Dateline NBC - TikTok star accused of hiring hit man. Hemlock and magic spells at a murder trial. Plus, the Bexley Box.

Episode Date: May 28, 2026

In California, social media influencer Gabbie Gonzalez is accused of conspiring to kill her ex-boyfriend and father of her child, former boy band member Jack Avery.  In San Diego, alleged killer Larry Millete calls a local NBC reporter while on trial for his wife's murder. In Dateline Round Up, Colorado man Barry Morphew, accused of using animal tranquilizers to murder his wife, is back in court.  And a judge sentences former businessman Paul Caneiro, convicted of killing his brother and his brother's family. Plus, an update in the Jared Bridegan murder case, and his widow's mission to provide comfort for children taken to police stations.    Find out more about the cases covered each week here: www.datelinetruecrimeweekly.com Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Good morning, everyone. You're listening in to the Dateline story meeting. Okay, so let's jump in. Our producers are catching up on breaking crime news. Do you think there's going to be cameras in the trial? We're all on track with this. Everyone is losing their minds over this story. Welcome to Dateline True Crime Weekly.

I'm Andrea Canning. It's May 28th, and here's what's on our docket. In San Diego County, California, it's week two in the murder trial of a man accused of paying people to cast magic spells on his wife. I can't remember a time that we talk about magic or spells in general when we're talking about homicide trials. In Dateline Roundup, we've got the latest from the courtroom in the case of Barry Morfew, a Colorado man accused of murdering his wife using animal tranquilizers.

And a New Jersey businessman convicted of murdering his own brother and his brother's family faces the judge at his sentencing. You are a quadruple murderer who slaughtered innocent children. That is the identity you will carry for the remainder of your life behind prison walls. Plus, the widow of a man murdered in front of their two-year-old child tells us about her campaign to bring comfort to children who end up alone and scared at the police station. So as I reflected on that night, wishing that there had been more to comfort her, that she had a diaper that fit her. I just thought we have to do something. But before all that, we're off to Los Angeles, where a TikTok star has been charged with a

attempting to take out a hit on her ex. Beautiful Lifestyle influencer Gabby Gonzalez has built a devoted following on social media, documenting her life in Hawaii and beyond. Hundreds of thousands of followers tune in to the 24-year-old's posts about exotic travel, beachy fashion, music. Every day my favorite song keeps changing,

but this was my favorite song on day two. And even motherhood. Where are we going to put it? In the castle. You're not right? Yeah. Okay. She seemed to have it all, but now Gabby is attracting attention for all the wrong reasons.

Allegations of conspiracy to commit murder. LA prosecutors accusing a TikTok star of trying to hire somebody off the dark web to kill her ex. Gabby's ex and the alleged target, Jack Avery, is a former member of the boy band, Why Don't We? He is also the father of Gabby's child. Prosecutors in Los Angeles say back in 2020, Gabby embarked on a years-long quest to find a hitman to kill Jack, and they allege she didn't act alone. Here to bring us up to speed on the alleged plot and what took so long to uncover it is NBC News Breaking News reporter Matt Levitis. Matt, thanks for being here. Thank you.

So, Matt, let's start with some background on Gabby Gonzalez. We know she's this beautiful influencer. Tell us more about her. She's this 24-year-old from Florida. She has hundreds of thousands of followers on TikTok and on Instagram. And like you just said, she posts these sort of glamorous shots of her in Hawaii, in her in California in front of waterfalls and recording her on vacation with her young daughter in Paris. She describes herself on her Instagram page as a lover of life and a mermaid at heart. Yeah, it's ironic because everything in her posts, I was scrolling through the years and everything is so light. So, Matt, what do we know about her relationship with Jack Avery, this ex of hers who was in the boy band? Yeah, so they dated in the late 2010s when they were both teenagers. Their relationship was brief. They had a child together in 2019. And really since then, they've been in this contentious, custom.

battle with Gabby accusing Jack Avery of being this sort of unfit father. What did Jack Avery have to say about this dispute? He actually addressed it on X and on TikTok, describing the allegations against him as false accusations and painful attacks. What happened with the legal side of things with regards to this custody dispute over their daughter? We don't have those details, but what we do know from the prosecution in this case is that Gonzalez wanted full custody of their daughter, and she, you know, did not get that.

Yeah, so this actually became a part of the prosecutor's felony complaint that, you know, this was a possible motive. So as we mentioned off the top, Gabby, according to prosecutors, was not acting alone. Who do they say she was allegedly plotting with to take out Jack with a hitman? So prosecutors are alleging that Gabby plotted. with her father, Francisco Gonzalez, who's the successful personal injury attorney in Florida and her boyfriend at the time back in 2020 and 2021, a young man by the name of Kai Cordry, who lives in Hawaii. And prosecutors alleged that Francisco, Gabby's dad, was sort of funding this whole scheme, right?

So in April of 2021, he transferred $10,000 to Kai Cordy for the purpose of hiring this hitman. Okay, and then prosecutors say Kai then took that money and searched for a possible hitman on the dark web. Right. So after receiving the money, Kai in May of 2021, according to prosecutors, signed up for a dark web murder for higher site using the alias Lizard King 69. And he asked for Jack Avery to be killed by, quote, whatever method was easiest. And that included a shooting or some sort of staged accident. Wow. In September 2021, the FBI came into the picture. Tell us how they get involved. Right. So prosecutors say that at some point, Kai made contact with this undercover FBI agent who was posing as a hitman and that the FBI recorded the phone call between these two suggesting that Kai wanted the plot to take place and that he was acting at the behest of his girlfriend at the time, Gabby Gonzalez. And by December of 2021, Francisco Gonzalez also got on the phone with an undercover FBI agent.

These are wild accusations, Matt. But this alleged plot never came to fruition. Jack Avery is alive and well. What went right, if you will, for Jack that this did not happen? So the last we know about this case, where the prosecution laid out that Gonzalez and Kai spoke about the matter over the phone in October of 2020. 22 with Gabby suggesting that she had some concerns that they were going to get caught. We know that a month later, November of 2022, her home was searched and rated by the FBI, but we don't know what happened from then until now.

And that's sort of the large question here. Why was no action taken? Yeah, because that was three and a half years ago. It's very interesting to think, like, what has transpired in these years? Gabby and her dad were arrested just last week, and Kai was arrested over the weekend. Right. So that's what I've been asking the authorities in Los Angeles. And, you know, they keep pointing me to this statement that they gave us last week, the L.A., DA, Nathan Hockman said that, quote, this was a lengthy investigation that was initiated by the FBI and eventually turned over to our office resulting in criminal charges being filed. Has there been any comment from any of the defendants? We have not heard a peep from any of them. They have not entered pleas to our knowledge. We know that Francisco was arrested in his home state of Florida, next ride to California. We know that Gabby is out on $2 million bail that she posted. And as a condition of that bail, she is not allowed to have any contact with her daughter or to post about the case on social media. We know that she is expected to make her plea.

this summer. All right, more hearings to come on this, and if convicted, they face the possibility of 25 years to life in state prison. Matt, thank you for coming on. Thank you for having me. Coming up, five years after a woman disappeared from her California home, her body has still not been found, but her husband is on trial for her alleged murder. Prosecutors say he may have used hemlock to kill her. Chula Vista is a city in San Diego County. known for its peaceful neighborhoods and suburban charm. In Spanish, the name means beautiful view. But what happened to a working mom on a winter's day back in 2021

would cast a dark shadow over the area. Thursday, January 7th, a security camera captured 39-year-old Maya Miliette pulling into the driveway of the house she shared with her husband Larry and their three young children. But investigators say there is no footage of Maya ever leaving the house. after that. Five years later, Larry is now on trial for her alleged murder. Prosecutors believe he killed Maya, but can't say for certain how or where he disposed of her body because it has never been found. What they do point to is a trail of evidence, they say, includes poison, an alleged affair,

and even magic spells. Larry's defense attorney, on the other hand, says there is no proof Maya is even dead. And if she is, there were other people who may have killed her, like her married lover. As Larry's trial enters its second week, NBC7 investigative reporter Alexis Revis is here to tell us more about the proceedings so far, which Alexis includes a call you got from Larry himself right in the middle of trial. That's right. I definitely wasn't expecting that, and it's definitely a first for me. Yeah, well, thank you for joining us. We're going to get to that in just a moment. But You've been covering the story from the very beginning. Give us a sense of who Larry and Maya were before all this happened, at least who they seem to be to the outside world.

Well, they got married very young. They were teenagers in Hawaii. Eventually, through the Navy, Larry gets relocated over to Southern California. Maya goes with, and they both wind up working very successful jobs. He's in optometry. She's an administrative specialist for the Navy. and from photos, they had kind of the perfect family. As we talked about off the top of the segment,

the last confirmed sighting of Maya was when she was captured on her neighbor's security camera pulling into her driveway. Maya's sister reports her missing a few days later. That's right. So she had her daughter's 11th birthday coming up. There was a big family trip that they were all supposed to go on together in Big Barrett.

And then just a couple days before this trip, she stopped responding to anyone. It seemed completely out of it. seemed completely out of character. Ultimately, her sister drove down to Maya's house and insisted that she go inside and see what was going on, and that's when she called 911. Maya's sisters and brothers started vigils and searches and trying to find her. That's right. I mean, we saw hundreds of people from Chula Vista come out looking for Maya very early on, and notably not at those events was Larry Meliette, and that's something that

police mentioned when they initially arrested him about nine months after she managed. Which brings us to this trial that has been five years in the making, Assistant District Attorney Christy Bowles gave the prosecution's opening statement. And she painted a picture of a marriage in serious trouble. You absolutely get that picture. When you listen to her friends and her coworkers, I've started to take the stand, and her family members. Everyone kind of said that she said that she was done with him.

And there was also the fact that he had found out she had an affair with a co-worker. And after that, he sort of started to engage in behavior. behavior, constantly asking other people to help him, convince her to stay in the marriage. And he also reached out to something called a spellcaster. Yeah. This is something that I think makes this case particularly unique. I can't remember a time that we talk about magic or spells in general when we're talking about homicide trials that we've never. Never. Yeah, no. But Larry Milliante spent thousands of dollars requesting spell after spell after spell from a couple of spells. From a couple of spellcasters. If you talk to the prosecution, they say it shows that he had intent to harm his wife.

In fact, one of the spells was he was willing to ask for Maya's bones to be broken so that she wouldn't leave the house and be reliant on him. But if you talk to the defense, they'll say all these spells show that he was just in love with her and so badly wanted to keep her and hold her close. Seems bizarre. The prosecutors do have a lot of missing pieces as to how they believe this alleged murder happened. What are they telling the jury? Oh, up front in the opening statements, the prosecution said, we're not going to be able to tell you how she died. We don't have a body in this case. But they've thrown out a couple of things. They said there were some suspicious Google searches Larry was making about poison. What kind of poison acts the quickest. If they're

a plant poison where you never wake up. And the big moment in trial came when they talked about a vial where they tested it for hemlock. And according to the prosecution, the results came back. positive, and investigators found this vial in the house, right? Well, it wasn't right away. It wasn't during the initial search of the house. The defense said that they tested that multiple times and that the vial came back negative for hemlock three out of the four. So they're arguing it's inconclusive. What other theories did the prosecution have for the jury about Maya's cause of death?

There's testimony. She had been talking to friends leading up to her disappearance about how Larry had once choked her to a point of unconsciousness. That might explain why there's no direct. forensic evidence. And then last but not least, a neighbor told police that they heard nine gunshots and they have surveillance video. However, the FBI said the video just wasn't good enough quality to confirm or identify those sounds as gunshots. So there's different kinds of ways that they're sort of hinting this might have happened. But the reality is no one really knows yet. What happened to Maya and where is she now? Alexis, we've talked about this alleged affair with a coworker. The affair is confirmed, according to the

prosecution. They said that Maya and a coworker named Jamie Laird began having an extramarital affair. So you have the affair playing into Larry's motive. But on the flip side, you've got the defense saying there's a couple loose ends on the other side of that affair that should have warranted some investigating of more people than just Larry. In their opening statement, Larry's defense team suggested that Jamie Laird had acted suspiciously around the time of Maya's disappearance. That's right. And something the defense has pointed out that I think we didn't know until last week. Their anniversary of their affair is the day that Maya vanished January 7th. And Jamie Laird stopped texting Maya after Maya vanished. Granted, his wife who was pregnant at the time of their affair gave birth on January 8th.

So there could be a variety of reasons, right? But there was also the fact that when police eventually did talk to him, he had a new phone. The wife's phone was investigated. But her mother also apparently there's reports that she was harassing Maya. So you have some other people here that we really never learned very much about at all until now. The prosecution alluded that we're going to hear from these people. There's so much interest in them. I think they have to bring them to the stand. And I think they're going to have to eliminate them as suspects if they're going to eliminate any reasonable doubt according to some of the experts that we've talked to. So that's the nuts and bolts of the cases so far for both sides. But before you go, Alexis, let's talk about one moment that stopped the trial in its tracks.

Maya's dad was on the stand. Yes. Her father was, I think, one of the most difficult things to witness in a courtroom. He's just answering questions about kind of some of Larry's behavior. And then he just stops answering questions altogether. And he starts crying and screaming at Larry and pointing at him and saying, you're a murderer. Why did you do this to my daughter?

Why did you do it? Wow. And Larry's own defense attorney starts crying. And so because she's crying. She's worried about how that looks in front of the jury. So she calls for a mistrial. Oh, my gosh. And it comes close.

We come back, though, and the judge asks the jury if they can basically disregard the accusations of murderer that they watched. The jury says that they can do that. And we decided to keep moving forward. And it's kind of a couple hours after that that my phone rings from the county jail. It's Larry. Why is he calling you in the middle of a trial? I know after the fact now that his attorney's had no idea he was doing it. this, but mainly, Larry wanted to talk about the fact that he doesn't think he's getting a fair

trial. He is really worried about the jury for a couple reasons. As they were going through selecting jurors, 80% of them had already heard about the case. And he didn't like that this emotional raw moment with Maya's father happened right in front of the jury. And he is worried about that. Yeah. Alexis, wow, this trial is absolutely fascinating. I look forward to having you back on to see how this all unfolds. Well, thank you so much for having me. Up next, it's time for Dateline Roundup. Barry Morfew, the Colorado man accused of murdering his wife with animal tranquilizers, appears in court. And the New Jersey businessman convicted of murdering four members of his own family learns his fate. Plus, a mother's mission to bring comfort to young children who find themselves alone at

the police station. Welcome back. Joining me for this week's Roundup is DateLest. line producer Haley Barber. Thanks for being here, Haley. Thanks for having me. So Haley, first we are heading to Colorado where Barry Morfew, a man who has been accused of murdering his wife with a cocktail of animal tranquilizers, was back in court recently. And Haley, you have been reporting on this case since it broke. Give us a quick refresher on this one. Yeah, absolutely. So Barry's 49-year-old wife, Suzanne, went missing on Mother's Day back in 2020. And her mountain bike was found in a ravine close to the house, and her helmet was actually in a different location. You were actually there, Haley, as hundreds of people started searching for Suzanne.

What was Barry saying at the time about what might have happened? Barry actually in a video that was posted on Facebook at the time, he made a kind of very emotional appeal asking for tips and begging for Suzanne to come home. Oh, Suzanne, if anyone is out there that can hear this that has you, please will do whatever it takes to bring you back. We love you, we miss you. Your girls need you. A year later, however, Barry was arrested and charged with Suzanne's murder. Her body had not been found. Why did investigators zero in on him? Investigators say they learned the marriage was in trouble. Suzanne wanted out. She had told friends she

was afraid of Barry. Barry insisted that he was innocent. And about nine days before trial, the case against him imploded when the judge ruled that the prosecution had failed to hand over evidence to the defense. The charges against Barry were ultimately dropped at the time. Haley, how did Barry end up getting charged a second time? Because it wasn't over. Yeah. In 2023, three years after Suzanne went missing, her remains were found. An autopsy indicated that she had animal tranquilizers in her system. And according to prosecutors, it's a very rare drug that's used just to specifically tranquilizers. deer is not something that's very easy for just your irregular citizen to get. Investigators were able to determine that Barry Morphew had that chemical within four years of Suzanne's disappearance.

Barry was arrested for a second time, and he has pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder. He's actually out on bail, and he's awaiting the start of his trial, which will begin in October. Let's get the latest from the courtroom. Barry's defense team has filed 31 pretrial motions. Seems like a lot of motions. What are they arguing? Yeah, a lot of them are run-of-the-mill motions.

You know, there are motions to get more information about the backgrounds of prospective jurors. Also a couple that stood out to me, including one in which they talk about these kind of statements that Suzanne had made, which are basically some text messages she was sending to friends at the time, Barry is not being nice to me. I'm very concerned about the status of our relationship. Okay, we'll definitely keep an eye on that case as we get closer to the October trial date. Our next story is in New Jersey where 59-year-old convicted killer Paul Canero appeared in court last week for his sentencing. He was convicted back in February for the 2018 murders of his younger brother Keith, Keith's wife, and their two young children. And Haley, what was happening in the courtroom during sentencing?

Yeah, the courtroom was packed with family members, Andrea. And, you know, based on local reporting, we're seeing it looks like he was just kind of stoneface sitting there as the judge ultimately sentenced him. Yeah, there he is. You know, once a businessman, now he's wearing a yellow jumpsuit. It's quite the fall from grace. There were several emotional statements from the family. Paul did not just take Keith and his family's lives. He tried to steal the man, the legacy of a man whose character, compassion, and integrity he could never, ever come close to being.

Haley, did Paul give a statement at all? Paul did not speak, and his defense informed the judge that he maintains his innocence, and he didn't wish to say anything in court. Before he handed down the sentence, the judge walked through the events of the murders. Let's take a listen to Judge Lemieux. You are no longer Paul Canero. You are an intimate number in the Department of Corrections. You are in quadruple murderer who slaughtered innocent children. That is your identity.

That is the identity you will carry for the remainder of your life behind prison walls. So, Haley, what sentence did he get? Paul was sentenced to four life sentences plus an additional 16 years. For our final story, we are heading to Florida for an update in the case of 33-year-old Microsoft employee Jared Bridigan, who got out of his car in February 2022 to move a tire blocking the road and was shot dead by a gunman. Bridigan's ex-wife, Shanna, and her second husband, Mario Fernandez, Saldana, were charged with conspiring to murder Bridegan. They had pleaded not guilty and are scheduled to go on trial

later this year. Central to the case against them is the man prosecutors say the couple hired as a hitman. Haley, before we we get to the latest on this, just remind us what we know about this suspected gunman. Prosecutors say the alleged gunman is 65-year-old Henry Tennant. He was a tenant of Mario Fernandez, Saldana, and he drove a truck similar to the one caught on security camera at the scene of the shooting. After being questioned, Tenant told investigators he had in fact been hired by Murillo to carry out the murder. He pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in March of 2023. As part of his plea, he agreed to testify against both Shanna and Mario.

Earlier this year, Tenon abruptly changed his mind and withdrew his guilty plea. His defense attorney also asked the judge to throw out all the statements Tenon made to prosecutors. That's right. The defense argued that anything he said to prosecutors should never be heard by a jury. That's a big deal because presumably if Tenon's jury can't hear it, then neither can the juries at Shanna and Mario's trial. The judge made a ruling on the motion this week. What did she decide, Haley? The judge ruled that the conversation between Tenon and prosecutors before he pleaded guilty could not be presented as evidence, but his sworn statement when he pleaded guilty can. So the jury is going to hear some of Tenon's original story that he had given. Okay. So what can we expect next for Tenon?

Yeah, that's a good question. There's no trial date set for him yet. But in the meantime, Jared Bridigan's ex-wife, Shanna Gardner, will head to trial in August. Her now estranged husband, Mario Fernandez-Seldana, will stand. in trial in September. Okay, thank you for all these updates, Haley. Of course, thanks for having me. We just told you about the latest developments in the case of Jared Bride again. What makes this story even more heartbreaking is that Jared wasn't the only one in the car that night. A couple passing by found Jared's two-year-old daughter, Bexley, strapped in the back seat.

They made this call to 911. He's just laying there, and he has a little kid in the car. My husband right now is holding her. She was crying. I think it's just him and this little girl. Bexley was taken to a nearby police station where Sergeant Tanya Tater tried to comfort her, but said there was only so much she could do. She later talked to NBC12 about the experience.

Me being a stranger to her, her not knowing who I am, and obviously the trauma she just went through, you try to do the best that you can. When Bexley's mom and Jared's widow, Kirsten Bridegan, reunited with her daughter at the police station, she realized there were few resources to comfort kids. who find themselves in the care of law enforcement. So Kirsten came up with the Bexley box. It's a kit containing items designed to help calm young children during moments of crisis. There are now dozens of them in police stations across the country.

We invited Kirsten to come on the podcast to tell us more about what's inside those boxes and how she and Bexley are doing. Welcome to the podcast, Kirsten. Thank you for being here. Thank you for having me. First off, I just want to say all of our hearts go out to you and your family. How are you doing? I'm doing okay. I think it helps that. The trials are coming up finally. We've been waiting for almost four and a half years and it's finally here.

Yeah, it's like you say you never get closure, but you can certainly have closure on a, you know, the legal portion of it, which is very difficult. Right. I'm so sorry for all of you. And I also commend you because out of this grief, you have created something good for other children. First off, take us back to the day when you walked into that police station. to get Bexley, and she's there all by herself with law enforcement, and that must have just been excruciating as a mother. It was. You know, it was at night. We walk in and she's in essentially the break room. She's sitting at a table. She's got one little squishy toy, I believe it was like a stress ball type of a toy, and then a few crayons in a coloring book. And she's two and a half. She's little. And just to

sit there without more to comfort her was heartbreaking. She also needed a diaper change, and I didn't have a diaper bag. So there's just several things that sat with me for months after that experience that I wish had been different for her. And you had been looking for Jared, right? Like until that point, you didn't know what had happened. I had been calling him repeatedly and there was no answer until finally a different voice answered his phone and it was a police officer. They wouldn't tell me anything except to come to the police station. And so I walked in there and I had no knowledge of what had happened up until that point. Wow. I can't even imagine you that evening having to go through all of that. Has Bexley ever talked to you about that night? Does she remember anything? We haven't spoken in detail about it for

probably a couple of years, but when she was younger, she would repeat mostly about sounds that she heard that night and daddy on the ground was another phrase that she would repeat. Mostly now, we talk about who her dad was, the memories that we have. We look at pictures and videos, you know, his photos all over our home. And she's six. now turning seven this year? She'll be seven in the summer. She's excited. So let's talk about your initiative after that terrible day. You launched a foundation and you created something called the Bexley box. So tell us about how this came about, what this box is, what it entails. So as I reflected on that night, wishing that there had been more to comfort her, that she had a diaper that fit her,

I just thought we have to do something, something that'll make this better for other kids that might, you know, hopefully not be in the same situation, but similar situation where they need to be comforted while at a police station. And so I share this idea on social media. I said, you know, I want to get a cute toy box and I want to fill it with things and just donate it to them so that this doesn't happen again. And once I shared that, it kind of just caught fire. And a whole bunch of moms, some dads too, were like, oh, you should put this in there and what about this? And so I gathered some of that feedback and very carefully selected the items to go into the first Bexley box and delivered it to the Jacksonville Beach Police Department where this happened. And then from there, the fire not only behind

myself, but behind the community and mothers across the world, really, was so contagious and so large that we knew, hey, we got to, we have to start a foundation because I can't keep having people send me Amazon and Target boxes to my house. Like, that's just not going to be a long-term solution. So we founded the Bridegan Foundation. And through there, we have done almost 70 Bexley boxes across the country to this date. And within the next month, we will do an additional 245. Oh, my gosh, that's amazing. Do you have departments reaching out to you now saying, hey, we'd like one of those? We do.

We have departments reaching out. Mostly it's women, actually, on the staff at police departments that are saying, we want one. Victim advocates that work at police departments or sheriff's offices. And then we also have people in the community that said, I want one from my police station. So we've had several sponsored by families in communities across the country that want to make that their police station has a Bexley box ready to go. We have just partnered with Walmart for the entire state of Florida. So they had originally committed to doing about $100,000 in funds and in-kind donations, and they have since doubled that. And they are the reason we are

going to be doing 245 agencies in the state of Florida by the end of June. Congratulations. And how has this affected Bexley that she, I'm sure she's a part of this, right? Yeah, she is. She was at the press conference were announced the partnership and she was excited. What she really enjoys, though, is helping to pick out the items for the box. And some of the things that we put in there are based off of one of her favorites from when she was little. Is that a jellycat? No, it's just a little security blanket. She calls it her lovey. So there's several of those in each box. She gets excited and I think she likes that something's named after her. I mean, what kid wouldn't enjoy that? And she knows why we did it. And that's meaningful to her. I mean, it has to be a part of her therapy, right?

in a way. Doesn't it all kind of go hand in hand? It does. I think it's therapy for our whole family, just knowing like we can take the darkest part of our lives and turn it into something bright and hopeful for other people. You've already come so far, Kirsten. What is sort of the goal for the future with your endeavor that is exploding at this point? My biggest hope is that a Bexley Box will eventually be available in every law enforcement agency in the country. But I want a Bexley Box to become a standard resource, kind of like an AED or a first aid kit, something that departments know that they can count on long term that will be refilled and kept updated for them so that they can serve the children in our communities the best that they can. I just love this. I mean, as much as I

am so sad for you and everything that's happened, this makes me really happy. Thank you, Kirsten, for joining us today. Thank you, Andrea. That's it for this episode of Dateline True Crime Weekly. To get ad-free listening for all our podcasts, subscribe. to Dateline Premium. And coming up this Friday on Dateline, Keith has a brand new twist to tell you about in the incredible tale of Sante and Kenneth Kimes, the mother and son, Grifters, who became killers.

There's a lot of times over 35 years where you just, you know, your mind kind of runs wild. It's nice to be able to put it to rest. Watch The Devil War White, airing this Friday at 9-8 Central on NBC, or stream it starting Saturday on Peacock. Thanks for listening. Dateline True Crime Weekly is produced by Carson Cummins, Caroline Casey, and Keani Reed.

Our associate producers are Ellery Gladstone, Groth, and Aria Young. Our senior producer is Liz Brown Curloff. Veronica Mazaka is our digital producer. Rick Kwan is our sound designer. Original music by Jesse McGinty. Paul Ryan is executive producer, and Liz Kool is Senior Executive Producer of Dateline. All right.

Thanks very much. Thank you.