Dateline NBC - Talking Dateline: Secrets Unmasked

Episode Date: June 24, 2026

Keith Morrison and Dateline producer Tim Uehlinger join Andrea Canning to discuss their episode, “Secrets Unmasked.” It’s the story of Regina Hicks, a young Ohio mother whose body was found in the passenger seat of her submerged car in 2001. Her manner of death was ruled undetermined, and for decades the case remained a mystery. Then an alleged arson scheme involving a custom-made face mask prompted investigators to take another look at Regina’s death. Keith and Tim discuss the twists and turns that ultimately led to justice, including the pivotal role of witness Steve Gates, who broke his silence after nearly 25 years. Keith also shares an extra clip from his interview with Steve, who explains why he is no longer afraid of Regina’s killer. Plus, we answer your questions from social media. Have a question for Talking Dateline? DM us @DatelineNBC or leave a voicemail at [phone] –  your question could be featured in an upcoming episode. Listen to the full episode of “Secrets Unmasked” here: https://swap.fm/l/secretsunmasked Listen to Andrea’s episode “Running Man,” about the case that took place where she grew up in Canada: https://swap.fm/l/runningman Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hey everyone, this is Andrea Canning, and we are talking Dateline, and today we are joined by the legendary Keith Morrison and his legendary producer, Tim Eulinger. They are here to discuss their Dateline episode, Secrets Unmasked. This episode is about the murder of Regina Hicks, a 25-year-old Ohio woman who disappeared on the way to pick up her son from her estranged husband, Paul. Days later, Regina's car was found submerged in a pond with her body in the passenger seat. What followed was an investigation spanning two decades, a bizarre arson scheme, and a reluctant witness. If you haven't seen the episode yet, you can stream it now on Peacock or listen in the Dateline podcast feed, then come right back here. Later, we will have an extra clip from Steve Gates, the witness who kept his silence for nearly 25 years, reflecting on how he feels about Paul now. And we will answer some of your amazing questions from social media.

Okay, let's talk Dateline. Hey, Keith and Tim. Hi, hi. How are you, Andrea? Nice to see you. It's always nice to see you guys since you're out there in California, Southern California, so I don't get to see you very often. It's great to see you.

So let's dive right into this episode. The first thing that I thought of as I was watching was I'm always struck by, you know, just the opening lines. right, and in the body of the episode. And in this one, you know, we're talking about Ohio, what is it, Willard, Ohio. And, you know, I was an anchor in Ohio. So I know those little towns. It's not super little, but it's not, it's not huge either. And it always strikes me how these, most of our date lines happen in these small towns. You know, they don't happen in the big city. In fact, I've done, I think, one dateline in New York City.

And I've done a lot of date lines. So, I mean, what's your take on that, that these crazy things happen in small town America, like in this episode? It's because it is a small town. I mean, there's even a genre called murder in a small town, right? I think the TV show called that. But if you look at all the famous crime novels, most of them occur in small towns. I agree with Christie loved those country mansions. didn't she? And there's a reason because it's a little place where this sort of crime doesn't

normally occur. You expect it to happen in a big, scary city and not in a sweet, bucolic little place that everybody, where everybody knows everybody else. Because it does, we're really interested in it. One of the things about the small towns is that because they are small towns, relationships are tighter. More people, like everybody knows everybody and emotions and things that I have found in stories like this, people are tighter, there's more emotion. That's a big part of it. Yeah, I agree with you. Yeah. And Keith, you know where I am from, Blue Mountain in Canada, which is on Georgian Bay. It's part of Lake here on the Great Lakes. And so this was, you know, as I'm watching the opening of this episode, I'm thinking to myself,

you know, I finally know sort of what it feels like, you know, to have a murder happen in a small town like that and for it to affect you because I am from a very small town. And we did have a murder that was a diabolical murder that we featured on Dateline in November. And it was the fire captain who had murdered his wife Ashley. And it happened three miles from my house where I grew up. So it's a new perspective for me. Yeah, it would be. And along the lines of what we've been talking about, the, Regina's uncle, Regina, the victim in this story, her uncle said something

that struck me and he said there's no way to explain it until you experience it yourself. And you don't have any idea really what these people are feeling when someone they love has been murdered. Right. Even though this case occurred 24, 25

years ago now, the scars are, they're not healed. The people are still hurting. There's still emotion. You could see it. Yeah, and those things never heal. And as they say, the ripples go out a long way, but they also last for generations. So people, anybody, even somebody who was a small child who you'd think would grow up and forget all about, they don't forget about it.

It informs everything in their lives. Regina's cousin said, you know, when the verdict came in guilty, she could feel it in her toes. When she told me that, I was like, oh, my God. You could, she still, I saw her that day. I was there for the verdict. And I saw her that day and the tears just kept coming and she just couldn't believe that finally, finally. But the emotion, it's still right on the surface. You really brought to life Regina in this episode, especially with the challenges that we have sometimes telling these stories when they're so old because we don't have video and all the crystal clear pictures that we have now.

It's more of a challenge. So it's the people. It was the people that you interviewed who. were the ones who did such a good job of bringing into focus, Regina, bringing her to life. I will not deny that frequently when I'm just speaking for myself, launch into a story, one of the kind of stories we do, I'll get a sense of, oh, no, not again. We have to invade somebody's grief and we're going to do this story about the worst thing that ever happened to somebody. And in the end, the thing that makes me glad we tell the stories, are because you get to know the person of the heart of it, which is generally the victim.

So true. And in a way, in a strange way, it's like you are celebrating a person who died a long time ago. I agree. I agree. And also, Keith, they looked like they wanted to be there talking about Regina. You could feel it. Yeah, they did. Regina's brother, for instance, Chuck Rowe.

I hit it off with Regina's brother Chuck, because he was wearing a Marine cap, United States Marines. It was a snowy day. We love Marines. We love the Marines in this household. Yes, I know you do. So I met Chuck. He's wearing this hat and I introduced myself.

And I said, you're a Marine, really? And then I asked like, where did you serve? And he goes, well, one of my foreign deployments was in Somalia. It was like Somalia, 1992, Somalia. And I said, were you there on the first day? First wave? He was like, oh, yeah, yeah. All the TV cameras were in my face.

I said, oh, my God, that was me. I was there on the beach. You guys were there. It's funny how paths crossed, isn't it? Cross. So we hit it off. But it was very funny. Anyway, that family is really very, very nice people.

Nice. The crime, it starts out with, you know, she goes missing. Of course, Regina, they find her car in the water. And the cause of death is ruled as a drowning. Manor of death, however. is pending. And I'm thinking to myself, this poor woman is in the passenger seat. How, so how do you figure that, and she's got marks on her, how do you figure that she, that this is anything other than a homicide? I don't, I didn't really get that. It was a source of puzzlement to a lot of people, I think. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The coroner may well have felt that he would be sticking his neck out a little too far if he went to declaring that it was a homicide. Right. How else does she get in there, though?

Well, you know, there are ways in ways. It's possible that she could. She could slide into the passenger seat. When things are at least remotely possible that, you know, with many in the law enforcement community, probably quite rightly, are saying, well, we can't quite go with that yet. It's interesting, though, because we were talking about the case in Blue Mountain with Ashley, with her husband, who was the fire captain, and her body. So he had pushed the car into the ditch during a snowstorm to make it look like she had had a car accident. But there she is in the passenger side. Again, it's another story where the victim is in the passenger side. So how did she, you know, drive herself into the ditch, right? It didn't add up.

Exactly. Yeah. And then later on, of course, much, much later on, years and years and years later on, that manner of desk has changed. to one that I think everybody, you know, was able to sign on to, and that made all the difference. I don't want to say this in the wrong way when they changed that to homicide. I was so glad for her family. To me, that was movement. That was like acknowledging we believe Regina was murdered.

And now it's official. Sadly, it came after Regina's mother was dead. And she had campaigned for that for years and years. But didn't survive to see it, which was a real shame. And her mom, Regina's mom, had put up billboards to keep the case alive. And I covered the Crystal Rogers case last year where that became a real focal point of this, were these billboards of, you know, where is Crystal? And they believed also that they knew who had killed her, even though she'd never been found.

I think the billboards, I think they're so effective because it not only does it show how much the family cares, right, that they're not giving up, but it's in your face. Face. Every day, if you live in these areas where these billboards are. Like, you cannot ignore it. And in the Crystal Rogers case, they put up a billboard right next to the sheriff's department. It cannot be overstated how important it is for families in a cold case to keep at it, to keep pushing. And it helps the police, too, because, you know, they may seem annoyed.

But the fact is they need to have cover sometimes to continue in a little bit. investigation that otherwise they wouldn't be able to afford. But if somebody's really ramping up for it all the time, then their bosses are going to say, yes, spend the money. And so things get done. When we come back, we will have an extra clip from Steve Gates, the witness who kept his silence for nearly 25 years. Let's talk about the other half of this story that just really went off the rails in a lot of bizarre ways. You know, from the beginning of the show where I see somebody with this long hair and they've got glasses on and then there's a fire.

I'm like, where is this going? Yeah, well, exactly. It's what anybody looking at the story would think. You guys had me hooked. It was the weirdest darn thing, you know? I wrote down the name of the, actually, I don't even want to get, maybe I shouldn't even give it any publicity, but like where you can, you can get these wearable masks. I'm not sure they even sell them anymore.

That company that was involved in our story, Andrew, is no longer in business. They were based on the UK and they are no longer. I'm kind of actually glad about that. So it was called, That's My Face, but it's safe. Yeah. You know, it's one thing to have like a Halloween costume or something, but like you have a plan where you're going to use your current girlfriend to wear your ex-girlfriend's face to burn down your house. What? It was a stretch.

The other thing that was in this, which was the spoof card, to be able to call people. Yes, the spoof card. And it appeared to be coming from a different number altogether. And until they did a real deep dive on that, it looked as if people who were innocent were guilty and vice versa. The Claremont County, Ohio Sheriff's Department, you know, started investigating this case. And they did a pretty good job. And then using some of their information, this insurance investigator named Zach McCune, he was like the super investigator. And he got to the bottom of this.

And every time like he learned something, he couldn't believe the next thing he'd learn. You know, he was literally, he was like in all the things he's done in his career ever, he's never seen anything like this. Could have listened to that guy all day long. He was, uh, he definitely had me at hello. I was like, okay, I'm interested in this person. In this story. And I always like it when people have specialties. You know, so he's saying right out of the gate, my specialty is fire. It's arson. Yeah. Yeah. He's a certified fire investigator as if, you know, like a fire marshal would be. The second person in the house lighting the fire. Do we think that was Paul then? Or do we not? Do we not know? Or do you know? We don't know. We don't know. We don't know. Okay. No. Oh, well, Paul's tall. So. You would know, right, if it was Paul? Right.

Right. And Paul had an alibi, a perfect alibi. He was at a hotel three hours away. The thing about Paul was this, and it's central to the story. He was one of those guys who was always the leader of the pack in a small town. If he'd gone to the big city, he would have been shot down pretty quickly if he went to work for IBM or something. But, you know, he was a railway win. He knew other people around town.

They'd drive around in his cars. He would always pick up a kind of a satellite. somebody who was enthralled with him, who would do whatever he wanted them to do, who would be afraid of them, but wanting to attach to them at the same time. Kind of like Steve. There you go. Yeah, sure. Terry Sweet is another person, you know, who went along with Paul.

Right. I just say allegedly Terry Sweet. Yeah. But she died, right? So she died. She died. The very day the insurance inspector was going to talk to her. Talk to her again.

And, Andrea, this is funny. This is something we can bring up. I mean, obviously we attempted to get the death certificate and to see if there was any investigation. How did she die? Apparently, according to the little information out there, is that it was probably alcohol-related and it was, quote-unquote, natural causes. Do people think otherwise? Well, there may. There could be.

But nobody is going to talk about it on the record. There are some people who believe that coincidences happen. and other people who believe coincidence is unlikely to ever happen. Long enforcement generally doesn't believe in coincidences. As I always say on this podcast, it seems like an awfully big coincidence that she would, the timing of her death. However, Paul was never, we should say was never charged with Terry Sweet's death, was never arrested. Absolutely not. No. I mean, Paul was really a charmer, but when it came to choosing girlfriends, and I mean, no disrespect to any of the girlfriends he may have had over the years. He would choose people who would be very pleased to be with such a handsome, virile guy. He would pull him in and

they would do anything for him. You said to Kelly, you said, you were in love. And she said, lust, like dead pin. Sure, yeah. Like, she was not, she was not happy. She said in our interview that she really liked him at first. Like, he was really nice. He was. Yeah. That he was super charming. He was fun. He gave the appearance that he was going to be taking care of her. You know, Kelly is very upfront about that in the main interview that we did with her. Why was Kelly's face obscured in the police video?

Because at the time, she ended up not being charged. So they didn't want to. When they released that, they didn't want to have that. Right. Yeah. And then also the detective, I mean, poor Kelly is there for a child handoff at Kroger and tasers are being pointed at her. I mean, I can't even imagine. Then she's in the interview room and the detectives talking about the woman in the fire. She's rather large.

And then Kelly's like, you hear Kelly say, oh my God, and I'm not sure. I can't tell if she's talking about her saying she's rather large or the whole situation. I was like, what? That interview occurred probably seven to ten days after the arrest. And the female detective they are starting to realize, and I don't know, I'm not sure this is the same person either. Interesting. Yeah. Yeah. But at first, there was very, there was a lot of, you know, feeling that that was Kelly, you know.

Well, yeah. I mean, there's a mask and the hair and also, you know, nighttime security camera from a house. It's never going to be that crisp and clear. You could have gotten away with something like that potentially. If you had just, you know, not maybe not a strong. investigator on it. And by the way, you know, he wasn't convicted of any serious crime. He got misdemeanors and so no jail time.

That made me really actually angry that he got this slap on the wrist. But what happened is, first of all, the main witness that would have been is deceased. They're missing that element. And then we had the pandemic. They were like two or three changes of judges. and they just wanted to wrap this case up and get him on something. And they did. They got him on misdemeanor.

And the civil case, he ended up supposedly having to pay $400,000. But I don't think he ever paid it. All right. Can we talk about Steve? So Steve, as we mentioned, Steve is, I guess, the old friend who admitted, finally, that he was there that night. he says he didn't see the murder happen, but he went along with Paul to cover it up.

And it took him a really long time to do the right thing. Yes, it did. And he would say that even years and years later, when Paul was living in a different part of the state altogether, hundreds of miles away, he couldn't go to the police, in his opinion, or his view at the time, without Paul finding out immediately,

and somebody in Paul's circle of friends and acquaintances in that little town would, you know, make life very difficult indeed for Steve. He lived in fear that whole time, he claimed. You know, given a sort of personality that he presented to us and the role that he played in that relationship, I can kind of see it. We have an extra clip from your interview with Steve. What do you think about him now? I don't think he has any more minions that will pull any weight for him.

I don't think that he has anyone left in his corner. I think he's powerless at this point. I don't think he has the reach that he used to have. I'm sure he still has connections, but I don't think that they would, I don't think that they're a danger to me is connections. You don't get that little itch in your back anymore, somebody might do something to you someday?

No. No, I'm not afraid of him anymore. Interesting, isn't it? Once you decide not to be afraid of somebody, does it make you look back and say, Jesus, why didn't I have this attitude 20 years earlier, 24 years earlier? You just look at the brute in the face and say,

F you, I'm going to go tell the cops. Right. I was young and just I was stupid. I was a young, stupid kid. The whole idea of him coming forward and him giving this, you know, according to the jury, very believable testimony,

that solved the case, that found justice from Regina's family. But Regina's family are still not very happy with Steve Gates. They feel that he waited way too long. They feel that their mother could have had justice. while in her lifetime. There's still some hard feelings there. Yeah.

And, I mean, the one thing I'll give, Steve, is we are dealing with a killer. Paul is a convicted killer. And a skilled manipulator who can make a person feel afraid. And also, you know, this arson business, you know, then his girlfriend shows up dead. We don't know how. But all these things, I think I'd be afraid of Paul. too. I get it. I get it. And I'm just, frankly, I'm still surprised that Steve came forward to us. When he was in court testifying at the, you know, the day no one of the trial, he didn't want any audio recorded.

He didn't want any video. And under Ohio law, if the witness requests that, the judge can grant that request. And he did. So the fact that he ended up talking to Keith was I was kind of surprised. And the reason, Andrew, I think he has essentially, you know, decided to come forward. I made a special trip out to Ohio to talk to him in person with his attorney, Bernie Davis. And I think he wanted the community to know that he suffered with this, but ate away at him for 24 years. And that he, sorry that he waited so long. And, you know, his family in that region has gotten a lot of, you know, pushback from that community. He still lives on the same farm that he did back in 2001.

Yeah. Can you imagine going on with the rest of your life, having now gone public finally with that story? And the feelings a great many people must have about it is you've still got to go to the grocery store every day. You're still going to go and see other people around this small town every day. and you know that they're probably whispering behind your back. And it's a tough thing to deal with. For sure. We often hear from people from our stories right after they air through a text or a call.

Did you hear, have you heard anything from Steve about the reaction to him doing this interview? Not yet. No, I've not. No. I think that probably it's a good thing that he has done. And I think it might be recognized. I hope it is. Because, you know, even now, you're not afraid of anybody, but you're afraid of how the public might feel about you, I'm sure.

Yeah. No, I personally, the way it came out, I think it was a good thing that I think he needed to get some of that out. And I'm sure a lot of people in that community were watching your dateline. And I think the fact that he, at Keith's, you know, pushing him, apologize to the family. Keith had to drag it out of him a bit, but he said, I'm sorry. I didn't come forward earlier.

And you could tell he meant it. Yeah. Apologies go a long way, I think. They're big, if they're sincere. You know, and I have to say, given the ride that we went on in this story and all the things that, you know, Paul was accused of doing,

it was a very satisfying arrest and verdict to see that, you know, to see that car on the video, you know, get pulled over. And the jury, yeah. Three hours. That's, I always say, three hours is like the, I swear, it is the magic number for juries with quick verdicts for guilty. It always seems to be three hours.

It has to be a lunch in there too, right? Two hours plus lunch. Yeah, exactly. They were like, yeah, you're done. You're done, Paul. And up next, we have questions from our loyal viewers and listeners. on social media that we are going to answer. Okay.

Okay, now Keith and Tim are going to answer some of your questions, and they also have comments from social media. So these are coming from people who caught your excellent program Friday night or over the weekend. Great. Yep. Linda Bellaglow Abrams says, how did he kill her, meaning Paul, before he drove her into the water? I think I missed that. Do you know exactly how Regina died?

Well, I guess we don't really know exactly how she died because nobody saw it except the killer. The friend who eventually told the story of what he saw that evening didn't see that part of the activity. What he saw was when he walked back to the car, he saw her crumpled in the passenger seat and Paul told him she's dead, although at that point she actually wasn't dead, but clearly he had done something to her, and it wasn't clear exactly what. Didn't they say that she had marks on her body? I mean, I don't know if that's related to her death or not.

Marks on her body, which could have meant any number of possibilities, I think. Strangulation was a possibility, I think, wasn't it, Tim? Blunt force. It seems a more likely thing is that some type of blow. to the head was the possible thing that made her unconscious. But the cause of death was actually drowning. They know that from water being ingested. Yeah.

Yeah. So they believe, though, that some things happened before the drowning. Yes, he knocked her out and then he put it in the passenger seat of the car, and then he drove the car into the pond. That's how it worked. So the observer, you know, the witness saw the car going over a hill into the pond. but didn't see what happened to her beforehand. Okay, so this one is at Jill Hughes from Facebook,

and she's talking about Steve, the man who made the deal and testified. She says, what a jackass. He should do jail time as well, because if you don't tell about a crime, you are complicit. Well, I mean, it's an argument that could have been made, all right, but in the end, they really needed to solve that crime, and Steve was a way they could solve it. So he was able to, you know, make that arrest. arrangement with them that he didn't go to jail.

And he was a lucky man in that sense. And I do think, Andrea and Keith, one of the things that everybody involved with the prosecution of this case feels is that if Steve Gates did not come forward, this family would not have had justice. No. We would have been on year 25 or 26. Yeah. If he had not come forward, this case wouldn't have been officially solved. They didn't really have anything. more than him. Yes, exactly. And the other cases, I mean, remember, he was, he got misdemeanor

charges. He never did any jail time. So this would have been a guy watering around Scott Free for any number of bad acts. We see this a lot. It's a double-edged sword, right? I mean, you need, them, but at the same time, you know, maybe they could have done things differently, you know, from the beginning. It's hard. Do you think Steve would have come forward without the immunity deal. Andrew and Keith, I think any defense attorney would not have let their client speak to police without some type of deal for immunity before they talk, because his client, Steve, was at some risk for some type of charge, including, you know, obstruction of justice, perhaps. So I don't think there was any way he was going to be talking without a deal. And that's very normal.

Robin Stevens West says once you know it's a mask, you can tell. Hindsight is 2020. You look at this security, this surveillance video, and it kind of looks bizarre. But then, you know, when you actually have the luxury of knowing who maybe this was, does it change it for you when you watch that video? It never looked real to me. And I was a little surprised, frankly, that investigators could have looked at it in the first place and I thought, yeah, that's Kelly. That's the ex-girlfriend, not the current girlfriend.

It didn't make sense to me, but apparently it worked for a while. Thank you both for joining us and giving us all your insights. Thank you. Thank you, Andrea. It's been a delight. It's been a pleasure. It's been a pleasure. Well, that is it for talking Dateline this week, and thank you all for listening. Remember, if you have any questions about our stories, you can DM us your audio or video on our socials at Dateline NBC, or leave us a voicemail at 212, 413-5252 for a chance to be featured right here. And you can watch the video version of Talking Dateline on Peacock or YouTube or subscribe to the NBC News app. And before we go, be sure to check

out Keith's new original podcast series, Five Miles From Home, the story of the murder of a high school track star in a small desert town. All six episodes are available now, or you can subscribe to Dateline Premium to binge the entire series ad-free. We'll see you Friday for an all-new Dateline on NBC.