Dateline NBC - Talking Dateline: The Girl with the Hibiscus Tattoo

Episode Date: June 5, 2024

Andrea Canning interviews Keith Morrison about his latest episode, “The Girl with the Hibiscus Tattoo,” based on his original podcast “Murder in the Hollywood Hills.” 21-year-old Kristi Johnson mysteriously disappeared in 2003 after meeting a man at the Century City Mall in Los Angeles who invited her to audition for a Bond movie.  She was found dead days later. Keith talks about the group of women who helped bring Kristi’s killer to justice and shares a clip from his 2023 interview with Kristi’s mother, Terry Hall. Susan Leibowitz, one of the producers of the episode, answers viewer and listener questions.Listen to “Murder in the Hollywood Hills” here:https://link.chtbl.com/mithh_socialListen to Keith’s interview with Terry Hall available to Dateline Premium subscribers: https://dateline.supportingcast.fm/listen/dateline-nbc-premium/after-the-verdict-death-in-the-hollywood-hillsListen to the episode about the murder of Crystal Taylor mentioned by Susan Leibowitz:https://link.chtbl.com/dl_onemomentHear from the forensic sketch artist who worked on the Kristi Johnson and Crystal Taylor cases: https://www.nbcnews.com/dateline/video/how-forensic-artists-aid-investigations-1077038147665

Hi, everyone. I'm Andrea Canning, and we are Talking Dateline. Today, I'm here with Keith Morrison. Hey, Keith. Hiya, Andrea. All right. This episode of yours is called The Girl with the Hibiscus Tattoo, and it is based on your latest podcast, Murder in the Hollywood Hills. If you haven't listened to that, you can check it out on our Dateline Originals feed, wherever you get your podcasts. And if you haven't seen the new TV episode, 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, Keith has a clip that he's going to play for us from an interview that wasn't in the show. After that, I'm sitting down with Dateline producer Susan Leibowitz to answer your questions about the show from social media. And to recap this story, 21-year-old Christy Johnson mysteriously disappeared in 2003 after meeting a man at the Century City Mall in Los Angeles. He promised her an audition for the

role of a Bond girl, but Christy was found dead days later. Police identified her killer, Victor Paliologos, with the help of various women who saw Christy's story and realized they had been approached by Victor too. Okay, now let's talk Dateline. All right, good. This was such a powerful episode, just the stories from these women and what they went through and what they almost went through and the way that they all came together. You know, forget about evil Victor. This is about these women. It is about these women.

And it doesn't matter what time or what era you're in. If a bunch of people, a bunch of women get together and decide that they're going to do something about a bad character like Victor, they can. They have the power. This all happened before Me Too. And at a time when women were telling stories about what had been done to them, what men had tried to do with them or had done with them, and they weren't believed. So this was a pretty remarkable decision a prosecutor made, that he didn't have the physical evidence.

He had a very slippery character as a suspect. And the only thing the prosecutor had was the stories of these women. And their stories were all almost identical. You know, the white shirt, the stilettos all provide the tie. I mean, how could these women independently, you know independently be telling these stories if it wasn't the same guy? A year before, two years before, 10 years before, come to an audition for a Bond movie. Wear a man's white dress shirt and a micro mini skirt and sparkly tights and sky high heels and I'll bring the tie. Yeah. I mean, he had a script. And it's apropos saying script when we're talking about Hollywood.

We're talking about Hollywood, we're talking about movies where, you know, women in L.A. are drawn in by things like that. Well, you know, many of the women who were approached and attacked were women who had gone to L.A. specifically because they were interested in the movies in one way or another. Christy, the victim in this case, had wanted to work behind the scenes, though heaven knows she was also, had somebody come along with a part for her, she would have been jumped at it. She was beautiful. Yeah, gorgeous.

But also had real acting ability, had some past in dance and in acting, and was a real prospect. So when somebody came and offered her a possibility like that, she thought her ship had come in. And who wouldn't think that? His technique was exceedingly clever. He was a smart guy. He dressed well. He looked good. He was tall and relatively handsome. He came off like a very serious industry person. in Los Angeles in the 90s and went to the Century City Mall all the time. And I had taken acting at UCLA and I even got some headshots done.

But I had chills when I started watching this because I thought to myself, that was me at that mall. And I was putting myself in the shoes of those women. And I thought with my aspirations, if someone had approached me like that in that mall, I was naive enough in my 20s when I was there, early 20s, to probably say yes. I probably would have been excited about it. I'm not kidding. And remember, he kept telling these women it wouldn't be him. It would be a director who would be there.

I could just see anybody falling for this. A couple of them came you know, came from backgrounds where they learned to be naturally skeptical, especially if somebody comes along and offers you something like that. One of them, of course, was Kathy Debono, whose dad was a detective. And the other one was Susan, who, again, you know, had some law enforcement in her background. And they immediately sort of thought, nah, this guy's a little creepy. There's something going on here.

I'm interested. I'm going to go to this thing, but I'm going to take a boyfriend with me. I'm going to take somebody with me. And then, of course, the creep ran away. Kathy, Kathy DeBono, decided to study psychology. And she got her PhD. She went to the FBI and enrolled in a specific course the FBI does on psychopathy, the kind of people who are really incurable. And almost always in these cases, the psychopath begins his behavior, usually a hymn, begins his behavior sometime in his late teens to early 20s. Do we know if Victor had done anything like that in his past?

The story involves quite a number of women who were assaulted. Christine Kludgeon is the first one we know about and whose story we have from 1989. And then there were quite a few of them throughout the 90s, culminating in the attack on Christie in 2003. And many of the women from the 90s came forward, but we don't think all of them. And Kathy believes that there were more women before 1989. And it's amazing. I was on the edge of my seat because it's near the end, and I'm thinking, okay, they got the guy.

Where's this story going? And then we have Kathy going to visit him in prison, and I'm thinking, oh, my gosh. And the things she did, the kiss, the brushing his arm with the Band-Aid. I'm thinking to myself, oh, my gosh. She's brave. Well, she spent years, literally years, writing him letters that were getting increasingly sort of intimate, where she was inviting him to indulge in some of his fantasies in letter form. And he did.

Victor was a fascinating, in a bad way, a fascinating character. I mean, an incorrigible psychopath. In other words, said Cathy, incurable. Which is scary when you think about the fact that this person could potentially get out. Everyone is extremely concerned about him re-offending. One of the problems with law enforcement in this or any country is that

courts are overburdened. They've got so much to deal with. They can't possibly keep up unless they make things very efficient. So 95% of criminal cases, something like that anyway, in the United States are resolved by plea deals. The guilty person, you know, finally is persuaded, okay, I did this thing and I'll make a deal to, you know, not have to be charged with first degree murder. I'll take second degree murder and I'll agree to spend 25 years behind bars or something, and they'll deal with it that way. Prosecutors, police, courts hate uncertainty. They hate the possibility that a person they know is a bad person is going to go to trial, and there is a chance, and sometimes a fairly good chance, if the evidence isn't absolutely

solid, like it wasn't in this case, except for the stories of the women, there's a chance that that person is going to get off. And they only get one shot at it. And so there's a natural inclination to want to hide in the safety of a deal. And Victor knew that. He had known that for years. He had done that over and over and over again. And he wound up getting an agreement from the judge that he could confess to being responsible for her death. It's a very vague term, right? It could mean that they were in the house together and she tripped and fell down the stairs because of something he did. But, you know, it's more of a men's lottery. Yeah, he's not giving details about I strangled her. He's not giving any details.

He refuses to give details, but it appeared that the court was so eager to make a deal to resolve this thing, they wound up making a deal that gave him precisely the same sentence he would have received had he not touched the hair on her head. And that was because he was facing the death penalty. The normal course of events would be that if he took a plea, they would plea that down to life without parole, right? That's the next step down. Instead, they took two steps down to life with parole. The court's kind of worthy of thinking he'll never get out because murderers don't get paroled. Then it turns out maybe they do. LA got a new DA and the rules

were changed. The new approach was simply that there are too many people in prison. If somebody has been at least 20 years in prison and they're over 50 years old, the likelihood of there being a danger to society is vastly reduced. And so they should be offered a chance at parole. And it makes sense that older prisoners would be released because they're no longer a danger to society. But as Kathy pointed out, this guy is. Okay. After the break, we'll be back with an extra clip from Keith's interview with Christie's mother, Terry Hall. Victor was supposed to be up for parole in 2023, but he waived that. And his next parole hearing, correct me if I'm wrong, is 2025.

November 2025, yeah. Right. But he's still alive. He's still in prison. He's awaiting this parole hearing. I guess we'll see what he does when it comes around. Who knows? Maybe he'll decline it again.

It's possible. It's hard to know. Very bizarre. Keith, you spoke with Christy's mother, Terry Hall, back in 2023 prior to Victor's scheduled parole hearing. And I know you talked to her on our After the Verdict podcast, which is where we revisit our old cases for our Dateline Premium subscribers. This is what Terry had to say about the parole hearing. A close friend of mine was actually monitoring on a regular basis to see where the inmate was. And to her surprise, realized that it was coming up prematurely. Sure. And we've heard of other cases, some deserving, where people who have had early parole heard and in many cases granted, or in some cases at least here in California. This was a particularly egregious one.

I mean, it wouldn't take somebody with a legal background to just read that summary and just be outraged and think, this is somebody that needs to be incarcerated for the rest of their life with no parole. So, this behavior is not something that has been diminished through keeping him in prison for 20 years. If anything, this is just a time bomb about to go off. He will do it again. And quite frankly, Keith, it's been very disheartening to discover a lot of what's broken within our parole system. Have you been informed about all the things that have happened in the last 20 years? Yes and no. First of all, there is a process to register online through a social service agency that will give notification to the family if the parole is scheduled or if the inmate has been released for some reason. And apparently what happened a couple of years ago,

I believe it was during the heightened COVID period, where there was an upgrade to the database and somehow a lot of the information was not transferred over. And we do have these agencies that are set up to notify the next of kin, so to speak, which would be the father, the mother, the brother of when that inmate is released to the parole hearing. Are you going to be able to speak at the parole hearing? You yourself?

Yes, I will be. Yes. And there's a designated certain amount of people, of course, the father, the mother, the brother, and I can have a representative as well. So, there will be an opportunity for me to speak. As Terry was saying in that interview with her, there was somebody assigned to keep in touch with her about when things were happening, when there would be a parole hearing.

But after COVID did throw a monkey wrench into that kind of notifying process. Unfortunately, we've encountered this now several times on Dateline Stories, that the significant others of victims in these cases are not always notified. The prosecutors aren't notified. The detectives who worked on the stories often aren't notified. A lot of the people in this one would not have known about this at all had Kathy Debono not been watching carefully to see what was coming out. And Terry, Christy's mother, I noticed, did not do an interview for this new updated story. Was there something behind that? She is still a deeply grief-stricken woman. She and her daughter were incredibly close, had been all their lives. The loss of Christy

in her life has been so, it's been awful. And she had got to the point where she just couldn't kind of sit in front of a camera and talk about it again. And I got that completely. I understand. And on a much lighter note, your look going back in the time machine of Keith Morrison and getting to see you interview these people with, I was like wait was Keith was blonde right so you know I'm trying to I'm looking at your hair and I think it was like in between it was like maybe blondish gray I'm not even really sure it was it was going great by that point but I'm telling you what one of the side effects of working on Dateline for as long as I have is watching yourself age on television.

I look at some of those stories from, well, I've been at NBC now since mid-1980s. That's a long time. I'm looking back at some of that old material. That clip that Seinfeld runs every once in a while, I see it it and i think who the hell is that and it also made me think of bill hater with the older ones you know like the snl skits um but you don't you don't look that different to be honest with you i don't i don't think so i mean and i'm being like the process is deeply disconcerting let me put it that way. But I really enjoyed seeing the blending of the old version and then now. We've done that on a couple of stories, and I enjoy doing it, partly because we go and visit people when they're in the middle of a crisis or when they're at the tail end of a series of crises which have changed their lives

dramatically. And then we go away again. This is how the media works, right? You do the story, then you say, see you later. And sometimes you keep in touch, but often you don't. And then 20 years go by and then you find out, well, things have happened. And I felt it just made for a richer story because we were able to be there from the very beginning with you. And now here we are with you all these years later. It's fascinating. I could have kept talking to you about this story. It was so really just like amazing story.

I was hooked from the beginning to the end. Well, amazing story. I was hooked from the beginning to the end. Well, thank you. When we come back, I'll be joined by Dateline producer Susan Leibovitz to answer some viewer and listener questions. Welcome back, everyone. We are joined now by producer Susan Leibowitz, Dateline producer, that is, who is here to answer some of your viewer questions and observations. Hey, Susan. Hey, Andrea. All right. Let's dive right in.

The first question is from Dude in the Desert. Says they briefly touched on the fact that he owned a few failed restaurants. Speaking of Victor, Dude in the Desert would be interested in what some of his former staff had to say. I guarantee he creeped out more than a few of the female staff members. He's probably right. We didn't talk to any of his former employees, but he had three restaurants. One in Marina del Rey, and that was reviewed by the L.A. Times. It got a great review. It failed anyway. One in Brentwood in the same building as Roger Corman, famed B-movie director who just died about a month ago.

And another restaurant in West Hollywood. So really good locations, but they all failed. and Kathy DeBono interviewed his partner in these restaurants who said at one point something like every time he went out with one of our regulars they never came back oh okay yeah and and he knew that partner knew there was something pretty unsavory about Victor all right this is from Abessa Annie how do they find similar looking people for the lineup? Personally, I would be offended. Well, I think everybody for their live lineup is they're finding in the jail. One of the things that's interesting is that he had let his beard grow after he was arrested. So the detective, Virginia Obenshain, made sure he was clean shaven for the lineup. And then they found other men in the jail that looked

enough like him. Yeah. I always feel like I would fail one of those police lineups if I was a witness. I think it's hard. Well, she said that one of the things that's interesting, rather than the six-pack photo lineup that we hear about a lot, is that with the live lineup, you can see how someone moves. You can see how tall they are. You can see a lot more about them that is indicative of who they are than just a photo. That's true. All right. Mad World. I wonder if they interviewed Victor's ex-wife. I bet she has some stories to tell. Victor's ex-wife would not respond to our requests. And as far as I know, she hasn't talked to anyone. I mean, she may have talked to the law enforcement but not to us and i'm sure she does all right this is again from mad world kudos to

the composite sketch artist and the witness to have such an accurate picture um and you mentioned on something on twitter susan that this sketch artist was featured on another episode of Dateline. She was. She was the head. She's retired just recently, but she was in charge of all the sketch artists with the county sheriff's department. And her name is Sandra Enslow. We have a web story about her that we put up in 2017 about that other case, which was the young woman named Crystal Taylor, who was pregnant and was murdered and took them about 20 years to solve that crime. And Sandra was really proud of the work she did on this case because it really helped make the case, right? Without Susan Murphy

getting that sketch done, then the other information from Victor's parole officer wouldn't have come in. He wouldn't have been found so quickly. Sketch artists have remarkable brains. I don't know how they do it, but it's really phenomenal. All right, this is from Kathy. When I first saw Christine during this episode tonight, I knew I recognized her and her manner of speaking, but I couldn't quite place her.

I agree. I had the same feeling that I had seen her before. I didn't know why, but Kathy looked it up and her instincts were right that she'd seen her before. Christine had a small role on a Frasier episode in 2000. Christine Colugian's an actress and has had parts where she's a working actress. I didn't recognize her from her work. I just know her from the story. Yeah. I just felt like she's one of those people I felt like I had seen before, which I get all the time in this job. I get people. I feel like I know you from somewhere, you know, people who aren't like quite sure why. And then normally, you know, I'm always hesitant to say Dateline

because, you know, then you don't know if they're going to say yes or no, and then you'll be embarrassed. And then, you know, the one time I do say Dateline, they're like, no, I think you look like my cousin or something. I know Josh says people have accused him of being on soap operas. Do you know what I leave on a soap opera? I have never got that before. That is really funny. All right. This is from Randy Giamarco.

I'll bet every girl that worked in that mall knew who Victor was and were creeped out. Did you hear, Susan, about any other women in the Century City Mall who were weirded out by Victor that you know maybe didn't have a bad situation with him personally or maybe they did there were a few people who came forward who said I saw that guy and I ran away from him you know that instinct yeah as I mentioned earlier in this episode I in thes, would go to the Century City Mall all the time. I'm trying to picture young Andrea on the mall. But it just makes me wonder, like, did I see Victor? Like, I certainly don't remember. I think I would remember if someone had approached me about, you know, being in a bond,

being a bond girl. But I, you know, went there enough that I surely could have possibly seen him there at one point. So very, very creepy story. Very well told story, as I told Keith. Very powerful. Kudos to the women who came forward and the women who brought him down. Good job for them and protecting future women from him. Right, right. That's their job now. Thank you, Susan, so much for sharing our viewers' thoughts. We always love to hear from our Dateline viewers and listeners. Thank you. That's Talking Dateline for this week. In the description of this episode, you can find a link to Keith's After the Verdict episode with Christy's mom, Terry Hall, available exclusively to Dateline Premium subscribers.

You can also find links to Josh's story on Crystal Taylor that Susan mentioned, and to the video about the sketch artist who worked on both cases. Remember, if you have any questions for us about stories or about Dateline, you can reach out to us on social at DatelineNBC. Also, if you want to check out more true crime from Dateline, we have a new podcast for you called Dateline True Crime Weekly. Every Thursday, I'm 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 wherever you get your podcasts,

and we'll see you Fridays on Dateline on NBC.