Dateline NBC - Talking Dateline: The Sleepover

Episode Date: February 7, 2024

Josh Mankiewicz and Andrea Canning go behind the scenes of Andrea’s latest episode, “The Sleepover.”  More than 20 years after Navy petty officer Sherri Malarik was found shot to death in her car in a Pensacola, Florida parking lot, her husband was arrested and put on trial for the murder. Twice. Greg Malarik has denied having anything to do with his wife’s murder and, following a hung jury in the first trial, was ultimately acquitted. Andrea and Josh discuss how Sherri’s murder and its aftermath have torn her family apart. Plus, Andrea answers viewer questions about the story and shares previously unaired interview audio with Sherri and Greg’s daughter, Tera.Listen to the full episode of "The Sleepover" here: https://link.chtbl.com/dl_sleepover

Hi, everybody. I'm Josh Mankiewicz, and we're talking Dateline with Andrea Canning. Hi. How are you? Ready to talk. So this episode is called The Sleepover. Now, if you, the audience, have not heard the podcast of this, or if you didn't watch it on television, it is the episode right below this one on the list of podcasts that you just chose from. So go there, listen to it, or watch it on television, and then come back here. When you come back, Andrea and I are going to talk about all kinds of things involving her story. And then we're also going to answer some

of your viewer and listener questions, because a lot of people posted on social media after the TV interview. And also remember, it's Dateline. You never watch alone. You have us here all the time. One more thing, which is great. Andrea has an extra clip from the interviews that she did, which was not shown on television. So you're going to get to hear that here first. Okay.

I got to say, you know, I watched this story without knowing anything about it. That's usually how I do it. I want to watch it the way the viewers do. And I thought Greg's 911 call sounded quite genuine. He sounded like somebody who was worried, confused, didn't know where his wife was, and starting to panic. City police, Jackie. Hi, my name is Greg Mallard. My wife is a little late getting back. I was wondering if you had any kind of accident reports this evening? Not with injuries, no. Where would she be coming from? I have no idea. She left and she didn't say where she was

going. I have some track of the story. Yeah, I story. Yeah, no, I'm not sure what I took away from that call. I probably knew too much at that point. So you're probably in a better position to analyze the call than me. I mean, look, you know, we've both heard 911 calls, which are, you know, authentic and sound authentic, and 911 calls, which are not authentic and sound not authentic. So, you know, we've heard both. I just had the episode on Ghosts Can't Talk and the wife, you know, her husband's been

murdered and she's really like upset on the 911 call. And a lot of people on social media were saying, you know, she's too upset. This is acting. Right. You know, and she absolutely was not acting. This was real. This was her genuine response. But for some people, it was too much. Yeah. I mean, I'm reminded of a story I did about Chasey Poynter in Texas in which the 911 call is connected and she's not saying anything. And then the minute the operator says, 911, what's your emergency? My husband's in shock. All of a sudden she's frantic, but

one second earlier she wasn't. I feel like everyone's going to catch on now from Dateline that they're going to learn that little trick. Start your hyperventilating the moment it starts ringing. So let's talk about some of the details of this case. If you're going to kill your wife, doing it at home with the kids present feels like a risky way of trying to do it. But I guess that was the allegation. That's the allegation. And it certainly does seem risky if the way that the state presented it, you know, is true. Tell me what the state thinks happened.

The state thinks that Greg was, you know, supposedly tinkering around with the red minivan in the backyard and called Sherry out to talk to him. The kids were inside eating pizza, playing games, stuff like that. She comes out. He, according to the state, their theory, shoots her in the minivan and then drives her to the Winn-Dixie. And then that's where he gets into the lover babysitter Jennifer's car and leaves the van there with Sherry in the parking lot

and Jennifer drives him back to the house. Today, this wouldn't work because there'd be a million doorbell cameras and traffic cameras. Well, and the Winn-Dixie parking lot would be covered in cameras. I mean, for sure. And also, Jennifer claims that Greg was wearing a wig when he met her in the parking lot. And she drove him home and he threw the wig out the window greg of course completely denies killing sherry and obviously does not agree with jennifer's version of events and he was acquitted they get first a mistrial and then a uh and then a not killed verdict uh i gotta, I would hire that defense attorney.

This story was a good ad for him. Yeah, I mean, he was interesting. Actually, I had a conversation with him before the show aired about why he didn't go after Jennifer face-to-face directly in court. So he alludes that she's the real killer, Jennifer the babysitter, but he doesn't confront her in court with that theory. Even though she's on the stand and he could have. Yes. He said that he couldn't take the chance that the jury might believe her

if he directly asked her or accused her of killing Sherry. So he stayed away from that. And the other thing that I didn't realize either was different states approach accusing someone else in trial different ways. If you're going to offer a third party defense that it was not me, it was this person over here. Some jurisdictions insist on some offer of proof. The example that's always used is you can't say aliens did it. Exactly. Because that isn't plausible unless you have evidence that aliens landed and did it. Right. Because some could see it like throwing spaghetti at the wall.

Well, it wasn't him. So, oh, let's see if they'll buy this. In California, it's known as the SODDI defense, S-O-D-D-I, which stands for some other dude did it. I have never heard that before. I liked what the defense attorney had to say about his reasonable doubt computer. Yeah. It's like if you if you put everything into a computer, what would the computer say? Like almost like what would I say is what he really could have said in this day and age, right? And he believes that they would spit out reasonable doubt.

And also, crazy how you rarely hear an attorney give an opinion about the guilt or innocence of a client. And I pushed him on it. He said, you know, I waver on that. I've never heard that before. Another reason why I would want to hire that guy seems like a very honest guy. Hope I don't need to. Don't worry. You won't need Chris Crawford.

Yeah, you never know. One of the interesting things about this case, and I'm wondering whether this was something that ended up leading to the not guilty verdict, is, you know, the cops waited and waited and waited for the kids' memories to get better. But, you know, the problem with that is that they're not disinterested parties. These are kids who lost their mom and may or may not harbor a grudge. Or what have family members told you over the years? What have you read over the years?

I mean, it could be any number of things that could alter a memory. And I'm not saying that their memories changed. I don't know. No, but that's one of the things that jurors have to think about is, is this what you actually remember or what you wish you remembered? And that's what hurts cases like that. And you think about your old childhood memories and how many of them are accurate, you know, or have changed over the years. And I don't think anyone remembers things perfectly from, you know, under the age of 10. I mean, I remember watching Keith on television when I was a small child, but I somehow, that can't be true, can it? Well, I actually grew up in Canada when he was on the air, but I was definitely not interested in the news at that age. So I wasn't watching Keith, sadly.

He's going to be thrilled about this discussion, let me just say. This happened September of of 2001 right yes it was it was it was um right after 9-11 i kept thinking to myself like everybody in that family was like living two realities like tv was probably about all 9-11 aftermath and what's happening now and the search for people in New York. And meanwhile, they're living their own personal hell in Pensacola that isn't getting covered and nobody's talking about it. But to them, it's the biggest thing in their lives and clearly remained that way. Yeah, I know. What an odd time to have a tragedy like that in your family so close to 9-11 because we're getting so much further and further away

from 9-11, we forget how we were all feeling as a country, you know, how disturbed and upset and just discombobulated we were. So then imagine piling that on top of that. I mean, it's, I just can't even imagine that family having to just, and they're also in the military on top of that. Right. So, I mean, I'm sure they knew people who were, you know, I mean, not in that first week, but people who were thinking about, you know, getting deployed and people who were, you know, we went to some state of readiness right away and, you know, all stuff that the, that Greg and Sherry would have been involved in. Right. And, you know, Tina and Jeff as well. They were in the Navy, too.

Did your, this is off topic completely. I love going off topic. I know, but that's what we're doing here on Talking Dateline. Did your husband, who was a military pilot, he do any time in Pensacola? He did. Yes. He went to flight school in Pensacola. Do you remember the show, Pensacola Wings of Gold? Do I remember it? Of course I do. With James Brolin in his flight suit, he looked great. Yeah. Oh, and all those, you know, it was kind of like the TV Top Gun and all the guys would have their shirts off and they would, you know, recapture the magic of Top Gun. It was like military Baywatch. It was great. Yes, exactly. Yeah. Well, yeah, my husband flew F-18s, Hornets, and that was part of his training was in Pensacola. And, you know, Jeff and Tina and I had a lot of military conversations while I was in Pensacola,

which was kind of fun. That probably helped you a little bit, sort of, you know, be on the same page with the people you're interviewing, right? Yeah, it is. It's because military people are tight, you know, whether you know each other or not, whether you're in a different branch, there's a family, like, camaraderie element to the military that is just organic, that just happens. One of the things that I really thought about a lot in this was the revelation that Sherry knew about Jennifer. She knew something was up. I mean, how much must that hurt when you took a one-year deployment? By the time you get back, your husband is climbing into bed with the babysitter. Yeah. And she did that year deployment because it was due a year now. And then you get to stay home for a really long time. Or if you don't do it, then we're going to

keep sending you away. You got to uproot everybody. Yeah. Yeah. And so she did that, which as a mother, I just can't even imagine leaving my children for a year. That sounds just awful. But think about like her kids were her world and she did it for them, you know, so she would be there for them. I get the feeling that, you know, Greg and Jennifer thought that, you know, the kids won't notice anything. They won't be aware of that affair.

And of course, kids are aware of a lot of things that you don't realize that they're aware of and they're picking up on all kinds of cues. Kids are smart. I mean, you, and you heard Jacob, he saw them on the carpet together, you know, with the wine and the, the kiss or whatever. The thing that just leaped out at me was the kid who said to Sherry, you know, after she came back from Greece, daddy doesn't love you.

Daddy loves Jennifer. That's Tara. I mean, one of the things that, this comes up in all these cases is the, you know, like people think about themselves and not about the children in the middle of this. I mean, like they had to grow up without their mom, all those kids. And then they got cut off from their cousins who they clearly were very tight with, which is another terrible thing to do to kids. You know, now you have, you know, brother and sister with diametrically opposite views of the case. You know, Jake, who thinks his dad's guilty, convinced of it, and Tara is convinced he's innocent. Yeah, it's heartbreaking. It's really heartbreaking.

And Tara, when we interviewed her, was very close to having her first child. And so that was sad, too, because she wants Jacob to meet his nephew. It's just really hard. And we have another, we have an extra clip that didn't air in the show that we can play for you with Tara. All right.

Why don't we take a listen to that? There's moments where you need your mom. Yeah, I've definitely felt that over the years, for sure. I don't remember a time that I didn't long for her and her presence. And just throughout the big things in life, I wish she would have been at my graduation. I wish she'd be here, you know, with me when I have my first child. Yeah, you're expecting very soon. So it's moments like that, things like that.

She's always been in the back of my mind. I was kind of in denial for a really long time about her actually being gone. Since she was in the military, I think until I was about 11, I had this story in my head that she was on a secret mission. She wasn't actually gone. She's on a secret mission. And when she was finished, she would come back. That's heartbreaking. So that was a really hard one to get over as I grew up. You finally had to say to yourself, she's not on a mission. She's not coming back. Okay. That is, I mean, murder is a wrecking ball. Look what it did to that family. I know. Because not only does she not have her mom, but then she has fractured relationships murder is a wrecking ball. Look what it did to that family.

I know, because not only does she not have her mom, but then she has fractured relationships with her siblings on top of it and her cousins and her aunt and uncle. The people you need the most when you're in the middle of some violent loss like that. That's a terrible thing to do. Yeah. Because I interviewed Jacob and Tara and I didn't get to interview the other siblings, I'm just rooting for those two. I felt like at the end of my interviews, I was like, I just want to force these two back together because they belong together. This brother and sister, they love each other. You can see it. They're just angry. Yeah. Life's tough enough without that. In terms of the way you guys presented the story, I thought you guys did a really good job of sort of in the first hour, you know, some keen viewers might have taken note of.

Probably did. What is a babysitter doing there on a Friday night with a lawnmower? When they're not needed to be the babysitter. Exactly. I found Jennifer's arrival at the house to give back the lawnmower kind of perplexing as a viewer because I thought, okay, well, wait a minute. If she's involved, if she's partners in this, why is she showing up at all? You don't want to put yourself at the scene if you're involved, right? So why don't you stay

home, give the lawnmower back the next day? The prosecution believes that it was Greg's idea to have Jennifer come to the door with the lawnmower because, remember, she drove him home from the Winn-Dixie, according to Jennifer and the prosecutors. So her arrival at the house would explain if somebody had seen her drive there. Exactly. It was an alibi. It was, oh, I was in the neighborhood because I was bringing the lawnmower back. Jennifer had never spoken about this. No, not to the media. She had given dribs and drabs interviews to law enforcement. But she'd never had anybody challenge her like that, like you did. That was our producer, Sergey Ivonen, who somehow convinced Jennifer

to sit down with us. And I mean, that's a big decision. I mean, after all that time and you're, she's working and you're like revealing all this stuff. I mean, wow, I don't know if I could do it. And she was very forthcoming about about so many elements of her life. You know, she told me she did the interview for closure for the family. But I'm thinking to myself, what are you like that? That could have come 20 years ago. Yeah. I mean, and also I think that any sense of resolution that you would have given the family would have been, yeah, worth something much sooner.

When you realize that the person you're having an affair with is talking about murdering their spouse and their spouse then subsequently is murdered, I think that's when anybody with a conscience goes to police and says, look, this is not going to make me look good, but here's what I know. She said that she was in too deep at that point

that he would have turned it around on her. She was scared. You know, she sort of made it sound like he was kind of brainwashing her. Like, you know, she was under his spell. We don't know if Jennifer's story is true. I mean, the defense thinks that Jennifer might have killed Sherry. But this is Jennifer's story. The prosecutor gave her the

platform to tell that story in court. And Jennifer told us that she is telling the truth. Well, the story doesn't make her look good. I mean, that's the thing is it's not, she's not heroic in that story. Maybe some of her reason she didn't say this, but maybe some of it was, you know, cathartic for her to talk about it openly. I don't know. I thought after our interview, I was thinking to myself, I wonder if she's upset because it was an intense interview. And afterwards we said, would you take us to the spot where you threw the gun over the bridge? And so she took us there and she was driving back to Illinois that night. She had

to be at work in the morning, driving from Florida to Illinois. And she still agreed to go to the bridge. I was so surprised. And there was a visitor at the dock where we went to go see the bridge and the stray dog would not leave the shot. And it just kept barking and barking. And we were trying everything we could to get the dog out of the shot. And finally, we were just like, okay, the dog can be in the shot. I don't know if any of our eagle-eyed viewers noticed that we had a friend, we had a guest on the shoot. So this is legally the end of the road, isn't it? I mean, Jennifer testified pursuant to a plea agreement. She's not going to get charged.

Double jeopardy applies. Greg cannot be tried again. No. For murder. You know, the question is whether he could be, you know, tried in, you know, federal court for depriving Sherry of her civil rights by killing her. That's one way that sometimes prosecutions get around this.

That case is not in the works, as far as you know. No, and of course, there's always the wrongful death civil lawsuits that someone like Jacob could file against his stepfather. You know, I haven't heard any talk of that, but, you know, that's another avenue. Okay. We will be back in a minute with viewer and listener mail. And there was plenty of it. So a tremendous amount of viewer and listener mail on this one, which I'm not surprised about. Let's get to that. The first one is from someone named Liz, who writes in to say, continued Rick rolling of Keith will mean that you are out of a, you know what, that's actually internal email. That's not viewer mail. I was going to say. Yeah, sorry. Never mind that. Let's go to the actual listener viewer mail.

Jiffy Pop Culture wrote, Jennifer, with all due respect, you're a grown woman and you could have ended things. That's your question. Jennifer, who knew Greg was married and didn't care. And that's why I love Andrea. I saw so many emails saying essentially, Andrea, you go. I sent you like 20 of them. I texted you over the weekend. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I just, with her, I knew I needed to take a tone that didn't turn her into a martyr or a victim. But let's talk just a little bit about how hard it is sometimes to know exactly how tough to be on somebody. Because you don't want to beat up on someone to the point where the audience feels sorry for them. You know, you want to be asking the questions and challenging people in the way that the audience would if they were asking the questions. Like, you know, how could you do that? You know, how, how did you not know this?

And sometimes it's hard to know how hard to go at people. Yeah. I think when it's a killer admitting they did it, yes, I killed this person. Right. I think you can go as hard as you want. The tough part is when that person isn't actually accused of something. Right. Or isn't actually legally accused of something. Like Jennifer, or the other tricky one is when you do an interview with someone pre-trial.

Well, at that point, they are still entitled to the presumption of innocence. Exactly. The verdict doesn't come in yet. Exactly. So it's like it's not totally our place to go super hard when they're still presumed innocent. And we also know that by the time people see this interview in which the person is presumed innocent, they will no longer be innocent because we wait until this thing is over and there'll be a verdict then. So unless you're pretty sure which way it's going to go, sometimes it's a little hard to judge that because you don't want to prejudge it.

But on the other hand, people are seeing it after the end. So here's a question about Jennifer's immunity from DaisyCat125. How do you give someone complete immunity? Doesn't some part of the legal brain say that this person could also be involved, even to a lesser extent, i.e. at the scene of the crime? And to answer that question, DaisyCat, that was a big question to the prosecutor, you know, knowing that people are going to be like, what the heck? How does this woman get nothing? And the prosecutor just said, you know,

the case was so old, it had been so hard to even get it to this point, you know, that we just felt like she was holding all the cards because there was really no evidence, you know, proving what she did. It's impossible to charge him with murder and her with accessory without her testimony against him. Right. So they kind of felt like, look, we don't really have much on her anyway. So let's just get the big fish, which the person they thought was Greg.

Of course, Greg was acquitted. It sounded to me as if Jennifer, in her statement to prosecutors, gave up a little bit more than they suspected her of. She did. She ended up telling them about the gun being tossed over the bridge. So she did open up more and more. The thing about Jennifer that was tricky, though, was just how many times her stories changed. And even in my interview,

she was contradicting herself about things. Somebody whose name is Absinbr. A-B-S-I-N-B-R. I have so many thoughts about this Dateline episode. It's easy to criticize prosecutors, but I really question why NCIS didn't push harder at the beginning when two Navy personnel was involved. Well, one of the problems was that there wasn't any evidence. And another is that NCIS in real life is not the same as NCIS on television. So not solved after the commercial break.

No, no, it's not. Everything's not wrapped up in 60 minutes. So, I mean, there was like at the beginning of this sort of no evidence or not enough evidence or nothing pointing directly at any one person. There really wasn't. And they tried with Jennifer. They tried with Greg. You know, but they just without that forensic evidence and without either, you know, the kids didn't really know what was going on. Jennifer wouldn't talk. Greg wouldn't talk. So they were stuck.

Candace C. asks us, what happened to the life insurance money? Did the kids get any when they turned a certain age? That's a good question. What did happen to the insurance money? Greg got all the insurance money. Which is $250,000, $260,000. Yeah, he's the surviving spouse, so the money goes to him. Todd in sports writes, Jacob was right, justice for his mom will happen in a space we won't

see. Goes back to their religion. You think Jacob's going to find peace with this at some point? Because it looks like he's having a very tough time. He's unsettled with the relationship with his sister and the rest of

the family members being divided. I could just see it all over his face. He has three daughters. I said, focus on your daughters. Focus on being a great dad because that's something you can do. You know, you can be a great dad. And he agreed. That's a great thing to say. They're not in a good spot right now. Like this, things need to get better. Along those lines, Gina Fraustro writes us to say, how difficult was it for Jacob to take those

pictures with him, him being Greg? The wedding pictures, Jacob said he had to sort of pretend when his stepfather was at his wedding, which I just don't know how you would be able to do that. I wouldn't even do it. I just couldn't do it. I can't fake anything. I'm terrible at faking or being nice to people that I don't like. So that's amazing that he was able to do that. I mean,

I think that if I believe that somebody who was at my wedding was involved in a murder that, like, you know, that directly affected me, like, was it somebody related to me or my parents or something like that,

like, I wouldn't be able to take any pictures with them. I wouldn't be able to do that. but big of Jacob to invite, to allow him to come to the wedding so Tara could come. You know, that was the reason was to get Tara to the wedding. But like, I wouldn't put him in the pictures that I'm going to look at presumably the rest of my life. Well, there's always Photoshop, Josh. You can just like play nice, smile, and then crop them out.

That's right. I got my brother out of all my pictures at my wedding. No. Just kidding. Thank you, Andrea. Always a pleasure to talk with you. And thanks for listening to us here on Talking Dateline. Now, if you have any other questions for us about our stories or about just Dateline in general, we would like to hear them. And you can reach out to us on social at Dateline NBC. And as always, see you Fridays on Dateline on NBC.