Dateline Originals - Killer Role - Ep. 5: What Did You Do With The Gun?

Episode Date: December 18, 2023

Detectives want to know who fired and re-loaded the gun hours before Shane was shot.This episode was originally published on April 27, 2021. 

Art imitates life, as they say. Most of the time, anyway. Sometimes bizarrely, as if purely by coincidence or something inexplicable. Like the young woman named Tucker Reed, who shot and killed her uncle. Do you remember pulling the trigger? I, I, no, yes, I don't know. The same young woman who more than a year later starred in a movie in which she pretended to shoot someone else. Al, just calm down. Please stop. Help.

Agreed to play the part after, as you may recall, after she read the script. And the scene with its echoes of her own troubling reality. Certainly the filmmakers, their treasured project in ruins, found it hard to believe a person would do that. Remember what they said? She signed a contract the day after she read the script. And this is when she was all unveiled. Of course, by then. Again, more than a year after the real-life shooting,

Tucker was presenting herself as a different person. She'd changed her look, dyed her hair, told people her name was Wynne, even created Facebook and Wikipedia pages for this Wynne person. And it wasn't just the movie makers who were fooled. Oh no. As you'll soon hear, the live theater world of Southern Oregon is unlikely to forget the young woman they knew as Wynn, or her representative, or those things they did, apt to drive a director mad. I would say that everybody that was involved in it that day would honestly tell you that there was some form of PTSD happening amongst us. I mean, nobody has ever forgotten it. But none of that had happened yet.

All of that was still the unformed future back on that terrible day in July 2016. And she had reached underneath the towel, and when she brought it back this way, in my head I went, oh my God, that's a.38. The day Tucker Reed fired a bullet from a snub-nosed.38 into the chest of her Uncle Shane. Who has the gun and where is it? I don't know her name. It's in her hand. Okay.

She needs to be told to put that gun down. Still, so much to sort out. You're listening to Dateline NBC's newest podcast, Killer Roll. Take a long, winding drive through the green hills. Find the elusive turn. Point up the 200 feet of earthen driveway. And stop outside a small rustic house. A classic cabin.

Wide front porch. Windows looking out onto the pines. Shane's body was lying half off the front porch. Carla, the notary, had just stepped past to make her escape Shane's sister Kelly, Tucker's mother, was still on the phone with 911 It was still recording Okay, is he completely alert? No, he's nearly dead

Okay, listen to me Ma'am, you need to take a deep breath If you want to help your brother, I'm more than willing to help you, but you need to listen. No, I don't want to help him. Why don't you want to help him? Because he's a crazy meth addict. Okay. Did he hear that? Her dying brother as he struggled to draw breath?

Tucker's grandmother, Lori, sobbing, took the phone from Kelly. Oh, I think it's too late. Oh, God. And I need to tell the patrol officers, where is the gun? I don't know. My daughter put it somewhere. Okay. I think it's in a drawer.

In which part of the house? Where is the gun, Kelly? They need to know. What did you do with the gun? I can hear it. You want me to throw it in the green? I'll throw it in the green. No, that's not what I asked her to do. She wants to know where it is. It's right there in that drawer. Now, is everyone happy?

Well, no, the operator wasn't happy, but she was certainly inquisitive. What did he do that warranted the being shot? Did he hurt someone? Was he armed? No, he was just here at my house. Okay, did you shoot him, ma'am? No. Who shot him? I don't know. I don't know.

The 911 call, dramatic, emotional, angry, was investigative gold for the detectives trying to sort out what happened at that country ranch house. One of the contributing bits of evidence that would help them determine whether this had been a self-defense shooting, or a reckless act of the heat of passion and therefore manslaughter. Or if this shooting was planned, if it was murder. It was by no means the only important piece of evidence. Shane, of course, could not tell his side of the story, but in a way, his body did. Here's lead detective Gabe Birchfield. Was he armed when he was killed? He was not armed. He didn't have anything on him.

Just flip-flops, jeans, and a t-shirt. Where was he when he was shot? Was he inside or outside? He was still outside the front door. Was the wound visibly fatal? I mean, could you tell? It was, I mean, it was direct center of his chest, probably like six inches below his head, right in the sternum area. It was a perfect circle, like right, right through the center of his chest. That didn't prove intent, as Birchfield knew. But remember, that 911 call wasn't the only time someone phoned sheriffs from the ranch that day. Shane did too, a couple of hours before he was killed.

And he seemed quite worried. out here at my place. I'm expecting another public to be here at 2 o'clock to 2.30. And I don't want any trouble with my sister. She's over in the house. Her kid fired off a gun over there this morning. And who was the one that shot off the weapon this morning, your nephew? My niece. Okay. My niece.

I've been taking care of my mother. She's been meeting my mother out here for the last 15 years. I've been taking care of my mother every day for 15 years. And now I've got my sister and her kids camped in the house. And, oh, gosh, it's a long story.

Okay. Anyway, I wonder if I could get a sheriff out here. Okay, we'll get him out there as soon as we can, okay? But it wasn't an emergency call. And the ranch was remote. And before a deputy could get there, Shane was dead. I wanted to know what that shot meant, what that was, who fired that shot. Detective Tony Young, along with his partner Bill Ford, questioned Tucker just hours after the shooting.

About 30 minutes into that interview, Young, out of the blue, slid a transcript of Shane's phone call across the table to Tucker and asked if she really did fire a gun earlier in the day. That's today's date. And the time that that call was initiated was 144. Okay. Can you see what that covers? Your uncle called reporting that you fired a gun on the property today. Well. At that, prior to that time. Well, that's bizarre. Tucker, I got to tell you, I mean, being a critical thinker, and I know you are, with where we're at right now, that's pretty ominous, right?

Okay. You got to understand there's more to this story, and that's pretty telling. I mean, there's a lot of questions with this. We always try to figure out motive. What was the motive of somebody pulling a trigger on a gun and the gun going off? Was the person trying to shoot at the person and scare the person and accidentally hit them? There's a lot of stuff that can go into this. You've got to understand the reason. to me that's a burning question that printout i showed you with a with you

shooting a gun there earlier in the day i want you to understand what somebody other people watching this okay could be thinking oh my god there's a lot more to what went on today. A lot led you to where we're at today, but we've got to have it from you. You were there. I wasn't. Bill wasn't. We've got to have it from you, what was going on in your mind to get a complete picture of this. And that thing that I showed you, it just doesn't look good right now.

Without you opening your mouth and telling us what happened today. Yeah, well, I have to say that I've incensed that he would call 911 and think that that was anything. That man is firing off guns all the time. Okay. I found a gun that I believed belonged to my grandfather. I wanted to know if it was loaded. I took it outside onto the porch and I fired it. That was this morning. Was that the gun that was used? Yes.

I gave it to my mother afterwards saying I think that this gun I didn't even know how to use it. It doesn't need to be cocked to shoot but I thought it did earlier this morning. We were just kind of curious be able to see the gun. So was it meant to scare him or anything like that?

No, absolutely not. People are always shooting. You can see my grandmother's gun. That helps right there. That puts your voice on it. But let me ask you, are you a gun person? No. Okay. No, no. Okay. voice on it but let me ask you about are you a gun person no okay no no okay so that kind of raises another question what made you go out today what was going on in your mind to make

you want to test fire that gun today to make sure it worked i i don't i don't know i'm just getting out of my mind for so long i just saw this thing. Were you thinking, let me ask you this, Tucker, were you thinking that I ought to shoot this? I mean, you've already talked about barricading the doors. Yeah. Were you thinking of why to shoot this gun just in case something happens? Yeah. Okay.

That makes sense. So you're thinking of the gun as a protection. It's just a thing, yeah. All right. Okay. Was there any thoughts in your mind about causing any harm to Shane at all before this happened? No, absolutely not. No. Then, a little later in the interview,

Detectives Ford and Young seemed to get quite interested in a particular detail. Not about the question of why Tucker fired the gun that morning. No, they wanted to know if Tucker loaded the gun. You didn't have to load it this morning? No. And then after you shot it, you didn't open it? I don't know how to do that. Okay.

Didn't know how to load it. Didn't know how to open the cylinder. Why is that important? Because somebody did before the fatal shot was fired. How did they know? When cops inspected the gun after the shooting, they found only one spent shell corresponding to the shot that killed Shane. But since Tucker had fired the gun earlier, there should have been two spent shells. The fact there was only one meant someone reloaded the gun. She's saying that her mother took the gun. She never reloaded it, opened the cylinder, doesn't know how to do that with a handgun.

Tucker had told the detectives she didn't even know how the gun worked. It went off by accident. But now they knew she'd also fired it earlier that day. Though at what they didn't know. And somebody reloaded it afterwards. And then, as Tucker admitted, Kelly put it right in the middle of the table, hidden under a towel, as they met Carla the notary, and Shane waited outside. She's like, let's put it in a central place. Okay. Just, you know, so it's there.

What did it say to you that that gun had been placed in a position under a towel where it could be pulled out and used on a moment's notice. It's almost like they were looking for something to happen where they could concoct this story to justify its use. They're like, Shane's around, there's a notary here, let's put this gun here, and if he makes any attempt to come into our house, we'll pick it up and it'll be available and we'll shoot him and just claim self-defense. And to me, that really put a shadow over the whole trying to ask you and get your take on it is, looking back on this thing as it happens now, the stuff that was going through your mind, why do you think you shot him?

I think because I felt like there was a knife to my throat and I didn't have anywhere to run. Okay. Let me ask you this. But I don't think I did mean to shoot the gun. I didn't mean to shoot the gun. Okay. I didn't mean to shoot the gun. There's been a lot of, I mean, it's pretty evident that your mom doesn't like her brother.

At this point, yeah, I would bet. It sounds to me like you and your mom have had, you know, you're filled with them. But would you agree or disagree with me right now that if you don't like somebody, even if you hated somebody, you don't have a right to shoot them, right? Right. Okay. Yeah. hated somebody, you don't have a right to shoot them, right? Right. Okay. No, yeah. In this particular case, what we need to do is clear out all suspicion that this was something

that you shot him because you don't like him. Right. Okay. I would never have done that. And to end all the problems with all the threats and everything else. Yeah. No. I would never have shot him in front of so many witnesses if it was just a case of me not liking

him I would not have done it do you remember pulling the trigger I know yes I don't know I know if you did anything wrong yeah I feel like I'm really gonna help what do you think you did wrong and that's why I asked you do you think you did anything wrong? Yeah, I feel like I'm going to go to hell. What do you think you did wrong? And that's why I asked you, 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. 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. The whole money thing. So, it seemed to the detectives at least there was plenty of motive for murder.

And certainly opportunity. And even what the detectives suspected might have been shooting practice. Oh, and one more thing. All three women, Tucker, Kelly, and Lori, told a story so... Just the same, said Detective Birchfield. It's almost like it was rehearsed or something. Like a perfect match with each other. So as if they had been talking about it beforehand. Yeah, which is very probable considering it took Sheriff's Department like over 30 minutes to get to the house. When they got downtown, Tucker and her mom told a very dramatic story,

that they barely escaped from a violent attack. Tucker's mother, Kelly. I'm telling you that moments before my brother died, he was assaulting me with the door. He was causing me physical injuries. He was screaming at me. He was trying to force his way into a house he had no right to be in. Tucker's version. And he was banging the door into my

mother and my mother was screaming and he was screaming and I had the gun and I'm sorry. Okay, take your time. I don't even remember what happened. I was like screaming and I thought that you had to cock a gun for it to go off. And it was... Did the gun go off? Yes. And I thought that it was going to... But of course, the police already knew Tucker fired the gun twice that day, once in the morning and once into Shane.

Oh, by the way, Kelly's grandmother, Lori, told the same story to me about violent, scary Shane, her son. And he had a look on his face that was just murderous. I don't know how else I would describe what he was doing. And when this shooting occurred, where was he? He had come to the front porch and wedged his foot in the door when my daughter, Kelly, was trying to close it. Did you see the shot occur? No.

I would never in a million years want to be in your shoes in this situation, Laurie, but can you describe to me what it was like to be in that room and to have your granddaughter kill your son and have it all happen right in front of you? Well, it wasn't exactly in front of me. Shane was trying to get into the house and he lunged for the gun that Tucker was holding. Put all this together, along with the ongoing dispute over inheritance, and Detective Gabe Birchfield came to the conclusion that the women were not being honest about what happened at the ranch, and that the killing of Shane Moore was planned. It's just that he couldn't prove it.

The only other witness there that day, Carla, the notary, never actually saw the shooting. Her view of the door was blocked by a wall. Carla only heard how the shooting unfolded. Might not be quite enough to persuade a jury. In order to get murder, you have to have the intent. We did not have the intent. All we had was them saying they were defending themselves. And if that's the case, we don't have murder. We have murder without intent, which is manslaughter. You needed something to disprove the stories that they told you. We did. We had to disprove it. And up to that point, we did not have anything to disprove what they were telling us because Shane could not tell us anything. What was left? Research, for one thing. What was left? Research, for one thing. Who was this unlikely shooter, Tucker? There wasn't a

lot of information about Tucker, which made it tough, and she didn't seem to have a lot of friends, so there wasn't a lot of information we could garner about her and maybe her state of mind during the time of it. But when it came to Tucker's mom, Kelly, different story. Everyone wanted us to look at Kelly and tell us all the things about her. And that was, so it was almost diverting at times. We just got a lot of information from other witnesses about how good of a person Shane was and how bad of a person Kelly was. A bad person? This accomplished, devoted mother? How could that be?

A record search of the Jackson County Courthouse showed Kelly had been charged with misdemeanor disorderly conduct and harassment in 2004. The charging document detailed violent, tumultuous, and threatening behavior, like yelling and pushing and trying to provoke a confrontation. The alleged victim was the principal of the elementary school Tucker and her siblings attended. Kelly pleaded guilty. Then, three years later, she was arrested for criminal trespass in the second degree, again at her children's elementary school. There was a jury trial.

She was acquitted. We spoke to the principal and a teacher who said she witnessed one of the incidents. They declined our invitation to be interviewed. Didn't want to stir things up again, they said. Anyway, minor offenses. And to be clear, Kelly was not charged with any crimes related to Shane's death. Only Tucker for manslaughter. Though Detective Birchfield admitted he had issues with that.

I wanted it to be a murder, but it didn't have that little extra piece that would give it to us. Tucker, facing manslaughter, was out on bail, awaiting trial. At the very same time as her alter ego, the young woman named Wynne, went on to star in that horror movie. It's time for some change, you know? But imagine this. It was not Tucker's only command performance while she was out on bail. Again calling herself Wynne, Tucker boldly auditioned for the lead in an upcoming musical performance by a local and well-established theater company. She came into the auditions cold, so it wasn't like somebody that we had seen a million times.

Susan Aversa-Arago, a twinkly-eyed woman with a sly smile and a long record of theatric accomplishment, is the director of the Collaborative Theater Project in Medford, Oregon, a playhouse in Congress, located in a shopping center a few doors down from a Baja Fresh, across the midway from a Cineplex. But step inside and you are transported. It might be small-town theater, but the vibe here is anything but amateurish.

What with the props and wardrobes and green room and sophisticated light grid. You could just as easily be in an off-Broadway theater in New York. It's the kind of place that can launch a career. But there must be a lot of talent to choose from. There is. It's competitive. It's very competitive. There's a lot of people up here that want to perform.

So, no small accomplishment. But after this newcomer auditioned, Wynne Reed, that is, the staff of the Collaborative Theatre Project all agreed she'd be perfect for the lead of their upcoming musical. She looked delicate, but she was very strong.

And she has a very lovely singing voice, which, of course, is necessary for a musical. And she just looked right and she did a really solid audition. The production was called Himself and Nora, a wry comedy that tells the story of the lifelong love affair between author James Joyce and his Irish working class muse, Nora Barnacle. Here's a taste of the New York premiere. Without Nora, Nora Barnacle, there would be no James Joyce, in my opinion.

And that is New York playwright and musician Jonathan Brielle, who looks the part, what with his shaggy hair, wire-rimmed glasses, and tweed jacket. Jonathan wrote and composed himself and Nora. Is there a theme that a playgoer would discern in your story? Like any good musical, it is about love overcoming an obstacle. And here it was James Joyce's death. And Joyce died 15 minutes before Nora got back to his hospital room. But here at the theater in Oregon, the obstacle began to look like the star herself, Wynne. We started to have moments where she wanted to do her own costuming and bring in her own things.

And it was explained to her that't come in for rehearsal or something. Behaviors unbecoming serious theater, said Susan Aversa-Orego. And things kept happening over and over and repeating. And every little thing that would be an upset would escalate. It was very confusing dealing with her. When she got upset, she said that she wanted to have her representative come and talk to us. And so she brought this woman in who was her advocate. And during the course of the discussions, we were told, well, it's her aunt. Dealing with Wynne and her aunt was a constant source of turmoil, said the director. I think that whatever it was that they thought that they wanted. They thought that how to achieve that

was to push people into agreeing with them. It was winning something at all costs. What it was they wanted to win here, I don't know. Still, the director was so impressed by Wynn's raw talent, she put up with it. More than put up with it. She called the playwright, Jonathan Brielle, to tell him about Wynne. I understood that the woman playing Nora was very good.

And I thought, OK, I want to go see what she could bring to it. Because every actor, you know, brings themselves to a part in some way and draws from your own life experience to somehow make a role be truthful. It was just a quick C1 performance and off you go. Yep, that was the plan. But for a relative novice like Wynn to be noticed by a New York playwright who would fly across the country just to see her perform,

that was a very big deal. So it was alarming when on the afternoon of the performance, the director of Versa Orego got an urgent message from Wynn. And at one o'clock that afternoon, we got a message. She didn't use a phone. And we got a message. She didn't use a phone. And we got a message through her Facebook messenger that she was sick and she was in the hospital and she wasn't going to make it for the performance that night because she was on IV painkillers. And so, you know, she wasn't capable of performing.

In a hospital bed, hooked up to an IV, some kind of health crisis. The playwright, Jonathan Brielle, didn't get the news until his plane landed in Medford. What did you think when you heard that? Because you traveled across the country to see her. Disappointment was definitely high on my radar. I felt really disappointed.

It was a disaster. Embarrassing, certainly. But rather than cancel the performance, Aversa Orego arranged for the cast to do a simple table reading instead, with an audience including Jonathan Brielle, but without Wynne. And then, moments before the curtain rose, there she was. Wynne, along with her advocate, dramatically entered the theater. Really nicely dressed and carrying armloads of flowers for the playwright.

A surprise? That would be putting it mildly. Even after all the earlier issues, this was too much, said Susan Aversa-Orego. And we told her that she couldn't perform because she had told us that she was on, you know, IV meds. It would be downright irresponsible the director told her when she'd been so ill what was her response to that she was very upset it was more than you would expect somebody to be upset and just about then the playwright arrived well i got there and there was a bit of commotion susan came out and told me that Wynn was there and that they were having a bit of a heated discussion that she wanted to go on

and that Susan felt that that wasn't the right thing to do, even though the producer I knew felt very responsible for the fact that I had come out. So if she was making that kind of decision, something was going on. So loud, so rancorous, so upsetting, that two years later, Aversa Orego was still clearly uncomfortable talking about that night. Her answers to our questions punctuated with pauses and nervous laughter. Was there yelling? Yes.

Maybe screaming and cursing? Yes. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, it was awkward, to say the least. We have the playwright here, and there's... Right in front of the playwright this happened. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

That's what I mean. It's not a normal, what you would normally expect people to be able to control themselves to the extent that if somebody important is there, you wouldn't think that they would want to cause an upset like that. So, yeah, it was interesting. She even threatened to call the police, she said, to get Wynn and her representative or aunt or whoever she was to leave. 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 of house crew. There was no one that was left unscathed with this whole thing. When you say with this whole thing, you're not just talking about that one incident?

She made multiple accusations. She accused me of harassing her and making her life uncomfortable. And she accused different people of sexual harassment, not in a physical sense, but in a verbal sense. So I take it seriously. I take it very seriously if somebody says to me that somebody harassed them. The director conducted her own in-house investigation and asked Wynne and her advocate, aunt, to take part. But they were not willing to do that.

In the end, the director said she could not find any truth to any of the harassment allegations. So the easiest thing was we told her that we couldn't continue to have her perform in the show. Months would pass before Aversa Orego would learn that Wynne wasn't Wynne, but a woman named Tucker who was out on bail for killing her uncle. And then, for a little extra jolt, would discover what you already know, that the woman Wynne called her advocate, her representative, her aunt, was actually her mother, Kelly.

And then we all sat there and went, whoa, that's weird, that's her mother, it's not her aunt, It's not her advocate. It's not her representative. It's her mother. Boy, you may have dodged a bullet. Please don't say that. At that point, it was a joke, but then it wasn't a joke. So, yeah. No, it wasn't a joke, but it certainly was dramatic. And like most dramas, it contained the elements of surprise, revelation. Call it the twist, if you will. Oh, but I'm not talking about what's happened already. Now, the curtain was ready to rise on the final act. Next, on Killer Roll.

They said, we have some evidence that's going to prove this was self-defense. So we said, okay, send it to us. And what was this amazing piece of apparently defense-friendly evidence? Well, imagine this. It was a video. When he pushes a button on his computer, my jaw hit the floor. Killer Roll is brought to you

by Dateline NBC. For Dateline NBC, Vince Sterla is our producer. Linda Zhang is the associate producer. Joe Delmon 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. 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.