Dateline NBC - Verdict in the roommate murder trial. Mom accused of murder by fire and van. And, actor Dennis Quaid.

Episode Date: March 27, 2025

Listen to this week's episode of the Dateline: True Crime Weekly podcast with Andrea Canning. A verdict in the trial of a North Dakota woman accused of stabbing her roommate to death with a pocket knife nearly 20 years ago. In Michigan a retrial begins for a woman accused of setting her husband on fire and then running him over with her van. The latest in the Karen Read and Bryan Kohberger cases. Plus, actor Dennis Quaid talks about his experience playing the Happy Face serial killer. Find out more about the cases covered each week here: www.datelinetruecrimeweekly.com

Hey, good morning. Good morning. It's the start of another workday for the Dateline team here at 30 Rockefeller Center. This was supposed to be a great buzzer beater game last night. Hope your brackets are still intact. Our producers are catching up on breaking crime news around the country. Is there anything new? The alternate suspect questioning is a strong case.

Prosecutors said bad blood, as Taylor Swift might say. Welcome to Dateline True Crime Weekly. I'm Andrea Canning. It's March 27th, and here's what's on our docket. In Western Michigan, a woman accused of murdering her husband is on trial for the second time. Can a renowned arson investigator clear her name? It'll come down to science, the science of fire. Other stories we're watching this week.

New details in the prosecution's case against Brian Koberger. The wife of a murdered California firefighter is arrested in Mexico. And it's not the first time she's been charged with murder. And the latest on Karen Reed's upcoming trial. Jury selection will start on Tuesday. More than 200 jurors have been summoned. Plus, we've got our first celebrity here on Dateline True Crime Weekly. Dateline fan and actor Dennis Quaid, he's got a new role as a serial killer.

He killed eight women in five years. And he would leave notes and sign them with happy face. But before all that, we're heading to the North Dakota prairie for the latest chapter in a murder that stumped investigators for decades, until a surprising arrest three years ago. On June 4, 2007, Gordon Knutson was worried that he hadn't heard from his 18-year-old daughter Anita. She was a first-year college student and hadn't heard from his 18-year-old daughter, Anita. She was a first-year college student and hadn't shown up for work or answered his calls.

So he drove over to her apartment. What he found there would shake not just the Knutson family, but the community of Minot, North Dakota. Anita had been murdered, stabbed to death in her bed. Following the killing, police had no shortage of leads. They interviewed more than 40 people and said there were several possible suspects. But the case went cold until almost 15 years later.

Anita's roommate, Nicole Rice, was charged with her murder. She pleaded not guilty and her trial finally began last week. Dateline producer, Haley Barber, is in Grand Forks, North Dakota, and joins us now to bring us up to speed on the case and take us inside the courtroom as the verdict was read. Haley, thank you for joining us. Of course. Thank you so much for having me, Andrea. So Haley, to start, can you tell us a little bit about Anita Knudsen? What have you learned about her? So by all accounts,

she is just this bubbly ball of energy. She's only four foot 10. She's really tiny, but she just makes friends with everyone. And she's just a really sweet person to be around. She liked kids. She was studying elementary education. Yeah, she wanted to be a kindergarten teacher. And her friends joked that that was the perfect job for her, because only the kindergartners

would be shorter than her. So sad that her life just was so abruptly ended in that way, horrible. After Anita's father found her body, police came to the apartment. Was there anything out of place, any clues that might have given them an idea of who could have done this? Yeah, her purse was there, her wallet was there. This didn't appear to be a robbery when police went in, but the window to her bedroom, the screen had been cut.

And that definitely seemed a little bit mysterious. So something really big the police found, they found what they believe was the murder weapon in the apartment. That's right. Yeah. And it appeared to be a pocket, basically a pocket knife that you would kind of bend in half. And she had been stabbed twice. So whoever did this, you know, left this weapon behind. Were there any fingerprints on it? Any DNA? No fingerprints were recovered from the scene and limited DNA was recovered from the knife itself. So as we know, Anita had a roommate, Nicole, the woman now on trial for her murder.

When did police first talk to her? Right away, they call her to the scene. They want her to look and see if anything is out of place. At the trial last week, one of the detectives who responded to the crime scene talked about that. Best of my recollection, my exact words were, I'm sorry to tell you that your roommate's deceased and she's been killed.

I used the word she's been killed. How did the defendant react to that? She didn't. She was flat. Just no real reaction at all. Was that reaction unusual compared to the other times that you relayed the death of someone? It was unusual and I remember thinking what's going on here.

Right away she tells police that her iPod is missing. She just kind of fixated on that. She was very, all of a sudden she was animated. And she was animated about this listening device and I thought this is what excites you here this is this is what you're concerned about. So that stuck out to investigators at the time and they also discovered there was tension in this roommate relationship. Yeah these are things that looking back on having roommates when you're 18 you know Anita wasn't turning her alarm off, Nicole was maybe going out and partying.

Yeah, I mean, I think a lot of college kids have those sort of petty arguments with their roommates, but this seemed like it was more than that. Yeah, and it seemed like it was kind of at a heating point in the months and weeks leading up to Anita's murder. What did Nicole tell police about where she was at the time of the murder? Yeah, so she tells police that that night she is out at her family's farm and her parents back this up and say, yep, she was here.

But she gives two more statements to police and they're a little bit different. So her stories are kind of changing. So 15 years go by. And then finally, there is an arrest of Nicole in 2022. What changed? Yeah. So a oxygen television show called Cold Justice teamed up with the Minot Police Department

and they did this new investigation of the case, and they were able to get a couple of new statements from other witnesses who said that Nicole had admitted to the killing. And based on these other statements and other information, the Minot Police Department made this arrest. And you were in the courtroom when those witnesses testified for the prosecution,

including a man Nicole had dated at one time? That's right. He claims that one night they're at a party and everyone is drinking and somehow Anita's murder comes up at this party. Nicole and I were sitting on a couch and a couple buddies were playing video games and someone from the kitchen was talking about it and that's when it was stated, the comment. When what was stated? The comment was that from Nicole Rice, it was that she had did it, that she had killed Anita. Nicole said that?

Yes. Then another, there was actually another witness that took the stand and said, I gave her a ride one night and she, you know, made a confession to me as well. Nicole, of course, denies committing this murder. Right off the bat, the defense really went after alternate suspects in this trial. In their opening statement, they were pointing the finger at other people. There was other work that was done in this case that showed other suspects that were

much more culpable than Nicole. There's one particular suspect, a man who had come into town that weekend, and he kind of had a violent past. We knew that he had a federal conviction. He had assaulted a woman. And it's again, kind of varying stories about where he was that night. The defense also, you know, has really questioned, you know, why it took a TV show to shake the trees on this. It was pressure from a TV show, a nationally syndicated program that came in, didn't dig up anything of substance, but put an incredible amount of pressure on the state's attorney's office, the police department, to bring charges in this case. Yeah and there's been a lot of testimony about that you know when a case goes on as we know Andrea for so

many years can we really trust you know these new witnesses this new information to put someone away for a murder that she says she didn't commit. The trial moved very quickly and we heard closing arguments in the case on Tuesday and then we got a verdict. We, the jury, duly impaled and sworn, find the defendant Nicole Erin Rice not guilty of the crime. We have no information. Dated at Grand Forks, North Dakota, this 26th May of March 2025.

Is this the jury's verdict? Can you calm down a little bit, please? Is this the jury's verdict? Can you calm down a little bit, please? Is this the jury's verdict? Okay, the juror nodded. This was, I think, stunning to a lot of people in the courtroom. You know, on one side you have Nicole's family, and obviously this is a relief, but very emotional to them.

And for Anita's family, I think this was a crushing and devastating blow. It was emotional for everyone on both sides, I think. —Paylee, thank you so much for joining us to talk about this trial. —Thank you, Andrea. —Coming up, the Michigan mom accused of burning her husband before running him over with a van is heading to trial for the second time. She says investigators got it all wrong.

On a cold and rainy January day in 2007, fire trucks raced to a house in Lawrence Township, western Michigan. The home was destroyed and Todd Sturmer, who'd run out of the building with the top half of his body in flames, died in the yard. Three years later, a jury convicted Todd's wife, Linda Sturmer, of murdering him by first setting him on fire and then running him over with her van. Her mandatory sentence was life in prison without the possibility of parole. But in 2018, Linda was released. A federal

appeals court ruled Linda hadn't received a fair trial because of mistakes her defense attorney made. This week, almost 20 years after her husband's death, she is standing trial yet again. Dateline producer Sergey Avonin was there as a jury was selected. Sergey, thank you for coming on the podcast. Good morning, Andrea. Thanks for having me.

Set this up for us, Sergey, because I understand at the beginning of their relationship, Linda and Todd Sturmer seemed to have a great relationship, a lovely blended family. By all accounts, the 80s and the 90s were a happy time for the couple. Linda had two daughters when they met, and by the time they married, Todd and she already had two sons also together. It seems finances became an issue for them and according to their sons, there was some infidelity on Linda's part. Linda denied that and all of her children

said that Todd had a temper. Linda's daughters especially say that Todd sometimes hit Linda and her oldest daughter when she was a teenager. Todd did have an arrest record for a misdemeanor assault and drug charges and a DUI. So according to all of their children, Linda and Todd had a big blowout fight the night before the house was set on fire. So the allegations here are that Linda killed Todd by setting him on fire. Well, there's that and more. The state said that she had doused Todd in gasoline and then started a fire in their living room.

And then he ran outside on fire and she drove over him in her Ford van. She denies that and said she was in the basement doing laundry and he was yelling at her from the living room and then his yells turned into screams. So when she went upstairs, he was on fire and there was fire separating them. So she said she ran outside and to her van to get some help. Once she was there, she saw Todd run out of the house and she tried to get him to drop and roll and, you know, get the fire off of him or get in the van, but he just wouldn't do it. And she said while she tried again to leave, the van got stuck in the mud

because it had been raining and snowing. And that's when the next-door neighbors got to the house and found Todd lying on the ground and called 911. So, is Linda saying that she didn't hit him or that she accidentally hit him? Linda says she has no understanding of how Todd got hit by her van. The state says it must have happened because they found Todd's blood on the bumper and the undercarriage on the vehicle. The neighbors say she was incoherent when, you know, they saw her on site. So I'm assuming at her first trial the state presented evidence that Linda started the fire, committed arson, you know, to be able to get that conviction.

The state's fire investigator said that the fire was intentionally set in the living room, and Todd was at the center of it. Linda's lawyer at the time told her, according to both of them, that she didn't need to hire a fire investigator of her own, because their argument was that it was Todd, not Linda, who committed an arson and he had accidentally set himself on fire.

So how does that work? Are they trying to say that it was actually Todd trying to kill Linda? Well, he had other properties that suspiciously caught on fire and he was in debt on each of them. Those fires were investigated as arson, but according to Todd's sister, someone else was eventually held responsible for them, right? Yes, but Todd's mother actually testified about those fires at Linda's first trial and she said, quote, I will be hard pressed to find somebody who has had one house burned down, but three? Three? So the argument was that he knew how to do it and Linda didn't have a trace of gasoline on her when they tested the clothes that she was wearing that day. Interesting. But the jury still convicted her back in 2010 and they didn't deliberate for very long, did they? Not even a full day. So she was sentenced to life and served eight years. One of her

daughters actually reached out to a well-known investigator in Michigan called Bob Trenkle, who made a report that Linda's team got to the U.S. Court of Appeals, saying that wasn't enough evidence, not only that did Linda start the fire, but anyone did intentionally. He said that the county's investigation was inadequate and the appeals court agreed with him, faulted her lawyer for not countering that official's testimony. So Linda has been out on bail since 2018. And she's been living here locally with one of her daughters. She's 60 years old now,

and when I spoke with her, she sounds confident and ready for the new trial. So the fire evidence will be newly contested this time, but what about Linda driving over Todd with her van? How will they handle that? If the next door neighbors are called to testify and saying they saw any movement of the van's wheels, that would be, that testimony would be certainly damaging to her. So we'll just have to wait and see. Wow. Okay. Well, thank you, Sergey, for this.

I know you're heading off to court as we speak, so please keep us posted. Thanks for having me. Of course I will. Up next, it's time for Dateline Roundup. We've got details from the latest court filings in the case against Brian Coburger. And after a month on the run, a woman wanted for the murder of her firefighter wife is finally in custody.

Plus, actor Dennis Quaid tells us what he learned playing the happy face serial killer. -♪ -♪ Welcome back. Joining us for this week's Dateline Roundup is Dateline digital producer, Veronica Mazekka. Hey, Veronica. Hi, Andrea. For our first story, we are off to Idaho for the latest in the case of Brian

Koberger. He is the man accused of fatally stabbing four University of Idaho students in November of 2022. Last week, more than a dozen court filings were made public, giving us a glimpse of what the prosecution and defense might be planning in the run-up to his trial, including a selfie. Tell us about that, Veronica. Yeah, so there were a couple of things that came out in recent filings. One of those things was the selfie, which shows Brian Coburger. He has a little bit of a grin and he's giving a thumbs up to the camera. It seems like the prosecution is hoping that this photograph will help support their bushy eyebrow evidence.

If you remember, one of the surviving roommates says that she saw a man with bushy eyebrows leaving the residence. And if the prosecution is right, this photo was taken within hours of the murders. Hostage Also in recent filings, Veronica prosecutors talk about Coburger's alleged click activity on Amazon, what he was searching. Essentially, there was a search warrant on Coburger's Amazon activity. Investigators say that he purchased a military brand knife on Amazon about eight months before

the murders, which matches the knife sheath found next to one of the victims. We reported that development in our dateline back in 2023. But what we hadn't heard before was that Coburger's online shopping activity revealed that he was shopping for another knife just days after the murders. Some legal experts are calling Coburger's searches on Amazon a smoking gun, saying the evidence is catastrophic to the defense's case. Yeah. saying the evidence is catastrophic to the defense's case. Yeah, so experts are saying that the Amazon click activity could prove premeditation, but his defense team is hoping to have his Amazon activity kept out of the trial, and

the judge has yet to rule on their motion to exclude this evidence. There's also been some back and forth over security footage from an apartment building near the crime scene. That's right. The prosecution has identified about 12 hours of security footage that they want to enter into evidence, which they say shows a driver circling the house in various times before the murders. But in a motion, Coburger's defense team said it's too long to sort through, so they want it out. And the prosecution filed something that involves Brian Coburger's family and how they could

get dragged into this. Yeah, in the filings we learn that Coburger's family may actually be called as a witness for the prosecution. We don't know what they might say or how the prosecution thinks they'll help the case, so we'll be watching for more on that. For our next story, we're off to the West Coast where there's news in the murder of a California fire captain, Rebecca Becky Morodi, who was fatally stabbed this February in her house. Yeah, the 49-year-old Captain Morodi was a veteran firefighter just weeks before her death. She had been battling the Eaton

fire out in California and her mom found her stabbed in her neck and chest and it was just horrible. And then the San Diego County Sheriff's Department named her wife Yolanda as the suspect. So according to the arrest affidavit, she was seen on ring camera chasing Rebecca Morodi. And Rebecca is saying, I don't want to die. And Yolanda is seen holding a knife. So where does Yolanda go from there then? What do authorities say?

She's been on the run for about five weeks until this past weekend when Mexican officials located her at a hotel just south of the US border. She's now in custody in San Diego on suspicion of murder. What are they saying the police about the prosecutors about a possible motive here? The arrest affidavit says that Yolanda Morodi texted an unnamed witness the day after Rebecca's killing saying that Rebecca had met someone else and was planning to end their marriage. According to the affidavit, Yolanda said, quote, we had a big fight and I hurt her. I'm sorry. This isn't Yolanda's first run in with the law, is it?

That's correct. In 2003, Yolanda Morodi pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter of her husband and was released from custody nearly a decade later. Thanks for the update on that. We also have an update on the Karen Reed case. The Massachusetts woman accused of murdering her police officer boyfriend, John O'Keefe, in 2022, something she vehemently denies. What is the news in Karen Reed land this week, Veronica? Well, it looks like she might finally be heading to trial.

The judge confirmed jury selection will start on Tuesday. More than 200 jurors have been summoned, so it could take a while, but we'll be there watching. All right. Thank you so much, Veronica, for all these updates. Of course. Thank you. For our final story this week, I am joined by a famous actor who's been a household

name for decades. You might know him from his role as an astronaut in The Right Stuff, or a loving father in The Parent Trap, or his most recent film role as a TV producer in The Substance. Now he is tackling something in our wheelhouse, a completely new genre playing serial killer Keith Justperson in the series Happy Face. He is also a friend of mine and he likes to watch Dateline with his wonderful wife, Laura. So we invited him on the show to talk true crime.

Dennis, thank you for making time to come on the podcast. Thank you. We don't just like, we are stressed. We've seen every episode. I love it. Well, as you may remember, my favorite role of yours was in The Rookie, where you play the older baseball pitcher.

Right. This is not that. No. No, Happy Face is not The Rookie 2. It's not a sequel. No, this is so much darker. Let's just start with, can you just give our listeners a quick snapshot of who Jesperson was and what he did?

In the 90s, he killed eight women in five years. He was a trucker and he would leave notes on bathroom walls and sign them with happy face. That's how he got the nickname. Yeah, he's in a hole in Oregon and it's exactly where he should be. He had a very loving, close relationship with his daughter, who was a little girl. And then she was 15 when he got caught. And so she had to reconcile this loving sweet dad with who was this monster. And I had no ambition or attraction to playing a serial killer at all.

But this is told from her point of view. And it's the relationship between her and her father. And she really had a lot of courage to even tell this story. And that's why I'm doing it. Does he know about the show? Yes, he knows about it. Usually when I do play a real person who's alive, I always want to meet them.

But with this, number one, I didn't feel like I was going to get the true story from him. And I didn't want to give him any kind of satisfaction or entertainment or take away from the boredom of prison that he deserves. And so I read his daughter Melissa's book, and Melissa knows him better than he knows himself. Lauren Ruffin Seeing the relationship between you and her was so creepy. David Hickman Yeah, he found ways to get in contact with her. He wrote her letters, I mean, huge amounts of letters. That's what kind of prompted her to start her podcast

about this and her way of healing and, you know, in a way it's how do you heal from anything like this, but was eventually to reach out to the families of her father's victims and the families of other perpetrators. And it really helped her, I think, too, because you have to think, is this in me? And then the shame, it's shame that you're living with, and shame is something that holds us back. But if you put it out into the world, it loses its power. Yeah, so true. And that's how courageous she has been. And she's really kind of a hero of mine.

Yeah. We deal with so many families on Dateline, you know, families of the killer, families of the victims, and these people, you know, that are collateral damage in all of this. Not to take anything away from the victims, but there are more people affected by this. And I guess the silence of it, it ripples out.

And if you don't speak of it, it continues. You said it so well. I mean, this is something that we know on Dateline is this ripple effect of a murder and crime. On another note, I'm putting you on the spot. Do you have a most fascinating Dateline? Or are there too many? I knew you were going to ask that question.

The betrayal is always the best. Love triangles. Just you can't believe it. Who was the woman who killed her own kids? Oh, Lori Vallaudet. Yeah. I mean, that's one that is just still sex with you and it's ongoing still. That's what makes it so fascinating is how could people do that to each other, to those that they loved? I mean,

especially a parent and a child, that's the most unthinkable you could possibly imagine. It's unbelievable. Yeah. I'm working on a dateline right now that involves a mother and her two children that's airing very soon. So you'll look forward to that one. Dennis, thank you so much for this conversation. I've been really looking forward to that one. Dennis, thank you so much for this conversation. I've been really looking forward to this. I encourage everyone to watch Happy Face. Thank you so much, and our hats off to Melissa for her bravery and for telling her story.

It sounds like she's on the road to healing by doing things like this with you. Thank you. It's streaming on Paramount, and it's available now. The first episode just dropped a few days ago. Excellent. Thank you so much, Dennis. Thank you.

That's it for this episode of Dateline True Crime Weekly. To get ad-free listening for all our podcasts, subscribe to Dateline Premium. Dateline is off this Friday for the 2025 World Figure Skating Championships. But get ready for a whole lot of Dateline for the next couple of months. We'll have episodes Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays starting next week. And we've also got plenty to keep you busy on Dateline's podcast feed. Coming up this Friday, we have a treat for Dateline Premium subscribers. Listen in as Josh, Dennis, and Keith talk about a very special anniversary, their 30 years

spent working on Dateline. From their very first stories to prison interviews that didn't quite go according to plan, you'll hear them reflect on what Dateline and you mean to them. 30 years, yeah, hard to believe. Now, you know, it kind of depends on how you measure time. Oh, here we go, here we go. You're gonna do this Einstein thing on us, huh? One last thing before we go.

If you have any questions for the Dateline True Crime Weekly team or suggestions for a case we should look into, send us an audio message on social at DatelineN or you can leave us a voicemail at 212-413-5252. Thanks for listening. Dateline True Crime Weekly is produced by Franny Kelly and Katie Ferguson. Our associate producers are Carson Cummins and Caroline Casey. Our senior producer is Liz Brown-Kurloff, Veronica Mazaka is our digital producer, Rick Kwan is our sound designer, Original Music by Jesse McGinty, Bryson Barnes

is head of audio production, Paul Ryan is executive producer, and Liz Cole is senior executive producer of Dateline. Okay, see you later.