Dateline Originals - Killer Role - Ep. 4: Oh, My God. That's a .38

Episode Date: December 18, 2023

She was there to help with legal documents, but when a fatal shot rang out, she became a key witness.This episode was originally published on April 22, 2021. 

It was all so odd. That summer night at the sheriff's office in Central Point, Oregon, Detectives Bill Ford and Tony Young sat in rapt attention as two intelligent, educated women told them this crazy, crazy story about a terrible man, an awful fright, and a gun that was only used to scare that seemed to fire all on its own. Did you intentionally pull the trigger? No, I might have, but I didn't think that it was cocked. To fire a gun, and I've always thought you had to cock a gun. This gun doesn't do that. It just fired.

But why, the detectives wanted to know, why did Tucker pick up the gun in the first place? Do you think you could have done something different? Because you've been around him a couple times. He's never tried to kill you before. There's people there. I mean, I would think that... This is different. This is... He was... He's been threatening us all day and for days. And he wanted my grandfather's money.

This is completely different. Tucker, you've got to understand something, too. And that causes us concern with this right here. Oh, yes. The money thing. Why was it, the detectives wondered, that neither Tucker nor her mom seemed to have any? As accomplished as the two women were,

why were they both unemployed and hard up for cash? I don't have any money. I was looking to get food stamps. I'm that broke. But it wasn't just money that kept popping up during Kelly and Tucker's interviews. We're also talking about deeds and wills and property and large amounts of value there.

Wills and deeds. Property. Oh boy. In this episode, Money. How it can turn brother against sister. And how the dividing of an inheritance can be hard proof

of who mom loves best. It's a story in which love is the battlefield and wealth, like blood, drains away. And the fantasy world of moviemaking is but a temporary refuge from the hard reality of a 38 slug. This is Dateline NBC's newest podcast, Killer Roll. Kelly and her brother Shane had so much in common. Both well-educated, both former lawyers, and both very dependent on their mother for survival. Their little brother, Ryan, said that as their mother aged and her fortune dwindled,

well... Things went downhill dramatically after my dad died. Finances started to become a bigger and bigger issue. This is the Game of Thrones bit. Or maybe more like that TV family drama. Succession. What was at stake was a Victorian house in town, the one Kelly was living in with her three children,

then worth about half a million, and the 60-acre ranch where Shane lived with his mom, worth at least twice that. According to the younger brother, Ryan, the arrangement was that when their mother eventually died, Kelly would get the house in town and half the ranch, and Shane would inherit the other half of the ranch. My understanding was it was going to go 50-50, my sister and my brother as an inheritance. They would essentially split the farm in half. And Shane certainly deserved his share of the land,

said Ryan. I was perfectly fine if he got half the farm. I thought that he was, he had spent a lot of years there and what he did for my dad. Ryan, to be clear, will be getting none of the property, which is just fine with him and his wife Rhonda.

That's the way they wanted it. We just took care of ourselves. That's the way we felt. Rhonda and I both worked for a Silicon Valley firm, and we're just fine. But the family wasn't so fine. Money, the inheritance, seemed all the family could talk about whenever they got together.

Got so bad, Brian said, that by 2008, he stopped taking his wife and kids to the Oregon ranch and cut off all contact with his sister Kelly. A little more than two years later, deed records show, Lori Moore, Tucker's grandmother, took out a $938,000 reverse mortgage on the property, almost as much as the entire spread was worth. Then, said Ryan, his mom started using the ranch kind of like an ATM, withdrawing cash as needed bit by bit, and she could continue to do so right up to the loan amount of 938 000. it was just money going out constantly going out so you were aware of declining value of that place yeah shane must have been aware of it too yeah and kelly told detectives that borrowed money became her source of income. My mother is taking care of my

family with her property wealth. But simple arithmetic. Every time they withdrew money, it increased the debt on the property, and so diminished the value of the eventual inheritance. Not just

Kelly's half of the ranch, Shane's half, the ranch, Shane's half too. Shane, on the other hand, was making money off the land in his own way. He was running a small marijuana growing operation, or pot, or weed, or whatever. It's legal under Oregon law if you have a license, which Shane did not. Anyway, he was growing about 50 big bushy plants, but not in an amateurish way. Oh no, Shane's operation was almost like a professional nursery. Giant pots, shade structures, an elaborate irrigation system. His crop, by harvest, could be worth anywhere from $30,000 to $50,000.

So, if Shane were ever to lose the ranch, he would also lose his business, his home. He would be destitute. According to Kelly, Shane flew into such a rage during one of their many arguments over money, he threw that plastic oil can that ended up hitting Tucker in the face. Here's Kelly with the detectives. Knocked her down to the floor. It hit her so hard. Could have taken out her eye, but it hit her on the cheekbone, split open her skin. She's permanently scarred from it. And she called the police. That is when Tucker had Shane arrested for

misdemeanor assault and harassment and followed up with that no contact order, which meant just that, no contact. Shane couldn't come anywhere near Tucker. And that, according to Tucker, was when the threats began. Has he ever threatened you directly? Yes, on the phone. When? Multiple times, actually. Let's talk about the last time you had a conversation with him where he made threats.

He called and he said that he's actually basically like repeated the same things over and over. But it's, I need to drop the charges. I need to make this go away. I don't have any idea what he's capable of. All the while, Kelly and her mom, Lori, were desperate for cash.

Six months before the shooting, the two of them got an idea. All those Douglas firs and ponderosa pines gracing the property were beautiful, sure, but also worth a lot of money at a lumber mill. But Kelly told the detectives, Shane said, no way. He refused to let the timber harvest go forward when we desperately needed the money. That is, she said, he refused unless. Unless Tucker drops the charges. Economic duress. That was, my mother called me on the phone, weeping, weeping.

Please, Kelly, please, please, get Tucker to drop the charges. He's not going to let us do the timber harvest. Shane and a friend were there when the loggers showed up anyway, hired by Kelly to cut the trees. Here's what the friend told police. Shane told the loggers about the $900,000 reverse mortgage and that it would be illegal to cut the trees down without the bank's approval. The loggers,

not wanting to get tied up in some sort of family feud, legal morass, left. And when Kelly found out what happened, she was so furious, she looked at Shane and said,

I'll just kill your ass. That again from a friend of Shane witness, so consider the source. We didn't get a chance to hear what Kelly had to say about all of this. She politely declined our repeated requests for an interview. But as Kelly told the story to police, Shane made his next move about a week before the shooting. Possibly worried his inheritance would melt away before he could claim it, Shane asked his mother to sign a document. Kelly said Lori thought it was a revision of some sort to her will. And he came in and told my mother that unless she signed this will, he was going to kill me.

Me. He was going to kill Kelly. He said to her, I'll kill her. I'll kill her, mother. You sign it or I'll kill her. And my mother signed this, what we thought was a will. How did you find out about this will that Shane made? Did your mom tell you? I came home... A week ago? A week ago. And my mother said,

I signed a will giving Shane half the farm. And I was distraught. Who was the other half going to go to? Me. But remember, according to Brother Ryan, that was the arrangement all along. Shane and Kelly would each get half the farm when their mother died. So what was the big deal?

Why was Kelly distraught? Mother, how could you do that? Now I have no leverage over him because leverage over him is, I need it. I can't be at his mercy. The only way I had to control him was to have leverage over him when my mother died. Shane and Kelly's mom, Lori, questioned at the ranch right after the shooting, explained this leverage arrangement to the officer who questioned her. It was a hot day, so you'd be hearing a thirsty dog panting in the background.

Do you have a will or anything like that for when you pass away? I do. Okay. And before this all happened today, where was everything supposed to go to? It was supposed to be divided half and half between my son and my daughter. There was, however, a but. Here it comes. But I didn't want to give him a large lump sum of money.

So I'm confused. You were saying that you don't want him to get the money, but you're going to give him the money then? No, my daughter was going to give him like $25,000 and then $20,000 a year. So I'm confused with the whole will situation. So the will you have now, it's split 50-50, right? Yes.

Okay. And so now your future plan was to have him not get anything and everything goes to your daughter, but she's to make payments to him? No. Oh, yes, yes. That's what we were going to do. We were going to give him his share slowly. Okay.

And you were in the process of doing that with Kelly? Yes, I guess so. Okay. We don't know if Shane was aware of this arrangement or not, but for some reason he clearly felt a need to make sure he was still getting half the ranch when the time came. So, a week before the shooting, he tried to outmaneuver his sister when he had his mom confirm, in writing, his share of the ranch.

But according to Kelly, Shane had made a mistake. And then Shane realized that he needed to have it witnessed or notarized, and he told my mother that he was going to bring a notary out. Which gave Kelly the opening she needed to get a leg up on Shane. I had had my mother prepare in advance, because she writes very slowly, a renunciation of the will she signed earlier. And I was going to have the notary notarize that as well I was going to hand write into Shane's will which disinherited him instantly if anybody if my mother or

anybody in my family was injured or killed by him or persons known or unknown, if her property was vandalized or stolen by persons known or unknown, because he could very easily have somebody do the dirty work for him. Okay. So, any bad thing that might befall Kelly and her family would automatically disinherit Shane, even if he didn't do it. Then Kelly made another move. On Tuesday, July 26, 2016, the day of the shooting, Kelly arranged for a realtor to visit the property and make an appraisal, supposedly because... My mother decided she wants to sell.

Well, that was a wrinkle. The realtor arrived just hours before Shane's notary was due. And when Shane saw the realtor, according to Kelly at least, he lost it. And Shane was threatening her and threatening to do damage to her car telling her it was his property and she better get out and she got brave soul but she is stayed and took a look around brave indeed she must have been that realtor because the way Kelly told it, her brother was acting like a man possessed.

And Shane looked at me and he said, he said, don't you f*** up my deal, Kelly. Don't you f*** up my deal. Or you and Tucker. And he made a gesture across his throat. Police checked out this part of the story. They called the realtor, recorded the conversation. The realtor backed up Kelly, said she heard Shane making threats.

When I went towards the house, he said he was going to f*** up my truck, and he said, and I'm going to kill you and Tucker. He said that to Kelly? He said that to Kelly.

Kelly picked up the story from there. And I said to him, I'm not afraid of you're afraid of me or not. You and Tucker... For a moment, Kelly paused and made a cutting gesture across her throat. And he walked away. And I told my daughter to come out because I'm frightened.

I'm really frightened. I'm screaming, Tucker, where are you? Come! Come! So then the realtor left, said Kelly. But the real real estate drama? The players were getting into position. The curtain was about to go up. Had he explained on the phone, you know, that there was a feud going on between them, I might not have gone. The person you're listening to now is Carla Treiber, a fit 50-something with a cheery but wary demeanor. Carla is just the

sort of person an investigator dreams of finding, but rarely does. She is the notary Shane hired to come out to the ranch the day he was shot. Of all the people there, Carla was the one impartial observer, a true eyewitness. So her account of what happened before and after the shooting carried a lot of weight with police. Carla said she expected this was going to be a routine 15-minute signing. But she hit trouble before she even got to the ranch. It probably took me about 45 minutes to get to the area, but then I was out of service. Cell service, she means.

So, no GPS, no phone calls, no texting for directions. She was lost. I couldn't find the place. This is some kind of treasure hunt, just getting to the place where you need to be. Oh yeah, this one was a tough one. Carla drove miles out of her way before she could get a strong enough signal to reach Shane, who gave her directions and a cryptic message. He said a gentleman will be waiting for you at the driveway. Gentleman? And so, lead me in there. What happened next? Okay, so I found it.

I pulled in. I drive a little red Mazda Miata, and I had the top down that day. It was probably about 3.30. And so I stopped when I saw him, and I got out, and I said, hi, I'm Carla the notary. The man was a friend of Shane's, a guy named Carlton. Why wasn't Shane there to meet her? No explanation. Anyway, the friend said he had the document that needed to be notarized,

and he got into Carla's car and told her to drive to a house about 200 yards up the dirt driveway. So I was really nervous at that point. But so we drove up to the house and we knocked on the front door and heard nothing. Nobody was coming. So he went around the side

and I followed him and he went to the big picture window and he's knocking on the window and somebody's coming out yelling and it was Kelly Moore. Where was Shane while all this was going on? I don't know. At that point, I didn't know where he was.

Did he explain why he wouldn't be there? Nope. Okay. I had no idea. We know why Shane wasn't there. Remember, he was under a court order not to go near Tucker. But Carla? She had no clue what she was walking into.

Must have seemed very strange when you got up to the house. As soon as the door shut, it was strange. Carla found herself in a kind of dining room, kitchen arrangement. Wood paneled, rustic. Big windows looking out onto the property. A big brick fireplace with a giant musket hung over the mantle. Carla sat down at the antique dining table with Grandmother Lori and a very angry Kelly Moore. She kept yelling. She's like, what do you need? What do you need? What are you doing here?

Carla said she could see a young woman standing silently in a dark corner of the kitchen. Didn't know yet who it was. And I saw her out of the corner of my eye and I said, oh, excuse me. Hello. How are you? And she put her hand up, never said a word. The entire time from the time that door shut, everything was just off. Carla tried to ignore it, tried to maintain a professional calm. She pulled out the document to be notarized. And it turned out to be not a will like Kelly had expected, but instead a real estate document

known as a grant deed. If she signed, Lori could no longer siphon money from the ranch and give it to Kelly. That would have to stop. With that deed, Shane would be guaranteed

his 50%. So, a surprise move by Shane? A surprise to Kelly, for sure. The air in the room seemed to stiffen. And Grandma's not saying anything. She's just like sitting there, afraid to talk.

So she never said anything the whole time. I asked Grandma, do you know what you're signing? And she said yes. She understood all that. And I said, okay. Because I had to make sure she understood what we were getting ready to sign. And Kelly goes, I thought this was a will. And I'm like, I don't know anything about a will. And she goes, are you sure this isn't a will? And I was like, it's not a will. And she grabbed the paper out of my hand. She read it and tore it up in pieces.

Did she go on talking and yelling at that point? She was always yelling the whole time. She was very excited. Up until now, Carla had never laid eyes on the man who hired her, Shane. They'd communicated only by text. I looked up, and here comes somebody outside of the window, like walking up from behind the house. And I said, oh look, maybe that's him. And she said, yeah, that's my brother. Then, she said, the young woman, Tucker, of course, suddenly appeared at the table. Tucker came up, and there was a towel on the table, and she had reached underneath the towel.

And when she brought it back this way, in my head, I went went, oh my God, that's a 38. So there was Carla Treiber, stuck in a deep country house, brimming with danger and tension, miles from anywhere, in a place she couldn't even find, and without so much as cell service to call for help. It was like she'd just walked into a scene from a horror movie, where everybody else knew the lines but her. Oh, and one of the actors had a gun, a real one. And I don't really know what Tucker's doing because she's behind me. With a gun.

With a gun, right. So my assumption at that time was she's going to shoot me. That's what I thought. I'm the oddball that doesn't belong here. So she must be shooting me, and I couldn't figure it out. What was that like, that moment? It was the most scariest thing I'd ever been. I remember telling myself at one point, if you're going to shoot me, just do it and get it over with. Yeah, that's how intense it was. What happened next was so traumatic, said Carla.

She had to be hospitalized afterwards and still suffers from PTSD. There was yelling, she said, and that gun and Shane stalking around outside, she could see him through the windows. Yes, yes. He wasn't coming in. He was just like coming up towards the patio. And so Kelly went to the door and said, hey, what's going on? I thought we were signing a will. And he's like, what? Why would we sign a will? Carla could hear the conversation, but from where she was sitting, she couldn't see Shane. So then all of a sudden, Tucker said, Mom, Mom, look out. He's coming in. He's coming in. I remember looking over my shoulder, and I couldn't see him at all. So he wasn't coming toward the door, as far as you could tell.

I didn't really know what was going on, and then she went over towards the door. She, Tucker, with the gun. Carla didn't see what happened next but... I heard the gunshot and I was like, what just happened? Because I thought in my mind, I'm like, oh she must have shot the top of the patio or something and then I hear him yell, you shot me! And I was like, oh my God, oh my God, I don't know what to do here. So I was scared to death. I can only imagine. So after that, Tucker went to her room and I remember thinking there was a phone on the table. So I grabbed that phone and I kept trying to dial 911 and I put it up to my ear like this thing won't work and Kelly comes around in front of me and I said oh my god you

need to help me call 911 no and I looked at her and said you better go in the bedroom and get the gun from Tucker cuz I didn't know if Tucker was gonna come out and shoot us if she was gonna shoot herself I didn't know what was really going on it wasn't but the intensity was totally ramped up this whole time. Oh, yeah. The amount of adrenaline in the air. For everyone, I think. I mean, I know I was going crazy.

And Kelly comes back out with the gun down to her side. And I'm trying to, like, hold it together. And I'm like, Kelly, just give me the gun and give it to me by the grips. And she goes, no. I go, Kelly, look it. I'm like, Kelly, just give me the gun and give it to me by the grips. And she goes, no. I go, Kelly, look it. I'm really shaking. I just need you to hand me the gun by the grips.

I just want the gun. And she leaned down and got in my face and said, I said no. And I was like, okay, I don't know what to do. So I was holding that phone in the kitchen. And I told you I was trying to dial 911. It didn't work. It didn't work. And it starts ringing, and I just pushed the button. And I said, hello?

Hello, who's this? This is Jackson County 911 emergency. Yes, I need somebody out here right away, and I need an ambulance. Tell me what the emergency is. I didn't see anything. All I can tell you is a gun went off. Hey, listen to me. They're on their way. Are you not, are you in danger? Yes. Okay. Is the person that did the firing of the weapon, are they there now? Yes. And she kept saying to me, get the phone to someone near the victim. And that gave me the

idea of how I was getting out of there. So I grabbed all my stuff and I had the phone to someone near the victim. And that gave me the idea of how I was getting out of there. So I grabbed all my stuff and I had the phone in my hand and I said, here, grandma, talk to 911. I have to go. And I headed on out the door. When I headed out the door, Kelly kind of pushed me, you know, with her shoulder. That was the arm that she was holding the gun in.

So I didn't really know what that meant. By now, I was just angry that I got involved in all this. I was just done with the situation. So I kept thinking, is she going to shoot me? Because she's standing right next to me, you know, but she still has it down at her side. When she stepped outside, Carla saw Shane lying halfway off the porch. And I kept thinking, how in the heck did that bullet push him from the front door clear over to the ground?

I mean, it was like four feet, five feet, something like that. It seemed like, you know, away from the door. He was nowhere near the front door when he was shot. No. Put me in your shoes or in your brain when you're walking from the house to your car 100 feet away. She still had the gun. She's got the gun. And I remember looking at her and I thought, whatever, if you're going to shoot me, do it. I stepped over his body, which was the hardest thing to do, but there wasn't any other

place to go. So I had to step over his body and go to my car. And I remember I thought, just don't turn around. Don't turn around. Just get in your car and leave. There was three houses on this property. When I was getting towards my car, there were two people, a girl and a guy, walking up towards my car. And I said to them, do you see Kelly standing up there? Go back to your property.

I've already called the sheriff. She's got a gun in her hand. And they're like, what? And then they said, is Shane okay? And I said, no, he's dead. I already called the sheriff and I'm leaving. Go back to your property. And then I got in my car.

I didn't know what to do. I feel like I was probably in shock. And I was just, no cell service. So I couldn't really call anybody. And I was worried about leaving the scene, leaving that scene without talking to anyone. And maybe a mile and a half to two miles or something like that. And I saw a guy standing outside. And so I drove my little car up there.

I said, help, I need help. I just went to the signing and they shot my client. As she told the story, we could see that Carla was compensating, telling it like some kind of bizarre adventure, even though it clearly still horrified her. But what's important to our story are the details. Carla said she never saw Shane pushing his way into the house. She did see his dead body outside, several feet away from the door.

So, a very different story than what Tucker and her mother told the police. So, my mom was against the door and trying to push the door, and I could see Shane, and he was trying to get in. I challenge you that moments before my brother died, he was assaulting me with the door. The discrepancies between Carla's account and the family's story helped convince the DA to charge Tucker with manslaughter. Tucker, not Kelly, since it was Tucker who fired the fatal shot.

Though she wasn't in jail very long, hours after she was booked, her family scraped together bail. And then something very strange happened. As Tucker walked away from the jail, she, in a way, vanished. Replaced by an alter ego named Wind, whose

adventures? You don't know the half of it yet. Next, on Killer Roll. Was there yelling? Yes. Maybe screaming Was there yelling? Yes. Maybe screaming and cursing? Yes.

Yeah. It was awkward, to say the least. You wouldn't think that they would want to cause an upset like that. It's something that none of us that were here will forget. It affected all the other actors. It affected the technical crew. It affected the front other actors. It affected the technical crew. It affected the front of house crew. There was no one that was left unscathed with this whole thing.

Killer Roll is brought to you by Dateline NBC. For Dateline NBC, Vince Sterlet is our producer. Linda Zhang is the associate producer. Joe Delmonico is the senior producer. And Susan Null oversees our digital programming. Adam Gorfain is co-executive producer. Liz Cole is our executive producer. And David Corvo is our senior executive producer. Liz Cole is our executive producer. And David Corgo is our senior executive producer. From Neon Hum Media, supervising producer is Samantha Allison. Associate producers are Liz

Sanchez and Evan Jacoby. Producers are Crystal Genesis and Alex Schumann. Executive producer is Jonathan Hirsch. Sound design and mixing by Scott Somerville. And music by Andrew Eapen.