Dateline NBC - Talking Dateline: Sound and Fury

Episode Date: May 15, 2024

Josh Mankiewicz interviews Stephanie Gosk about her recent episode, “Sound and Fury.”  Months after the 2014 murder of the beloved DJ Nando from famed Club Onyx in Atlanta, a second killing strikes the Club Onyx family. DJ Andre Pugh’s wife, Tiffany, is found murdered in their suburban home.  Investigators wonder if the two murders are connected, or if Tiffany’s killer is someone much closer to home. Stephanie shares what she learned about the Atlanta hip-hop scene and about producing Dateline episodes, and Josh ponders the killer’s behavior after the murder. Later, Stephanie plays a podcast-exclusive clip and answers viewer questions from social media. Listen to the full episode of "Sound and Fury" here: https://link.chtbl.com/2xv8XW3D

hi everybody i'm josh mankiewicz and we are talking dateline today with stephanie gosk hi stephanie hi josh so uh this episode is called sound and fury now if you haven't seen it on television or if you have not listened to it yet it is the episode right below this one in the list of podcasts you chose from so go go there, listen to it, or watch it on TV or stream it on Peacock, and then come back here. And today, Stephanie has some extra audio to share, a clip that did not make the broadcast. And then later, we are going to answer some questions about the show that you had on social media. So, Stephanie Gosk, let's talk Dateline. All right. Stephanie, I thought this was a fascinating story. And my first thought was that I was completely unaware

that strip clubs had become the place where rap and hip hop music marinated and became popular before people heard it on the radio. I didn't realize it either, Josh. And it was totally fascinating. And in some respects, Atlanta for hip hop had a period of time where it was basically like Nashville for country music. I mean, people were hearing these songs in these strip clubs before they were hearing them on the radio. And that gave the DJs who were part of this world, enormous amounts of power, because if they played it and people started hearing it over and over again, then they rocketed to stardom.

How'd you get Jeezy? Because like, I would think that if you come to Jeezy and say, Hey, look, we want to talk to you about this murder that you had nothing to do with. He might say no, but you talked him into doing it. And he was great. I didn't understand it until I actually talked to him. Once you talk to him, you realize that DJ Nando's murder has

rocked Jeezy and he lives with it every single day. he told me. It is heartbreaking. The most heartbreaking thing that has happened to him, he him. And he credits him with his success that he wanted to talk about it. He also wanted to potentially light a fire under the investigation because he wants justice for Nando and for Nando's friends and family. One of the great things about this story was the end,

which was this twist that I did not see coming, which was that Nando's murder, maybe they are related. Well, certainly Sergeant Glover has a lot of questions and it's a different police department. So he hasn't gotten a lot of the answers that he's looking for. For instance, there were a number of cigarette butts at the scene of DJ Nando's murder. He wants to know, was the DNA run on those cigarette butts? Was there a cell phone dump? And you would have to imagine if they got the answers to those questions, they could figure out pretty quickly if it was Adrian and Andre involved in that one. Now, I spoke to some people over the course of this story who are absolutely convinced

it was Andre, including that house mom, Sabrina Swinger, who said the moment she heard that Tiffany Jackson Pugh was murdered, she sat up in bed and said, oh, my God, he killed DJ Nando. Now, there certainly haven't been any charges in that case, but she was convinced. And one of the reasons she was is because Andre was so fixated on DJ Nando, his time slot, super important Friday night, making lots of money. He was very jealous. And they used to butt heads, according to a number of people that knew them. And the other thing, Josh, do you know that the very day he was murdered, that the news spread, according to people we spoke to,

he asked for DJ Nando's time slot on Friday nights, the very day that he was murdered, that the news spread. According to people we spoke to, he asked for DJ Nando's time slot on Friday nights, the very day that he was murdered. Wow. Okay. Well, he didn't waste any time. So I thought one of the great things about this episode was that you got a real sense of who Tiffany was and how much she was loved in her circle of friends. It's so true. You know, you meet those people in life who, because they're so wonderful, their circle is so big and people who speak about them speak in this kind of effusive way about how wonderful the person is. And I got that sense, certainly from her friends, but in also talking to her father who talked about her as a young person growing up, she had this fierce independent streak. She was very good at school. When she graduated from college, she wanted to go

to a historically Black college. So she went to Clark Atlanta University in Atlanta, and she was growing up in upstate New York. And that's a pretty big distance away from home. She was very excited to be there, fell in love with the city, fell in love with the music scene. She went to these clubs because she loved to hang out there. The music was great. She loved it. That's where she met Andre. Exactly.

And people who knew her and knew about her love for music weren't surprised that she fell for a DJ. I mean, I know the way we tell the story, we don't say what her friends thought instantly, but I'm guessing her friends instantly thought, oh my God, Andre has to have something to do with this. Yeah, for sure. And she had also received a fairly threatening text from him. And she was talking to her friends about the communication that she was having with them.

And she was clearly nervous in the buildup to the conversation that she had with him him. And she was clearly nervous in the buildup to the conversation that she had with him, calling it quits. What was interesting is that one of her friends had said at the time that during that final conversation, that Tiffany actually felt better afterwards because he seemed like he wanted to plan sharing custody of the children and that he realized that it was really over. But all along, there was this simmering fury that was going to play out in an incredibly tragic way. Well, you know, the text, I won't let you leave me. Yeah.

Those words fit into a lot of Dateline stories, unfortunately. Yeah, I bet. I mean, chilling, absolutely chilling. I mean, my first thought when you meet him, you know, and you see him like standing outside the house with his hands over his head, my first thought is, oh man, I hope it doesn't come out that it's him. Like, I hope that he gets exonerated because he seems miserable and, you know, exactly like you would be, except very good work by the cops. He didn't get the kids out of the house. And that turned out to be a hugely telling thing. Because again, like if you come back to your home and your spouse is dead, you're going to grab the kids and make sure that they are

safe because you don't know what's going on in there. And he knew he didn't need to do that because he knew the threat was gone by then. Yeah, that's a remarkable detail and something that you have to imagine struck that jury very profoundly to see him back outside on the driveway, making some phone calls, and the two small children are still inside the house. Are they safe? Certainly they're traumatized. And really, they were not his priority in that moment. You know, this is something that comes up on Talking Dateline, sadly, a lot. How do you kill somebody that you once loved? I mean, I get it. Maybe the relationship is soured, but this is somebody that you once loved enough to marry, and they are the parent of your children. So even if you don't love them anymore, you must still love your kids.

How do you deprive your kids of one of their parents? Not only that, Josh, but to send a gunman into your own home where your two small children sleep, where your youngest, your two-year-old toddler routinely sleeps with your wife in her bed when you are DJing at the club to send a gunman in then and risk really right out of the gate your children's safety. What if something goes wrong? One of those kids could have very easily been shot. I mean, the whole thing is really difficult to wrap your head around. It's hard to imagine.

Okay, we're going to take a little break. When we come back, we have an extra clip from Stephanie's interview with Sergeant Glover. So let's talk about the murder what kind of uh what kind of neighborhood is that and uh and why does everybody have a security camera there is that just normal that is a great question i asked sergeant glover that as well i mean you walk down the street and it looks like the suburbs of america it the houses are all the same size they They all kind of look alike. It is your classic suburban neighborhood. You are struck, however, by the security cameras. To me, cameras inside the house is like another whole level of security.

Half a dozen of them in that house. And so what are they watching and who's monitoring them? And are they running all the time? I don't quite understand it. It's a lot of cameras. I'm working on a story right now in which the guy who's accused of committing a murder comes back home after we know the murder was committed. And because he has cameras inside the house, there's no audio, But you see his wife pointing at his arm like, what's that?

What happened to you? And he looks down and he's like, nothing. It's the cat or something like that. She notices the scratches, which later ended up being a significant part of the investigation. Do you remember the Aaron Hernandez murder case? Yeah. He's the former Patriots tight end who was quite famous then eventually uh was sent to prison for murder um he was caught with with the gun walking around

the house in his own security cameras his own cameras yeah i mean yeah so a couple of things First of all, very smart work by the police to see the particles of dust that were dislodged by a gunshot. I'm not sure that I would have noticed that. And second, when somebody slips into a house undetected, a house that has seven cameras, that pretty much says that wasn't an accident. That person knew where to go. Yeah, exactly. And on top of that, there were no traces of DNA that were left. There were obviously steps that were taken to make sure that they wouldn't be caught. Here's a good question, which is, if you were aware that lots of other people have internal and external security cameras in your neighborhood, how is it that you as the murderer do not take that into account

when you are planning the murder? That little cul-de-sac rendezvous with two cars, there's a very good chance that's going to get recorded. They're actually lucky that the pictures of that weren't a lot better and you could actually see who was in the cars. I mean, that's just blind luck. Yeah. Rendezvous in the cul-de-sac a few hundred yards away from the house. Not a good idea. How about Adrian driving his girlfriend's car with the blown light through the neighborhood, caught on all the security cameras? How about that move? And both of them had their cell phones with them. Both Adrian and Andre had their personal cell phones. Now, this was 10 years ago, and I understand that technology

changes. But 10 years ago, we all knew you didn't have to be some crack detective to know that police can get cell phone records. Police can get cell phone tower dumps. They know where you are and where your phone is. Pretty wild. You know, this reminds me of something I said very recently when he died. I mean, today, OJ would be convicted very easily because there'd be cell phone data between OJ's house and Nicole's house. And there'd be all these doorbell cams and traffic cams that would show him making that journey, which prosecutors were unable to establish back

in 94 and 95. It would be a different trial. What's interesting to me too, Josh, is that circumstantial evidence, we have this idea that that's a pejorative phrase, but what we're talking about in this case was all circumstantial evidence. But there's circumstantial evidence and then there's circumstantial evidence, right? I mean, this was the kind of circumstantial evidence that is really hard to refute. And that's the cell phone data and the text and all the rest of it. Circumstantial evidence has convicted a lot of people. It's hard not to miss that. You know, we get to know Andre as a character through the interviews that he did, the police interviews that he did. He came in and talked a bunch of times without an attorney, right? Yeah. Yeah. A lot of times. Now, I have a friend

who's a criminal attorney in Atlanta who is going to see this episode and who's going to say, oh, my God, why did you not call me? I would have told you not to show up for any of those interviews. And phone calls. He called Sergeant Glover repeatedly. I think we have some sound from my interview with Sergeant Glover about this. Yeah, let's listen to that. How many times did he talk to you altogether before you arrested him? Oh boy, on the phone and in person 10, 20 times. He even called me one time and said he was setting

up a GoFundMe to help find Tiffany's killer. And he was calling you sometimes. Yes. Offering up information. Yes. He never got a lawyer. No. Were you left with the impression that he thought, they're never going to catch me? I always felt that Andre, and I felt this was why he spoke to me so often, is that he always felt like he was the smartest person in the room. The entire investigation, I used that to my advantage. So I just sit back in my interviews and let him talk.

And the more you tell me, if you're telling me stuff that's not true, then later on that's going to be proven. So I don't need to do a lot of talking. Any detective will tell you that. We ask a question here and there. But our job is to be quiet and let the person talk to either help themselves out of the situation or to put themselves right there in the middle of it, which Andre did. Take note, there would be murderers out there. I was just thinking that. Yeah, this is a pretty good commercial for getting an attorney

and clamming up. Yeah. Yeah yeah yeah i mean but we see this all the time as people who think they're smarter than the cops who think that also by engaging with the cops they're going to find out what the cops have and how much trouble they're in and then they're going to try to steer the investigation to someplace else and like you know i mean i mean what sergeant glover said is true in nearly every department I've ever covered, which is you want to come in and talk, we're going to let you talk. And at the end of it, if you're the guy, we will be closer to nailing you than we were before you came in. Like they know whether you're really telling the truth or not in a lot of cases.

And they know whether you've lied about certain parts of the story. How about the fact that they sat down with Andre and Sergeant Glover says to him, so how's the marriage? And he says, oh, you know, it's good. We have our ups and downs just like everybody else. And with knowing that absolutely everyone else in Tiffany's life is going to say they were about to get a divorce. She told him she was leaving him. Yeah. That is, again, I mean, that's just like, like, you're not going to get anywhere with that because now you've made yourself a liar. One of the things I thought that was great about this, you could really sort of see how Sergeant Glover connected to the family and to this case because he's a father himself.

He is a kid. I mean, that really made a difference. And I think, you know, look, I think I think murder police work pretty hard on all their cases. But in this case, I think he sort of felt some connection to this. Yeah, I met Sergeant Glover's kids and obviously they're 10 years older, but they were they were little at the time. And again, you don't need to have a toddler in your life to see those pictures of Andre Jr. in his pajamas going to the front door and clearly looking for help after his mom has been murdered. It is it's just crushing. It's an image that I'm not going to forget for a long time. No, that's a that's a horrifying image.

It really is. This kid woken up by his mom's murder. And then she's she's shot in bed. I mean, that too, the fact that she sat up and then there was a second gunshot, it's just hard to really wrap your head around. Certainly Tiffany's friends thought of Andre and the marital issues that they all knew the two of them had been having. Did anybody suspect Adrian? That's the thing that really shocked everybody. And this was a young man who obviously was very close to Andre.

Adrian was at all the family functions. Sometimes he would show up with a girlfriend. Sometimes he'd show up by himself. He was always over at the house. The way Tiffany's friends talk about it, Tiffany kind of viewed him as part of the family. He was the pallbearer at the funeral after having shot her in her bed. It really, people were absolutely shocked.

I mean, like the idea that he's going to do this for his childhood friend. He's the godfather of the kids. He was at the wedding. He was at the wedding. He's at her funeral. I mean, like, at what point in that situation do you say, yeah, no, bud, I'm not doing that? We got a little bit of insight from Sabrina Swinger. And what she said to me is that Adrian really kind of looked up to Andre, that he never would have been at Club Onyx if it weren't for Andre.

It did seem the way that she presented it, that he had an enormous amount of power over Adrian just psychologically. I mean, he allowed his friend to talk him right into prison. Oh, and also tried to throw him under the bus alone in that moment with Sgt. Glover in the hallway. How is that for a scene where he pulls him aside? He goes, actually, I know who really did it. It was Adrian did it by himself. He came up to me in the booth and confessed right before you arrest me. Pretty astonishing. Okay, after the break, we're going to take a break and then we will come back and answer your questions from social media. Okay, let's get to some viewer and listener mail. WorkRightCom says, Andre's mother has the children and listener mail. WorkRightCom says,

Andre's mother has the children and Tiffany's family hasn't seen them in years. I know he didn't kill her, but it feels wrong for his mother to have them and cut them off from their mother's family, which is something that I heard a couple of times on social. So what's the story there? Well, I mean, you can understand it. Obviously, up until the point that he's arrested, being the sole parent, he's most likely going to have custody. Then he gets arrested and then they've got to have some sort of court process on custody.

And it was determined at the time that his mother was the best person for that custody. I know in speaking to Tiffany's dad that his you know, his wife had passed away and the children were really quite young and he had a job and was traveling all over the place, might not have made the most sense. But I know that Tiffany's father has been very frustrated by the fact that he's not been able to see the kids. This is a question that I got specifically, which is why is it so often the case that the kids go to the family of the parent who was in legal trouble rather than the family of the parent who was the victim? Now, I have not noticed over the years that it's more one way than the other. I mean,

there's the Dan Markell case in Florida, Dennis's famous case. But in that case, what was going to happen with the kids was sort of partly the impetus for the murder itself, which was not the case here. This was about other things. I would say, based on my experience, and it does not seem to follow any pattern. So, nctrigirl85 wants to know, a question I had also, how did Andre afford this big-time lawyer if his credit score was so bad that he would have lost his house after a divorce so i mean presumably great question presumably the guy who was at another time mr trump's lawyer he not working pro bono here well you know one of our producers spoke to the da who doesn't know for sure himself but remembers in

court that andre's mother may have paid for sedo um but you're right that's a ton of money and prosecutors argued in court that one of the motivations for the murder was that andre wasn't going to be able to pay for the house etc etc so it it's a great question yeah and a head scratcher real r Riz 16 and Fangirl 1979, they're sort of asking the same question, which is, is there some involvement between Andre and Adrian other than best friends?

Are they secretly involved in some way? Well, we didn't have an opportunity to speak to either of them. There was no reason to suggest they were in a relationship. We did talk to people who watched their dynamic. There was a bit of a Howard differential in a relationship. We did talk to people who watched their dynamic. There was a bit of a Howard differential

in their friendship. And, you know, I think that that was maybe the vibe they were picking up on as people talked about the two of them. That was the sense that I got, was that they did have an intimate relationship, but it was as, you know, friends. And one of them sort of had always

kind of been the dominant partner in that relationship you know uh i think there's somebody at the door uh they're just gonna leave it i'm sure okay yeah your your tie food has arrived i think yeah it's my salad which was supposed to arrive 45 minutes ago but you know that's how it works it's tough journalism's difficult that's what i know it's not easy um uh m kaufman 85 says i really didn't want it to be andre i felt exactly the same way when you showed me andre at the beginning oh come on let's not have it be him please no but the way this episode is going is me on the edge and not know what twist is coming next and these teases are done by a master that would would be you and your team. Yes. Listen, the group at Dateline, they are amazing at what they

do. And I just was in awe the entire time. I'm new to this process. As you know, it was incredible to watch them work, Josh. I just found that really remarkable. I mean, these are people doing it for a long time and they just get how to tell a story. Yeah, they're great. Black Girl with Tools wants to know why we don't do more Atlanta stories on Dateline. First of all, I love Atlanta. Second of all, Black Girl with Tools, one of the great Twitter handles. I was going to go with something like that but josh mankiewicz was available and so i took that but i should have gone with something a little

little more what do we think um what do we think the tools are i don't know i don't know we don't know whether those are you know intellectual tools to survive in this world or whether she's like on a drill i don't know like there's no at a bare minimum she leaves you guessing right i think which is great and she wants to know why we're not doing more Atlanta stories. I love Atlanta. I used to live there about, uh, about 40 years ago. I did live there. And, uh, in all your experiences, Atlanta, uh, a crime town. I don't know. I don't, I don't get called to Atlanta all that much for NBC news, but a fair amount. Yeah. I mean, I don't know, maybe they open up this or reopen this DJ Nando case and something comes of it. And then we're back there talking about DJ

Nando again for a follow up. All right. That is Talking Dateline for this week. Stephanie, thank you for joining us. You're welcome. Great to be here. Thanks, everyone, for listening. Now, if you want to check out more true crime from Dateline, we have a brand new podcast for you, and we're calling it Dateline True Crime Weekly. Every Thursday, Andrea, Andrea Canning, and her guests are going to be digging into the biggest true crime stories of the week, bringing you the latest on trials and investigations around the country. So check that out. Thanks again. and as always, see you Fridays on Dateline on NBC.