her takeaway from this. She said, I want everyone to remember that, that everything you have can be gone in a matter of seconds. And her whole world was just shattered in that moment, in that night.

And I think to myself, just the betrayal, that one of your children could do this to you. It's so hard for any parent to wrap their head around. And I said to Corey, how do you wrap your brain around that? And she said, you don't. I thought she really sort of made that clear because, you know, she's paying for Nick's attorneys at one point, right? That'd be more, I'd be like, you hire killers to try to kill me and your dad. You're on your own, pal. I think Corey didn't want to believe that her son could be capable of something like that.

So she hung on as long as she could. It's one reason why when we interview mothers and fathers of people who are accused of murder, usually they're on their son or daughter's side. Nobody wants to admit that they raised a murderer. And you can just imagine in Corrie's mind, I feel like it would be a natural thought to say, what did I do wrong? Like, you know, there must be some of that guilt factor in there, even though there should be none.

There shouldn't be. I mean, I just, my heart breaks for her as a mom. You know, she lost her best friend. She lost her son. It, it's just, oh, you know, I was hired to, you know, follow this guy next door. That was weird. You know, yeah. And I thought his sort of redirecting the investigation that way was, for all from his point of view, smart. Although cops clearly saw through that at some point. They realized this guy's being more helpful than he should be.

Nick is very conniving. You know, the way that he tried to redirect them also not only to the neighbor Kim, but his friend Spencer. He told them that Spencer knew about the bedroom window and that he knew how to get into the house. And then he gave Spencer that gun. You know, he was clearly planning all this before and, you know, had thought this through. But he hadn't thought it through enough to realize that, you know, he had approached Spencer about actually doing the job. And like, why you want to put the cops in the room with the person that you approached about doing the job originally? I mean, that's a very, very foolish thing to do. That's why he's in prison now. And he also didn't count on the random man showing up with that

Renewal by Anderson t-shirt. Let's talk about that a little bit. I mean, one of the things that I just, I loved in this is how the cops got from that t-shirt to a murder suspect, because that's just like lightning striking in the middle of this murder case and making a huge difference. I mean, no one saw that coming. No, I mean, what are the odds that he's wearing that T-shirt that is, you know, renewal by Anderson, the window company, and then they go to that local office and they remember him? And I think he only worked there for like one day or something or three days. It was a very short stint, but enough to get a name.

And they, I mean, when the cops see that, they've got to think to themselves, wait a minute, maybe we were wrong about the guy in Minnesota, right? I mean, what are the odds? What are the odds that this window company is going to figure in a murder case, not once, but twice and completely unconnected in both cases? And here's another crazy thing. When I used to work in the Toronto area, I worked with the woman who now does the Renewal by Anderson commercials. Wow.

Yeah. So how about that? Well, it's a... All kinds of Renewal by Anderson connections. It's a smaller world than I thought. Yes. That's an example of how technology has changed crime fighting because that couldn't have happened just, you know, a quarter century ago. Like the cameras weren't good enough to figure out what somebody was wearing.

Also, Nick's the one who told them that he had the surveillance, these surveillance cameras. So he kind of led them right to their breadcrumb there. I used to refer to my father when he was alive. I called him dad, right? What'd you call your father? Dad. Okay. So I'm going to be a little bit from the date with dateline playbook here, but I thought

Nick referring to his dad as father was really weird. I don't know how many people out there do that. I know that it's a thing, but referring to his father, father doesn't want me to do this. Um, uh, that feels like something from like the,

you know, 17th century. Very formal. Yeah. Um, they were, you know, they had a good relationship by all accounts.

I mean, this isn't like the Menendez brothers where, you know, they have, they gave a reason, right? He has no reason. Nick has no claim that he was being mistreated in some way. No. He just wanted the money.

You know, I say to Nick, and I hope it didn't sound flippant, but I said, you know, is there a chip missing? Because, like, who does this? You know, who does this when they have everything, right? Lots of people want money. Lots of people want their parents' money. They don't kill their parents or bother in this case,

attempted murder of mother. I mean, look, I'm no psychologist. Me neither. Well, I did get a psychology degree, but. Okay. So you're much closer to a psychologist than I am. You know, I mean, is it possible this is something in his past? I guess, but you know, the, I mean, is it possible this is something in his past? I guess. But, you know, the babies don't come out wanting money. No, of course not. The answer is, you know, we don't know. I think it is normal to look for an explanation here because what he did and the reasons that he gives do not make any sense. I mean, I had a lot of issues with sort of, you know, his responses to your questions, which I think you were great.

And he was sort of like back on his heels a lot of the time. Yeah, it's an interesting dynamic when someone is actually admitting to a crime. Because as you know, when we do these prison interviews, they're always deny, deny, deny. And you're, you know, throwing information in their face. Well, how do you explain this and this? And, you know, you're kind of getting a little angry because they're just denying everything. And he just copped to it. He just copped to everything. I know. You're right. You're right. Yes, I did it. Yes,

I was wrong. And then there's always that, you know, is this because he got caught that he's apologizing or does he really feel bad? And we actually have an extra clip from the Nick interview where I ask him about what he put his parents through that night. Let's play that. Do you think about the fear that your parents experienced? Your dad, your mom waking up in the middle of the night to the dogs barking, your mom hearing the sound of gunfire, your mom being shot at and having to shoot back to save her life. And then cowering in a closet, believing that whoever was in the house was going to come to finish her off. You put her through that.

It's just reliving that and going through that is something that's always there. Like knowing what she went through and is going through is something that will always be prevalent. Like it will, it's not something I can just negate or minimize. It's her pain, her suffering is something that I'm truly, like that's what hurts me the most. She doesn't, she believes that whatever you're going to say is lies or whatever you've said are lies. And that she has no reason to think otherwise. But

I hope to prove her wrong through my actions and who I'm becoming. That was torture for Corey, that she had to be put through that. I mean, imagine the post-traumatic stress of an experience like that and how the fear that you would live with. You know, that's something that will never leave her. She still live in that house? No. No, she moved to a new state. Yeah. Cause I,

I don't think I could keep living in the place where that happened because everything is in that house. Right. Not just, you know, where I nearly got killed. My husband did get killed, and my kid who, you know, tried to kill me lived. Um, yeah, I can, I, I, I won't divulge too much about what Corey's doing now because, you know, she because she didn't want to go too far into that. But she does have some good things in her life. She's turned, I believe, somewhat of a corner where she's doing all right as best she can. Good. That's good to hear.

This feels like a good time to talk about something that I get asked about a lot by viewers, which is, what's it like to do an interview in a prison? Because it's different than the way we usually do interviews. Usually we find some big space, which we usually have to rent, and we set up all our cameras. You know, sometimes we have like hair and makeup for people, depending on, you know, who's being interviewed or how many are being interviewed. How is a prison interview different from regular Dateline interviews? Usually there's only, what, three people allowed in. Sometimes it's three if the audio person can come in. The producer almost never comes in because of the numbers that you're allowed. Occasionally I'll see someone working, like an inmate, and I'll say, can they clean the glass for us?

I've never thought of that. there's a lot of handprints, you know, people not being able to touch each other, but they're touching their hands together. And then what I'll do is in the women's prison, I'll try to sort of ask if I can bring in some powder, maybe some hairspray or blush. And, you know, I'll try to do something with the inmate if I can. And then there was one woman who I was interviewing. I put her hair in a ponytail. I put the powder on, gave her a little blush. And then I looked in the camera and I thought, still kind of looks like a prison. They wear in Texas the white tops. Right. And they have the collars. I popped her collar. Next thing I knew, she looked high fashion.

She did not look like she was in a prison i mean it was like my best makeover yet this fall on nbc andrea's extreme correctional makeover oh you know i would do that i would love that i know you would and you know i mean i think we should say this for the uh just for our listeners here you know one of the reasons that we try to disguise the fact of somebody being in custody is, you know, if we're showing an episode of Dateline and somebody shows up, you know, two and a half minutes into the story and they're clearly wearing a orange prison cover. Yeah. No. You know, it's pretty obvious that person has been convicted. So we're not going to show you that right at the beginning.

Sometimes they won't let you do anything. And you're interviewing the guy through glass and he's wearing a coverall and that's it. The prison interviews are always interesting. There's also, you could hear it in that bonus clip we put on. It's so loud, the clinking, you know, the opening and closing of doors that you can't control because we like to have quiet environments. Right. And it's clang, clang, clang constantly and keys and all kinds of stuff that you hear while you're trying to do your interview.

I thought you were great with Nick. I mean, I was cheering. Oh, thank you. I mean, you know, this is one of those stories that from the moment it happened, I flew out to Austin, met with people and stayed on this story. You know, didn't let it go. Kept calling Nick on the phone. You know, kept meeting with the defense attorney.

It's interesting how if you kind of latch on to something and you don't let it go, then you can end up with a really powerful story. So this took a long time. This wasn't something you guys, this wasn't something you wrapped up in just a couple of weeks. No. Being dogged and hard-nosed pays off. It's great when that happens. So congratulations to you. And who produced this? Let's give them a little shout out here. Well, it all started with Anne Priceman. And then the baton was... Who we adore. Who we adore. The baton was passed to Chetna.

Chetna Joshi, who we also adore. Yes. Yeah. And Alison Orr, our senior producer from New York. She steered the ship for us. Well, that's great. Well, congratulations to all of them and to you. Thanks. Ghosts Can't Talk is the episode title. for us. Well, that's great. Well, congratulations to all of them and to you. Uh, thanks. Uh,

ghosts can't talk is the episode title. Uh, and, uh, and I, I thought it was great. I really did. And, uh, that's it for talking Dateline. Andrea, nice to see you. Thanks for joining us as always. And, uh, to all of you listening out there in podcast land. Thanks. See you Fridays on Dateline on NBC. And to all of you listening out there in podcast land, thanks. See you Fridays on Dateline on NBC.