Dateline NBC - Talking Dateline: The Secret in Black Rock Canyon

Episode Date: June 26, 2024

Andrea Canning talks to Keith Morrison about his episode, “The Secret in Black Rock Canyon.”  In 2006, 16-year-old Cassie Jo Stoddart was found stabbed to death at a relative’s home in Pocatello, Idaho. Detectives quickly learned that Cassie’s last day alive was nothing short of a real-life horror movie, with video to prove it, and the filmmakers-turned-killers were not at all who they expected. Keith and Andrea discuss his interview with one of Cassie’s killers and Keith shares an extra clip from his interview with Dr. James Garabino, a psychologist and expert on teen violence. Plus, Keith and Andrea are joined by the detective who investigated Cassie’s murder, retired Captain John Ganske.Listen to the full episode of "The Secret in Black Rock Canyon" here: https://link.chtbl.com/dateline_podcast

Hey everyone, I'm Andrea Canning and we are Talking Dateline. Today I'm here with Keith Morrison. Hey Keith. Hi Andrea. Good to see you. This episode is called The Secret in Black Rock Canyon. If you haven't seen it, 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 an extra clip that he's going to play for us that didn't make the show from his interview with an expert on teen violence. Plus, we're going to be joined later by Captain John Gansky, who led the investigation of Cassie's murder. To recap, in September 2006, 16-year-old Cassie Jo Stoddart was found stabbed to death at her relative's home in Pocatello, Idaho. Detectives passed through various possible suspects, including Cassie's boyfriend, but they finally landed on two of her classmates, Tori Adamczyk and Brian Draper. These two teenage boys were so obsessed with violence and horror movies, they wanted to make a real life horror movie of their own and chose Cassie as their first victim. This is a disturbing story, Keith. Yes, this was truly a disturbing story

where we hear about kids turning on each other and doing terrible things to each other, often sometimes killing each other for reasons nobody, no adult can understand. It's truly bizarre. The thing about this one is that I wonder often is if Captain Gansky, who we'll be talking to in a bit, had not made the discoveries he made, had he not gone out to the desert, had he not managed to persuade Brian to talk, had he not found the tape in which the boys are talking about what their intentions are and then what they had already done, would these two have managed to escape justice after all you know if brian the one who confessed had been more like tori the one who was advised to

say nothing and did say nothing yeah would they have been able to solve the crime right and also cassie's boyfriend matt at you know at the very end says oh by way, these two guys were over, if he had not said that, as you said in the piece, I mean, would they have ever been led to these two guys? Hard to know. And Matt, of course, initially looked like the right suspect. He was the last one known to have seen her. He was the boyfriend. He did some things that seemed odd to the investigators that night. So they were going in that direction until they heard about these other fellas. You always feel so bad for people like Matt, you know, when the finger's pointing at them and they actually didn't do it.

And, you know, they're saying that he seemed flat. He didn't have enough emotion. And I mean, he's a teenage boy whose girlfriend was just murdered and he was with her right before it happened. I don't know. How does a teenage boy react to something like that? They all do it differently, I would think. Right. And why did he wait until after his polygraph to mention Tori and Brian? Did it just hit him later or was he protecting them? What was that about? As far as we know, he was not protecting them. As far as we know, he thought they left and wasn't aware that they had returned. Now, they did see him the day after the murder occurred.

Oh, they did? I guess just to make sure that either, you know, there were some people who wondered if maybe they intended to complete the double kill that they talked about or whether they just wanted to make sure that they wouldn't be given away. Oh, that's so, that's really creepy that they went. It's almost like returning to the scene of the crime in a way. I know that's not exactly what happened, but it kind of feels like that. A little bit, yeah.

And maybe trying to find out from Matt, like, what do you know? What are you, you know, does he know it was us? There could have been some of that going on. Sure, yeah. And poor Matt being a target of this and just happened to leave. Right. Which was a terrible thing, of course, that he was a target. But there were more there supposedly um the police

say there was a kill list that there were other names other people do you did do the police think that they were going to continue had they gotten away with this first one well what becomes apparent when you listen to their tape and when you see what they did with it is that they they committed that kill they were like little hyenas afterwards celebrating and hooping it up um but in the course of driving from where they parked their car to where they ended up putting the videotape they must have decided oh wait a minute reality began to hit them and they decided the thing to do they was bury the evidence and burn it if you possibly can. Because they didn't want to be caught. I can tell you that I, and maybe some people would think I was naive, but I questioned him pretty thoroughly when I talked to Brian.

Again, years after this happened, he'd already been in prison for years. And he knows he isn't going to get out no matter what he says, whether he apologizes or not, whether he stresses remorse or not, he's there. And he's accepted that. He wouldn't want anything else. He doesn't believe he deserves to be let out of prison. He is now fully cognizant of what he did. He's aware of how terrible it was and about the pain and the heartache that he brought to other people. The other participant in this murder was also convicted and sent off to prison for life.

The two at the beginning blamed each other, and Torrey still blames Brian all these years later. We're told, but he wouldn't talk to us. Where Brian is, his heart's out there on his sleeve, and he's saying, I recognize the terrible thing I did. Not that it's going to undo it, but at least there was that. At least there's something, you know, and maybe all that time in prison, someone can change and think about, you know, what they've done. Well, and that's, I think, why he did the interview. interview whenever i see interviews with you and defendants i think to myself does that defendant or that killer say to themselves how did i get here where i'm now in a room with keith morrison or on the phone with keith morrison talking about this heinous crime i mean it's it's almost it's very strange for me, too.

But one of my fictional idols is Inspector Magray of the Pharaoh's Police Force, the Simenon novels. And his motto was, you know, judge not, but understand. So even as a cop, he wasn't trying to judge people for the bad things that they had done. He was trying to figure out why the heck they did it. Just wanted to understand. And then he could look at somebody in the eye as another human being and send them off to prison. Not as a devil, but as a human who did a bad thing. And that's kind of how I feel when I interview people. And that is probably the same with you, Andrea.

Yeah, that's what I was just going to bring up is like probably 98% of the interviews we do with convicted killers or, you know, denials and lies. And then that small percent, that 2% or whatever that says they did it, I find a lot of times I say, why? And often they don't know. I mean, in this case, you know, he did give some glimpses of, you know, his childhood and the way he was treated. What was refreshing in this case is that although he did say yes, you know, he had this problem and that problem as he was growing up, he wasn't trying to use it as an excuse.

He talked about what the issues were, but he said, I did it, you know, my responsibility. Mostly he wanted to be able to get a message to Cassie's family about the extent of his remorse and how he feels. But some people who commit terrible acts like that, even if they seem like they're the most evil people on the planet, can actually feel remorse later on, can recognize the terrible things that they have done, and try to do whatever they can from wherever they are, whatever prison cell they may be living in, to make amends. Yeah. Okay, after the break, we'll be back with an extra clip from Keith's interview with psychologist, Dr. James Garabino. This story was so chilling and it actually reminded me of a

movie from a while back called Murder by Numbers with Sandra Bullock and Ryan Gosling. Did you see it, Keith? I confess, I don't think I did. You should watch it. It's about two high school students who had an obsession in this movie with wanting to kill someone and get away with it. And so they planned this whole thing that they would murder another teenager at the school. They would do it together. And it reminded me so much of this. And if you haven't seen the movie, I urge anyone to watch it.

It's a very good, you know, 90s crime thriller, maybe early 2000s. But it's a good movie and it's very, very similar. In this case, these two guys seem to be so obsessed with their horror movies that they want to make one of their own. But also, they saw reality in a different way than most people do. They saw everything they did as being for an audience somehow. And when do you cross that line of that you're into horror movies, and now you're going to make a horror movie that's real. And you actually have sound from an interview you did with Dr. James Garbarino, a psychologist who specializes in teen violence. And this is an exclusive clip that didn't make it into the final episode. Let's take a listen to what Dr. Garbarino had to say about this teen violence. The more I interviewed kids who committed murders, the more I got a sense that they do have this idea that there's an audience out there where negative celebrity becomes, is better than no celebrity at all. The things that these boys were watching,

you know, the horror movie genre, which a lot of people, you know, like and don't have, it doesn't inspire them to dark thoughts, but it did them. Have you formed any opinion about these kinds of influences? Well, I think that they are a social toxin. This is sort of corrupting for everybody, but for some individuals, it's really dangerous because it really distorts their fundamental connection with reality, their moral connection with reality, their social connection. Most of the kids you see are never going to murder, but it is enough to push them over the edge. That's really chilling what he said about negative celebrity is better or is good enough, you know, even if it's... And that's pretty common now, isn't it?

And that's becoming more common all the time. It doesn't matter if you're a jerk. When kids see their political leaders and others in society acting like jerks for the effect it has, it wouldn't be long before they start to do the same thing. And some of them who are troubled and don't get the fact that this is all just good fun, do things. Did the doctor say anything about signs to recognize from your kids if you feel like they're acting weird or they're watching too many of these movies or getting too obsessed with them? Well, beyond the old-fashioned advice to always be aware of what your kids are thinking or trying to as much as you can, but it's not always possible. And sometimes on those very rare occasions when one person who has troubles for secret reasons

connects with another person who has also trouble for those same secret reasons, that's when something happens. Yeah, and they're not going to be like, hey, mom and dad, I'm obsessed with horror movies and want to kill someone. You know, this is not something your child is probably going to share with you. moments, but it involves two moments, was in the beginning when you show the video of Cassie, and she's at her locker, and she kind of smiles and says hi or whatever. And you don't think too much of it. You're like, okay, well, good, I'm seeing her. And then that video, when you play it again, this time with context of the reason that they were taking that video. I get chills just thinking about it because I thought, oh my gosh, that seemingly innocent video at the beginning of the show

now represents the beginning of their movie and her murder, which is just, wow. That's one of the most jaw-dropping moments i've seen in a dateline to be honest with you and what makes it even more disturbing is that cassie was one of the few people in the high school who was nice to brian not that anyone obviously deserves to be murdered ever but you'd almost think they would go for someone who was mean to them a bully or you know someone that had made their lives nothing to do with that. Nothing, nothing, whatever to do with that. It was a target of opportunity. They found out where she was going to be. She and her boyfriend were going

to be alone. They thought they would do it too for her, you see. Yeah. Now we're going to take a quick break and then we'll be back with a special guest, former police captain John Ganske. We're doing something a little different today. We have a special guest that is joining us for Talking Dateline, and he was in your story, Captain Ganske. Indeed. So we're going to bring him into the conversation. Oh, there he is. Hello.

Hey, how are you doing? Nice to see you. Well, well, well, what's happened to you in the years since? Are you still doing the same thing? No, I retired a couple of years ago. And so I'm just living in Sun Valley, Idaho and just trying to enjoy the next part of my life. Beautiful area. Yeah, it is.

All right, John. Keith, you want to throw out the first question? Well, I mean, we've been, I don't know whether you've heard our conversation, we've been yammering on at the edges of this thing. And, you know, from the outside, it's sometimes a little opaque and you can't quite figure out why people do certain things. And from inside the investigation, do you think you've got a clearer picture of what was going on there with those two kids? Yeah, no, I think so. I think we got to see kind of their, you know, their past, how they come up and kind of maybe what brought them to that point in their life. We found kind of how they were brought up

and how they grew up and kind of maybe one or the other of them was a little more destined to do that. And I think to me, the whole dynamic of their two personalities together really made this happen. Who do you believe was leading this horrible journey that they were on? Well, I feel like it was Adam Cech. I feel like that he had the personality, he kind of hatched the idea. And Draper, he was more of a follower, more of a type of a pleaser.

And he has been looking you know for somebody to you know to follow a bit and and that's what brought out i think his personality yeah i think brian was a bit infatuated with her yeah um he was he was actually he liked her and but he he resented the fact that she had a boyfriend and so it was this kind of love-hate type deal going on with him. And so that was, I think, part of the trigger, perhaps with helping him over the edge to actually go forward with this. When you began investigating this, what was that break you got that led you to the trove of evidence out in the country. Well, you know, eventually we came across a stash site where they found a videotape.

You know, I think that's what made this whole case so interesting to other, you know, so much attention is the fact, oh my gosh, they actually videotaped to a certain, their confession and intent to commit a crime. They tried to burn it. They did. And how did they mess that up? Well, it was a juvenile mistake, basically. They had stopped by the store to buy an accelerant to burn it, and they bought hydrogen peroxide instead of alcohol. And of course, as we know, hydrogen peroxide doesn't burn too well. And I think to the layperson, if you were to look at this videotape, you know, in the condition we found it in initially, they would have said, oh, there's no way, you know, they're going to get it.

But we fortunately had a few people able to get the tape cleaned up and able to view it again, which is kind of a miracle in itself. It was. And it was surprisingly clear, actually. It was. Yeah. What did you think, John, when you started playing it and you're seeing what you're seeing? When we first sat down, we didn't know what we were going to see. We were kind of a little bit nervous because, you know, we didn't want to see what, you know, we didn't want to see anyway.

And yeah, so we were kind of preparing ourselves for, you know, maybe the actual, you know, we didn't want to see anyway. And yeah, so we were kind of preparing ourselves for, you know, maybe the actual, you know, murder take place here. Was the murder on it? It was not. It was, no, it wasn't. No, it was, it was close. You know, it was shortly after and it was a video themselves shortly before. And then the only missing part was the actual deed itself.

Isn't the irony of this? Didn't they want to make a horror film and then they don't actually film the horror? Right, right. Which I think that became, you know, perhaps a defense, you know, later. It didn't match up with the facts.

So Torrey wasn't as cooperative and Brian basically gave it away, right? Yeah, I think early on, neither one of them were very cooperative, but the one that kind of prevailed to be a little bit more cooperative was Brian. And in my opinion, it was because of his mother. His mother was there. She was a driving factor between, you know, getting him to, you know, you really, as much as she hated it, she knew that the truth needed to come out.

I can't imagine what it'd be like for a parent. It's so hard, but absolutely, she did the right thing. She did. And I think the dynamic between the parents' reaction to Adam Cech was just 180 degrees different. They went out of their way to protect him, perhaps, you know? Watching the interrogation video, I was waiting for the mom to have more of a reaction, and she's just sitting there. And then finally, she kind of does something with her hands or whatever. But I'm thinking, if that was me and my kids in an

interrogation room for possibly committing a murder, I would not be able to sit still. I'd be crying. I'd be losing my mind. You know, like her reaction to me was so bizarre. Yeah, we really had a difficult time even trying to get them there. You know, we wanted a chance just to sit down with them. And reluctantly, you know, at the end they decided to, you know, come in and have a brief conversation. And, you know, we knew that was a big chance for us.

We're going to get anything. We've got to get it now. Yeah. And something that Keith brought up in the show that I thought of as I was thinking about this poor girl, about Cassie, was the fear that, you know, I mean, you imagine your house sitting, you're that young, you're alone. And even if they're just there to scare you, and that's it, we know this went obviously so much further. And, you know, she probably had that initial really scared and then, oh, it's, I know them. You know, she probably had that moment where, oh my gosh, it's them. And then it turns into what it turned into. I mean, oh, that poor girl.

Yeah. I think that's the thing that haunts me, you know, to this day is just absolute torture. Yes. You know, that both of them, even when Matt, her boyfriend was there and there were all these noises in the basement, the dogs were alerting. If it would have been me, I'd have been that age. I'd have been, I'd have been out age i'd have been i'd have been out of there yeah and the power goes out like i he should have insisted on her leaving with him he tried and i think i think the mother best you know said it later she could hear because this was a conversation was on a hard line at the house and she could hear

you know cassie in the background and you know matt know, Matt's trying to say, come on, you can go with us. And she's, no, you know, I committed to staying here for the weekend. And I'm going to finish what I started. Well, as her mom said, it's Pocatello. What happens in Pocatello? You know, even if you're hearing weird noises, you still probably think you're fine. Sure. But it also tells you what kind of a girl Cassie was.

Strong. All that much worse to hear. Have you ever had anything like this before in your career? No, nothing, nothing. You know, young people, you know, killing young people and, you know, seeing triple homicides and, you know, children killed, but it's like, oh, but this was a bit different just, and I think part of it was just the, you know, the horror thinking about, you know, children killed, but it's like, oh, but this was a bit different. And I think part of it was just the, you know, the horror thinking about, you know, what she might've gone through.

I think that's the thing that keeps, you know, coming back to me anyway. And her poor mom having to think about what she went through. And just sweet people, nice people, you know, just nice, decent people. And it's unfortunate, right? Yeah. When you think about the horror movie too, you know, just nice, decent people. It's unfortunate, right? Yeah. When you think about the horror movie too, you know, you always scream at the TV or the screen, you know, don't run in the house or run away. Or, you know, you're always thinking, right? Like they're running in the wrong direction.

And that feels like Cassie, like run, you know, you had these signs. Right. Yeah. Because she was so nice and inviting. She unfortunately became, you know, their prime victim. Yeah. Yeah, of course. All right. Well, John, thank you. Thank you so much for this.

This has been so interesting. Somebody who actually knows what he's talking about is a very nice person to have on the show for us. I appreciate seeing you guys. Yeah. Yeah, you too. And thank you for all your insights into this case. That is Talking Dateline for this week. Remember, if you have any questions for us about stories or about Dateline,

you can reach out to us on social media at Dateline NBC. Dateline will be off this Friday during NBC's coverage of the Olympic trials, but we'll have a new episode of Talking Dateline for you next Wednesday. If that's not soon enough, check out our new podcast, Dateline True Crime Weekly, which drops every Thursday. This week, we'll be digging into the trial of Karen Reed. She's accused of murdering her police officer boyfriend by running him over with her car, something she denies. The case has gone to the jury, and we'll have the verdict for you when it happens. That's it for Talking Dateline this week. See you next time. she denies. The case has gone to the jury and we'll have the verdict for you when it happens.

That's it for Talking Dateline this week. See you next time.