Dateline NBC - Talking Dateline: The Premonition

Episode Date: January 29, 2025

Andrea Canning and Blayne Alexander sit down to talk about Andrea’s episode, “The Premonition.” In 2006, respected dentist and father, John Yelenic was found brutally murdered in his Blairsville, Pennsylvania, home. An investigation into his death revealed a contentious divorce, a messy custody battle, and a suspect with deep connections to law enforcement. Andrea and Blayne discuss the relationship troubles that led to John’s death and the two share stories about what brought them to Dateline. Plus, Andrea and Blayne play listeners’ questions submitted to @DatelineNBC and do their best to answer them. Learn more about the unresolved case of Olivia Lone Bear here: https://www.nbcnews.com/dateline/video/unresolved-the-case-of-olivia-lone-bear-119617605728

Hello, I'm Blaine Alexander and I'm here with Andrea Canning and we are Talking Dateline. So this episode is called The Premonition. It's about the 2006 murder of a beloved dentist, John Yelnick, who predicted his own death and the obstacles that investigators had to overcome in bringing his killer to justice. Now if you haven't listened to the show yet, it's the episode right below this one on our list of podcasts. So just choose from that. You can go there, listen to it, or if you want to watch it, of course, you can stream it on Peacock and then come right back here. When you come back, Andrea has an extra clip that she wants to play for us from her interview with Dr. Mark Perlin,

the chief scientific and executive Officer at Cybergenetics. And then later, of course, we're going to answer some of your questions from social media. So make sure you stay tuned for that. Okay, let's talk Dateline. Let's talk Dateline. Hey, Blaine. Hey, Andrea, how are you? I'm good. I haven't even seen you in the new year. So it's a little late, but happy new year, Blaine. Thank you. It's always appropriate and happy new year, Blaine. Thank you. It's always appropriate. And happy new year back to you.

Yeah. I have to tell you that this story, it literally had me hooked from the very first line, right? To say, hey, I paid you $10,000 to investigate my murder, and I'm not dead yet. That's wild. It is wild. And it's something we see in different forms on Dateline, where someone writes a letter to themselves or they write

it to someone else or they tell someone, you know, if something happens to me, you know, so this was more uncommon because he's paying money and he's actually like enlisting the help of his attorney. But definitely over the years, people have predicted their own murders on Dateline, sadly. Um, there were so many parts of the story that were just gripping. I think past the premonition, the person who found John's body, his nine-year-old neighbor, Zach,

found his body in this really gory scene. I just... What was it like talking to him? Of course, many years later, but that was just a hard thing. Well, it's always horrible when a child has to be the one to find someone who has died. It happens too often where children are dragged into these things, where they have to see these horrific things that they can't unsee. And imagine how that shapes your life at that point, that you've seen something so gory and awful and, and you're just a child. I mean, you're forced to grow up, right? You're forced to in that moment grow up much faster

and much more immediately than you would ever expect. Right? Yeah. I mean, in this case, the neighbor was, you know, kind of collateral damage, right? That he had to be the one to find him. To find him. Yeah. And he was going over to look for a playmate. He was looking for a son, JJ, to play together. That one touched my heart. Like, oh, he just wanted to find a friend and that's what he found, my gosh. I know. I want to talk about John, 39 years old

and clearly successful, right? I mean, he'd wanted all his life to be a dentist. He's always on the honor roll. He's a partner at his own dental practice where he used to go growing up. Like it had to have been a really interesting full circle moment for him. Yeah, I mean, he put his mind to something. He set out to do what he used to go growing up. Like it had to have been a really interesting full circle moment for him. Yeah. I mean, he put his mind to something he set out to do what he wanted to do and

he made it happen. I'm curious about full circle moments. I was thinking about this. I mean, it's something he always wanted to do. He was able to do it. Did you always know that you wanted to be a journalist? Like, is that kind of, did you start off intentionally on this path? No. Absolutely not. No, I think I've told this story before. I'm going to date myself here, but I also lived in the country. We had three channels.

And after school, six o'clock rolls around, all I want to do is watch TV. And all that would come on was the news. And I'm like, darn news. You know, this is all that's on my three channels. What am I supposed to go do? Read a book? And then I went on a shoot with a TV commercial. And then I was like, I'm kind of interested in TV.

And then that just kind of unraveled into TV news. And then now I'm like a news junkie. That's all I watch now is like during the day is like news, news, news. That is so fascinating. But at first you're like, no, absolutely not. Oh gosh, no, no. I just couldn't, what about you? Were you like on your dad's lap going,

I'm gonna be a reporter daddy. Yes, I was the exact opposite. Like I grew up watching Today Show. Like I would watch Tom Brokaw on the news as like a third grader, like a second grader. Like I loved the news. And I think that at some point I realized, okay, like the news tells people when things are important.

Like that was kind of my realization. So I identified with that full circle moment, like, oh gosh, I always want to be on the news and then to do it. So I definitely identified with John on that. It had to have been so cool to go back and actually work for that practice. Let's talk about him meeting Michelle. He meets Michelle and they, I mean, he falls head over heels pretty quickly. Like, I wonder how he felt.

Do you think that he felt he was lucky to be with her? When you kind of talk to his friends, did you get that impression that he felt lucky to have found somebody like Michelle? I think he was like, you know, I got the Budweiser girl. I got the homecoming queen. You know, right? There's a lot of guys who would be excited about that, right? That they got the girl that all the guys want.

Because the Budweiser girls back in the day, I don't know if they still have them, but they were popular. Michelle was definitely attractive. And you know. Yeah. And I think that also kind of speaks to just the dynamics of their relationship, right?

Like Michelle already had two kids, but John was all in. And not everybody would necessarily sign up for that. Right? also kind of speaks to just the dynamics of their relationship, right? Like Michelle already had two kids, but John was all in and not everybody would necessarily sign up for that, right? I mean, to come in and kind of parent to other kids. I wonder, I mean, I feel like that kind of tells us a lot about the person, the type of person that John was. Yeah, I think John wanted a family so badly

and he certainly wanted a child with Michelle, but I think this was a way to just kickstart that family that he'd wanted so badly. He stepped right in as a father figure to her children. And he was in love with her and she was a package deal. Yeah, especially after having lost his own parents, right? This kind of longing for family or longing for his dad. Yeah. And then his mom, of course, later in life. But yeah, like losing his dad, you know, when

he was just a baby. Absolutely. So he was able to be a dad to her kids and then ultimately to their child that they adopted from Russia. And speaking of JJ, I mean, when they have JJ, they have now their three children and it really seemed like everything was falling into place. I remember looking at the home that they had and I said, this is gorgeous. Obviously this was before Instagram, this is early 2000s. But when you think about seeing people's lives on social media and thinking, oh my God, this

is perfect. They would have been the people that you would have looked at and said, oh, they're perfect. They adopted a child. They're so cute. To go from that to this very, very bitter divorce. There's certainly a lot in there that we'll never know, but it was just really kind of an interesting fall, unfortunately. And infidelity on both sides. Yeah. Yeah. That was one of the points. Michelle admits that she cheated on John, but then he admits the same and she just loses it. Talk about that dynamic. What is it? Don't throw stones at glass houses. I just feel like if, if you're going to have an affair,

then you really can't judge your partner for having an affair. Absolutely. You know, I want to talk about kind of this heated custody battle for JJ. JJ really becomes at the center of this, right? Um, one of the people that you interviewed was Maggie, one of John's friends who said that at one point he was crying on the phone to her saying that he didn't think that he would see his son again. And that's just, you know, heartbreaking for any parent. It seems like a lot of these cases do stem from custody battles. Yeah. Like, what if it was amicable? What if there was, like, a different way to handle it?

Could his life have been spared? When we come back, we have an extra clip from Dr. Mark Perlin, the chief scientific and executive officer at Cybergenetics. His technology played a crucial role in solving John's murder. I want to talk about Corporal Janelle Lydic. She was kind of the MVP of this story. And I was so, I've got a couple of questions about her. I just was really struck by her instincts, even though this was her first murder case, right? Yeah. Yeah, it was. So the first thing that really stood out to me is that she gets the call. She's on like a family outing, right? And she's got her husband, she's got her kids in the car.

Yeah, four kids. Four kids! And they just turn around and go to the crime scene. It's like a family field trip. I know, right? I was surprised by that. I know, I know. Yeah, like it's amazing.

She just was on it. I remember when I had to go to an interview at a jail and I had my kids with me because we were doing like a handoff or something. Somebody was coming to get them because we had been somewhere. And they were always asking me when they were little, what does a jail look like? What is a jail? And I'm like, well, here you go. We're at the jail now. We're not going inside. You're not. I think a lot of moms would identify with that, right? Yes, exactly what you said. There's a

handoff. At some point you have to do something. But I also thought that it was interesting because it kind of showed her dedication to the job. She was like, I want to get there. I want to be there immediately. I don't want to kind of waste that time going home. And then at one point she kind of describes how she's standing in between the car and the house to block her kids. And you know, we went in that house, we shot in that house And it's always like adds sort of that extra layer of chilling moments when you get access to the house where the murder happened or the field or whatever it may be. Because you're really going back to that moment exactly where you can see that person like going through what they went through.

Of course. But I want to talk about the psychics. The psychic sisters. Oh my gosh. The psychics. We talk about the psychics. Have you ever had psychics involved in a story before? I'm trying to think if I've interviewed other psychics. I probably have at some point, but no one stands out more than the sisters. Oh my gosh.

I mean, I still remember sitting there outside talking to them. They were funny, but they said that they felt a dog tag. They were thinking military, but they weren't that far off. I mean, police, military, maybe that's where they were headed. It's so interesting to me. I think that time and time again, you see people when they turn to psychics or just some sort of kind of unexplained anything, people are really kind of at their most desperate point. They want to know, they want answers, they've gone through everything and they're like, well, maybe these people know something, right? That's kind of what we saw. But then there's people who actually believe in

psychics as well. So maybe they're not desperate, they just actually really believe. And the power of that. Yeah. as well, so maybe they're not desperate, they just actually really believe. And the power of that. The power of that, I mean, I've been to psychics in my life. I wouldn't say that I'm like some huge psychic believer or regular visitor to a psychic, but I remember it's so funny, I still have the piece of paper. The psychic, this was before I was married,

she said, she was writing everything down, and she said, she said, your husband is up in the air. And I was like, well, up in the air, she said, your husband is up in the air. And I was like, well, up in the air, yeah. Of course he's up in the air. Like everyone's husband is like up in the air if you're single, right? Like, and then I ended up marrying a pilot.

A pilot, yes, that's amazing. He was up in the air. Isn't that funny? So it's always interesting to hear people's, you know, experiences with that. Yeah. I'm glad we interviewed them because we don't usually get to interview psychics. Sometimes police will, like in this, the corporal ITEC was like, you know what, whatever helps at this point. Exactly. And why not at this point, right?

Yeah. Yeah. Why not? It can't hurt. So let's talk about the evidence. The bloody footprints at the scene, that was a big deal. They're brought up, of course, in the trial. The state calls the director of ASICS, the tennis shoe company, to talk about the shoe. So first off, imagine you're the head of ASICS and you get a subpoena to come testify at a murder trial. That had to have been shocking.

Yeah, that was interesting because those shoes were not available for purchase in the area. And then they, of course, they find out that Foley has ordered those shoes through like a law enforcement type website where you can, you know, I mean, wow. What are the odds? What are the odds that you commit a crime and you're wearing these shoes that are so rare? He had to have been kicking himself for that one. Right. And I'm going to use a pun, gumshoe detective work at its best. Absolutely. It was such a big piece of evidence though. Corporal Lydic, she had some interesting

instincts, the fingernails. She kind of kept them in an evidence refrigerator just because she thought, eh, maybe I should just hang on to these. Well, I think it was that whole, you know, he's a state trooper and she's being told not to interview him or Michelle, which is just odd. That baffles me to this day. And also apparently trooper Foley would make comments like, you know, I wish he was dead and things like that. And they're going through a divorce.

I mean, hello. That's the first place you look. So, you know, putting those, the fingernails, like I think she just had that instinct. I think she was just nervous that given his connection to the state police, like I'm gonna keep these a little closer. So cyber genetics was also presented during the trial.

They've been now used to kind of solve a plethora of cases, right? But at the time, this was something that was really groundbreaking, this kind of DNA technology. Their technology showed that the DNA under John's fingernail had a 189 billion to one match to Kevin's DNA. And that was huge. That compares to the FBI's match of like one in 13,000. Yeah. DNA is an investigator's best friend. Those fingernails just became everything. So we're going to hear a little bit more from your interview with Dr. Mark Perlin, the chief scientific and executive officer at Cybergenetics. He's talking here about how he defended his

work in the courtroom. You have that hesitation though of how am I going to convince these people? I'm a scientist. You know, it's a different animal going into a courtroom. The Foley testimony happened in two stages. The first was a hearing where my only audience was a judge. And what I was armed with was scientific studies and metaphors and translating for the judge that the science predicted exactly what we found. So the judge obviously agreed and allowed it into trial? Yes.

A judge is one thing, a jury is another. Correct. And so now the jury was 12 interested students as opposed to one. Did you have any doubt that the DNA found under John Yelnick's fingernails belonged to Kevin Foley? Mathematically based on our studies, no. You were convinced you had your math? The chance of it not being him was so small based on the match statistic that it was not feasible.

Interesting. Yeah, very. You know, I think about DNA technology and nowadays it's used all the time to solve cold cases. But just kind of hearing from him, I mean, that was really stunning when you talk about that level of certainty. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, that's hard to get around. Yeah, the best evidence you have. So at the end, I mean, that's hard to get around. Yeah, the best evidence you have. So at the end, I mean, Kevin was sentenced to life in prison. I think when we first started hearing about Kevin in this episode, we heard John's cousin say that she thought, hey, he's going to be a good influence on the kids.

And one of John's friends even told you at some point that it was hard to see Kevin as the bad guy. I'm curious, where did things go so wrong? Well, something we see a lot and, you know, in these stories is where the, we'll just use mom as an example. The mom tells the new boyfriend that, you know, her ex is a monster and he's doing these horrible things. And a lot of times the mother will get the new boyfriend, new husband riled up, right? Like he did these awful things. And that could be the case here.

Doesn't excuse anything. Doesn't mean you can kill someone, but it certainly could get somebody fired up about another person. But there were no charges brought against Michelle. Yeah. And I think that doesn't sit well with some people. What happened when you and our team reached out to her?

She did not want to talk to us. But I think for John's friends, they were upset. They really felt like she got away scot-free. That's their opinion. I could see how they could still feel some frustration there. Yeah. Let's talk real quick about John. You ended this story on a sound bite that I thought was just so beautifully poignant.

I was actually watching this with Jay, my husband, and we were kind of doing our own things. He's listening and he hears the sound bite. His friend, Dennis, said, if there was ever a person that I knew that deserved to die peacefully in bed, surrounded by a loving family, it was John. And my husband goes, oh, that says it all. Right? I mean, it really did. I think we all hope to be kind of spoken about that way. Yeah. And he got anything but that. And that's not what he deserved.

Okay. And after your break, we will be back here to answer some of your questions from social media. We have some fun social media questions, and these are audio questions, which makes it all the more fun. Here's Allie from X, formerly Twitter, and here's what she wanted to know. Is there a case or mystery that you wish Dateline would cover but hasn't yet? Hmm. Well, we usually do a lot of them. We do, yeah, we do a lot of them. There's one case that I would like to do Olivia Lone Bear.

She is an indigenous woman that we talked about on an episode that I did. She was found in a lake in her car in the passenger seat. And that case has gone unsolved, but I would like to do that as a full date line. And I would like to see it solved. Yeah, absolutely. You know, if there's one that comes to my mind, very, very different from our typical date line. Who killed Tupac?

Who killed Tupac and Biggie? I would love to see that as a date line. Isn't somebody behind bars for that? For Tupac, yes. For Tupac? But there's still a lot of unanswered questions about it. And I think it can make a great, I mean, there's so many twists and turns in that story. And then the Biggie case, you know, as long as we're bringing out on date lined cases,

that would be an interesting one. Those would make good episodes. So we've got another one. This is from Instagram. This is from Taviba Gordon Bennett with a question. I just got done listening to an episode of Talking Dateline. It was Keith Morrison who I love and Josh Mankiewicz who I also love. They were trying to be funny with each other.

Like Keith Morrison called Josh like an infidel and Josh was like, yep, totally an infidel. But there was like so many moments of that. It felt really like almost like, do they really not get along? Or do they get along? Are they frenemies? It was an interesting back and forth and now I'm not sure. And I want Andrea Canning to chime in and like, let me know if they're actual frenemies. That was a great question. No, I can absolutely tell you that they are friends and they love rubbing each other and they love getting into these conversations with each other. And I've

been around them so many times and I have never seen anything but love between those two. And only Josh and Keith, right? Like they're the only ones who can do that and it's hilarious. I love it. No, that's a fun question. Thank you for that. Well, Andrea, I think that's it for talking Dateline. We've talked a lot. It's been great to talk with you. We have, Blaine. Thank you. Of course. Thank you. And thanks everyone for listening to this week's episode. Remember, if you have any questions for us about our stories or any of the cases we should cover,

reach out to us on social at Dateline NBC or send us an audio message for your chance to be featured right here on our next Talking Dateline episode. And of course, we will see you Fridays on Dateline on NBC.