Dateline NBC - Talking Dateline: The Perfect Life

Episode Date: February 21, 2024

Josh Mankiewicz and Andrea Canning discuss her latest episode, “The Perfect Life.” In 2012 the body of Jen Ramsaran, a mother of three, was found on a desolate stretch of road in Upstate New York. She’d been murdered. Andrea says the subsequent interview she did with Jen’s husband Remy was one of the most memorable of her Dateline career. Ten years later, after some dramatic developments in the case,  Andrea tells Josh what it was like to sit across from Remy Ramsaran one more time and shares a podcast-exclusive clip from their most recent interview. 

Hi, everybody. We are Talking Dateline. I'm Josh Mankiewicz. And my guest today, as so often, is my friend, Andrea Canning. Hi. Hi, friend. to this yet. It is the episode right below this one in the list of podcasts that you just chose from. So go there and listen to it. Or you can watch it on TV or you can stream it on Peacock and then come back here. Today, I've got some questions for Andrea about this episode. And she also has something for us, which is an extra clip from our friend Remy. And it's hard to believe that there was anything left out of this episode since he literally cannot stop talking. And then we're also going to answer a couple of questions that you, the viewer, you, the listener, seem to have for me and Andrea.

So let's talk Dateline. Let's do it. All right. So like the first thing I wrote down, you haven't aged in 10 years, it says right there. Can you not see the lines, Josh? No, your glasses need to get a little thicker. I think I do not. And I'm very skeptical reporter. So here's like the second thing I wrote down. He can't shut up. No, I have never seen a defendant, suspect, person of interest, bad guy, as anxious to sort of put himself in verbal harm's way as this guy. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, and that's how we started the whole episode. We were like, okay, what do we have? Like, what do we have to work with? Because we

want to start with Remy. And it was, Remy talks a lot. Remy says this, Remy says, you know, and so Bourne was this whole top of the show about that this man cannot stop talking. So what's it like for you sitting across from him? This does not feel like any typical interview that I ever did with anybody. I mean, in some ways, that probably made the interview easier because he likes to talk, but also it's going to be harder because he's probably going off on a million tangents. It's hard to interject. It's hard to get a question in. As far as sitting across from Remy, the first time I'm thinking, wow, this guy seems pretty arrogant. You know, he's saying he's got the wife, the girlfriend, the kids, and he's saying

it's fantastic. And I'm like, you're sleeping with your wife's best friend. That doesn't sound so fantastic. So, you know, there was that's best friend. That doesn't sound so fantastic. So there was that version. Then there was the Remy 2.0 interview, which was the second one. I was in Pensacola shooting interviews and I was supposed to fly to upstate New York to go interview Remy again. Remy, we found out, was being moved at 5 a.m. the next morning. And I wouldn't have made it because I had to finish in Pensacola. And I'm in a defense attorney's office doing an interview with the defense attorney from another story. And we kindly asked if we could set up a remote from the defense attorney's office.

And this is an old house with thin walls. Not some modern office building. No. These defense attorneys in this office can hear everything. So Remy starts going off and yelling. And like, you know, I can barely get a word in edgewise. And I'm thinking to myself, oh my gosh, the defense attorney in this other story is probably like, what the heck? They're turning to their colleagues and going, okay, do not let your client do this. Maybe we shouldn't have welcomed Dateline into our office. Just to be clear, they're the defense attorneys in a completely unrelated case. Yeah. Remy, just right out of the gate, had all this energy pent up and was saying how unfair

Dateline is, but I'm doing this because my attorneys tell me it's the only platform I'll have, which they deny, by the way, that they ever told him that. So he just launches into this tirade about Dateline. And I'm like, Remy, let's talk about what we need to talk about here. So that's always the challenge with him is letting him say

his piece, but then being able to challenge him and being able to, you know, ask him the questions you want to ask him. And you know what, actually, Josh, I have a question for you because we've, there's been a big debate that we've all had about this interview as far as the moment where Remy says, I'm Mr. Charles Schwab. I'm Mr. American Express. I'm whatever. I'm a guy, Mr. Corporate America, Charles Schwab and Company, American Express, IBM. Prison is freedom. Look, I have never done. What are you talking about? You can get anything you want in prison if you are looking for it. I took it in the interview as I'm interviewing

as him saying, like, I'm a shark in here. You know, I'm like the man. Right. But Alison Orr, our senior producer, she brought up that she thinks that he meant I've worked in corporate America. This is easy compared to corporate America. So I love your take on it. What do you think? I thought what he meant was I can manipulate any environment to fit me. You know, I'm a shark out there and I'm a shark in here. I thought that's what he's saying. Well, Remy says there's a lot of freedom

in behind bars. Yeah, that's another thing. Like, I don't think you want to go on national television and talk about how you can do whatever you want behind bars. They're going to be listening to that. Katie bloom, who works at Dateline texted me today.

And she's like, she's like, what, what's the warden going to think when he hears that? And I'm thinking also, what are his fellow inmates going to think? I mean, who,

I don't know that I would be saying all that stuff before going back to prison. Because remember, he did this interview in the Shenango County Jail before he was transported back to state prison. And he's like that for how long? How long the interview go on? I think this went on for over two hours. So it was a lot of talking and a lot of stuff happening with that interview. He was dressed differently in these interviews. He certainly was within his right if he wanted to wear regular clothes, which the first time it really worked for us, for the show. Yeah, right, because it feels like he's not in custody. And you think like, well,

he either beat these charges or they never actually filed. Right. So for this one, he didn't ask to be in regular clothes. So we just left it as is. When we come back, we have an extra clip from Andrea's interview with Remy. You know, this episode's called the perfect life and he said i have this perfect life which is i have this great job and i have this great family and uh and i'm carrying on with my wife's best friend i have everything a guy could want and let's not forget he was also hormonally happy

according to gilberto garcia in court that he had been with his lover the night before the murder. Hormonally happy men don't commit murders, Josh. That's essentially what the defense attorney was saying. I'm sorry. Continue. So that echoes a defense that we've heard a couple of times over the years. The Secrets of Silver Lakes episode that I did a few years ago with the woman Sabrina Lamone, who was carrying on with this firefighter

who ended up killing her husband. And then it was alleged that she had put him up to it and she went away for life. Her argument in court, Sabrina's argument, was exactly the same as Remy's, which was, why would I kill him? I had everything. I had my husband, and I had the kids, and I had a lover. Yeah, it sounds like a lot of work to me to juggle all of that. It's clearly a lot of work.

And keep it a secret. Yeah. And on the other side of that is Eileen. I'm sort of astonished that she wanted to do the interview. I mean, it's like wearing this sort of public hair shirt. I mean, did she do that because she sort of feels like she, you know, needs to be punished in the public eye for what she did? She's clearly ashamed of it now. Well, one of our secret weapons at Dateline is Kim Krawitz, who I call the queen of booking because she can book anyone. And she managed to book Eileen.

I was amazed by that. But yeah, maybe Eileen felt like it was just time to let everyone know how horrible she felt for what she'd done. It is an easy way to get it out to a lot of people that, look, I'm not running away from this. I made a huge mistake and I'm still paying for it. Because the one thing I felt as I was sitting across from her was that she felt really horrible about what she'd done. I mean, you know, we don't have a rewind button in life. And it's one of those situations where she must tell herself a million times, why did I do this?

Why did I do this? If I could go back in time and she can't, you know, and it's following her. Eileen and her husband are not together anymore. Maybe still married, but they're not together. They're separated. They're good friends. I'm guessing also probably for the sake of their children, you know, being good friends always helps with co-parenting.

And she does still live in New Berlin. So she still lives in that town. Yeah. Which is, you know, that's hard to, you know, to imagine after something like this rocks a small town and you're at the center of it and then you still live there. Well, and then every time something like this happens, it's going to air again. You know, when people see it, even the ones that don't remember it are now like, hey, I saw you on television. I didn't realize you had that whole backstory. Right. And you know what? I do feel bad for her because she has obviously completely taken

responsibility for what she did. She called herself the worst kind of friend. I think her punishment is from herself. And so I hope that she can let it go and start moving forward now that we have this new resolution. Because you wouldn't want her to just keep punishing herself for the rest of her life. I mean, that's no way to live. Yeah. And I looked, I mean, the question is, you know, which is one there's really no answer to, which is how long do you have to keep paying for a mistake?

You know, I mean, if it's not a crime, if it's a mistake of judgment or your own morality or, you know, a bad call, I mean, how long do you have to suffer for that? She wasn't a part of this murder. You know, she didn't plan it. No one alleged that. No. She didn't help cover it up. You know, she made the mistake of having the affair, period. Right.

I felt very bad for the son, for Glenn. Oh, I know. Really? And we've seen this a lot of times, too, is, I know. almost the way he described it. And gosh, I just, I felt so bad for those children, how one minute they're living this perfect life, as we've said before, and the next, their whole world is, you know, torn apart. Again, like the perfect life, you know, I mean, he's working, he's making a lot of money, you know, the kids seem to be happy. The wife, Jen, is spending eight hours a day gaming. If that's true.

We don't know for sure. It's what Remy said. You have to take what Remy says with a grain of salt. Remember, that was a big part of his. Oh, I think you got to take it with a whole shaker of salt. Yeah. Okay, a shaker. You know, but that was a big part of his defense was that, you know, he believed that someone on that game killed her.

And so the more he can say that she spent time on that game, the more those people potentially look like suspects. Exactly. And we actually have an extra clip of Remy talking about why he couldn't have done it. Let's listen to that. Do you have any idea? I do. Who you think killed your wife? Who?

I can't. Look, I'm not going to besmirch and say names or circumstances that involve others where they may or may not be involved. You don't have to say the names, but are you willing to say what the relationship is to Jen, who you think might have done this? I am not interested. How they fit in her world? I am not interested in speculation.

I can only tell you irrefutable factual evidence. But if you're trying to clear your name, why not point us in the direction? And just blame others without evidence? I'm not going there. You know, he seems to be sort of bluffing as to who it is, right? He doesn't seem to know. How interesting, though, that Remy the talker... Doesn't want to say. Doesn't seem to know. How interesting, though, that Remy the talker... Doesn't want to say.

Doesn't want to say. Yeah. Or why not say it in private to the police or to your attorneys? Because the police certainly haven't told us anything about any suspects that he's named or that the prosecutor didn't. One of the things that this points up is something that we do see on Dateline all the time is a situation in which the person who's at the center of the story, who's maybe being accused, feels that they can sort of carry this on their back. They're the person to tell their story, and they don't want their attorney to do it.

They don't want anybody else to do it. I mean, I'm guessing at some point his attorney said to him, you should shut the hell up. Well, that's debatable given what happened with ineffective counsel. And what's amazing to me was he has Gilberto Garcia for his trial, and then he gets this appellate team of Melissa Swartz and, and her partner. They seem very sharp. They're incredible. Like I'm interviewing these two and I'm thinking to myself,

like, this is who you want. You know, they were amazing. And they allowed Remy to do an interview once the deal was already signed. You know, it wasn't going to impact anything at that point. And Remy really wanted to do it.

So they gave their blessing. And I think if it had have gone to a second trial, I think they would have done a phenomenal job. Well, I think it would have been much closer. I mean, the first guy didn't call any witnesses. He also took money that the family had given him for expert witnesses and he kept it as part of his fee. They spent over $100,000 and he didn't call one expert witness.

He called Remy. Gilberto Garcia was just, he was a character in himself. You know, I mean, Gilberto was just, first of all, had no business trying this case, this murder case. And it's not just my opinion saying he had no business trying this case. He was censured in New Jersey. And this is why Remy got a new trial, because Gilberto Garcia was so ineffective. The ineffective assistance of counsel argument is made now and then by different defendants. It's incredibly hard to win that motion. I mean, it's got to be much more than just my attorney didn't

do a good job and I got convicted as a result. I mean, it's got to be, you know, you fell asleep, you know, you missed court a couple of times and they, you know, you had to keep these of evidence, which you lost on the subway. I mean, it's got to be monumentally dumb. You know, you heard, you heard the new appellate attorneys, I mean, talking about how Gilberto is essentially looking up, you know, DNA for fifth graders, you know, and I'm paraphrasing. Yeah, if I'm on trial for murder, I don't want to see my lawyer Googling things. I want them to already know those things. Right. He's Googling things.

And, you know, there's this DNA that was not introduced the first time around. Which I think would have been a big problem for prosecutors. You got this mystery DNA on her. It's not him. It's not him. It's a partial. Yeah, it's partial DNA. So there's not enough to, you know, put it in CODIS or whatever, but it's enough to say it's not Remy.

And that was under her fingernails. So that certainly could provide a jury with reasonable doubt. If you introduce this at trial, they may have a hard time, you know, putting someone away. of her fingernails. So that certainly could provide a jury with reasonable doubt if you introduce this at trial. They may have a hard time putting someone away for the rest of their life with that kind of information. And I mean, there's a lot of reasons to not feel for Rami Ramsaran. That was a reason to feel for him, that you want defendants to have a fair trial. That's what America is. That's our justice system. We want people to have fair trials. He didn't get one. That's the bottom line. Whether he did this or not, he didn't get a fair trial because of his attorney.

How long until he might be out now? They're saying it's about eight and a half years. Coming up in a little bit, we're going to tell you why Andrea nearly ended up in court. Thanks to Remy. You nearly got dragged into this? I did get dragged into it. I wouldn't say nearly. So the new special

prosecutor, he wanted to have me testify. He wanted to have me testify about the interview that I did with Remy about the perfect life. And actually, let's play a clip for you. This is with the special prosecutor, this clip. There was a star correspondent I was trying to bring into the mix, but she didn't want to play which I understand. Would that be um how did you plan to use Dateline in your prosecution? When you were interviewing him there comes a point where you ask him some question about you know he wasn't having a good life or things weren't going well for him. And he started laughing and he says to you, my life was great. I had a great job. I had a wife. I had a house. I had a girlfriend. And he's laughing while he's saying it. I don't care

what you say. That's not the reaction of someone who's being falsely accused. So I'm not sure what benefit the prosecution would have gotten. I mean, they could play the interview. That's available, right? Yeah, they could have found that interview. So what happened was, to take you back to the beginning, Remy was back in the Shenango County Jail. So my husband grew up in that county. And he gets a Facebook message from a New York state trooper from his hometown

saying, can we talk to you? And he didn't see it for a bit. And so then the same trooper contacts my husband's best friend, who's an FBI agent from their hometown and says, do you have Andrea's address? We need to subpoena her. And the FBI agent said, I'm not giving you her address. You can reach out to Tony, my husband, and you can work it out, but I'm not just going to hand over Andrea's address. So what happened was our Dateline attorneys ended up taking it from there because I contacted them and said what was going on. And so all weekend, we're waiting for these New York State troopers to show up at the house with the subpoena. And I told the kids, I said, you know, just if the police come to the door, like, don't worry, you know, we know that they're coming. And of course, they never came all weekend.

And you're standing there all weekend, right? Yes. Every time the doorbell rings, I'm like, is that the police? Tony's ready to shoot it on his iPhone, right? So they wanted me to testify in this new trial. And I believe what their plan was, was to introduce the interview and have me answer questions about it. And the prosecutor would not promise to us that he wouldn't ask more questions beyond just like what you're seeing in the clips that the jury would see. And as you know, as journalists, we don't want to be a part of the story. We want to cover the story. And there's laws that protect journalists from having to become a part of their own stories and give up

their material. And imagine if we're testifying against all the people we interview, I feel like no one would ever want to do an interview with us. Right, right. You know, if we were constantly testifying against them, you know, for the prosecution. We're not agents of law enforcement here. We're objective. Yeah. Also, I mean, it's not like you know something that could convict him.

It's not like you're hiding some secret that would get him locked up. I mean, you did an interview and the relevant part of the interview we put on television. They could use that. Exactly. So that ends up with you not having to testify, but also there wasn't a trial. Yes, it was ruled that I would not have to testify. Even if there had been a trial. Even if there had been a trial. You know, it's one of those things, of course, you have to testify. Even if there had been a trial? Even if there had been a trial.

You know, it's one of those things, of course, you want to help, but you also have a job to do. And your job is to be a journalist. And not take a side. I think that's exactly right. And not take a side. Exactly. Exactly. Not take a side.

Yeah. All right. Let's take some social media questions here. Miss Peepers writes to us and says, Andrea, I had no idea you worked in Toronto. Just listening to this podcast and I heard that you mentioned working in Toronto. How long were you in Toronto? I didn't actually work in Toronto. I worked in Barrie, Ontario, which is an hour north of Toronto. I worked there in 98, I think it was, 97, 98.

That was definitely one of my first jobs. And it was only an hour from where I grew up. And that was TV or radio or print? TV, TV. Of course, I was so green that all my friends got to make fun of me when they would see me screw up. In fact, there was one moment where I was anchoring the news and the prompter had broken. This is like every on-air person's nightmare, when you go to sleep and then the prompter breaks. And so they were trying to print out the scripts for me while this is all happening and the

printer's jamming. And i'm just like i don't know what to say i have no scripts i have no prompter i have nothing and apparently there was a nice phone chain going around with my friends who all started to tune in because it was such a train wreck and like you've got to watch this right now andrew is on tv and she doesn't know what to say oh that's great really enjoyed it Wow. Apparently watching me just like go down in a ball of flames. Yeah. My first on-air job was in Washington, D.C., where I had lived at that point. And my mom used to say to me, I saw you the other day.

You know, like I'm on the local news. I've been on, I was on the air like, you know, nine, 10, 11, 12 times a week. And I'd be like, oh. I saw you the other day. I saw you the other day. I'm like, oh, which story was it? air like, you know, nine, 10, 11, 12 times a week. And I'd be like, oh. I saw you the other day. I saw you the other day. I'm like, oh, which story was it? You know, mom. She'd be like, hmm.

You had a red tie on. You look terrific. I'm like, yeah, that's, like, you saw nothing that came out of my mouth resonated with you. Is that where we're going here? Yeah. Ronnie19001 writes in to say, glasses look cool, Josh. Thank you. I love the glasses.

Thank you. I love them too. See, you don't have enough personality, so you need even more personality with your glasses, right? Right. I need to ramp up the personality. I think they're cool. L Lions JB writes in and says, Andrea, in the episode, The Day Alyssa Disappeared, you can be seen wearing a blue leather jacket. My wife often accuses me of never listening to her. But as we watched that episode, I happen to recall that she said that she loved that jacket.

Where can I find it? Oh, I know. You know what? I'm trying to find it here. I don't know why this website where I got this jacket, the name always escapes me. L. Lyons JB, aka Jeff, you are to be commended for seeing something on television and remembering that your wife loved it and getting it. And if we had more husbands like that, Dateline might go off the air.

Oh, no. Right. So on that happy thought, that is Talking Dateline. Andrea, thank you. Thank you, Josh. Thanks, everybody, for listening to the podcasts and watching on TV. And remember, if you have any questions for us about our stories or anything, really, you can reach out to us on social at DatelineNBC.

That's at DatelineNBC. See you Fridays on Dateline on NBC.