Dateline Originals - Murder & Magnolias - Ep. 4: "Bluegrass Needs Another Benjamin"

Episode Date: December 19, 2023

Lovers on the line in jailhouse phone calls reveal new clues. Then, a big arrest.This episode was originally published on November 29, 2022. 

Sometimes, in moments of crisis, it's instructive to look back in time, to think anew about the old family stories we once found so amusing. Like the night of the Shrine Dance in Conway, South Carolina, way back in 1988. Family stories have a way of fusing fact and fiction together after a few dozen tellings, and this is one of those. It was getting late, the story goes, and Chris was getting antsy. He'd wanted to speak with Nancy's father, but he knew the timing needed to be right. When he finally saw his chance, Chris asked O'Neill Cannon to step outside.

And he said, Mr. Cannon, I would like to propose to your daughter, and I want to ask for her hand in marriage. And my dad said, well, son, I got something to tell you first. What followed was a long story about Nancy and a squabble she'd once had with her brother Neil when they were kids. Something of a backyard baseball game. Anyway, this is how Nancy tells it. He said when Nancy was a little girl, she and her brother were playing ball in the backyard. So whoever was catching was calling the strikes or balls. And Nancy happened to be catching.

And when she called her brother out on a strike, he got so mad, he took the aluminum baseball bat in his hand and slammed it down on her hand that was on the ground as she was catching. And he said, oh, Nancy screamed. What Chris was thinking as he listened to Nancy's father way back then, we cannot know. But listen, he did, polite as any supplicant would be, as the story went on and on until O'Neill Cannon said this. In the middle of the night, I hear Neill screaming at the top of his lungs. And I run to his bedroom and I see Nancy was standing on top of the bed,

straddling Neill, and she had an aluminum baseball bat, and she was swinging it like Paul Bunyan chopping wood. He said, I grabbed her and pulled her off of him, and she still threw the bat at his head. According to family lore, Chris stood there slack-jawed as Nancy's father got to the point. He said, well, son, I'm going to let you marry her, but I am going to tell you, if you ever hit her, don't go to sleep. And that was the prequel to our marriage. Rather appropriate, don't you think? I definitely think.

In this episode, you'll hear from the man now on the receiving end of Nancy's metaphorical bat, Chris Latham. Nancy tried to break into my home. You'll hear two lovebirds, alleged conspirators, cooing on a recorded line. I think of you every second, honey. I think of you every second. I dream of you every time I close my eyes. And you'll hear how one of the plotters suddenly died behind bars, taking crucial secrets to the grave. He's so volatile, and knowing that he was probably going to spend a good portion of the rest of his life in prison,

I think it just pushed him over the edge. I'm Keith Morrison, and this is Episode 4 of Murder and Magnolias, a podcast from Dateline. Every day they queued up beside the telephones, women all dressed in the same baggy prison scrubs, unflattering gray and white horizontal stripes. An observer in the women's section of the Al Cannon Detention Center in Charleston would have noticed a tall blonde standing by the phones.

She was almost always there, either on the phone or waiting for one. Hello, who's calling from? Wendy Hall. An inmate asked. Charleston County Detention sent her. Though her collect calls to the outside were limited to 15 minutes, Wendy made dozens of them. Anyone standing within earshot would have known

she was speaking to a lover who was on the outside. Can't wait to ravish you when I get here. I can't wait either. Oh, yes, the intensity of young love. But truth be told, Wendy and her banker boyfriend were decidedly middle-aged. You and me together? Yes, just you, me, and Jacob. Yes, honey.

Absolutely. Yeah. Well, it wasn't just you and me and Jesus As the agents heard again and again It may have sounded like a summer of frustrated love Said Joe Boykin But it wasn't just that Oh no, plans were afoot Many of them were their affection for one another But it wasn't just that. Oh, no. Plans were afoot. Many of them were their affection for one another and graphic detail. But also... Phone settings.

Kind of. In essence, yes. Yes. But the other part was, I would use the word, their conniving and scheming with one another. Translation? with one another. Bluegrass, he's another Benjamin. Hello. A wife, hello. Translation? A lawyer in Kentucky needed another $50,000 to defend Sammy Yenawine.

That's right. It seemed Chris Latham was somehow covering the legal costs of the man who plotted to kill his wife. Hello. What up? Ah, I'm going to get distracted. We'll figure that out.

Wendy and Chris basically collaborated to get Wendy's two parents to foot the bill for Sammy Yenawine's lawyer. And why would they do that? So Sammy wouldn't roll. As far as the agents could tell, Chris Latham was doing all he could in those phone calls to keep Wendy close.

After all, she was the one in jail for allegedly plotting to have Chris's wife killed. And the agents were sure she knew things Chris would not want revealed. I'm telling you, though, that will be a plan. Okay. I'm going to work on it. Okay. I'll do everything I can. Okay. Chris would not want revealed. Of course, Nancy knew nothing about those calls. But what she did know was in the weeks after the foiled murder plot became front page news, her husband had not lifted a finger to contact his own daughters. Not a word of shock or dismay or a pledge of innocence. Nothing.

Not a peep, not a text, not an email, nothing. Not a friend reaching out to the girls, not a friend of his, not a relative of his. Nobody to say, are you okay? Are you safe? I can't believe this is happening. I want to make sure you're safe. Not one single person reached out to my children from Team Chris. During those long months, Nancy had plenty of time to think about the arc of their love affair. What had happened to the young man she fell in love with at first sight?

I just really felt like, gosh, this guy's going to be a great daddy. And what had happened to her? Their divorce, it seemed, had brought out the worst in both of them. Even Nancy's divorce attorney could see that. He said, you are letting this divorce change you. You are letting Chris and his attorney turn you into a mean-spirited person. He said, you need to get back to who you are because you can't let somebody else change you. Nancy knew it was true, but in those bitter months before the hit packet surfaced,

Nancy just hadn't been able to stop. She couldn't stop collecting evidence of her husband's affair, couldn't stop throwing zingers his way at depositions, couldn't pass up an opportunity to shame him. I was becoming maniacal, like an evil villain who's so excited that, you know, I put the laser beams on the shark's head. I mean, I was Dr. Evil. I was so excited that I was hurting him, and it was just making me so happy. Things got so bad at one point, Chris sent a memo with her photo to the bank's security officers, instructing them to evict her if she entered bank property for a non-banking purpose, or if she started making a scene, which she did, frequently.

So I went to my local Bank of America to cash a check or do something at the teller window, which was always when I would try to find that opportunity to get a dig in. Like, oh, my husband, Chris Latham, works here. Have you slept with him? And during one of those days at the bank, she bumped into a woman she knew sitting in the lobby. The woman's name was Coco. And she said, your husband works here, right? And I said, yes, he does. And he slept with so many people here. That's why we're getting a divorce. And she said, like, wait, why are you getting a divorce? Because you're so nice. And I said, because my husband has been having sex with so many people who work at the bank. And she said, at this bank? I said, all the banks, all the Bank of Americas. He's just throwing it out like mints at a Christmas

parade. And Coco was like, oh my God, tell me more. So of course my voice is now escalating and I'm talking very loudly. And I said, oh, by the way, one of the women he's sleeping with just happens to be married to one of the guys who works right here in this branch. That was the kind of nonsense that I was doing just to make his life difficult for fun. All that was before she learned about the plan to have her killed. Before she and her girls went into hiding, before anybody was arrested. Just Nancy making Chris's life difficult. There was another night when she drove by Chris's beach house and noticed Wendy's Durango parked in the drive. Nancy decided to take a quick picture as further documentation for her divorce case.

So I'm at the edge of the road at Sullivan's Island, and I'm taking a picture of her car in the driveway. And when I hit the button, I guess the flash on this disposable camera had gone off because all of a sudden it was, you know, that loud kind of that pop of flash. And I thought, oh, crap. So as I'm walking around the car to get back in the driver's side, I see Chris come out the house with his boxers on, no shirt, and he's carrying a flashlight, of all things. And he's following me like he's making a beeline for the car. And I thought, I'm not going to drive away. I'm going to seize this opportunity to just get one more dig in.

So I rolled down the window, the tiniest crack. And I said, don't mind me, just taking pictures. Because I thought that is going to irritate him more than anything else, right? That kind of, yeah, yeah, yeah, taking pictures, because I thought that is going to irritate him more than anything else, right? That kind of, yeah, yeah, yeah, taking pictures. And I drive off and I'm just kind of giggling to myself at my awesomeness. That's the way it is sometimes with ugly divorces. Competent, mature adults regress, let loose their inner 10-year-old. The giggling didn't last long. The very next day, Nancy learned that Chris had filed a trespassing complaint against her with the Sullivan's Island police.

The summons said he was seeking a protection order from Nancy. So next thing you know, there's a police officer at my door, and he's like, I have a warrant for you. You have to be in court for X day. Not so funny now. Nancy didn't like the direction her little photo escapade had taken. A possible trespassing rap? Wouldn't look so good for her in divorce court. So I called my sister-in-law Kelly, who's an attorney, and I just said, girl, you got to help me. And she said, okay, I'll have a conversation. She calls the courthouse. She talks to the clerk of court. They're like, yeah, we get it. Divorce. People are crazy. Sure. Let's wait until they're divorced,

and then we'll hash this out. Chris Latham, of course, was not at all ready to let it slide. He had juice in the Charleston area. In time, the clerk of the court on Sullivan's Island was feeling the heat to get Nancy's trespassing case on the docket. Months had passed, and every day, Chris Latham was calling, saying, I don't understand why haven't we had our day in court. I don't understand why she isn't arrested. He was calling in favors. He was calling everybody who knew the judge. He knew all the movers and shakers

and was one himself. So if anybody could pull strings to make this happen, it was him. In the end, an initial hearing of Nancy's case was put on the court calendar just six days before their divorce case was scheduled to begin. Nancy hired a lawyer

and showed up on time for the late afternoon hearing. So Sullivan's Island was renovating their courthouse. So they had a little trailer off at the side is where they were holding court. And when you walk into the trailer, you are in the courthouse. You see the judge sitting at a table up front. There are a ton of chairs. My soon-to-be ex-husband sitting on a row. So we go and sit right behind him just for fun.

Because that's, you know, any time I can get, like, a little bit of irritation in there. As Nancy and her lawyer, a man named Rutledge, waited, they made small talk weekend plans. Nancy remembers telling him she might go to her dad's place. As they talked, Nancy noticed her husband sitting right in front of her, furiously tap, tap, tapping on his phone. But she didn't notice, as court was called to order, Chris used his phone to snap photos of her. Well, the judge said, you know, who would like a jury trial? Rutledge grabs my arm, stands me up. We do, sir.

And the judge said, OK, you're going to have a jury trial. Come back X day. Rutledge is like, yes, sir. Thank you so much. So once we say we want a jury trial, Chris Latham jumps up. You can see he's so irritated. And he starts walking to the door as fast as he can. And I was like, well, there you go. I guess I won. I've irritated the bejesus out of him. As she and her lawyer headed out, said Nancy, they noticed that Chris was standing by the door, still tap-tapping on his phone. As we walk up, he said, here, let me get

that. And he pushes the door open for us. We walk out. And as we're walking down, Rutledge said, well, that was mighty considerate. And I kind of look back and there's Chris watching us walk away. What was Chris Latham looking at? Who had he been texting or emailing? Nancy had no idea at the time. Only later, when she saw the hit packet splayed across Kathy Harrow's kitchen table, did she notice that the date and time of that court hearing was scribbled on the pages. So was her father's home address. Had Chris Latham somehow been communicating with the hit team that day? Hard to say, but if he was, he was out of

luck. The hitman, Sammy Yenawine, had returned to Louisville. Is that why Nancy survived? It was another restless night for Nancy Latham. She'd had so many since the plot on her life was uncovered, tossing and turning. The clock radio's red numerals seemed to mock her as she counted down the hours till daylight. She flipped the pillow to the cool side and tried to drift off. But no, her mind kept churning, recycling the same old thoughts. She still couldn't fathom it. Her husband had actually wanted her dead. Did

he still? Had he hired someone else? Someone who might be out there beyond the window, watching, waiting for a clean shot? Chris had so much money that that was our thought during that time frame. Wendy's already arrested. Sammy's arrested. Aaron's arrested. What kind of evidence are they going to turn over? And so does he feel like, I don't have anything else to lose if they arrest me. Should I go ahead and line something up now?

And I think that was the fear. Oh, there was plenty of fear. Remember Sammy Yenawine, the original assassin contracted to kill Nancy? Oh. Two months after being brought to South Carolina to stand trial? He was found hanging in his jail cell. Had Sammy lived, he might have named names,

might have cinched the case for prosecutors, but no, he'd taken those secrets to the grave. Though some did wonder if Sammy's death had really been a suicide. Sammy's wingman, Aaron Wilkinson, said he never doubted it. I knew that he killed himself. He's just, he's so volatile, I think, with the knowledge he was probably going to spend a good portion of the rest of his life in prison, I think it just pushed him over the edge. Through all of this, Chris Latham remained a free man.

The agents had collected plenty of circumstantial evidence implicating him, but prosecutors were reluctant to greenlight an arrest. I felt like we really needed to make sure that we had all the evidence before we went in. That's the voice of Bill Nettles, the U.S. attorney for South Carolina at the time. It was his office that would have to prosecute the case. I was a criminal defense lawyer before I took this job, and I knew that if we were to charge him and the forensic evidence wasn't back, that that would make a cross-examination about us rushing to judgment.

Nope. The U.S. attorney wanted to take his time, cross the T's, dot the I's, and so on. It was a gamble, of course. Chris Latham could flee, but Bill Nettles didn't think he would. I wasn't that worried about that because, you know, he really thought he was smarter than everybody else. When you've got a murder for hire, a part of the killing is how you're going to get away with it. That's part of the point. And believing you can get away with it. And believing, because if you didn't believe you could get away with it, you wouldn't do it. Waiting, however, did carry a cost.

ATF agents Boykin and Callahan wanted to compare the computer printouts from the hit package with the printers that Chris Latham and Wendy Moore had in their offices. But by the time they got a search warrant, those printers were gone. We interviewed numerous co-workers of Chris Latham and Wendy Moore who said without a doubt that they did in fact have printers located in their respective offices. ATF agent Bobby Callahan said they searched everywhere for those missing printers, even that rented house on Sullivan's Island. Bobby Callahan, ATF agent, ATF agent, ATF agent, ATF agent, ATF agent, ATF agent, ATF agent, ATF agent, and we conducted a search warrant on their offices at the residence that they shared in common,

and we did not recover those printers. Hmm. In the whole Bank of America building, two printers? Chris and Wendy's printers had gone missing and only those? Well, let's just say also in our investigation, we didn't undercover a rash of printer theft at U.S. Trust. That's Agent Joe Boykin. Just a couple of missing ones. Just two particular ones. And Wendy Moore's laptop?

Never recovered. They did find the printer logs, though, and in there was gold. Buried deep in the computer data, gibberish on the bank's central server, but something akin to a smoking gun. I don't know that Chris Latham was the most computer-savvy person in the world, and I don't know if he realized what was on those items. Printer logs showing him from his computer and printer printing out maps of Nancy Latham's residence that were in the hit package,

as well as the photograph that we recovered from Chris Latham's phone of Nancy Latham's residence and her vehicle, which was also located in the hit package. Well, it was early August, four months after the murder plot was revealed, that a grand jury returned a criminal indictment against Chris Latham. And that afternoon, Agent Boykin called Nancy. He was on the road, he told her, and he needed a favor. If Chris wasn't in town, he asked, where might he be?

And she told me that they had regularly vacationed up on Lake Jocassee and stayed in lake houses up there. I said, I tell you what, give me a few minutes, let me see what I can find out. Nancy padded downstairs to the den, where Madison was noodling away on her computer. Pull up your Facebook page, she said. Look at the children of your father's best friends. She did. And she said, what am I looking for?

And I said, anything about a vacation. Well, one of the girls, one of the daughters happened to post on Facebook, we are at Lake Jocassee in a house built for 14 people. There are 21 of us. How are we going to make this work? Okay, good information. Thank you very much. And in that post, she had tagged Wendy Moore's children and his other friend's children.

Nancy had a hunch. If all those kids were together in the same lake house, the odds were good that Chris Latham was there too. A quick Google search turned up a list of rental properties on Lake Jocassee, a sprawling 7,000-acre lake near the North Carolina line, and only one rental claimed it could sleep 14 people. I called the owners of the house. And I said, I see that you have a house for rent on the lake. Is there any way that I can go look at it right now?

And they said, no, I'm so sorry, it's occupied. I said, okay, was there any way you could give me the address for the house so I can Google map it and see where it lays out on the lake? They said, absolutely, happy to give it to you. With address in hand, Nancy called the agents back. I said, here's the address. And they said, how sure are you? I said, I will not bet my children's life on it,

but I'll happily bet mine. I said, I'm like 99.9%. They said, okay, we'll talk to you later. The agents were 150 miles from that big house on Lake Jocassee. That was a very long day. By the time the agents got to the lake, teams of local law enforcement had been assembled at a nearby staging area.

Hoping to preserve the element of surprise, the agents Boykin and Callahan crept up on the house, sometimes crawling through the woods and underbrush to get a closer look. We didn't want to just walk up and he not be there and tip our hand. Hanging out on the porch, the agents could see a half-dozen teens standing around drinking beer. Out on the drive, they spotted Chris's big Ford Excursion. Yes, he was there. So once we were able to verify he was inside the house, we went down and encountered a young man outside in the yard

and told him who we were and why we were there and followed him into the residence. The house was built on the side of a hill that sloped down to the lake. Upscale rustic, you could call it. When the agents entered, they found themselves on the second floor of a large indoor space. As Agent Boykin looked over the railing down to the lodge-like living room below, he saw Chris Latham in shorts and a t-shirt standing before a stone fireplace.

Chris Latham looked right up at me, and all he could say was, you gotta be kidding. It was at that moment, said Boykin, that the clouds opened up. Rain pounded on the roof as Chris Latham changed into a light blue long-sleeved t-shirt and jeans because he was going on a long ride back to Charleston. Shortly after we had gotten Chris in the car and were heading back to Charleston, we received a phone call from his attorney and he advised us not to talk to him, not to ask him anything about the case. So we honored that request and we only told him, if you need something to eat, if you need to use the bathroom, let us know and we'll oblige.

It was slow going in the driving rain. The windshield wipers working at full speed. At one point, Chris indicated he needed to make a rest stop and asked the agents to get a carton of chocolate milk. While Chris was inside with Agent Callahan, Joe Boykin dialed Nancy. They called me, let me know that he was now arrested. He was in the car, and they were headed to Charleston. And they said, and we want to thank you, because were it not for you, we would have never found

your husband. We had no idea where he was. Sweet revenge? Oh, yes. Even more so when you consider it was after midnight when Chris Latham finally walked into the Charleston County Detention Center to be booked on conspiracy charges, which meant the date was August 7th, Nancy's birthday. Best birthday present ever. Happy birthday to me. She slept well that night for the first time in months, said Nancy. And a few days later, when she saw Agent Boykin, she thanked him again in person.

I said, why in the world would you think that I would be able to find Chris? And he looked me down the eye and he said, if you want to find a husband, call a pissed off wife. And I was just like, that is a great point. Yes. I mean, when a woman puts her mind to it, we can find just about anybody. Chris Latham was in a talkative mood when I spoke with him at the Charleston Detention Center. He had dressed like the banker he used to be for our visit. Navy blue blazer, powder blue dress shirt. Must have shrunk a little, though. The clothes had been made for a bigger man. I want to answer all your questions. Know that. Whether I can or cannot.

Gotcha. Yeah. Sitting in silence all this time is painful. He was in his early 50s when I met him, with sandy gray hair and sky blue eyes, and a soft southern voice that seemed designed to radiate calm. And I want my side of the story told as well. What do people not understand about you and your situation that they should know? There's a lot. You know, everything that's gone on has been a media frenzy.

There's only one side of this story that's been out there, and the media, in my opinion, has taken this, and I've been tried and convicted in the media long before this ever started. And what was Chris Latham's side of the story? Well, it begins with adultery. Nancy's adultery. Had his divorce trial not been sidetracked by a certain murder plot, well, said Chris, his legal team would have proved that in court. Yes, we had proof. What was your proof?

Absolute proof. Well, number one is there were 9,355 phone calls. There were cloaking numbers that they used that we proved. Also that various emails back and forth between her and a pair more. Pot calling the kettle black? I asked him about those reports from Nancy's private eyes of a woman sneaking into his hotel room,

staying all night. Well, that, said Chris, was a simple misunderstanding. You're saying that's not true? No, I'm not saying that that's not true. We spent some time. Do I need to get into this? See, I don't want to get in the weeds here. I mean, she makes a claim, you make a claim.

I don't know which one is right. That person was being a friend. And so it goes. He said, she said. make a claim. I don't know which one was right. That person was being a friend. And so it goes. He said, she said, bitter exes squabbling over blame and pride and the size of the settlement package. Except in this case, all that was now moot. Chris was in jail accused of trying to have his wife killed. What's it like to be accused of plotting to kill your wife? You know, I think it's horrible. It truly is. But I've been blessed with the people, friends, and family that truly know me.

It's been remarkable how they've stood beside me throughout all this time. And I feel truly blessed that they've done that. They know who I am. They know that I would never even think, I have no desire, none whatsoever, to harm Nancy. Never did? Never did. You must have been pretty mad for a while. You know, it's a civil thing. A divorce is a very common thing that people go through. Sure. I just wanted to get to the other side. I don't think my divorce was any uglier than a lot of divorces that take place out there. You know, maybe I had some characteristics of my divorce that makes it more interesting for the media and others to pay attention to.

But, you know, divorces are awful for everyone. And what about his lover, Wendy Moore? Wendy number two. Did she conspire with her ex-husband, Sam Yenawine, to have Nancy killed? Chris was adamant, no, no, no, no. There's no incentive whatsoever for Wendy to want to harm, you know, Nancy Latham. I mean, what's in it for her, I ask you? Well, what's in it for her?

I mean, she can have you without you having to pay alimony, without you having to pay house payments, without you having all those financial obligations, and without you having that woman around who's been driving you crazy for years. Yeah, no. If anything, Wendy wanted this chapter closed. She was very supportive of trying to settle it without going to court, to take the high road every single time, just to get this chapter closed in my life so that we could begin our chapter in our lives. As far as any upside for Wendy, no. The one thing that we were waiting on, Keith,

was my vindication, my vindication before my daughters. Vindication? Yes. According to Chris, a divorce trial would have proved that Nancy was the one who had cheated. Nancy who had the affair and caused the divorce. A charge Nancy has always denied. He had accused me of having an affair. He had accused me of slashing tires. And none of it was true.

Truth? Well, whatever the truth was, one thing was now crystal clear, even to Chris Latham. He had no chance of getting a favorable ruling in a divorce court trial. Not now. Not with a murder-for-hire rap hanging over his head.

So he settled. Since it seemed unlikely Nancy would ever be able to collect on an alimony judgment, with Chris now out of work and looking at a lengthy prison stretch if convicted, the court awarded her a larger portion of the Latham marital estate. It was November 2013, less than four months after Chris's arrest, the Latham divorce case was finalized. And that day, Nancy Latham reclaimed her maiden name. Cannon, that's a powerful name, right? Cannon. Great name.

The day that I got the divorce, the day that I got the divorce, I started going by Cannon. She might be a Cannon now, but Nancy would have to keep her powder dry, at least for the next three months. That was when her ex-husband and his girlfriend would have to face the big guns from the Department of Justice and go on trial for plotting to have her killed. Next on Murder and Magnolias. I can say that I would never do anyone harm, especially not the mother of someone whose children were the same age as my kids,

went to school with my kids, who I was, you know, in love with their father. You know what I mean? I watched as Wendy turned around and smirked to her family, and I remember Chris kind of got this look on his face like, yeah, we're getting off. What was going on in here, in your head? In my head, I thought, oh my gosh, this is not good.

This is not good. Murder and Magnolias is a production of Dateline and NBC News. Tim Beecham is the producer. Brian Drew is the audio editor. Thomas Kemen is assistant audio editor. Keone Reed and Reese Washington are associate producers. Susan Nall is senior producer. Adam Gorfain is co-executive

producer, Liz Cole as executive producer, and David Corvo as senior executive producer. From NBC News Audio, Bryson Barnes as technical director, sound mixing by Bob Mallory, Nina Bisbano

as associate producer. Nina Bisbano is Associate Producer.