Dateline NBC - Talking Dateline: The Farmer’s Wife

Episode Date: December 17, 2025

Josh Mankiewicz sits down with Andrea Canning to talk about her episode, “The Farmer’s Wife.” In 2021, 42-year-old husband and father Ryan Cooper was shot to death as he slept in a recliner in the living room of the family’s rural Iowa farmhouse. What at first looked like a terrifying home invasion, turned out to be something much darker, involving a hidden relationship, a web of lies, and a motive rooted in desire and greed. Josh and Andrea break down the case, including the chaotic crime scene and the digital trail of messages that ultimately helped crack it. Andrea also shares a podcast-exclusive clip of Ryan’s widow in court. Then she and Josh discuss binge-worthy thrillers on their must-stream lists. Plus, 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 “The Farmer’s Wife” on Apple:https://apple.co/44ud8VlListen on Spotify:https://open.spotify.com/episode/7MYoHkig0fEZ5ELns9PnUS Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hey, everybody. It's Josh Wankowitz, and we are talking Dateline. I'm here with Andrea. Canning. Hi. Hey, Josh. And happy birthday. It was your birthday this week. Thank you. So, this episode is called The Farmer's Wife. And here's a little bit of background. In 2021, Ryan Cooper, age 42, a farmer, found shot to death as he slept in a chair in his Iowa home. Now, as investigators kind of dug in, they came up with a twisted love triangle, one of the most familiar shapes that you will find on dayline. And also a plan fueled by passion and by money, one that ultimately led to murder. Now, if you've not listened to this episode yet, it's the one right below this one,

or you can also go to Peacock and stream it and watch it on television. And later, I will be joined by Keith Greenberg, who was the producer of this episode, to answer some of your questions from social media. So let's talk Dateline. Let's do it. So this really was a kind of classic Dateline, I thought. I mean, this is the small town where everyone knows everybody else and people don't lock their doors.

Absolutely. This is classic farm country. I grew up in a farming area. People didn't lock their doors. And it was neighbors, help neighbors, and everyone knew each other. You know, it's kind of a cliche, but it's a cliche for a reason. And clearly the fact that everybody knew everybody else kind of played into this story. Oh, yeah.

There was technology involved, but also people talking really helped sort of fill in the narrative of what police believed happened that night. So this begins with what seems to be a chaotic scene. Very. But it turns out that although it is chaotic, it's also maybe, if you believe, prosecutors, planned. I mean, she's on top of the body, and it looks like she's horrified to find him dead, and she's, you know, she's in colossal grief. And then if you listen to prosecutors, they're like, no, no, no. This is about making sure his blood is on her to thwart any kind of forensic examination.

Now, that's something I haven't seen before. Exactly. And, I mean, she was screaming. She was hysterical. The one question I had for them, I said, did you do a gunshot? residue test on her hands since you had her immediately after the shooting and they said no which surprised me but because she's touching it that's the thing true Josh a defense attorney could could work with that but at the same time if she had GSR all over her hands that wouldn't look great

either no but I mean you you would be able to say like yeah I mean she climbed on top of it yeah you could you could work with that for sure as a defense attorney um the thing that was so sad to me was that the children were home and that one of the boys had slipped in the blood in the living room when he went in to see what the chaos was all about. And, I mean, that's just heartbreaking when you bring in small children into that environment. Those kids are never going to forget that. I mean, that is not a memory that goes away. You know what's so sad, too, is that the boy, Cade, who was the one in the living room,

he apparently was tied to the hip with his dad. He slept on the couch every night next to his dad, on the recline. You know, people have different sleeping habits. I guess Ryan would fall asleep in the recliner and then Cade wanted to be near his dad, so he would fall asleep on the couch. And that was actually a clue in this case where they said that she'd said to him, go sleep in your own room. You have to start sleeping in your own room and she redid his room and everything. So you could say, oh, loving mother, or if you're the prosecution, you're saying it was all part of the plan. It certainly does fit with being part of the plan. Yeah. And, you know, she gives this elaborate story.

And she's pretty convincing at the beginning. Yeah, an intruder. They do believe it's some intruder. But, I mean, on the other hand, you have to believe. I mean, nobody breaks into a house to kill a guy who's sleeping in a recliner and then doesn't steal anything unless the point of the whole thing was to kill the guy in the recliner. Like, this is not burglary, robbery. This is no other, there's no ulterior motive here. This is about killing him.

Josh, you know what I never understand? it seems to happen again and again and again where people stage these, you know, they try to stage that it was a burglary, right? Like they throw things around, they empty drawers. But why does it feel like every single time this happens? They somehow fail.

There's the monies left or the jewelry, the purse is there, but there's $700 on the counter. Like, it never feels like it works. I think there's a couple of reasons for that. First of all, one reason it doesn't feel like a real burglary. burglary is that it isn't a real burglary, like they're not wasting time stealing stuff, right? And we've seen this at a bunch of different cases.

Second is the number of murders that begin as residential burglaries and end up as murders is extremely small. I mean, burglars usually don't carry guns. If they do, it's because there's like a dog on the property or something like that, but they're usually not armed. And they don't want you to be home. Generally, the most danger that you're in during, if you're, if you're, you're in, if you're you surprise a burglar is that you get between them and the door. Because they might knock you down running out, but they don't kill people. So as they sort of start looking around, pretty quickly, you know, the cops come across

Houston, you know, who has a reputation. You know, if you move this to a big city, I don't think his reputation is as widely known, but there it was. There it was, yeah. It was like the more you dug into it, the more it, the more it. it kind of turned into this a bit of a salacious story about what was going on with this, you know, slightly older woman. And, you know, she's in her, you know, early 40s.

And then you've got Houston Danker, who's early 20s, who's, you know, all the people in town say that he's sleeping around with older women, hence the cougar term. And we had some conversations about, you know, do we use the term cougar or not? And it's such a, you know, ubiquitous word now, I guess. This is talking dateline, so I think we can actually get into that a little bit. What were the arguments for and against using that? Was the idea people won't know what it is? Because I think people do know what that is.

No, everyone knows what a cougar is for sure. That was not the issue. We have legal and standards. Yes. You know, people watching over our shows, which is amazing because they make sure that we're getting everything right. And standards is to make sure that we're being fair to people. So one of our standards people, she brought it. She just brought it up that some people could see the word cougar as, you know, derogatory.

But we agreed that we didn't think it was that bad. But, Josh, I will tell you, though, that the more of the debate came from whether we should keep in Stacey's mom, the song title. I, okay, I wondered about that, too. And I also thought maybe you were either going to play it, which I was kind of waiting for. I thought maybe there was going to be more quoting from the lyrics. Yeah. Stacey's mom has got it going. on. Just all I've won. I've waited for so long. I have the worst singing voice in the history

of singing voices. Just so cover your ears. We should put a warning on that one. That's why I kept silent because I want you to continue to hold that title. No, but Josh, it was funny because then people started pulling their kids and everything. And I was like, I said to my 10 year old, I'm like, you know the song Stacey's mom? I'm sure, because yeah, I know that song. I'm like, okay, well, we're good on the youngsters, I guess. But then like my friend Lynn Keller, you know, producer, she's not on this story, but I asked her, and she was like, I actually don't know that song. So we're like, you know what? Okay, if you don't know what it is, Google it. Yeah, I would argue, and I have argued during many script conferences, that something doesn't have to

be, for us to make a reference like that, like when you did with Stacey's mom, it doesn't have to be recognizable to everybody, just a lot of people. And it's an iconic song, and remember Rachel Hunter, the model, was she played Stacy's mom in the video, you know, the boys mowing her lawn and, you know, lusting after his best friend's mom. And in this case, Houston Danker, word was, and the police told us this as well, that he was having an affair with his best friend's mom, and he broke up, apparently the marriage broke up. No, no, no, it was totally appropriate. It's worth including. Yeah. Did the housewives, um, do you think they might, I ended being compared to the Real Housewives.

I know you're a big Real Housewives. Oh, no, no, that's their thing. That was they do. They said that. They call themselves the Real Housewives of Tama County. You as an expert on the Real Housewives of television. How closely do they match up? Because I think you count as an expert here.

I mean, yeah, I'm definitely an expert. Oh, my gosh. The amount of hours I've spent watching The Real Housewives. A tawdry affair, lots of drinking, partying. Um, actually, you know, it's like really the farm version of like Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. It's got a lot of the same elements. And you know what? The women were beautiful.

They were fun, smart. And I just loved everybody I met. So, uh, when we come back, we will have more of Carina's testimony. One more, you know, sort of. tip for America's murderers who are trying to masquerade as burglars. Yeah, one, you're going to get caught. Two, if you want to call yourself somebody's gay best friend, but you've pretty clearly proven yourself to not be gay in terms of the relationships you've had, that could potentially

be a big mistake. That was so ridiculous that he was saying he was like her gay best friend. You're allegedly, according to people in town sleeping with all these older women, And then you're calling yourself a gay best friend? Parked outside the gym and watching women work out? Right. I mean, what just a weird thing to say. Well, I mean, and that's just the reddest of flags to investigators.

Because what are you saying? No, no, no. You don't have to worry at all about any kind of sexual relationship between the two of us. Right. If I'm in the investigator, I'm thinking like, really, you're denying that a little too vociferously. Right. And also, they apparently had sex at her home hair salon. So that doesn't really fit with the gay best friend theory there, Houston.

It feels like she probably thought, and he probably thought, that they'd gotten away with it. I mean, for three years, nothing happens. And it's interesting, we didn't, you know, we don't have time, obviously, in our shows to go into every detail. But the law enforcement officer, Trevor Killian, who was in the piece, he said that he was at a work function and the state attorney general was at this function and they have this conversation at this he says at this work function and he tells her about this cold case and then you know the next thing you know a new prosecutor is assigned to the case and that really changed everything and the prosecutor who we interviewed in the piece

he was so smart to say let's take another look at the phones you know what Karina's phone and I think it was Houston's phone as well and that's where they discovered all the what was left of the Snapchat because we all know

you can screen grab Snapchat it's never foolproof but a lot of the messages do disappear I mean I don't use it but isn't that the point of Snapchat it's the point but it all vanishes but it all so it does technically vanish, right? But then if you have the tools, like they went to University of Iowa, I guess, right? And they found what they called like a hacker type person. And they actually were able to get into the phone. And they found a bunch of Snapchat. Not all of the messages were there.

But enough to let them know sort of what was going on here. Yeah. I mean, those messages, like even the defense attorneys were like, wow, that changed everything. So now we have a little bit of extra sound that did not make the broadcast. This is more of Karina's testimony. And the defense attorneys, she's, going to talk about how Houston repeatedly threatened Ryan, although she did not think that he would ever act on it. Now, we know that that is in fact not true, but here is a little bit more of Karina's explanation. If we had the other Snapchat content, would it show, would it show these things about Houston going off about Ryan? Yes, several threats. Sorry. What would your reaction be when he's making these threats? How did you handle it? Laughed it off, used sarcasm, sometimes replied inappropriately, like when he would say,

he said, one time, don't use your husband's truck in the morning. There's going to be a bomb planted under it. And I replied, gee, thanks for the heads up. Yeah. Okay. So does that mean, though, do those messages mean that you, or did you want your husband did? No. I guess we do have these

Snapchats about shell casings. What's going on? Again, it's not the first time that that had been talked about. I didn't take him seriously. He'd said, he had made a comment before about walking into the shop. When Ryan was there, I was gone with the kids

at the swimming pool, and he had made a comment. He said, if you get home and find your husband dead, make sure you pick up those shells for me. and I had asked him what in the world, you know, like, LOL, what does that mean? And he said, well, according to CSI, that's how they always catch the killer. So I took it as a joke. I, you know, and you do hear that a lot as well on Dateline. People saying, oh, I thought it was a joke.

I never took them seriously. Well, we do live in a world where these diabolical crimes happen. And you might want to think about it a little harder if someone makes a quote unquote joke like that. But in this case, we know that they were, according to the prosecution, conspiring with each other and that's all a bunch of baloney anyway. But it just shows you how they both turned on each other, right? In the end, there was no loyalty, there was no love, there was nothing there. This was some type of lusty romance that ended up in murder that was just bad all around

for everybody involved. No honor among thieves or murderers. And it's, you know, it's such a good lesson even for kids, for adults, for anybody. Like, you think you're on these platforms that are just going to be gone because you're like, oh, they vanish. And it's like, no, they don't. Not even Snapchat. And also, the other thing that that's frustrating I know for law enforcement is that a lot of times these social media companies will not play ball. So, you know, they ask for the messages. They ask and they say no. And so then they resort to different means to try to get into the phones. Well, I mean, this would not be the first

time that we've heard of law enforcement going sort of outside normal channels to get into somebody's phone because you know you're trying to you're trying to hack somebody's phone or computer you might be able to do it your forensic experts at the at the whatever law enforcement agency you're at might be able to do it or you might be able to get the phone or internet company's cooperation but you also might not and your people might I mean your people also might try to get into an iPhone or some other device so many times that it gets locked yeah and sometimes your only way forward is to sort of go go the hacker route, which is, seems crazy, but it increasingly sort of does happen and it works. I thought that was interesting, you know, that they found this expert to do it.

The downside to that is that defense attorneys, as I'm sure they did in this case, they attacked the credibility of the person you had breaking into the phone because that person sometimes, you know, has been charged with some crime in the past, involving doing exactly the thing that they're at being asked for. So, I mean, I'm not saying in this case. Yeah, no, in this case, it was not. That can be an issue, which is like you're asking a criminal for help. It's the same thing as the jailhouse informant who is themselves in for some terrible crime. Have you seen The Beast in me?

No. Okay, you need to watch it. It is excellent. But there's a scene where, and I'm not, this is not a spoiler alert in any way, but the FBI agent takes a drive to a, like a criminal hacker. and they get into it, and then the hacker says, well, you're going to owe me something in the future for this. I highly recommend it.

I think you'll really like it. I'm still on all her fault, which I think is terrific. Oh, isn't it good? Yeah, we're about two-thirds of the waste room now. I saw on, you never know what to believe on the Internet, or on social media, but it said it broke all, like, streaming records or something for T-Coc. Maybe not sports, I don't know, but for a show anyway.

I mean, it is fantastic. You and I should do a different talking dateline about streaming shows that are in the crime world. Because between you and me, we've seen all of them. Let's do a bonus talking dateline. Andrea and Josh talk about shows you should watch and why. Okay. Yes. And this is actually a great idea.

Okay. I love it. Okay. So we always speak with victims' families on dateline. And one of the things that I thought was really interesting about this, was that you had her brother sort of staunchly defending her through the first like seven-eighths of your story, right? And then at the end, he flips and he's persuaded.

What was that like being there? Yeah, I mean, it's interesting because a lot of times family members will just, you know, it's ride or die, right? Like, they just stick by, like, we see this happen all the time with kids of killers' kids where they just defend dad to the end. They don't want to believe that. that person would be capable of that. But in this case, the evidence is overwhelming. It's so hard to do for some people. I mean, it's just so hard to do for maybe parents don't want to

admit that they raised a monster. Right. You know, kids don't want to admit that, you know, mom killed dad or the reverse. I mean, it is, I mean, I understand why people do it. But in this case, this was somebody, I mean, I really kind of admired the fact that he, you know, believed his sister and then looked at the evidence and then believed she was guilty. I think that's what I would do. You know, if I had a loved one, God forbid, in this situation, I think I would be very pragmatic about it. In this scenario, you think you do that story or I do that story?

And then I interview you. How do you think that works? You could see through the BS with me. So I'd have to just be fully honest with you and just spill everything. Yeah. I think you as participant in the story is better than you as correspond on a story when it's your family that's in. And vice versa.

Okay. Let's hope that never happens to us. Okay. My brother is absolutely heading for an interrogation room at some point. So just FYI. Does Ben listen to this? No. He doesn't listen to me in person or here.

Oh. Yeah. Well. Yeah, he might listen to this, but he's got his own podcast. Don't worry about. Hello, Ben. Happy holidays. Yeah, from all of the dateline.

Yeah, Ben, when you hear this, happy holidays. Andrew has to go. She used to cover a story. So see ya. Bye. Thanks for coming. When we come back, I will be joined by Keith Greenberg, who produced this episode. And together, we will answer some of your questions from social media.

Thanks, Josh. Have a great holiday. We are now joined by one of the broadcasts producers, Keith Greenberg. Hi. Nice to see you. Hey, Josh. So let's take a couple of social media questions that came in. Bobby G62 says now the poor children will have to be without their dad.

I don't care about her. I hope they went with his side of the family. This is something we talk about all the time, which is why do you think you, the prospective murderer, why do you think your kids are going to be okay if you remove their other parent from this earth? Well, I think that's a very warped worldview. You know, you think that somehow,

I mean, there are Snapchat messages in which Karina Cooper and Houston Danker fantasize about Houston Danker stepping in and literally raising her children, raising the children of the man who Houston Danker is a party to a murder. And they think that somehow the kids are just going to seamlessly adjust to that. And that's the difference between people who commit these. types of crimes and the rest of us. It's really just astonishing. Do we know who's raising the kids?

Yes. Aaron Cooper, who is the brother of Ryan Cooper, is raising the children. The family has now expanded from Aaron Cooper's three biological children to the three children who are the products of Karina and Ryan. Very Liza writes in to say. Karina's mom saying, where did I go wrong, was heartbreaking. And it certainly is. I would see the mother in court.

There was one day I came out of the courtroom and the mother was just sitting there all alone. And there was a moment where one of the local churches gave the Cooper family a gift basket. And there was some wooden crosses in there. And one of the Cooper relatives walked over to Karina's mother in hand. her one. So there are very positive feelings between the two families, even though there are very negative feelings from the Coopers toward Corina, obviously. Our friend Chuck Deasy 76 is a friend of the broadcast says, Karina is acting like she's in a horrible community theater audition, which is, I think, referring to her arrest. It could be her arrest. A lot of people felt

Karina was overacting in those early hours, and one of the detectives said he'd never seen an interview subject, who's had a loved one killed, acts so hysterical that they could barely deliver any information. So among law enforcement, there was immediately a sense that she was putting on this act because she didn't want to help. But they weren't ready to declare that she was guilty at that point. They wanted to see where else the evidence would bring them. Well, that kind of gets us to our next question, which is for Bobby G62, who says, six months, and they called this a cold case? She said, I've never heard of that happening.

I mean, look, law enforcement will tell you there aren't really any cold cases because they're always sort of working to some extent on all cases, including ones which haven't changed in years. But six months is not a shocking amount of time to investigate a crime and then make an arrest. I'm wondering whether they said it was a cold case to sort of allay any concerns by the perpetrators. I'm not sure about that. I mean, I can tell you, having spent time with the investigators, this was never regarded as a cold case. They did tell the family it was a cold case, which perhaps it was indelicate to frame it that way.

But I will say, you know, this is a small town, a small county, and people know each other. And the investigators I spoke to never gave up. Connie Utili Barnett said I watched it, but who actually pulled the trigger? Did I miss that part? Well, that's actually a really good question because the prosecution insists that Karina pulled the trigger. The defense, they insist to this day that Houston Danker pulled the trigger. It doesn't matter because according to the law, first-degree murder. in Iowa means you either pulled the trigger or you aided and abetted in the crime.

And both of them are guilty of that. Interesting comment here from a guy named Michael Eric who says, I knew Ryan pretty well. Karina, I knew a little. She cut my hair a couple of times. They live five miles or so south of me. I go by there a lot and keep thinking a great guy like Coop would never deserve anything like this.

I mean, this really was a small town, which everybody knows everybody. Everyone knows everybody, everybody, you know, and we say it in the show. You know, if you lived in that town, you probably had your haircut by Karina Cooper. And you knew Ryan Cooper, and you knew the entire Cooper family. They're fourth generation farmers. And it's a large business in the town. And, you know, a lot of people have worked at Cooper Farms too over the years. You know, there's a lot of intimacy there.

And the sheriff, Casey Schmidt, told me, that when he was running for office, he discovered that more than 35% of the people in Tama County are literally his relatives. They might be distant relatives, but they're all descended from the same group of families. Wow. That'll make IGG difficult when they try and do it there. I would say so. Yeah. I will say that that is the kind of comment from social media that we don't hear very often. You don't get a lot of people saying, yeah, I lived around there, and I know them, I know this person, I know that person involved in the story. Usually, these are, the people are not writing in who are friends of either the deceased or the accused.

Yeah, but everybody from that area was quite intrigued by the story. And I'm not surprised that people are coming forward and saying that they knew the parties involved, particularly because, because both families are quite well regarded in that area. Janet Fisher Broder on Instagram. Also, were the children never questioned about what they saw or heard? And not only that, the oldest son testified. So certainly they were. Janet also writes,

thank you for continuing to bring us fascinating stories, which is what I'm going to say to you and Andrea. Thank you. I mean, you know, we want to do fascinating stories that also honor the victims and maybe teach people a little bit about investigation. Keith, thank you, and Andrea.

Thank you. Thank you, Josh. That is it for talking Dateline for this week. Thanks for listening. And if there's a case that you want us to cover or if you have a question for the team,

you can reach out anytime on social at at Dateline NBC. And you can leave us a voicemail at 212-413-5252. Now, before we go, Keith, Morrison is, as you know, taking over the podcast world. So check out his brand new series, which is called Something About Carrie. Keith cannot do a podcast unless the word something about are in it. Just FYI.

This story is about a single mother named Carrie Farmer after she went missing. Her boyfriend and his ex began receiving threatening messages that seem to come from Carrie herself. As investigators soon learn, nothing about that case was what it appeared to be. The first five episodes are available right now wherever you get your podcasts. The final episode drops tomorrow. Then on Friday, the return of Morrison Mysteries. That's just in time for the official start of winter. Keith will take on the Hans Christian Anderson classic, the Snow Queen.

And in case that's not enough, Keith Morrison, you can also see him this Friday. On Dateline, on NBC. Thank you.