Dateline NBC - Talking Dateline: The Night Time Stopped

Episode Date: April 10, 2024

Josh Mankiewicz interviews Keith Morrison about his latest episode, “The Night Time Stopped.”  The hunt for the killer of champion cyclist Moriah Wilson in 2022 took detectives and the Dateline team from the gravel bike paths of Austin, Texas to the sandy beaches of Costa Rica. Keith tells Josh what he discovered about the suspect’s plastic surgery and the technology that was key to investigators cracking the case. He also shares with Josh a new clip from one of the police interviews and they answer viewer and listener questions from social media.Listen to the full episode of "The Night Time Stopped: here: https://link.chtbl.com/thenighttimestopped

Hi, everybody. I'm Josh Mankiewicz, and we are Talking Dateline. And our guest today is Keith Morrison. Hi. Hello, Josh. How are you? This is starting off about the way I expected. It's really quite delightful to talk to you, Josh. That's much better. That suggests that you've made some progress. It's the last time we did this. So this episode is called The Night Time Stopped.

And if you haven't seen it or if you haven't listened to it, it is the episode right below this one on the list of podcasts that you just chose from. So go there and listen to it or watch it on TV or stream it on Peacock and then come back here. Today, I've got some questions for Keith about this latest episode. Keith also has an extra clip that was not on the episode that he's going to play for us. And then later, we are going to talk to you. We're going to take some of your viewer questions and listener questions about this episode from social media. So let's talk Dateline. Where to begin here? This was a very recent story as Dateline episodes go. I mean,

it happened in May of 2022. And I think you did the first episode on this later that year. Yes. Yes, indeed. And we were running around the continent trying to, you know, catch up with everybody who knew what was going on. And we were able to get the outlines of the story all right before the trial actually began.

And then this is a deep dive that we couldn't do before. You know, we have all the information and we were able to talk to a great many more of the people who were involved in these strange events. Because sometimes people are not available when it first happens because they are unprepared and because they don't want to get involved. And then as time passes, they read about it. Maybe they're mentioned in some of the articles or stories about the thing, and now

they do want to talk. And what happens too, as you know, is that people who are, you know, going about the business of investigating and prosecuting these cases often don't feel that they're able to speak about it before the trial actually happens. They want to do their talking at trial. Understood. So last time around, the prosecutor wasn't talking to us. The detectives were unable to be very revealing. Of course, the U.S. Marshals couldn't talk to us at all. In this case now, everybody has come forward to tell the whole story. And that just makes it far richer and more interesting. The interesting thing about this, I thought, is how hard it is to hide from law enforcement. Caitlin Armstrong, her on the run with the yoga mat under her arm is just one of the most remarkable things I've ever seen on Dateline.

Isn't that interesting? Yeah. And her trying to settle into a little beach community in this country, I guess, thinking or hoping that somehow she had evaded responsibility for this crime and she could go on with her life, you know, as if nothing happened, was so telling. But, I mean, it's magical thinking and it's desperation and the rest of it. But the fact that she would go to the trouble of getting plastic surgery to try to make her face look different, and she would color her hair, but her hair was so important to her that she wouldn't do the obvious thing and just cut it off.

Cut it off. Yeah. Getting plastic surgery to avoid detection is like, first of all, it's like something out of like the 50s and 60s, you know? Well, it's like from watching a James Bond movie or something, right? And also, by the way, like, unless you've got like a couple of hundred thousand dollars, it's not going to change your look so much that you won't be recognized by law enforcement. No, no, you can barely tell the difference at all, in fact. But what was fascinating to me was that the plastic surgeon who spoke to us, his story about her behavior was fascinating and that she did not want to have her photograph taken before or at any time during the process. And she, you know, she wore a mask in and she had most of her face covered the whole

time and clearly was somebody who was trying to hide from any photographs. Do we know how much money she paid for that plastic surgery? Yeah, we had the bill. I forget offhand what it was. It was much less than it would cost in the United States. Let me put it that way. Okay, well, I mean, look, she didn't come out looking bad, but she certainly didn't disguise herself

in the way that she wanted. No, she did not. She did not. I found it fascinating, the detectives, I questioned them a little bit about why it took them so long for the marshals to get their butts down there

to Costa Rica to do the looking. And then they explained to us how it works, that if you really want to find somebody in a country of several million people, if you just kind of fly down there and start going, it's just not going to work out. You'll never find them. So you get the U.S. consulate involved

and you get people on the ground there already to kind of try to sector out the country for you and figure out where to look. It was difficult to do this because most of the photographs of her were her kind of grinning away and they wanted one of her not smiling. I thought that was very clever of them. Yeah. Yeah.

And they spent some time, some extra time to get that photograph. And, you know, that was what did it. They were able to look into her eyes as they saw it in that unsmiling photograph. And they knew for sure they had their woman. I just thought that was all very smart detective work. It was good. And actually having one of their agents take the yoga classes to see whether or not she was an instructor.

Then once again, her magical thinking had her trying to evade capture right up until the last moment. She picked the lock on her handcuffs. Well, again, it's these decisions made in desperation, right? What would make her think, what in heaven's name would make her think that she could, while she was in custody, sneak a pin into her hand and then use it to take off her handcuffs and somehow run fast enough to evade capture and what, leave the country again? Get to an airport somehow with no money at all?

Get on a plane and fly to, I don't know where this time. No money, no ID, and wearing, you know, jail clothing. I know. Bizarre. I mean, she did a lot of what would be, you know, sort of objectively speaking, smart things to, you know, get off the grid, get away. And it didn't work.

They found her. Yeah. They would have been smart things 15 or 20 years ago. They're not anymore. You know, it's very, very difficult to commit that kind of a crime and get away with it nowadays because of the fact that you're tracked everywhere you go. If you've got a cell phone with you, you're tracked whether it's on or off. If you're driving around in a car, that car records where you go and when you go there.

I did not realize that your car can give law enforcement as much information as it did. I know that in the Murdoch case in South Carolina, that was a similar thing. They got a lot of info from the car. Yes. I was surprised by that. I had no idea. A couple other things. I mean, they used Facebook to help find her, which was clever.

And the thing about the app, about Caitlin using the cycling app to track Mo. Yeah. That was creepy. That was creepy. Yeah. Well, that told you that she was planning this and that this wasn't a spur of the moment thing. But the Strava thing was weird. It was when you can go online, if you're a famous cyclist as Mo was,

automatically you put up all your rides on Strava so that other cyclists can see where you're riding and can kind of follow your progress. Probably never occurred to her that that was a way that could lead someone to her for a terrible reason. No, no. Watching her all that day and then back to that little apartment. It's an awful thing. I thought that ring camera video and the audio that came from it was really chilling. Yeah, it was chilling. Yeah.

You know, a lot of the victims about whom we do stories are people I wish I had known. And Mo Wilson ranks very high in that list. Because everything that I heard about her was about what a good person she was, what a kind person she was, what a humble person she was, and someone you would want to know. So, you know, you really begin to feel more connected to this whole business when you know more about the victim. And then to hear that sound, to hear those screams,

to recognize that that was her being murdered, that hit pretty hard. Yeah, I agree. That was really chilling. Yeah, yeah. Well, let's take a break. When we come back, we have an extra clip from one of Colin's interviews with police that did not make it into the broadcast. How many times, I may not know the exact number,

but I'm guessing that you and producers reached out to Colin any number of times to try to get him to sit down. A lot of times, a lot of times. Colin is an interesting character. He was a big star in the cycle racing world. You know, he had big companies sponsoring him right, left, and center. He had a happening life. And all of that came crashing down when this happened, every single bit of it. His career is in the toilet. He's just a very unhappy guy. I don't blame him. I suppose I would be too. Anybody would be. You have to wonder.

I mean, miss certain signs, but. I mean, he wasn't charged with any crime. No one seems to believe that he was actually involved in this. But come on, like, do not tell me, pal, that you were not aware of the fact that your girlfriend and this woman did not get along, that there was some significant bad blood, that your girlfriend clearly had talked about Mo any number of times. I mean, if you're the woman and you get to the point where you're calling the other woman to essentially say, leave my guy alone, the guy knows about it. Who knows what his motivations were. I got the sense of tape that did not make it into the broadcast. Let's listen to that. This is Colin being interrogated by police early on. I think in your gut, you know what happened. And I think you're trying to protect Caitlin right now,

which is understandable. But understand, I don't want you to get wrapped up in anything. I have no knowledge of what she did. What do I think she did? Things are sounding very, very strange, but I don't, I mean, I don't have evidence. What do you want me to say? Well, you care about Mo, right? Of course I care. Yeah.

And so something happened to Mo. Something horrible happened to Mo. And I think you know what happened. Is Caitlin capable of hurting Mo? I could not imagine her capable of hurting anyone, to be quite honest. My impression of her is confrontation adverse. I'm asking you what you think. Is she capable of doing something like that?

I wouldn't be the person who I think is capable of doing this. I would never in a million years have someone in the house with my mother who I think is capable of this. So the answer is no, I don't believe it. Okay. You don't believe it. She's confrontation adverse, but you give Mo a different name in your phone. That is the action of somebody who wants to avoid a confrontation. Absolutely. this person i can't conceive of her committing murder even though i know she's a little angry and she gets flies out the handle sometimes i don't think of her as a killer but i mean like this is not a conversation you know with your friends over a beer this is one of those little tiny rooms with the cops and like you know there's been a murder committed. Come on. I mean, in his interview, he describes Caitlyn as one of the least volatile women he's ever dated. I mean, an intuitive guy, clearly. Yeah.

I mean, who else were you going out with? Ma Barker? I mean. Others who knew her, mind you, to whom we spoke, you know, would say that she was not a violent person. But on the other hand, we did talk to some people too, also, who heard her talking at parties and other places about how she would do terrible things to Mo Wilson if the occasion ever arose. I mean, this is, you know, this is fatal attraction is the thing I kept thinking of. And, you know, this is your classic love triangle. You bet.

It's jealousy as written by Shakespeare and Caitlin Armstrong. Now, I didn't get married until I was 60 years old. You're 60? No, I'm way older than that now, but I didn't get married until I was 60 years old. You're 60? No, I'm way older than that now, but I didn't get married until I was 60. I had you for about 35, John. Oh, this is good. I like this. I like this, Keith. Yeah. Spoiler alert, it's not going to last. But yeah, I was single until I was 60. And Caitlin Armstrong is recognizable to me. I dated women who go through your phone, women who one followed me around town or said she did. I never had contact with certain people. I'm here to tell you, life is too short to be with somebody who doesn't have any boundaries. But this idea that, you know, I mean, taking a life for this romantic relationship,

which maybe did or didn't exist, nobody even really knows. I mean, wrecking, ending her life, wrecking your life, wrecking her family's life, wrecking your family's life. This is insane. Yeah, I would have to agree with you. What about Caitlin's family? They, you know, they declined their every effort. And, you know, we get it. We understand.

And we're not going to push you on it. And we didn't. They're caught in a particularly difficult emotional vice. They'll have to deal with it for the rest of their lives. I'm prepared to believe they probably never saw that coming. Yeah. And again, just because you know somebody has a temper or that they can be jealous,

that does not translate to you expecting that they're going to commit a murder. No, she's the one they knew as the big sister who could be counted on and the fun one who went off and traveled the world and did yoga, et cetera, et cetera. All things that you just do not associate with somebody who is capable of committing a homicide. All right. After the break, we will come back and we will answer your questions about the episode from social media. Okay, let's get to some viewer and listener mail. And the first one is from David in Malibu. Hey, we know a David in Malibu. Well, this one says, Josh, did you take up skiing? Because Liz told me you're really going downhill.

Oh, wait a minute. That's not, that wasn't viewer mail. That's just a text. Nevermind. Yeah. Sorry. Well, you know, it's an astute remark, I must say. Yeah. So we got a fair number of pieces of mail about the defense attorney um yes yes who says what if i told you that everything you've said is wrong and that the government's evidence is going to acquit her right um yeah so here's a couple uh what if i told you that you look like a smarmy expletive deleted you sir do not deserve to sit to sit in Keith Morrison's vicinity or even breathe the same air. That's from Sherry. Oh, my goodness.

Yeah. Well, I frequently feel that exact same way. But, yeah. Well, you know, I have to say, I mean, I did two interviews with the man. First, when he was being all full of bravado at the beginning of the case. And there was a kind of a strategy at play there, which was that he thought if he could get this fast-forwarded to get the case on as quickly as possible, he would have a chance to put the case on, put his defense case on before the prosecution had a chance to get all of his ducks in a row. But in the end, when he came back for the second interview, he was chastened.

He was very chastened. He comes from a family of attorneys. I can only imagine who chastened him, but he was determined not to say anything at all. Well, you know, look, I mean, if I were the defendant, I might want that kind of in your face bravado that he was sort of demonstrating. And then anybody who accuses my client doesn't know what they're talking about. I mean, you and I both covered plenty of attorneys who come in with guns blazing and then the verdict ends up, you know, changing their tune a little bit. Yeah, we got to have something to back it

up. You know, you have to have more than just empty bravado, which is, you know, essentially what he was dealing in. Felicia, a longtime friend of ours here, says, I would love to see her defense attorney's explanation. What if I told you she wasn't trying to flee, but was just trying to stretch her legs? Yeah. Mark Sardella, who I read all the time on social media, had an interesting point, which I didn't think about earlier, which is they have her gun as the murder weapon. That's not a circumstantial case. Well, you know, in the sense that other people had access to the gun, it remained somewhat circumstantial.

They had everything else under the sun. I mean, when he said it was a circumstantial case, I think he was sort of, what is it they do? They kind of play, my case is not as strong as I would like it to be game. Right. But the case was very solid. And the actual circumstantial evidence was as good as any circumstantial evidence I've ever seen. And I begin to think that that shouldn't be called circumstantial. You know, the fact that they've got the actual sound of the murder, the fact that they've got her car at the murder scene. Yeah, I mean, this was a pretty strong case. One chicklet says, I wonder if her sister is being prosecuted for the passport shenanigans. And the answer is no, she's not.

That is correct. The answer is no. Because there's no proof that Caitlin didn't actually steal it. Right. And that's about the best we can say. Others may have a more definitive idea about what happened there, but they're not revealing it, if so. All right. On to more important things. Nikki New Vogue says that the surfer guy, Teal Ackerson, he's the only person to ever show up for an on-camera interview topless on this show,

and he must be protected at all costs. I should think. Yeah, I can see why she might tweet that. I can't remember anybody else topless on this program. I can't either. That was kind of a one and only, I think. You know, I did stories years ago, but this was in the pre-crime days. I did stories about this unbelievable rescue of a guy in the water off Hawaii. And I think there

might've been some shirtless people in that. Quite possibly. But in the Dateline crime era, I certainly can't think of anybody. You know, Josh, I have to confess that you're speaking of the pre-crime era. I myself went topless on a story about whales, which was really a truly embarrassing time. I don't think it'll ever live it down, frankly. One of the things that was mentioned, it's not really a question, it's more just information, is about the Ride for Moe event. That's going to be on May 11th in East Burke, Vermont, if people are interested in that. I hope they are.

That is Talking Dateline for this week. Keith, thank you. Oh, Josh, Josh. It's always such a pleasure. How do you manage to make that sound so phony and yet so genuine at the same time? Thanks, everybody, for listening. Remember, if you have any questions for us about Dateline in general or about any of

our episodes, you can reach out to us on social at Dateline NBC. See you Fridays on Dateline. Thank you.