Dateline NBC - Talking Dateline: Open Desert

Episode Date: July 17, 2024

Andrea Canning talks to Josh Mankiewicz about his episode, “Open Desert.” On March 8, 2020, 16-year-old Britney Ujlaky told her dad she was leaving a park to meet up with a friend. She never came home. Her partially-clothed body was found three days later in the Nevada desert. Detectives investigated multiple potential suspects before they turned their attention to the last person to see Britney alive. Josh and Andrea discuss Britney’s strong relationship with her father, Jim Ujlaky, and the blackmail scheme that gave her family false hope after she disappeared. Later, Josh shares a podcast-exclusive clip from his interview with Jim about his first impressions of the killer. Plus, Dateline producer Ann Preisman joins the conversation to share her experience making the episode and to answer viewer and listener questions from social media.Listen to the full episode “Open Desert” here:  https://link.chtbl.com/dl_opendesert

Hi, everyone. I'm Andrea Canning, and we are Talking Dateline. Today, I'm here with Josh Mankiewicz. Hey, Josh. How you doing? Good. All right. So, this episode is called Open Desert, if you haven't seen it. It's the episode right below this one on your list of podcasts. So, go there and listen to it or stream it on Peacock and then come back here. Today, Josh has an extra clip that he's going to play for us from his interview with the victim's father. Plus, we're going to be joined later by this episode's producer and a good friend of mine, Anne Priceman,

to answer some questions from social media. To recap this story, back in March of 2020, 16-year-old Brittany Lackey was reported missing from her hometown of Spring Creek, Nevada. She was last seen with her friend Bryce Spring Creek, Nevada. She was last seen with her friend Bryce, who said he had dropped Brittany off to meet a mysterious cowboy named JT. Detectives and Brittany's family searched far and wide for her body and her killer. Eventually, they found her remains in a nearby desert, and DNA evidence at the scene showed

them that her killer wasn't that cowboy, but her trusted friend, Bryce. Okay, let's talk Dateline. Josh, what really hit me from the very first line of this episode was the child not answering the phone. Yeah. Right? That happens to all of us as parents. You know, at first, it's like, no big deal. Your kid didn't answer their phone. You don't really think much of it. And then if they don't answer the second time or the third time or they're not answering texts, your mind immediately goes to the worst place. At the same time, you're like, no, no, no, everything's fine. And usually it is. But then, unfortunately, as we've learned on this show, sometimes it's not okay. Yeah. And that's what Jim Yalaki was going through. He also, you know, there's one more component to that, which is in this case, he knew how long it took to get from where he last seen his daughter to where his daughter said she was going. So like she should have been home. She should have been reachable. You know, that's an age where

kids want to start having some portion of their life for themselves. And they don't want to tell you, the parent, everything. But in this case, in this family, Jim Ulaki, he knew this is not my daughter, you know, misleading me so she can run off and, you know, have a beer behind the gym with somebody she's not supposed to be hanging out with. He. Something was wrong. Sounds like such a great dad, such a softie with his daughter. Yeah, because she completely changed his life. And I loved how he said, you know, I'm dad first, and then I'm the best friend or the friend. Yeah, he was super protective of her. I mean, he paid a lot of attention to where she was, what she was doing, where she was going. I mean, he was on her.

And in this case, of course, we had was going. I mean, he was on her. And in this case, of course, we had the worst outcome that they had to discover her body in that way. You know, and it's amazing that they eventually even found her when you look at that landscape. And, you know, as the name of the show, right? Open Desert. Right. I mean, it's gorgeous country.

I sort of wasn't prepared for that. There's no easy way to get there. You got to fly somewhere and then drive for a long distance, but it is absolutely gorgeous when you get there. And yeah, there's this town and then around it is a great deal of just nothing, just natural beauty, but a lot of areas where if you are up to something that you shouldn't be up to, nobody will see you. And if you want to hide a body, there's a lot of places to do that. Yeah. And it's interesting because it sort of reminds you of the Wild West, old-fashioned, but then it's got this edge to it where I noticed the teenagers have nose rings. They were free spirits, right? They

were just being themselves. I looked at Britney's eyeshadow and it was multiple colors, like one of those really pretty sunsets in the mountain that has like every color in it. It just kind of told me that this girl was a free spirit. You know, she was doing her thing. She was riding her horses, dressing the way she wanted to dress. She was being the person she wanted to be. Yeah, I mean, like a lot of the people we cover, this was somebody who was just, you know, on the cusp of adulthood and, you know, loved the rodeo and loved being around horses and, you know, really wanted a life that encompassed some part of that world. And whereas, you know, a lot of people that you run into in a small town like that, they can't wait to get out. Like, I gotta go. I want to be in LA or I want to be in New York. I want to go to the big city. And she was like, no, no, I love it here. You know, she embraced that culture and the stuff you do there. And, you know, she was all

about the rodeo. Where was Brittany going in life? She was going to go someplace that made her happy. That's where she was going. One thing that made me really sad in this episode, and it was a really powerful red herring, was that girl fight that was caught on video at the rodeo. I did not like watching that video. Well, first of all, you can see in Brittany, her dad, right? I mean, like that, I'm not backing down from a fight. I'm not afraid of you. And she got in a fight with some kids in school, but then it ended up spilling over into the rodeo. And some of that was caught on video. And I mean, law enforcement had absolutely no choice, but to like figure out

who that is because, you know, is it conceivable that somebody who's 16 years old could be killed by other 16 year olds that they had some kind of like, you know, nebulous dispute with? Absolutely. And that's one of the roads that law enforcement went down. I mean, they found those girls and ultimately determined that they were not involved. But that's one of the things that you have to do because any defense attorney worth their salt is going to say, wait a minute, you did not check out these people who were clearly angry enough to get in a fistfight with her. You didn't check those people out as suspects. Of course you will. You have to. Yeah. And I didn't know how the story ended. So for me, I was thinking this is a viable lead right here. Right. Exactly. I mean, there were a lot of twists and turns in

this case. It was the blackmail thing, the the kidnap scam. So cruel. And all you want is to cling to some hope. Yeah. The toughest thing I think the police had to do in this was say to Brittany's mom, listen, this is not real. There's no chance this is real. These people don't have your daughter. They may be committing a crime here, but we've talked about this before on Talking Dateline. When the thing that you are hoping for as a parent is that your child is still alive, but imprisoned by some maniac, when that's the best case scenario, you have gone to a very bad, very dark place. And that's where Brittany's mom was you have gone to a very bad, very dark place. And that's where Brittany's mom was at that point, which is okay. Well, at least in that scenario,

she's still alive. And the hardest thing that law enforcement had to do was say to her, hey, this is nothing. Okay. After the break, we'll be back with an extra clip from Josh's interview with Brittany's dad, Jim Ulaki. One of the things that I've had to learn in this job is that the traditional rules or the rules that I grew up with of dating or going steady or who's with who, you know, the idea that like, I'm going to come to your house and I'm going to pick you up and I'm going to have some flowers for you. And your dad's going to grill me in the entryway. And then I'm going to make sure that I have you back by, you know, 10 59 PM or whatever the curfew is. Which I'm okay with. I am okay with that. I know that you, with all those, with all those girls in your house, I know you are

okay with that, but that has changed. And all those girls in your house, I know you are okay with that. But that has changed. And it's sort of hard to figure out what an involvement is. And so that's kind of, you know, a little bit about what was going on between Brittany and Bryce. I mean, they were friends. Also, clearly, he thought there was more going on there and or could be more going on there. And we don't know what else had happened before that. We do know that it went very, very wrong and that he was the aggressor in that.

Yeah. And her dad said clearly this was someone before he figured out Bryce, someone that she trusted. Right. There's no question about that. She did not see him as some annoying guy who was pestering her, who was stalking her, who wouldn't leave her alone. I mean, they were friends and they were thought of as friends by everybody who knew them. And her dad actually talked to you about that in a clip that did not

make the show that we're going to play right now that's right up that alley of what you're talking about. Going back to now, back when Bryce seemed like a decent, trustworthy guy when they were friends, what was your relationship with Bryce? I only met Bryce twice. Every guy had to meet me before she could do anything with him, and I'd do the typical dad thing. But I've been to jail a lot in my younger radical years and everything, and I would tell him I'm not that dad who says I've been to jail a lot in my younger radical years. And I would tell them, I'm not that dad who says I've been to jail, and I haven't. I've been to jail many times, and I'm not afraid to go back to jail.

Whatever you do to my daughter, I'm going to do to you. And I was just my little spew, and actually, I really meant it. I'm very protective of my kids. That would have worked with me, let me just say. So I'd seen him for probably two or three minutes, and then they left. He came by one other time. I'd very briefly seen him, but he mainly showed up around her mom. Okay, so you had that conversation with Bryce, but he wasn't really a boyfriend, right? I mean, she sort of made clear, this is just my friend. Yeah. And it was not her boyfriend

that she brought over, just any guy that she was hanging around with, I would just say that. So there was nothing really to fear with Bryce initially. No, there was nothing suspicious. And like he and his family had been in that town forever. Like they were all sort of known quantities. And it's amazing because usually it's like, you look back, oh, the red flags were there, you know, oh, he did this or he said that. And it all makes sense. But not in this case. Yeah, that's right.

Bryce did a fairly good job of steering the investigation away from him, even to the point of coming to a memorial for her, because I'm guessing something told him if you don't go, it's going to be suspicious. And he went and and people were putting their arms around him. Well, we know that law enforcement detectives, they go to the funeral or they sit outside the funeral, you know, that usually trying to hide the fact that they're law enforcement. Right. But sometimes they're taking photos of every license plate in the parking lot. Yeah, because very often the killer does go to the funeral, just like an arsonist might go to the burned down building. Right, and a killer might go to the funeral, one, because not going might make them seem suspicious, and second, because so often murders are committed by somebody that the victim knows.

That the victim knows, exactly. And that's, you know, the majority of our Dateline episodes. In a way that maybe should give people a little bit of comfort, which is the, you know, the random madman or madwoman who, you know, breaks into your house, kills you. Like, that's pretty rare. Like this, you're mostly in danger from people, you know, from relationships you already have. But one of the things about this story that made it an interesting story to tell was that there was this mythical other suspect, this cowboy named JT that, you know, drove, you know, a particular kind of pickup truck. And Bryce gave a description of this guy and of the

truck. And that, I mean, the police turned over a lot of stones looking for JT, looking for that truck and, you know, looking for those initials. And in nearly every law enforcement agency that I know of, there's a nickname database. So, you know, if you're looking for somebody named Sugar or Beefy or JT, it's going to be in there. I was actually known as Sugar back in high school. And so they spent a lot of time looking for the mythical JT until they figured out that the way Bryce was talking about this guy kept changing. Like one time he was in the truck, one time he was out of the truck. Yeah. And I made a note of that as his story kept changing, that this is why defense attorneys tell people not to open their mouths. That's right.

Right? Because this is what got him in trouble. If he had just not said anything, and of course, it's that you're damned if you do, you're, it's, it's, of course it's that you're damned if you do, you're damned if you don't, if you're innocent and you don't say anything, then you look guilty. If you're guilty, you say something you potentially could incriminate yourself. So it is tricky, but in this case, he absolutely should not have opened his mouth. I mean, yes, in the sense that, I sense that a defense attorney would have said, don't talk with police or just talk with police once and then say, look, if you're going to treat me like a suspect, I'm not going to talk with you anymore. But, you know, once her body was found and once

DNA is found from the tobacco that was spit on the ground near the body, then that's going to lead back to Bryce. That leads me to talk about the clues in this case, which were really good ones. Especially if you're really eagle-eyed, apparently unlike me, he spit in that body cam video, the police body cam video, which I noticed. I really noticed him spitting. But then the chewing tobacco, when they say they found it at the scene I didn't put two and two together with the chewing tobacco and the spitting so I missed that clue but then thought wow somebody out there watching Dateline surely picked that up

surely and the other one that was so good was the desert landscape you know in the photo with the mountain ridge and how they were able to line that up. That was a great, that was, I mean, there was very good police work in this. And that was part of it, was lining up the mountain ridge that really existed behind them in the photo. Yeah, it was really right out of a movie, you know, that clue, I feel like. It was an exact match, right? I mean, it was pretty amazing. Yeah, no, they did a great job with that.

Now we're going to take a quick break and then we'll be back with a special guest, Dateline producer Anne Priceman. What we're going to do now is we're going to bring in Anne Priceman, who, as I said, is a good friend of mine. And I've done many Datelines with her. And she was your producer on this episode. She was. And she is going to tell us a little bit about her experience with the story and answer some questions from social media. So let's bring in the incredible Anne Priceman. Hello.

Great to be with you. Anne, so you made a vlog while you were out filming this episode. Let's just play it for our listeners really quickly. Hi, I'm Anne. And so you made a vlog while you were out filming this episode. Let's just play it for our listeners really quickly. Hi, I'm Anne. And I'm Rachel. And today we're taking you along on a shoot for an all new episode of Dateline. We're in Elko County, Nevada, which is one of the most beautiful places I have ever been while traveling for Dateline. In fact, this area is known as the Swiss Alps of Nevada. After a couple of hours of filming, we headed back to town. Although we ran into a problem, a lot of big problems, actually.

So we're driving back from our B-roll shoot. And we're having some trouble getting home. Eventually, they moved out of the way and we made it back to town so what the listener can't see is that you're driving through this gorgeous valley and then your suv is suddenly surrounded by a herd of huge dairy cows eventually they turned around they're like oh there's a car um yeah but it's the same philosophy that ann uses when dealing with me which is you just wait and eventually like it works out just be patient enough yeah um josh you you made a vlog as well in canada i did because i had that uh that that trip which by the way was the other kind of story

that we were just talking about which is it was not a friend of the victim it was somebody completely random and that was that's true kind of a kind of a swerve for us in that there was no relationship at all between killer and victim and where we were going in Canada was so far away and it was so hard to get there. And it took so long. It was a real planes, trains, and automobiles experience. So I made a, uh, I made a little video travelogue. If you hadn't have documented it, I don't know that I would have believed it, that you were in Moosonee, Canada. I know. And it took two days to get there and two days to get back. I was only there a little while. Yeah.

I was so proud of you for braving the cold, Josh, you California guy. I know that you and Keith grew up with that, but I did not. Yeah. All right. So we are going to dig into some social media questions. The first one is from Dalaran7 at DanielRHawker1. He talks about how this is a very tragic story and sad story that all parents should watch with their kids and tell them, this is why we ask questions. This is why we keep tabs on you 24-7. This can be, this episode, a teachable moment for sure if you feel comfortable either having your kids watch it or just telling them what happened.

Yeah, I mean, I think that's right. I think Jim Ulaki did everything right. I mean, he paid a lot of attention to where his daughter was, who she was hanging out with, what was going on in her life. He was not some absentee father. He was very, very involved. And yet this still happens. So, I mean, if there is any kind of teachable moment here, it's that you say to your kids, you know, even people that you feel

comfortable with, it doesn't mean that nothing can ever happen. You just have to be aware all the time. Yeah. And it's kind of an instinctive thing, right? There's no manual. You kind of just have to figure it out and hope for the best and do everything you can, which is what Jim was clearly doing. Which leads me to our next viewer, Jossie at JocelynD20, who said, and I think she speaks for all of us, this dad has me in tears. You know, and when we were originally talking with him, we sat down. He's very sort of taciturn. He doesn't talk a lot. But man, once we started him talking about this story, he was great all the way through. And he was one of the main storytellers of the story, which, you know, sometimes on Dateline, the people that know the victim the best aren't their parents, but not Jimmy Lackey. He was a player in her life all the way through. And he told the story better than anybody. And Katie Bumble said, Britney's father left a deep impression on me.

May all daughters have a dad who loves them this much. I mean, his pain was so palpable. I mean, we're around for what we do, a lot of victims, but this was so different. Like you felt it, you almost took it on yourself. So on to Bryce, the killer, Nancy Carol Harvey on Facebook said, I knew right away Bryce did it. Talking about the cowboy hat and the truck. There are so many of the same color truck in that town and cowboys. That definitely set investigators off on a whole other path, which they, I mean, if you were JT and you lived in Elko County, you probably were getting investigated. So, I mean, it was a clue just broad enough to guarantee a lot of investigator hours. It's the land of F-150s.

Yeah. And cowboy hats. Yeah. It's cowboy country. I think people around here forget that there's a whole other world out there in America. You know, there's places where there's not Starbucks on every corner. Josh found a Starbucks in town. I did find it.

Okay, maybe there's one on the corner. It found a Starbucks in town. I did find it. Okay, maybe there's one on the corner. It wasn't actually a Starbucks, I think. It was a Starbucks-type place. One of our cameramen is a coffee aficionado. This is obviously a sidebar. So every place you go, he finds the little specialty roaster place. Yeah, I mean, that's the thing.

There isn't a Starbucks in every town, but... And you don't need a Starbucks if they have these little cute specialty coffee places. But there are places that serve coffee, and I will find that. Yeah. Okay. This is from the Dateline team.

Brittany's main hobby was horseback riding, and she loved the rodeo, of course. During the show, we asked viewers what their favorite hobby was as a teenager. We got all kinds of answers, but we want to know, Josh and Anne, what were your favorite hobbies as teenagers? And do you still do them today? Anne, you go first. This question underlies how much of a dork I was. I watched a lot of TV. Oh, gosh, me too. Wonder why we're in this business.

My parents hated it too, by the way. I don't know about you. My parents were like, stop watching TV. I mean, I was Gen X and a little bit latchkey. So, again, Love Boat Reruns and Magnum P.I. were my jam. Absolutely. Yeah. I remember one of my favorite hobbies was watching Keith on television when I was a small child.

So that was. Wait, are you joking? Or you mean when he was an anchor in L.A.? No, I mean when I'm joking. When I grew up, I read a lot. I'm still doing that. I watched a lot of television. I watched a lot of crime dramas on television.

Me too. My mom used to say to me, you know, Josh, television is not a life. Well, wrong again, mom. To all of our parents. All right. Well, on that note, thank you

Ann for joining us today. That was a nice special treat. Thank you for having me. Thank you, Josh, as well for sharing all your insights into this episode. Thank you, guys. Okay, and that is Talking Dateline for this week. Remember, if you have any questions for us about stories or about Dateline, you can reach out to us on social media at DatelineNBC. Also, be sure to check out the newest season of our podcast, Dateline Missing in America, featuring missing person cases brought to our attention

by our followers on social media. Listen to the first episode now wherever you get your podcasts and see you Fridays on Dateline on NBC.