Dateline NBC - Talking Dateline: The Sisterhood

Episode Date: May 22, 2024

Josh Mankiewicz and Keith Morrison sit down to talk about Keith’s episode, “The Sisterhood.” In March 2015, Stacy Feldman was found dead in the bathtub of her Colorado home. Stacy’s death was initially ruled “undetermined” until someone with a fresh set of eyes took a closer look and determined Stacy had been murdered. Keith tells Josh about the band of women who helped bring Stacy’s killer to justice and the two discuss the issue of domestic violence that is often in the background of Dateline episodes. Keith also plays a web-exclusive clip from his interview with the founders of the Training Institute of Strangulation Prevention.Listen to the full episode of “The Sisterhood” here: https://link.chtbl.com/dl_thesisterhoodResources: National Domestic Violence Hotline [phone]-SAFE (7233) orwww.thehotline.org

Hi, everybody. I'm Josh Mankiewicz, and we are Talking Dateline. And today, our guest is Keith Morrison. Hi, Keith. Hello, Josh. How are you today? Okay, that was great. What do I say?

I say hello. You said hello, Keith. I said hello, Josh. It's starting right away. This episode is called The Sisterhood. Now, if you haven't listened to it or if you haven't watched it on television, the link to the episode is in the description to this episode. So go there, listen to it. You can also watch it on TV or stream it on Peacock and then come back here.

Now, today, Keith has a clip that he's going to play for us, interviews that did not make the episode. And then later, we will answer some of your questions about this broadcast from social media so stick around for that all right here we go um it really is quite a journey at least in the mind of the viewer of bob from kind of like you know good guy husband to sort of hapless loser who can't really hold a job to, you know, widower to possible murderer. No one will hear you if you scream. I mean, you know, he's going from Fred Flintstone to Hannibal Lecter. There is a character who appears often in fiction and more often than we would like to think in real life as well. And that character is one who puts on a pretty good impression

in the first place and can don all kinds of disguises. But when it comes right down to it, he's a selfish person who really is not very ambitious about working and supporting a family. He just wants stuff. And that appears to have been what this situation was. He doesn't clean out the garage. He just pretends to clean out the garage. He doesn't go to work, really. He just kind of keeps a job enough that he can say he works. And at the same time, he is a very controlling individual in the marriage. I want my candy. I want my girls. I want to have something going on outside the marriage. And so even after he murdered her, even after he was on bail awaiting trial, he was he was going for bicycle rides around the neighborhood where he wasn't supposed to be going and then also alleged to have done i have to say that using grief counseling as a place to hook up with people uh would for me fall very near the top of the list um taking

advantage of people who are certainly at their worst yeah well it and and all you know when you know what happened back at the beginning which was that that he killed her, and then he was going to a kind of a religious school and talking to people who run the religious school and picking up his children and bringing them home from school. He was able to hide himself during those occasions, and nobody knew otherwise, frankly. He then put on such a show in his 911 call that that's one thing that the initial responders were a little suspicious of. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine. Please help me, please. Help is on the way, sir.

That's one thing I want to talk about is that 911 call. I thought it was great the way you play it at the beginning, and then at the end you do the analysis of it with people who have listened to it more carefully. He sounds like he's calling for help help but he's really talking about himself uh which i thought was uh was interesting and he's using that he's using his hysteria as a way of covering the fact that he's not actually doing anything it reminded me a little bit of right the uh the ivf doctor that you did the story about. A little bit. Although the IVF doctor put on his, if he made an error in that 911 call, at least one that made people suspicious, it was that he adopted too much of the examination room attitude. My patient.

And yeah, I'm a doctor and I'm going to keep my cool. Bob's hysterical, but he's not actually doing anything. No, he actually wasn't doing anything. And as we now know, those bruises on her body came from some other activity altogether. And again, if we're to believe prosecutors, and clearly the jury did, then she was already dead at that point. Not dying, not breathing her last. She was already gone at that point. She dying, not breathing her last. She was already gone at that point. In which case-

She'd been gone for some time. Yeah. In which case Bob did not, I mean, again, if you're going to sell the idea that you are trying to bring this person back, this person you have just killed, you're going to have to do a better job of it than that. That is true. You had great interviews in this. Her friends were great.

I thought the stuff about, you know, the dress, which they sort of loaned back and forth, the sisterhood of the traveling dress. I thought that was something. And the detective, I thought was terrific because he felt it just like everybody else did. He carried that case around with him for a long time. And I think it bothered him more deeply than I may have realized when we began to talk. Yeah. And Susan McBride, who, you know, I think Bob thought, you know, okay, well,

that didn't work out. I'm never going to hear from her again. And she ends up like sort of driving a stake into him. Oh, yeah, she was absolutely the key to the case. Without her, it wouldn't happen. But again, you know, it's the happenstance of things, right? If she just, you know, not kept in touch with the home front, because she went off to Italy, would she ever have known about this? Would she ever have contacted anybody? Clearly, something made her want to investigate bob a

little bit more after after the way he behaved right now plenty of women would just have thought okay that guy's a loser i'm gonna block him on social media i'm gonna ignore his emails and i'm gonna move on to somebody else i'm not gonna look him up i'm not gonna discover that he's married i'm not gonna even have any debate about whether or not to contact his wife but she did all of those things yes um this woman figured out he was a cat after all called the wife and blew the whistle she thought she was doing a good thing and then she went away and when she came back she discovered that the victim had died that very day and it it hit her like a like a mac truck as you can imagine like i called i made that call i talked to that woman and in a matter of hour or two later

she's dead and so yes that's something that susan has carried around with her um at the same time you know it was her testimony that made the difference in convicting him. The woman who was terribly attacked by Bob, that was a great interview. Was it difficult to get her to tell that story? She was reluctant, yes. But she thought about it for a time and realized that it was an important story to tell. in the experience of doing these stories will tell us, tell me, I'm sure they tell you that somehow they feel like they can't really do anything. Like they are powerless in the face of somebody who has taken advantage of them or abused them. And it doesn't matter what they say, it's not going to make a difference, but it does. And this is one of the stories that indicates it

truly does make a difference. When we come back, we have more from Keith's interview with former prosecutor Gail Strack and attorney Casey Gwynn. so i guess my first question about this is how did this death go down as anything other than suspicious from the get-go because it feels like it took a long time to sort of build suspicion about this it seems like they just kind of bought it from the beginning, bought Bob's story. This case took a long time to get to trial, to get to conclusion. Seven years was the process between the time she was killed and the time it was resolved. They thought he behaved a little oddly. And they thought, boy, there are a lot of abrasions and things on her body. But that makes sense because he dragged her out of the shower and took her into the middle of the room and he was giving her CPR.

The medical examiner who did the autopsy could not find a cause of death right off the top. There was no obvious sign of strangulation, for example. There was no obvious sign of enough brute, blunt object force to kill her. So they just didn't know for sure. That detective was always kind of suspicious, and he kind of kept at it. But he was unable to move against the husband because he didn't have the medical examiner on side. There wasn't an indication it was actually a homicide, so he couldn't charge the guy. I think that the issue was that the medical examiner who looked at the body initially didn't recognize that that was potentially from a strangulation case. One of the interesting things about this is that, you know, that initial determination

by law enforcement or by a coroner or medical examiner carries so much weight in so many of these cases that we've covered. And everything sort of cascades from that, whether it's, you know, the weight of innocence or the weight of guilt. Yeah, the system is the system is front loaded in that interesting way. And it but everything takes so long. The initial determination is so weighty, is so important that it takes a long, long time to undo that, to see a case from the other side. Did that happen in this case? For sure. Let's talk about the Training Institute for Strangulation Prevention. I've never heard of them before. How'd you guys come across them? And tell me a little bit more about that. Our victim's sister who located those people,

when we were doing the story and heard about them, they happened to be having a conference not far away from where both the producer and I live. And that's where that interview came from that you will see in addition to the material here. It's a group who recognize that medical examiners, most prosecutors, most people in local law enforcement in the country are only aware of, you know, one very specific kind of injury from strangulation, and they miss a lot. This feels like a good place to listen to this extra sound. If you want to see the full video of this, you can see it on our website. It's an interview with the former prosecutor Gail Strack and attorney Casey Gwynn, and they're talking about the Training Institute of Strangulation Prevention and what

can be learned from their work. So let's listen to that. The Training Institute on Strangulation Prevention actually started probably in 1995. Casey put me in charge of the domestic violence unit. We had two teenagers. Both of them had been choked before they were killed. Neither case got prosecuted and it really changed my life personally. And ever since then we've been trying to figure out what happened, can we make it better, and can we make it right? Strangulation has been missed for decades and decades in this country. There's no black eyes, there's no broken bones. And we didn't understand that for almost 30 years in our work as prosecutors and as social change advocates.

But the other thing we didn't understand is that men who strangle women are not the same as men who push or slap or punch women. If you go after stranglers before they kill, you're getting the killers before the victim is dead. Our work has prevented homicides in San Diego, in California, and across America. That is certainly provocative. The idea that strangling is a precursor to domestic violence, which is in one form or another, so many Dateline episodes and so many stories that we cover. The idea that they have, you know, prevented deaths was something I wouldn't ever have considered.

You know, maybe you discover a death, a reason for death that you didn't, weren't aware of. That seemed obvious. But to prevent them, well, I guess so. There's an assault on a woman. And if she is able to report what happened to her and they can have a proper look at the medical indicators, they can stop that person. One of the things I really like about this episode is I always like it when we can sort of take our eyes off the actual story that we're telling and do something a little bit bigger. In this case, sort of talking about domestic violence and strangulation and the whole issue of, you know, sort of controlling men like that and where that can lead. Well, thank you, Josh. But it does go to the heart of what you and I do and have been doing for years, which is as we set out to do these kinds of crime stories,

we came to understand that these are stories of abusive, largely of abusive husbands or abusive men who are damaging women. And it's unfortunately very common. If you or someone you know is experiencing domestic violence, you can call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-SAFE. After a break, we'll be back to answer some of your questions from social media. All right, let's look at some questions from social media. Joy Gimbel says, chilling story. I pray those kids are getting therapy to heal from years alone with their toxic father. Well, you know, we're not going to know for a long time sort of what the fallout of this is.

That's one of the problems with this. Although there is a support group around those children, happily. So I think they're probably better off than many other children are in similar circumstances. Um, something we were already talking about dr lyndon p says uh just listen to this episode i think the investigation was shoddy two fentanyl patches none in her blood they must have been placed on her after death with none in the blood one of the major red flags uh you know poor work by by all um you know it uh it clearly did take a long time yeah yes yes it's a fair point and the fentanyl patches were a tell that should have sent them

off in a different direction right off the bat you don't uh don't take a shower with i do want to say this on your body and no i do want to say this which is frequently when we do these stories and it takes a very long time to try somebody um we can say or it can be said that the delay you know didn't really have any result. It didn't matter. But they didn't kill anybody else in the interim. They did eventually go to go to prison for killing their wife or husband. But in this case, that's not true.

That delay allowed Bob Feldman to do some terrible things. Sure. And could have been more terrible. We could have had a repeat of that uh of the reason that he was on trial um girl that jay says good for you susan retaining those emails from nasty bob feldman yeah um good for her um again like there's there would be ample reason and precedent and no one would ever wonder if she just thought you know that guy's a loser that guy's a jerk that guy's a liar i don't like the way he's just erased it all

yeah look that's it i'm done with you forever instead she sort of you know kept going dug into it uh good for her uh here's somebody who wrote an awkward swim with with Bob Feldman is my new band name. That does have a great punk rock ring to it, I have to say. It just shows you if you have a pool, you'll have a lot of friends. Sure. A pool in Denver and places like that, especially, there aren't quite as many pools as there are right around where you live. I know, Josh. No, it's just one big pool here in California. Yeah. Is there one right around where you live, though? I know, Josh.

No, it's just one big pool here in California. Yeah. I don't personally have one because you probably do. You do. You're probably cleaning it this morning, aren't you? I see you with one of that big long thing fishing the leaves out of there and holding this glass of wine in the other hand while you're doing it saying you know that would be perfect wouldn't it is that a leaf on the bottom of the pool i actually i have something that i've got for you that i keep waiting to see you in person so i can give it to you it's a fabulous wine glass which uh oh my god something white behind it so that people can see it a little better

there it's got it's got your uh look at that your sketch on it my god it's pretty good and then it says here what does that say it says here an ordinary glass of wine or was it or was it so this is going to be yours someday when next we meet. That's very kind. This has been waiting for you for a long time. I've been meaning to give this to you, and then I never see you. So how are we going to arrange to get this thing transferred? I don't know.

Maybe, yeah, give it to one of the producers who sees you more than I do, which would be, you know, all of them. Keith, as always, it's been a pleasure. And when I say pleasure, I'm making quote marks with my fingers. I'm so touched by that. Very impressed. I knew you would be. Yeah. That's 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 at Dateline NBC. See you Fridays on Dateline on NBC.